Into the City

At the Rimnan train station, Lena and Maxim had just made it to board the 4:30 train to Chanan. As they both raced onto the platform, a conductor noticed them and asked the duo, “Are you guys here for this one?”

“Yep,” Maxim replied back.

“Come on in! You’re just in time!” Lena and Maxim then made it onto the train, and within just a few seconds, the conductor closed the door behind them as he shouted, “ALL ABOARD!” True to Lena’s word, the car they were in was deserted, with them being the only passengers besides the conductor. “Looks like you guys are all alone for now. It’s rare for anyone to get on the train here in the afternoon. Usually it’s the other way around.”

“We have to meet someone in Chanan,” Lena replied as she handed her ticket and Maxim’s ticket to be stamped by the conductor. “Nothing major.” She then turned to Maxim and explained after getting the tickets back, “There’s probably twenty people max on this train right now. Even by the time we get to Chanan, there’ll be at most one hundred and twenty. Compare that to the morning commute, where this train is packed like sardines in a can by the time it gets to Chanan Central.”

“I bet,” he replied. “I wonder if Yuna and Kana are on the same train.”

“If they ran over here fast enough, maybe. Otherwise, they’ll be on the train after this one.” She then looked around to see if the conductor was still in the car, and after seeing that he was not, she told Maxim, “We could hop on over to the other cars and look, but we have to be careful.”

“Isn’t that not allowed?”

Lena, showing a more playful and somewhat mischievous side to her, chuckled and reminded Maxim, “As Victoria says, anything’s allowed if you don’t get caught.”

Maxim laughed, telling Lena, “That’s fair. I mean, I don’t feel like getting kicked off a train today, but I guess we could try.”

The two then got up and looked around again to see if anyone was watching. They then slowly made their way to the door at the front end of the car, and when they got up to it, Lena turned the knob and slid it open, crossing over into the next car first before Maxim did the same. Maxim then carefully shut the door as quietly as possible before the two sat down in a seat. They did so just in time, as another conductor began to walk through the car. They both remained silent as he walked to the other end and then exited the car out the back door, and when he did, they both breathed a sigh of relief.

“That was close,” Lena sighed. “We were in the seventh car of eight, so we got another six to go before we get to the front.”

“And those two may not even be on this train,” Maxim pointed out. “But we should keep looking anyway.”

“Indeed.”

…

As it turned out, Kana and Yuna were in fact on the same train, albeit in the very first car closest to the front. The two sat across from each other in the very back of the car, having remained quiet ever since they boarded together. Then, after having stayed silent for so long, Kana spoke first, asking Yuna, “Are you wondering why I told you to come with me?”

“Yeah,” she nodded, still a bit worried about what Kana’s plan was. “I heard about what you did in the village, and… Um…”

“I know it must frighten you,” Kana replied. “But you have to understand what I’m up against. The Order of the Shining Light are a cult of murderers, cannibals, and more. If I had shown any of those five cultists any mercy and let them go, they would have gone on to kill more people. They almost captured and killed one of our own classmates, after all.”

“How do you know so much about them, Kana?”

Kana, clearly knowing the answer but not able to bring herself to say it, sighed and told Yuna with an expression of regret, “I’m not at liberty to say the exact reason, Yuna. I’m sorry. All I can say is that the cult has had a personal impact on me, and that is why I oppose it so stringently.”

Yuna wanted to pry more, but knew that she would not get any more of answer from her, and so she accepted what Kana told her. “I see…” Changing topic slightly, she then asked her, “Why don’t you want me getting involved in monster hunting like Lena and Victoria?”

“Because it’s far more dangerous than those two are letting you on. At any moment, either of them could be seriously injured or even killed doing this line of work. The pay isn’t great at all, and you’d be spending a lot of nights looking for monsters rather than focusing on other things. That’s not even getting into the matter of monsters with souls attached to them.”

