The Regent Hotel's revolving doors slid open soundlessly. A doorman in white gloves bowed in greeting, and cool air carrying the bitter, roasted scent of freshly ground coffee swept out of the lobby, dividing it from the sticky early-summer heat outside into two separate worlds.
Lu Mingfei shuffled across the marble floor in a pair of old sneakers.
Following the signs, he arrived at the Executive Lounge on the ninth floor.
Seventeen chairs had been set out outside the conference room on the executive floor. Sixteen people were already seated. With him, that made seventeen interviewees, one chair each, no more and no less.
Lu Mingfei glanced over them. They were all familiar faces. He knew he ought to recognize them, and a few uncertain names even surfaced in his mind, but the names and the faces before him seemed separated by a veil of mist. He couldn't match them up.
He watched them. Their laughter and gestures seemed to happen somewhere far away, passing through some barrier that distorted them before they reached him.
"Lu Mingfei?" A boy frowned.
He wore a tailored suit, his hair neatly combed. His tone was condescending. "What are you doing here?"
Lu Mingfei looked at him.
He searched his mind for a long while, but all he could tell was that the boy looked familiar. He saw no sign of military training. Slack muscles, a careless stance, no calluses between thumb and forefinger. In an underground shelter, this sort would be among the first to crowd the gates and shove people aside when the alarm sounded.
"Oh, here for the interview." Lu Mingfei gave a perfunctory nod. He really couldn't remember the boy's name.
The boy's expression soured.
Lu Mingfei sat in the last chair. A form and a pencil lay on it, with fields for his name, age, and similar details.
Zhao Menghua and his friends were left exchanging bewildered looks. Somehow, the loser seemed like a different person today.
A waiter brought a croissant and a glass of hot milk. Lu Mingfei polished them off in a few bites and was just about to snap his fingers and ask the guy for another serving.
A hand caught his sleeve.
"Lu Mingfei, keep it down. The interviewers are here. They're inside." The girl beside him lowered her voice. She wore a white dress, her long hair falling over her shoulders.
Lu Mingfei turned to look at her.
This was probably Chen Wenwen.
Her name had appeared in his QQ messages, and Old Tang had mentioned her too. He knew he had once liked her, but he couldn't remember why.
Her face was barely a dozen centimeters away. Her eyelashes, the tip of her nose, her pressed lips-he could see them all clearly. But the rose-colored filter in his memories was gone. He searched and searched, unable to find a single moment when she had made his heart stir.
What had I liked about her? Something she'd said? Some moment when she'd turned back to look?
"...Thanks for the heads-up." Lu Mingfei lowered his hand.
"Is Liu Miaomiao here?" The door to the conference room opened, and a tall, slender young man stepped out.
He wore a dark green suit with thin silver edging at the collar, its cut more military uniform than school uniform. Lu Mingfei instinctively took another look. The man's steps were light, his weight held low and steady, and his feet barely made a sound. His hands hung naturally at his sides, with dark calluses between his thumbs and forefingers and over his index-finger joints.
A professional.
Lu Mingfei made his judgment silently. This was the only person he had seen today who could fight.
A pretty girl sprang to her feet, her voice trembling slightly. "Here!"
"I'm Ye Sheng, one of the interviewers. Please come with me." The young man smiled, his gaze sweeping almost imperceptibly across the room before meeting Lu Mingfei's.
Liu Miaomiao walked gracefully inside with Ye Sheng, and the door closed behind them. The remaining fifteen turned to exchange looks, none able to hide the anxiety on their faces.
Then Liu Miaomiao, Su Xiaoqiang, Zhao Menghua, and Chen Wenwen went in one after another, each drifting back out with a dazed expression.
The girl called Su Xiaoqiang came out gritting her teeth.
Lu Mingfei couldn't help chuckling. That fiery temper reminded him of someone. But if that woman had been rejected, the conference room door would probably have been kicked off its hinges by now.
"Lu Mingfei." Ye Sheng opened the door again.
"Coming." Lu Mingfei brushed the bread crumbs off his hands, stood, and went inside.
A long solid-wood table occupied the center of the room. Besides Ye Sheng, two other people sat behind it.
One was a gentle-looking Japanese girl; the other was a red-haired girl chewing bubble gum.
