Tokyo Psychic

Page 109

This subtle ambiguity, so close yet so intimate, made An and Subaru's hearts race. She longed to do something to respond to the burning emotions surging within her, but her girlish reserve and shyness held them back. She couldn't help but let her mind wander, wishing that Akira could be a little more proactive.

But this is a classroom, an exam room with surveillance cameras, and there are students all around. No matter how much you like it, you can't be too flamboyant.

Akira Lai pointed at the draft paper. "It's your turn to write."

Even though it was just a game of Gomoku on paper, An and Subaru felt like they were signing a marriage certificate that seemed to stretch on forever.

......

Yoshizawa Kasumi probably noticed the increasing number of gazes around her, so she stopped looking at Kurusu Akira and Anwa Subaru in the classroom.

She walked silently to the stairwell, preparing to return to her classroom.

Her single ponytail swayed lightly against her back, as vibrant as a bouquet of blooming roses.

By this time, more and more students had gathered by the window, and sure enough, someone noticed the boy and girl who seemed inseparable in the classroom. "Hey, isn't that Anhe, who recently transferred to Class C!"

"How could this be?...Are they dating?"

"Hey... what about Jingqin?"

"I remember that Yoshizawa, a first-year student, was also somewhat close to him... I think she was just here!"

Hearing the conversation behind her, Fang Zexia quickened her pace and fled the scene as if she were running away.

*

at the same time.

A brightly lit office.

After bidding farewell to his visiting guests, Xinma Xiaolian quickly opened a drawer, took out a spare mobile phone, and dialed the only number in his phone book.

"They've left, the plan can continue."

“Hmm…yes, let’s start with the student council,” Shinma Hsiao-lien lowered his voice. “After this exam, there will be study tours, and it’s time to reward everyone in the club…remember to invite those qualified ‘customers’ who have signed up for memberships.”

"Don't worry, they won't complain."

His pupils gradually became cloudy.

Xinma Xiaolian completely forgot how he gained such a group of supporters who operated in the black market, and even forgot why they were so obedient to him.

To be precise, this is not "forgetting," but rather a fundamental loss of the corresponding understanding.

The mysterious figure named "Tōdō Naoya" stood in the corner of the office, seemingly invisible, and was not noticed by Shinma Hōryō.

Looking at Xinma Xiaolian's impatient reaction, he revealed a somewhat contemptuous and disdainful smile, his eyes filled with undisguised disgust.

*

*

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(Did you notice the "xx/13" at the beginning? It means there will be a maximum of thirteen chapters today. However, due to time constraints, posting five chapters before midnight is the limit. For the rest, please stay tuned for my late-night challenge.)

(The New Year is just around the corner, and everyone's monthly votes will be refreshed soon, so please cast your votes!)

098. Palace Conquest in Progress (Four-in-One)

（月末冲刺：8/13、9/13、10/13、11/13）

(The two chapters in the middle were written as side stories and included in the table of contents under 'Moonlight Pavilion Past Events'.)

*

*

The top floor of the administration building.

Jing Qinren tiptoed closer to the principal's office.

She had never done the job of delivering advance notice before...

However, as Akira Kurusu has already said, the school's surveillance cameras have been hijacked by hackers from the Phantom Thieves of the Mind, so she can brazenly drop the letter into the "anonymous student suggestion box" next to the principal's office door.

I heard that this principal is planning a lot of terrible things, but thankfully, he should be going to jail after today.

As Jing Qinren was cautiously thinking, she was completely unaware that a man in a suit and tie, wearing earrings, with blue hair and blue eyes, was standing in the corridor a little behind her, quietly watching her every move.

Jing Qinren looked around to make sure no one was passing by before quickly stuffing the notice into the "anonymous student suggestion box".

"And that completes the process..."

Every time she turned around, she felt as if someone was watching her from behind, even though there was nothing there.

My phone vibrated; it was a text message from the hacker expert codenamed "Navi".

[Navi: Hurry, there's a new signal source downstairs in the administration building.]

Jing Qinrencai then hurriedly ran up to the sky corridor.

The phone vibrated again; it was Ms. Navi's furious reminder.

[Navi: Idiot! Act natural! Are you afraid people won't notice you're suspicious?]

With a mournful face, holding her phone, Jing Qinren returned to the teaching building, stopping every few steps.

She looks exactly like a heartbroken young girl...

