I smirked and asked,

"So, you're not afraid that I might be one of those... monsters too?"

"Oh, no!" Anne said confidently. "You can spot them right away, they're terrifying. But you... well..." She hesitated slightly. "You're dressed so elegantly, like someone straight out of a fashion magazine. That coat is so stylish..."

"This? It's Rick Owens! From his latest collection," I boasted.

Had I died and gone to heaven? Someone was actually willing to talk to me about fashion and art? (Though, honestly, it’d be better if she used the word "monsters" a little less often when referring to people like me.)

"I read a lot about fashion," she continued. "I know God disapproves of vanity, and yet... I’d love to know how to dress well too. Not out of arrogance — just because it’s beautiful! God can’t disapprove of beauty, right? But usually, the things I like don’t suit me at all, and the things that do… I just can’t figure them out. I’ve been reading about style types, but it hasn’t helped much. How did you learn all this?"

"Heh, I had the best teacher in the world!"

A hundred moments flashed through my mind — times when Kouyou, sometimes gently, sometimes with brute force, but always with patience, hammered this knowledge into my thick skull.

Like that one time when I was about thirteen, and the Mafia was hosting some big formal dinner. My hair looked like a damn ikebana arrangement, my face was caked with makeup, and I couldn't for the life of me tie my obi properly. I was praying Mori wouldn't take his sweet time fixing my kimono like last time, or I'd puke. Meanwhile, Kouyou was putting the finishing touches on my "ethereal beauty" and rambling about Heian-era color palettes, kasane no irome.

"Kouyou, no offense, but I don’t give a shit about these maple leaves, chrysanthemums, and whatever else. If I ever need to, I’ll just Google the names."

"It's not about the names, Chuuya!" she sighed. "I'm trying to tell you that clothing is a language. Every pattern, every color carries meaning, evokes associations. The Heian nobles understood this better than anyone. It’s about feeling the world around you, moving in harmony with it — not dissolving into it like sugar in warm water, but being the essential, most beautiful detail. The season, the weather, the city, the people around you, how you look, how you smell, what you're thinking about, what memories you're carrying — it should all come together, like a mosaic, like music. You exist in the world, and the world exists in you. That’s what matters. The names, sure, you can just Google."

Kouyou had a way of making it sound beautiful. Wabi-sabi, yūgen, miyabi, iki — all that stuff. Sounds like pretentious nonsense, some mystical "Japanese soul" crap for tourists, but if you actually get it, it makes perfect sense. I had to learn it the hard way, through effort. But Kouyou? She just saw the world that way — like a flowing painting, a river of associations, where she could instantly spot every wrong brushstroke. Wish I had that kind of eye, that way of explaining things.

"Style types are bullshit," I told Anne. "Well, I mean, they’re just one tool out of a million. The most important thing is..." I hesitated. I wasn’t Kouyou, I couldn’t articulate this shit properly. Actually, if I was being honest, I sucked at explaining things altogether. "It’s about who you are. Looking good means knowing yourself. One day you might want to tell people one thing about you, the next day something else — but through it all, you’re still you."

Judging by her face, I had not, in fact, delivered an enlightening revelation. Great job, Chuuya. Real smooth.

"Right, well... I should probably get going," I said awkwardly.

"Will you come back here again?" she asked hopefully.

I did come back... and then I came back again.

Anne and I had some nice talks about art and fashion. I gave her some tips on her wardrobe because, honestly, the way she dressed was a goddamn tragedy. But, if I was being real, I wasn’t visiting just for our little style consultations — I was checking up on Dazai, worried about how he was holding up. Not that he knew, of course. If he had, he would’ve laughed his ass off.

I even considered moving out of my hotel in Soho to be closer to that damn Avalon place. But the thing was... I actually liked Soho. There were some fantastic bars with great regulars near my hotel, plus a Vivienne Westwood boutique just around the corner. Besides, it probably wouldn’t do anyone any good if I started hanging around that orphanage 24/7.

Surprisingly, Dazai texted me a lot. His messages were long and boring, like some shitty novel (I usually replied with something like "yeah cool"). Sometimes he’d ramble about the most random crap. One time, he sent me:

"'O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.' — You know where that’s from?"

"From a quote generator? ;)" I texted back.

Or this gem:

"Have you ever considered that by calling time the fourth dimension, we imply it’s a completed process — that everything that is meant to happen has already happened? We only perceive it as a flow because, being three-dimensional beings, we can’t see the full picture. It’s just one of many theories suggesting that the future is predetermined and free will is an illusion."

