Toyokawa Shoko doesn't want to become a witch

It was this composure that made Xiangzi feel as if he had suddenly become Watson.

She stared blankly as this memory was repeatedly paused, rewound, and replayed.

"Honey, did I do something wrong?"

"Then what should we really be paying attention to?" Mutsu's eyes reflected the scene in the miniature garden as she answered the question she had just posed. "It's what we should have been paying attention to."

"Honey, did I do something wrong?"

“I said before that Mortis wouldn’t put itself out there so openly,” Mu said calmly. “That was wrong. In fact, it has always been in the place where we can see it most easily.”

"Honey, did I do something wrong?"

"Honey, did I do something wrong?"

......

Mu repeated the same memory countless times, watching Xiang's mother being hit between the eyebrows and then rising unharmed from the pool of blood again and again.

again and again.

until......

"Honey, did I do something wrong?"

"Honey, did I do something wrong?"

"Honey, did I do something wrong?"

The repeated lines had almost imperceptible pauses.

Xiangzi subconsciously sensed something was wrong and blinked.

A woman with a hole in the back of her head, "Xiangzi's mother," teleported from inside the wall to in front of Xiangzi, her hollow, dilated pupils staring intently at him.

Mortis impersonated the "mother" in Xiangzi's memory who kept dying and coming back to life. Perhaps it played other roles as well, but Mu ultimately chose this segment that terrified her the most.

Mortis is not part of the memory, so when the memory reappears, it must pretend to be part of the memory.

Mortis's repeated playback of the same memory segment exposed his role-playing.

It gave up and charged straight out of the wall, intending to kill the weakest one, Xiangzi.

boom----!

A greatsword smashed Mortis's head.

But that's still not the real Mortis.

A sudden ripple appeared in the shadow beside Xiangzi, as if something was about to pierce out of the shadows.

Boom!

Another greatsword pierced through the shadows before anything could be done.

Everything happened in the blink of an eye. Before Xiangzi could react, the dead face that suddenly appeared in front of her didn't even give her a chance to scream before Mu's battle was over.

Mu turned his head to the side, the Soul Gem between his fingers, transparent threads coiling around two giant swords, controlling them to float beside him.

She didn't even transform.

"Xiang, it's dark under the lamp," Mu said calmly.

Xiangzi, still shaken, looked at Mortis's corpse as it gradually emerged from the shadows and swallowed hard.

"How did you find out...?"

"I only had a rough guess, which narrowed down the search area. I didn't expect it to appear so quickly."

As Mu spoke, he walked to Mortis's corpse, squatted down, examined its face which looked exactly like his own, and poked its cheek.

Just then, the white light that reset the world enveloped them.

Back in the central square, Mu still felt the sensation of touching Mortis on her fingers.

Hard.

Mortis is a puppet.

"Sending you here was definitely the right decision."

Everything was going as expected, and Xiangzi couldn't help but sigh, then asked another question.

"How about it? Does anything feel off?"

"Something's not right?" Mu tilted his head.

"Witch's Kiss."

Mu lowered her eyes and focused her gaze on her calves.

Xiangzi's gaze followed the downward movement.

Mu knelt on one knee, lifting her skirt slightly. On the calf of her leg, which was perpendicular to the ground, was the mark of a witch's kiss.

"Hmm." Mu nodded, touched the Witch's Kiss with her finger, and said softly, "So, that makes four, right, Xiang?"

It doesn't hurt when you touch it; the stinging sensation doesn't come from the skin, but from something deeper.

"Only the last one."

Xiangzi turned his head and looked at the huge white building.

"Five days left..."

Is that enough?

Mu stood beside Xiangzi, and together they looked up at the building that stretched as far as the eye could see.

For some reason, Xiangzi's heart skipped a beat when he heard Mu's words.

Is five days enough?

Yushina gave her a two-week deadline, and with five days left, she defeated four familiars.

Five days should be more than enough.

But Xiangzi felt inexplicably uneasy.

Five days.

Is that really enough?

The Tale of Nirvana: Keeping Your True Self: Chapter 115 What You Think About During the Day, You Dream About at Night

I saw the same scene again.

Xiangzi thought.

Before me was a pure white hall.

Xiangzi stood in a certain position in the hall, probably in the middle.

