"So this is Balai Building?"
Geno raised a hand to shade his eyes and looked up at the twin towers rising into the clouds, and something stirred in him.
"That's right. They say these twin towers used to belong to a pair of famous entrepreneurs - the Ballet Brothers."
Twiggy had clearly done her homework on the place.
"Word is the Ballet Brothers were on the verge of bankruptcy back then. To draw investment from society's rich and famous, they paid a fortune to sign the most celebrated ballerinas of the age - the Nymph Sisters - to perform here."
Geno listened to Twiggy lay out the tower's history, curiosity written all over him.
"So what happened after that?"
"After that comes the part where Balai Building was swallowed by a Hollow. Not one person made it out of those buildings during the disaster. It happened far too fast."
That soured Geno's mood at once.
Tragedies like that always drag a person down.
"All right, don't let it get to you. It was a long time ago - all of it happened back in the Eridu days."
Twiggy had caught the change in him, of course, and stepped closer to console him.
Geno might come across as careless most of the time, but at moments like this he was always the first to feel it.
"I know. I just think it would be nice if this world didn't have Hollow disasters at all."
There was an irony in that. Geno was an Ethereal, and he owed his very existence to the Hollows, yet what he wanted was for the Hollows to be gone.
Meanwhile, certain powerful figures would deliberately throw the Ether inside a Hollow out of balance for their own gain, triggering even greater catastrophes.
The Rebel Soldiers and The Exaltists both fell into that category.
"That day will come. I promise you."
Twiggy smiled. Wasn't her research into the Ether Bracelet for this big kid's dream in the first place? Wanting to put a smile on every face in the world - what a troublesome dream to have.
"Enough of all that. Let's get inside. I want to see just how grand a building this expensive really is."
Shaking off the gloom, Geno led the way into the reception hall.
One look at the interior pulled an audible gasp out of Geno, who had never claimed to be worldly.
Gold and gleam everywhere. Exquisite chandeliers hung down from the ceiling in rows, and every surface had been finished with an artist's eye.
In the middle of the hall stood two statues posed like thinkers, their heads shaped as giant light bulbs.
Opulent, yet somehow still refined. That was the hall that opened up in front of the pair of them.
"Isn't this a little over the top? And this is after sitting empty for years. Imagine what it looked like in its day."
In fairness, Geno had seen the homes of rich people before. His time at the Timefield estate had been an education in itself. But next to Balai Building, that was a candle held up to the sun.
"All right, business first. Mayor Mayflower hired us to clear the Ethereals out of this building, which makes us the so-called 'cleaners.'"
If the Hollow wrapped around Balai Building kept shrinking the way it had been, then the death of every Ethereal inside was a foregone conclusion.
But before that, Mayflower needed a basic asset assessment of the property.
Which meant a building crawling with active Ethereals was absolutely not an option.
"Understood. Basically we fight things, right? That part I'm good at."
Twiggy had said a great deal, and those two points were probably all of it Geno had taken in.
As a warrior, he had never been one for words.
One word covered it: fight.
With that, Geno drew his longsword and made to charge in and start cutting, only for Twiggy to grab him back in a hurry.
"Stop! What's the rush! I wasn't finished. Fighting is fine, but try not to wreck the building while you do it. All of this counts as part of the assets."
Twiggy knew him too well. Geno's combat ability was in a league of its own, but once a fight started he lost all sense of restraint, and damage to the tower would cost them more than the job was worth.
"Got it. I'll hold back a bit."
Geno nodded. He had a fair sense of his own strength. One swing he failed to rein in, and some floor would end up with a crater through it.
After all that talking, the two of them finally set out.
Hunting Ethereals inside the tower turned out to be the easy part, since Geno could track their trails. He was a professional hunter through and through.
"One, two, three. That's the third wave of Tyrfings and Hatis now. Doesn't look like this building has anything too strong in it."
From the ground floor up to the tenth, the two of them had already cleared batch after batch of Ethereals.
And the strongest waves among them amounted to a few oversized Goblins.
At this rate, they would have the whole building swept clean before the afternoon was out.
"True. Though the tower on the other side might not go so smoothly."
At Twiggy's words, Geno opened his Ether Sight and looked across at the other half of the twin towers. That side sat deeper inside the Hollow, so the Ether concentration over there ran higher.
Just as she said, the odds of running into a high-risk Ethereal were greater on that side.
"Shouldn't make much difference either way, though."
The Geno of today was a long way from the weak little Ethereal who once had to give everything he had just to put down a Doppelganger.
The same went for Twiggy. So once the east tower was completely clear, the two of them set off for the west tower.
As they walked, Twiggy pulled out a map and pointed out where they stood.
"The two towers are only joined by the connecting bridge on the tenth floor, so we need to get down to the tenth first."
Clearing the east tower of Ethereals had taken them all the way to the twentieth floor at the very top, which meant the rest of the trip was downward.
"Ugh, more stairs."
With the main structure still sitting inside the Hollow, the building's power supply was anything but stable. Anything mechanical, elevators included, was effectively dead, which left the stairwell.
Luckily they weren't pressed for time, so Geno and Twiggy took the steps at an unhurried pace, talking over their plans for the future as they went.
"You know, I kind of think life right now is already a happy one. There's always some small mess going on, but it still makes me feel like being alive is a pretty great thing."
Geno looked at Twiggy's profile and said exactly what he hoped the future would hold.
If only every day to come could be as calm and peaceful as this one.
____
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