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“THANK you for saving me! You really helped me out!” Euphemia’s voice echoed up the modern vaulted ceiling through the mezzanine. “Hello? Zel? How about you show yourself just once? I’m trying to say a proper goodbye before I leave!” She raised her voice even louder but her high-pitched shout only bounced off the walls, failing to bring even a shadow of the man dressed in all-black out into the open.
Euphemia threw the front door open and shouted over her shoulder one last time to be sure, “I really will just go straight home! Are you okay with that?!”
Naturally, her shout elicited no response, infuriating her to the point she slammed the heavy door behind her in a fit of anger. Unfortunately, not even her little tantrum caused anything to happen.
What’s his problem?! I get it, he doesn’t want anything more to do with someone like me. Good-for-nothing jerk! I’m a pitiable woman who just barely survived murder! A gentleman would’ve escorted me home! Or at least to the car!
For all her blustering, Euphemia more than knew that was a selfish wish on her half. Her foolish actions had put her in danger, and Zelaide had never tried to appeal to her as a gentleman. Whether he was a gentleman or not, she thought his actions spoke volumes about his kindness, as he had not only saved her, but also brought her back to his home to rest. She didn’t know how he had done it, but he’d also guaranteed her safety from those scoundrels.
Euphemia understood that much at least. It was just the irrational side of her that she couldn’t control that was making her feel annoyed.
I’ll start to hate myself if I keep these selfish thoughts up…
Crestfallen, she dropped her shoulders and kicked the gravel as she crossed the diligently maintained front yard until she came out where Zel said she would find her car. He had neatly parked her car underneath a large tree beside the gate leading out of the property.
How did he transport her car back to his house after he chased away the two men? Considering the situation, he’d had his own car, and while she didn’t want to think about it, the Bijour’s corpse to transport, so how had he gotten her car here too? Though his identity was already shrouded in mystery as it was, there were just too many baffling elements surrounding him.
I have to look him up as soon as I get home—Whoa!
Euphemia’s foot caught on the polished marble gravel and she nearly fell flat on her face. She barely stuck her other foot out in time to keep herself from toppling over, but it was quite the ugly save. It aggravated her, but she started laughing despite herself when she realized she had pulled it off because she was wearing shoes with low heels.
Her car showed no signs of being damaged or ransacked. The purse she had chucked into the back seat sat there, just as she left it. She opened the door through the fingerprint authentication lock, slid into the car on her small behind, and then gazed up at the building she had been inside for the past few hours.
“Wow.”
It was a luxurious white stucco, two-story house that was neither too large nor too small. Surrounded by just the right amount of space, the yard was landscaped with beautiful trees being tended to by several hovering drones.
The only part that bugged Euphemia was the sturdy bars equipped on every window, including those on the second-story, but they weren’t ugly enough to ruin the beauty of the home, and she could be convinced of their necessity as a security measure in this city.
Didn’t he say this wasn’t his house though?
Euphemia certainly didn’t think her mystery man would pick this picturesque house as his residence. He’d told her it was a rental, but did he live there alone? All of the toiletries left out were unused premium products. Did he have a proper housekeeper?
Or maybe a woman takes care of him. He looks kind of scary at first, but he doesn’t seem like a bad guy, and it wouldn’t be so strange for a man with an incredible body like him to have a patron or two funding his life… Right?
Though Euphemia didn’t really understand why, she screwed her face up in a big scowl, and while she was at it, turned toward the house and stuck her tongue all the way out.
Feeling a little better, she started her car as if that would break her free of her brooding. She only now realized that her car was the only one parked at the house. What happened to his car? The house didn’t have a garage, but it wasn’t like Euphemia walked around the entire property, so she wasn’t sure where else it could be. She couldn’t fathom the man going anywhere without a car.
The car engine roared to life and gravel shot up behind it. The property gates opened automatically. She twisted her neck to see if the house had any identifying markers from the driver’s seat, but naturally there wasn’t a lot number anywhere; not even a mail-delivery-drone box existed.
He’s shrouded in mystery in every way! I’ll commit this house’s location to memory one way or another, so it doesn’t matter!
Euphemia didn’t want to linger now that she had left, so she stepped on the gas and floored it out of there.