“Huh?” Yuna, concerned about this, asked, “Monsters with souls attached to them?”

“Over the past few years, more and more monsters have been emitting one or even several streaks of light that shoot up into the sky upon death. Notably, these occurrences happen shortly after a murder or disappearance, most of which are suspected to be related to the Order of the Shining Light.”

“Wait, you don’t mean…”

“Exactly. The working theory, at least for me, is that the Order of the Shining Light is sacrificing people they kidnap and sealing away their souls into animals and smaller monsters to power them up and wreak more havoc on Tamara and beyond. As for why, well… They want to resurrect the Beast of Ralwan, the monster sealed away by King Alfred the Third long ago.”

“The Beast of Ralwan?! But that thing almost destroyed Chanan before it was sealed!”

“I know. That’s why I have to stop them. Lena and Victoria may try, but they won’t be able to get very far, I’m afraid.”

Yuna, feeling a sense of responsibility, asked Kana, “Is there anything I can do to help? Please, don’t say there isn’t, because I know there’s something. There has to be.”

“I don’t want you getting hurt, Yuna.”

“But I can’t just sit on the sidelines like this!” Getting more assertive, Yuna told Kana, “I want to help! I know it’s dangerous, but I can make my own decisions!”

“Listen,” Kana then said with a sigh. “Another reason I brought you out here is so you could go on a hunt with me. I want you to see the full picture of what it’s like to hunt a monster. Maybe then you’ll see how dangerous it really is, especially in a city like Chanan where there’s a lot of competition for monster-hunting. It’s not uncommon for there to be fights over it amongst us. I’ve fought a few monster hunters before. Please, at least hear me out.”

Yuna paused as she formulated an answer in her head, and then replied, “Okay. I’ll hear you out.”

Kana then looked at the window to the door in the rear of the train and noticed something. She sighed and said to Yuna, “Perhaps we’ve been followed.”

“By who?”

“No one that’s gonna be a threat to you.”

Not satisfied with her answer, Yuna demanded, “Well, who is it? Tell me!”

“Another monster hunter,” Kana replied. “She may be competing with me for hunts. She won’t care about you, but she may try to confront me. This is what life is like for a lot of monster hunters. It can get pretty cutthroat.”

On the other side of the glass, Lena had seen Kana turn and look at her, prompting her to quickly back out and retreat to the second car on the train. As she sat back down, Maxim asked her, “Did you find her?”

“She’s right in the rear seat of the first car,” she explained. “She’s definitely with Yuna, too. We need to keep following them, but we have to be careful since we know she knows about it.”

…

An hour after boarding the train, Lena and Maxim exited at Chanan Central. The train had gained some more passengers, but was still far from full. Even so, enough had boarded that the two of them were able to blend into the crowd as they began to follow Kana and Yuna into the main concourse of the station. As they walked out onto the main concourse, they were barely able to move through the throngs of people commuting out of the capital and to its suburbs. Seeing that moving through such a tight crowd might be an issue, Lena extended a hand to Maxim and asked him, “Take my hand. I don’t want you getting separated.”

“Wait, really?” Maxim blushed slightly, realizing that he was about to actually touch Lena, even if it was for a rather mundane reason. “Uh…”

“Just do it,” she insisted. “This crowd’s pretty bad!”

“Okay, okay,” Maxim replied as he took her hand and she led him through the crowd. As they walked, they soon spotted Kana and Yuna once again and began to follow them as they walked outside of Chanan Central and onto the city streets. He turned his head and saw the two of them about to board a rather old-fashioned double-decker motor bus, saying to Lena, “There! Hurry!”

Seeing that the two had boarded on the lower level, Lena and Maxim ran over and quickly hopped on the steps of the upper level. The attendant for the upper level said to them, bewildered by how fast they were going, “Woah, hey! Slow down! You gotta pay two pounds to get on!”

