Chapter 159: A Black Hole, But Very Cute
[Resonance Intertwined: Night After Night (Elation & Nihility)]
Midnight descended upon the Hyperion. Rekka had been planning to pull off something big, but an inexplicable, strange sensation washed over him just as his schemes were taking shape.
He had become IX.
To be precise, his current state could no longer be classified as human. He was IX—or at least, a being teetering on the very edge of becoming a black hole, though not quite there yet.
However, his appearance, which was nearly identical to that of a true black hole, had undergone a… slight modification.
"...Boss, you're actually kinda cute right now."
That's right.
A cute… black hole.
A being that resembled a singularity, but with cat ears.
There was no need to guess who had bestowed this particular power upon Rekka. The only reason he could still think and speak was thanks to a contingency plan left behind by a certain someone.
'I feel… I am very cute,' Rekka thought.
He gave a little hop, a motion that thankfully caused no structural damage to the Hyperion—because today, he was a cute black hole.
He tried to twitch the ethereal cat ears. As they wiggled, the surrounding space-time rippled in tandem.
The resonance of Elation and Nihility… a truly chaotic combination.
"Uncle Welt~~~"
"Uncle Welt~~~"
Late at night, Rekka floated back and forth in the corridor of the passenger cars, his voice an ethereal whisper that drifted through the silent train like a ghost's call.
Of course, no ghost was nearly as terrifying as Rekka.
He looked like a perfect model of a black hole plucked straight from a physics textbook: a flawless, absolutely pitch-black spherical shadow. A thin, scorching accretion disk floated around its edge, the orange-red halo rotating slowly like molten syrup. Light bent dramatically as it neared his event horizon, stretching the corridor's wall lamps into slender, distorted arcs.
And then there were the additions: a pair of cat ears and whiskers, outlined in glowing fluorescent lines, as if someone had hastily sketched a graffiti filter onto the fabric of reality. They floated crookedly atop his "head," accompanied by two simple white dots that served as eyes.
"Mr. Welt~~~ Do you remember~~~ that time you saved a little girl somewhere~~~" Rekka sang out softly at Welt's door, his voice designed to pull the man from his sleep.
'What is it?'Welt wondered, stirring.'A little girl coming to express her gratitude?'
He had saved so many people over the years; he honestly couldn't recall every single one. With a weary sigh, Welt slid out of bed and opened the door.
"Are you the little one who came to thank—"
"I am a~ black hole~"
The expression that crossed Welt Yang's face was nothing short of spectacular. Of course, he knew what this thing was; he summoned quasi-black holes as a matter of course. It was a running joke that the quasi-black hole wasn't even a true ability of the Herrscher of Reason, but rather one belonging to the Herrscher of Earth. Old Yang used them so often that everyone had all but forgotten that the Herrscher of Reason's real power wasn't just conjuring singularities.
"...Rekka?"
"Yes~ It's me~" The accretion disk at the edge of the black hole flickered faintly, like a cosmic wink.
Looking at this impossible sight, Welt felt a strange sensation…
"Can you change back?"
"I can't~ This is me for today~" Rekka's voice emanated from the center of the black hole, carrying a strange, hollow quality, as if speaking from the bottom of a very deep well.
"Then what exactly is your situation now…?"
"I just wanted everyone to see~ I turned into a black hole~ and I grew cat ears~ Isn't it very cute~?"
"Your mass already exceeds that of the planet outside by dozens of times," Welt stated, his eyes flicking from Rekka's form to the celestial body visible through the train window, his mind performing the grim calculations automatically.
Rekka tried to look down at himself—a difficult feat for a being without a neck. He could only rely on his consciousness to perceive his own "body."
"I don't feel very heavy right now~"
"Don't mess around. You're a micro black hole. You are, for all intents and purposes, a celestial body," Welt sighed, rubbing his temples.
