This story was co-developed by Titan127 and beta read by ShonnaRose and JhinoftheOpera.

[10-2] Who I Shouldn't Be Anymore

Kris ambled through the Sinnoh League as if she'd been stabbed through the heart. One of her feet led the other, dragging her towards an unknown destination.

She wasn't certain what she wanted, or if she even wanted anything at all. The fundamental aspect driving her now was fear. Fear that the shadow that taunted her in her bedroom prison was right. Fear that she had fallen somewhere she could never escape, no matter how much she scraped her nails against the icy walls trying to find a handhold.

What time was it? She couldn't be sure. There were no windows around, but there were enough whispering faces to imply that it was working hours.

What day was it? She didn't know that either. The past was not a memory, it was a curse, and she was using every ounce of energy to forget what that specter had told her at the beginning of her new universe. She'd slept endless hours and not at all since then, and the turns of the planet were beyond her.

Lucian. She needed to talk to Lucian, have him ask her some dumb questions and have her give him some dumb answers. That monotony was enough to dull her mind and make her forget, somehow making it the only comfort she could turn to. She hadn't touched her Poké Balls—her mother's or her own—because her Pokémon could choose. If Rick told them the truth he sensed in her aura, her mother's might follow Kiki's lead. And her own Pokémon, the family she had loved for years before she was an official trainer, might see the horrid mess she had become and make the right decision.

The whispers grew to roars, the stone barriers throughout the castle ceasing to exist. She became part of every conversation she passed.

"Isn't that… oh, she looks terrible," someone whispered to their walking companion.

"I miss seeing her and her brother on TV, but I guess it'll never go back to— what do you mean I shouldn't say that? It's true."

Was she hearing anything at all? Their voices sounded like her thoughts, exactly as corrosive and horrid.

She limped further, feeling her ankles and legs and stomach cut open as she was dragged through a pit of sharp words. They were all about her, or rather, what she wasn't. People wanted Christine Masuta, and she could no longer play the part.

Christine Masuta had always been a mask she wore, a mask of vigilance, and fighting spirit, and life, and exuberance. Without that mask, she was no one. It shattered on the 29th of August; a nameless face had wasted the days trying to pick up those shards, only to spill them again like a child. She wasn't important. She wanted to shrink away. She was not Christine Masuta.

Kris slumped against a wall and felt the cold stone in her ear. This time she was certain the voices were real, and she thanked the first god that came to mind when she realized they weren't talking about her.

"I've had enough of our supposed 'management' of the situation. We can't keep this charade forever, and sooner, rather than later, our hold will crack." The speech was muffled through the walls and distorted even more through a persistent buzz in her ears. She tasted a similar static on her tongue and pricks on her fingertips.

"Please, Dr. Furutre, you have to—" A gruff voice held back, one of an adult man.

"Calm down? I'm beyond calm."

"An Elite Four Member shouldn't be doing this!"

"What should I not be doing? Should I not try to bring peace to the people? Should I not try to aim the Pokémon League towards stopping crime and saving their lives rather than toiling with a Champion selection process that the public has no insight on?" Lucian pressed, shouting at an unknown number of people. Kris recoiled—she'd never heard him even a whisper above his speaking voice. Other rhythms of syllables rose and fell around him, trying to get a word in edgewise.

"Keep your voice down!" someone hissed, and the argument vanished into the stone.

Kris scrambled after it before the other voices came back. The chill of the castle caressed her shoulder blades, drawing a tremble from her chest that dissipated as it raced down her abdomen. She held out a finger to the wall, as if her eyes were no longer reliable. She was on… the side of the castle with the conference chambers, where the Viceroy normally held Audience meetings with the council members, esteemed guests, and those of the public fortunate enough to be invited. It was hardly an audience when average people couldn't seek it, only pray for it.

Eventually she found the argument again on the other side of a locked door, and she crumpled against it when her legs gave way. Her hot, ragged breaths condensed on the cold wood. As if listening to a debate of only Whismur, her addled mind struggled to pick up any sounds at all.

"Detective, if you wouldn't mind?" asked Lucian.

What followed was a series of thumps and bangs, someone mentioning to "plug that in", and the distant sounds of somewhere else entirely. They were playing some type of recording or video. All throughout, no one had anything to say, and they merely absorbed it in interest—or shock.

