Chapter 28 - Date...or Is It?

(Third person POV)

Walking on the sidewalk and totally standing out, two high school students were holding hands with one leading the other.

A handsome boy and a beautiful girl walking together hand in hand would surely draw a lot of attention, especially from all the single guys and girls who were also passing through this street.

Walking past a newly opened crepe stall, the two students walk past two other high school students sitting at a table while waiting for their orders.

Ren and Asahina sat across from each other at a small table for two. Asahina was marveling at the designs and decorations that make this small humble stall stand out from the rest.

At the same time, Ren had a gentle smile on while looking at her getting absorbed in observing the beautiful interior of the stall; it was a sight he'll never get bored of no matter how many times he has seen it.

As they say, someone who is doing or talking about something they're passionate about is more charming. It is something that is universal for all people, no matter the place.

Ren, in the past, was very passionate about books, more specifically, books that told a story. No matter the form, he loves to enjoy a good story, be it novels, light novels, manga, anime, plays, movies, TV shows, or drama, although he prefers reading over watching he would also watch some stuff occasionally to change up the experience.

Now, he's more into making magic items and magic, you know, as he should be as the strongest mortal magic user in the world of Mirkaz.

Now, enough of that, let's get back to the date.

Asahina had finished with looking around and finally noticed Ren staring at her, making her flustered.

"D-don't stare at me too much" Asahina turned to the side with a red face, she still hadn't gotten used to him being so blatantly aggressive yet. She's always been the one pushing, and although being on the receiving side wasn't bad, she's just not used to it yet.

"No, I don't think I'll stop just yet" Resting his chin on one hand, Ren smiled affectionately as his gaze intensified even more.

"A-alright, then do as you want!" Asahina pouted, trying to look mad but ultimately failed because her expression keeps fluctuating between a pouty one and a silly smile.

Meanwhile, a part-timer who was packing up their orders was having conflicted feelings right now; he felt refreshed and amused by the couple's cute interaction, and yet he also felt annoyed and envious seeing them flirting right in front of him because he was single.

'Sigh…I want a girlfriend so BAD!!!!' He screamed internally while still doing a superb job at packing their crepes. Unfortunately, he's still far from being financially stable enough to have a girlfriend.

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(Third person POV)

In a Police Station, all the way across the city from Kurimo Academy, a middle-aged man with black hair and a goatee sat behind a desk with documents piled up and a laptop sat on the side of the desk. He looked very annoyed and yet serious at this moment while staring at a sealed paper envelop with ripped black tapes and paper sprawled around it along with a device that keeps beeping periodically.

The reason for his annoyance was because of the disturbance it caused a few hours ago.

Someone had discovered this package wrapped in black tape super glued to a desk in the middle of their office space and panicked after hearing the beeping sound from it.

Every single police officer was called, from the Chief of Police to normal patrol officers to evacuate everyone in the vicinity of the Police Station while a bomb squad was called.

Ren had actually witnessed this happen through some [Mage's Eyes] he planted in the room and was laughing internally at what was happening.

After the bomb squad spent one whole hour inspecting the "bomb", they finally figured out it was, in fact, not a bomb but just a paper envelope, a note, and a sound device along with crumpled papers wrapped in black tape; the crimpled papers were used as fillers to make it look like a bomb.

Fortunately, Ren was outside of class when he saw their dumbfounded expression because he just broke down laughing.

Everyone who was at the scene was completely exhausted before they announced that it was a false alarm to the citizens, though they were also relieved that it wasn't an actual bomb, feelings of annoyance surfaced until someone read the note that was left in there along with the paper envelope.

It read in English

「I have info on where Night Spider's main base is, but you won't believe me so easily, will you? In the envelope is the info and location of some of their branch lairs in and near this city.

Raid them and I'll send more about them later when you're done.

P.S: Don't even try to track me down because it is impossible. I'll be watching your every move.

Sign - Night Owl」

Once someone who could read English translated it for every high-rank officer including the Chief of Police, they went into his office in order to read the tip they got from this Night Owl.

"Do you really think there's real info in there, Chief? All we know, this might just be a tasteless prank from someone crazy" One of the Chief Inspectors asked, looking doubtful of the thick paper envelope.

"That's why we're waiting for a bit until Inspector Touki finishes checking something first" The man with a goatee, the Chief of Police, looked to him before turning back to the paper envelope with the word 「Evidence」 stamped on in bold red letters.

"If I may, what is Inspector Touki checking for, Chief?" A mature woman raised her hand; she's also one of the Chief Inspectors and the only female Chief Inspector at this Police Station and even this city.

"I'm having her check the security camera to find out when this appeared in the office and who put it there; this package cannot just have appeared out of thin air" The Chief of Police stared intensely at the envelope once again.