Lu Mingfei's gaze lingered on that red hair for a moment.
Something stung his eyes. A rusty smell rose deep in his nose, and he forced it back down.
"My name is Shide Aki. These are Ye Sheng and Chen Motong, also interviewers." The Japanese girl stood and bowed slightly. "Good morning, Lu Mingfei."
"Ohayō gozaimasu." Lu Mingfei bent at the waist by reflex, returning a perfectly proper bow.
In that other world, he had greeted the middle-aged women in base logistics, the drivers, and Misato Katsuragi this way every day. His Japanese even carried a slight Kanto accent.
Shide Aki looked up sharply, astonishment filling her delicate face. "Your Japanese is very good, Lu."
"I learned it from anime." Lu Mingfei lied without blinking.
"Really?" Shide Aki smiled and didn't press him.
Ye Sheng sat beside Shide Aki, opened his notebook, and looked at Lu Mingfei. "Then let's begin."
"Go ahead." He wanted to see what these people were really up to.
"First question," Shide Aki asked softly. "Do you believe in aliens?"
Lu Mingfei leaned back in the leather chair. These people were still speaking in riddles.
But he soon remembered the enormous monsters sleeping underground. He wondered what people here called them.
"Sure." Lu Mingfei nodded, his tone casual. "There might even be ruins they left behind here on Earth. Maybe some ancient monsters are buried underground or sleeping on the ocean floor. They're waiting for a chance to wake up and reset this world."
He was talking about the Angels Adam and Lilith.
Ye Sheng's pen stopped.
"Second question." Ye Sheng drew a deep breath, his expression turning grave. "Do you believe in superpowers?"
Lu Mingfei scratched his head.
"Yes. If your mental power is strong enough, you can distort reality," Lu Mingfei said with certainty. "For example, you could project an Absolute Defense field. Against something like that, conventional human firearms and explosives are no better than scrap metal."
That was an objective fact. The A.T. Field really was that absurd.
Ye Sheng and Aki exchanged a look, each seeing the shock in the other's eyes.
Pop.
The red-haired girl popped her bubble gum.
"Enough with the riddles." The red-haired girl crossed her legs and leaned forward slightly, her amber eyes locking onto Lu Mingfei.
"Lu Mingfei, right? You were pretty interesting on the phone yesterday."
Ye Sheng and Aki froze for a moment, then shook their heads helplessly. They knew Nono's "interview" had begun.
Lu Mingfei looked at her without speaking.
The red-haired girl picked up a pen from the table and spun it between her fingers. "What were you trying to confirm on the phone yesterday?"
"An organization's capabilities," Lu Mingfei answered calmly. This girl was perceptive, more so than that Professor Guderian.
"Oh?" A playful smile curved Nono's lips. "What sort of capabilities?"
"Containment, or warfare." Lu Mingfei counted on his fingers. "Isolation networks, information lockdowns, physical defenses, underground armor plating. Standard equipment."
Beside her, Ye Sheng and Shide Aki drew sharp breaths.
"Since you know everything." Nono stared at him. "Since you know this place is extremely dangerous, why did you still come today?"
That was the real question. Fear of death was instinctive. If he knew a battlefield lay ahead, why would he willingly walk into it?
Dangerous?
He looked at Nono's red hair and said seriously:
"Because I wanted to confirm something."
"What?"
"The threat level."
The smile on Nono's face froze.
"I wanted to see for myself just how bad the trouble you're facing really is."
"If it really were a matter of life and death, you'd send an armored vehicle straight through my front door, tie me up and put me on a helicopter, strap a bomb around my neck so I couldn't run, then dump me onto the battlefield. You wouldn't care whether I agreed."
"The fact that you're still following the admissions process step by step means your defenses haven't collapsed. The crisis is still under control."
Lu Mingfei stood and pushed his chair back into place.
"Thank you for the milk and bread."
With that, Lu Mingfei turned, opened the door, and walked out.
Out in the hallway, Lu Mingfei leaned against the wall by the elevators and waited.
He raised a hand and touched his neck.
There was nothing there.
The elevator doors opened with a ding.
He was going to Hakone.
To see whether there was anything beneath that lake.