Chapter I - Unexpected Aftermath

What in the Sanbi happened here? Eiri Sanbi Royal, a girl in her twenties dressed in fancy maid clothing, with sapphires shining in her collar, stood in the doorframe, her mouth open, and bulged eyes tried to take in the present situation of the room. The door she was supposed to open lay at her feet, collecting dust from the settling cloud, amidst a pungent smell of decay and bagarisa musk that smelled like a wet dog spreading from within the room. An unknown person, completely naked, lay there as if he was sunbathing. Accompanying him in that solace moment was a dead scientist apprentice by the name of Kibe.

“Kibe?—you dead?” An inquisitive, yet hopeful tone slipped out of Eiri, while breathing through her mouth.

Nothing, except the rowdy noises of the populace outside coming in through the broken window. A stronger breeze blew through it, making a few glass shards fall in this silent room, like a cliché horror movie, but at last it brought in fresh, but slightly fishy humid air.

Who’s that? Eiri approached the fat unconscious person, sunbathing in the middle of the room without a care in the world. With her gloved hands, she poked the person in his chubby cheeks. “You okay?”

No response. The stranger was limp, looking like he was out cold after chugging a whole bottle of whisky.

Eiri, biting her lips, analyzed the protuberance of this stranger’s gut and the overall balloon shape of his body. She had imagined someone completely different—a hero-like, all-powerful, panty-dropping male. “No way! It can’t be!” She let out a chuckle, sticking two fingers on his short neck, putting pressure until she felt a slow, constant pulse beating against the glove protecting her fingers. Meanwhile, her eyes glanced towards his floppy privates hanging to the right. Sizing it up with her eyes, then playing with its floppiness with her free gloved hand, her eyebrows curved. Heh—not bad for a Toleridemian!” Eiri looked around the room again. “Eh—he doesn’t look right. Gabiro?”

Just what were you two doing? Carefully making her way to the suspicious broken window, Eiri peeked her way through, and saw a bustling seaside kingdom separated by a castle wall, protecting a lusty green courtyard full of flowers beautifying the boxy-looking castle in the middle of it.

Another gust of wind rushed by, nearly ripping Eiri’s blue headdress away. Holding onto it, she noticed a few people in the surrounding buildings, some of whom were taller than the castle walls, peeking towards the base of the tower she was in. Bending her head down, she saw a backdrop of the same lusty green vegetation at the feet of the tower she was in, but its lively greenish hue contrasted the bright vivid red blood oozing from the flattened old gentleman, resembling Gabiro. “Ohhh—this is bad.”

More people gathered to see what was going on, with some spotting Eiri’s head peeking through the glass.

Eiri, realizing the eyeballs beginning to stare in her direction, gave a quick smile, and a wave of her hand. Gabiro is gonna have to explain that tomorrow.

She retreated her head slowly, but once inside, an anxious grin formed in her face, as her hands rushed to open the second drawer, top-to-bottom, of a nearby white cabinet. Where is it?

Her eyes glanced through a drawer neatly packed full of sigil rings—a double ring composed of a frontal plate with two drawn squares, with each square containing a logogram inside. Eiri’s hand reached out to two specific rings; one had the name Body Restore written on the back plate, with two logograms—an Egyptian-like hieroglyph on the faceplate. The first was of a body, and the second was a circle with a broken round piece being glued back together. The second sigil ring had a name of Storm Create, also containing two logograms: a lightning bolt and a plus sign.

She wore the Body Restore sigil ring on her middle and left fingers, grabbed a blue nari stone chain in the ground, then kneeled in front of Kibe, assessing how bad he looked. She touched his cheek, but like a tree falling in the forest, Kibe’s head made cracking sounds as it fell to the side, aberrantly resting on the shoulder. So it really was an explosion!

Eiri, only removing the glove from her right hand, performed the same hand ritualistic trickery as Gabiro to get a spell started, but instead of using a blade to carve her skin with logograms, she used the sigil ring, on her left hand, to touch its faceplate on her right palm. She followed it by feeding the entire nari chain until three red, instead of white, balls of double helices appeared, and zoomed on the white rings around her arm. Unclenching her fingers, she released the spell into Kibe’s body.

A slow twitch randomly surged across his body, progressing into faster ones. Sounds of bones rubbing against each other echoed into Eiri’s ear, serving as some sort of macabre rhythm for the melody of juicy flesh and tendons moving about. Kibe’s head, still lifeless, started to move somewhat back upright, reaching a “not-so-broken” appearance.