Everyone nodded, understanding his thought process. He's right, under normal circumstances there was no way for it to pop out of thin air and onto that desk.

They continued to wait in silence until their attention was pulled to the sound of someone knocking on the door.

*Knock* *Knock*

"Come in"

*Click* *Whoosh*

The door flew open at a great speed that startled everyone as a woman in her mid-twenties frantically ran up to the Chief's desk with an opened laptop in hand.

"Chief! You have got to see this!" The woman, Inspector Touki, placed the laptop in front of the Chief while also fumbling with her hands and knocking a few things over.

"Calm down, Inspector Touki, explain to us first one step at a time on what you've found that made you so frantic" The Chief spoke with a deep and authoritative tone, calming her down slowly.

*Inhale* *Exhale* *Inhale* *Exhale* *Inhale* *Exhale*

She started to take slow, deep breaths in order to calm down her shaking nerves, and everyone stayed in silence while she was doing this; everyone here was experienced in this field, that also includes Inspector Touki even if she is the youngest among them, so something that could make her frantic is something to be taken seriously.

"Well, I think you should see it for yourselves" Inspector Touki, now more calm and collected, worked on the laptop for a bit and several video footage from all the cameras in the Police Station showed on the screen.

Everyone in the room stood up and walked up behind the Chief to see what she wanted to show them.

On one Camera 1, which was the one inside the lobby, it showed police officers walking out one by one, leaving for lunch. Suddenly, on Camera 2, 3, and 4, the ones stationed in the office space, the door leading to the stairwell slowly cracked open before slamming shut at an incredible force all by itself.

This perplexed everyone watching and some of them had a chill running through their spine.

Before anyone could speak, all the cameras blacked out for 8 seconds before turning back on. Seeing the footage, everyone widens their eyes in disbelief as they witness four all-black dark humanoid figures standing in each corner of the room.

One of them was standing near the door to the stairwell, and this one slowly walked to where the package was found while the others walked up to the three cameras and stood in front of it with their head lowered down.

The three figures crookedly raised their head and looked up to the cameras with eyes black irises and blood-red pupils along with the outer part of the eyes also blood-red in color. The face of this person? thing? whatever it was, its face was all black with zero facial features except for its eyes.

The moment they saw its eyes, the office background seemed to distort with static images except for the three black figures. Slowly, they seem to somehow be inching closer and closer to the cameras that were high up on the wall, its creepy red eyes seemed to dilate strangely, no emotions can be discerned from them as three pairs of eyes stared right into the soul of everyone watching.

Everyone started to feel a great amount of dread, they felt as if these things were actually able to see them, watching them as they stared stunned shock into those blood-red eyes.

They started to feel terrified as the blood drained from their face, making them pale as ghosts. Yet again, as if these things could see them, able to see their horrified faces; the once featureless faces, grew a very sharp and hideous grin that chilled them to the bones, showing rows sharp white teeth with a bit of red on the tips.

Their eyes now showed amusement like a sadistic killer reveling in the fear and suffering of their victims, arousing abject horror from everyone.

Time seemed to stretch on for eons as everyone bathed in a cold sweat, their bodies unmoving for fear of provoking these horrific monsters of nightmarish origin to leap through the screen and tear them limb from limb.

How that was possible and how they came to such a conclusion was completely beyond them, it was like an instinctual fear or their primal instinct helping them to escape from certain death.

However, as soon as those feelings started to set in, every camera footages blacked out, showing static images instead of those horrendous things.

Everyone standing quickly fell to their knees while the Chief slumped in his chair with widened eyes and a pale face. This was only natural as they have just experienced being eyed by several blood-thirsty predators for the first time.

In their years out in the field, though they have seen dead bodies, people with horrible injuries, and killers of different kinds, this was the first for them to be looked at as prey for the picking.

Coupled with the fact that they saw such nightmarish creatures staring at them like that, it was only a given that they would be in shock.

After all, this is the peaceful modern world unlike Mirkaz, where every day could be your last either from monsters, criminals, cultists, diseases, curses, a random stray magic spell, or simply being exposed to high concentrations of mana, there are far more things that could kill the average person there than here.

Though, there was an anomaly here in the form of Inspector Touki. She was extremely confused as she only saw the screen completely blank static. She swore she saw those monsters in the footage but now she doesn't.

She was further confused by everyone's reaction to the blank static screen as it just seemed illogical to her, she quickly tried to look into the files while everyone was still in shock. But, to her surprise, there weren't any video files for the entirety of the lunch break; an entire 2 hours of camera footage was missing.

There was, however, a strange audio file in there along with all the video files named 「Warning」 with the date and time exactly on lunch break time of today.

