City Series:Volume3b Ending
All Sections - Ending: Encore - The Flight Song (2:17)[edit]
A festival was underway in Hong Kong Cave.
It was celebrating the fifth year since Hong Kong Cave had been Tuned by Akira’s Earth Serpent.
The city was bright.
There were now people in Hong Kong Cave.
Some were Glossolalians and some were Nein Engels.
No accurate census had been taken, but it was known that more than a million lived there now.
There was a height difference of three kilometers from the bottom to the surface and most of the wide levels were residential areas. There was more than enough space for people to live.
The city was full of life.
The festival played a role, but the city was also filled with the shouts and songs from shops and performers.
Currently, three people were slowly descending through the pleasant noise of the giant layered city.
One was an old man, one was a young man, and the last was a child who ran out ahead of them.
The boy in a nice child’s suit had four wings.
He unsteadily ran down the stairs and turned back toward the two adults walking more slowly behind him.
“Hey, Uncle Gunmal! Can I go on ahead!?”
“Yes, but…hey, G2! Don’t get lost.”
The young man replied to the boy with the Urban Name of G2.
Gunmal wore a coat of contrasting black and white and he carried Wild König on his back.
There was no harshness in his expression and the passage of five years could clearly be seen on his face.
Similarly, the General still wore his usual work uniform, but he was surrounded by a somehow calm aura.
The old man rubbed the scar on his cheek and glanced up at the young man.
“Heh heh heh. You go by uncle now, do you?”
“I don’t want to hear that from someone who could be his great-grandfather.”
“…Where’s his mother?”
“In London.”
“Rin is too, isn’t she? That’s probably for the best. Kouga handled things pretty well.”
“…”
“Rumor has it the god there is personally performin’ Double Lee’s resurrection ceremony to question him. If so, maybe he’ll eventually come here for Akira’s-…”
Gunmal cut off the General.
“Let’s not talk about that.”
“It’s been five years. Hong Kong Cave is back to normal…so why hasn’t she come back?”
“We can only wait.”
“Then why are you here? Weren’t you goin’ to wait it out?”
“My nephew said he wanted to come here.”
“Liar. Quit tryin’ to act tough.”
“But it makes me look cool.”
The General sighed.
“I understand …You’re here to give up, ain’t you?”
“…”
“After five years, Hong Kong’s been revived inside this hole and we’re all more or less back to normal. But Akira alone is missin’.”
“But we made a promise.”
“For what?”
“We were gonna go to the beach once she came back.”
“Then why are you givin’ up?”
Gunmal smiled bitterly.
“I’m not giving up.”
“Really? Then why’d you choose to take over the Maldrick family?”
“Because that lets me make the rules.”
“?”
“Next year, I’m building a workshop here. Just like my brother did.”
“…”
The General fell silent as they arrived at the lowest level.
The stone-paved plaza had shops set up here and there and the sunlight poured down from directly above.
A large spring sat at the center and Gunmal’s nephew, G2, was scooping up and playing with the water.
The General narrowed his eyes when he saw the boy.
“That boy really does look a little like J-Gun.”
“Really? When he was born, I thought he looked just like a monkey.”
“Don’t say that when the boy can hear you.”
“Don’t worry. According to my mom, my brother and I were the same.”
“So you’re a family of damn monkeys?”
“Please, enough compliments.”
While exchanging verbal jabs, Gunmal and the General walked forward.
Gunmal stopped next to the spring-side stone monument engraved with the Flight Song.
He sat down and G2 stood next to him.
“Hey, hey, hey, hey! Uncle! This is where that Nein Engel you love is sleeping, isn’t it!?”
“She’s not the Nein Engel I love. She’s she Nein Engel who loved me.”
“Quit lyin’ to the kid.”
The boy did not hear the General’s warning and he asked Gunmal a question from pure curiosity.
“Hey! Uncle! Can I Tune and Bust too?”
“I don’t think your mom would like that idea.”
“What does that matter, Gunmal?” The General smiled bitterly. “Hey, boy. Do you want to be a Tuner or a Buster?”
“A Buster!”
The two adults exchanged a puzzled glance at the energetic answer.
Once they turned back his way, the boy said more.
“I want to be able to help people like you and dad did! So can I become a Buster too?”
“Precocious little brat,” muttered Gunmal as he stood up and rubbed the boy’s head with his false right hand. “A dirty brat like you’ll definitely end up like me.”