Is it in the middle? Xiangzi wasn't quite sure. The hall was so big that you could hardly see the edges, and she felt as small as an ant inside. For an ant, what difference would it make where in the Pacific Ocean it was, or whether it was in the middle or not?

Xiangzi gave up thinking and stood there in a daze.

The source of the light was unknown, and there wasn't even a shadow on the ground. It was minimalist, even rudimentary, like a game without any models.

Faint music echoed in the empty space.

Xiangzi finally had a goal.

She looked in the direction the music was coming from, and at the end of her line of sight, there was a shadow that she could barely make out.

She walked toward the protruding shadow.

It turned out to be a dressing mirror.

Xiangzi squinted.

The source of the sound was on the table next to the dressing mirror.

She strode toward the dressing mirror, her little leather shoes making a crisp sound as they hit the ground.

Da da da.

The music became clearer and clearer, and she was able to hear what the song was about.

We stand on either side of the stairway to heaven, reflecting on our lives, discussing the past years and events...

She stood before the dressing mirror, lowered her head, and looked toward the source of the sound on the dressing table.

The source of the sound was a Sony Walkman, a classic model, battery-powered, an old thing from the last century. The cassette tape, which looked equally old, was spinning inside, producing a sound with a noticeable background noise.

In addition, there was a pile of parts on the table.

Xiangzi could recognize that if these parts were assembled together, they would become her commonly used M1911 pistol. Now, these disassembled parts were placed next to the tape, as if telling her to assemble them.

Following his inner guidance, Xiangzi picked up the parts and assembled them little by little.

There was a bullet between the parts. Xiangzi stuffed it into the barrel and finally finished assembling the gun.

She gripped the pistol, raised her head, and looked at the vanity mirror.

She saw herself smiling in the mirror, holding a pistol, aiming at Xiangzi's forehead and pulling the trigger.

boom!

The bullet pierced the mirror and grazed Xiangzi's cheek.

? !

In Xiangzi's eyes, the world slowed down, and even she herself slowed down. In the mirror, Toyokawa Xiangzi grinned and reached out her hands from the broken mirror, grabbing Xiangzi's throat. The pistol and Walkman were knocked away by her movements and fell to the ground.

We're facing each other, and across from you is...

Click.

The singing stopped abruptly.

Xiangzi saw her own grinning reflection in her eyes, her mind still in a state of chaos. She tried in terror to pry open the hands reaching out from the mirror, but she couldn't muster any strength.

Black borders began to appear at the edges of my field of vision, and I could see less and less.

My thinking is becoming increasingly unclear.

Like a drowning person struggling to their last breath, Xiangzi watched helplessly as the light emanating from the water's surface receded further and further away from him...

Just as consciousness was about to fade, it felt as if I had stepped onto solid ground, and the feeling of being choked disappeared.

What happened? Where am I? Why can the hand in the mirror reach out? Is she trying to strangle me?

Xiangzi thought about it with lingering fear, and touched his neck with a lingering sense of unease.

What on earth happened just now?

Is the person in the mirror another personality?

What was that place we just saw?

besides......

Where is this place?

The sound of the wind rustling through the treetops filled my ears, and the sunlight streaming from the sky replaced the light source that seemed to come from nowhere. All around me were birdsong and the fragrance of flowers, and the highly saturated, vibrant colors filled my eyes, making me feel as if I were in a fairyland.

But this fairyland made her hands and feet feel cold.

Xiangzi was standing at the entrance of the villa estate.

The dilated pupils suddenly shrank.

This is my home, or more accurately, my former home.

Xiangzi no longer cared why he had come from that pure white space to his doorstep. He stood at the door for a long time, his limbs weak and unable to move, his clothes soaked with cold sweat.

She took a deep, difficult breath, turned and went through the small door next to the main gate, walking across the garden with the fountain.

An angel statue holding a water bottle pours cool spring water into the pool, creating ripples and tiny water droplets that float in the air. Standing on the delicate, dewy petals, the flowers in the garden are as vibrant as they were on the day she left, swaying in the breeze, and the air is filled with a faint floral fragrance.

Go around the fountain.

Arriving at the gate, Xiangzi placed his palm on the door panel.

Want to go in?