The woman carried a bag with her as she entered the tunnel and once she arrived at the end, she brought out what looks like golf balls in different colors and fixed them on the wall of earth. After making sure they are carefully set, she step away from the wall and brought out a set of push buttons with the same color matching the golf balls. She pressed the corresponding buttons and the golfs balls went off and exploded.
The ground did not shake nor a heap of debris formed from the blast. Instead, the golf balls expanded into nets and captured every debris from the explosion as the wall shattered. Once collected, these golf balls turned nets seemed to swallow the scattered debris and once they've done their jobs, they lost their color and get attached to the newly formed tunnel and become parts of the tunnel.
When the area is cleared, the woman repeated the same process until she used up all her multi-colored explosives. She went back to her shabby house to pick up more explosives and repeat the same process again. She only stopped doing so when the black cat spoke.
"We're here." It said with a solemn expression.
They both looked upwards. The woman took out he remaining explosives and positioned them upwards instead. They were able to make a hole going up as they did this then they hit something hard which would not allow them to proceed any further. The black cat raised one of its paws and it grew large allowing it to scrape a portion of the soil. They discovered an area covered by a transparent shield. They cleared more dirt up but ended the same way. The woman bit her lips and looked at the black cat.
"Where exactly are we?" She asked, her calm look did not betray the panic she felt.
"We're in the middle of their residence." The cat replied.
"They are using a formation to prevent anyone from unknowingly trespassing their property. What a thoughtful family," It proceeded to praise the unique family.
The woman sneered and raised her hand to look at her wristwatch. Something that looks like a hologram projection of a clock expanded from the watch. She moved to touch some points on the hologram and the projected image changed. It showed two round objects slowly approaching each other.
The woman found a good position on the hole and comfortably sat as she brought her notebook and wrote. She wrote a series of complicated letter and numbers hastily on it. The weird marks and shapes she used before are still seen on her notes but there are more letters and numbers on it now. However, these letters and numbers when written together did not make sense at all but to the woman, it seemed like an equation waiting to be solved.
Finally, she was able to arrive at an answer and went back to check the projection of the clock. She tinkered something on it and went back to viewing the projection of the two round objects. The black cat just looked on with curiosity. Once done, she finally glanced at the cat and spoke.
"It's just after dark. The two moons will overlap each other before midnight. When that happens, nobody will be available to strengthen the formation and we can easily get in." The cat nodded.
"This is your only chance. If you miss this, it will be many more years again before this would happen and by then, the chances of not being caught would be exponentially higher." It gave a cautious reminder to the woman.
"Even without your reminder, I know what to do." The woman said. The black cat smiled bitterly. Had it shown a few hours before then, she would not be in this state. She would not have been sent away.
'Forgive me, Lisa.' it thought. It prayed that all her hard work would pay off and let her go back again. To Toradashi, that cruel place. The little black cat set its sight on the two round objects from the projection and held its breath.
The woman saw the cat's anxious expression despite it trying to sound confident. She smiled and gently patted its head.
"It was never your fault, Luca."
The stern look that the cat has been showing suddenly crumbled and it jump in the arms of the woman, wailing. The woman got shocked from its actions but immediately regained her focus and shot out something from her sleeve. This unknown object expanded and engulfed both human and animal into a transparent space. In this space, they were suspended midair. The woman let the little black cat cry to its heart's content as she gently stroke its fur.
"I'm so sorry Lisa. I'm not strong enough. Waaaah!" It continued to wail like a baby. The woman, whos name we now know as Lisa, blinked her tears away and hugged the pitiful cat.
"Don't say that. I may be living like a dead person still if you had not appeared. You never know it but I'll tell you now. Thank you, Luca. Thank you for saving me." A tear eventually scaped her eyes and the pair wept for a little while more.
Lisa met Luca not long before the storm five years ago. He saw her silently crying by the river of this forest when he arrived. He watched as she wandered about in the forest, silently taking care of the wild animals that tried to hurt her. She wakes up early to start walking along the forest, somehow looking for something he didn't know. When the sun goes down, she walks towards the river and as she settles down next to it, tears slowly form in her eyes again.
Unable to conceal himself any longer, he appeared as a stray cat and lived with her since. That's when he found out the purpose of her actions, she had been looking for the entrance to Toradashi. Lisa did not share any more but he knew, he knew it all along. He felt it, the pain of being thrown away from your home. He felt it and so he wept for her. He wept for his incompetence.
When Lisa found out the truth about him, she was not surprised but was divided into feeling happy and sad. Happy that she found light to go on again and sad that he has arrived too late. Still, they stayed with each other and had been each other's friend since then.
They eventually stopped crying and stayed silent for the next hours. Both stared at where the transparent fence should have been and threw a few glimpses at the holographic clock on Lisa's wrist.
When Lisa shifted the hologram of the clock to the two round mobile objects, the round objects had started overlapping each other an now appears to fuse as one. The transparent shield underground started to flicker like a light and when it disappeared, both mouthed 'Now!' to each other as they jumped towards the unseen barrier.