Autophagy

Song Lei felt a tugging at his sleeve. When he turned his head, he saw Sugihara staring at him with sparkling eyes.

"I have an idea," she said.

Song Lei took a step back.

"What is it?" He asked.

"We can't pass through this corridor, right?" Sugihara asked for him to confirm. Seeing him nod, she continued by saying, "And we don't have anything to do. Why don't we relocate one time, pass this corridor and wait at the exact same space the door would be? We can then keep relocating again and again until we manage to land there."

Listening to her plan, Song Lei touched his chin to think about it for a second. The more he thought about it, it seemed to become more plausible to his eyes.

"That's actually..." Song Lei started talking. Sugihara's sparkling gaze was making him feel a bit uncomfortable. "That's a very good idea. Let's try that," Song Lei said. Hearing his praise, Sugihara nodded happily and held onto his arm.

They both closed their eyes and waited four seconds for the relocation to happen. As the countdown was over, they opened their eyes in a perfectly synced manner. They had done this a lot, so they had gotten used to it.

"Um... It's a wall..?" Sugihara muttered. There was a cold hard wall right up to their face.

"It definitely is a wall... Let's relocate again," Song Lei said. They both closed their eyes again and relocated. This time, they had landed on a sub-space that had a corridor that could be passed, unlike the other one.

"Huh..."

They both looked at the long corridor and started walking ahead. After they reached the spot that would correspond to the place the door was in the other sub-space, they stopped.

*Thud

Just as they were about to close their eyes and relocate again, they heard a faint thud from a nearby room. Just after this slight thud, the door creaked open and someone started running towards them while making weird noises. Song Lei, thinking that he was in grave danger, quickly raised his calculus book to read it out loud.

However, before he could manage to do so, this person had already managed to reach them.

"Sob* Sugihara! I was so scared! WAAH!" This person jumped and hugged Sugihara. With her blonde hair and slender body, Song Lei could easily understand that this person was, in fact, Nishimura.

"Here here... It's okay now. Don't cry," Sugihara kept consoling Nishimura while patting her back. Song Lei could see motherly love on her face.

"I- I met another one of those monsters! I kept my eyes closed and escaped just like you said. I- It was so scary that..." Nishimura kept telling about what happened to her without taking any breather in between. It could be understood that she was very scared of her skin color. She had become so white from fear that a normal person would think that she was a ghost if they saw her.

It took more than ten minutes for Nishimura to calm down. She had finally stopped talking about how scared she was.

"You don't have to cry anymore, as we have someone that will save us from this place!" Sugihara said as if she was advertising a product. "Here he is! The famous ghost hunter himself! Presenting to you, Toda Anzai!" She finished her introduction by Showing Song Lei with her hands.

Song Lei facepalmed hard at Sugihara's weird presentation. He truly didn't know what to say. Fortunately, though, her little joke seemed to have lightened their mood. Nishimura had calmed down and was actually chuckling a little bit.

"What is Toda doing here?" Nishimura asked while looking at Sugihara.

"Apparently, he is some kind of exorcist or something," Sugihara explained. Nishimura looked at her with a confused expression on her face.

"I wouldn't believe that normally but..." Nishimura said. She looked at Song Lei's stoic face and stopped talking. She had seen a lot of unbelievable things today. Toda being an exorcist couldn't be the most surprising amongst them.

Song Lei misunderstood Nishimura's silence and touched his face to see if anything was wrong with him. 'Do I really look like an exorcist? How would an even exorcist look like?' He thought.

"Well... Whatever. Toda seems to have some amount of ability to protect us from monsters. We're currently trying to leave here," Sugihara said. She then went on to explain what had happened with Song Lei so far. When they were done, she also explained what they were currently trying to do. Being showered with new information, Nishimura had to spend some time understanding everything.

"I understand... I think," Nishimura said with a frown on her face. This place was really bizarre. She wasn't an occultist like Sugihara and it was a bit harder for her to comprehend such things.

Finishing with her thoughts, she bowed ninety degrees towards Song Lei.

"We'll be in your care from now on!" She said with respect. Song Lei tried his best to not frown. He wasn't used to being treated this way.

"It's okay... I'm doing my job after all," Song Lei said. As Nishimura finally stopped bowing, they got back to their previous mission.

They stopped at the exact spot the weird door was and formed a circle. They looked like they were doing some kind of weird ritual.

They all closed their eyes to relocate.

Unfortunately, they didn't land on the right sub-space.

They repeated their actions in a uniform manner but they still couldn't go to the right place.

Time after time, they kept relocating. Song Lei was actually pretty surprised that they hadn't encountered another person or monster in these sub-spaces.

Finally, after relocating more than a hundred times, they managed to reach the right sub-space.

All three of them looked at the door standing right in front of them. Now taking a closer look, there was a weird emblem engraved on the wooden door. Also, this door had a much different design compared to the other ones. Although it was the same as others, the feeling it gave was much different.

Song Lei tried to turn the knob of the door to open it, however, he couldn't do so.

"What are we going to do now?" Nishimura asked with a deep frown on her face.

It felt like there was a big, uniform wall standing tall, blocking them from seeing whatever was inside the room. The emblem on top of it was in the shape of a heater shield with a black and red color palette. It had a bloody, red-pupilled eye right in the middle of it as if it was staring right into their souls. Its stare made the two girls shiver in their place.

Song Lei kept inspecting the door as best as he could. He stared back at the eye and saw that there was a hole right in the middle of its pupil. Seeing this, a wide smile found its place on his face. His smile caused the two girls standing right beside him to raise their brows.

Song Lei unzipped his backpack and started searching through it. After looking for some time, he found what he was searching for.

'Finally. I knew that I was right,' Song Lei praised himself in his head. He held the ruby gemstone in his hand and looked at it.

Nishimura and Sugihara both took deep breaths and looked at Song Lei.

"How did you find this!?" Sugihara asked.

"What? Why?" Song Lei asked. He had no idea why Sugihara was acting like this.

"I didn't know you were doing robbery as a side job. I think you should stick with exorcism," Nishimura said sarcastically while crossing her arms in front of her.

"What do you mean robber? I don't understand what you guys are trying to imply?" Song Lei said.

"Are you serious right now?" Sugihara asked. Seeing Song Lei tilting his head to the side, implying that he had absolutely no idea, she sighed and facepalmed. "You're serious after all..."

"That gemstone was something that was stolen from the National Museum a few weeks ago! Its name is Eye of Moteus! It belongs to the God of Vengeance," Nishimura explained. "The whole police force was searching for this stone! I heard that they were even thinking of mobilizing the army!" Hearing her words, Song Lei looked at the gemstone in his hands.

"I've never heard of that god before," he said. "And no, I wasn't the one who stole it. Do you really think that I can steal it? I found it inside this basement."

"You're a god damn magician of some kind. You could've very well stolen it," Nishimura said. Thinking about her words, Song Lei facepalmed.

"That seems fair," he said. He didn't know how to refute. "Well... Whatever. Whether I stole it or not doesn't matter now."

"Why did you even take it out?" Nishimura asked.

Song Lei didn't answer and turned around. He raised the gemstone carefully and aligned it with the hole on the door.

'Here goes nothing!' Song Lei thought. He took a deep breath and inserted the gemstone into the hole.

*Click