After their conversation about the Mora, the rest of their journey was quiet and ended when the ship reached the port of Redchapel.

This time the journey was faster than the first two. The ship had the wind at its back, so the journey was shorter.

“Now... We will look for this address.”

Every street in Rolderhelm was numbered, so it was easy to find an address. There were signs everywhere and numbers on every house.

“Lobster quarter, sixty-eight, twenty-eight.”

The houses the Sivina and others rented were number twenty-eight on street number sixty-eight in the Lobster neighborhood.

“We're on the fifth street now, if I remember correctly, the municipality is on the twentieth street or something. We will find it by asking around.”

Redchapel was as they had left it, dark and depressing. Yu couldn't imagine that summer had ever visited this gothic city.

In addition to such a dreadful atmosphere, the rain clouds gathering with the effect of the season colored Redchapel in a more melancholic and restless tone.

“There's something I'm curious about.”

“What are you wondering?”

“Well... or whatever, never mind.”

It was something he should have asked much earlier. He had wanted to ask it on the first day they embarked on this adventure together and during the silent time they spent on the ship on the way here, but he had given up because he thought it would look like he was giving hope.

Now the idea of asking the question came to him again, but he decided it was better to put the idea out of his mind and kept silent. Because the more he pretended to be interested in the subject, the more hope he might give Yurine, and he didn't want to do that when he himself was struggling to have faith that they would succeed.

His question was what Rie had said. According to Yurine, her mother had said that it was possible to take everything back, and Sharley would say the same, looking for a way back to the past.

What could it be that Yurine and Sharley believed in, that Rie had told them about a way to turn back time?

“It is possible to turn back time, is that all she said? Are we struggling over just a few simple words?”

Yu couldn't believe it. Even though he was in a fantastic world, even though he found himself in an unbelievable story the moment he came into the world, he still couldn't believe it.

"I don't want to believe, I want to know. But how?"

In the month he had spent here, he had gained enough insight. Rewinding every single event in the world, going back in time, seemed impossible even by this world's standards.

Moreover, Yurine had told him about the gods and the people of this world believed in the existence of gods. In fact, if the stories were true, gods were known to exist. If they were like the gods in Yu's head, they had to be above everything. Why would the gods allow an act like rewinding time?

“Well…” Yurine interrupted Yu's deep thoughts with a shy voice. “Well... You, I mean if you want...”

“What I want?” Yu tilted his head and looked at Yurine as the rain beat down lightly. Yurine blushed as she looked down.

“It's going to rain now, it's going to thunder...”

“Are you afraid of thunder? You were calm when it thundered before.”

“Of course I'm not afraid! Oh, forget it!”

Yurine puffed out her cheeks and quickened her pace, Yu speeding up to keep up.

“Tell me, tell me! I'm listening.”

“Hmph!” Yurine started walking at their old pace again. “You're a coward.”

“What's this about?” Suddenly humiliated, Yu automatically became defensive. “First of all, I don't accept the word ‘coward’, I'm just a person who acts with reason and logic. If I was given magical powers, I would also go and do ‘brave’ things, but it's not because I'd be too overpowered, it's because you need to balance the characters.”

“I have no idea what you're talking about, you're just a coward. I mean, well... well... if you insist,” Yurine held out her hand to Yu. She was still looking at the ground to avoid making eye contact. “I can grant you the favor of holding my hand so you won't be scared or lost.”

“I see...” Yu smiled the biggest and most sincere smile he had ever seen on this earth. “First you worry about me and now you use thunder as an excuse to hold my hand. Of course, it is no wonder that this is the case and that you have finally come to accept the intense love between us. On the contrary, it is surprising that for all my greatness you have not been able to accept this love until now. After all, my intelligence, charisma and perfection, along with every single good quality I possess, are far above this world, my world and every other world that could possibly exist. As such, it is completely inevitable that any girl I give a little smile to will fall head over heels in love with me.”

“Never mind.”

