“Start eating without me.
I’ve got a call to take.” Miguel untied his apron with one hand, draped it over the back of the chair behind him, and turned his head to tell Hoshimi Miyabi, who was sitting beside him.
The little fox was holding her freshly filled bowl of red bean porridge in both hands like a good girl.
At his words she lifted her face, the two big black ears on top of her head swaying twice, and gave a calm little nod.
Miguel stood, and as he passed Wise he clapped him on the shoulder.
“Wise, take care of everyone.
I’ll be right back.” “Leave it to me, Big Bro Miguel, go handle your business!” Wise answered without looking up, hands busy passing napkins to Morning Star on his left and Astra on his right.
Morning Star gently held out a glass of juice, her voice soft.
“Wise, don’t just hand out napkins.
Drink something yourself.” Astra refused to be outdone and leaned in from his other side.
“Wise, I can’t reach the salad over here.
Get me some, please?” Pinned between them, Wise broke into a sweat and shot Miguel a pleading look.
Miguel pretended not to notice, shook his head with a grin, and kept walking.
At the other end of the table, Nekomata had already crammed a piece of fish into her mouth, cheeks bulging as she mumbled around it, “Boss’s cooking is number one in the whole world, meow!
How do you even make this fish?
My tongue’s turning into a snob!” Nicole, meanwhile, gnawed on a shrimp spring roll while frantically pitching her latest “priceless antique” to little Sunna beside her.
“Sunna, sweetie, listen to me.
The piece I just picked up is the real deal.
I’m only offering you a share because you’re family.
Trust me, next month it’ll be worth double—” She sounded so convincing that the poor honest girl very nearly fell for it.
“R-really?” “Should I buy a share too?” Luckily Belle cut in just in time.
“Sunna, don’t listen to her.
Last month Trigger docked half a month of her living expenses because she bought a fake antique!” “Belle, you traitor!
How dare you sell me out!” Nicole lunged over to pinch her cheeks.
The dining room stayed as lively as ever, laughter tangled up with chatter.
Miguel crossed the wide sofa area and went straight to the floor-to-ceiling window by the balcony.
He pushed the glass door open.
The cool morning air swept past his face and shut out most of the racket behind him.
Outside, Sixth Street was already waking up.
At the Cascade Broth Valley ramen shop, General Chop was lifting the lid off his pot, and a plume of white steam billowed up.
He pressed accept and put the phone to his ear.
“Hello?
Morning, you old codger.
Did the sun come up in the west today?
Calling me this early.” Miguel leaned back against the balcony railing, greeting the caller like an old friend.
The caller ID read Mayflower.
The man at the top of New Eridu’s government, the Mayor, who normally lived in a sharp suit and ran the city like a chessboard.
All told, the two of them had known each other three years now.
Three years ago happened to be the day Hoshimi Miyabi became a Void Hunter on the Zenless Zone Zero timeline.
By rights it should have been a desperate, knife-edge battle for her.
But Miguel was the type who protected his own.
Since this butterfly of his had already flapped its wings, he saw no reason to hold back, and simply whipped up a storm big enough to bend the line of fate.
With him in the fight, the outcome was never in doubt.
It was a rout.
Afterward, aside from reuniting with Hoshimi Miyabi and taking his little fox home, he hadn’t bothered talking to anyone else.
The single exception, the one man shameless enough to keep pushing his way in, was the Mayor.
One thing led to another, and the two of them ended up friends across the age gap.
After that came the end of the Lido War, and Miguel’s ascension to a higher order of being.
He tore the Authority of Time out of the World’s Malice, and from then on he was something close to omniscient.
Anything that happened in the world of Zenless Zone Zero, large or small, he could lay bare with a single thought, if he wanted to.
He rarely bothered.
Spoil every twist in advance and what was there left to look forward to?
Being an all-powerful god had its appeal, sure.
He preferred keeping his feet on the ground as a man, enjoying the smoke and warmth of ordinary life.
“It is a pleasure to receive your greeting, Mr.
Miguel.” The voice on the other end wasn’t Mayflower’s faintly worn-out rasp, but a low, elegant, richly resonant baritone.
“Allow me to convey the sincere gratitude of the Mayor, and of Victoria Housekeeping, to you.” Miguel raised an eyebrow, mildly surprised.
“Lycaon?” “It is I, sir.” The Mayor’s most loyal wolf Thiren butler, unfailingly correct in every courtesy.
As one of the very few people who knew exactly what Miguel was, Lycaon had never let his respect slip a single degree.
He also kept close ties with Sixth Street these days.
Whenever Wise and Belle took on a commission with teeth in it, Lycaon would lend a hand.
Wise was long past being the half-trained kid who could only pound a keyboard in the back of a video store, but an experienced teammate who kept his head in a crisis was never a bad thing to have.
And when it came to sheer dependability, Lycaon ranked near the top of anyone in New Eridu.
“So where’s Mayflower?” Miguel let his gaze drift down to the street, to a small black cat darting out of an alley.
“This time of day he should be in his office choking down that lethally bitter black coffee while you read him the day’s schedule.” “The Mayor is receiving a guest.” Lycaon’s tone stayed level, though Miguel caught a thread of resignation running through the calm.
“He genuinely cannot step away, so he asked me to contact you on his behalf.” That told Miguel most of what he needed to know.
He didn’t need to reach for his Authority.
Guesswork got him most of the way there.
Mayflower, that old fox, had made his peace with the arrangement long ago.
Trouble inside New Eridu that he could handle himself, he handled without hesitation.