The video had finished an eternity ago by the time a councilwoman, nameless to Kris, was brave enough to speak up. "Is it truly them?"

"The old bastard should have listened to me!" What would have been an earth-shattering slam if she were closer shot an instinctive jolt up Kris's spine. "'We don't have an enemy to fight,' he said."

"News reports say they're just copycat crimes. We shouldn't be worried."

"You shut your damn mouth. They stabbed a woman in Pastoria. They tried to shoot an eighteen-year-old kid! I've seen multiple reports already of muggings in my city."

Trying to log his accent more closely, she recognized him as Jorgen Moltebær, a young councilman from Sunyshore. He was one of few she could place aurally due to his insistence that reporters listen to everything he says, and it was wonderful to know he demanded attention even when cameras weren't looking.

"I'm sick of having people pin the Galactic trouble on me just because their damn leader was from my city and I say we cut them off right now. What if they were the ones that murdered Cynthia?"

The burning all rushed back. Kris beat her skull with a closed fist to force it to stop. She needed to speak to Lucian, needed him to tell her something insane and stupid so that her head would stop pounding and her heart would slow down, and she'd stop sweating and she'd stop shaking and she'd just stop.

"Ah, that's unlikely to be true!" exclaimed someone else. "On the contrary, our investigation has yet revealed only family members and coworkers as possible suspects, and we don't believe remaining actors of the Galactic Company would have had the means to commit such an act."

Another councilwoman joined in. "Has your investigation turned up anything else, Detective?"

"Well, we cannot further investigate persons of interest without the utmost cooperation from the executive branch, and the Viceroy has been particularly evasive since our investigation. Such a particularly shady response even led us to bump him up the priority—"

"That's enough." Lucian cut the discussion with a forceful edge and waited just long enough before continuing to let them wonder what might happen if they kept that topic alive. It was the tiniest mercy to Kris's cranium. "But these points are correct. The Viceroy refuses to address these failures because he's too preoccupied trying to find his 'perfect' Champion and waiting for a neat little arrest to tie up the uncertainty of our citizens, and now we have this. The environment inside our organization is collapsing. Our managers, our network technicians, our local employees and Trainers, they're all overstressed or overburdened by... chaos."

"Please. We can handle ourselves just fine, and you don't— you don't have to stick up for me," said someone, choking on his own objection.

"Mr. Sylvester, that's not what you're really saying."

"Lucian! I've told you not to— Sorry, sorry, Dr. Furutre. I've kindly requested that you not do that, and I'm sure everyone else here would also prefer their mental privacy."

"You all have the same thought," said Lucian. "You all wish for this to stop, and I declare that we move forward regardless of the Viceroy's failure to select."

The murmurs fought back. They thought he was crazy. He had just spoken a public sacrilege, something that none would voice even if nine of ten people in a room believed it to be true. He said that the Viceroy was wrong. It was enough of an upset that someone rose from their seat and slammed open the door Kris leaned on. She didn't even feel the impact, but when she opened her eyes, she was on the floor.

"You're speaking dangerously," said an older woman. Kris was barely cognizant enough to know it was Bertha, and her tone immediately cut the discussion. Someone else made to leave the room, but Bertha squeezed their throats with words alone. "I'd suggest you sit down and listen, dear child. You wouldn't want something unfortunate to happen to you."

Whoever it was returned to their seats without further argument, and a tense pause permeated their meeting. The next person to speak up was Flint, rolling through his words like lyrics with his country spin.

"Yeah, we outta hear him out. I'm not so hot about going against the Viceroy, but… it's up to someone to do something, right?" said Flint.

"Exactly correct. The Viceroy's response to this crisis has been disastrous at best," replied Lucian.

"Disastrous is an exaggeration." This person spoke gruffly and low, as if they didn't want to be heard, and Kris hated how dismissive he sounded.

"So says the boytoy living at one of the House of Dione's cushy resorts. Just because you don't have to worry about criminals and riots doesn't mean others have the same luxury," said a wispy councilwoman. The muscle of her words was betrayed by her wispy tone, as if she was afraid everyone on the planet was listening.

"That's not— I'm not— why don't you say that to Berlitz over there?"