It just so happens that they encounter girls who are speculating about the complicated relationship between the four people: Akira Kurusu, Subaru Anwa, Kasumi Yoshizawa, and Nina Izare.

They looked at each other for a while, seeing Jing Qinrencai's depressed appearance.

Then, trying to lower their excited voices, they huddled together and began whispering rapidly.

......

at the same time.

The women's restroom outside the playground.

An and Subaru locked the toilet door and looked at Akira Kurusu, who was crammed into the same stall as them, and felt an indescribable shame.

She lowered her voice, "Do we really have to sneak into the mental palace through the women's restroom?"

“There’s no need to go to the toilet to infiltrate the palace…” Akira Kurusu explained. “You just need to find the right location and you can break in directly.”

He continued, "But this joint monthly test is quite famous, and there are many parents waiting to pick up their children at the school gate... Do you think you can leave without attracting attention, given your appearance?"

An and Subaru: "We only have one hour left during lunch break. Is it really possible to conquer the palace?"

Akira Kurusu: "I've already inquired. Apart from that Ishihara-kun who was sacrificed to the evil god, he hasn't committed any outrageous acts like those in Kawasaki City in Shujin. He also doesn't have the same level of control over Shujin as he did in those cram schools in Kawasaki... In other words, after leaving Kawasaki City, his mental palace has been greatly weakened."

"But you said there must be traps in his palace..."

"This is an open conspiracy, but just as we were not fully prepared, the loss of many human masks that served as the evil gods to assist us also prevented us from setting up an ambush that was as inescapable as heaven and earth."

Akira bent down, reached out and took An and Subaru's legs by the back of her legs, and then picked her up in a princess carry.

This familiar feeling... An and Subaru subconsciously hugged Akira Kurusu's shoulders, then hurriedly let go.

The phantom thief ignored her contradictory reaction and simply stomped his foot hard—the sound was extremely loud, striking straight to the heart, but it did not reach reality; instead, countless cracks instantly appeared in all directions.

With his third stomp, the cracks shattered, the boundaries between reality and consciousness were broken, and the two quickly fell into the palace formed from the desires of Xinma Xiaolian.

......

The familiar fall, the familiar blue flames burning on Akira Kurusu's body.

When the two landed, they were standing in front of a dilapidated ancient castle.

"Is this the palace you've seen before?" Akira asked An and Subaru in her arms, then put her down.

An and Subaru shook their heads as they looked at the enormous castle before them. "Completely different, and...it looks a bit...fragile?"

Akira Kurusu examined the various weapons and props he carried. "It's very simple. Because Shinma Hsiao-lien's twisted desires have not yet been implemented in this school, and that evil has not yet matched the understanding of most people, this palace is in an unprecedentedly weak state."

He led An and Mao toward the castle gate. “Every day at one o’clock in the afternoon, the student council secretary would open the ‘student suggestion box’ next to the principal’s office and hand over the anonymous letters inside to Xinma Xiaolian.”

"So before the Xinma Xiaolian saw the notice, we had about twenty minutes to familiarize ourselves with the layout of the palace—the shadows in the palace are when our power is at its lowest, so twenty minutes was more than enough."

"Once he sees the letter of recommendation, and the treasure of desire materializes in the palace, we can seize the opportunity to steal it. Perhaps we can even have some extra time to check on his transformation in the administration building..."

An and Subaru said "Oh" and followed closely behind Akira into the castle.

......

Everything was just as Akira Kurusu had analyzed; the shadows encountered along the way were surprisingly weak.

They were nowhere near as strong or well-equipped as she had seen in the previous cycle.

A group of soldiers clad in leather armor rushed over from one side of the corridor. Akira Kurusu waved his hand, and the Persona "Arsène" unleashed a string of black flames, burning them into a large patch of black mist.

Before entering each room to check, Akira would carefully stop An and Subaru to make sure there were no traps before leading her deeper inside.

"It seems like there are no traps at all..." An and Subaru looked at the phantom thief walking in front of them and asked in a low voice, "Where did the enemies go?"

Compared to the Shadow Group she had encountered before, which required Arsen to quickly kill with a gun, the Shadows in this palace were so weak that they could hardly be called enemies.

Lai Xixiao gripped a dagger in reverse and stood in front of her, saying, "Perhaps they are all guarding the treasure in the deepest part of the palace—depending on the specific form of the treasure, it is indeed possible that this 'unstealable' situation could occur."