And yet, Rekka wasn't attracting anything. He just… looked like a very cute black hole, and that was it. When Welt cautiously tossed a small object toward him, it was deflected by an invisible force field.
After confirming that even direct contact was blocked by a barrier akin to a wall of air, Welt finally relaxed.
"It is indeed quite cute," he conceded, his voice laced with resignation. "Go on, go play."
"Then I'm really going to play~"
"Go on, go on." Welt waved a dismissive hand, closed the door, and lay back down on his bed. He stared at the ceiling for a long, silent moment.
'A cat-eared black hole.'
How could those two concepts even exist in the same sentence?
Rekka floated along the corridor, momentarily unsure of who to bother next. A sliver of light shone from under the crack of the Data Bank's door—Dan Heng was still awake.
Rekka paused, considering it. He ultimately decided against it. Dan Heng's mental state had finally stabilized recently. The last thing he needed was to see a black hole with cat ears floating outside his door in the middle of the night. That might just set his recovery back a bit.
"Conductor~~~ Look~~~"
"G-Ghost!!!" Pom-Pom shrieked, dropping its mop with a clatter.
"It's not a ghost~ Conductor~ Look~ I turned into a black hole~ Path of Nihility, oh~ Isn't it very cute~?"
Pom-Pom stared at the fluorescent cat ears for a long moment, then at the two little white dots for eyes. The conductor's panic subsided, replaced by a baffling acceptance.
"Good morning everyone, Pa!" Pom-Pom suddenly announced, having somehow climbed onto Rekka's "back" and now riding him like a noble steed.
Little Blue Light materialized, settling comfortably on top of Rekka's spherical form. 'Boss is so different today, weng.'
"Oh my god, Conductor, what is that thing you're on?" March 7th cried out, her eyes wide with shock as she spotted them. "Conductor, when… when did you buy a black-hole-themed floating chair?"
"This is not a floating chair! It's Passenger Rekka!" Pom-Pom patted the event horizon. "It seems he became a part of IX today, Pa."
Pom-Pom hopped down to resume its mopping duties, leaving March 7th and Rekka to stare at each other.
Ten minutes later, March 7th was perched atop Rekka, shrieking with glee as she began "black hole racing" inside the Astral Express. Rekka had no physical form she could hold onto, so she could only vaguely grip the air, her entire body swaying back and forth with the black hole's gentle, gliding movements.
"Speed up, speed up, speed up!" March 7th shouted excitedly.
Rekka floated forward a little faster. The actual speed was nothing impressive, but the visual effect was turned up to the absolute maximum.
Stelle poked her head out of her room, a toothbrush still hanging from her mouth. Her eyes went wide as she watched March 7th, a mouthful of toothpaste foam, joyriding a black hole.
'So cool,' was her first, immediate reaction upon seeing the cat-eared singularity.
March 7th pulled over to share her fantastic new ride with her best friend.
Stelle reached out a hand, still slick with toothpaste foam, and tentatively prodded the edge of Rekka's accretion disk.
An invisible wall of air met her fingers.
What a pity.
'Can I get stuck inside?'
The Trailblazer instinct took over.
She took two steps back, shook her arms loose, and struck a sprinter's pose. With a sudden lunge, she launched herself forward, clinging to the edge of Rekka's accretion disk like a koala. Her hands clutched the invisible barrier, and she used all her might to try and squeeze her way in.
The result was, of course, futile.
Her face squished grotesquely against the force field, her nose flattened and her mouth stretched wide.
"It hursh…" she mumbled, her voice distorted.
"Am I cute~~~" Rekka's ethereal voice floated out.
"Cute… uh, it really is… cute?"
"What are you all doing."
Dan Heng appeared.
One glance—just one single glance—and Dan Heng was utterly captivated.
'Hss—what is this thing?'he thought, his mind reeling.'So weird. Let me look again.'
[Anomalous data detected. Logic error. Annoying. Attempting to recalibrate...]
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