“Here,” Lena replied, unintentionally handing the attendant a five pound-coin instead of two one-pound coins in her haste. “Keep the change if there is any.” The two then sat down near the back right as the motor bus began to make its way down the street, carrying a full load of passengers on both decks. As they sat down, Lena told Maxim, “That was close, huh?”

“We almost lost them there,” he replied. “Now we just gotta watch out for them to get off.”

…

After about twenty minutes on the motor bus, Kana told Yuna as it came to a stop, “Let’s get off here. This is where I need to go.”

“Show me where to go,” Yuna replied. “I don’t often go to the city, so you’re my guide, Kana.”

As they got off, Kana looked around and saw a rather dilapidated but still occupied building to the right of them, with several people standing and milling around the front entrance, none of them in clean clothes. In addition, the air was filled with a rather pungent stench, much unlike the rather clean train station they had come from and especially unlike the small town their journey had started in. It was clear based on this and the surrounding buildings that they had gotten off in a rather rough neighborhood of Chanan. She looked at the numbers on the address plate and told Yuna, “This is the place.”

Clearly scared by her surroundings, Yuna got close to Kana and asked her, “Uh… Is this really safe? This place looks… Looks…”

“It looks dangerous,” Kana finished her sentence for her. “I know. Trust me, you’ll be fine as long as you stick with me, Yuna. These are the streets I grew up in before I came to Rimnan.”

Kana then walked up the front door, going past the stragglers out front without saying a word to them. Yuna tried to follow, but accidentally bumped into one of them. She turned and said, “I’m sor-“

Before she could finish her sentence, however, the man she bumped into turned around, his face covered in grime and sweat from what seemed to be a hard day’s work. He said to Yuna in a thick inner city accent, “You alright? Did I bump into you?”

“Oh, um… No, I did it to you…”

“Ah, okay. You know…” The man then looked Yuna up and down. “You’re pretty. What’s a girl like you doing around these parts?”

“She’s with me,” Kana replied, her own accent slightly changing to be closer to the inner city one the man had. “Don’t fuck with her. I’m from this area, so I still know some people that will beat the shit out of you if you lay a hand on her.”

“Chill out,” the swarthy man replied to Kana. “I wasn’t gonna do anything to her. I just think she looks good. It’s called being honest, you know.”

“You’re ’being honest’ to a teenager,” Kana pointed out. “Why don’t you back off and go after a girl that’s a bit closer to your age and not one that’s half your damn age?”

Annoyed, the man groaned, “Whatever. I don’t gotta deal with this shit.” He then turned back around and began talking to the other men congregated on the street.

With that out of the way, Kana opened the door, waving to Yuna and telling her, “Come on in.” Clearly wanting to stay away from the man out front, Yuna ran up the steps and joined her, not caring what the inside of the building looked like at that point.

While all of this went on, Lena and Maxim were watching the proceedings from an alleyway, having not been seen by Kana and Yuna at all. At least, that’s what they thought. Lena turned to Maxim and said to him, “I bet that one man’s gonna try to make a pass at me unless he deduces who I actually am.”

Curious, Maxim asked her, “How well-known are you?”

“My family is pretty well-known as a family of dukes,” Lena explained. “But as for me, well… My Uncle Michael holds the real power for now, so I haven’t been involved in any of the political decision-making that comes with being a duchess aside from making sure he consults with me before he makes a major decision. The people at school all know who I am since a majority of students at Rimnan are from noble families, and a good chunk of those that aren’t are still from upper class commoner families with connections to nobles. Out here, though… Most of the people don’t really know anyone besides the Imperial Family and a few nobles who are known for government roles beyond just their titles.”

“Interesting,” Maxim replied, always curious for more information about the world of Rimnan Castle School beyond what had merely been presented in canon when he watched and read the series. “Well, we might as well try to make our way in, or at least follow them as soon as they get out.”

“Indeed. I wonder why Kana brought her here…”

Maxim, of course, knew the answer, but could not tell Lena, at least not yet.