MTLNOVEL Chapter 180: Project Bunny?
Communication with the old man finally began to flow, albeit slowly. Since he seemed to have lost the ability to speak, Shu resorted to yes-or-no questions to gather information.
"Sir, are you from ARC City?"
The old man nodded.
The question was a bit silly. In the post-Honkai world, only Shu and his group had the means to travel between cities. Anyone they encountered in ARC City was bound to be from ARC City. This wasn't some hypothetical sixty-kilometers-per-hour grandma from Kiana's math homework.
Still, such small talk served as a decent icebreaker.
Shu moved on to his second question: "Sir, have you always been alone?" He paused, then added, "Before the city became like this?"
"Huh… uh… mm…" The old man shook his head, uttering a string of strange syllables.
Shu winced, attempting to decipher the meaning. "You… were… with others… recently? Is that right?"
The old man paused, then nodded.
He was with others?! Behind Shu, Mei, Kiana, and Bronya exchanged surprised glances.
"How did Shu figure that out?" Kiana whispered to Mei, who shrugged. Even as their instructor, she had no idea how Shu had guessed correctly on the first try.
"He couldn't have just… guessed, right?" Kiana frowned.
He had guessed, and even Shu himself was momentarily taken aback by his accuracy. But he was immediately distracted by the implications. "Are there other survivors here?"
The old man nodded, and Shu felt a surge of relief. He'd feared this old man was an anomaly. If there were others…
Wait a minute… Shu's gaze drifted to the old man's three left hands. Those were what he really wanted to ask about. But all of the old man's negative emotions seemed to stem from those hands. This fragile communication had been hard-won, and directly addressing such a sensitive topic could easily shatter it.
But it seemed unavoidable now.
"Sir…" Shu's expression turned serious, but his tone remained gentle. "Did you leave the others of your own volition?"
This time, the old man's silence stretched longer. Finally, he nodded without a word.
He had left… Of course, it was possible he had been driven out and was simply too proud to admit it. But Shu felt the old man was being truthful.
Coupled with his earlier reaction to being touched, it was highly likely he had left voluntarily.
"Sir, my next question might be a bit… personal," Shu said, sighing softly.
The old man remained silent.
Shu continued, "Have… you always looked like this? If not… could you tell us when the changes began?"
This was the sensitive topic he had been dreading. Behind him, Kiana, Mei, and Bronya held their breath, watching the old man intently.
As expected, he fell into a long silence.
After several agonizingly slow breaths, he shook his head, then raised his right hand, holding up three fingers.
"Thirty days ago?" Shu asked.
The old man nodded.
"I thought it was three days ago…" Kiana whispered, then turned to Mei, confused. "But… he said he left the others recently. What about all that time before…?" She trailed off, unable to articulate the rest of her thought.
But everyone understood what she meant.
"Bronya believes… the old man did not transform instantly, but only recently became… this way," Bronya offered softly.
"Or maybe he wasn't willing to leave…" Mei said, her expression somber. "Perhaps he couldn't bear the ostracization…"
"Hmm…" Both theories sounded plausible to Kiana, yet something felt off.
"I think… he's looking for something," she said, finally trusting her gut feeling.
Looking up, she noticed the old man seemed to be looking at her. She shifted to the side, and his head followed.
Kiana: "…Mei, did he hear all that?"
Mei didn't answer. The old man nodded at Kiana.
"Eek!" Kiana squeaked, startled. She had assumed, seeing Shu shouting earlier, that the old man was hard of hearing.
Shu hadn't expected the old man's hearing to be so acute. He had shouted twice before getting a reaction, leading him to the same conclusion.
"Ahem." Shu cleared his throat, drawing the old man's attention back to himself, away from a suddenly shy Kiana. "Sir, can you describe what you're looking for?"
The old man fell silent again, then, with trembling fingers, began drawing in the dust on the ground.
Shu and the others winced almost imperceptibly. Knowing what the dust was made of, they couldn't bring themselves to touch it like he was.
Still, they had to see. Pushing down their revulsion, they peered at the abstract image taking shape.
First, a wobbly circle, then two parallel dots inside it, followed by a short horizontal line.
Shu looked at it head-on, Mei from the side, Bronya upside down, and Kiana standing up. They all came to the same conclusion.
The old man had drawn an emoticon.
"Sir, perhaps you could write it down in Chinese?" Shu suggested, looking up at him earnestly.
The old man's silence was longer than ever before. He looked down at his trembling hand, then reached for the ground again.
He slowly began to write, the characters forming one stroke at a time. The four watched patiently, then received an unexpected answer.
[Project Bunny]
The characters were slightly distorted, but unmistakable. They looked up. The round emoticon now bore a striking resemblance to something they had seen recently.
They exchanged glances. They had just seen this in the story Shu had shown them yesterday.
"Sir, do you know… Natasha Cioara?"