In the time that followed, Idehali dove headfirst into a lively conversation with Lucia and Alice, trading ghost stories back and forth with infectious enthusiasm.
The friendship between the three of them rocketed forward at a speed Geno found genuinely incomprehensible.
So this is what friendship between girls looks like. No matter how many times I see it, I can never quite believe it.
He thought back to the first time Twiggy and Belle had met — they'd been chatting like old friends within minutes, and before long, they were practically attached at the hip, inseparable best friends. He'd once brought up the subject with Wise, but Wise had been just as clueless. Maybe it was some kind of special ability only girls possessed.
"Mm, that story is fascinating. I'm going to write it down and use it in one of my novels."
"Hali, you're a writer too?"
"Just a web novelist. Nothing fancy."
"That's amazing! I'm always hunting for supernatural fiction on the Inter-Knot, and there's this one author called [Strawberry Parfait] — the writing is absolutely incredible!"
"...Thank you. I never expected someone to be so fond of what I write."
"Wait — you're [Strawberry Parfait]?! No way! What are the odds?! I'm [Envoy of the Night Demon] — I've even left comments under your posts before!"
What had begun as a friendly exchange between two lovers of the strange quickly evolved into a full-blown fan meet-and-greet. Shortly after, under Lucia's enthusiastic insistence, both Alice and Idehali were officially inducted into the House of the Grotesque.
"This is incredible! I never imagined that one little sleepwalking episode would lead me to two kindred spirits. Could this actually be the Night Demon's guidance?"
Lucia clapped her hands together, practically vibrating with joy. She truly hadn't expected a random accident to bring her two brand-new friends.
For the Lucia of a year ago — wandering alone without a soul to call her own — something like this would have seemed like a dream.
"Geno... isn't Lucia's reaction a little over the top?"
Alice drifted quietly to Geno's side, glancing at Lucia — who was rapidly crossing the threshold from 'excited' into 'overwhelmed' — with a slightly puzzled expression.
"She's always been like this," Geno said. "That girl spent most of her life drifting around the outskirts of New Eridu with her clan. Outside of her own people, she never really had any friends. Maybe that's exactly why friendship means so much to her."
Hearing that, something stirred quietly in Alice's chest. When she thought about it honestly... wasn't she the same?
She had classmates at school, sure. But how many of them had ever approached her for her, rather than for the Timefield name? She knew the answer better than anyone.
Just as she herself had made up her mind to follow Geno into the Hollow — because she'd already decided, in her own heart, that he was her friend — Lucia was this happy for the exact same reason: she'd accepted them as her true friends.
Thinking that, the way Alice looked at Lucia and Idehali quietly shifted. In that moment, she let them in — truly, fully let them in.
Nothing to do with status, or family, or money. Just people who shared the same passions, who had found each other by chance, and who looked out for one another. That was all there was to it.
Geno watched the whole scene unfold with the same dead-fish expression he always wore.
Yep. Still completely beyond him how girls managed to form bonds this fast.
Time passed quietly, and at some point, the rain outside had stopped without anyone noticing.
Geno poked his head out the door, confirmed that it had truly let up, and stepped cheerfully outside.
"Rain's stopped. Looks like we can make it out of the Hollow before dawn."
He stepped out into the open air. The clean, earthy scent of rain-soaked ground drifted into his lungs, and Geno exhaled a long, deep breath as he gazed at the horizon where the sky was just barely beginning to lighten.
This. This is what nature smells like.
He was just about to wax poetic about it when a violent, searing pain detonated inside his skull.
[#!%!%#%!#]
"Ngh—!"
A torrent of fragmented images tore through Geno's mind in an instant, there and gone before he could grasp any of it. Something — some unseen, shapeless presence — was murmuring right beside his ear.
The images were blurred. The murmuring was unintelligible. But the pain was anything but — it felt like his head was about to split open from the inside.
"Geno! Geno!"
Lucia's voice. It sounded like Lucia. Maybe.
He couldn't be certain whether it was her voice or the sound itself, but the moment it reached him, the pain began to ebb — little by little, receding until he could breathe again.
When clarity finally returned, he found he'd instinctively grabbed onto Lucia, who was standing right beside him.
"What's the matter, Lucia?"
"Quick, look — it's Cili!"
He followed the direction Lucia was pointing. There, atop a nearby hillside, a small and slender Hati stood watching them. It called out repeatedly, its cries carrying an unmistakable urgency — as though it was trying to warn them about something.
"It seems like it's trying to say something. Like it's telling us to watch out."
Lucia stared at it with quiet worry. Cili, for her part, remained perfectly still on that distant slope.
"You can actually understand her?"
Geno found that genuinely surprising. Lucia could understand what this Hati was saying?
"Sort of. It's more like a feeling — and it only happens with Cili."
Lucia herself couldn't explain it. She had no idea why she felt that particular connection with Cili and no one else.
Noticing the shift in the pair's behavior, Alice and Idehali moved closer — but the moment they did, Cili's silhouette vanished without a trace.
"...She ran off again?"
Watching Cili leave for a second time, Lucia felt the familiar pang of loss. But compared to before, she accepted it more easily now. Not every Ethereal could be as extraordinary as Geno. Sometimes the best thing you could do was let nature take its course.
"What happened? What did we miss?"
Idehali and Alice asked in unison. Lucia recounted what she'd seen, but neither of them had any idea what to make of it.
"Alright," Geno said. "She's already gone. Let's set it aside for now — the priority right now is getting out of here."
No one argued with that. Lucia, too, accepted that pressing the matter further wouldn't get them anywhere. With Idehali leading the way, the group turned and walked toward the edge of the Hollow.
"By the way, Hali — what exactly is that box you've been carrying?"
Lucia had only just noticed the box that Idehali had been holding since the moment she walked through the door. She hadn't paid much attention to it at the time, but now that things had calmed down, it was hard to ignore.
"This? A client commissioned me to retrieve it from the Hollow. Apparently it's something quite important."
Idehali herself found it a little strange, honestly. The item didn't seem remarkable at all, and the box it was packed in looked perfectly ordinary — and yet her client had paid an extraordinarily generous fee for the job. If they hadn't specifically told her not to open the box, Idehali would absolutely have taken a peek already.
"That just makes it more interesting!"
Lucia's eyes lit up like stars. She knew better than to actually do anything about it, but the curiosity was almost physically painful.
Alice was equally curious, though she kept it entirely off her face. Maintaining excellent emotional composure at all times was the standard expected of the Timefield family's heir.
Geno, meanwhile, had already discreetly been scanning the box with his Ether vision for a while now.
If you can't be caught looking, can you really call it snooping?
Even so, he came up empty. Whatever was inside seemed to carry absolutely no trace of Ether — he couldn't even make out its shape.
Could this little box actually be blocking Ether?
The thought had barely formed in his mind before a spark of realization flashed through him.
"...The material this box is made from — it wouldn't happen to be Lumiceramic, would it?"
____
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