I barely managed to throw my shoes on and sprinted out into the city streets, still wearing the same wrinkled school uniform I’d never bothered to change out of the day before. The old man was nowhere to be seen, but I knew I could chase him down anyway.
“He’s gonna regret smashing that durian when I’m done with him...”
I could still faintly pick up its acrid stench in the air. Some of that was coming from me, of course, but I could distinguish our respective trails. That whole thing was weird, though—almost unnatural. Why would he go out of his way to stink us up with a durian...? No, overthinking this would be pointless. I could save all those doubts for after I caught him and beat the stuffing out of him.
As I sprinted through the streets, I caught no small number of people turning to look at me in reaction to my durian stench. I sorta felt like a celebrity. None of them tried to talk to me, of course—actually, pretty much all of them went out of their way to avoid me, which made running all the easier.
The sunset had wrapped up its daily business, and the sky was well on its way to darkness. I would’ve liked to catch him before night fell entirely, but that was probably already out of the question. I could tell from his smell and the dim sense I still had of him that the old dude was moving at a pretty rapid pace. Faster than I could actually imagine him running, considering his build.
I wasn’t worried, though. My body’s engine was gassed up, and I knew for a fact it wouldn’t lose to his. Not only had I fully recovered from my mana-drain-induced weakness, I felt better than I had in a very long time.
“Oh, hey! That you, A-senpai?”
“Huh? Was it just me, or did I just hear someone I know...? Meh, probably just me.”
Before long, the old man’s trail had led me into a fairly abandoned part of town. There wasn’t a person to be seen. I couldn’t say whether he was avoiding people on purpose or whether people were avoiding him on purpose, thus clearing the way by the time I passed through (again, the durian thing), but in any case, it definitely wasn’t the sort of situation where somebody I knew would be trying to talk to me.
“Heeey, Senpai! C’mon, don’t ignore me!”
“Again! Maybe I wasn’t imagining it...? Wait, whoa?!”