"Cut it out. Come back."
Without hesitating, Shane lowered his voice and quickly told the still-playful Mira about the anomaly his Eye of Karma had picked up.
The moment she heard, the teasing expression vanished from Mira's face, replaced by something grave.
So the time to uncover the answer had finally come.
She instinctively clenched her hands, but knowing Shane's usual style, she still took a deep breath and reminded him,
"Shane. Mystogan may be secretive and strange, but he's still one of our guildmates…"
"I know."
Shane nodded, making it clear he understood.
Following the red line down the street, the two of them quickly arrived at the guild's front doors.
Before they even got close, thick, sticky waves of drowsiness were already spilling through the cracks like a tide.
"That's some seriously strong sleep magic…"
Mira felt her eyelids turn heavy as lead, and her body swayed uncontrollably.
"Stay here."
Shane reacted fast and caught her by the shoulder. "I'll go in and talk to him myself."
As he spoke, he didn't act recklessly. With a thought, he switched his class to Lancer.
Thanks to Lancer's [Eternal Arms Mastery], the heavy, drowsy sluggishness was instantly stripped away from his mind.
"Honestly… I thought after sleeping four years, I'd get to make some dramatic return."
Looking at the front doors—repaired who knew how many times—Shane let out a helpless sigh, then shoved them open hard.
Creeeak—
The doors swung wide, revealing the inside at a glance.
The spacious guild hall was full of bodies lying all over the place.
Some people were slumped over tables snoring, some were sprawled across benches, and a few were even lying flat on the floor with their drinks still clutched in hand.
"Hm… there are a lot of new faces I don't recognize."
Stepping carefully over a few sleeping members, Shane's eyes swept quickly across the hall.
At the bar, Master Makarov was sitting cross-legged as always, a wooden mug in hand.
And over by the job board stood a tall man.
His face was wrapped in a black cloth, leaving only his eyes visible, and at that moment he was reaching out to take down a request sheet.
The sound of the doors opening made both of them look toward the entrance.
"Pff—cough, cough, cough!"
The second Makarov got a good look at that now fully-grown, familiar face walking in against the light, his eyes bulged, and the ale he had just taken a gulp of sprayed straight out in a mist.
"Sh-Shane? You brat, you finally woke up?!"
The masked man at the job board, on the other hand, shuddered almost imperceptibly the instant he recognized Shane's face, and the hand reaching toward the request twitched back as if electrocuted.
"Old man, we can catch up in a minute. I need to talk to this guy first."
Ignoring the Master's excitement, Shane strode straight up to the masked man.
"You're Mystogan?"
What surprised him, though, was this:
As Shane got closer, this supposedly "mysterious and powerful" man didn't radiate even the slightest pressure.
Instead, as if he were trying to avoid some kind of plague, he kept stumbling backward the closer Shane came.
"What kind of reaction is that?"
Shane's voice turned cold, trying to pressure him with sheer presence.
"…"
Mystogan stayed silent.
He lowered his head deeply, twisted sideways, and tried to slip past Shane and flee.
"There's no way I'm letting you leave!"
Without any politeness, Shane shot out an arm and blocked his path.
At the bar, Makarov looked completely baffled.
He had absolutely no idea why Shane—barely awake from a four-year sleep—had immediately locked onto the guild's most solitary member.
But since both boys were usually sensible enough not to start an internal fight for no reason, the old man simply lifted his mug and watched with shameless amusement.
"Urgh… gwaah!"
Backed into a corner with nowhere left to retreat, Mystogan suddenly convulsed.
Then, to Shane's astonishment, he bent over and started dry-heaving through the mask in a series of miserable retches.
"Huh? What the hell are you doing? Are you seriously trying to fake this?"
Shane stared at him, utterly baffled.
Thankfully, Shane had never been the type to respect boundaries anyway.
Since the guy could barely stay standing, he stopped bothering with roundabout methods and directly reached for the black face covering.
"Dreamscape!"
The moment he sensed what Shane was about to do, Mystogan jolted like he'd been shocked awake.
He stumbled back half a step and yanked several magic staves carved with strange runes out from under his cloak, slamming them into the ground.
Bzz—
In an instant, a tidal wave of drowsiness far stronger than before surged out, strong enough to drag a person's very soul into the abyss.
Unfortunately for him, even an attack on that level of mental pressure—
crashed against Shane in his Mirror-Still-Water state and vanished like mud sinking into the sea, without the slightest ripple.
"It didn't work?"
Mystogan clearly hadn't expected his magic to fail completely. At last, he couldn't help speaking the first words he'd said since Shane came in.
Yet the moment Shane heard those two hoarse words, his outstretched hand froze in midair.
"That voice…"
He frowned.
"Why does that sound so familiar?"
"Have I met this guy somewhere before?"
His curiosity fully hooked now, Shane pushed forward again. Not only did he not stop—he sped up.
He looked fully prepared to strip the disguise off him today no matter what.
"Shane, Mystogan's a very shy guy. If you really want to pursue him, you might want to use a little more passion!"
From the bar, Makarov raised his mug high and shouted encouragement with shameless delight.
Hearing that utterly inappropriate tease from the old man, Shane actually felt a strange sense of comfort.
If the Master still had the leisure to stir the pot, that meant he had absolutely no intention of interfering in this mess.
"In that case…"
With that reassurance in mind, Shane flicked his wrist, and two short spears gleaming with cold light appeared in his hands.
Their tips shone with a dangerous chill. Staring at Shane's face as he drew nearer, the shadow in Mystogan's heart expanded without limit, leaving him unable to bring out even a fraction of his usual skill.
Especially since, after all these years, Shane had grown his hair long. The outline of his face now looked even more like that nightmare image burned into Mystogan's memory.
Seeing that Shane really was about to get serious, Mystogan finally let out a defeated sigh and slowly raised both hands.
"Wait. Don't attack… it's me."
With that dry, hoarse surrender, Mystogan pulled down the black face covering and lowered his hood.
A familiar head of short blue hair—and the distinctive tattoo over his right eye—were exposed completely.
"Jella— no, wait!"
Shane's eyes widened and the name came out on instinct, but then all the clues snapped together, and he corrected himself.
"You're the Edolas version of Jellal?"
From the bar came another reaction as Makarov cut in, surprised.
"Oh? So you two know each other?"
"You could say that. We crossed paths a little while traveling before."
Shane tossed that answer to the old man casually, but his eyes never left Mystogan's face.
He remembered that blue-haired boy from the Nirvana forest years ago very clearly—the one who had thrown up the second he saw Shane's face.
No wonder the voice had sounded familiar. After all, it was exactly the same voice as Jellal's.
Everything clicked together.
That also explained why Mira had sensed Edolas magic on Mystogan.
Because this guy was literally a counterpart who had stowed away from that parallel world in the first place.
"How did you end up here?" Shane couldn't help asking.
He knew better than anyone how badly this guy wanted to avoid him. Calling it "physical disgust" wouldn't even be an exaggeration.
So how had someone who literally gagged just from seeing him voluntarily joined Fairy Tail of all guilds?
Now that his biggest secret had already been torn out into the open, Mystogan simply dragged over a chair, sat down, and answered like a man giving up.
"It's a long story. For all kinds of reasons…"