However, she didn't open it yet, she decided to wait for everyone to snap out of their stupor first. She's also going to keep the fact that she saw a blank screen this whole time to herself, she knew what she saw and she wasn't doubting her eyes either, it was just that nobody would believe her anyway so she felt it unnecessary to divulge this information.

'What was that all about? How is this even possible? This Night Owl person is undoubtedly behind the things I saw and the reason I couldn't see anything but a blank screen this time' She started to think to herself about this phenomenon and her wariness of this person grew.

Unbeknownst to her, however, everything that happened was all according to Ren's plan.

He had intentionally made it so the illusion will only be cast on the higher-ups and will only be a one-time thing for each person, leaving only one person to witness this anomaly.

Ren had already predicted this would happen after taking a quick look through everyone's record with [World Archive]. It was his intention to expose his older cousin, Touki Shizuka, to the abnormality of this situation.

Ren wasn't naïve enough to think that there wouldn't be any external problems from outside of Earth occurring and that the status quo of peace will be the same after he started his plan to push Earth's growth even further.

In fact, the mere act of allowing the living creatures on Earth to be able to interact with and use mana meant he was allowing the developments of "supernatural" abilities to start occurring.

It means he was willing and ready to deal with the situation of people being able to use a primitive and crude form of elemental and non-elemental magic.

Though it will still take many years before that ever occurs, he still had to prepare for it and make sure to protect his friends and family.

In the Dream World, while training Hiro, Ren thought about a lot of things, about the future to be specific. He started entertaining the idea of secretly training all his friends and family members in the ways of magic and stuff through the Dream World.

Although he wouldn't be able to train them physically, he could still train their unconscious mind about magic and techniques and keep it in a dormant state until they needed it while also giving their unconscious mind guidance in how to get stronger in the real world.

All the nitty-gritty stuff is kind of complicated, but the main point is he would help them gain power unknowingly and will be kept hidden from them until they really need to use it.

This was merely the start of his plan to make his friends and family powerful among the normal humans of Earth, nearly untouchable by anyone from this world.

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(Ren's POV)

I'd say this date is panning out pretty well; after getting our crepe orders, we went and sat on a bench at a nearby park while enjoying the quiet atmosphere.

Hina seemed to have become far less flustered at my presence, though she would still put some distance between us because, and I quote, "M-my heart c-can't take it being so close to you".

Which although I find it very cute and endearing, I would much prefer her to want to be as close to me as possible like how it used to be, but I guess I can't ask that much in such a short time.

I'll just have to go at it one step at a time, we have all the time in the world to deepen our relationship, and the start of that is her telling me her feelings of her volition.

While indulging ourselves in the crepes, Hina filled me in on what I missed this afternoon since I was out.

It seems Alice told them her relation with me, which gave them a huge shock at such a "coincidence", at least that's what they all think but I know better than that.

There was another interesting little tidbit as well, in that Alex and Monoa "got along" very well with their game discussion, which I could not agree more. They make the perfect comedy duo in their back and forths, and with the addition of Akirou as the mediator between them (I don't know how he got that role), a perfect balance was made.

After we had finished eating, I grabbed Hina's hand and we started walking to the final spot of our date. It's quite the walk away so we occasionally stopped at some shops along the way and just enjoyed each other's company.

We stopped by an arcade and played a few games like we used to do in primary school, after that we continued on before stopping by a familiar playground and sat on the swings for a while, reminiscing about our memories of playing here.

"…I remember that time you dislocated your right arm trying to do a loop on these swings, Hehehe, Aunt Mitsuko was really mad at you that time" Hina giggled and smiled serenely while swinging light on the swing, it seems remembering the past put her mind a little at ease.

"Well, I also clearly remember Dad and Uncle Asaki quietly chuckling to themselves in the back before they got scolded by Mom and Aunt Reina at the hospital" I also smiled remembering those times where I was filled with childhood innocence.

"It was also on this playground that I…" Hina's words trailed off as she stopped swinging while a tender smile bloomed on her face.

"You what?" I smiled and tilted my head slightly, I already know just from her expression alone but I still want to hear it.

"…Nothing. Didn't you say you have a perfect place to finish off our date? I think I know where it is now…" Hina got up off the swing and took several steps forward before quickly turning to me with an affectionate smile and light pink coloring her cheeks while leaning forward, causing her hair to flutter as the wind started to pick up, lifting her long beautiful hair slightly before they fell down.

At that moment, I witnessed something I'll never forget; even if I didn't have perfect memory, I would still remember that moment for the rest of my life, as the moment I fell in love with her all over again.

"I guess the jig is up" I stood up with my hands raised in defeat, but there was a huge smile on my face.

Because my plans worked perfectly or, as some like to say it, 'all according to keikaku'.