Editing City Series:Volume3b Chapter 5 (section)

===Interlude 3===

The hospital lobby Akira had passed through the day before last had sunken into a darkness that did not quite fit the term “late night”.

During the day, it was a bright place meant for victims to communicate with each other, but at night, it was only a space of empty darkness.

The emergency lights were dim and only illuminated what lay directly below them.

Two men could be seen below one of those weak light sources.

One was the General who stood directly below the light.

The other was Gunmal who sat on the lobby bench below the light.

He wore his one-armed coat directly over his bandaged skin.

Exhaustion colored his face…no, his entire body.

His lips moved.

“What’s Akira up to, old man?”

“C’mon, is that really what you’re gonna ask after callin’ me here? What about your own body? Like that prosthetic hand.”

“I’m fine. And I can always get a new hand. …So how’s Akira?”

“She’s sleepin’ at my house.”

“Oh, you’ve finally crossed that line, have you?”

The General frowned.

“That’s not what I meant. My wife’s looking after her right now. She dragged someone as big as you out from all that heat. Also…”

“Also?”

“She went back in to retrieve your burned-up Device.”

“What was she thinking?”

“Don’t ask me,” simply replied the General. “But the exhaustion and dehydration’s done her in for the time being. I thought I’d let her rest at her own place, but…”

“Yeah, her place is a mess and full of water.”

“You knew about that? You knew, and yet…”

“Don’t get so upset, old man.” Gunmal sighed. “Akira wasn’t the one that healed me, was she? I doubt she can Tune right now.”

“She’s clingin’ to your Device and refuses to let go. My wife wanted to heal her, but she was complainin’ that Akira won’t let her remove her clothes.”

Gunmal smiled bitterly at the General’s joking tone of voice.

“You know why Akira can’t Tune, don’t you?”

“Why would that be?”

“The same reason you taught Rin how to Tune but didn’t teach Akira.”

“That’s because Akira could already do it.”

“If you keep lying in your old age, you’re going to be a lonely old man.”

“…”

“I caught a glimpse of Rin’s Live.”

“Rin’s was an accident,” muttered the General. “If it wasn’t for that, she wouldn’t even be in Hong Kong. She’d be somewhere else entirely livin’ with that young man named Fei.”

“Sounds tricky.”

“I got a phone call at home. Rin’s visited a Custom Body shop in the New Territories and she’s connected to Detroit to customize her body. And without tellin’ her parents.” The General smiled bitterly. “It never seems to work out right. Where did we fail to make the change?”

“Really? I feel like I’m always at my best no matter how hard I work.”

“?”

“You realized long ago that nothing you can do can change the past itself, right?”

“Yeah. You can remake the past, but you just end up pilin’ up the means to do that and never move forward.”

“Who in Hong Kong was the first one to realize that fact?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“To feel satisfied.”

Gunmal’s answer was an incredibly normal thing, so the General smiled bitterly again.

“The ones who realized that fact of yours were me, my wife…and Huang Daquan.”

“…”

“But we realized it too late. So the pasts that we and the others piled up had to be settled by Hu and Luna.”

“Settled?”

“After several Divine Punishment Wars and the creation of Hong Kong Cave, the Nein Engels and humans parted ways in this city, but there’s still one thing here that thinks of it all in a positive light.”

Gunmal fell silent for a few seconds.

“You mean the song?”

It had taken quite a long time in the night for him to say those few words.

A moment later, Gunmal moved a little.

He had nodded.

Then he stood up.

The General looked up at him and narrowed his eyes.

“I can see your Live.”

“There’s no point in searching for another reason to hide it.”

He smiled bitterly.

“I’ll use the remaining five days to create a Device.”

With those simple words, he clenched his left fist.

That flesh-and-blood hand filled with tremendous strength.

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