He was smiling as he said it.
The boy narrowed his eyes and those eyes fell on the stone monument next to his uncle.
“Hey, I’ve been wondering.”
“Hm?”
“What does this rock say?”
“Eh? …Oh, right. You can’t read Chinese.”
“Yeah, so what’s it say?”
“It’s a song,” replied Gunmal. “A long, long time ago, those who came before us wrote it to make sure Hong Kong would end up the way it is.”
“Those who came before us?”
“Yeah.”
“Were they famous?”
“Of course.”
“How much?”
“Just a little more than me.”
“That’s not very much.”
The General laughed bitterly at the child’s blunt comment.
Hearing the laugh, Gunmal touched the stone monument.
At the same time, an entertainer in the plaza started playing a song on a sanxian.
“The Flight Song, huh?”
Gunmal suddenly opened his mouth as he listened to the accompaniment.
彼街通天地 (That city connects heaven and earth)
墜朝地仰雲 (I fall in the morning and look up to the clouds from the earth)
昇夜空謳月 (I rise at night and sing with the moon in the sky)
惟望再笑君 (All I desire is to smile with you again)
His voice carried on the sanxian’s music and his Live sounded loudly on top of it all.
The reverberation expanded upwards from the bottom of the pit.
Gunmal’s Flight Song carried a hint of his Live as it slowly but surely filled the air of Hong Kong Cave.
It rang out.
The song came to an end.
Silence followed.
G2 then tugged on the bottom of his coat.
“?”
The boy answered Gunmal’s confusion by pointing upwards.
“Encore.”
Gunmal cleared his ears and heard applause coming from somewhere in Hong Kong Cave.
His song had been mistaken for an entertainer’s and people were applauding in hopes of an encore.
It gradually grew louder.
As more applause piled on, it gained a certain beat.
It settled at a certain tempo and the synchronized clapping built to a great thickness.
It sounded like one giant set of hands clapping.
Unable to bear with that beat any longer, accompaniment for the Flight Song began playing from a higher level. The previous sanxian similarly played on the lowest level.
“…!?”
Drawn out by that ensemble, a male voice sang the Flight Song somewhere in the city.
It only grew from there.
Singing voices and accompaniment rang from every corner of Hong Kong Cave.
Countless voices burst from every level.
“Oh,” muttered the General.
Everyone’s voices had joined as one for the chorus.
The music played loud.
The ensemble and beat of clapping hands enveloped Gunmal, the General, and G2.
“…”
They heard the voices.
Man, woman, boy, and girl all sang or played the Flight Song.
Hong Kong Cave was singing.
Their singing voices were drawn out by Gunmal’s Live in his voice.
And Gunmal stared straight up.
“…?”
But he suddenly pulled Wild König from his back.
“What is it?”
The young man held the large Device out in front of his and the old man’s eyes.
The base of the Device’s hilt contained the Uroboros Rondo Wild Emblem.
Gunmal had created that Device and it was now trembling ever so slightly.
“It’s resonating.”
Wild König would only resonate with Wild Königin which had been created at the same time.
He looked to the spring.
They were faint, but he saw ripples on the water’s surface.
The small ripples were spreading along the large spring, but they did not vanish. More and more were created as if to make their presence known.
Similarly, the tremor inside Wild König gradually grew larger and faster.
Gunmal gulped.
“It really is. Wild König is resonating.”
A smile appeared on his lips.
“Can you believe this!? Wild Königin is singing! Who is it!? Who’s singing!? It’s coming up from the bottom of the spring!”
He knew perfectly well who it was and G2 shouted up at him.
“Sing, uncle!”
That small wish was granted.
Gunmal held Wild König close and he opened his mouth.
He began with a prelude that could have been an “ah” or a “la” and he began to sing.
As countless singing voices rang through Hong Kong Cave, he sang the Flight Song as if his voice was the most correct and as if he wanted someone to hear it.
The hands clapping to the beat cheered him on.
“…!”
Gunmal sang.
Hong Kong sang with him.
The ripples in the spring grew larger.
And a song rang out in response to that movement.
“La!”
Gunmal’s voice rang out powerfully and loudly while sounding just like Akira’s Live.
The song danced and reverberated through the city that connected heaven to earth.
To wake a certain girl.
And to be able to laugh in the end.
Loudly.
Loudly!
Hey, can you hear it!?
This is my answer!
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