Chapter 55: Sabbath of the Forgotten (6)
“In any case, let’s leave here first. Otherwise, we won’t even be able to eat dinner peacefully, hoo hoo~”
For someone who already knew that a disaster of catastrophic proportions was about to happen, she could still smile. Didn’t she have any sense of crisis?
“Huh? What’s there to be flustered about?”
This person is hopeless.
She doesn’t know fear at all, feels nothing.
She still sheds tears, still bleeds, but inside she is an empty abyss.
That’s right, she said she had completed the Four Calamities, meaning Zihua, like Juncheng, had abandoned her emotions and heart, and was no longer complete.
Wait, then why does she still like Juncheng? Why can she maintain her love-hate for Juncheng after abandoning her emotions and heart? Where did this feeling come from?
Until now, what… what am I traveling with?
Was I… was I always talking to a puppet?
“Then, wait a moment, I’ll go change my clothes first. Then we’ll leave, wait for me~”
Zihua waved goodbye to us and went into the room to change, leaving Juncheng and me standing dumbfounded at the door.
Isn’t this…
This place is about to turn into hell, isn’t it? The earthquake is about to come, isn’t it? She’s going to change clothes at this time? What is she thinking?
“I know… she’s not normal anymore. In other words, she’s an ‘anomaly’.”
“Anomaly? She’s not even at that level! I can’t understand her! I don’t understand, I really don’t understand!”
What are we going through?
Isn’t it simply returning to the past to change the future?
I’m completely confused now…
“Don’t think too much, Zi’ai. We just need to treat everything as an anomalous event, and the mastermind is the anomaly named Zihua.”
“But this is not even at that level…”
Juncheng put his hand on my shoulder. It was through Juncheng’s hand that I felt my body trembling uncontrollably.
“Don’t dig any deeper. We can’t understand it. If we force ourselves to understand, we’ll only break ourselves.”
“She herself said it, she’s just one of the forgotten. We can just think of her that way.”
“Even you, Juncheng, have given up trying to understand her?”
“Heh heh, I never understood what women think anyway. They are incomprehensible beings, so let’s just lump them all together.”
“…You’re quite strange yourself.”
Well, that’s true. If I weren’t strange, I wouldn’t have encountered these things.
“Well, after all, we’ve experienced so many Shura Fields. This level… okay, although I’ve never seen anything like it before, I can adjust my mindset.”
Juncheng shrugged and spread his hands, his expression saying, ‘I guess we can only get used to it now.’
But I really can’t get used to it…
“Yes, yes, sorry to keep you waiting~ I wanted to put on some light makeup, but there’s no time. So, let’s go downstairs first.”
“What’s the point of running now—”
It’s too late to reach a safe place.
Even if we go downstairs, we can only rely on luck, praying that the building doesn’t collapse on us…
But praying is useless. Rather, the building ‘will’ collapse, and it will definitely bury us alive.
“Don’t worry~ Don’t look so upset, Zi’ai. Weren’t you in a good mood just now? Just maintain that mood.”
Unlike Juncheng, who has the experience of reincarnation, nor like Zihua, this crazy woman, who has experienced a desperate future. In the end, if I hadn’t been born into the An family, I wouldn’t have…
No, what am I complaining about now? This is too unlike me! I love it!
I patted my cheeks, shook off all the杂七杂八 thoughts, and resolved to focus on the crisis at hand.
“…Let’s go! We must escape!”
I’m not going to die in an earthquake! I’ll survive even if I die… Ah, this sentence seems contradictory.
No, I mean! Why is my mind so scattered! Am I suffering from nervous exhaustion!
I won’t think about it anymore, I won’t think about it anymore, I’ll give up thinking!
I quickened my pace, wanting to get out of this place as soon as possible. Just as I was about to run out, Zihua grabbed my hand.
“Ah, no need to be in such a hurry, Ai. The time has been calculated. The earthquake won’t happen for another thirty seconds.”
“And you’re not in a hurry?!”
I think we have different understandings of the word “hurry.”
“Juncheng! What are you doing! Try to persuade her too!”
“Mmm-hmm. I heard there are all sorts of precursors before an earthquake. I’m looking to see if any pigeons are flying around in the sky. It seems not yet, so we’re probably safe.”
What the hell! Juncheng has given up thinking!
“Hoo hoo, there won’t be any precursors. When I was changing, I looked at the fish tank. If there were any precursors, the fish in the tank would be jumping around frantically, even jumping out of the tank.”
“Ah, I see…”
…Haha…
It’s just me being nervous, looking like an idiot… Well, it’s not a big deal… In the end, the worst result is just dying. I wasn’t born in the first place, so what am I afraid of dying for…
I feel like I’m about to grasp some life philosophy.
With that, the three of us, hand in hand, took the elevator downstairs. We didn’t look like we were evacuating, but rather like good friends going out to play, as we walked out of the hotel entrance.
“Hmm, the timing is just right. Ten seconds left, +…”
It’s coming.
Are there no places to hide around here?
I frantically looked around and immediately spotted a telephone booth not far away.
Hiding in a telephone booth would at least offer some protection!
