The car rolled to a stop.
Neo stepped out after Richards and took in the building in front of them. The apartment was nothing extravagant, but the difference hit him anyway. The entrance was clean. The walls looked maintained. Even the lights worked without flickering. That alone felt wrong to him. In Zone 0, things always seemed one bad day away from giving up completely. Here, the building stood the way it was supposed to, quiet and intact, like failure had never lived near it for long.
Richards opened the door and motioned him inside.
Neo entered without a word, reading the apartment on instinct. The apartment was not large. A living area, a small kitchen, a table, a sofa, the basics. Enough for one person. He realized it almost at once when he glanced near the entrance and saw only one pair of shoes besides the ones Richards had just taken off.
'So he lives alone.'
"Come in," Richards said, glancing back at him. "Sit wherever you want. I'll bring something to eat."
Neo gave a small nod. "Thanks."
He moved toward the table and sat down carefully, still paying attention to everything around him. The place was clean and functional, but it did not feel lived in so much as used. Nothing was out of place. Nothing looked neglected. Even so, there was a flatness to it, the kind a place got when someone only came back to sleep before leaving again.
A short while later, Richards returned carrying two bowls. Steam curled up from them.
"Sorry," he said as he set them down. "Instant noodles. I don't have anything better, that's the life of a government official, you have little time."
Neo looked at the food, then at him, then picked up the bowl and started eating fast enough that whatever manners he had left vanished on the spot.
Richards sat across from him and watched in silence while Neo emptied the first bowl in what felt like no time at all. The moment Neo set it down, his eyes flicked to the second one before he could stop himself.
Richards noticed.
A faint smile touched his mouth. He pushed the other bowl toward him.
"Go on."
Neo did not pretend to hesitate.
"Thanks."
By the time the second bowl was empty, some of the strain in his face had finally loosened enough to show. Richards leaned back slightly in his chair and folded his arms.
"Feel better?"
Neo wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and let out a breath through his nose. "A little."
Richards nodded once. "Then tell me what happened."
Neo sat with the empty bowl in front of him for a moment, his fingers resting against the warm ceramic. He did not rush into it. The hunger was quieter now, which only left more room for the rest.
"I used to go to the old man for work," he said at last. "Small jobs. Deliveries, or even cleaning the place. Whatever paid enough to keep me eating."
Richards looked mildly surprised. The reaction was small, but Neo caught it.
Neo went on anyway.
"This time it was low-rank Soul Cores. Nothing big. I took them where I was told, got paid, and came back." His jaw tightened faintly. "When I returned, the place was quiet."
Richards said nothing.
"There was blood under the back door."
Richards stayed silent and let him keep going.
"I opened it. The old man was on the floor. He was still alive then, but barely." Neo's voice flattened. "He told me to run."
That was where the clean version ended.
What came after did not come out in a straight line. Neo did not give it to him that way.
"There was someone else there," he said. "I saw him. Then I ran as I was told." He paused, then added, "He followed."
Richards watched him quietly.
Neo looked up. "I ran to the forest. After that..." He let the rest hang there for a beat. "A Duskmane got in the middle of it, and sent me flying, that is why I was injured."
Richards's expression changed slightly at that, though he still did not interrupt.
"He fought it," Neo said. "And in that brief window of time, I hid for my life."
That was all.
He had left out the ruin. The Soul Core. The class. The mountain opening for him. Everything that actually mattered.
None of what he said was false. It was simply nowhere near complete.
After a moment, Richards let out a slow breath through his nose.
"Thanks for telling me."
Neo said nothing.
Richards watched him, then spoke again, more carefully this time.
"You were right not to say more than necessary in front of the others."
Something tightened in Neo's face.
Richards leaned back slightly in his chair. "Some scenes get cleaned up too fast. Some deaths disappear before anyone has the chance to look at them properly." His mouth flattened for a moment. "A place like Zone 0 makes that even easier."
Neo studied him.
That was better. Closer to honest, but still wrapped up enough that Richards could step away from it if he needed to.
Richards glanced toward the table between them, then back at Neo. "You were lucky you said that name to me and not to someone else."
Neo's fingers tightened slightly against his knee.
Richards continued, his tone still level. "The system does not spend much effort on a dead man from Zone 0. Most of the time, a case like this gets buried under paperwork and indifference before the blood has even dried."
Neo said nothing for a beat.
There was little to go back to anyway. A broken room. A few clothes. An empty fridge. And now the old man's death hanging over all of it. Even so, hearing it laid out that plainly made something settle cold in his chest.
Then Richards looked at him properly.
"You can't go back there."
Neo almost laughed, though nothing about it was funny.
Back to what?
His apartment flashed through his mind for a second. The broken window. The cold. The silence. Then the old man's place, stained with blood and full of questions that would never be asked the right way.
Richards must have read enough in his face, because his voice softened a little.
"You can stay here for now," he said. "Unless you'd rather go back."
Neo looked up.
"Let me stay."
Richards nodded once. "Fine."
Then his expression shifted again, practical this time.
"Do you have any identification?"
Neo hesitated, then shook his head. "No."
"We'll have to fix that." Richards rested an arm on the table. "And the healer told me you awakened a class. You'll need to register and take the official test."
Neo's stomach tightened at once.
Of course.
There it was.
The part he had been trying not to think about.
His expression did not change, but his fingers curled faintly against his knee. Showing his class was dangerous. Divine was not something he could place in front of the world and expect to survive unnoticed. Refusing would only make things worse.
"I understand," he said. "I'll do it."
"Good. We go tomorrow."
For a few seconds, neither of them spoke.
Then Neo asked, "Where are we, exactly?"
Richards looked at him as if that part had only just occurred to him.
"Arandom City."
Arandom City. Neo had heard the name plenty of times. It was the sort of place that existed in other people's lives. Not his.
The room felt wrong against everything his day had been, too clean, too quiet, too intact.
His mouth moved before the rest of him fully caught up.
"How did we get here that fast?"
"I used a teleport."
Neo looked at him. He only stared, the scale of it settling in piece by piece. Teleports were not the kind of thing people from Zone 0 used. They were not even the kind of thing they really imagined using. It was expensive, too far above their world. It was the sort of answer that should have sounded normal in someone else's mouth. Coming from Richards, after everything else, it only widened the gap more.
Neo leaned back slightly in his chair.
'Right.'
That answered one thing.
Richards was no ordinary man.
Richards seemed to read enough of that from his face.
"Don't tell anyone what happened yesterday," he said. "Not a word. Let it sit for now."
Neo kept watching him.
Richards held his gaze. "Some things stay buried because people are afraid of what comes out when you dig. Sometimes that can be useful. Sometimes it can be turned."
That was as close to a confession as Neo was going to get tonight.
Then Richards added, quieter, "And... I'm sorry for your loss, Neo."
Neo frowned immediately.
"How do you know my name? I never told you."
A small smile touched Richards's mouth.
"You did," he said. "While you were asleep muttering."