The city was huge.
This was not an observation—it was a reality that hit you when you stood at the entrance of a narrow alley and suddenly looked at a wide street full of movement, noise, and people walking quickly as if all of them had appointments they had already missed ten minutes ago.
Leo stood at the edge of the alley without moving.
He simply looked.
His mind—which had not stopped working since he regained consciousness—began collecting information calmly and quickly at the same time.
The buildings: old stone buildings with tall windows and small iron balconies.
A distinct architectural style with a name, but he could not remember it at that particular moment.
The streets: relatively clean, carefully paved, and the cars were driving on the right side.
There was also a tower that looked like the Eiffel Tower.
The signs were written in a language that appeared to be French.
“Okay.
It looks like we are in France,” he said quietly.
Then, one second later:
“Paris, most likely.”
Then, two seconds later:
“Okay.
This…
was not in my plans at all.”
The first problem he faced was the language.
Leo did not speak French.
He had never learned it because he had never found a reason to learn it.
His native language and the English he had mastered by himself through books and movies had always been enough for him in his country.
His country.
Those last two words struck his mind in a strange way.
His country.
That meant this was not his country.
That meant—
“No.” He firmly interrupted his own thoughts.
“I will think about that later.
Now—the practical problem in front of you.”
The practical problem was as follows:
He had no common language with the people around him.
He had no phone—it was still in his room.
He had no money—it was also still in his room.
He had no identification documents—the same answer.
His watch was not working.
He already knew this, but for some reason, he liked reminding himself of it.
A truly excellent list.
“Maybe things cannot get any worse than they are now, right?”
He slowly walked along the sidewalk, his eyes moving between the faces, signs, and shops as he searched for anything useful.
The people around him barely paid any attention to him—a boy in ordinary clothes walking down the street.
There was nothing unusual about him.
That was good.
Attention was the last thing he needed right now.
He stopped at a street corner and looked at a large sign on a building across the street.
He tried to read it.
He knew the Latin alphabet.
The words—
“Pour le…” he whispered as he tried to read them.
“Non…
This is going to be harder than I expected.”
An old man standing beside him heard him, gave him a quick look, and then continued on his way.
Leo smiled politely at him.
The man did smile.
“Well, I heard that French people do not smile much at strangers,” Leo noted to himself.
“Looks like that information was wrong.”
He sat on a wooden bench in a relatively quiet corner of the street and took out the watch.
He looked at it carefully.
The watch was not working—that much was obvious.
But why exactly?
The spatial storms he had gone through had put enormous pressure on its internal system.
The armor had broken while protecting him, and the energy had been completely drained during the process.
This meant that the system itself was not broken.
Only the armor had been damaged.
That was the difference between a problem and a disaster.
A problem had a solution.
A disaster did not necessarily have one.
“So, you need repairs,” he said calmly to the watch.
“And repairing you requires—”
It required components that he did not have.
It required equipment that he did not have.
And it required a laboratory that he did not have.
“Things cannot possibly get worse than this, right?” Leo muttered sarcastically.
“Okay.” He sighed.
“Then this will take some time.”
He raised his eyes from the watch and looked at the street in front of him.
Paris moved at its own rhythm—cars, people, shops, and organized noise that reminded him of his school, but on a much larger scale.
Somewhere in this city—he needed a place to sleep.
Somewhere in this city—he needed food because his stomach had started reminding him of its existence in a rather unpleasant way.
And somewhere in this city—he might need someone to help him.
This last one was the hardest.
Leo was not used to asking for help.
Well, he was Leo the genius.
How was he supposed to ask someone else for help?
He got up from his seat.
One step at a time.
That was his decision.
No panic.
No overthinking the entire situation.
Just the first problem in front of him and its solution.
What was the first problem in front of him right now?
Finding someone who spoke English in a French city.
He walked.
After fifteen minutes of walking through streets he did not know, signs he could not read, and people whose words he could not understand—
He heard something.
It was the voice of a girl speaking very quickly in French on her phone as she walked with hurried steps.
In her other hand, she was carrying a large bag that looked much heavier than she was.
Her dark blue hair was flying in every direction in a way that seemed to break the laws of physics.
she collided with him directly.
The bag fell.
She stopped, said something in French in a clearly apologetic tone, and bent down to pick up the bag.
Leo bent down at the same time, grabbed the bag before she could, and handed it to her.
She looked at him.
Blue eyes.
A slightly tired face.
And the expression of someone whose day had already been difficult before this collision.
She said something else in French.
Leo did not understand a single word.
“Sorry,” he said in English.
“I do not speak French.”
She stopped.
Then she spoke in English—good English, but with a slight French accent:
“Oh.
It’s okay.
I was saying thank you.”
Leo smiled.
“You’re welcome.”
She took her bag and started walking.
Then she stopped.
She turned around.
She looked at him in the way a person looks at someone after noticing something.
“Are you okay?”
Leo thought for a moment about all his possible answers to that question.
No.
I am not okay.
I am in a city I do not know, in a body smaller than my real body.
My watch is not working, and I do not have a phone, money, identification documents, or anything useful.
But he said:
“Yes, thank you.”
She looked at him for a second longer.
The girl whose name he did not know—the girl he would later learn was Marinette Dupain-Cheng—looked at him in the way kind people look at someone when they know that person is lying, but that person is lying politely.
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.”
She looked at the watch on his wrist—the watch was silent and inactive—and then raised her eyes to his face again.
Then she said something he did not expect:
“Do you need help?”
End of Chapter Five