Yurine's flushed cheeks turned white after Yu's little monologue. When Yu saw Yurine's outstretched hand land on the ground, he quickly bent down and grabbed it.

“Okay, okay, okay. I'll hold your hand.”

Yurine's small hand seemed to disappear in Yu's palm. It was warm and soft.

“When was the last time I walked hand in hand with someone?”

Lucia was the last one to hold his hand. Before her, Rie had held her hand when he first came into this world. If he didn't count her, he still remembered holding his sisters' hands last spring and the warmth of those hands.

But when it came to holding hands and walking, like now, he should have done it six or seven years ago, again with his sisters.

Walking like this with Yurine now brought back memories of the old days. Whenever he remembered those days, so far away in his own world that he could never reach them again, a feeling of melancholy overtook him and made his heart bleed.

But today, even though he remembered those memories, he didn't feel melancholy, he still knew he would never reach those days, but he didn't feel sad.

At the moment, he was just happy to be adding to the list of good memories.

“Such innocent feelings are the only thing that gives meaning to life.”

It was only his cowardice that prevented him from dying during the short period he lived without this feeling. He did not want to go through that period of being deprived of this feeling again. He didn't want to be deprived of this feeling again.

“Look over there,” Yurine said. With her free hand she pointed to the wall on the side of the road.

On the wall was the figure of a knight with silver hair and sea-green eyes, no stranger to them.

“It's what we wanted.”

The picture on the wall was not as good as the graffiti of the First World, but with the distinctive silver hair and sea-green eyes, you could tell who he was.

If he took into account that silver hair is a rare color in this world, the other people in the town would have known that the knight in the picture was Sivina Ecues.

The further they went, the more pictures and slogans were painted and written on the walls. Some of them were so different in style that Yu thought they were drawn by independent parties.

“Anyone with a brain would suspect it was a trap,” Yurine said.

“I still think it's going to provoke him, and if we don't succeed in provoking him and drawing him to us, I have no idea how we're going to solve it. We're not going to get anywhere just knowing he's in the woods.”

The rain picked up and with it other people on the street started running to get less wet.

“Now it's time to ask someone.” When they arrived in front of the municipality, he looked around. People had taken shelter from the rain under trees and shops. “Or we could wait until it stops raining.”

***

“Twenty-eight, this is it.” He looked at the paper in his hand and then at the writing on the door of the house in front of them.

When the rain stopped, they asked the first person they met for directions, and then found the way by asking someone else.

By the time they arrived in front of building number twenty-eight, the rain had started to fall again.

The building was two stories high and made of wood. All but two of the windows had closed curtains and the curtains were abnormally stuck to the wall.

“I hope they're not dead before we arrive.”

Although they hadn't knocked yet, the door suddenly opened with the sound of bells and out came a girl with green hair and a slight smile on her face.

“I think you should be a little more positive,” Ana said, then added. “We are still alive.”

Ana's eyes fell on Yu and Yurine's hands. They were still holding hands.

“Hmph!”

Yurine pulled her hand away when Ana smiled at her and took a step away from Yu.

“It broke my heart.” He grabbed Yurine and pulled her to him. “But it broke my heart more when Ana left us out in the rain.”

“Oh, pardon me. Here you are, welcome.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Ana curtsied to them as if she were a maid in a skirt and then stepped out of the doorway. Inside the house was almost completely empty and dark. The furniture inside seemed to be a hundred years old.

Wooden planks were nailed behind the windows where the curtains were drawn, blocking the entrance into the house. That's why the curtains seemed to be stuck to the glass.

“Motherfu-”

Inside the house were two creatures he had not expected to meet. Two dogs came out into the hallway and bared their teeth at the strangers who entered the house. It was clear from their looks that neither of them liked Yu.

“We thought they could help protect the house. Met and Nito are guard dogs. Hyene is a hunting dog. Actually, Lylphia said we should get another dog, but the people at the shelter wouldn't let us, and then they let them out on the street.”

