Chapter 29: Backstep

Asuka looked up at him. His face gave her nothing to read. That dark, mysterious quality she'd sensed from him before had returned — even standing in full sunlight, some aura clung to him that the brightness couldn't reach. Perhaps because she'd already been startled once, the pressure didn't hit her as hard this time. But his expression was serious, and he was clearly not joking.

She still couldn't believe what she'd heard. Stop? Here? The destination was steps away. This sudden reversal felt like abandonment — and abandonment was the last thing she'd have expected from this man.

"Don't want to continue...? What do you mean?"

"I have a bad feeling. I don't want to go to the cemetery." If Ma En had been alone, he'd never have turned back. But with Asuka beside him, the calculus changed. He'd never intended to let her set foot inside Room 4. A trip to the park that was connected to Room 4 could end here — should end here.

"Are you joking?" Her brow furrowed. Displeasure darkened her face.

"No." He paused. "I'm a little afraid."

"Afraid?" Asuka looked at him — really looked. Not a trace of fear anywhere on this man. She was certain he was lying.

"Fine. You don't go — I'll go." She was genuinely angry now.

She turned and walked. Her hand wrenched against his — and went nowhere. His grip was iron.

"I'm serious." He held her eyes.

"Let go!" she shouted.

"Trust me. All right?" He didn't let go. He held tighter. His expression, his forceful certainty, made something in her chest tremble. Her feet faltered. Her resolve to keep walking wavered.

"I promised your father I wouldn't take you anywhere dangerous," Ma En said. "Just now — what those men said — it made me feel like what's ahead has become dangerous."

"You actually believe that? The Matchmaking God, the cemetery — even if it's all true, so what? Plenty of people have been there and come back fine. You can't blame the place just because a few had bad luck."

"And you — someone obsessed with ghost stories — don't actually believe in them?"

"Because I don't believe. That's why I can be obsessed. If I believed, I'd be running the other way." Her logic was airtight. Ma En had no counter.

He didn't argue further. But he knew — with absolute certainty — that he would not walk toward that cemetery, and he would not let Asuka walk toward it either. Whatever she wanted, whatever she said — today, and for as long as he stood beside her, she was not going. He wrote that stubbornness on his face, in his eyes. She glared at him and he did not look away. If he could avoid force, naturally that would be best. But Ma En was already prepared: if Asuka still insisted, he would absolutely do something underhanded to stop her, even if it damaged the fragile familiarity they'd only just built.

A wise man doesn't stand beneath a crumbling wall. The post office had taught him that lesson over years of fieldwork — not as a proverb, but as lived experience. Pursuing the bizarre had taught him what danger smelled like. He believed those bizarre, inexplicable things were real. He wanted them to be real. And precisely because of that belief, his alertness ran deeper than most, his instincts sharper. From that angle, Asuka's fearlessness stemmed from the opposite source: she didn't believe any of it. In her worldview, rumors were just rumors — she engaged with them as material, never looking at the possibilities behind them. For ordinary life, that attitude was perfectly sound.

But it also meant that if something beyond her comprehension actually occurred, she'd either overlook it entirely or be devastated by it. Neither outcome was good. Even without physical danger, the psychological damage could take years to heal. Ma En had seen it — people who carried that kind of wound for decades.

Probability was an illusion in the face of danger. Once you walked into it, what was going to happen happened. And when you relied on luck, you were usually unlucky.

He held her hand with everything he had. No matter her expression, no matter how hard she pulled, she wasn't going one step farther.

Asuka didn't struggle for long. She felt his stubbornness — immovable, unreasonable — and something in her shifted. Disappointment, yes. Frustration, yes. But she could not bring herself to hate him for it. She'd always despised quitting halfway. She'd never liked men who imposed their will on women. And yet, looking at Ma En's face, she discovered that none of that resentment could take hold. Beneath the frustration, something else was there — something closer to joy.

Because he was doing this for her. She was certain of it. Ma En wanted to go. If he'd been alone, nothing would have stopped him. But because she was here —

The thought made her feel strange. Her cheeks warmed. The hand he gripped — its heat, its pressure — seemed to radiate through her skin and spread.

"Is it really dangerous?" she asked, steadying herself.

"Just my feeling." He didn't dress it up. "I don't know if I'm right or wrong. But I don't want you to go, Asuka."

"You're worried about me?"

"Yes. I'm very worried. I don't want to make a mistake here and spend the rest of my life regretting it."