“Arrggghhhh'' A painful gurgle breath came out of Kibe, as the pupils of his eyes contracted tightly. Looking as if he had just run a marathon, he remained still, looking at Eiri’s worried green eyes. “What are you doing in my room?” he tiredly blurted out, choking up, and spitting leftover blood.

Eiri stood up, cleaning her hand on a cloth she pulled from a nearby drawer, “What are you talking about?” One of Eiri’s brow twitched up. “What were you two doing anyway? Gabiro is dead!”

Kibe looked around the room aimlessly, as if he did not believe the words that came out of Eiri. “But I am in Waterfall! My bed is—” His eyes focused on the taint belonging to a body in the center of the room, sunbathing atop a table. Kibe appeared to be taken aback, appearing to pause to see if it was a taint he recognized.

Eiri, meanwhile, wore her yellow glove again, then handed the two rings she had to Kibe. “You came back from there like two weeks ago, on the fourth! Now get up! C’mon! Gabiro is really, really dead!” She extended her gloved hand towards him.

Kibe, looking quite comfortable, even though he was leaning against a solid stone wall, let out a faint whimper. “Can you do it for me? I’m on PTO.”

Eiri responded with a short sigh, grabbing his hand, and pulling him up forcibly. “C’mon! We need to get him up!”

A grunt came out of Kibe as his limp body did not take kindly to being moved around. He stood up, but soon leaned against the drawers, like a shit-faced drunk person trying to pee, but ended up resting on the toilet instead.

Eiri opened another drawer, and pulled a glass jar filled with a black thick substance. “This is for your own good—” She leaned Kibe upright against the wall, popped the glass jar open, and placed it on his mouth, making sure he drank, or rather, ate this thick black substance looking like a molasses mixed with honey known as black honey.

Kibe tried to resist it at first with a closed mouth, but seeing as Eiri was not pulling the jar away, even after he whimpered like a dog and faintly shook his head, he accepted his fate by filling his lungs. Eating it up, he looked to be regurgitating, but did not end up throwing up. Instead, his skin goose bumped as he tried to half-eat, half-drink the overly sugary, nearly diabetic-inducing black substance as fast as possible, making a tear come out of his eyes.

Eiri took the mostly empty jar away from his mouth, “It’s not that bad. Stop it!”

Kibe closed his eyes and tried to scrape his tongue with his front teeth. Spitting the remains on the floor, he attempted to clean his dirty mouth on his blood-soaked rags. “Argh. Way too sweet. I hate it!”

Shoving the two rings, another jar of black honey, plus a few unused nari chains into Kibe’s pockets, Eiri did not take kindly to the spit. Pausing her rush, she stared at Kibe with souring lips. “I’m gonna let it fly this time. Now go ahead! Quickly!”

Kibe, no longer looking drunk, was pushed out of the room by Eiri, but as they neared the stairs, she instead went into another room, quickly checking the cupboards and cabinets inside what appeared to be a storage room. Holding himself at the top of the stairs, Kibe blurted out “You’re not coming?”

“JUST GO! I need to find something for this fatso to wear, or Sora will have a panic attack!” Eiri kept looking through the backstock of random stuff ranging from clothing to metallic scientific instruments, some with blue nari stones, others with gels, and even some with dissected animal parts.

Kibe shrugged with his hands up in the air, turning back towards the stairs. Carefully holding himself in the blue handrails, he took his sweet time going down, leaving bloodied handprints which would surely make whoever has to clean it very happy—or not.

The rustling noise of a vibrant city, filled with people, carriages, and animals of all kinds, all going about their daily business, reverberated from the other side of the stone wall. Eiri and Kibe stood by Gabiro’s corpse, quite bloodied, but no longer showing hints of being flattened against the not-so-soft terrain. The usually slightly salty, fishy air now had lingering scents of baked fish and smoked pork butt, giving hints that noon was approaching. However, there was also a lingering metallic smell of blood that did not curry favors in making either of them hungry.

A refreshing breeze swept through, making the colorful flowers dance, and Kibe clinked his teeth, shivering as he attempted to check Gabiro’s pulse in his thin frail neck.

“Is he still not coming back?” Eiri, eyed the mostly empty black honey jar by Kibe.

