54 Side Story: A skirmish

"Going out for your mission?" A woman's words echoed through a hallway.

On the other side of the dark hallway, where the windows only showed the endless and seemingly never-ending blizzard, a figure stopped walking.

The figure then turned around and glared at the woman. "What does it have to do with you?"

"Haha, as impolite as ever." The woman snickered. "You ought to have better manners— perhaps spending all that time in the abyss gave you that tongue?"

"Ha, provoking me for early in the morning? You've got some nerve..." The figure gave a scoff to the woman. "Witch."

"Why, it's the only way to liven up the atmosphere around here, don't you think so?" Hearing the word the man gave her, the woman's temperament changed. "Gremlin."

"...Keep that up and you'll end up like Childe." The man mocked. "Speaking of which— you should be with right now."

"Don't worry, I'm on my way soon." The woman then walked towards the man and scoffed lightly. "Let's do well, shall we?"

"Whatever." Saying this, the man clicked his tongue and walked past her, turning and disappearing from her sight.

"Really..." Seeing the man's actions, the woman smiled as if she was pitying him. "What a sad existence."

"Keep that up and you'll make no friends." Saying this, she chuckled and also departed.

As the man and woman left, silence once more descended upon the dark hallway.

However, soon, two new figures emerged from another pathway.

"They really don't get along, do they?" The soft and gentle voice of a woman resounded throughout the hallway. "They're both so hostile..."

"And that would inevitably be their weakness." Another voice of a woman spoke beside her. This time, the voice was stern.

"Coming from you, I'd believe it," The woman with the soft voice smiled. "After all, apart from the director, you're the only one well-versed in these kinds of things."

"By the way, are you going back to Fontaine?" The woman asked curiously.

"Correct, there are some recent issues that I'd like to address with as well as..." The woman paused mid-sentence before pulling out a sheet of paper. "An interesting matter."

"Oh? Something that caught your eye?" The woman beside her got even more curious. "How rare— what is it?"

"Someone who I think to be..." As the woman spoke, her eyes which had a unique "X" pattern on them, eerily glowed.

"Another actor."

After saying this, the woman threw the paper, and a second later, bright red ambers sparked and lit the paper in bright flame.

The burning paper fell to the carpeted floors, as it slowly burnt away to ashes. In its last moments, the last readable words left on the paper were...

"Le Souffle du Silence."