From midnight to dawn, most people rested to ease the fatigue of a full day of work or study and gather their strength for a brand-new tomorrow. But there were always some who worked hard while everyone else slept, and so they gained what those people lost. Fair enough, wasn't it? The law of exchange—gain something, lose something—was fair to everyone.
But sometimes, fate brought surprises to an ordinary, flavorless life. As the saying went, if you don't court death, you won't die. Since you did business in Dongguan, you had to be prepared for raids—cough, cough, I meant that if you worked a special night shift, you had to be mentally prepared to be robbed by someone even worse.
The guy trembling beside a trash can in the corner did not seem to possess any of that mental fortitude. But that was understandable. He had only been an ordinary thief, honest and conscientious. He stole but never hurt anyone, never went too far. He only took a little from each household, preferring to visit a few more homes each night rather than leave a family unable to eat the next day. In this day and age, that was truly rare.
But what use was any of that? The shadow steadily approaching him, the person who had toyed with and chased him for more than two hours like a cat playing with a mouse, certainly would not spare him because of his usual conduct.
He had nowhere left to run—though even if he did, he had no strength left. He could only pray that everything tonight was a nightmare, that he would wake up the next second, immediately find a proper job, and never leave the house after ten at night again.
Sadly, he did not wake as he wished. That figure lifted him with one hand—no human could have that kind of arm strength, right? It really was a monster! Its other hand touched that terrifying mask—there had to be a demon's face beneath it, right? Was it going to eat him?
The mask came off...
"Ah, hahahaha, ahahahahaha! So it really is a dream—a nightmare, and a wet dream. When I wake up, I'll find a proper job. What kind should I get? It definitely can't be one where I get home late. Seven o'clock—no, six. That's still too late. One where I can get home by five. Salary doesn't matter either..."
"Is something wrong with this guy?"
Jizi stared at tonight's final prey with a puzzled expression. Ever since she had removed her mask, he had abruptly gone from being too terrified to say a word to muttering nonstop, like Fan Jin after passing the imperial examination.
"Forget it. It has nothing to do with me anyway." Shrugging, Jizi pressed the mask onto the muttering man's face.
"AAAAAHHHH!!!"
The instant the mask touched his face, it clung to him as if magnetized. Black-red patterns rapidly spread from his head across his entire body, emitting an ominous glow. The agonized screams he had initially let out soon stopped as well.
"What an awful scream, like a pig being slaughtered. It's not like I'm taking your life. I'm just draining a little stamina." Seeing that it was about enough, Jizi removed the mask and tossed the unconscious thief into the pile of garbage beside him.
"My mana's pretty much full again. Time to go back and sleep!"
After leaving the church, Jizi had begun voluntarily maintaining nighttime public safety in Fuyuki City. So the thieves tonight had been terribly unlucky. Though, in terms of the outcome, they had not actually suffered much loss. Jizi had merely used them to restore her Mana. At worst, they would suffer aftereffects such as sore muscles, weakness, and an inability to work for several days. The psychological damage, however, was harder to say. Due to her personal bad taste, Jizi had deliberately imitated Batman's style, appearing and disappearing unpredictably as she dragged them into the darkness one by one and used the night to create an atmosphere of terror. In short, after that night, Fuyuki City's nighttime public safety became unbelievably good for a long time. Strange urban legends even spread among the pickpockets...
But none of that had anything to do with Jizi. After returning to the hotel, she switched her state to her "human" form and quickly fell asleep. She did not climb out of bed until the sun had already tilted westward the following afternoon.
[Jizi: Did I forget something? Whatever. If I forgot it so casually, it couldn't have been important. I'll just leave it be.]
How long had it been? Risei Kotomine began to wonder. It had been many, many years since he had last lost control of his emotions. Yet within the first twenty-four hours of this carefully planned Holy Grail War, irritation had stirred his usually unruffled heart at least three times.
He had spent the night preparing the items requested by that mysterious Caster group, then sent people to deliver them to the designated, bizarre locations—so bizarre that one could reasonably question whether the other side had any sincerity in making a deal at all. That actually was the truth, because there really was no such intention. The base of a tower crane at Fuyuki Port, the pier of Fuyuki Bridge, every guest room of the Hyatt Hotel... Would anyone really come collect goods from such places? Moreover, the first and last locations specifically required large quantities of explosives. What the hell was the point of that?
Sure enough, the old priest had personally participated in the surveillance out of caution. Fighting through exhaustion, he watched one "transaction point" for more than ten hours and came to a conclusion—he seemed to have been played. The other party had no intention of collecting the goods at all. The other transaction points were the same. Even when they removed those supplies again as a test, there had been no reaction whatsoever. Other than the possibility that the other party simply wanted to torment him, there was no other explanation.
[Jizi: Foolish human. If you knew what would later happen at the places where I had you put the explosives, you'd understand my painstaking efforts. As for the bridge pier, I really did plan to collect those—but who told me to oversleep?]
"Damn Caster's Master. Pray that you die with dignity in the Holy Grail War. Otherwise..."
On the streets of Fuyuki City, Jizi had disguised her hair and eyes as the black typical of Asians and changed into casual clothing. She looked like an utterly ordinary young woman. In addition, her human form emitted no unusual aura whatsoever, making her perfectly suited for one task—tailing someone!