The residential road wasn’t very wide, but there was little pedestrian traffic because of the early-morning hour. Expensive residences lined both sides of the road, in rows of compact luxury homes instead of massive mansions. Perhaps it was best understood as a wealthy neighborhood where retired elderly couples enjoyed living out the rest of their lives in comfort. Either way, it wasn’t the kind of neighborhood a man who exuded the exciting and alluring air of danger like Zel would choose to live.
Euphemia immediately came out on Middle Circle Line after driving for a few minutes, allowing the automated systems to take over after she set her destination. Middle Circle Line was the road in the center of the three circular routes concentrically surrounding Gothic City. Center Circle ran the inner route and Out Circle ran the course outside of it. The area within Out Circle was the so-called Uptown, where people from the middle-upper classes lived, and where many business offices, government administration buildings, cultural facilities, and universities were concentrated.
Downtown was located along Out Circle’s exterior route, where the majority of low-income citizens lived and the normal residential areas and small-scale factories had been built. Like cities all over, there were dangerous, corrupt neighborhoods and blocks here and there in Downtown, but the affluent-at-a-glance Uptown was also considered a hotbed of crime. They just hid it better. For that reason, it was the unwritten law of the planet that everyone protected themselves regardless of age, gender, and wealth.
Beyond the city’s towering walls were the Plains, which were often called the Wilds because of the roaming Muta.
Gothic City considered a circumference of 20 kyros around its walls as part of its territory, and that was where well-maintained large-scale factories and farmsteads expanded their businesses. Their products were consumed within the city, with the excess distributed to other cities. However, despite its technical definition as a part of the city, farming, manufacturing, and production at the outside facilities were almost always done during the day except under extreme or special circumstances.
In that sense, Euphemia had committed the worst possible mistake ever. Even small children from Downtown knew not to go outside city walls after the sun set.
I had to! I just had to! This opportunity only comes once a year! I had no choice! It never even crossed my mind that something like that could happen… I think it’s reasonable to say it’s their fault. Sure, Erica might have a point calling me a rash person incapable of seeing anything around me. Now, I can agree it would’ve been a better choice to have just stayed the night at the official lodging provided by work, but…
Euphemia gently turned the steering wheel to the right switching from autodrive to manual. Her car was steadily approaching a part of the city she recognized. Before she knew it, the night had completely dawned into a new day.
I couldn’t resist what a momentous occasion last night marked.
Last night, she had reveled in the beauty of the flowering Night Blooms cultivated in the laboratory greenhouse for her research.
Night Bloom flowers blossomed simultaneously on a midsummer night, only once a year.
As the name suggested, the thin petals emitted a pale light at night, creating a magical world of their own under the moonlight. Unfortunately, the delicate flowers withered the same night they bloomed. From its seeds, it was possible to refine the most hallucinogenic narcotic in the plant world.
Handling the plant was considered a serious taboo for obvious reasons, and the cultivation and distribution of it was strictly forbidden in the colonies. Years of research had managed to weaken its toxicity, opening it up to medical use under close supervision, but even that was limited to the Night Blooms cultivated by government-controlled research facilities and laboratories like Euphemia’s workplace.
Last night was the only day they’d bloom this year.
I waited a whole year for this one night. I stayed the last three nights at the Dome until I was finally able to observe, for the first time, the moment a room full of Night Blooms opened.
When the moonlight had struck the tempered glass dome, the flower buds slowly unfurled. Before long, the dome had been filled with countless pale-flower lanterns, and the flowers swayed as if conversing under the ventilation system aimed on them to encourage pollination. It was an artificially made landscape, but the magical spectacle mesmerized Euphemia nonetheless.
Euphemia was a junior researcher at the Municipal Biotechnology Research Institute’s Applied Plant and Animal Research Laboratory. The top researchers of the laboratory studied plants and lichens that were useful to humans, including research on how to reduce Night Bloom’s toxicity, which Euphemia focused on as the core of her research.
The institute only cultivated the amount necessary for medical and research purposes, but Night Bloom was an endemic, annual plant species that could grow anywhere on the planet in the right environment, so it wasn’t surprising that people bypassed the strict regulations to secretly cultivate and circulate the narcotic plant on the black market.