My sense of crisis made my body react instinctively. I pulled Zihua and Juncheng towards the telephone booth, pushed both of them inside after opening the door, and then squeezed in myself and desperately held onto the doorknob.
“…Okay…”
“Oh my, Zi’ai, you’re so bold. Are we playing a game in a confined space?”
A small telephone booth is certainly not enough for three people, so we were almost pressed against each other, our bodies tangled like in a game of Twister. And because of our excited and nervous emotions, our body temperatures were also high. The hot breaths intermingling between us made the atmosphere ambiguous.
“Endure it! It’s better than being buried alive by the earthquake!”
At least we have to ensure we don’t get hurt. Even a minor scratch doesn’t matter. The key is not to suffer a fatal injury.
Otherwise, I’ll have to use Zihua’s Time backtrack again. I don’t know how much of her remaining Destiny Power she has left…
“But the time is up?” “Huh?”
The time is up? That means it’s already the time the earthquake was supposed to happen just now?
…
“The earthquake… didn’t happen?”
“Because we’re not there anymore, there’s no need for it to happen. Since we can’t be buried alive under the ruins, there’s no need to go to such great lengths to trigger a disaster.”
“In other words, are we safe?”
Do we have to stop being frightened?
“Well, I wouldn’t say we’re safe. After all, being discovered is a foregone conclusion. Even if we go back to the past, Fate still knows of our existence, so there will be ‘other events’ next.”
“Other events? Like a truck suddenly rushing over and smashing this telephone booth we’re in to pieces?”
“…”
Juncheng, you idiot! Why are you making a FLAG at a time like this! It’ll really happen!
Then I saw it: a truck rushing towards us reflected in Juncheng’s pupils, and a driver who seemed to be asleep!
It’s really coming! You crow’s mouth, Juncheng!
I wanted to escape, but my body couldn’t react in time. Seeing that we were about to be turned into minced meat in the telephone booth, I didn’t even have time to be scared. My mind was blank.
Just then, Juncheng, with incredible speed, scooped me up with one arm and Zihua with the other, kicked open the door, and rushed out. His movements were quick and precise.
The edge of the truck grazed Juncheng’s feet by a millimeter, hit the telephone booth, and then directly crashed into the hotel entrance.
“Damn, I was scared to death. Lucky I accelerated in time… Are you two okay!”
Juncheng stood up and reached out to pull me up. But I hadn’t even reacted yet. Everything happened too suddenly…
“Will things like this… keep happening in the future!”
“Yes.”
“What should we do? This is like a curse! No matter where we go, these ‘accidents’ will happen. We can’t stay vigilant every second, can we? And even if we could, there would still be… nowhere to hide.”
“There won’t be any accidents like this for the time being.”
“How do you say?”
“Before we truly change the future, Fate won’t go all out. It’s like action and reaction. The more we try to change the world, the stronger the causal force that will correct it.”
“…In other words, it’s like an immune system. As long as we ‘viruses’ remain latent and don’t actively cause illness, we won’t attract cellular immunity.”
“I’m not happy about this at all… This is fundamentally unsolvable…”
“Yes, hoo hoo~ We can only keep running until we achieve our goal~”
Listening to the two of them talking so calmly, I still couldn’t recover from the shock of what had just happened.
“…Where can we escape to?”
This isn’t paranoia. It’s not a hallucination created by the mind, but genuine misfortune falling from the sky…
“…You can still be so calm?” When was it? “Since”
It’s normal to feel terrified.
Because this is human nature. Humans fear the unknown… it has always been this way.
Don’t look away. What’s important is to face the problem head-on and not evade it. There will always be a solution.
If you relax even a little and succumb to this fear, it’s just… even if you’re alive, it’s no different from being dead.
I’ve always thought this way.
Just like those who escape reality believe in vague ghosts and gods, it’s just a fictional lie.
The moment this veil is broken, and fantasy is revealed by a rational explanation…
That thing will immediately vanish like smoke.
This is the law of historical progress. There are no exceptions… there shouldn’t be any…
Once humans understand the principle of the unknown, they can immediately overcome their fear.
But this doesn’t apply to the current situation…
Is someone really intending to… make the whole world their enemy?
Not simply standing in opposition to the majority, but truly being regarded as an enemy by the concept of Fate itself.
Truly “being at odds with the world.”
“…It’s impossible to win, right?”
“We’re overthinking it! Changing the past or whatever! It’s impossible!”
I yelled hysterically.
“That Head Maid also knew that when we try to change the future, we would attract Fate’s erasure, so she advised us not to do it, right?”
In the end, what has already happened cannot be changed!
The consequence of forcibly changing it is like this now!
Endless danger!
“Why would my future self propose such a… plan… and sacrifice so much… so foolish…”
Truly foolish…
My cheek felt a burning pain.
I stared blankly ahead. The person who slapped me looked at me with an unprecedentedly serious expression and said,
“Don’t deny yourself.”
“It’s because I believe in you that I was able to persevere until now, Zi’ai.”
“If you don’t believe in yourself, I’ll prove it to you—I will change the future!”
