"Seriously, you two — aren't you boiling in those getups?"
Lucia couldn't help but chime in from the side, ice cream cone in hand, fresh from the nearest vendor. Even so, she could feel just how warm Weifeidi's climate really was.
"As a composed young lady of the distinguished Timefield family, one must remain unruffled under any circumstances."
Alice said this while adjusting her hat, face mask, and sunglasses with meticulous care. As a terminal sufferer of symmetry obsession, she could not tolerate anything being even slightly off-center.
"All the same, I genuinely feel like you're going to cook yourself alive if you keep this up."
Lucia licked her ice cream and regarded Alice's so-called disguise with complete skepticism — if anything, she thought, it made Alice look more suspicious, not less.
"And speaking of suspiciously dressed people — what's your deal? Ge... mmph?"
"Shh! Keep it down! Those guys could show up any second!"
Geno clapped a hand over Yuzuha's mouth, raised a single finger to his own masked lips, and dropped his voice to a barely-there whisper, silently pleading with her not to say his name out loud.
"Things are a little hot for me right now. Please — just for a while — don't call me by name."
Geno's eyes darted left and right, scanning the crowd around them. The past few days had left him genuinely rattled — the paparazzi here were absolutely relentless. Even with his Ether Vision active, he couldn't shake those guys. They were everywhere. It was terrifying.
They probably still thought he was holed up in the hospital. But just to be safe, Geno wasn't taking any chances.
"Isn't that a little dramatic? How would the paparazzi ever end up all the way out here? Big star~"
"Shhhh~~~ They're everywhere!"
"What, did they evolve into gas?"
Yuzuha made a show of glancing around with exaggerated terror, then broke back into her usual teasing grin.
"When you get down to it, isn't it a certain headline-grabbing somebody's own fault for pulling off something so earth-shattering that he's become this famous?"
Geno had no comeback for that. He genuinely hadn't expected the paparazzi to go this far — these people had literally crawled into bathroom stalls to get their shots. If he'd known it would come to this, he would have sooner fought that freakish hand thing again.
"Let's drop the subject. Weren't we planning to head to the haunted district? When are we actually leaving?"
Geno tried to steer the conversation elsewhere. He was fine, more or less — but the little rabbit at his side was going to turn as red as her namesake if this kept up much longer.
To that, the other two's reaction was...
"We can head out whenever — but the two of you dressed like that..."
Yuzuha hugged Kamanosuke to her chest and declined to comment on Geno and Alice's disguises.
To put it plainly: weren't they drawing more attention than if they'd just gone out in the open?
Alice thought it over, and ultimately peeled off her full ensemble of mysterious-celebrity costuming.
"For my part, it's actually fine. I rarely appear in public, and I slipped away early during the last incident — no photos of me made it into circulation. It's Geno's side that's the problem..."
Just as Alice said: once she dropped the disguise, not a single person around them reacted. She may as well have been an ordinary girl from an ordinary family rather than the heiress of a prestigious house.
Then she turned to look at Geno, still wrapped up like a suspicious package, and let out a quiet, helpless sigh.
"Geno's name and face have been plastered across the front page of every major publication in New Eridu. At this point, a stray dog walking past could probably recognize him."
The group deflated a little at that. There was no getting around it — Geno did need some kind of disguise.
But then again, a man swathed head-to-toe in mystery wrappings, out strolling with three girls — no matter how you looked at it, that was deeply suspicious. Right, yeah, okay.
All of a sudden, Lucia's ears twitched. Something seemed to click for her, and she turned to Geno with a flash of excitement.
"Oh! Oh wait — Geno, can't you do that thing?"
"What thing?"
"That thing! That thing!"
"Oh! That thing! How did I forget about that!"
Geno had been tilting his head in genuine confusion, but the moment Lucia's words triggered the memory, the lightbulb went off.
Their baffling exchange left the other two staring blankly — and then they watched as Geno stood up and walked off in the direction of the restrooms.
"Give me a sec. Be right back."
With that, he dove straight into the men's room, startling the young man who had been walking by.
That urgent? Something wrong with his kidneys?
Before the guy had even finished that thought, an unfamiliar figure stepped out of the restroom — and his eyes went wide. He looked back at the sign on the door, slowly, in disbelief.
This is the men's room. Am I dreaming?
For a moment, the poor guy genuinely couldn't tell if he was in a coffee shop or at a cosplay convention. He stood there, thoroughly dazed, the wind blowing straight through him.
Meanwhile, the three waiting at the table watched a complete stranger walk calmly over and take the empty seat — as naturally as anything.
All three of them stared blankly. Except Lucia.
"Excuse me, miss — can we help you?"
"Oh my, looks like my transformation worked perfectly."
"Pffahaha~"
The stranger looked smugly pleased with herself — and then Lucia inexplicably burst out laughing, leaving the other two even more lost.
Yuzuha and Alice not recognizing this person was one thing — but Lucia definitely did.
"Still not getting it? This is Ge— the Ethereal Knight."
"Huh?"
The Ethereal Knight — Geno's online handle. Which meant that the fair-skinned, silver-haired beauty sitting right in front of them was the same Geno who had just been wrapped up like a rice dumpling?
No way. There was absolutely no way. Even a disguise couldn't change someone's gender along with everything else, could it?!
"Geno, you transformed into Twiggy's likeness — do you owe her royalties?"
Lucia stifled her laughter as she looked at the achingly familiar face Geno had taken on. Who else could it be but Twiggy? The same Anby-shaped face, the same trace of imperious little attitude in the eyes — Geno had absolutely nailed Twiggy's particular brand of energy.
"Ahem — she wouldn't ask for any royalties. No wait! Right now, I am Twiggy."
The act collapsed in under a second. Geno — or rather, 'Twiggy' — couldn't take a compliment to save his life, and the perfectly crafted image he'd worked so hard to project shattered on the spot.
Then 'Twiggy' planted both hands on her hips, flashing a confident, sunny smile that radiated youthful energy to the fullest.
It was the kind of look that, if the real Twiggy ever saw it, would have made even her squeal about how cute it was — and sure enough, the gazes of the people around them were growing noticeably warmer.
"Look at that girl over there — she's so cute!"
"She really is! And the three girls with her are adorable too!!"
"Heh heh~ Cute girls~ Come here~ Gimme~"
Ewwww~
The onlookers made absolutely zero effort to keep their voices down, and every member of the group — all blessed with exceptional hearing — went stiff with collective exasperation. By unspoken mutual agreement, they decided it was time to leave and get their day actually started.
They left behind a cafe full of customers still gossiping about the spot they'd just vacated — and one young man still standing in front of the men's room door, questioning everything he knew about reality.
____
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🔥 New history: JJK: Naoya Zenin Reborn as a Woman
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