The House of Dione. The House of Berlitz. They were some of the Royal Guard houses, and they generally had a representative on the Council more by grandfathered right than any actual service to the community. How many Royal Guard houses were there? Two? Eight? Kris tried to list them off in her head in a desperate attempt to quell the buzzing and the pounding, but she was only able to name three and a half and it only made it worse. Thinking about anything just hurt. She wanted to sleep but she couldn't when she was so unfortunately awake, and when her feet were moving despite her command to still.

"Dear children, if you don't focus," said Bertha, in a low, earthen rumble, "your seats on this council might be particularly endangered. Do I make myself clear?"

The whispers were all around her now as her legs kept betraying her. Someone asked what Bertha did before she retired. Another responded that she never gave the same answer twice. One of those voices was right next to her, somehow. Wasn't she still beside the ajar door?

"Christine?"

Kris slowly, minutely, glacially lifted her head up and saw Lucian directly in the center of her view. She was inside the audience chamber, at the end of the long table between two empty seats for esteemed guests. The attendees down the table all had their eyes on her, the debate once more interrupted by her.

With no sense of how to respond, Kris slowly lowered herself into one of the guest seats, pretending she was someone special. Her aching head was gone, as an old habit kicked itself in gear—she straightened herself in the chair, ran a hand through her hair to smooth out astray strands, and plastered a neutral smile over her convulsing face.

"H-hey," she said, softly but firmly. "May I sit in?"

Everyone threatened her with silence. She wasn't supposed to be involved, but she'd heard far too much already.

Kris could feel Lucian in her mind for a few seconds, and when he slipped away, he said, "Of course. We were just wrapping up here."

"Were we?" Moltebær seemed displeased, and as red in the face as every other time she'd seen him on the airwaves. "And shut that damn door."

"Ah, well, aside from petitioning the Viceroy that he should go forward with a Champion candidate immediately, have no other action items to discuss," replied Lucian.

"We can't supersede his authority." A woman in a lab coat spoke up for the first time, and given the daggers being shot at her by a man in a fine, gilded button-up, he assumed they were the representatives of Berlitz and Dione that were at odds before. The Berlitz lady had some Johtoan in the sharp angles of her face, while Dione's square jaw and nose were purely native.

"Yo, that's not entirely true," offered Flint, flicking his thumb as if he was holding a lighter. She found herself temporarily lost in his explosion of an afro. "If we get the public fired up, we can force the Viceroy or maybe even Terminus to pay us some lip service, since he doesn't wanna look bad."

"But we would need a Champion to present," a councilwoman noted.

"My suggestion remains," said Dr. Berlitz, curtly, her arms held close to her chest in a defensive posture.

Kris felt herself pierced by the implications of the woman's intrusion. It was the first time she had spoken since Kris was in earshot, and perhaps the first time she had spoken at all, and for some reason it put everyone on edge. Without any feeling left in her head, Kris could only watch the silent battle play out between Dr. Berlitz and the rest of the council members and Elite Four present. She carried the power of a name, whether or not it was a useful weapon.

"You just want to expand your dying House, not help the Region," hissed Moltebær. "Besides, even if she was on the list as you claim, you pushed her away."

"I pushed away no one," replied Dr. Berlitz.

"Everyone, please." Lucian broke them from their argument. "I suppose this is hypocritical, but we should take a week to present and vote on a candidate. Whatever shortcomings they have, we Elite Four can make up the difference, and hopefully put confidence back in our employees and law enforcement."

"Doctor, I said this was unnecessary. But if you're so certain, you should be prepared for the consequences," said a man with deep brown skin and short, curly black hair. A tag with the name "Sylvester" sat on the lapel of his navy suit, and he must have been the man that sparred with Lucian. Particularly, he called him Lucian first, before correcting himself to something more formal.

"I would say we were all rather prepared by coming here," said Bertha, who calmly flipped her earthen scarf to her other shoulder. "If we do not act now, none may ever."

"Right, thank you. You're all dismissed. And remember, none of this leaves this room." Lucian stood, bowed to his comrades, and held his position as they slowly filed out of the hall. They seemed to veer around Kris on their way out, trying desperately not to step one foot too close and set off the time bomb they knew she'd become.

Her heart beat fast. Her head heated. Her lungs burned empty.

"We appreciate your participation, detective," said Lucian to a man wearing a knee-length brown coat and wickedly ungroomed hair. He spouted something about justice and the key to stopping villainous forces, and then sped from the scene as if his next appointment was days late.

