Chapter 149 – …No, I Mean, I Get It… I Get It!

Coroshe, Sector 16.

Shown into a room in a neatly standing, thirteen-story hotel, the party set down their travel luggage.

"This is owned by an affiliated company that Wistrum operates, so there is no need to worry about information leaks."

Priscilla announced this after checking the room's security.

"Just in case, I have also transferred a simple map of this sector to everyone's comm terminals. If any trouble comes up, please don't hesitate to come back here."

Grain, Merry, and Letaria nodded at Priscilla's words.

"We are about to go and take over from our predecessors who have been operating on site. For now, please take a stroll around Coroshe's streets, everyone. At least for ordinary walking around, it isn't such a dangerous station."

"Awww, I wanted to go sightseeing too..."

Adelina pouted her lips enviously, and Ranses laughed breezily -- ha ha ha.

"Once this matter has settled down, I'll go sightseeing with you until you're sick of it."

At Priscilla's words, Adelina answered cheerfully, "Okaaay."

"Then, we will be on our way."

Leaving those words behind, Priscilla and the others deftly left the room.

◆◆◆

"A stroll, huh."

Once outside the hotel, Grain muttered, tugging his brimmed sun hat low over his eyes once more and turning up the collar of his subdued coat. In this mature everyday outfit, so different from the Vigilante Corps uniform she was used to seeing him in, Letaria felt a strange sense of freshness.

Merry, too, had put a semi-long wig over her usual short hair and dressed in rough, easy-to-move-in clothes. And Letaria herself, to hide her distinctive dark-purple hair, now had straight blond hair. Uncharacteristically restless, she kept fidgeting with its ends with her fingers.

"If we're going to investigate, I'd think it would be around Argria's headquarters... but of course we can't just walk up to the facility that easily, can we."

Merry murmured with a pensive look, wondering how to proceed.

"Well, even the specialist undercover operatives are struggling. Just going there, we could manage. But there's only so much we can do by rushing in now. For the time being, let's do as Miss Priscilla said and take a stroll while getting a feel for the city's atmosphere. ...Letaria, don't you dare get lost, got it?"

Grain looked at Letaria as if to drive a nail in.

"I understand... I do understand perfectly! ...No, I mean, I get it... I get it!"

Matching her blond disguise, Letaria desperately tried to put on an unfamiliar way of speaking (casual speech). Her utterly clumsy effort made Grain and Merry burst out laughing before they could stop themselves.

"Well, as long as we don't kick up a big fuss, we should manage."

With that, the three of them started walking.

"Argria's headquarters is in the industrial district. First let's get a general sense of the commercial district's layout around this hotel, then head over there later."

Following Grain's proposal, they decided to start by checking their surroundings.

"The atmosphere is quite differ-- it's really different from Seldia's, huh."

Correcting herself as she spoke, Letaria gazed up at the vast cityscape. Whereas Seldia was a relatively young station, built only about forty years ago, Coroshe had a history of over a hundred years. That long history showed clearly in its patchwork interior structure. The area around the hotel that served as their base was neatly maintained, but the industrial district visible in the distance, and the old town sprawling on the opposite side, brimmed with a strange heat that made it plain at a glance that the nature of the space itself was different.

"It's a huge station with a long history, after all. Apparently it existed even before Wistrum was founded."

Grain added.

"When I came here back in my freelance days, the whole place gave a bit more of an old-fashioned impression, though..."

Merry murmured, looking around.

"Apparently Argria has been investing heavily in this city's redevelopment. For better or worse, their influence is enormous."

◆◆◆

Boarding a linear car that covered the entire station, the party traveled from the commercial district to the industrial district.

When their view opened up, a bleak sight spread before them: great numbers of large construction machines and work Makina moving about at a dizzying pace.

"The density of equipment and machines is far higher than in Seldia's industrial district."

Merry checked their surroundings warily.

"It's a different... feel... from Cranea, too... huh."

Letaria offered her impression in a halting, stilted way. Cranea, the transit hub station she had once visited, had been a lively place where all kinds of people and cargo came and went. But the industrial district of Coroshe was different from that -- somehow imposing and inorganic, a muddled, miscellaneous heat swirling sluggishly through it.

"Looks like Argria's grounds are about three blocks ahead from here. Let's at least take a look at the exterior."

Grain proposed.

"Will that be all right...?"

At Merry's worried question, Grain shrugged.

"Our faces aren't known, and there's no way for them to know we're here at all. No problem. Young lady, too--"

When he turned around as he spoke, there was no one in the line of sight where he looked.

◆◆◆

"...Huh? Grain? Miss Merry...?"

Before she knew it, Letaria was standing alone in an alley of the vast industrial district. Lost among the stream of large trucks and work machines coming and going, she had apparently become separated from the two she had been walking with just moments ago.

If it came to that, she could simply use the map on her terminal to return to the hotel. There was no need to panic. After all, she had once come through Cranea alone, and brilliantly at that!

Recalling past experience, she pressed a hand to her chest and breathed out deeply.

Having regained her composure, she began walking to check her current location -- when, suddenly, something in the grounds of a factory beyond a no-entry fence caught her eye. In the shadow of a distant hangar, she could see a slender Makina sitting enthroned.

That is...!

That distinctive form.

I must confirm it up close -- thinking this, Letaria, without the faintest idea that her own bracelet was equipped with a high-precision recording and photographing function, stepped toward an angle from which the machine seemed visible.

Just as she came to a shadowed corner beside the factory, a small figure sitting alone on an old bench that seemed meant for workers came into view.

Her hair was a pale, translucent ash-gray. Roughly grown-out straight hair, slightly pale skin. The clothes she wore were far too plain to be called everyday clothes, and they inescapably reminded Letaria of the examination gowns she had been made to wear in Milea's lab.

The girl had been gazing vacantly into midair, looking at nothing in particular -- but perhaps sensing a presence, she suddenly tilted her head and turned her eyes toward Letaria.

Pale blue eyes so light they seemed to draw you in pierced straight through Letaria's very existence.