As he spoke, he knelt down and calmed the dogs by patting their heads. The guard dogs were of the Doberman breed, but the hound was a breed not found in his world. It had a dark green coat with brown stripes.

Yurine grinned when she realized that Yu was afraid of dogs.

“Where are the others?” Yu asked. He tried to ignore the dogs as much as he could and keep a calm expression, not wanting to lose his charisma.

“Girls upstairs, Raul outside.”

Staying behind Ana meant staying right in front of the dogs, so he climbed the stairs without waiting for her to lead the way.

The door to the first room he encountered on the second floor was open, and Lylphia waved to her from inside.

“Yu!”

He was still not used to someone calling him by his name.

“I'm right in front of you, Lylphia. You don't have to shout.”

This must have been the most occupied room in the house. There were three beds in the room, which meant that the three girls were using one room for security purposes. That way, if the killer got inside the house, at least he wouldn't be able to kill them all unnoticed.

“What about Raul? I hope that bastard doesn't share the same room.”

If he stayed alone, he would have been the killer's bait, but Yu would have been jealous of him staying in the girls' room. So it was better for him to be separated, even if it meant he would be the bait and die.

“You have arrived,” Sivina said.

“The tone of your voice is very unintelligible. I can't tell if you mean ‘you're late’ or ‘we didn't expect you to come’ or ‘you might as well not have come.’”

“What insolence is this? They should come to a supreme being like me, but I come to them and greeted with such an unpleasant reaction? You should kneel before me and ask for forgiveness.”

Yu only smiled and mocked her, but Yurine took him seriously, her angry eyes sweeping over everyone in the room.

“Calm down, I didn't mean it like that.” Sivina said, looking at Yu, who was obviously joking, instead of looking at Yurine.

“We are only a little offended that it was inappropriate for Yu to enter the girls' room as if it was perfectly normal. It would be embarrassing for him to overhear our conversation.”

“What were you talking about?”

Lylphia's explanation had suddenly made Yu curious. What could they talk about that might be embarrassing?

“My sisters were shamelessly talking about everything in front of me... Was it?”

Sometimes they talked about boys and made Yu jealous, sometimes they gossiped about girls they didn't like at work, sometimes they talked about games or technology. Yu didn't know which one would be embarrassing.

“But logically their talk about men should be embarrassing. Were they talking about me? Hehehe... Hehehe...”

He would have loved to know what they were talking about.

Yu heard the bells ringing downstairs. The door to the house was open.

He didn't think the killer would come here in broad daylight, so it had to be Raul, but the voices still made Yu nervous.

They waited in silence for Raul to arrive as the footsteps grew louder.

“I can't just walk into the girls' room, but he can?” Raul reproached. Then he dropped the bags on the floor.

“Of course it's normal that there's a difference in the way we're treated. After all, I'm... well... a little too handsome.”

“Tch...” Raul sat on the end of the empty bed by the wall.

Ana and Lylphia were sitting cross-legged on the middle bed. Yu moved with Yurine to the bed where Sivina was sitting. The bed was by the window and from here he could face the others directly.

“Since everyone has suddenly gone silent, I will assume that my words have been approved.” Yu interrupted the silence. “Then let's get to the point. I want a report, what happened over the last week?”

“We've been doing a lot of publicity for Sivina, and I have to hand it to you, it seems to be really effective, Sivina is suddenly popular with the public,” Lylphia said.

“And Sivina helped solve two cases in town. I mean... I wouldn't say cases exactly, but she caught the bad guys,” Raul said.

Yu nodded to show he understood. It was good that Sivina was popular with the people, but what he really wanted was for that popularity to reach the killer.

“Any sign of the killer or Sony?”

“No, there has been no news of the killer since the last incident.”

What Ana meant by the last incident was Satoshi's death. At the mention of the final event, the atmosphere cooled briefly.

As she saw, some were still reeling from the death of their friend. Raul's face instantly fell and Sivina lowered her eyes to the floor.