“No for Body Restore.” Pulling out the sigil ring with a logogram of a lightning bolt and a plus symbol, Kibe wore it on his right middle and ring fingers, and used his left hand to hold, and charge up the spell—making five white rings of fire appear around his left forearm. With his right hand, he pulled one of the nari stone chains from his pocket and started feeding its power into the spell, just like how Eiri had done it.

Eiri’s frown turned into an indifferent smile, looking at the buildings poking through the top of the wall that surrounded them, seeing some people curiously looking on, as if they were about to write a hit piece on a gossip magazine. Amongst them, an older, nearly bald man ate an early lunch by holding a plate with one hand and stuffing his face with the other. Focused on the gossip unfolding in real time, he could not even stop to look at his fork as he shoved food down his piehole.

Am I going to be the one who has to explain all of this? Eiri, focused back towards Gabiro’s relaxed body, frowned again. “So you don’t remember at all?”

Kibe shook his head as the first ball of dark clouds, with flashing lighting, began zipping inside the smaller white fire ring around Kibe’s left forearm. One ball became two as Kibe continued feeding chains of nari stones, then finally three when the rest of the blue hue in the stick was sucked towards Kibe’s palm. Throwing the now diamond-like, empty stick aside, Kibe pulled another stick from the large pocket in his robe.

“Kibe! That’s too much!” blurted out Eiri, but it was to no avail as she saw Kibe’s hand making another trapping hand motion on the nari chain, sucking out all the blue hue from it, transforming it into a fourth storm ball.

“Gabiro told me to always crank it up.” Kibe put the empty nari chain aside, and grabbed a third one.

Eiri extended her hand, making a stop sign “NO! That’s more than enough!” Suddenly crouching, she began picking up the glass shards surrounding him. “Don’t release it either! He’s gonna start convulsing with that much!”

The shards looked bloodthirsty with their sharp edges, even more so after being foiled from cutting up an old man’s leathery skin, but Eiri’s precise carefulness, alongside the protection from her yellow gloves, kept on piling up the glass shards without donating a single droplet of her blood.

Kibe, still holding the spell, remained mostly motionless, except for his eyes tracking Eiri moving about. “Why bother? I filled him with Body Restore.”

Eiri picked up another shard, and held its blade-thin edge towards Kibe, “Would you want to wake up dying?” She dropped it on the pile, making a loud clack as the shard split into two.

“I guess not—” Kibe shivered again as another gust of air blew through his blood-soaked uniform, making him nearly release the spell. He stiffed himself in response, waiting for Eiri to say something, but her eyes were still focused on the bloodthirsty glass instead.

Why would there be an explosion? Eiri pictured the room in her mind again, remembering the ground being littered with used nari stones. I thought they were creating a new fake body—I didn’t see any nari gel though. Eiri, continually picking glass, asked Kibe, “How can you create a legit fake body on the Darfaries interface?”

“You don’t?” Kibe shrugged. “That’s a dumb question! That’s what the nari gel interface is for!” Kibe’s tone sounded somewhat rude, especially for someone just sitting there, not even helping pick up the glass.

Eiri chuck another glass. “Sure—then why were you two—”

“King-maid!” a cute, upbeat, but really fast girly voice came from afar, interrupting the conversation. A small maid in black and blue, about Eiri’s shoulder height, with fiery red hair, bright cyan eyes, and a cutesy small mouth, complemented by small, but sharp protruding canine teeth from her lower jaw, came running towards Eiri. Her cutesy slender legs were walking so fast that it appeared she was hovering above ground, while a straw bag flopped to her side, nearly spilling its contents as if she was running for her dear life.

“Sora! What size are those?” Still picking up the glass, Eiri eyed the cutesy maid flying towards her.

“King-maid! I’m sorry! Did I forget the size? I got Sanbi Average! I’m sorry!” A red blush arose in the maid’s face, speaking so quickly it looked like she was trying to rap, but without a solid beat. As she finished her freestyle, she crouched down, letting go of her straw bag, and going after one of the glass shards.

Eiri placed her gloved hands in the way. “Wait! I got something else for you. Go get the guest’s bath ready! And forget about the size, he’s more Toleridemian than Sanbi.”

“I’m truly sorry, king-maid! I heard the wrong size! I’m sorry!” Sora, the maid, blushed red as her trembling lips appeared as if she was about to be executed for treason.