Kris held her position and her curled lips as suits and dresses pushed past, regarding her as the outsider. Once the fine carpet was free of footsteps, she, Lucian, and Mr. Sylvester were the only ones who remained in the room. The man stepped close to Lucian, and Kris couldn't hear their low conversation in her scrambled neural network. They seemed to argue, and snap, and bicker, all while keeping their chins at the perfect, slightly downward angle so as to seem professional.

She struggled to maintain. She was sweating from every pore on her skin, and every still-living neuron contributed a lurch to her outward body. Mr. Sylvester opened his arms wide, only for Lucian to offer a hand instead. As they shook, Kris tried to shut everything down. For those remaining few seconds, she devoted every piece of her willpower to not falling apart, masquerading as the perfect, unhindered little girl that televisions and magazines so vehemently revered.

Only after Mr. Sylvester had closed the audience chamber door did all her muscle control simply vanish. Her head hung heavy over the table, breathing faster and faster and faster and faster and she couldn't stop breathing and her head wouldn't cool down.

Kris wanted all of it to end. She couldn't stop thinking about who she couldn't be and who she really was, and she begged for it to get out of her head.

Muffled words appeared at her right after the quick movement of a crimson body. "Christine. Are you having a panic attack?"

Why the hell was he so calm? Couldn't he see that something was wrong, couldn't he see that everything was absolutely not fucking okay? But Kris tugged her shoulders to drag her heavy skull and did what he always asked her to do—answer his dumb question.

Reality check. Was she panicking? Arguably. Could she stop panicking? No. Had she ever suffered a panic attack before? Also no, she had no idea what this felt like, but she was drowning and would choke without air.

"Y-ye-ye-yes." Her jaw clenched and unclenched on the single syllable.

"Are you comfortable with physical contact?"

"No-no-no-y-y-yes," she said, failing to truly decide. But he took her latter answer as a guess, and she felt two warm hands against her back and her heart, pressing herself between them.

"Alright, Christine. I need you to do something for me, if you can" he said. "Try to breathe slowly. Match my breathing."

She focused on his lips and his chest and tried her best to replicate.

In. In. In. Out. In. Out. Out. In. No, no, no, no, that's wrong.

In in. Out out. In in. Out out. In. Out. In Out.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

As she steadied, he kept his hands in place, urging her just to keep breathing. He stood there with his soft eyes behind his glasses, never saying more than necessary. She was doing good, he said, and that she just had to keep doing that, and for lack of any other guidance, that's what she did. She took in every slow breath like it was the last one she might ever taste, and her lungs and head started to feel just a little bit cooler.

He stayed there for an indeterminately long time, just gently touching her as she tried to breathe. At one point, he shouted past her shoulder, probably to her single assigned agent, and sometime later, a glass of water was placed on the long table. She reached for it, and only barely managed to wrap her still-trembling fingers around it.

"Would you like me to help?" asked Lucian.

She couldn't have been so weak that she couldn't pick up a measly glass of water, even if it was so heavy. Who cared? She wanted this, just this minor, stupid thing for herself. "No."

He respected her answer and let her agonize over the glass. Even without ice, it felt frigid down her throat, and she relished in it being the only thing drawing heat out of her. By the time the final drop hit her throat, her shaking had mostly vanished and Lucian seated himself on the table's corner, leaving her one of the VIP thrones. She pushed the glass away so she couldn't glance at her reflection on its surface.

"Would you like to talk?" She could finally hear his words clearly, no longer separated from him by a heavy fog.

"Mr… Dr. Furutre, I think I need… I think—" she said.

"I meant we could just talk. Do you want to just talk?" he asked.

"I—" She wanted, needed, to say something important. She needed to know that she wasn't trapped, but different words escaped her. "Yes."

"First, I have something." He brandished an index finger and withdrew something from the pocket of his jacket—a verdant flower. She couldn't fathom that he was offering it to her at first, and he must have seen that painted on her face.

"I'd been holding onto it after it arrived today, since I didn't know when I'd have the opportunity to give it to you. Unfortunately, it didn't list the sender."

Kris rolled it between her trembling thumb and forefinger, not particularly caring that its dull thorns wore down her fingerprints. Who in their right mind would send her a flower? She had no clue what to deal with it, nor how to ensure it wouldn't die in two days or less. She couldn't keep herself alive, let alone something so small and dainty.

A macabre cackle in her mind asked who the dainty one truly was. As she examined it, she mumbled, "Who was that?"