“You keep your shifts like I told you, don't you?”

“Yes,” Lylphia replied. “There's always someone awake in the house.”

“I told you to keep two houses, where's the other one.”

Yu turned around and looked out the window. Sivina stood up to show him the house and opened the window, pointing with her finger to the house diagonally across from theirs.

“That empty house over there,” she said. It was a little shorter than this one, but still similar. “Like this house, we boarded up the windows and put bells in the accessible places. So if the killer wants to enter the house, he will have to do it from the front and the bells will ring to let us know.”

The houses had a clear view of each other, just as Yu wanted.

“Good. So tonight we will split into two groups and the other group will stand guard at that house. The guards must never leave the window to look out. They must not leave, not even to go to the toilet.”

Sivina looked at Ana, Lylphia and Raul. If he had to rank them in order of power, what kind of list would he draw up?

“Lylphia is a trained fire mage. Fire... She must be very powerful. Sivina and Ana must be strong too, one a knight and the other a mage. Raul... I don't know, ‘tracker’ is not a very effective word.”

He thought he was weaker than Yurine. Raul must have been, since he had been afraid of Yurine before.

“But I don't want to think of Yurine as a fighting force right now... Hmm... Me, Yurine, Lylphia, all three of them together... No, not Raul bastard with the girls. Me, Yurine, Raul... We're too weak like this.”

He spoke believing that he had found the grouping that would make him most comfortable:

“Lylphia, Raul, Yurine and I will stay in the house across the street. Sivina and Ana should stay in this house. As I said, let's not miss our shifts. The guards must never leave their posts, never take their eyes off the outside. Remember, if you look away, you will die.”

There were two houses and in each house a sentry would watch outside. If the guards took their eyes off the outside at the same time and at that exact moment the killer entered the house, and if the dogs didn't make a sound and the bells didn't work, one house could be full of dead bodies in the morning.

“Why are Sivina and Ana alone?”

“There are two of them.”

“There are four of us.” Raul, unsurprisingly, protested. “If I stay with them, there will be three on each side.”

“No.”

“Tell the truth, you're saying no because you're jealous of me staying with girls.”

Yu turned his head slowly and looked at the mirror in the room, his reflection looked perfect. Then he turned his head slowly again and looked at Raul, he looked like an average human being.

“Did you really believe I'd be jealous of you?”

“Tch!”

Yu had indeed made this distribution out of pure jealousy, but no one would have believed that he was jealous with the gesture he had just made. Not even Raul could deny the level between their appearances.

“What am I doing...”

“I didn't want to put Yurine on guard duty. I thought Lylphia would be one person and Raul and I would join forces to make one person. That's why I made such a distribution...”

“Don't worry Yu, I'm strong than ten person!”

Lylphia raised her arm and squeezed the muscle.

“You're so reassuring.”

Being a girl, Lylphia naturally didn't have prominent muscles, but Yu would question the credibility of someone whose breasts attracted more attention than her strength.

“So, is Sivina stronger or Ana?”

He confronted Sivina and Ana with her question, and both girls looked at each other.

“Why did you ask?” Sivina asked.

“I just want answers.”

“Sivina is very strong, stronger than me.”

Ana gave him the answer he wanted. Yu sensed that Sivina was about to start talking to be humble, so he stopped her and spoke himself.

“You look stronger than Raul too, am I wrong?” Ana looked at Raul. Neither of them objected. “I don't think the killer will come in the first hours of the night, I don't think he will come in the last hours. If he comes, it will be in the middle of the night. Of course I could be wrong, but that's how I would act if I were the killer, so let Raul take the first watch.”

Even though he didn't want to, it made more sense for Raul to stay with the girls, to act on his logic instead of his emotions.

“Sivina will take the second watch at the time I think the killer is most likely to arrive. I want her to sleep well before that, so she'll have energy in case we meet the killer, and Ana will take the third watch.”

“Yeah, that sounds reasonable.” Lylphia nodded her head up and down in agreement. The others had no objection.