Eiri picked up the glass shard Sora was after, and dropped it in the pile. “No, that was me who told you the wrong size apparently. Alright, go—go—go!” Shooing the cutesy maid away, she looked at Sora, nearly jumping away, instead of just standing up normally.

Kibe sat there, shifting his weight on his knees, as he looked away from the maids, with one hand still holding the spell, while the other idled, sometimes scratching the dried blood away from his chin.

“Yes, king-maid! Sorry!” Sora, the freestyle rap machine, or just the extremely energetic maid, now red as tomato, took off running towards the tower on the far right, also called Southeast Tower.

“No need to—” Before Eiri could finish her sentence, Sora stepped on a pebble, and lost her balance, aggressively tilting forward. She held the straw bag like it was her baby, and with a few large steps, she seemed to recover from nearly eating dirt, only to ultimately bring herself back to top speed, putting herself at the same risk as before.

Meanwhile, in the background of the city, a voice, from a deep, smooth sounding old male, like a cowboy in a cigarette advertisement, sounded slightly strained as it spoke above everyone else's voices. Amidst the shout, the words “Juicy Fanchaki”, and “Tony’s Meatery!” reached Eiri and Kibe’s ears.

That girl needs to chill out. Eiri placed the last large piece of glass in the chunk, and stood up. Adjusting her skirt, she looked around for peeping eyes from the curious populace, only to spot a single set of eyes: the same older, nearly balding male, still fervently watching over them, now chowing down what appeared to be a tube of some sort of cream. “Fine! Release slowly.” Crossing her arms, she saw Gabiro’s peaceful semblance turn into a twitching, and teeth-clicking fest when a bolt of lightning zapped from Kibe’s palm into his chest.

Gabiro’s entire body convulsed just like a spoiled child throwing a fit on the floor after being told “no” for bringing candy to the checkout line. Tiny shards of glass dug into Gabiro’s skin, making it look like a chicken breast being dipped in breading, except it did not look appetizing. His chest, charred from the powerful lightning spell, released an eau-de-toilette of charred crispy skin, giving the corpse an appearance of more-dead-than-before fashionable look.

While the convulsions steadily subsided, the same cowboy cigarette advertisement voice from before drew closer—“For only thirteen pearls! Grab your juicy fanchaki breasts at Tony’s Meatery! They are extra thick and juicy!” The voice, now passing by the other side of the wall, was accompanied by the sound of a fat horse trotting, adding a constant beat, now turning the advertisement into a sort of an aria, loud enough to captivate anyone nearby, even if for a split second.

Eiri, falling victim to the advertisement aria, remembered two of her maids were taking care of the kitchen today. Did I tell them to buy more legunia?

Meanwhile, the charred skin on Gabiro’s chest began healing itself with new, relatively speaking, skin; it looked just as old as the rest of his body as it emerged from around the injury, slowly, but visibly making progress towards its nucleus.

“He didn’t come back!” With her hands pointed at the absolutely-dead-looking corpse, Eiri’s tone changed to inquisitive. “Did you even check his badge?—what?—what in the old Sanbi is that?”

A tiny white flame emerged from the nucleus of the wound, and slowly began spreading itself.

Kibe, still sitting on his hurting knees, froze up. His eyes looked dazzled as he saw the white fire slowly dance around, swallowing Gabiro.

“Kibe! Do something!” Eiri, taking a step back, waved her hands at Kibe to catch his attention. “KIBE!” she shouted, but there was no difference. It looked like Kibe was lost in his own world.

The white flames grew brighter, and blinding, like staring at the sun in the morning, as it further swallowed Gabiro, turning his body into a pile of ooze, growing much taller—getting close to Eiri’s hips in terms of height. The entire white fire unnaturally weaved back and forth in a rhythmic, constant motion, completely ignoring the wind playing with the nearby grass.

Eiri, looking through the slits of her gloved hands, did not feel any heat from the large fire. “Kibe! Is—is—this soul fire?”

No answer. Kibe remained mouth open, still sitting on his knees as he kept watching the flame do its thing, the ooze grew closer towards him, stopping about one centimeter away from him.

She bit her cheeks, and approached the white fire. Touching its border, it stuck like an ooze into Eiri’s gloved hands. “Feels like nothing—what is this?” She recoiled, hanging her hand down, letting the white fire ooze drip off her fingers. The fire did not consume her yellow gloves, or spread out at all. Instead, its flames began to die off as it dripped towards the ground, dissipating into nothingness. Soon after the white fire that was on her hand burned itself out, leaving no traces of it, like a puddle disappearing in a hot sun.

