***

Sanshi's shoulders suddenly convulsed from her light sleep. Half asleep, she raised her head lightly. At the dull gold darkness enveloping her, she seemed to sense a faint smell of blood trickling in.

--What is that?

A corner of her conscience whispered in a dreamy state. Some tiny foreign object. Something unpleasant that invoked unsettlement.

Sanshi lifted her head for a while, trying to peek around for surrounding signs on the other side of the tough shell. Finally she gave up unsatisfied.

... There seemed to be nothing.

Maybe it was her imagination. She must have been too alert. There should have been no possibly that any big problem would come straight to her face, Sanshi tried to convince herself.

Sanshi understood that Taiki instinctively invoked shoku upon danger. He invoked shoku to escape from the villains, and in fact he succeeded. Taiki had stepped through the gate, and once he stepped through, this is the alternate world. The alternate world Taiki had been carried to while he was still a golden fruit. However, upon such sudden danger, Taiki subconsciously made the most appropriate choice. Taiki instinctively escaped to the place whose people he knew while he was once there. The lady that lent her womb to Taiki, and her husband. The two's child as well. In other words, surrogate parents and brother, and indeed this place was out of the villains' reach. Taiki had chosen a place in which he would get protected.

...Therefore in no way should anything bad happen.

Enemies might be pursuing Taiki. However, it was difficult to search for Taiki. For Sanshi who had once lost Taiki's fruit, she knew the difficulty the hard way. Even if they were to start searching, it would take them a long time. Therefore it should be sufficient for Sanshi to only detect attacks from the outside.

So, everything should be fine. Sanshi convinced herself as she dropped back to sleep. Then, after some more time, Sanshi was awaken by the same sense of foreign object. This was repeated again and again, until Sanshi could not ignore such unpleasant stimulus.

--What on earth is that?

Sanshi raised her head. Her eyes wondered around the dull gold darkness, and desparately searched for the source of the foreign object.

"...It is poison."
From somewhere in the darkness came Gouran's voice. On that Sanshi finally realized. Yes, no doubt about it.
It is not poison -- but filth is filling in like poison.

" Why?"
Sanshi mumbled. Weren't they surrogate parents? Taiki escaped here exactly because he judged this place would be safe. Nevertheless, they tried to inflict harm on Taiki.

I must stop them. -- Sanshi was about to break the boundaries she set for herself and fly out of the shell, when a voice out of somewhere pressed on her to stay.

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