Everything around him had long since been reduced to gray and white.
What had been stripped away was not merely color, but emotion as well-his feelings toward this world, and this world's feelings toward him.
Kallen walked through the crowd and saw two newsboys holding up newspapers and hawking them. Their voices should have been loud and clear, yet Kallen could hear nothing.
The two newsboys also ignored Kallen, who was closest to them, and instead ran toward more distant passersby to sell their newspapers and the new cigarettes in the display boxes slung at their waists.
Two cars had collided at an intersection. Their hot-tempered drivers were already wrestling with each other, while the cars stuck behind them honked furiously to hurry them along.
Kallen walked silently through the intersection, yet could not sense even the slightest clamor.
He kept moving. Perhaps aimlessness was itself a kind of aim.
He did not know what he was doing, because he did not need to know. When he reached the place he was supposed to reach, there would be something he was supposed to do.
He was like a cold, humanoid gear, without a self, yet turning with unwavering persistence.
At this moment, Kallen was undoubtedly an extremely dangerous presence. Even setting aside his identity and position, his individual strength alone would cause terrifying harm if he lost control in a densely populated area.
The histories of the various churches had never lacked such cases of Lost Ones. Some extreme cases had even caused small-scale natural disasters.
An election motorcade passed before Kallen, and he looked at Rotini, seated in an open-top car.
Rotini wore a radiant smile and waved tirelessly. A faint point of light flickered between his brows, like a seed about to sprout and open his mind wide.