A bit after what appeared to be peak brightness of the flame, a black feathery corpse, in the shape of a large chicken, began to emerge from within the white fire ooze, consuming it in the process, appearing exactly where Gabiro’s body once lay.

“Fan—chaki?” exclaimed Eiri as a bead of sweat went down her cheek. A single chuckle came out, as her neck bent to the side. Arrhythmically blinking, a few more chuckles suddenly blurted out, then a laughter breakdown exploded from her. Her own brain denied the very thing in front of her eyes, all while a familiar face approached in the background.

“DAMM! That’s huge! Are we gonna eat that?” A friendly sounding voice contrasted an alpha-looking male. He wore a fancy-looking tank top, covered in blue fish scales with gold accents, plus round sapphires on his white collar. His strong naked arms contrasted with the white of the cape he wore. He had a certain authoritarian air to him, but perhaps it was the way Eiri and Kibe were behaving towards him, rather than himself appearing as authoritative.

Eiri, with a smile and curved eyebrows, tried to find words amidst an insecure hum. “Hmmm—not sure you’re going to believe—”

Cutting off Eiri, Kibe placed his hand on the large, perhaps dead, fanchaki in front of him, and spoke faster than usual, fumbling through his enunciation. “S—she told me to do it! I was at Waterfall! I—I don’t remember coming back here!”

Itagiba, not even acknowledging Kibe, continued to size up how succulent the fanchaki looked. “I’m kinda thinking half soup, half—”

“NO! We can’t. That’s Gabiro! Right, Kibe?” Eiri cut off Itagiba’s food-centric speech, staring at Kibe, but he remained with his head low, silent, as his hand comforted the dead-looking fanchaki.

Appearing as if he had just heard the news of a dead loved one, Itagiba’s eyes lost all of its alpha-male glimmer. “Then what was that white fire for?”

“Kibe?” Eiri quickly delegated the answer. “—are you even listening?”

Kibe remained sitting, with his head down, his voice forcing his way out of his mouth. “Gabiro did it. I have no idea what happened.”

“Riiiiight—then where’s the slum guy?” Itagiba’s tone sounded more sarcastic, than unconvinced.

Eiri jiggled her finger above Itagiba, towards the broken window on the fourth floor.

Following Eiri’s fingers up, Itagiba used his hand to block out the sunny sky. A whistle came out of him, noticing the broken window, and finally connecting the dots as to what they were doing out there. “He can fight already? Sweet! That’s awesome!” His voice went up an octave at the end.

Shaking her head, Eiri replied, “No, Itagiba. I was on my way up the tower when I heard a loud crash, but when I came into the room I saw everything torn up, and the Toleridemian-looking guy passed out on the table—”

“Stop! Maiara clearly said what she wanted, and this old fart makes me a Toleridemian?” Itagiba stepped closer to the unconscious fanchaki, bent forward and pulled on its feathery black and white crest, lifting its contrastingly small head off the ground. “WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU! THE DUEL IS TOMORROW!” He screamed right where one’s ear would be.

Within a split second, the fanchaki's eyes lit up, and its body began flailing around, trying to escape the tight grip of Itagiba’s muscular hands.

Itagiba, appearing impervious as the fanchaki kicked and scratched him, kept fighting to retain his grip on the bird’s head. “NO!—ugh—YOU’RE GONNA LISTEN TO ME THIS TIME!—ARGH!”

With a peck on Itagiba’s forearm, the bird found freedom, and took off running towards the distance. With an offbeat chuckling, wavering head, and zig-zag motion, the bird’s glorious freedom quickly ended when it suddenly collapsed into the ground, just like when someone claps or screams near a fainting goat.

Itagiba and Eiri exchanged chuckles, while Kibe remained still. Itagiba pointed at the bird, “What are you waiting for? Go get it!”

With a weak nod, Kibe stood up, grabbing the last nari chain stick with one hand, and a sigil ring for Body Restore with the other, begrudgingly making his way towards the fainted bird, with its pecker dented into the ground.

Itagiba didn’t seem to care as he watched Kibe struggle to pull the bird’s pecker off the ground, as if it was as demanding as pulling out Excalibur. He instead came closer to Eiri. “You sure that’s Gabiro?”