“We will be on watch more than them, there is nothing to do. I'll take the first shift, you take the next.”

“All right!” Lylphia lit a matchstick-sized fire on the tip of her finger. “If the killer shows up, I don't think anyone will mind if I use magic against him. I hope he doesn't keep us waiting too long.”

***

“Did we have to bring this dog?”

After Lylphia left Met downstairs, they went upstairs. Yurine was in bed waiting for Yu to arrive before going to sleep. When Yu entered the room, he sat on the bed and Yurine began to cast a healing spell on him.

Neither of them was sure if it would do any good, but since the fainting incident at the inn, Yurine had made sure to use a healing spell on Yu three times a day.

“At least nothing has happened since then.”

He had felt like vomiting several times and headaches were a daily problem. Still, Yu was hopeful about the healing spell, as he had not experienced a seizure for a week.

“You will wake me up if something happens,” Yurine said.

“Don't worry, I'll definitely wake you up.”

Although he did not want to see Yurine as a fighting force, he could not deny that he would need her strength if they had to fight.

Yurine pulled the covers over her and closed her eyes. There was only one bed in the room, so Lylhpia lay down on the armchair they had carried into the room to sleep.

When they went to bed, Yu opened the curtains and watched the Sivina’s house. If his eyes were not deceiving him, he could see the silhouette of someone looking at this house from the window of the house across from them.

---

The vigil was as calm as he expected. Not a single suspicious person, not even the slightest living creature, passed through the street.

The silhouette of Raul in the window of the building diagonally across from them disappeared briefly, and then the silhouette of someone with long hair covered the window.

“You look like a pervert when watching the house where two young and beautiful girls are staying.”

“I am.”

“What?”

“I'm kidding.”

He answered without looking at Lylphia, who had woken up on her own.

“Now Raul's watch is over and Sivina has taken his place.”

“I can take your place.”

“I still have time.”

He wanted to lie down and sleep, but he could not compromise his discipline.

“It's okay, I've already wake up, I can't go back to sleep. So I'll stay up anyway.”

Lylphia came to Yu. Yu was sitting in a chair. She looked out over his head.

“If you have to go to the bathroom, do it now and don't go later.”

“No, I don’t have pee.”

Yu got up from his seat and Lylphia sat on the chair Yu had warmed.

“When Sivina and Ana change shifts, get me up so you don't lose sleep.”

Lylphia nodded in agreement.

She went to sleep on the couch where Lylphia had gotten up. The couch was warm. He looked at Yurine who was sleeping before closing his eyes.

“You know, when we were walking today, Yurine wanted to hold my hand.”

“Hmm... How beautiful.”

“Isn't it? I wonder what her mother would think about that?”

He imagined that they had managed to turn back time. He wondered how Rie would react to seeing her daughter with a man she didn't know.

“If I had thought about today a month and a half ago, I could not have imagined that I would be at this point.”

Just before he came into this world, he saw no future ahead of him. His only motivation to live was that death was scary. He had given up, given in and was doing nothing.

He was unhappy and had no faith that he would find happiness. He could not have imagined that he would be happy now and that he would find this happiness with a person he had never met.

“Life is interesting, isn't it?”

“Yeah, you never know what you're going to get.”

Lylphia's eyes were watching outside and her ears were listening to Yu.

“I am greedy, selfish, hypocritical, a liar. I am... I'm a bad person in every way. And yet I desire a happiness I don't deserve.”

“All people are like that. I think it's good to be aware of your bad sides. In fact, usually people who think they are bad are kind people.”

“This is a wrong, a stupid point of view. Leave this stupid view or people will hurt your heart.”

Yu had found a comfortable position to sleep. He was about to close his eyes and fall asleep when Lylphia's scream made both him and Yurine jump out of their beds.

“There they are!”

Lylphia opened the window to jump out, but was stopped by a horrible sound of rage echoing through the street.

“VALARFIIN! COME OUT!”