“Heh. Hehehe… Ahahaha! Let’s! Go!” Natsuko said, clapping her hand.

Baran looked stupefied.

Sofiane exhaled and brushed back his hair. Natsuko’s reaction made him anxious. Her excitement was in direct proportion to how bad things were getting, so the bounty on them from the Yishang was probably even worse than his already upset stomach suggested.

“Why don’t the Yishang deal with the killer directly?” Shuixing asked. “I don’t understand asking Heroes to do it. Even less offering them a reward.”

“Because they’re gods-damned sadists, that’s why,” Natsuko said, dancing a jig in-between the other Heroes.

Sofiane rubbed his temples. “Okay, Natsu, I can almost sort of see why you were happy about having our mysterious attacker to go hunt down, but why does the Yishang giving out the bounty of all bounties for our capture have you dancing a jig?”

“Cuz, puffball, I get to embarrass more idiots like this guy, obviously,” Natsuko said, booping Baran on the nose.

“Not all of them are as stupid as Baran and Xiuquan, firecrotch,” he replied.

Baran started. “Hey—”

“Don’t forget, Daisy can stick you in a block of stone again with the snap of her fingers, and she’s only #4. Boulanger would eat you for lunch and pick you out of his teeth when he’s ready for his reward,” Sofiane said.

Natsuko stopped dancing. “Sure, but they’re on our side, right? And besides, there’s no reward for us because we’re not Shrike’s killers.”

“They said Frederick too,” Shuixing said.

“I didn’t kill him either!” Natsuko said, her voice startled birds out of their early morning slumber.

Shuixing put a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “We know, Natsu. But we also just learned the Yishang aren’t omniscient, so if they also don’t know that…”

Natsuko’s excitement disappeared as quickly as it appeared. Rather than protesting, however, she took a deep breath and shrugged. “Then we go find a Pengwu and tell them to tell the Yishang that Pechorin and I are clean.”

“Maybe,” Sofiane said. “But first we link back up with Daisy and hope like hell she convinced the other Top Ten Heroes to back us.”

Baran started laughing at that. There was something in the tone of his laughter that set everyone on edge. Everyone glanced around and saw their own concern mirrored in each other’s eyes. This was already uncharted territory. The Yishang had never promised permanent stat increases before, and timing it to the permanent deaths of Heroes did not sound like a return to the comfortable status quo. From behind them, the tides of the sea gave a muted roar.

“Do you really think the Yishang is going to walk back this event?” Baran asked, eyes flickering with greed. “Think about it! What do they thrive on? Use-Numbers. They need them more than we need them, otherwise they wouldn’t bother with this whole summoning thing, right? They’re doing all this for the Celestials, not the Entropic Axis. Even you all, down there at the bottom, you’ve noticed an uptick in your Use-Number, haven’t you?”

Sofiane crossed his arms. “We got new outfits for the Card Tournament, that’s why.”

Faisal cleared his throat. “Our party did not, but our numbers went up too. I thought it curious, considering we just lost stats, but I attributed it to something anomalous with our emanations.”

Baran shook his head. “No, ladies, gentlemen, and Sofiane, it’s neither of those reasons. It’s because the total number of Celestials went up. Everyone’s Use-Numbers increased across the board. And why? Because the mysterious permanent deaths of Heroes, and the hunt for the killers, is a special event that even the Celestials know about. And maybe it’s even for them.”

“Oh fuck,” Natsuko said.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

There was a sound like a punctured tire as the air was let out of a half-dozen sets of lungs belonging to Heroes who finally understood how truly screwed they were. This was immediately followed up with the short, sharp inhalations of sniffing.

“Uhh… guys…” the raccoon girl said.

Sofiane grit his teeth. “Shit. Alright, let’s go. We’re in better shape to take a fight with Xiuquan and them, but I’d prefer to keep moving if possible.”

No one protested his suggestion. With nothing to gather up, they shuffled off into the jungle except for Sofiane who kept his emerald sword pointed at Baran.

“Lay down, hands behind your head, face in the dirt until you can’t hear us anymore. If not, you get to lose another round of stats. Got it?”

