The broom room on the third floor that the waiter mentioned was not unexplored by Shade after he turned into a cat in the morning, but there was no result. After lunch, he came to the corridor again in the form of a cat and took advantage of the opportunity.
Seeing no one around, he opened the locked broom closet and hid in it.
There was nothing particularly valuable in the broom, mop, bucket, gloves, cupboards, trash cans, and the slightly narrow broom room. Standing in it, Shade closed his eyes and took a closer look, but found no trace of abnormal elements.
.
Dark vision helped him see every corner here. He even checked every scratch on the wall, but still found no strange traces:
"Echoes of Blood."
I blinked my eyes and saw that there was some blood on the rag placed in the cupboard, but it looked like the cleaner accidentally got it on.
"Echoes from the past."
The first echo was from the residents in the corridor talking about a symphony called "Sonata in the Woods".
The second echo was from the janitor who had opened the broom closet and was complaining softly about cleaning up the drunkard's vomit on the first floor.
The third response was——
"Apples apples, fresh apples! Who wants fresh apples!"
"Um?"
Shade, who had closed his eyes to enhance his hearing, suddenly opened his eyes. The third echo was clearly the cry of a street vendor, and the accent was definitely from the Vista area.
The sound was extremely clear, not like it was coming from the street across half a corridor and a window. And the source of the sound was clearly the cupboard in the broom closet.
The wooden cabinet looked very old, and the whole was skewed to the right. Shade guessed that this was the broken furniture in the guest room that had been put here for recycling.
The upper level of the cabinet has a glass window, and inside are the gloves and brushes and other tools used by cleaners. The lower level is a double-door solid wood door panel. Shade just checked, and there is nothing inside.
The source of the hawking sound was the lower level of the cupboard, but when Shade opened it again, there was still nothing inside.
Shade hadn't noticed it just now. Now he suspected that there was a problem here and only then did he think of the contradiction:
"Why are there no spider webs here?"
There are cobwebs in the corners of the broom closet, but the upper glass showcases are probably not there because they are often opened and used. But since the lower cupboards don’t store anything, there’s no reason there shouldn’t be cobwebs.
And when Shade wiped the lower floor of the cabinet with his hand, all he wiped was a light layer of dust:
"This place has been cleaned, it will take a week at most."
But other than that, Shade didn't see any other traces around here, so the current situation is that he knows that there is something wrong with the lower level of this seemingly normal cabinet, and the door of the lower level has been opened to him:
"So, I'm going to get in there, close the door and try it inside?"
This seems to be the only thing that can be done now, but considering that even Miss Daniste is missing, Shade will not be stupid enough to take risks casually.
However, considering that it seemed a bit troublesome to go home and tell Luvia or Dorothy what he was doing before turning back, Shade took out the toy flute from his pocket.
After throwing down the mute spell and playing the flute, the fluttering red butterflies immediately illuminated the broom room, and Helen and Grace appeared next to Shade.
Of course, because the space here was too small, they hugged Shade directly.
"Oh, sir, do you want to try it in the broom closet?"
Helen in the black dress giggled, and her more stable sister Grace looked around and asked Shade:
"Sir, have you arrived in a new city again?"
"Yes, Music City - Vista City."
He briefly explained the reason why he came here, and finally said what he wanted to do:
"The clues divined by the soothsayer will most likely point to this cupboard. I will get in here in a while. If you find anything wrong, open the cupboard immediately and get me out.
If I disappear, you have to wait until evening. If I still haven't appeared by then, go to Tobesk to find a fortune teller. Of course, the possibility that I will disappear is very low, and even if I disappear, there is no need to worry."
After all, he still has two drops of divinity.
"Sir, we can"
"No, you can't."
Shade held Helen's mouth:
"This matter is most likely related to time. Although you are very strong, your time resistance is far less than mine."
As he spoke, he took out a normal time key:
"Today is the time for me to use the time key. If I really encounter any danger, I can still go there and avoid it."
Grace and Helen knew how powerful Shade was, so although they were a little worried, they were quickly convinced by him.
After making sure that he was ready, Shade bent down and struggled to get into the cupboard. Grace and Helen closed the door for him outside, and then asked:
"Sir, how do you feel now?"
"I'm wondering if it would be more convenient if I turned into a cat now. It's too cramped here."
