Calm down!
Calm down, Yukina. You have to calm down!
In the dim clearing formed by three connected trees, Yukina repeatedly swept both hands across her cheeks, wiping away the faint tears and anxious expression as she scanned the area around the humanoid bloodstain again and again.
Calm down...
Chiba not being here might be a good thing. It meant he could still move! Right! If he could still move, then his injuries must have healed!
Right... right! That must be it!
Hirohiko had probably used the Rock Hardening Technique to encase Chiba and give him an extra layer of defense. Judging from how the Rock Skin had shattered, it appeared to have broken from the inside out. In other words, Chiba had emerged from the Rock Skin himself, rather than someone smashing it from outside.
And the traps had not been triggered. It was certain that no outsiders had come here yet.
Yukina pressed both hands to her cheeks and took a slight breath. The conclusions she had drawn from the traces before her slowly calmed the sudden palpitations she had felt upon not seeing Chiba, as well as the ominous premonition that she was about to lose something important.
Chiba is fine... He must be fine...
Then there was Hirohiko...
That feeling just now, that ominous premonition—it must have been about Hirohiko. Had something happened to him? After feeling somewhat reassured about Chiba, the anxiety in her heart subsided, but she could not help worrying about Hirohiko again.
That signal was one unique to the three of them, something they had developed together during missions and over the past few years. The signal Hirohiko had left behind already carried the implication of "Don't worry about me."
It was clear that he had gone to do this with the