Mad Bull

As she spoke, Hesta took out her planner from her pocket and jotted down a few notes.

Ten minutes later, the jeep stopped in an open stretch of concrete. Hesta looked around. There were no parking signs in the area, but parking spaces had been marked on the ground, with roughly thirty ordinary sedans scattered about.

In the distance, the neon signs of several restaurants had already lit up against the night. Hesta finally put away her planner and pen and began unfastening her seat belt.

"What were you writing?" Ligo asked.

"Tonight, I need to talk to Polly about Safety Inspection, along with some other trivial matters," Hesta replied. "If I forget when we come back later, I can still make up for it when I check my planner before bed."

"...Hey, was it you, or Chiba, who told me that? 'If you forget it, that means it wasn't important.'" Ligo tilted her head. "And there was another one: try to keep important things in your head, not on paper—"

"Both were me." Hesta sighed. The first had been Yu Xuekun's advice, while the second had been Ava's reminder. "I heard them from other people, too... but they're not absolute truths."

"I think they both make sense. People don't forget things that are truly important—"

A subtle pain descended without warning, making Hesta uncomfortable all over. She shrugged and scratched at her back as though fleas had landed on her.

"No," Hesta said as she jumped out of the car. "Sometimes you only realize how important something was after you've forgotten it."

The restaurant was called "Santus," also the name of a deity in District 12 mythology who governed rivers and seas. It had a peculiar appearance: the upper body of a man and the lower body of