Where the Gods Should Go

Naoko saw that there were no clean rooms left, so she invited Wu Heng to stay in her room.

Wu Heng didn't want to spend the night in the ruins of Room 203, and he was even less willing to stay in the pervert's room, so he followed Naoko to Room 204.

By now, Wu Heng was wide awake. He turned on the TV and started watching while Naoko packed her things.

"Echizen, I might be going home tomorrow. What about you...?"

Naoko asked hesitantly, a trace of hope in her eyes.

"Yeah, I'm leaving tomorrow too. I have somewhere else to go. I'll leave at dawn—I've got something important to do."

Wu Heng answered casually. He didn't want to leave a trail of broken hearts across all these worlds. The girls on this island seemed particularly obsessive, so it was better not to get involved.

"Oh!"

Naoko replied, clearly disappointed. After finishing her packing, she took out her sketchpad and sat beside Wu Heng. He watched TV quietly as she drew.

After a while, Naoko held a drawing out in front of Wu Heng.

"Echizen, look!"

Naoko smiled sweetly.

At her words, Wu Heng lowered his head to look.

On the page:

Beneath the moonlight, a man in a trench coat stood in the street, his silhouette looking especially tall and straight in the moonlight.

His dark trench coat looked like a bank of storm clouds, mysterious and powerful.

A little girl in dirty pajamas, tear streaks on her face, clung to his side. A dead mutated beast lay sprawled across the road.

Strangely, though, the trench-coated man's face was blank.

"Why didn't you draw his face?" Wu Heng asked curiously.

"Echizen, the way you look now isn't your real appearance, is it?"

"I can sense how badly your appearance clashes with your aura."

At that, Naoko narrowed her big eyes and smiled like a spring flower, sweet and warm.

"You're clever, Naoko. Is that a woman's sixth sense?" Wu Heng said, at a loss for words.

"Then could I see what you really look like, Echizen?"

Naoko's smile grew even brighter, pure and radiant as a flower in full bloom.

"I can't show you."

Wu Heng's current appearance was an illusion. He could put on other skins and change identities, but he couldn't return to his original appearance.

"What a shame. I thought I'd get to see a god's true face!"

Naoko lowered her head in disappointment. The hope in her eyes had been crushed, and she looked dejected.

Even seeing him once was too much to hope for! Naoko, you really are someone the gods have never blessed. Naoko sank into self-doubt.

"I'm really sorry. How about this? I'll describe myself, and you can draw me."

Wu Heng couldn't help but chuckle. He hated clever enemies, but he admired clever people.

He had nothing better to do right now, so he'd treat this as a reward for the girl's keen mind.

"Okay!"

Naoko nodded vigorously, her eyes glistening even as a bright, sunny smile spread across her face.

"The hairstyle should look like this. Yes, make the hair a little longer."

"About this long?" "That's right!"

"Don't change the nose." "Oh!"

"The eyes look a little too kind." "Like this?"

As Wu Heng described himself and Naoko responded, her pencil scratched across the paper.

By the time the sky began to lighten, their voices had fallen silent.

The drawing showed an anime-style Wu Heng. Next to his real appearance, it looked quite similar, but on its own, no one would recognize him.

"I have to go. I've got things to take care of."

Wu Heng spoke first, his tone calm.

"Where are you planning to go after you're done?"

Naoko tucked back a strand of black hair and asked as though it were just a casual question.

Wu Heng couldn't answer that. There was no way to explain it, so he simply said:

"I'm going where I need to go!"

Naoko fell silent. The sun rose slowly, its rays falling across them both, mingling light and shadow.

Wu Heng stood up. "Aren't you going to give me the drawing?"

"I want to keep it!" Naoko said with a smile, fighting back a sob.

She clutched the drawing tightly in both hands, unwilling to let it go.

"All right, then I'll be off. Maybe we'll meet again!"

Wu Heng set down a box of pistol ammunition, turned, and headed for the door. As he walked, he waved with his right hand without looking back.

The room's vermilion door opened, and the room instantly brightened. Then Wu Heng's figure blocked the light, dimming it again. Finally, the door shut completely, plunging the room back into darkness.

"Where the gods should go?"

"Then what if..."

Naoko sat quietly on the tatami and turned to look at the box of pistol ammunition.

"What if... I became... a god, too?!"

"Maybe we'll meet again? We'll meet again!"

"Echizen!"

Naoko clutched the drawing tightly in her pale fingers and whispered with determination.

A long while later, the bedroom door opened again, and light filled the room once more. This time, though, it was Naoko who opened it.

Echizen!

Wu Heng had underestimated a woman's obsession, especially that of a girl with a disability.

Wu Heng left the inn and walked along the street, looking around as he searched for someone he was destined to meet.

After ten minutes, he finally spotted his target in front of a restaurant.

The bald restaurant owner came over to two tattooed young men, bowing and scraping as if discussing the bill.

One of them, a young man with a tattoo of a demonic face, slapped the bald owner.

"Old man, what's wrong with us eating some of your food? I brought my buddies here to advertise your place. You should pay me ten thousand yen in advertising fees. Take off the 1,200 for the sushi, and you still owe me 8,800 yen in change."

Wu Heng's eyes lit up. He walked over, took out three gold coins, and jingled them in his hand. The sound immediately caught the two punks' attention.

"When did you steal my gold coins?"

The young man with the demonic-face tattoo instantly forgot about the advertising fee and shouted at Wu Heng, pointing at him.

"We had more gold coins than that. Where are the rest?"

The other young man, who had a scorpion tattoo, simply took the coins from Wu Heng's hand. He bit down on one, then nodded at the guy with the demonic-face tattoo.

"Oh, so these are your gold coins. There's a bag of them over there. I picked up a couple, thinking they might be fake."

"Nani? Where? Hurry up and take us there!"

The two men responded in unison, eager to get there as fast as possible. They had to hurry, or someone else might find the coins first. Those were their gold coins!

"Right this way!"

Wu Heng pointed in the direction of the alley. As the bald owner bowed to him at a grateful ninety-degree angle, he led the two men into a secluded lane.

A moment later, the young man with the scorpion tattoo emerged from the empty alley. He scrolled through his phone's contacts and found the person he needed.

Punks like these usually had someone backing them.

"Senior Mori, I've got a chance for us to make a fortune. There's a fat sheep carrying a lot of gold, at least three or four catties' worth. He claims it belonged to his ancestors, but I suspect it's stolen."

Wu Heng hung up and thought about how to deal with Tomie next. The mission had only one objective: kill Tomie.

A reward of 3,000 survival points meant it probably wasn't as simple as just killing her, right?

After all, Tomie's physical abilities were completely ordinary. She could be chopped down with ease. Her terror lay in the way she split and multiplied after being killed.

Her consciousness split along with her body, and even fire couldn't destroy her completely.

If all he had to do was chop Tomie up, wouldn't he be able to farm endless survival points? The Lighthouse couldn't have a loophole like that!

Wu Heng coveted Tomie—not for her beauty, but for her ability to multiply and grow without limit. After all, to fill the Life Box, he couldn't actually kill two hundred million people.

But that raised a problem: the Lighthouse's teleportation currently didn't allow him to bring living humans or monsters along. Given Tomie's immortality and the living consciousness in each fragment, there was a good chance he couldn't bring her back—even a single cell.

So Wu Heng needed a method—one that could get around the Lighthouse's restriction against transporting things like that.