What was her mother thinking of bringing her daughter to a different world? He waited patiently for Lumina to answer him and when she did, he became more confused. They met each other in at least one out of millions of the universes he had. What did that even mean? If they were not strangers, then why was he having a difficult time remembering her? He wanted to ask more but stopped himself when he saw her expression. It was an expression of sadness and loss even. His heart almost ached and he wanted to give her a hug and comfort her as if she was his daughter…

“Alright, I understand.”

As much as he wanted to know the answer, it would be wrong of him to push further. He will wait until she feels like it was time to tell him.

Lumina smiled back when Kunikida respected her decision. “Alright, I think it has been a long day. It’s kind of rude to leave you alone in this big facility.. So tonight, there will be small dinner made by three of us somewhere in this city. I will come to your room to pick you up! Luke might be interested to talk to you since he seems very eager to know about you.”

“Five years old?! Why and how did you travel to another world at that age? Wouldn’t that be dangerous?” He highly doubted she travelled there because it was bring your child to workday. He noticed her bitter smile but did not say anything. “That is good although I am surprised you remembered despite being so young.” He wanted to ask her more about her trip but had a feeling she might not want to talk about it. However, it was still shocking to him that she remembered.

He followed Lumina across the brides as he tried his best to remember his surroundings. If he ever needed to go anywhere, it was important that he remembered the way instead of constantly relying on Luke, Dei or Lumina to help him especially when they were busy. However, it was interesting to see and explore the facility more. As they were walking, Kunikida couldn’t help but remembered the expression Lumina gave him when she first saw him and the strange feeling he had.

“So…if you have been to Yokohama before, have we met in the past?”

His question felt like a stupid one but he could not help but ask.

Lumina laughed lightly at Kunikida’s question. “I was with my mom.” It was quite hard to explain it to him, Lumina just worried he will take in too much information. All she remembered was, in that dimension, her mother is still alive. To get to Yokohama, venturing new world with her mother was an amazing one.

When Kunikida asked more, wondering if they met each other in the past, the girl paused from walking for a moment before she smiled back at Kunikida. She finally nodded, but her lips clasped tight that moment. She wanted to avoid from telling a lot because she was afraid that Kunikida couldn’t take more of it. She could only answer little by little that moment. 

“Yes. We do. At least in one out of million of universes you have, we have met and we are not a stranger to each other.”

But her lips shut after she answered. Trying to stop herself from telling more. It was complicated. She does not want Kunikida to know more than that. And her heart started to ache over the feelings of longing yet she couldn’t show it to someone who don’t even know her at all. She was afraid he will freaked out if he knows everything. She looked down, seemingly a bit sad when she remembered back her mother.. At that time, it looks like the time kind of stop. And feels like the Hoia’s gargantuan trees radiating a soft glow for a moment, and as if it was watching over the two.

Kunikida listened to Luke’s explanation, slowly understanding what he was telling him. Cosmos… he has heard about it before. Something about the energy of the universe. Was Luke saying he has the cosmos and he used it to protect him? While it sounded similar to abilities, it was still very different. He would need to look further into the topic of the cosmos when he had time later. He already noticed the flashing light on his phone and the urgent look on Luke’s face.

“Of course. Thank you again,” he said, bowing back to Dei and Luke. After they left the room, he looked back at Lumina who was smiling awkwardly.

“Thank you.”

He followed her out of the room as she showed him to his assigned room. He kept thinking back to all of Lumina’s reaction towards him and couldn’t help but feel as if she knew him.

“You said you knew my world very well. Have you been to my world many times before?”

Both of them headed out in a rush but as they are walking. Dei couldn’t help but to talk about him. “You didn’t shield him through halfway of our journey.” Luke didn’t take a chance to glance to his friend beside him while he continue to walk towards the meeting room.

“He have resistance against the harsh elements in the rift. Something tells me this is not the first time he went through that.” Dei rolled his eyes a bit when he heard Luke’s explanation. “Still, leaving him with no shield, you could have killed him.”

“Yet, I didn’t.” Luke smiled. Dei then was wondering about Luke’s previous statement. “..Does it mean in alternate realities, he did travel through the rift..?”

“..But not with us.” The other answered with a low tone.

-

When Lumina heard the question, she stopped walking and then turned to looked at him. “It’s... complicated. But yes. I have been into some places before. I remember Yokohama as well but I was only five years old when I arrived there.” She simply smiled. But it was a bit bitter. “But I have fun.”

“It is not?”

He thought it would be but apparently, it was more complicated than that. He had to withstand the pressure of the rift? Then, how was he able to travel to Luke’s world earlier without suffering any consequences? Why did he need protection from the rift now?