I snapped.

"Fuck, spare me the shizoteric bullshit! Just start a blog or something."

He went radio silent for a while after that. Long enough for me to get worried and send:

"Yo, you still in our dimension?"

To which he responded with something snarky and dripping with sarcasm.

When he wasn’t busy feeding his army of brain-roaches, Dazai updated me on whatever he had learned inside the cult, and I filled him in on what I managed to dig up outside of it. The investigation, however, was going nowhere.

Even though he had dismissed my theory that Joanne’s nullifying ability belonged to someone else, he still went ahead and double-checked her entire inner circle — studied their histories in detail — and ruled everyone out. Digging into Joanne’s background didn’t help either.

Her official biography, easy to find online, read like some Hollywood tearjerker. Just an "ordinary woman, a loving wife, and a devoted mother of several wonderful children" who, one day, while driving through the city, crashed into a gifted individual — a man with the ability to turn into solid rock. Supposedly, her husband died in the accident. Two of her children too. Only one son survived. Joanne herself miraculously lived and, after recovering, was "blessed" with the power to strip abilities from the gifted.

The first person she "cured"? The rock-man himself, who had come to her full of guilt, begging to be freed from his cursed existence. But she didn’t kill him — oh no, she "forgave his sins," saying, "Forgive your enemies."

What a load of sentimental horseshit.

The story reeked of fabrication. For one thing, it was weird as hell that Joanne awakened her power in adulthood — most abilities emerge in childhood. But when I tracked down her relatives, including her mother in a nursing home, they all backed up the official narrative: yes, Joanne had a wonderful family, a loving husband, kids, the accident happened, and so on. Clearly, someone had scrubbed their memories clean. But knowing that didn’t help much. There was nothing solid to latch onto.

We were stuck.

Days passed like that.

And then something happened.

The sound of a gunshot carries for about two or three kilometers, but in a big city, it gets lost among a million other loud noises. Plus, the rain muffles everything, so let’s say one kilometer at most.

Why am I saying this? Well, if I’d been hanging out in some bar back in Soho, I wouldn’t have heard the shot. But I just so happened to be nearby — like a goddamn guardian angel.

(If we’re being completely honest, I was actually browsing clothes at the Spitalfields Market. Still think the whole East End is a fucking dump, but they had some interesting designer pieces. Either way, I was lurking around close to Avalon.)

Thanks to my gravity control, I can move fast — run? jump? fly? Hell, I’m not good with words to begin with, and in this case, it was all of the above. I launched myself toward Avalon, bouncing off walls and whatever other vertical surfaces I could find. A whole lot of people probably saw me, but it was late, dark, and rainy, and I was moving way too fast for anyone to get a good look. In their memories, I was probably nothing more than a drunken hallucination — a nightmare on the wings of the night.

Then it hit me — most people have phones. So much for staying under the radar. Oh well. Sometimes it’s a good thing when the body moves faster than the brain.

I covered the one-kilometer distance from the market to Avalon in about thirty seconds. Not bad for a PE class, but in this situation? Maybe too slow. Maybe deadly slow...

Dazai, where the hell are you, you idiot? I scanned the building with my inner vision; the place was full of unfamiliar silhouettes, none of them the one I needed. A few windows were lit — probably the kids waking up, startled by the gunshot so close by.

Too late?

Then I saw the roof. And a few very familiar figures on it.

Dazai, standing right at the edge. Wilde, gun in hand — holding it with surprising competence for a rich boy. And pressed against his back, terrified, was my art room buddy, Anne Brontë.

And the second I laid eyes on them, Dazai spread his arms out like a goddamn movie star and let himself fall backward — off the roof.

I lunged after him in one huge, desperate leap, nearly having a heart attack in the process. Snatched him by the collar of his coat midair.

“You fucking insane?!” I yelled.

The sound he made in response was either a relieved sigh or a disappointed groan.

“Knew you would catch me.”

If you squinted, maybe we looked like Superman and Lois Lane. But in reality? Dazai dangled in the air like a kitten being carried by the scruff. His coat sleeve was dark with blood, but the wound was shallow — the bullet had just grazed his shoulder.

“You rely on me way too much,” I snapped.

“Who else am I supposed to rely on? Certainly not myself,” Dazai smirked.

I shook him so hard his teeth clicked. Yeah, very funny, asshole.

