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The golden sports car streaked down the streets like a bolt of golden lightning.

People whistled and screamed at it from time to time. A few young girls even deliberately tugged open their collars at the window, revealing the tips of their breasts. No wonder racing movies always tied speed to passion—it was clearly an excess of hormones triggering the urge to stomp on the gas.

Not to be outdone, Kate thrust out her chest and drew in her stomach, using a "weight-class crush" alongside a tactical lean-back.

What was wrong with young people these days?

Even as Hayato mocked them inwardly, he happily feasted his eyes. Seeing the look on his face, Kate's hand started misbehaving again, her index finger lightly tracing lines and circles over her body.

"Are you an art student?" Hayato suddenly asked.

Before this, Hayato knew nothing about art. His entire understanding of it amounted to: utter nonsense. He could never figure out how an oil painting with a few smeared blocks of color could somehow sell at auction for millions, even tens of millions, of dollars.

He couldn't understand it.

But ever since he had seen the Gate of Truth, his understanding of art had reached a different level. Though most of it still looked like utter nonsense to him, little more than one intelligence tax after another imposed by art dealers upon the newly rich.

At least Hayato now acknowledged that art existed.

Kate's lines and circles seemed to be expressing something vague, stirring an emotional resonance within Hayato.

Eliciting empathy through abstract things was an exceptionally powerful form of expression.

"Yes, I'm a freshman at Cooper Union. Darling, you're amazing!"

Kate's eyes sparkled with stars.

In