"Sir, after this is over, can I give you a hug in your cat form?"
Hearing it was Helen speaking, Shade could even imagine Grace's expression when she looked at her sister with helpless eyes.
Next, Shade started chatting with the two sisters through the cabinet door. The last time they met was last week, so they didn't have much new things to share. It was just that Grace and Helen told Shade about their feelings about Ximu Town.
understanding.
The two sisters had never been here during the "Vista City Era", but they had set foot here separately during the "Ximu Town" era.
They also all know the current "Golden Music Hall". When Shade mentioned that the hall was rebuilt from the ruins of an ancient temple, Grace said in a broken voice:
"I know the ruins of the temple on that hill. I passed by there more than five hundred years ago. At that time, only the main frame of the building was left in the ruins. I didn't expect that it would be so long ago."
Grace's voice became increasingly blurry, as if she was running away quickly as she spoke, until finally her voice completely disappeared.
Grace, who was outside the cupboard, didn't feel there was anything wrong with her voice. After she finished speaking, she found that Shade didn't reply, so she motioned to Helen to open the cupboard.
There was no one inside.
As Grace's voice gradually became blurry, Shade in the cupboard also realized that something abnormal had finally appeared.
But he didn't open the cupboard door immediately, he was waiting.
There was no whisper element around that was obvious compared to the other three elements, which meant that this matter had nothing to do with the relic. When Grace's voice completely disappeared and Shade couldn't feel the two sisters outside the cabinet door, he understood
I should have succeeded.
"Tell me the time now."
[The current world, the sixth era, year 1698 of the universal calendar, the 15th of the month of sowing.]
"The spring of 156 years ago? Does this mean we have traveled through time? There is no feeling at all."
[To be precise, you did not completely travel through time, you just came to the intersection of two times. Using this method to truly travel through time is a "serious violation", and you selectively resisted the time travel. 】
"That's it"
Shade was not very surprised, but when he tried to push open the cabinet door in front of him, he found that the wood in front of him was not a flat piece of wood, but a rough piece of wood with a curved surface.
I blinked my eyes, and then realized that at some point, my surroundings were completely different from before:
"This is not the inside of the cabinet, this is a tree hole?! Yes, in 1698, this cabinet was still a tree!"
Shade reached forward and ignited a flame with his fingers. The flames touched the inner surface of the tree hole in front of him and tried to burn a hole, but as soon as his hand touched the wood, the wood was actually pushed away.
Grace and Helen stood outside the cupboard, tilting their heads and looking at Shade who was curled up inside. Shade withdrew his fingers.
[The present world, the sixth era, year 1854 of the universal calendar, Friday, the 19th of the harvest month. 】
[The special effect of the cabinet disappears and you are back.]
"Well, I disappeared just now, didn't I?"
He asked the two sisters outside the door, and the girls in their mid-teens and sixteens nodded together:
"Yes, about half a minute. And we didn't notice anything before we noticed your breath disappearing. This is indeed the power of time, but it is very unstable."
"So what did you find when I came back?"
"nor."
Shade thought for a while:
"Again."
Helen helped Shade close the cabinet door again. Shade briefly described what had just happened through the door panel, and then continued chatting with the two sisters, but this time nothing happened after waiting for two full hours.
Gemini didn't mind "wasting time". Although this kind of date was weird, it was still a date. Shade had no choice but to climb out of the cupboard and sum up the current situation:
"This cabinet can indeed achieve a certain degree of time connection, but this connection is not stable. Sometimes only sound can transcend time, and sometimes it can carry the things inside with it across time."
"So, did the lady you were looking for disappear when the passage was most stable?"
Grace asked, this is indeed very possible, but Shade had a more terrifying idea:
"I once heard the sound of apples being sold here, but the moment I disappeared, the outside environment was clearly a forest.
In other words, there may be more than one 'past' connected to this cabinet, and it is even possible that each time it is connected to the past time is random. I don't know which time the lady I am looking for is in, of course, provided that she is really
It’s through here that we go to the past.”
Since "now" can hear the past time, then maybe "past" can also hear the present, so Shade did not mention Miss Danister's name or other privacy.
Grace also looked at the cupboard in the dark:
"It's still unclear how this time travel works. Although it is certain that this cabinet caused everything, we'd better not move its position at will."
