Chapter 121: Dan Heng: A Thorough Investigation Seems Necessary
"I don't have it."
Dan Heng gestured to his now-empty clothing trunk.
"...Oh. Sorry. Looks like it's really gone."
Dan Heng's expression remained flat, but a dangerous stillness settled over him. "No. How, exactly, did you lose my clothes?"
"To be precise," Rekka clarified with the air of a scholar explaining a complex theorem, "we gave that particular article of clothing away."
For a solid second, Dan Heng's brain simply stalled. "...What do you mean? Explain yourself. Clearly."
"Okay, so. You gave the clothes to me. Then, I wore them back to the past to fool Jing Yuan and the others. After successfully fooling them, we handed the clothes over to the version of Dan Feng who hadn't received them from you yet. That way, the clothes in that Dan Feng's possession would be preserved until they eventually reached you in the present, and once they reached you, you could give them to me again to start the loop."
Dan Heng's famously sharp mind processed the temporal knot with surprising speed. "You're saying the clothes are stuck in the past. They can't be retrieved."
"Exactly!" Rekka beamed.
With a long, weary sigh, Dan Heng closed the lid of the empty trunk. His voice carried the heavy weight of someone who had long since resigned himself to his fate. "—Go buy me a new one."
"Alright."
A short while later, Dan Heng stared at the garment Rekka had brought back for him, his mind falling into a state of deep, troubled thought.
"This... Do I really have to wear this?"
"Of course, of course! Don't you think it's cool?"
"But... wearing this kind of thing out in public is embarrassing, isn't it?"
"For my sake," Rekka said, slowly extending a clenched fist. "Put it on."
Dan Heng's face became a perfect mask of stoic suffering.
Meanwhile, March 7th pressed her ear against the door to the data bank, her brow furrowed in concentration.
[What are you listening to at the door~? Just go in and take a look ♭]
A mischievous grin spread across her face. She pushed the door open and was greeted by the sight of Dan Heng, who flinched as if struck by a physical blow the moment he was seen.
March 7th froze on the spot. A few seconds of stunned silence passed before she erupted into a violent, howling fit of laughter.
"Hahahahahahahahahahahaha—hic! hic..."
Oh no.
She laughed so hard she started hiccuping, then clutched her side as a painful stitch began to form.
"Hic! Hahaha... hic... Haha."
"March, are you okay?" Rekka asked, looking concerned.
"Hic... I'm fine... it's just... haha... Dan Heng, you... hahahahaha..."
Dan Heng's face was as dark as the bottom of a scorched pot. He looked down at the "new clothes" Rekka had so carefully chosen for him.
It was an ita-shirt, emblazoned with a massive, full-color print of the galactic superstar, Robin.
"Look at this color scheme! So eye-catching," Rekka declared, gesturing like a proud designer. "When you wear this out, everyone will know at a glance that you're a loyal, fanatical supporter of Miss Robin."
"I am not a fanatical supporter of Robin," Dan Heng stated, his face darkening several more shades.
"It's fine, Dan Heng! Think about it—if we're out trying to catch some bad guys, they might suspect the street vendor selling crispy pancakes, they might even suspect a passing child, but they would never suspect you." Rekka raised a finger, attempting to sell the shirt from the most absurd angle imaginable.
Dan Heng turned his pleading gaze to March 7th, who was still hiccuping helplessly at the door. "March, tell him off."
I'm out of options.
Tears of mirth were streaming down March's face. She opened her mouth to say something, but the second her eyes landed on the shirt again, she dissolved into another fit of hiccuping laughter.
"Dan Heng... haha... you..." She leaned against the doorframe, squeezing out a few words between gasps. "Just... wear it... it looks... quite good..."
In the end, Dan Heng accepted the clothes.
But he would absolutely, positively not wear them. Not even if it killed him. Absolutely not. It was far too mortifying to be seen in public.
However, given the general trajectory of his life recently, it was basically a foregone conclusion that he would be forced to wear it at some point in the future.
Dan Heng was already being molded into Rekka's plaything. How tragic.
"Why not wear it?" Rekka pressed.
"If I wear it," Dan Heng said through gritted teeth, "I feel like I'll lose something very important to me."