"So what should we do?"

"Run them over and rob them," said Lai Qixiao. "We're almost there."

Relying on his abilities of [Memory Archive] and [Memory Retrieval], he easily memorized every road he had traveled, and could then use this information to analyze the castle's internal structure.

Pushing open an armory door and knocking aside the shadows blocking their way, the two passed through the vast space between the thrones inside the castle and found the entrance to the treasure vault beneath the thrones with almost no effort.

Along the way, not to mention the traps set by the evil gods... all the original mechanisms in this palace were so rotten that they could not be used. When they encountered places that they could not cross, they used grappling hooks. When they encountered locked doors, they had the personality mask "Arsène" smash them open with a slap... The doors were also surprisingly weak. It seemed that the owner of this palace had some special experiences, which made his inner defenses almost completely undefended.

But soon, the two encountered their first obstacle at the entrance to the treasure vault.

“This door cannot be opened by force.” Akira Kurusu stroked the bright gold door in front of her and clearly felt the resistance reflected back to her palm.

“This place is already very deep into Xinma Xiaolian’s subconscious. It’s the closest place to his shadow and, unsurprisingly, the place where the secret treasure is stored.”

Akira Kurusu turned to An and Subaru and asked, "Our exploration so far seems a little too easy."

An and Subaru nodded, then observed the space beneath the throne—

Just like the entire outer perimeter of the castle, it was old and dilapidated, with damp steps covered in moss, foul-smelling stone walls, and moldy wooden furniture.

The two groped around the door for a while and found a modern ventilation opening in the ceiling. The metal shield was rusted. The thief jumped up, stepped on the wall, grabbed the ventilation opening, and pulled it with both hands. With a piercing and unpleasant metallic creak, he and the shield fell to the ground together.

The phantom thief pointed to the open ventilation duct, "This should be a good place to get in."

Then he helped An and Subaru climb up the ventilation shaft, and the two crawled forward one after the other in the rusty pipes.

After enduring the discomfort of being enveloped in dampness and stench for a while, they successfully entered the treasure vault.

The phantom thief smashed open the windproof shield in front of him with his elbow and jumped down first.

An and Subaru also jumped down quickly, and were caught by Akira Kurusu.

Upon noticing the intruders, the soldiers guarding the treasure vault immediately charged toward Akira Kurusu, brandishing broadswords and two-handed swords.

The phantom thief switched to holding An and Subaru with one arm, while using the other to fire the grappling hook gun at the railing on the second floor opposite. With a powerful push off the ground, the two leaped high into the air, using the prop to retrieve the rope and fly to the second floor of the treasure vault.

In mid-air, Arsène Lupin appeared behind Akira Kurusu, spreading his jet-black wings and raising the smoothbore musket woven from shadows, pointing it at the assembled legion below. As the trigger was pulled, jet-black light surged and bounced throughout the space, leaving behind thread-like mist that formed a dense net.

Wherever the black lines passed, all the shadow guards exploded into mist in an instant.

"Watch out!" An and Subaru immediately warned as Akira Kurusu landed.

The phantom thief reacted even faster. As soon as An and Subaru uttered the first syllable, he turned around, forcefully stepped on the pale white hand that was sticking out of the floor, and then kicked it off.

However, hands kept reaching out from the building's surface from all directions, constantly grabbing at Akira Kurusu and Subaru An beside the railing.

Seeing this, he had no choice but to command "Arsène" to unleash a raging inferno of flames that burned them to ashes.

"What is this?" Anhe Subaru asked, still shaken.

"The changes in the subconscious of the Singaporean and Malaysian philanthropists... indicate that he has already read the notice in reality."

Akira Kurusu quickened his pace. "Now we can be certain that the secret treasure and the shadow of Xinma Xiaolian are both located at the innermost part of this treasure vault."

He took off his pistol and handed it to An and Subaru. "Things won't be so easy from here on out. Take this for self-defense. Put the safety on, pull the trigger, it's that simple."

"I...I've never used this before."

Lai Xixiao didn't have time to teach her, but before leaving, she instructed her, "Wait until the enemy gets close before you fire. Aim directly at its chest and pull the trigger, and you'll definitely be able to drive it back."

An and Subaru nodded, and then followed Akira Kurusu into the heavily guarded treasure vault.