"Whom?"

"Nice suit. Brown skin." With her mind slowly stabilizing, she realized that his name was familiar, as she heard it when she first sat down for a session with Lucian. "Is he… a patient?"

In response, he suppressed a polite, simple laugh, the crinkle of his eyes obscured behind his glasses. She didn't personally know what was so funny about the question. It was his job.

"Mr. Sylvester is my boyfriend," said Lucian.

"Oh." Kris looked away, feeling a strange pang at his statement, and she wasn't sure exactly why. Romance had never been her strongest suit, especially by how few people seemed willing to open themselves up to her—not that she was any better. Maybe if she'd actually pursued some of the rare few people that convinced themselves she wasn't out of their league, her situation might be different. Her last date was about a year ago, and she had enjoyed her time out, but for the life of her, she couldn't remember his name.

She wanted someone who wouldn't bend if she tried to lean on them, and she knew it was greedy to say that, because it wasn't a service she was confident she could return. What a limp partner she'd be. A mess with more rumors and gossip about her than most would hear in a lifetime. For that reason, she'd mostly barred herself from dates and crushes, and there was no reason hearing that someone else was happily committed would hurt her so much.

It made looking at the flower ache that much more.

"He's actually why I called this meeting," the man said. "He confided in me about work stress and how chaotic the management in the Sinnoh League has become. Yet now he's hesitating because he's worried that I'll put myself in jeopardy by doing this."

"You never talk about him," she droned.

His face fell to a neutral line. "He disagrees about how we should carry ourselves in public. I prefer to keep my affairs as Elite Four and as a therapist strictly professional."

"And me?"

"Ah, well," he said, looking away, "I suppose I'm not wholly consistent."

Her voice held no spite, but somehow it erupted as a growl. "And that's why you used me to dig up information on the Viceroy?"

Lucian's glasses couldn't contain his reaction, and he, ever so slightly, hung his shoulder back as he tried to process a response to her accusation. His eyes outlined her silhouette, afraid to draw a line with her own. Absentmindedly, he pulled a book from his jacket and placed it on the table, tapping its cover with his ring finger.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said—"

"No. You're correct," said Lucian, quietly. As a member of the Elite Four, he always seemed to carry himself with unbreakable poise, but here he responded like a child called by his full name. "It's been eating at me for some time. Perhaps I'm not standing on firm ground when I tell Mr. Sylvester not to let his emotions get the better of him."

"I'm not… angry, or anything," she said. He was just like her brother, wanting to make something happen when the world had frozen still around him. "I'm not sure I could be even if I tried, right now."

"That's not an excuse."

"Just tell me why. For real this time." That was her only request. Closure.

He tapped more on his book, one tap a second, trying to give her a response. Kris wondered why he was hesitating, and hoped he wasn't planning on lying to her—unlike him, she had nothing but her failing wits to vet the truth.

"The Viceroy has been avoiding me. Physically. I don't see the man regularly, but he's never canceled a meeting with me without notice, let alone four."

He paused suspiciously long. She blinked. "That's it?"

"He was certainly the best place to start, especially since I only managed to pick up," he coughed, "minor information from the International Police. Perhaps there's more involved at the IPL, but—"

"Stop avoiding the question, Lucian. Tell me why."

Kris raised her head and looked him right in his uncertain eyes. A few strands of his hair were notably out of place, and the bags under his eyes told a story that no one could read from a distance behind the shield of his spectacles. She was starting to see a bit of that old photograph come through again, and that was terribly sad.

"I haven't felt comfortable since that day."

"Yeah, tell me something new," she muttered, squeezing soft petals between her fingertips.

He allowed himself a smirk at the horrible joke since he'd probably run dry of them recently. "I've been shouldered with this unknown feeling. I didn't specialize in precognition as others with Psychic training have, but I'm still gnawed by a constant ambience of…" He trailed off, clearly not willing to say further what exactly haunted him. She was too exhausted to read between the lines, and she cursed her informational disadvantage versus his Psychic-wired brain. Not knowing what he meant was terrifying.

"Lucian?"

He took her caring tone and used it to shake free whatever inner conflict had stalled him. His glasses shifted on his nose. "I've read the thoughts of many around the Sinnoh League, and all of them are… hopeless. I assumed that things would even out with time, but the Pokémon League's delayed response and the amount of crime going unpoliced is draining their faith. Not just in us, but in everyone."

