[On the bustling, noisy modern street, the once-teeming crowds seemed to have been separated by some invisible barrier.]
[Several adult men in dark haori and hakama, wearing setta sandals, looked like outsiders who had stepped out of an old ghost scroll. In a semicircular hunting formation, they had a small figure with a backpack firmly cornered against a wall.]
[Standing at the very front, looking down at the little boy, was a young man with golden-brown dyed hair tips and a face so handsome it was almost bewitching, yet his features carried a sinister, frivolous air.]
[It was Naoya Zenin. The mere sight of his face brought disgust surging up from the depths of your memories. Counting those stretches spent in the damned simulations, it felt as though many years had passed since you had last seen that nauseating exterior.]
[At that moment, Naoya leaned down slightly and abruptly reached out with his slender fingers, rudely clamping Megumi Fushiguro's chin in his grip. His fingertips pressed harder, forcing the child, only a few years old, to raise his head and endure his unrestrained scrutiny.]
[There was not a trace of an elder's care in his movements. He was as rough as someone critically inspecting a cheap, dust-covered item newly delivered to an antique shop, with a nauseating arrogance ingrained in his very bones.]
["Let me see..."]
[Naoya spoke unhurriedly in his distinctive, languid, cloying Kyoto dialect, his narrow, foxlike eyes squinting slightly as his gaze roamed the boy's face like a snake's flickering tongue.]
[The instant he clearly saw Megumi Fushiguro's features, Naoya's previously indifferent pupils contracted violently, almost imperceptibly. An indescribable shudder of excitement shot through his spine like electricity, reaching deep into his heart.]
[So alike.]
[*That jawline, the shape of those brows and eyes, especially those eyes