Seeing Klein—who had advanced to Trick Sorcerer and was a master of controlling his facial expressions—lose all composure and fall into a complete daze, Angel, who had learned the "truth" beforehand, smiled smugly.
It almost made her forget that when she had seen her own corpse on that modern street inside the City of Calamity, her shock and dejection had been no less intense than Klein's.
"Earth..."
Only after a long silence did Klein murmur the word. His unfocused eyes gradually cleared, and his gaze settled on Angel.
"Yes, the very 'Earth' you're thinking of... seven continents, four oceans, an Earth with a moon and a sun."
Before he could ask any more questions, Angel carefully explained all the evidence she had considered and verified, leaving out only the details of her own corpse.
For instance, the consistency of the years, months, and days with those on Earth; the exaggerated yet traceable changes in the terrain; the existence of the same moon; the strength of gravity; the changing seasons...
Before she finished, Klein raised a hand to stop her presentation of the clues and sank into prolonged thought.
Angel knew that, with his intelligence, he must already have found further evidence among the information and scattered clues he had gathered over the past year. He simply could not accept the truth yet.
After all, crossing space was nothing compared to the passage of time. If they had come to another world, another planet, there might still have been a chance of returning home. But a gulf of thousands or tens of thousands of years was an uncrossable river—or, as her Mirror Person had put it, a distance as vast as the Pacific Ocean.
And this time, the two of them did not even have a bathtub.
*Back then, I immediately