Chapter 380: Searching for Someone |
"What magical girl?" Shimizu Yu waved her hands repeatedly. "It's not what you think, I..."
She suddenly stopped mid-sentence, unsure if she was even allowed to talk about it. She wanted to ask Hoshino Gen, but unfortunately, she couldn't contact him at all.
Pouting, she muttered, "Anyway, it's not what you guys are imagining..."
Everyone around her was speechless. How was saying that any different from saying nothing at all?
Before they could press for more details, a notification suddenly popped up on Shimizu Yu's mobile phone screen. Glancing down, she realized that Hoshino Rin had finally replied.
However, the moment she opened it, she froze.
[My brother is missing.]
"......Eh?"
......
Although police vehicles could usually be seen driving slowly down various streets, there had never been a night like this. They wove through the city's main roads as densely as a tightened net. It wasn't that helicopters had never been spotted overhead before, but never had they hovered in such overwhelming numbers, sweeping the ground with searchlights like a swarm of dragonflies filling the sky right before a torrential downpour.
There were also search teams scattered across every corner of the city, as numerous as molted feathers. Those out of the loop would have thought some international super criminal had fled to Tokyo!
Yet, no matter how many people were pacing like ants on a hot pan over a certain someone's disappearance, none of it concerned the current Ye Xingyuan.
He sat confidently at a restaurant table, eating heartily and tearing into a lavish feast with absolute gusto.
......
"Carole? Do transcendents like you go missing too?"
Having also taken a trip to that abandoned school, Shirayanagi Ayaha was likely the one with the least amount of information among all the involved parties. After all, the moment Carole started fighting that somewhat psychotic-looking young man, she had been instantly teleported back home.
Even the incident of Hoshino Gen's disappearance, which had already caused a massive uproar and become widely known throughout the upper class, was something she only just found out about.
She appeared a bit distracted, but unexpectedly, she wasn't overly panicked. Her tone when asking Carole sounded just like their usual casual chats.
As for Carole... having escaped the battlefield at the abandoned school, she had naturally teleported directly back here as well. She was currently leaning back on Shirayanagi Ayaha's large, soft, and fragrant bed, listening to the rain outside the window while playing games on a tablet computer. Hearing the question, she retorted with amusement, "Ayaha-chan, what exactly do you think a transcendent is?"
"......" Tapping her chin with a finger, Shirayanagi Ayaha thought about it seriously before answering, "Mysterious, powerful, possessing unimaginable abilities, and practically omnipotent!"
She didn't know many transcendents. Counting them on her fingers, there were only two: Carole and Hoshino Gen.
Hoshino Gen went without saying; they had grown up together, yet he had hidden it from her for all these years. As for Carole, even after Shirayanagi Ayaha learned about the existence of such a group of people, the girl had never discussed the topic deeply with her. Therefore, Shirayanagi Ayaha's conceptual understanding of transcendents was indeed quite limited.
She only had two samples to observe, and she hadn't even seen one of them use supernatural power before, so she couldn't help her limited perspective—
"Pfft... Haha... Hahahahahaha~~~~——"
Hearing Shirayanagi Ayaha's words, Carole, who was on the bed, laughed so hard that tears welled up in her eyes. Clutching her stomach, she looked as though she was about to pass out from giggling, her tender bare feet kicking against the mattress. Shirayanagi Ayaha watched her with a face full of question marks.
It took a full half-minute for Carole to barely suppress her laughter. Wiping away the tears from the corners of her eyes, her lips curled upward uncontrollably as she looked at Shirayanagi Ayaha, grinning widely while pointing at herself. "Ayaha-chan, who do you think I am?"
Shirayanagi Ayaha tilted her head, filled with puzzlement.
"I am an SS-Level transcendent. The number of transcendents in the world who are more powerful than me wouldn't exceed three digits. But what is my current identity?"
"A wanted criminal!"
"......"
For a moment, Shirayanagi Ayaha looked slightly numb.
Yet Carole continued to laugh to herself. "As for going missing... Hah~ It couldn't be more common. Especially for transcendents with lower statuses and tiers, it's not strange at all for half of them to just disappear without a trace."
"......"
Shirayanagi Ayaha parted her lips. It was only now that her cheeks slowly turned pale, genuinely frightened by Carole's remarks.
She quickly stood up, asking in a panic, "Then... then what if their status is very high?"
"Then, at most, the probability of falling prey to ghosts and monsters is slightly higher than falling victim to humans," Carole stated frankly, spreading her hands.
Despite saying that, Carole had already guessed what happened from observing Shirayanagi Ayaha's pale face and reaction. She asked with a cheeky grin, "What's wrong? Did someone you know go missing?"
"Do you know any other transcendents besides me—oh, right, there's your childhood sweetheart, whom you just 'diagnosed' as a transcendent~"
Carole's smile grew noticeably more cheerful. "Did your childhood sweetheart go missing?"
Shirayanagi Ayaha's face was deathly pale. The slightly faint heartbeat in her chest rapidly accelerated. She nodded repeatedly. "Help me, Carole... He can't be in danger. Nothing bad can happen to him. Please, Carole, you have to help me..."
"......" The smile on Carole's face froze before completely vanishing. She curled her lip. "You know perfectly well that once you phrase it like that, it's impossible for me to refuse you..."
Shirayanagi Ayaha was already entirely consumed by panic. She hadn't even heard Carole's words, merely murmuring to herself non-stop, "He'll be fine. He's only temporarily missing..."
Carole's face was filled with speechlessness and a hint of resentment, but she ultimately sighed in helplessness. "Stop mumbling. If you make me too consumed by jealousy, I might just harden my heart and refuse to help you~"
Shirayanagi Ayaha immediately shut her mouth, looking at her with an expression full of earnest pleading.
Carole rolled her eyes and sighed, asking, "Do you know the location of his disappearance?"
Shirayanagi Ayaha shook her head.
"What about the time he went missing?"
Shirayanagi Ayaha shook her head again but quickly added, "It was sometime between after school and now, because he was still in the classroom right before school ended."
Carole pondered for a moment before nodding. "Not bad. Having 'after school' as a timeline makes things much easier—"
She rolled off the bed and sat down in the computer chair that Shirayanagi Ayaha had been using earlier. Taking a USB drive out of her inventory, she plugged it into the computer's port and said, "First, I'll hack into your school's surveillance system. You can point out which one is your beloved childhood sweetheart. Then, I'll sequentially hack into the surveillance cameras along the route he took after leaving the school. The probability of finding him is actually pretty high."
"If all else fails, I can even borrow the satellites hovering overhead to take a look..."
"However," Carole paused, watching the rapid stream of data refreshing across the computer screen, "finding someone is easy, but whether they are dead or alive is not something I can control."
Finishing her sentence, she turned around and met Shirayanagi Ayaha's gaze with a cheerful smile. "I can help you find him, but on one condition: even if he's already dead by the time we locate him, you aren't allowed to have any extreme thoughts~"