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Kanata, the rich lady, hearing this, nodded slightly.
On the surface, Ryoji looked like a pervert, but in reality, he had principles. As expected, he wasn't swayed by such shallow monetary temptation.
I really didn't misjudge him!
Thinking this, Kanata, the rich lady, had already selectively forgotten how she herself had "captured" Ryoji back then.
"Let's go." Kanata grabbed Ryoji's hand. Then she walked past Sara and headed straight toward the exhibition hall's exit.
Anyone would lose the mood to continue strolling if someone stared at their boyfriend like that.
Art exhibitions can be visited anytime, but a boyfriend is only one. Not to mention, she was still far from truly "securing" this boyfriend.
"Wait a moment…!" Sara reached out, trying to grab Ryoji.
But the two of them were walking too fast; they vanished from the gallery in moments. She couldn't catch up at all. All that remained in the air was a futile Erkang-style reaching hand.
Damn it!
She didn't even get to see his face properly! Sara bit her lip hard, so hard her lip almost bled.
If she missed him here, it would be extremely hard to find another chance. Without knowing his identity, trying to locate him was practically like searching for a needle in the ocean.
"How could I give up so easily!"
An intense obsession surfaced in Sara's eyes.
More than ten years of obsession, and today she finally saw a chance to fulfill it. How could she give up so easily?!
She stretched out both hands. With shimmering light flowing between her fingers, a paintbrush and a palette appeared in her grip. Then she began painting wildly in the air, like someone possessed.
Her expression was so focused that even if the sky collapsed, she wouldn't notice.
...
"Such a not bad person… I didn't expect her to have such a terrifying side."
After leaving the exhibition hall, Kanata sighed regretfully.
Sara had earlier impolitely driven away the arrogant Kazamatsuri Rinna. That alone showed she wasn't a bad person. She was also full of passion for painting, which gave Kanata a good impression of her.
Who would've expected that in the blink of an eye, she'd demand Ryoji take off his clothes in public, acting as starved as someone who hadn't seen a man in decades?
This development struck like a sudden storm, leaving people dumbfounded and utterly unprepared.
"Probably an artist's occupational disease."
Ryoji zipped up his jacket and replied with a thoughtful guess:
"That girl named Sara… this is only my speculation, but she might be related to Mario Rosso."
"What, really?!" Kanata was instantly stunned.
That starving woman actually had something to do with her idol?
"Her level of focus was extraordinary."
Ryoji nodded. "If she were a swordsman, her skill might be no worse than mine."
A swordsman's level could be inferred from many things:
Standing posture, observational ability, the ability to concentrate during training… And these principles didn't apply only to swordsmanship. They applied to every craft, naturally including painting.
The focus Sara showed earlier was indeed astonishing.
A painter like that was definitely the type who could paint for an entire day and night, collapse from exhaustion, and only then realize she hadn't drunk a drop of water.
Her usual "no mind/energetic" look was probably because once she concentrated, the mental and energetic drain would be massive. So normally she stayed in that lazy, sloppy state to conserve energy.
As for her demanding Ryoji strip in public...
It was probably the typical sickness of artists, unable to resist recording something beautiful the moment they saw it.
However, asking a complete stranger to strip in public was really going a bit too far.
Maybe… Sara is Mario Rosso himself?
Ryoji suddenly had this thought.
It sounded outrageous, but judging from the timeline of her debut, it matched perfectly. And that level of focus was practically unheard of among normal people. Someone with that kind of concentration, not becoming a world-class master would make people furious at the injustice of the world.
But saying this aloud would probably destroy Kanata the rich lady's idol worship completely. So this secret was better kept buried in his stomach.
"It's getting late. We should head back," Ryoji said, looking up at the sky, where only a curved streak of sunset remained.
"You're right." Kanata nodded in agreement.
If they went back too late and Touka noticed something, that would be bad.
"Pa!" Walking on the asphalt road, Ryoji's steps suddenly halted.
"What happened?" Kanata turned around, confusion on her face.
"We're being watched."
"Being… watched?"
"They're probably targeting me."
Kanata couldn't sense anything unusual. But Ryoji's expression showed he wasn't joking, his look was extremely serious. This made her heart tighten.
"Everyone on this street, listen up! A Blazer terrorist attack is about to occur! I am a professional Magic Knight, I'm ordering an emergency evacuation! All civilians disperse immediately!"
Kanata made a snap decision, her loud shout echoed across nearly a hundred meters, throwing the entire street into chaos.
Having once participated in the special enlistment program, Kanata had real experience fighting terrorists. Her decisiveness far surpassed normal students.
"What should we do?"
"Evacuate! No one wants to get dragged into this!"
Most people subscribed to the philosophy of "the less trouble the better," and within moments the street emptied. The remaining few hid in corners or ducked into buildings.
Thanks to the increasingly rampant global terrorist incidents caused by Rebellion, almost no one dared bet their life in a situation like this.
The last streak of sunset sank beneath the horizon.
The blue night veil swallowed the sky, and a new crescent moon hung in the darkness.
On the long street, only Ryoji and Totokubara Kanata remained.
Ryoji stood motionless in the center of the road, staring straight toward the far end.
Kanata the rich lady kept her guard up, scanning the surroundings.
Silently, without warning, A pitch-black silhouette appeared at the far end of the street.
The figure was slightly small, looking like a fourteen or fifteen-year-old girl.
But her face had no features. Her whole body was nothing but a faint, black outline, as if someone had colored her entire figure with a marker.
Like a stick figure.
"Rrrnnng--!"
But in her hand, she held a chainsaw that gleamed with cold light, its engine roaring as it ran.
"Is that… human?"
For a moment, Ryoji couldn't tell.
She resembled some kind of shadow creature, her whole body pitch-black, impossible to classify as human or beast.
A Blazer's abilities could be bizarre. It could very well be a Blazer using its power to obscure its appearance, or it could be some artificial creation.
"Shuā!"
The shadow creature suddenly clung low to the ground and shot forward at insane speed, almost like she was flying.
She raised her chainsaw horizontally, ignoring Kanata entirely, and aimed straight for Ryoji.
But her strike wasn't toward his chest; it was aimed directly at his legs, clearly intending to rob him of mobility.
"Trying to keep me alive?"
Ryoji murmured thoughtfully as he reached out and gripped his glowing Vrring Blade.
With a single slash…
(End of Chapter)