Baran snorted. “Sure, Sofi. For what it’s worth, I don’t hate you. When I say good luck, I genuinely mean it, cuz you’re gonna need it: Good luck.”

“If my luck was good I wouldn’t be here,” Sofiane replied as Baran lay down in the dirt.

Sprinting off into the trees after his teammates, there wasn’t much Sofiane could do to enforce Baran staying where he was put. On the whole, Sofiane’s brain wasn’t running at full efficiency. So much had happened so quickly. What they really needed was rest, and not the enforced kind after being blown to pieces. Unfortunately, there were over a hundred other people coming right for them that did not want them to have any.

The seven of them sprinted through the jungle for about an hour before the raccoon girl announced there were no longer other Heroes in her smelling range, not even Baran. By this point the eastern part of the sky had been splashed with dull indigo.

Without speaking a word, their group of seven decided to take a break and wandered out of the jungle onto a different part of the beach that encircled the Shikijiman main island. Given the island’s teardrop shape, with the north-western tail formed by Kazan-to and its namesake volcano, Sofiane estimated they were on the far southeast shore. The next island in the archipelago was visible as a dull gray blob on the brightening horizon.

Natsuko was the first to plop onto the sand to catch her breath and soon everyone but Harald and Pechorin followed.

“Get down here, idiot,” Natsuko said, her face as red as her hair from running. She slapped Pechorin’s leg.

“I’m not tired,” he replied, throat straining not to take in the deep, heaving breaths his lungs demanded.

“If you lay down and catch your breath, I’ll let you compose exactly one poem.”

Pechorin tucked the tails of his black leather coat under him and sat down on the sand. He didn’t lay down with his hands behind his head like Natsuko, however, but sat with his knees bent and his arms wrapped around them so that he was still in position to look wistfully off into the ocean.

“Doesn’t count,” Natsuko said. “All the way down, you dork.”

“I can’t watch the sunrise then,” he said.

She groaned at him and pulled herself into a similar position. Without admitting it to herself, Natsuko had been trying to recreate the moment when they had all laid out on the sand after coming to Shikijima for the first time. No matter how many times she got stung by it, there was a part of her that still wanted to recreate the past, step by step, even knowing that things had changed permanently.

“Y’know, everyone is so worried about permanent death… But we’ve had permanent endings for a while now,” Natsuko said. “So what’s the difference?”

“Are you trying to become the Koyon to my Sofiane?” Pechorin asked.

She looked over at him. “Huh?”

“You’re stealing my archetype—brooding and gloomy.”

She shoved Pechorin in the shoulder. For a moment afterwards, neither of them spoke. In front of them, a milky bubble in the sky expanded, birthing a dividing line between the dark ocean waters and a cream-colored dawn. Golden rays shot through it and drew up across the waters and then the beach and jungle, filling the muted colors of the previous night with their vibrant hues. Natsuko’s red kimono regained its crimson and even Pechorin’s black coat was glossy where the sunshine gleamed against its smooth surface.

“I’m sorry I didn’t say this before,” Natsuko said. “But thanks. For saving me, I mean. Even if I technically wasn’t in danger.”

He was silent for a moment and with dawning horror, Natsuko realized why. “I swear to the Yishang, you better not respond to that with a—”

“Blooming in autumn,

Enduring changing seasons

“O, Red Hibiscus.”

Natsuko flopped down onto her back and splayed out her arms. “Dammit, Pech.”

But despite the vastly different circumstances and the years that had passed between then and now, this was the closest Natsuko had come to recreating the feeling of that first day in Shikijima, lying on the beach with the world before her. Removing the bitter filter of detachment she had constructed for herself over the years, she was forced to admit that Pechorin and his poem had played at least some part. As she recalled, he’d composed a poem back then too.

“What did you say last time?” she asked.

There wasn’t any need between them to clarify what “last time” meant.

“I don’t remember,” he said, “It fit that moment, but that moment has passed.”

She sighed. “Damn.”

And it felt like there was more to say, but since she wasn’t sure what it was, Natsuko just breathed in the salty air and prepared herself to keep on running.