The heart beat hard in Yoichi's rib cage, causing his bones to vibrate and his throat to dry. While the time around him seemed to have stopped, the young warrior decided that the moment to face reality and look for his friend with his eyes had arrived.

He turned his head with immense courage. His hands did not leave Rokuro's body, while the demon barely breathed. Inside the darkness, in the shadow zone generated by the extinguishing of the torches on the wall, he saw what he hoped not to see.

The rocks that trapped Enatsu's body had shattered, and the merchant tamer lay motionless a few feet behind, on the muddy floor of the cave.

Yoichi stayed still, frozen, unable to activate the muscles of his legs, sore by the intense fright. The darkness that enveloped his friend's shape became denser and denser before his eyes as if a mattifying cloth had just been lowered in front of his pupils.

Suddenly, the stillness of those interminable seconds was broken by Shioko's run: the archer made her way towards the body of her teammate who, for the umpteenth time, had risked his life to save hers. When he chose to make that heroic gesture, Enatsu put aside Shioko's apparent contempt for him: as he had always shown, life had an extremely high value for him and was worthy of being lived unconditionally.

Shioko screamed violently, repeatedly pronouncing the name of the young merchant, whose face was dirty with mud and not visible due to the shadow, so dense that it seemed to be touchable.

The vision of the red-haired girl throwing herself on the floor in despair completely clouded Yoichi's sight, unlocking a memory in his mind's eye. His brain disconnected from reality, connecting to the archives of his previous life, still hidden somewhere between the walls of his cranium.

...

A man was lying on a parquet floor, immersed in his own blood. A woman rested her head on his chest, crying desperately and shouting incomprehensible words.

From the perspective from which he witnessed that vision, Yoichi realized that he was sitting on the ground, not far from the two protagonists of the memory.

"Yoichi! Yoichi, help me! Do something, please!" the woman screamed. Long black hair and midnight black eyes. Her makeup smudging under her eyes was flowing down to her chin, dissolved by the sour tears that kept wetting her face like a river in flood.

Yoichi's eyes crossed with the woman's, and then his gaze shifted to the corpse. The man lying on the floor had a deep wound on his abdomen, probably due to a gunshot.

His previous life ego felt a strong empathy for that man, apparently much older than the present Yoichi. He was about fifty years old, yet, his life had been abruptly interrupted.

Cramps in his chest made him realize that that woman's pain was shared. Indeed he and the one who now laid lifeless on the floor used to be great friends. She was undoubtedly that man's wife, or maybe his girlfriend. Or a mistress, who knows.

The room where the misdeed had taken place looked confused and faded as if his memory was not clear or that detail was purely irrelevant.

Suddenly, Yoichi heard the sound of footsteps to his left. He turned his head, and a pair of shiny and elegant shoes appeared before his eyes. Clad entirely in python leather with blood- dirty tips, those expensive shoes seemed to belong to a wealthy man.

The eyes of the helpless Yoichi of the past raised, and he did not say a word: the man to his right wore a sleek black suit and a shoes-like burgundy shirt under his jacket.

However, although the vision allowed Yoichi's consciousness to move and interact with the space around him, his eyes failed to focus on the man's face, but only on his right arm. It was raising towards the screaming woman, while its hand wield a heavy 'desert eagle' model gun.

"Yoichi! Yoichi! Help us!" the woman shouted again, aware that those would be the last words she would utter in the realm of the living. The index finger of the elegant man's right hand pulled the trigger, and the snake-shaped ring on it reflected the artificial white light of the chandelier.

*boom* - After the shooting, the black-haired woman's screams suddenly ceased, and drops of blood splashed over Yoichi's face, gently touching him like drops of water on the shore of a waterfall.

Who was that man on the ground? Why did he feel a deep affection for him? Why did he share the pain of his death with that woman? Why was he sitting on the ground next to the man who killed them?

The questions that quickly floated in Yoichi's subconscious were not answered, and his gaze darkened until all the vision was reduced to an infinite cluster of nothingness.

...historical

*anf*anf* - When he reopened his eyes, Yoichi focused on his still unmoved hands under the back of the dying mole demon.

"Yoichi! Yoichi!" Shioko's screams echoed in the cave, drawing his attention just like the screams of the black-haired woman, who had begged him a moment before she died next to his man.

Within moments, he realized that what had happened in that room with parquet in his previous life and what was happening at that moment before his eyes represented the same event.

What... what was I doing? Why didn't I save them? He thought as an adrenaline-pumping thrill ran down his back, triggering the muscles of his arms and legs. The archer's screams continued to call his name, begging him for help: the enemy was still hiding in the darkness and could attack them at any moment.

Yoichi gently dropped the body of the brave Moruba on the ground and stood up, looking at his two teammates and recalling the vision. The python-shoeed man who wore the ring with the snake oozed pure wickedness. The reason he killed two people dear to him escaped his understanding, and many questions clenched his brain in a vice. However, if he wanted to save Enatsu or barely avenge his death, Yoichi would have to do it quickly.