Asuka's face bloomed into a smile. Her tension vanished as completely as if it had never existed, dissolving into the curve of her eyebrows. She grabbed both his hands and said:

"You know what I can't stand in movies? The guy senses danger, but the girl talks him out of it, and then the scary stuff starts. Every single time. I always think — are these characters idiots? So I'm listening to you."

Ma En hadn't expected that reasoning. He blinked, caught off guard. But he understood it — understood her.

He wasn't entirely sure whether she truly believed what she'd just said, or whether she'd simply found a graceful exit for both of them. Either way, it was sweet.

"Only today." Asuka took his hand and led him away from the cemetery's direction. "Only today, got it? Next time we come, you're going in with me."

"So if I don't want to come back, you won't come alone?" Ma En asked, hoping.

"Can't promise that. Right now I feel cheated and I don't want to spend another second here. I hate the feeling of quitting halfway — don't even want to think about it." She huffed. "You owe me, Ma En-san. Emotional damages."

"No problem. Whatever you want to buy, it's yours."

He knew he couldn't monitor her constantly. Her family couldn't stop her either. And he couldn't explain his reasoning to them — telling people you "felt" danger, with no evidence, would only make him sound strange. If Asuka could keep her word, that was the best outcome.

"Deal. No take-backs," she said firmly.

"No take-backs. What do you want?"

"I want you to be free when I call. Pick up the phone — don't pretend you're busy." She wasn't done. "And you have to come with me to other places for reference material."

"Reference material?"

"I'm drawing a manga. Room 4 is off-limits, the park is off-limits — I'll have to find other locations." She sighed.

"The park is fine. Just not this cemetery. The busier parts of the park are actually quite nice," Ma En said.

"Then come with me next time. I don't want to come here alone anymore." Asuka turned to look at him. Her eyes carried an expectation that went beyond friendship.

Ma En felt it — clear and unmistakable. This girl likes me. Not as a friend.

But he couldn't answer that. Not now. If he did, what had been the point of leaving the homeland? He'd felt the same way during last night's dinner with Hirota-san — the same careful, necessary distance. He valued their feelings deeply. He didn't want to hurt people who extended warmth to him. But he also knew, with painful clarity, that anyone who got too close to him was walking into danger. A danger more real than anything the cemetery might hold — because the evidence sat in his room, physical and undeniable.

The danger of the Seven Transmutations of the Profound Mystery Records and the danger seeping from Room 4 didn't smell the same. But the former was more direct, and far more mysterious.

"I understand. Whenever I'm free, I'll come with you." He pressed down the brim of his hat and spoke gently. "I should hear back about the job tomorrow. I'm planning to settle here long-term, so I need to take the work seriously. Being a teacher — that's a good path. I'll probably be busy for a while. Once things settle down, wherever you want to go, I'll go with you."

"Then it's settled." Asuka released his hand, turned away — shy, suddenly — and stretched her arms overhead with exaggerated effort, her back to him. "Can't go to the cemetery now, but you're not heading straight home, right?"

"No."

"There's still a lot of the park I haven't shown you. Let's walk around before we head back."

"Mm."

"I want yakiniku for lunch."

"Sure."

"After yakiniku, I'll walk you home."

"No." Ma En hadn't been fooled. Asuka had clearly been building to this; she cried out immediately: "Why not?"

"I promised your father I'd never bring you home."

"What are you saying!" Her face flushed scarlet.

"...Did you misunderstand something?" His voice dropped into a teasing lilt.

"I did not! You're horrible! I hate you!" She jumped up and thumped his chest — lightly. "I'd never go upstairs with you. Walk you to the entrance — that's all. Is that a problem?"

"I'm just worried that once you're at the entrance, you'll want to come upstairs." He said it with a perfectly straight face. Asuka kicked his shin.

"Like hell I'd go up," she snapped.

A ghost would.

They were still talking when the dirt path ran out. The forest closed in again — the same wild, unvisited landscape. But the oppressive weight had diminished. The discomfort was still there, physical and undeniable, but the paranoid edge had drained away. Even Asuka could feel the difference. She turned to look in the direction they'd come from — not that she could see anything through the wall of vegetation. She couldn't even be sure she was looking the right way. But her sense of direction, reliable as ever, probably had it right.

"...Ma En, I think I understand what you meant earlier." She pointed toward the cemetery's direction. "This side and that side feel completely different. That side was... strange. Unpleasant." She paused, puzzled. "Why didn't I feel it going in?"

She was quiet for a moment.

"Right now, I definitely wouldn't walk back that way."