Complications

Since there was no shortcut to take, Ronan found the whole business of robbery and counter-robbery utterly uninteresting. Yet certain people lurking in shadowed corners remained intensely interested in a target walking alone through narrow streets and alleys so close to midnight.

More than one greedy gaze roved over Ronan, searching for traces of luxury goods. Others had a purer inclination toward "fun"—with the night so long, finding someone to pass the time with was good enough.

Of course, more people were entirely indifferent to the people and happenings in street corners. They shut their doors and windows, buried their heads in sleep, and conserved their strength for tomorrow's livelihood; or they kept themselves busy in their own little worlds.

This was the Recycling Layer.

Low-income residents, vagrants, Black Gang members, drifters... in short, people who had yet to adapt to this society filled the district with a chaotic emotional hue. On a spectrum, it had not reached the end of despair, but it was still far from normal.

To Ronan, emotions and desires were plainly visible, but he did not think understanding their mysteries was an easy task.

To make a somewhat inappropriate comparison, they were like electromagnetic waves. Visible light was merely an insignificant fraction of their vast spectrum; too many other, deadly things lay hidden in indescribable layers.

It was like that resplendent sun wheel rolling in the abyss. Even across infinitely distant space and time, the "trace of heat" it transmitted—and the supernatural power it produced—made Ronan deeply wary and awestruck.

Whenever Ronan tried to understand it, he suffered the pain of being burned by the very fire he had drawn in. His body and mind would be Imbalanced for days. After this happened several times, he was practically falling apart. By comparison, the cold Void