When something came along that could topple the whole city, he picked up the phone and called Miguel.
That didn’t make Mayflower a leech riding someone else’s coattails.
Quite the opposite.
As the helmsman of the last great ship humanity had left on this scorched earth, the Mayor had never once stopped hunting for and cultivating new fighting strength.
Miguel was only the safety net at the bottom.
What Mayflower wanted was for humanity to stand against calamity on its own two feet.
“If he’s receiving someone in person at this hour, and sending you out to call me personally on top of it—” Miguel laughed under his breath.
“Sounds like this one’s no small headache.
What is it, some district turned up a Hollow they can’t crack?” “You flatter the situation, sir.
It is not a Hollow matter.” Lycaon paused for half a second, as though weighing his words.
“Today’s client, and the commission itself, are both somewhat…
particular.” “Particular?” That amused him.
“You almost never reach for a word like that.” For Lycaon to call it particular, and for Mayflower to unbend far enough to greet the visitor himself, this person carried serious weight.
“I can see Mayflower’s taking it seriously too.” Miguel didn’t waste a breath on hemming and hawing.
“What time do you need me there?” “Anytime within the hour.
The Mayor is still in preliminary discussions, so you have ample time to finish breakfast.” Lycaon’s arrangements were always this considerate.
“Good.
Save a cup of tea for me.” Miguel straightened up, ready to end the call.
His thumb was already coming down on the button when he stopped and put one more question to the microphone.
“Oh, right, Lycaon.” “Please, sir.” “This guest of yours.
What’s the name?” The line went quiet for two seconds.
Only the faint hiss of current brushing past his ear.
Then Lycaon’s steady voice came through, perfectly clear.
“Our visitor comes from Weifeidi, in the Thorn District.” “She is the thirteenth Sect Master of Yunkui Summit.” “Yixuan.” At that name, the corner of Miguel’s eye twitched before he could stop it.
So it was Yixuan.
He knew all about the young Sect Master.
Or rather, he had never stopped watching the people bound closely to Wise and Belle, the two Children of Fate in Zenless Zone Zero.
Her visit to the Mayor was something fate had always had written down.
What he hadn’t expected was how far ahead of schedule it had come.
Or that what she was asking for would differ from the original timeline.
Memories of Yunkui Summit surfaced in his mind.
Yixuan’s elder sister, the twelfth Sect Master, had sacrificed herself thirteen years ago in the battle of the Fall of Old Eridu, wielding the sect’s greatest treasure, the Azure Empyrean Sword.
By all rights she should have been erased completely.
It was only the light of salvation Miguel had torn across the sky that day that dragged one thin thread of life back and held it there.
In the years since, Yixuan had drifted through her days as she pleased, treating fortune-telling like clocking in for a shift.
Underneath it all, she had been quietly searching for a way to heal her sister.
For her to turn up at Mayflower’s door this early, something must have happened to that thread of life.
The loom of fate was clearly impatient to start weaving a brand-new story.
And Miguel had no reason at all to turn it down.
He turned around and looked into the room through the glass door.
Hoshimi Miyabi seemed to have sensed something.
Her head was already tilted toward the balcony, a question sitting in those crimson eyes.
Miguel gave her a reassuring smile, then spoke into the phone.
“Tell Mayflower I’ll be there in twenty minutes.
And tell him to break out his best tea and treat this guest properly.” “Understood.
I shall relay it word for word.
We look forward to your arrival.” Lycaon ended the call politely.
Miguel pocketed the phone, pushed the door open, and walked back into the living room.
He came up beside Hoshimi Miyabi, bent down, and murmured next to one fluffy ear.
“Miyabi, after breakfast let Wise and Belle take you all out shopping.
I have to go meet an interesting new friend.” Her ears gave a twitch.
She reached out and caught his sleeve, nodding once.
“All right.
Come home early.” “Count on it.” Miguel straightened, his gaze sweeping across the noisy living room before it settled on the wide blue sky outside the window.
That white-haired beauty of a Sect Master from Yunkui Summit, coming to knock on the door herself.
Looks like his quiet days on Sixth Street were about to get choppy again.
[Author’s Note: King-class (subdivided into nascent and fully formed; the fully formed stage is likewise split into lower, middle and upper tiers.
They possess a unique Ether Domain that strengthens them.
In the nascent stage the domain is incomplete, but it is still more than enough to crush a Lord-class opponent with ease.
Once fully formed, one can rule a small or mid-sized Hollow alone, and the vast majority of them serve as the core of such Hollows.
When one is defeated, the Hollow territory it occupied recedes.
Representative example: the Dead End Butcher, which requires a Void Hunter to step in, or an entire HAND elite squad acting together, to be put down without difficulty.) Note: the one Nicole and the others faced in the main story was only a nascent-stage individual, and they did not defeat it.
It was crippled by the transit train and killed by the large-scale explosion that followed.] [Author’s Note: Calamity-class (also divided into lower, middle and upper tiers.
These are Ethereals that appear only in large and ultra-large Hollows.
A single individual can alter the environment of a Hollow, and can even make the Hollow’s Black Wall spread and expand as it moves.
Their combat strength is measured against multiple Void Hunters; only a handful of the very strongest Void Hunters can kill one alone, and being able to face and defeat a Calamity-class Ethereal is itself the mark of Void Hunter tier power.
Representative examples: Nineveh, Lerna, Geppetto.)] [Author’s Note: Further ranks will be added as the relevant story arcs appear.]