"That kind of thing isn't important at all."
"It's very important!"
"Then let's imagine this," Rekka proposed, his eyes gleaming. "A troublesome enemy is fighting you. In the heat of battle, you suddenly reveal this shirt. The enemy will definitely be stunned speechless by your attire, creating a perfect opening for you."
"...I think I'd be the one stunned into catatonia by my own embarrassing behavior."
"Sigh..." Rekka shook his head, a look of deep disappointment on his face.
What are you so disappointed about?! Dan Heng wanted to scream.
Rekka helped March 7th, who had nearly laughed herself into a convulsion, over to the sofa so she could catch her breath.
"You didn't take the chance to take advantage of me, did you?" March asked, finally getting her breathing even again after the stitch in her side subsided.
"I did," Rekka replied matter-of-factly. "It felt pretty good."
"What do you mean 'felt pretty good'? Only 'pretty good'?"
March 7th was, at times, not that easy to placate. In situations like this, the best course of action was to produce candy. March was a single-core processor; she couldn't handle dual-threading. The act of eating candy would occupy what little processing power she had left.
"Rekka, I learned some new abilities from my other self," she announced suddenly, her mood shifting. "Do you want to see?"
"New abilities?"
"The super powerful kind! Don't be scared, but... I can enter your inner world now!" March 7th stood up, planting her hands on her hips with a proud puff of her chest.
She reached out a hand, and a faint blue light shimmered at her fingertips. The light was soft and ethereal, like condensed mist, and it slowly drifted toward Rekka's forehead.
"Don't move. Let me try."
Rekka didn't flinch. The moment the blue light touched the space between his brows, March 7th's eyes suddenly widened, and she froze on the spot.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"Don't talk." March's voice became a hushed whisper, as if she were talking to herself. "I see it..."
"What did you see?"
"Your heart... there are so many worlds, all divided by emotions. Fear, sadness, anger, joy..."
"How much can you see?"
"A lot."
"Want to go in and play?"
"...Go in and play?"
"Yeah. How about Trailblazing my inner world? We can even place some Anchors while we're at it."
"I heard someone say 'Trailblaze'."
Stelle popped out from behind a nearby couch, seemingly materializing from nowhere.
"How can you go Trailblazing without calling me?!"
"Not today," Rekka said. "Today has to be March."
"Why? Are we not bros anymore? Has our revolutionary friendship faded?" Stelle's expression began to crumble. We're... no longer bros? "We've been through life and death together! Our bond is truer than refined gold!"
"Then why won't you let me play too?" Stelle's expression shifted from aggrieved to resentful, and then from resentful to some other indefinable, wounded emotion. She stood there with her arms crossed, her toe tapping impatiently against the floor. She looked just like Peppy after being told he couldn't go for a space walk.
"I know," she declared, her voice trembling. "You just want to be alone with March. You don't like me anymore."
"No, what you're saying is very easy to misunderstand."
"I don't care, I don't care, I don't care—!"
Stelle promptly threw herself onto the floor and began kicking her legs like a petulant child throwing a tantrum.
"Hey, Stelle, you can't do that, you'll flash everyone," March 7th sighed, squatting down next to her friend.
Rekka turned away from the scene, only to meet Dan Heng's gaze, which had become incredibly complicated.
"I want to go in, too."
"Wait, hold on, Dan Heng," Rekka sputtered, taken aback. "What do you want to do?!"
Dan Heng's eyes were fixed on him, an unreadable intensity within them.
He wanted to see. He needed to investigate.
[Inorin's Note:
Enjoying the story? Dropping a quick review, comment, or Power Stone means the world to me and keeps these daily updates flowing!
Want to read 50 chapters ahead or just want to help keep a shameless translator alive? (My livelihood actually depends on this, haha 😭). You can support me directly here:
(P.S. Just remove the brackets and replace the [.] with a regular dot . to use the links!)
✨ Patreon (50 Advanced Chapters): patreon[.]com/InorinTL
☕ Ko-fi (Support / Sponsor): ko-fi[.]com/InorinTL
Thank you so much for reading and keeping this project alive!]