[Too, too many.] After picking two or three common dishes I wanted to eat, I couldn’t help feeling dazzled.
But just as I thought that, Lapis suddenly said, 【“In that case, please allow me to recommend a few popular dishes. After filtering, 472 recipes remain. Continue filtering?”】
[Yes.] Four hundred seventy-two… that was still a lot.
【“Understood. Then please allow me to recommend the top twenty recipes by popularity. You may continue to filter, or personally adapt the recipes.”】
Twenty, huh…
I glanced over them roughly.
By the definitions of our world, they were almost all Chinese dishes.
But what was spicy rabbit head and braised rabbit meat doing at the very front?
Rabbits were so cute. Did we really have to eat them?
[Select all].
Almost without hesitation, I checked every one.
【“Understood. Custom product [prepared meals], classified by recipe into 26 types…
【“By calculation, if produced according to the [prepared meals] product as currently defined, with 26 types in total and one to two of each type, the total weight will exceed 10 kilograms.
【“Added to the 148 compressed food bars already in production, the total weight will reach 30 kilograms. If further products are carried, the total mass of these goods will exceed the recommended load for organisms modeled on humans during long-distance travel.
【“Please confirm..”】
【“Confirmed. Constructing production module… Complete…
【“Producing…”】
A total weight of 30 kilograms?
Trudging through the desert with something that heavy on my back, or later over more complicated terrain, did look like no small challenge.
I turned to look at Alice, who was still tasting the cake in tiny bites, and suddenly felt it was going to be hard on her.
The hum echoing through the train gradually faded, and then, as a sharp screee—screee— rose from beneath the car, the train slowly came to a stop.
The same steps as before.
The doors opened, and the metal plates extending from under the car merged with the platform outside the window into one.
As that blue-haired robot came before us once more, I said to Alice, “Time to get off.”
“Eh? This fast?”
Alice had only even eaten half her cake.
She glanced at the platform outside the window and hurriedly picked up the lemon tea she had barely drunk a few sips of, then discovered in the middle of rummaging around, “Ah, the waterskin is gone!”
…Mm…
I flicked a glance at the time in the upper right.
From departure until now it had only been twenty minutes or so.
Even going by the straight-line distance of 79 km, the train’s speed really was quite fast.
【“Hello. Destination reached. Current station—Zone G, Beneath Myriad City. We welcome you to ride again.”】
Then the voice in the car paused.
The robot seemed to have noticed Alice’s intent, and went on, 【“If you require it, I can provide a packing service. Please wait a moment.”】
After that, that cute little blue cart came before us once more.
Nn…
I still felt a little embarrassed, actually.
We had ridden a “subway,” not only eaten a tasty tea snack, and in the end even packed the leftovers.
When the blue-haired girl lifted a blue-and-white contrasting tote bag and held the tote out in front of me, I looked at her.
Blue, neat hair, and beneath those blue strands, jade-green eyes.
Even this close, she looked no different from an ordinary girl.
Perhaps because I had been staring too long, she tilted her head slightly, looking a little puzzled.
【“Is there anything else you require?”】 When she spoke, her mouth did not move.
Aside from that, there was nothing about her that looked like a robot.
Her voice did not come from her own body either, but from the car.
That clean, crisp voice came from every direction in the car, wrapping the whole compartment.
“N-nothing else. Thank you.”
A few steps took us out of the train and onto the platform.
The platform here was still dim.
In my field of view only scattered orange-yellow lights flickered.
I still couldn’t help looking back at the robot girl in the train.
She stood properly beside the little cart, watching me from the car door.
The metal plates beneath the train slowly drew back under the car, and as the doors closed, her figure vanished into the gap of the doors.
Then an orange-yellow band of light reading [Do Not Approach] lit along the edge of the platform, and the slowly starting train disappeared into the tunnel on the other side.
A similar platform.
There were probably many platforms like this in Eden.
Compared with the one where we had boarded, this platform had a few more odds and ends on the ground, leaving the feeling that not long ago there had still been quite a few people coming and going here.
The walls, likewise mottled and ruined.
We entered a corridor the same as before.
Here, faint orange-yellow bands of light still glowed along the corners at both sides of the corridor.
The bands were not complete.
In places they looked as if they had already peeled from the wall or been damaged, but even light like that was enough to illuminate the stairs, and the graffiti faintly visible on the walls.
Incomplete graffiti, with traces of erasure still left on it.
Were there those among the angels who loved street art like this too?
I couldn’t help thinking that, then started walking again.
“So this is Yulin-chan’s hometown… This is the place the angels once lived.”
If this had been a brightly lit corridor, Alice like this, holding the tote and smiling as she looked around, would have looked just like a girl who had finished shopping and was about to go home.
In the dim, silent surroundings, the only sounds here were my Alice’s footsteps and her voice.
Only, it was also like a traveler coming home late at night.
The place the angels had once lived.
The angels—where had they all gone?
Even without any information or explanation, even Alice could tell.
This was a once, buried under yellow sand.
“It is.” Quietly, I nodded.
We climbed the stairs, then a long ramp, and when we stepped out of the entrance of the underground passage, facing us was a high wall.
Looking around, this seemed like the doorway of a building.
The ceiling overhead was very high above the ground, and enclosed by the walls on both sides it formed a half-indoor entrance bay.
I glanced back at the glass door beside us.
Inside the glass door it looked like a shop.
Only, the shop had long since been a wreck, things lying every which way.
The buoy marking the factory’s position pointed ahead and to the right.
Along a few steps we came completely out of the building, and I looked back.
In the dimness, it was only a huge shadow.
Outside the building was a wide street.
The other side of the street was hard to make out in the dark, only a vague blur.
When we kept going along the street, I finally realized that this side had been almost completely swallowed by sand.
That vague black shape was an enormous slope of sand.
A stretch of silence.
Even the trash bins along the street had a thin layer of dust floating on them.
I didn’t know how long we walked.
We turned a street corner and came along another road to a barred gate.
As I drew near, the gate gave a beep, then folded itself automatically toward the wall on the right and opened.
【“User 0109 Yulin: The products you customized are located in Section 133. Please follow the indications to Section 133 to collect them.”】
This factory was very different from the one we had visited in Zone D.
That factory in Zone D had felt like one enormous building.
Here, though the dimness made it hard to tell whether we were indoors or out, what I could see was that the buildings on the ground were not tall, only two or three stories, laid out neatly across the whole plant, looking like warehouse after warehouse.
Section 133 was not far.
Following the blue band of light that lit on the ground, we walked toward the left of the main gate, and before long we came to the vicinity of a warehouse-like building.
[GNN013-133]. Above the “warehouse” door, a line of black printed text read that.
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