Then I shot back up and, with very little grace, dumped his ass back on the roof — from a safe height, sure, but I wouldn’t have minded if he broke a leg. Idiot.

The other two were still there. Wilde fired a few shots at me — wasted effort, of course. I had already thrown up a gravity shield. Realizing his gun was useless, he tossed it aside and bolted for the exit. Anne just stood frozen, staring at me like she’d seen a ghost.

I dropped down and, the second my feet touched the roof, made it as heavy as Jupiter. Okay, maybe not Jupiter — I’ve never been there — but heavy enough that everyone on the rooftop, except me, got slammed down and flattened against it.

“There we go,” I said, pleased, stepping toward Wilde and Anne. With every step I took, the gravity increased, pressing them harder into the rooftop. “Nobody’s going anywhere.”

This trick only worked on a solid, limited surface — just like this one. I was probably looking insanely cool right now. Or just insane. Judging by Anne’s terrified expression, probably the latter.

“Chuuya, would you please...” Dazai groaned. “...cut it out? My intestines are tying themselves in knots...”

“You got a better idea? If I lighten the gravity, they’ll run! And I can’t adjust it just for you!”

“Also, I think I broke my leg when I landed,” he whined.

“Did you break it, or do you think you did?” I asked shrewdly.

“Chuuya, my head’s about to explode, and blood’s gonna start leaking from my eyes. Literally. I’m begging you — let’s go classic: gags, ropes...”

I picked up the gun Wilde had tossed, flipping it in my hand. A Walther PPK — like Agent Scully’s. Small and deadly. Kind of like me. I checked the ammo — still a few bullets left.

Crouching beside Wilde, I pressed the barrel to his head.

Returned the gravity to a nice, normal 1G.

Wilde, undoubtedly, felt the change. But he also saw the gun against his forehead — so did Anne — so nobody dared to move.

“Alright, go get your ropes,” I told Dazai.

He got to his feet, rubbing his forehead. His eyes — and everyone else’s, for that matter — were bloodshot as hell. Guess I overdid the gravity a little.

“This is all your fault!” he suddenly declared and yanked a piece of paper from Wilde’s pocket, holding it up like a prosecutor presenting evidence.

It was a sketchbook page, drawn in a style I recognized — Aubrey Beardsley knockoff. A delicate, androgynous figure perched on a windowsill, one knee bent, the other leg dangling, a gloved hand holding a cigarette. The coat was drawn with rough, flowing lines, folding behind them like wings. The face was pretty spot-on. And even though the whole portrait was in black and white, the artist had decided to color the hair — bright red. As if on purpose, so that no one would have any doubts about who the model was.

At the bottom, in neat handwriting: "Angel of the Art Room ♥"

“Oh, Anne, this is amazing,” I said, genuinely touched. Kinda made me feel bad for showing up like some nightmarish monster. “I love how you did the hair and the folds here—”

“Quit complimenting yourself,” Dazai scoffed. “Mind explaining why the hell you were even here? What were you doing?”

“Worried about your stupid ass! And I just saved you, in case you didn’t notice!”

“Well, actually,” Wilde interjected angrily, “I never liked you from the start, Ikita, and this drawing — and my conversation with Anne — only confirmed my suspicions...”

Dazai, ignoring him completely, kept ranting:

“Did I ask you to save me? That’s the twenty-third beautiful suicide you’ve ruined for me!”

“More like your twenty-third stupid suicide joke in the past three days.” (Okay, maybe just the seventh, but who’s counting?) “Idiot, I leave you alone for five minutes, and you immediately get yourself into some kind of shit!”

“Oh, sorry for inconveniencing you. Must’ve interrupted your thrilling tour of clothing stores and gay bars.”

“One more word, and I’m dropping you off this roof again.”

“And you broke my leg, by the way, you incompetent hero.”

“You’re just a clumsy sack of shit.”

“You narcissistic moron.”

“You pretentious asshole.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Wilde groaned. “You’ve won. Isn’t that enough? Do you have to turn everything into some ridiculous farce?”

Dazai grinned, like he’d just been complimented.

“And we do it so well.” Then, turning to me: “Alright, truce. I think we can spin this little ‘incident’ to our advantage.”

Limping slightly (nah, he clearly hadn’t broken his leg in the fall — just twisted it, at most), he headed for the rooftop exit and came back a while later with a coil of high-quality hemp rope and, uh... a large butcher’s knife.

A cold shiver ran down my spine because the appearance of sharp objects usually signaled the return of Mori’s prized student in all his nastiest glory.