Didn't We Agree on a Week?

Klein saw someone standing behind him in the mirror. At first, he jumped in fright, but when he took a closer look-

Holy shit, Temperance?

Wait, didn't you say we'd meet again Above the Gray Fog in a week? Why did you follow me down here, man?

His eyes flew wide, and he spun around, only to find nothing behind him. Klein froze for a moment, wondering whether the stress had gotten to him and he was hallucinating.

But when he turned back, the man was still there in the mirror-Lin Chuan, Temperance, wearing black-framed glasses and a classical warlock's robe, smiling at him.

He even raised a hand in greeting.

"I suppose it's good evening now, right? Have you eaten, Zhou?"

The corner of Klein's eye twitched. A thousand questions crowded his throat, and for a moment, he didn't know where to start. How did you end up like this? How did you transmigrate here? Did you perform the Luck Enhancement Ritual too? When you joked about being from another world, were you actually telling the truth? Where exactly did you come from during the Tarot Club gathering earlier...?

In the end, however, he merely watched Lin Chuan drifting around him with a complicated look in his eyes and asked two questions.

"How did the surgery go?"

"Are you... doing okay now?"

At those two questions, Lin Chuan's floating figure paused slightly. His smile faded a little, though it didn't disappear entirely. He was silent for two or three seconds before answering in a lighthearted tone again.

"The surgery went very well. Before I left, your mom could already get out of bed and walk around. She was recovering faster than the doctors expected. Your dad's been looking after her the whole time, so don't worry."

Klein swallowed without saying anything. He lowered his eyes, and only after a long while did he ask quietly:

"What about you?"

There was another question he couldn't bring himself to ask. Lin Chuan's figure was only visible in the mirror, and he was floating around the room... didn't that mean he was dead? That only his soul remained? Even a Beyonder... probably couldn't do anything about that.

He was a little afraid of hearing the answer. It would mean that finding an old friend in a foreign land had merely been wishful thinking. After this brief reunion, he would have to face this cold, unfamiliar world alone again and endure yet another farewell.

"Hey." Lin Chuan sounded rather amused. He floated over to the chair beside Klein, but instead of sitting down, he hovered above it and crossed one leg.

"Don't worry, I'm doing great. I just transmigrated again, that's all. I'm used to it by now. As for why I'm only a spirit body... well, there was a little accident. It's no big deal. Let's leave that aside for now. I can sort it out later."

"But how did you end up transmigrating too, Zhou, my dude? You doing all right?"

Was transmigrating something to be ashamed of?

Klein was a little speechless, but more than anything, an indescribable emotion clogged his chest. He felt like laughing, like crying, like cursing. In the end, it all turned into a sigh.

"...Why are you always like this?" Klein said quietly. "Look at what's happened to you, and you're still cracking jokes."

"What's wrong with me?"

Lin Chuan looked down at his outfit and spun around, the hem of his classical warlock's robe tracing a clean arc through the air. "This is called having style, okay? Look at what you're wearing-all drab and gray. One glance tells me you're doomed to a life without style."

He thought his outfit was genuinely cool. If he swapped his glasses for a monocle later and put on a soft, pointed hat, he might look even cooler to certain people.

Cool enough to die for. Literally.

A chill ran through Klein. His intuition told him there was definitely something behind Lin Chuan's words. After all, the guy was always like this, constantly spouting inexplicable terms. Klein had once assumed he was just being crazy, but now it seemed those might actually have been bits of knowledge from another world.

"Right." He shook his head, deciding to get the conversation back on track rather than keep watching Lin Chuan clown around.

"There's something I need to make clear first."

His expression grew sober, his tone more serious. "My identity here is Klein Moretti, a history graduate from Tingen University. Don't call me by my original name. Just call me Klein."

After hearing him out, Lin Chuan replied with a perfectly straight face:

"Understood, Klein Moretti."

He paused, then added, "But I think there must be another reason you've decided that. After all, calling you by your name in Chinese would work too, wouldn't it?"

"Yeah. I did transmigrate into the original owner's body, after all..." Klein hesitated, then continued, "And I inherited some of his memories."

"Melissa, Benson, and Klein were very close. They've supported one another as a family all this time. If possible, I think I should take responsibility for them."

Klein looked up at Lin Chuan and said with conviction, "Besides, I figure that since you're still here instead of taking me straight home..."

"We won't be able to get back anytime soon. But you're still acting like a lunatic as naturally as ever, which means you have a way back and have just run into some difficulties, right?"

As he asked, Klein got up to look for food. Intense hunger surged over him like a tide. He felt as though he could eat an entire cow.

He wasn't particularly tired, though. He had some guesses about that. Perhaps it had to do with how, earlier, Above the Gray Fog, the connection between him and the crimson stars had first weakened, easing his headache, then stabilized, leaving him refreshed.

But that didn't matter. Klein's eyes were practically glowing with hunger now. Holding it back long enough to talk to Lin Chuan had already pushed him to his limit. Now he needed to eat-food.

As for everything else, transmigrating alone into a steampunk world and clearing it solo was entirely different from meeting a co-op friend right at the start of a level, especially when that friend was an experienced, mature, dependable(?) veteran transmigrator. Those called for two completely different approaches.

The latter was like playing Monster Hunter and thinking you were about to get carted, only for a long-handled longsword god, a dual-wielding longsword god, a ranged longsword god, a blunt-ended longsword god, and countless other longsword gods to suddenly descend from the sky...

Since he wasn't alone, surely he could relax a little and eat something before they continued talking?

As he stood up, Klein noticed four black dots on the back of his right hand, arranged in a small square. They quickly faded and disappeared. He guessed he wouldn't need four portions of staple food the next time he performed the ritual.

Right now, though, he desperately needed those four portions.

Without hesitation, Klein retrieved the rye bread from the four corners, flicked off the little dust clinging to it, and planned to use one loaf as the staple of his midday meal.

It didn't matter if it tasted like cardboard. He was starving to death. After pulling out the stove, he added some coal and paced back and forth,

waiting for the water to boil so he could wash the bread down with it.