Morning, 7:23 a.m., Woll Niu Supermarket.
A short-haired girl who looked around twenty, with innocent features, was staring blankly at the shelves before her, her eyes holding the clear-eyed cluelessness of a college student.
She wore a black turtleneck sweater and jeans, along with black-framed glasses and an inverted cross necklace. Her figure was surprisingly full.
Which one should I buy? Shizuku stared in distress at the two rows of root vegetables before her.
One row held white radishes, the other carrots.
"Which kind goes in radish and beef brisket stew-?"
Although she remembered Kuhua mentioning which kind he wanted, why couldn't she remember it no matter how hard she tried?
Absorbed in the two rows of large root vegetables, Shizuku completely failed to notice a tall figure flash past outside the supermarket door behind her-
Ding-a-ling. Like the bell rung by Death as he ferried souls across, the doorbell chimed clearly as the supermarket's glass door was quietly pushed open.
Along with the chime, a white mist drifted into the supermarket, as though wafting over from the River Styx.
"Hmm-mist?"
Shizuku lowered her head in confusion and saw white mist spilling around her feet.
"Why is there mist inside the supermarket?"
A voice suddenly came from behind her without warning. An ordinary person would certainly have jumped in fright.
But the naturally slow-witted Shizuku merely turned around in agreement and said to the tall man who had appeared behind her at some point:
"I think the supermarket turned the air conditioning up too high."
Dio: ?
Wasn't it winter?
Dio, who had been about to strike without hesitation, suddenly stared at Shizuku with half-lidded eyes, wanting to speak but holding back.
She hasn't failed to notice my [En], has she-?
As a detection technique, [En] could locate enemies, but