Klein froze for a moment, and it took several seconds before it fully hit him. He hurried to shift into "the World," forcing his voice to stay low and steady. "You mean Stephen?"
Audrey nodded, though it looked like it took effort. "That's right."
Vincent added, "Yes, I need to find this man. His name is Stephen."
"..."
Klein was silent for a few seconds, glancing again at the portrait. "But the Stephen I met doesn't look like this."
The moment he said it, he realized how foolish that had been — even he himself could change his face with the Faceless's item, so of course a Sequence 5 puppet of an evil god could alter his appearance too.
A wave of cold dread crept over Klein's scalp. He opened his mouth, but for a moment found nothing to say. He then felt a strange stroke of relief — thank goodness Ikanser and the other official Beyonders had pulled him out of his hotel and locked him down under heavy protection, all just to lure out that serial killer. If not for that...
Wait!
Suddenly, he remembered the first message Arodes had left on the vanity mirror: "You are currently in grave danger! Fortunately, your loyal servant's clever intervention has, for now, delivered you from that danger."
So the real "danger" Arodes had actually been referring to that whole time... had it been Stephen?
"Mr. World? Mr. World!"
Klein realized Vincent's voice was calling to him and said, quietly, "I'm listening."
"Can you tell me where your friend is right now? She could be in danger at any moment."
"She's currently..."
Klein didn't hesitate, giving the current location, but quickly added, "But her situation right now is a bit unusual — she's currently under the protection of official Beyonders."
He then quickly recounted how he'd stumbled onto the serial killer's crime scene and been picked up by them.
Vincent frowned. "In other words, you've actually been out of contact with your bodyguard for three days now?"
"That's right. I'd assumed he was probably hiding nearby, protecting me covertly, but now... I honestly have no idea what's happened to him." Klein felt his throat go dry as he spoke — his voice had turned low all on its own, no need for disguise anymore.
"I'm sorry, Mr. World."
Audrey's voice carried a tremor. "I — I really had no idea Stephen was... controlled by an evil god. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."
Then something occurred to her, and she turned in a panic toward the Fool. "Mr. Fool, could you... could you help Mr. World? I'll — I'll give up anything I have to make it right!"
Audrey was genuinely terrified — not just of having endangered a fellow Tarot Club member because of her own actions, but of the Fool holding it against her, of being cast out of the club entirely.
Klein, though panicking on the inside, kept up the Fool's composed exterior. "No need to worry — this isn't your fault." He paused. "If 'the World' really does end up in danger..."
"I'll step in."
Hearing the Fool say "I'll step in," Audrey's heart settled considerably. She took a deep breath and said to Klein, apologetic, "Mr. World, this is entirely on me. All I can really do right now is offer some financial compensation — I'll pay ten times what your friend charged him for the bodyguard work!"
Ten times the compensation?
Ten times fifteen hundred pounds — that was fifteen thousand pounds!
That... that was an unimaginably enormous sum of money!
A jolt of excitement shot through Klein, quickly followed by sharp clarity: sure, the money was a lot, but you had to actually be alive to spend it. Better to get through the crisis in front of him first.
He'd just had the Fool declare "I'll step in" with all the swagger in the world, but only he knew the truth — he had absolutely no ability to step in and do a damn thing. If it actually came down to that, it would probably be the moment he died.
And by then, well, he'd already be dead — whether the Fool's boasting ever came true or not wouldn't matter to him anymore.
Which meant the smart move, for now, was to cling as tightly as possible to "Lovers."
"Mr. Lovers."
Klein said, earnestly, "I'll have my friend give Miss Justice half of that compensation, as thanks for your help."
Bernadette had no shortage of money, and Vincent had no reason to turn down free cash offered his way.
"All right, that's it for today."
Klein switched back to the Fool, calmly declaring the gathering over, then waved a hand and made everyone's figures vanish.
Once Beyond the Grey Fog had settled back into stillness, Klein pulled the note reading "Amon is inside me" out of a nearby pile of odds and ends. He drew a light breath and wrote out a divination phrase:
"The current location of the person who gave me this note."
Then he gripped the note tightly, leaned back against his chair, and quietly murmured the divination phrase, gradually slipping into sleep.
In the gray, hazy, fragmented world, Klein saw Stephen walking casually down a street, holding some kind of food, eating it while glancing around, as if he were just out for a stroll.
Looking more closely at the surroundings, it was unmistakably the area right outside the very villa Klein was currently staying in.
Klein's eyes snapped open, his expression heavy. "It really is him."
The thought that he'd spent the past few days entering Beyond the Grey Fog again and again, all while sitting not far from an "evil god," sent a chill down Klein's spine — he felt like he'd been pulled right up to death's door and back, more than once.
Had that presumed "Angel of Time" ever noticed his own excursions into Beyond the Grey Fog?
Klein rubbed his temples, thinking it over for a moment, then set the note aside and wrapped himself in spirituality, returning to reality.
Facing an Angel-level entity, Klein obviously had zero capacity to resist. Given that, his best bet was to play dumb and wait for reinforcements from Mr. Lovers and Miss Lovers.
...
Meanwhile, Vincent had also returned to reality, and the first thing he said to Bernadette was, "I know where Stephen might be."
Bernadette was a little surprised. "Weren't you at the Tarot Club gathering?"
Vincent went on, "Remember when 'the World' — that's Klein — needed a bodyguard? Miss Lovers very helpfully introduced him to Stephen. Stephen's been working as Klein's bodyguard for several days now."
"Stephen disappeared, and ended up becoming Klein's bodyguard?"
Bernadette was even more startled. "What is he — no, what is whoever's controlling him — actually after?"
"Not clear yet. But Klein just asked us for help at the Tarot Club gathering — the problem is, I'm the one in control of the body right now, and our opponent might well be an Angel-level entity. I'm worried I can't handle this."
"What did the Fool say?"
Vincent gave an awkward "uh." "He said, when it comes down to the final moment, he'll step in."
But Vincent understood full well: that was Klein purely bluffing his way through with zero follow-through — anyone who actually believed him was in for a rude awakening.
To be continued…
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