In the room adorned with various drawings, the three of them formed a static, elongated triangle with their positions.
It wasn't just their positions; their actions and postures were also static.
Joyce held the black clump of Imaginary Space, eyes wide as she stared at Sirin.
Shu's eyes were even wider, standing rooted to the spot, his face a mask of disbelief.
Sirin was frozen with one foot raised, looking extremely guilty and awkward as she balanced on one leg.
The three stared at each other. After a moment, Joyce was the first to react.
"Homu King!" She abruptly raised her hand, making a grasping motion in Sirin's direction.
The wristband on her arm twitched once, then fell still.
Joyce's eyes widened even further. Shu, his attention drawn by Joyce's movement, looked at her wrist in surprise.
That spot... Shu remembered it was where Joyce stored her quantum robots, using some kind of quantum state storage system—a very advanced piece of equipment, in short.
Looking at it now... was it broken? Joyce seemed very surprised...
"Gcreee—" The sound of grinding metal suddenly erupted. Shu and Joyce, one turning his head, the other looking up, both saw Sirin quietly opening the room's main door.
She's trying to run!
"Wait!" Seeing the door already open, Shu quickly called out.
But Sirin wasn't about to listen to Shu. If anything, his shout startled her into a panic, and she turned and bolted out the door, head down.
"After her!" Without thinking, Shu immediately took off in pursuit.
Joyce looked at the two running figures, then slapped the quantum nano-robot storage device on her wrist forcefully. Confirming it was unresponsive, she had no choice but to chase after Shu.
"Joyce! What's wrong with your equipment?" Shu, running ahead, found himself surprisingly unable to catch up to the child-like Sirin. He had to turn back and ask, exasperated.
"The spatial concentration around here is probably too high. The quantum coefficient and quantum stability constants don't match my system, leading to a display drive failure in the quantum state definition system..."
Joyce lifted her hand, examining it closely, and rattled off an explanation like a machine gun.
"Speak human!" Shu couldn't take it anymore. He recognized every word Joyce said, but strung together, they made no sense!
All he wanted to know now was whether Joyce could stop Sirin, whose little legs were churning incredibly fast!
"It's broken, can't use it!" Joyce, of course, understood why Shu was asking, but this really wasn't something that could be easily summarized!
Just giving the result was easier!
"Then what about your powers? Did you really have a qi deviation, your Dao heart shattered, all your meridians severed, and your cultivation completely lost?" Joyce immediately seized the opportunity to turn the tables and ask her own question.
Shu nearly stumbled and fell flat on his face. He looked back at Joyce in shock.
"You've been reading too many web novels!" Shu exclaimed loudly. "If all your meridians were severed, you'd be dead! How can someone from Future City say something like that!"
"Not everyone in Future City is a doctor!" Joyce protested.
"But that definitely doesn't include you!" Shu retorted angrily, then turned back, panting heavily as he continued the chase. "Anyway, my powers are useless right now too! Chase!"
After just a few steps, Joyce, with a strange expression, caught up to the wheezing Shu, running alongside him down the mechanical-looking corridor.
Joyce opened her mouth as if to say something, but looking at Shu's condition, she couldn't bring herself to say it.
No way... Shu, are you really this out of shape?
Only then did Joyce remember the too horrible physical data sheet Darwin had. She realized the abilities Shu used took a heavy toll on his body.
But compared to Shu, there was someone else here who was panting even more heavily.
Sirin's steps were already becoming unsteady, but she was still running for her life, as if there weren't two people behind her, but two man-eating beasts.
Sirin and Shu's speeds had synchronized, both slowing down. Joyce looked at the two, who were clearly running out of steam, then effortlessly quickened her pace, reaching out and grabbing the scruff of Sirin's fated neck.
Sirin struggled for a couple of moments, then went limp, closing her eyes and tilting her head, pretending to be dead.
However, her rapidly heaving little chest betrayed her attempt.
Shu, also gasping for breath, leaned against the metal wall, bent over with his hands on his knees, his breathing like an asthma patient having a severe attack.
Joyce couldn't help but pat Shu on the back, afraid he might actually suffocate there.
After catching his breath, Shu looked up at Sirin, still playing dead in Joyce's grasp.
No wonder people say children have far more energy than adults and youths. Sirin had been panting just as heavily as Shu moments ago, but her current condition was much better than his.
Didn't you see Sirin was already trying to hold her breath?
"Hoo..." Taking one last deep breath, Shu composed himself and asked Joyce to put Sirin down.
Joyce lowered Sirin, her hands resting on Sirin's shoulders.
Sirin tried to fall over twice, but Joyce propped her back up. She could only keep her eyes closed, deceiving herself.
"Alright... stop running..." Shu sighed, crouching down in front of Sirin. "We mean no harm..."
"Really?"
Sirin peeked open one eye, stared at Shu for a couple of rounds, then closed it again.
"Good people don't just chase after someone right off the bat and tell them not to run..."
I can hear you, you know...
Listening to Sirin's discontented muttering, Shu couldn't help but shake his head.
Although [Hope] was unusable, empathy and the collection of [Wishes] were still functioning normally.
The Sirin before him was a little scared, but better than before. Of course, part of it was that her fear had turned into a resigned hopelessness.
But aside from a slight hostility stemming from fear, there was no other malice.
Nothing like "How dare mere humans look directly at me..." No such emotions. It was as if the Sirin before him was just a little girl whose home had been invaded by strangers...
Home invaded by strangers...
Shu glanced at Joyce, who was holding Sirin to prevent her from escaping, and pondered for a moment.
He thought he knew why Sirin had run.
If the Sirin in this world was as he imagined, then weren't his and Joyce's actions exactly that—strangers who had barged into Sirin's "home" and then captured her?