"Senior, I'm leaving."
"Go, go" said the black haired man indifferently to his colleague.
"Overtime again?" asked a blond man this time, sitting down beside him.
"Saito" said Kaito, recognizing his only true friend in the entire company. "It's not like I have anything to do at home, it's better to stay and earn money."
"Tsk, it's been years since your mother died. You should have gotten over it by now."
"I already did. But that doesn't mean there's someone waiting for me at home every time I come back, you know?" Kaito replied.
"Well then, why don't you get a girlfriend?"
"Who would want a twenty seven year old man who looks thirty five and has the physical strength of someone in his fifties? Better stop bothering me and go back home, you're the one who has a wife."
However, after speaking, Kaito received no response, so he looked at Saito in confusion.
He was completely frozen, as if someone had pressed pause.
Kaito looked around. Everything was completely static and gray, as if it were a fake world and he were the only real one.
At that moment, a sudden headache struck him, and thousands of memories flooded his mind.
"System, what happened?"
[The skill "Impenetrable Mind" detected weak mental states: loneliness, nostalgia, and sadness, so it directly nullified them, which also destroyed your dream.]
"So I'm dreaming" Kaito said, looking around.
Even though he should feel nostalgic about that place from his past life, he felt nothing. In fact, he did not miss that place at all. It was simply the loneliest time of his life, so he associated that feeling with that place.
[Do you want to wake up?]
"Wake me up, what a depressing place."
Kaito said, looking at the place without any pleasant feelings toward it.
---
Kaito woke up in the same bed as before, in the same hotel as before.
Yesterday, after obtaining the Lechermand Cube and somehow ending up killing Freddy Krueger without discovering his origin, Kaito spent the afternoon dealing with nearby members of the black organization, which for Kaito meant the entire United States.
After all that, he returned to the exact same place as before, not only without trying to stay unnoticed, but also intentionally trying to attract attention.
And the fact that no one had come for him anyway made him think that maybe the government had one of the objects and knew about the situation. Otherwise, it was impossible that no one had seriously tried to arrest him.
Especially because one of the warehouse members was literally the head of the FBI.
But leaving yesterday's matters in the past, Kaito decided to go for the next object.
Without wasting much time, the two of them headed toward an amusement park three states away.
"Your speed is very convenient," Shiho praised, observing her surroundings. "So we're going to the mirror house, right?" she asked, looking at a huge tent in the middle of the place, clearly the most popular attraction in the park.
They approached and entered.
Curiously, there was no line despite its popularity. Several people could be seen entering and leaving every minute, without any gap between them.
Even more curious was that when they entered, they found themselves alone, even though many others had gone in before.
Well, "alone," if you did not count the hundreds of reflections around them, which seemed to have a life of their own, barely recognizable as reflections and not as other people.
"Should we hold hands so we don't get lost, like in manga?" Shiho joked, looking at the place that gave off a strange feeling.
"There's no need, stay behind me" Kaito replied, before protecting them with a shadow shield shaped like a cloak.
Before Shiho understood what was happening, Kaito simply started moving forward.
"Wait, there's..."
Crash!
Her last words did not come out when Kaito walked straight through the mirror in front of him.
"You didn't really think I was going to waste time doing the maze, right?" Kaito said mockingly.
Shiho wanted to say something, but in the end she just shrugged and stood behind him.
Crash!
Crash!
Crash!
Kaito kept moving forward. Without using any force, the mirrors shattered at the slightest contact, as if they were meeting an unstoppable force, sending glass everywhere.
Finally, they reached the last one, stuck against the wall.
This time, Kaito did not move forward.
But his reflection did.
It kept walking until it stepped out of the mirror, with a frozen smile on its face.
Kaito looked at it curiously, wondering if it also had abilities.
However, that was impossible. If it did, it would have already moved to try to kill him.
Kaito moved quickly. Because of the short distance, it looked like a dash forward, ending with Kaito punching the reflection in the stomach.
It immediately shattered into fragments of glass that scattered everywhere.
"Was that a doppelganger that came out of a mirror? I would have liked to investigate it, but it seems to be made of glass" Shiho said without surprise. If there were weird things in a mirror house and they were not clones, that would have surprised her.
And although Kaito said nothing, he was thinking exactly the same thing.
'System, where did that clone come from? I don't remember any story with clones coming out of mirrors.'
[Remember that they were adapted to this world's lore. Perhaps the mirror did not exist in the original story. The creators of this world invented it as a medium for the clones.]
'Then it could be from any clone movie,' Kaito thought.
However, he did not dwell on it too much.
He extended his hand toward the mirror, but at that moment it changed. It no longer looked like a mirror, but like a door to another place, and from there came out a short, fat man dressed in a very unique way.
A monocle, a cane, a top hat, and a formal suit in flashy blue and white colors.
"Wait, please," the man begged.
"Are you?"
"I'm Edward Parkbell, the owner of this park and of the mirror. I beg you not to take it, I... my wife is in there," he said with tears in his eyes.
"Is your wife a clone?" Kaito asked with interest.
"N-no. My wife died a long time ago from an illness, but God gave me a second chance. Through the mirror, I could meet her again."
"Listen, Ed, it doesn't work like that" Kaito said.
"You don't understand. My wife is in there. Why do you want to take her away from me?" Edward began to mutter angrily.
"And what about the rest?" Kaito replied.
"T-the rest?"
"That's right. At least one out of every ten people who enters here never comes out. What does your wife have to do with replacing people? What does it have to do with taking their families away from them?"
"T-this is a mistake. My wife needs life force to keep living. But I don't want others to be sad, so she gives them a replacement. That way no one loses their loved ones. That way everyone is happy."
Kaito remained silent for a moment.
"You sound so convinced that I even started to doubt whether your wife is a clone or a zombie that feeds on people" he said.
"Then..."
"But it's not like I really care."
He extended his hand toward the mirror.
Edward tried to stop him, even pushing him, but with his strength, Kaito did not even feel it.
The moment he touched the mirror:
[Death Object obtained.]
[Current objects: 4.]
[End mission?
Yes / No ]
Kaito looked at the screen for half a second longer than necessary.
'No.'
At the same time, the mirror completely disappeared, which annoyed him a little.
'If they didn't disappear instantly, I could use the Death Note and finish this faster.'
"You bastard!"
Edward roared in rage as he ran toward him to hit him.
Kaito let him approach without dodging.
His hand vibrated.
When Edward reached him, his heart was pierced, and he died instantly.
"What about the clones?" Shiho asked.
"They should disappear completely" Kaito replied.
"And him?"
"I'll take care of it."
Kaito made sure to destroy the corpse with fire before quickly leaving the maze.
"What's next? Where are we going?"
"You seem pretty impatient" Kaito said.
"Not really. You're the one in a hurry, so I'm just following you" Shiho denied.
"I see" Kaito understood. "However, we have something to do before leaving."
After saying that, he headed toward a nearby stand.
He had sensed a bad presence coming from there earlier.
The interesting part was that he could tell it originated somewhere else, but he could not pinpoint the exact location, which meant it was connected to whoever had sent Freddy Krueger.
______________________________________
+15 chapters in advance on Patreon.
p-atreon.com/IAMME26
(just delete the hyphen)
80 power stones = 1 extra chapter (cumulative)