Ti in dreams rarely aligns with the waking world, and Jenkins himself couldn't be certain how long he had lingered in that rose-tinted dreamscape, though he suspected it had been a considerable while.
It had been a truly potent dream—incredibly potent—and Jenkins had certainly matured from the experience. Both of them possessed so ability to manipulate the dreamscape, which allowed them to do so rather extraordinary things.
When the ti ca to part from the red-haired girl, they embraced, holding each other for a long, reluctant mont before Hathaway finally let him go.
Jenkins wanted to clarify the nature of their relationship, a matter complicated by the involvent of a third person. But this ti, Hathaway gave him no opportunity. She gently placed her fingers over his lips, signaling that they should discuss it when they t in person.
“This is the sort of thing I feel we can only discuss properly in person.”
Jenkins truly didn't understand what went on in won's minds. But since he had, in his view, benefited from the situation, he felt it wasn't his place to press the matter.
When he returned to the alley beside the Hersha estate, his cat was still dutifully curled on his lap. Moonlight spilled from the sky, bathing one half of his body in light. The other half, hidden in the shadow of a low wall, concealed Chocolate as well.
His fingers twitched, and his eyes fluttered open. He gazed around, slightly disoriented, a soft groan escaping his lips. He had held the position for so long that his body had grown stiff.
Seeing its master return, the cat owed softly, but then imdiately began sniffing the air, its nose twitching with curiosity as if it had caught a strange scent.
A pang of guilt struck Jenkins, but he quickly reminded himself that everything that had just transpired had occurred while his soul was outside his body. It was impossible for his physical form to have any reaction or carry any scent. Reassured, he patted the cat’s head, pushed himself up from the wall, and peered through the gaps between the buildings, observing the points of light that represented Hathaway.
He couldn’t explain why he hadn’t been more forceful about leaving. Was it love? Was it because of what had happened last week? Was it the primal desire of a young man? He didn’t know. But what he did know was that the red-haired girl, not so far away, had truly beco a part of his life.
Though it had only been a dream, Jenkins—conservative in both his lives—still felt he had to take responsibility. Communicating in a spiritual state was an experience that defied description. As a traveler from another world, he was hardly a blank slate, but the night’s events had still been... intense.
“ow~”
Chocolate, however, was still relentlessly trying to pinpoint the source of that strange scent. It stared at Jenkins with an inquisitive gaze, as if trying to read the answer on his face. Because Jenkins had been acting in a spiritual state, the cat couldn't observe his actions through the river of ti. Finding the truth would take so effort, but Chocolate, with its equally potent intuition, already sensed that sothing about Jenkins had changed.
“ow~”
The cat felt it was finding Jenkins increasingly difficult to understand, and this left Chocolate feeling a little dejected.
This lancholy lasted until the following morning. Jenkins was up early and seed unusually energetic, making Old Jack wonder if he’d accidentally mixed the wrong herbs into his late-night snack.
Perhaps because the experience had been so out of the ordinary for him, the week that followed was surprisingly peaceful. For once, the author’s life in Shire was completely uneventful.
During this rare lull, he dedicated his ti to brewing potions and reading. When he went to see Miss Stuart and Alexia on Tuesday, both young won were occupied and unable to et, leading him to believe he might finally be able to enjoy a pleasant, pressure-free existence.
It was a truly perfect week. Jenkins had never experienced such a tranquil period since arriving in this world. Away from Nolan, life suddenly felt interesting and enjoyable. It seed the rumors about Nolan City being the stage for the epoch’s final act were absolutely true.
He would occasionally project his consciousness back to Nolan to check on things, but his usual haunts—the cetery, Pops Antique Shop, the church, and the Evergreen Forest—were all inaccessible to him in his projected state. As a result, his visits to Nolan grew less and less frequent.
Even Hathaway began resisting his attempts to enter her dreams, which made the prospect of visiting Nolan feel utterly pointless.
The pleasant seven days ca to an end, bringing with them the last week of the month. Monday found Jenkins in much the sa state as the week before, with nothing urgent demanding his attention. During a morning visit to the church, he casually inquired about Skryu Pomphey. He learned that, due to the discovery a week prior, Shire City had implented a city-wide curfew. After the painstaking effort of sealing off the street and eliminating every living and dead thing on it, the Orthodox Church was now deliberating on how to carry out a complete disinfection.
In Pomphey’s parents’ house, the Church had seized a massive trove of data on illegal human experintation. This information would prove invaluable, helping the Church understand the terrifying thods employed by their adversary.
In the small hours of the morning two days prior, behind so crates in the cellar of a spice shop on that sa street, the Church had discovered a well-hidden iron door. Beyond it, they found an underground archive sprawling beneath half the street.
It housed the criminal’s personal belongings, experintal equipnt, and a vast collection of rare materials. Jenkins had even heard over the weekend that at least three of the items had already been classified as numbered artifacts.
As Jenkins saw it, this place was the terrifying swordsman’s main base of operations. When traveling to an unfamiliar city, one naturally couldn’t bring everything along—a practice quite different from Jenkins's own habits. Which ant Pomphey now had nothing left. The Church had seized all his assets.
“He must absolutely despise the Orthodox Church in Shire right now.”
Jenkins muttered to himself as he left the church. Chocolate, however, figured the man with the sword probably hated Jenkins far more.
He had rendered a great service to Shire, and the temporary administrator of the local diocese, the man in charge of the case, laughed heartily and clapped Jenkins on the shoulder. He was a middle-aged man, a little younger than Captain Bincy, and he told Jenkins that the Shire diocese hadn’t dealt with an incident of this magnitude in many years.
Because the street still required a more thorough investigation, the full extent of the “gold mine” Jenkins had stumbled upon was still unknown. But based on the current findings alone, it was enough for the Church to award him with more dals than Chocolate’s body weight in gold—not that he had any use for them.
He declined an invitation to lunch at the church, instead hopping into a carriage with his cat and heading straight for the outskirts of the city. A week had passed, washing away the urgency of recent events, and now that he was out of the Church’s imdiate sight, Jenkins could finally test what he had gained from the cetery.
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