"Women really can shop. Even homunculi retain this trait? But scientifically speaking, women's shopping behavior seems to be genetically controlled. So what was going on with Irisviel, whose genetic map probably could not even be drawn? Sure enough, in worlds with a high level of mystery, science tended to die a heroic death more easily."
From the target of her complaints, it was clear that the people Jizi had caught up with after getting out of bed were the overwhelmingly popular poster girl of Type-Moon's Fourth War, its leading lady and one of the three great fandom communal bikes—Artoria Pendragon—and the model housewife who had achieved the great feat of NTRing her own husband, Irisviel Einzbern. On the first day of this new pair's debut, they had neither taken the initiative to attack other teams nor returned to Einzbern to regroup. Instead, they had spent more than half the day shopping! And they really had only been shopping. They had not entered a single store, merely glanced at display windows before moving on. This drove Jizi, whose physical abilities were temporarily only at the human average, absolutely mad. At least go inside and haggle, buy something, try on some clothes, and let me rest, okay? Weren't they tired?
As for why Jizi had not been discovered, Saber was not a class specialized in searching for enemies. No matter how excellent her senses were, in a place surrounded by people, asking her to detect someone whose presence was also that of an "ordinary person" was simply too much. Besides, Jizi did not reveal the slightest hostility. She merely wanted to see a character she liked up close. Even though she had kept watching the same-sex couple, she would probably have been categorized among the onlookers who were also staring at the two women in astonishment.
Night gradually deepened. Only a handful of pedestrians walked slowly along the quiet road. The same-sex couple was nearly at the seaside park, where they would confess their feelings by the shore and shower the world with sparkles. But at that moment, music suddenly rang out through the surroundings, which should have been completely tranquil:
"Open your heart, cast off spring's shyness. Let your dance steps soar, break winter's silence... Come, come, meet in '98... Meet beneath silver moonlight, meet within warm affection..."
"Heart to heart, connected heart to heart, meeting year after year, whether close at hand or at the ends of the earth." (1)
"..."
Startled by the abrupt sound, Saber reflexively shielded Irisviel behind her. She then realized it was merely someone with long, messy hair, dressed like a wandering singer and strumming a guitar. She relaxed slightly, but still watched the "singer" warily. Somehow, the person had approached to such close range without her sensing anything at all.
But Irisviel, lacking common sense, possessed no such awareness. Like Columbus discovering the New World, she walked up to the "singer"—who was, of course, Jizi—and listened to the entire song "Meet in '98" with great interest. She even applauded in appreciation.
You might ask why they understood Chinese. When Servants were summoned into the present world, they were imbued with the corresponding knowledge. Multiple languages were merely an added bonus. Homunculi were more or less the same, too. Let's just say they were.
You might also ask why Saber had not sensed Jizi using the Noble Phantasm New Yorker's Tears. Who said she was using a Noble Phantasm? It was just an ordinary guitar. As for the sound, hehe, Jizi quietly nudged a small recorder behind herself with her foot. People in the 1990s were still rather innocent; lip-syncing and fake performances were not so easily exposed.
"Thank you very much, beautiful lady. May your beauty endure forever, like this eternal night sky." Jizi gave an exaggerated bow and spoke to Irisviel in a bard-like tone, then extended a battered top hat containing several coins toward the approaching Saber.
"Huh?" Saber did not understand the situation for a moment.
"As a gentleman accompanying such a beautiful lady, do you not possess even a little matching generosity? Or do you believe the art admired by this lady is worth less than a penny?" So you want to pretend to be a man? As a girl, you need to have the awareness of a girl. Hurry up and put on that white wedding dress to please me, or I'll make things difficult for you.
"It's not... I..." Even if Saber understood nothing about human hearts, if she still failed to understand now, that would not be an emotional intelligence problem but an intelligence problem. But she was not a wealthy tycoon like Gilgamesh with Golden Rule, so...
Irisviel saw Saber's embarrassment and placed a stack of banknotes into Jizi's top hat. [Jizi: Holy shit! That green bill has Franklin on it, right? And the number says one followed by two zeroes, right? There have to be at least ten of them, right? Do you know how wasteful you are? Even selling rice cakes wouldn't support spending like that!] She was just about to say something when Jizi beat her to it. "Praise your generosity. Your heart is equally beautiful; even the pearls nurtured by the sea behind me could not compare to one ten-thousandth of it. But this flower guardian you have chosen is truly... nothing but a pretty face. Letting a lady spend money for him, tsk tsk..."
"You..."
"Even a destitute street performer like me knows that a man must be self-reliant, spend the money he earns himself, and make a living through his own skills. Though life may be hard, there is dignity in it. I never expected someone who looked as distinguished and high-ranking as you to... Forget it. I have said enough. Farewell."
After indirectly mocking Saber as a kept man, Jizi packed up her things as quickly as possible and fled the place like the wind. Saber, who wanted to retort but did not know what to say, wore a deeply aggrieved expression. Just as she was about to say something to Irisviel, who had moved to comfort her, a powerful battle intent made her cast this small unpleasantness from her mind.
A declaration of war from a certain man with genuine skill opened the curtain on the famous dock battle of the Fourth Holy Grail War.
Note: (1) Bilibili AV number 753269. Many people probably know it already, but it is worth mentioning anyway.
(2) The outfit Saber wore when Medea imprisoned her in the FSN UBW movie.
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