Sinnohans were a hardy people, and though Kris never really belonged anywhere except with her family, she knew there was nothing more important to an average Sinnohan native than supporting their community. They were proud to have Kris's mother as a Champion and for that Champion to be one of the most well-respected figures in the world. Whether or not it was truly a blessing, Sinnoh was one of few Regions born from memories of a single nation, as the Kingdom of Sinnoh and its Royal Guard had unified and tempered the bonds of a former trade confederation before it too was dissolved by the Coalition War. Most other former states had their borders mindlessly stripped away to create overarching government units, heightening tensions between ethnic nations that drew those borders as lines in the sand.

If that faith was dissolving, if Sinnohans could no longer look at one another and believe that together they could move mountains, it truly was a tragedy. And wasn't she just an unfortunate case study, a shattered will too ashamed of her cracks to bear them to anyone. Even her Pokémon had turned their backs on her.

"I can't avoid this feeling that a clock is ticking, and it terrifies me." he said, sadly. "And I suppose some part of me rationed that they could hurt you less than me. That's my flimsy reasoning."

Then, he took off his glasses, removing the final barrier between them. She saw him for who he was, not who he failed at being. And she understood.

His shaky words came out slow. "We should end our little arrangement."

"I never wanted your help," she hissed.

Kris could see how much it hurt, now that she had a clear view of his heavy face. She wasn't angry, that much she was honest about, but she still let it linger a little while before she clarified what she meant. Maybe it was her way of punishing him, no matter how little she could convince herself he deserved it.

"I shouldn't need other people just to function. I shouldn't need you or anyone," Kris said.

Lucian scrambled to say something to assure her, his expression shifting to concern once again, but she shushed him with her index finger aimed to the ceiling, to the sky.

For how long she took to respond, Lucian pointed to his own head with his glasses held weakly in his other fingers, and she slowly nodded. It wasn't something she felt like she could explain verbally, and she found comfort in the fact that, invasive as it was, she didn't have to share for him to understand how she was feeling.

She lost Kiki. It was all her fault. She was a horrible Trainer, and a horrible student, and a horrible person, and she knew that the voice was right. That somehow, despite being a liar and a failure, she was happy.

She just needed to say it. Kris couldn't spend the next months, years, decades of her life stalked by the voice of her own reflection, telling her she enjoyed being the weak shadow of a girl she no longer knew. She had to want to be better, even if it destroyed everything she ever was.

"But I…" She bit her tongue, tasting iron on her gums, and spit out all she could manage. "I don't want to stay like this."

His eyes softened, and the ghost of a smile haunted his face. "That's the best place to start," he said, "but I can't help you as a therapist anymore."

The stalk in her hand beckoned. She'd been playing with it aside her mind, trying to understand why it was hers. Her memories a puzzle without a hint, the solution danced unknown on her tongue.

It wasn't a funeral gift—it would've had some condolences or other dull pleasantries attached. And she had to believe, to maintain her sanity, that it wasn't a stalker. That didn't leave many other possibilities.

Awkwardly, like a tree learning to move when upset by the wind, Lucian leaned across the corner of the table, holding out both his arms. He didn't seem wholly familiar with it, as if he was simply replicating what Mr. Sylvester had tried before rather than understanding the gesture himself.

Kris leaned forward into him, pressing her head to his slow lullaby of a heartbeat, and she felt him wrap around her to keep her safe. Her heart fell to rest, her breathing lengthened, and her thoughts untangled. It reminded her exactly how she felt standing cold in her room, in his arms, and finally she realized where the flower came from.

It made her cry. She clutched Lucian with her pitiful strength and tried so hard not to let go of what little she still had. A colleague of her mother's, a brother so far ahead of her that she could never catch up, and someone she could barely call a rival—it was more a joke than anything—who decided for some stupid reason that she was a friend. They were the only ones that saw the girl Christine left behind.

Lucian stayed still and let her cry out all she had left.

For those who haven't read it yet, I published the second chapter of Ten Thousand Meters in the interim between the previous chapter and this one. Its chapters release every three volumes of Minutes or so, according to an arbitrary schedule I set for myself. This is mostly because it is concurrent to the timeline here, so I wanted to work on them simultaneously in case of overlap.

Next up is Part 3: Myths of Universe. See you someday!