Editing City Series:Volume3b Chapter 6 (section)

===Part 5===

The underground workshop J-Gun had holed up inside had grown silent.

The workshop was a square with twenty meter sides and it rose to a height of three stories. It was the largest of the building’s underground rooms.

After pushing open the bulkhead-like door, Genius saw darkness enveloping the large space.

There was no light.

It was underground and J-Gun did not need light since he could see Lives.

She found absolute darkness.

She hesitated and checked the clock.

It was 6:00 AM on June 30.

“It’s probably okay if I come in now.”

She muttered to herself and took a step inside.

The darkness enveloped her as well.

“Let there be light.”

She snapped her fingers in the darkness and light appeared.

A glowing halo appeared a mere thirty centimeters above her head.

It resembled a transparent fluorescent light, it appeared to be quickly rotating, and sharp pieces of light would occasionally scatter from it.

Genius caught the halo on her fingers and grabbed it.

When she passed her hand through it like a bracelet, it continued to rotate but stayed around her wrist.

She looked around with it on her right arm.

The white light illuminated the workshop.

A few concrete pillars, the gate for the elevator that brought in supplies, a lathe, and large steel panels for materials all became visible in the light and shadow.

Also, a single figure could be seen in that space of metal and stone.

It was J-Gun.

He sat on one of the I-beams lined up in the center of the workshop and he had his back to Genius.

“…J-Gun.”

She walked forward as she muttered his name.

Her heels rang loudly on the concrete floor.

After about a dozen of the hard sounds, she stood behind him.

The man’s back was right in front of her.

The back of his combat blouson was bent from his hanging head.

He almost seemed to have fallen asleep while sitting, but corpses did not sleep.

He had simply stopped until he felt he had a new mission.

“Just like a machine.”

She did not smile as she said that and circled in front of him.

J-Gun was still wearing his glasses and the eyes behind them were closed.

He did not move or even breathe.

“…”

She looked away and noticed something on the floor.

What Double Lee had requested was placed on the concrete.

“The Device.”

Two swords were there.

One was what J-Gun had been using. Its colors had grown clear and all of its previous scratches were gone, but that was the side effect of forging another one with it.

“He took good care of this for so long.”

With a bitter smile in her voice, Genius looked to the other one.

It was quite different from all the Devices she had seen in the past.

It was a short sword.

J-Gun’s Device was long at a meter and twenty centimeters.

The ADs which had activated the four Earth Burns had been over a meter.

But the final Device in front of Genius was only about sixty centimeters, including the hilt.

It was shaped like an expensive paper knife.

But Genius could not take her eyes off of it.

“Amazing…”

She stared at the light reflected from its short blade.

“It’s like a mirror…or the water’s surface at night.”

As she spoke, the light flowed along the blade.

And that was not a metaphor.

The blade reflected the light wrapped around Genius’s wrist and caused the Lives of light to flow toward the blade’s tip.

The light took a droplet shape at the tip, dripped to the floor, and vanished.

Genius gasped.

“So this is what you’re really capable of.”

She picked up the Device.

The light reflected sharply from the blade and sprayed outward.

For an instant, letters appeared on the blade like a watermark.

“Pd.? Period? Is that the Device’s name?”

No one answered her.

She tilted her head and looked away from the light emitted by the blade.

She sighed and placed the short sword back on the floor as light continued to scatter from it.

It made a light, metallic sound.

As she did, her fingers felt something hard on the floor.

“?”

She found a ring there.

It was not a mechanical component like a washer or nut. The surface was polished and processed. It was made from the same light-manipulating metal as Pd.

J-Gun had made it.

“It can’t be…”

She looked to her left hand.

She had once worn a ring there, but she had abandoned it in J-Gun’s workshop on the surface.

“…!?”

She turned around and found J-Gun’s head still slightly lowered. His eyes were closed and he said nothing.

But she did spot a small smile on his lips.

“Am I imagining that?”

She shook her head to reject it.

Still, she took the ring from the floor.

She hesitated for a moment, but she slowly placed it on her left ring finger.

The ritual-like action did not take much time.

The ring fit in place and silently reflected the light.

“I don’t understand. I was too afraid to ask…but what did Double Lee say to you to resurrect you?”

She faced J-Gun while sitting on the floor.

“You had to have been able to read my Live, so why did you stay with me?”

She took a breath.

“Will you tell me someday?”

There was of course no one to answer or respond to her question.

J-Gun simply accepted her words without moving.