Late at night, in an executive suite on the ninth floor of the Regent Hotel.
Nono huddled in a corner of the sofa, draped in a cashmere blanket. Her head was lowered as her fingers picked at a tissue, slowly tearing it into strips. The carpet's intricate patterns blurred together before her eyes. The room was so quiet that only the faint hum of the air conditioning could be heard.
Shide Aki stood beside her, gently rubbing her back.
Bang!
The suite's door slammed against the wall, then quickly bounced back.
An old man burst in carrying a briefcase, his white hair disheveled and his forehead drenched in sweat. "How did the interviews go? I booked a red-eye flight and came straight here after landing."
"Professor Guderian, we interviewed seventeen people, and among them..." Ye Sheng immediately rose to greet him.
"Skip the preliminaries!" Guderian's eyes gleamed behind his thick lenses. "I only care about Lu Mingfei, our one and only S-rank. Was his performance as dazzling as the sun?"
Ye Sheng and Aki exchanged a complicated look.
"Professor... dazzling isn't the word for his performance." Ye Sheng chose his words carefully. "To be precise, it was terrifying."
"Terrifying? That's wonderful!" Guderian rubbed his hands excitedly and sat down on the sofa without waiting for an invitation. "Tell me, what were his answers?"
"I asked whether he believed in aliens, and he said yes," Aki said softly. "But he added that some kind of ancient monsters were buried underground or sleeping on the ocean floor. They've been waiting for a chance to wake up and reset this world."
"My God! That's an extraordinarily rare case of bloodline resonance!" Guderian slapped his thigh, so excited that spittle flew from his mouth. "He's never taken a single class in Dragon Genealogy, yet his subconscious accurately sensed the Dragon Kings' dormant state and the myths of world destruction. That's unquestionably S-rank intuition! What about the second question?"
"The second question was whether he believed in supernatural powers." Ye Sheng drew a deep breath. "He said that sufficiently powerful mental strength could warp reality. In the face of that power, conventional human firearms were no different from scrap metal."
Guderian shot up from the sofa.
"Realm of Dust!"
Ye Sheng: "..."
Guderian clenched his fists excitedly and paced in circles. "What he described was clearly Realm of Dust. See? He really is an S-rank. The Word Spirit in his blood has awakened on its own!"
Aki quietly interjected, "Professor, Norma reported that his Word Spirit hasn't awakened."
"Hm?"
Guderian stopped mid-step.
"Then that's still S-rank intuition." The old man immediately smiled again. "He foresaw the form of a high-level Word Spirit. How many years has Cassell waited for a child like this to come along? What about the third question? Was he desperate to join us and fulfill his great destiny?"
The corner of Ye Sheng's mouth twitched.
"Professor, the situation with this... this 'S-rank' is rather complicated."
"How complicated?"
"We never got to ask the third question." Ye Sheng sighed. "He gave Cassell a thorough dressing-down."
"A dressing-down?" Guderian froze, his raised hand stopping stiffly in midair. "About what?"
"He thought that if the world really faced imminent destruction, a crisis response agency wouldn't have the leisure to book out a five-star hotel for interviews," Aki said, replaying Lu Mingfei's expressionless face in her mind. "He said a real intelligence agency would smash down civilians' front doors, put collars designed to blow their heads off if they tried to escape around their agents' necks, then shove them into helicopters and drop them straight onto the battlefield."
"He concluded that since we were still following the admissions process step by step, our defensive lines hadn't collapsed and the threat level was very low," Aki said. "So he just left, without saying whether he wanted to join."
"...Head-exploding collars?" Guderian repeated in a murmur. "Forced conscription by helicopter? That sounds like a suicide squad from World War II... Here at Cassell College, we place a great deal of importance on human rights and an academic atmosphere! What kind of violent organization does he have in his head?"
His crashed brain struggled to reboot as he tried to cobble together a plausible explanation from his theory of bloodlines.
"...But he's an S-rank," the old man murmured, as though trying to reason with himself. "How could an S-rank reject Cassell?"
"It wasn't a violent organization."
Nono, who had been curled up deep in the sofa all this time, suddenly spoke.
"That was normal life." Nono raised her head.
"Normal life?" Guderian frowned.
"I used profiling on him." Nono closed her eyes, her eyelashes trembling slightly.
"...I felt despair."
"And there was a smell." Nono's voice faltered. "Sweet, like expired syrup. It was everywhere."
Everyone turned to look at her.
She clenched the tissue she had already torn into strips and remained silent for a long while.
Guderian was at a loss for words.
Although the stronger the bloodline, the stronger the premonition of Ragnarök, Lu Mingfei's case, in which even his despair had become fully tangible, was completely beyond anything they understood.
"Norma," Guderian called, forcing himself to speak. "Check what this walking headache has been up to lately!"
"Professor Guderian, over the past forty-eight hours, the subject has repeatedly searched for geographical information about Japan's Kanto region," Norma's gentle voice echoed through the room. "However, he has not browsed any travel guides. His primary search terms were Kanagawa Prefecture, Hakone, underground cavities, the load-bearing capacity of air raid shelters, and geological fault zones around Lake Ashi."
Ye Sheng's expression changed. "Japan? That's the Eight Families of Sheqi's territory."
"Why is he looking into Hakone's geological structure and air raid shelters? Is he going to explore dragon ruins inside an active volcano with his bare hands?" Guderian was dumbfounded. Is this what an S-rank is like? No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't follow Lu Mingfei's train of thought!
"But Professor," several lines of billing records appeared in red on Norma's screen, "the subject's financial situation is far from promising. He is currently searching for budget airline flights and ways to obtain quick unsecured loans. He appears extremely eager to travel to Japan's Kanto region."
Guderian's knees gave way, and he collapsed onto the sofa.
Heading into yakuza territory to stir up trouble? This isn't an ordinary S-rank anymore. This is a madman who refuses to play by any rules!
"I... I can't handle this!"
The old man sprang up as though his backside were on fire, frantically pulled a crumpled envelope from his inner pocket, and flung it onto the coffee table like a satchel charge.
"This is the recommendation letter from his parents! It's for our final attempt to persuade him! Nono, you're resourceful. Keep an eye on him over the next few days! Under no circumstances can we let him borrow from loan sharks and fly to Tokyo!"
Guderian picked up his briefcase from the floor and headed for the door, his steps somewhat unsteady.
"Professor, where are you going?" Ye Sheng asked.
"Russia! There's a promising new student in Siberia. I'm going to recruit her! I'll leave things here to you!"
Silence returned to the suite.
Nono pushed herself up using the armrest and picked up the envelope from the coffee table.
"I'll go keep an eye on him," she said.