“It’s gotta be!—I mean, Kibe launched a storm into his corpse, but then a white fire covered him up, and he transformed into this giant fanchaki.” Eiri’s smile grew ponderous, as she brought her yellow gloves to her attention, remembering how the white fire behaved like an ooze. “It was his body after all, so it has to be him, right?”

Itagiba scratched the blue hair strands of his mostly black hair. “So the same they were gonna do to the slum guy?”

“I guess so? But that clearly was not a nari gel. Maybe—like an interface I never heard of before? Hey Kibe! What was that white fire?” Eiri turned up to the scientist for a formal answer.

A weak shrug came out of Kibe, as he powered up the Body Restore spell, making two red balls of double helix strands appear in the white fire rings.

Itagiba and Eiri exchanged glances, only for Itagiba to shrug as well.

Eiri’s worrying lips stretched out thin, noticing the semblance in the white fire on the rings around Kibe’s hand versus the white fire ooze from earlier. “Soul rings? Were they messing directly with the soul?”

“I’m fine either way as long as Maiara got what she wanted.” Itagiba let slip an honest-sounding thought through his mouth, while his pinky went deep digging in his ear.

“Oookay—” Eiri's troubled eyes glanced at the undisturbed-looking Itagiba. They never said that in the meeting. Seeing Kibe release the spell with no effect on the bird, Eiri picked up the glass jar with leftover black honey off the ground and approached the bird. “Can you please hold its pecker open?”

Kibe did as told, making the fanchaki’s small tongue flop to the side within its large opened dirtied beak. Eiri first tapped the dirt off it with her gloved hands, then tapped the glass on the upper beak, making the leftover black honey sloop against its small tongue, and run down the fanchaki’s throat.

Letting out a gurgled high-pitched shriek, amidst a panicked recovery, the bird chomped down on Kibe’s finger, only to then kick him in the chest, sending him flying backwards, towards Itagiba.

Eiri was spared. Instead, she watched the bird appear like it had just drunk a gallon of coffee, running off in a straight path away from the group, singing a rather rhythmic cacophony of clucks, with feathers being left behind in the wind.

Itagiba smiled, helping Kibe up. With a cheery mood, he tapped his back. “Well, you’re the courtroom scientist now—” his voice went deeper, and his face straight, “—so figure this shit out, and get me what Maiara wanted by tomorrow morning.”

“I—I can’t. I don’t know what Gabiro did. It’s his fault!” Kibe looked down, his shoulders slumped forwards. “There’s nothing I can do! I don’t even want this—”

A disappointed fatherly breath came out of Itagiba, his hand grasping Kibe’s slumped shoulder. “I thought so—that’s okay. Go take a shower, and jerk it or something. Maybe it will help. Let me handle the fatso, while you figure out how to bring Gabiro back.”

Kibe, with a weak nod, made his way back into the same tower he got out from, while Eiri approached Itagiba’s side. “Need anything from me?”

“I assume you’re on top of clothes, and such?” Itagiba scratched his pecked forearm skin, bringing his forearm close to his eyes. “Eh. Not bad.”

Eiri, quieter than before, replied “Yeah—Sora is in the Southwest tower right now. I’m gonna go get the maids ready for cleanup, and put in a work order for the window too.”

“All right! I’m gonna go get the girls. See ya in a bit.” Itagiba walked towards the castle as he waved at one of the onlookers, someone other than the nearly balding corpulent male, an older woman, with bright green hair, adjusted herself to a pose to reveal her body as much as possible towards Itagiba, then winking at him, as he dared to look towards her again—one would expect she would start doing an annoying cat-in-heat call next, but perhaps she was too far away to be heard. Not that it would make a difference anyway as Itagiba continued to ignore her.

Eiri, noticing the onlooker letting her breath go, saw her breasts sink, revealing a slumped belly. Next, she turned her back to her, and left the balcony. Eiri let out a laugh from her nose, moving her head slowly from side to side as she switched her focus to the pool of mostly dried blood, pile of glass shards, then at the large fanchaki now peeking at a distant flower garden. Eiri’s eyes grew serious, biting her cheeks. “If that’s not a fake body, then who are you?” She spoke under her breath.

Blocking the sun with her hands, she looked back at the broken window on the fourth floor, letting out a long-winded hum. Is that strange interface the soul itself?