“What is this rift that you are talking about? If the rift is this dangerous, how was I able to pass it before? Is there a way I can pass through it again?”

Kunikida was glad to hear that Luke agreed with him and felt confident in him that he would survive the trip but he wanted to know more about this rift before going. He was so busy thinking about this rift when he was startled by Lumina’s sudden outburst.

She seemed rather excited to go to lead the team to his world. He was surprised to hear that she knew his world very well. Had she been to his world so many times?

Dei looked at Kunikida and he seems to be struggling to explain. He hummed for few seconds, wondering how he would explain it to him. He seems to have realized that Luke probably protected him using his cosmos. It would be easy to explain if someone has a knowledge about it. Luke decided it is probably best to explain it later to Kunikida.

Luke was kind of quiet, thinking whether it would be fine for her to lead a team on her own. He focused on Lumina then nodded. “...Alright, gather a team for yourself and report to me within 3 days of preparation. We will need a briefing.”.

“-Anyway, a rift is a tunnel of countless dimensions. When you are going through it, you will be sweeping through dimensions until you are at your destination. Normal human won’t be able to do that without a help of technology and cosmos. Cosmos is another term for energy. A population in this world able to manipulate cosmos for a lot of purposes. I use my cosmos to shield you back then. I believe a supernatural ability user like you don’t have problems in understanding concept of cosmos. Well, you will understand about it later.”

Luke took a glimpse of his smartphone as the screen was flashing few times and then he stood up. “Sorry, I have urgent matters to attend. Lumina, please send Kunikida to the assigned room for him to rest. I will meet you again, Kunikida.” Dei was kind of startled but then he bowed politely bow to Kunikida before following Luke out from the room. 

Orianna laughed heartily at her mother’s embrace. She joins in onto teddy bear hug before pulling away. “ Thank you so much mother! I don’t have to come home late night from studying and training anymore. We can at least see each other.”

“ Though, that doesn’t meant you skip work mother.” She teased and leans to nuzzle her nose against Minerva’s.

“ Working with Luke will be a challenge but I’ll work hard to be a Peacekeeper for him. So.. it’s okay mother, I will do my best for both of us!”

“True but..”

Minerva was pouting slightly when Orianna teased her but she couldn’t ignore the nose nuzzling so she give in, not wanting to spark a debate with her girl. Minerva always put her daughter first before anything. Orianna has constantly become her priority and she won’t excuse herself from job if it is not involving Orianna. It happened quite a lot of time when she skipped her work because of her before.

Luke came in to the hall and after meet and greet with others, he approach Dei, Orianna and Minerva. “It seems that you guys are having a good time.” He looked at two of them before his eyes fixed on Orianna.

Dei didn’t answer his question and although he was curious, he did not push him for an answer. He understood when Dei only shrugged that he didn’t want to tell him and it was something confidential.

As the young girl beside Luke bowed politely towards him, he couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable with her staring at him. Did she rarely meet other visitors? Was he her first one? Instead, he chose to focus on Luke.

“Alright.” He watched as the window’s shield slowly closed and a large monitor showing multiple different earths on the screen. He listened to Luke’s explanation and when he mentioned otherworldy foreign invasion and aliens were the first thing he thought of. He felt it was weird that aliens are real but then all of this is real. And the cause of this could easily be a weakned reality. However, the more dangerous event was his world being destroyed by a man made diaster, one that was created by Fyodor simply because he wanted to get rid of all ability users and create chaos to the world by creating false realities. One false reality was already made by framing the agency. He did not know what other realities could be make and he did not want to know. It also didn’t help when he was told that there weren’t a lot of Earth with great survival rates. He just need to try harder to make sure that won’t happen to his Earth.

“You don’t need to apologize for taking me out of my world. I should thank you for saving me and telling me all of this. If you didn’t save me, I would have died and the agency would not know of all of this and they might fail. But now, with this information and your help, we would have a higher chance of succeeding and saving many people.”

Kunikida turned his attention to Dei. “How long would it take to prepare the ship? What if three people including me travel to my world first and then a team can travel to my world later on a ship?”

Dei looked at Kunikida and startled slightly. “E-Eh? It’s not that simple. I mean.. Will you be able to withstand the pressure of the rift?” 

Luke leaned back against his chair in a relaxed manner. “Why not? I have confident in him. Besides, we DID bring him from Yokohama to here without needing a ship.” Dei looked at Luke before looking back at Kunikida. He realized all this while, when Luke bring someone unfamiliar back to Gatekeeper’s facility through the rift, he would keep them in a life support pod. But not with Kunikida.

Dei then nodded with a silence. Luke simply raised his eyebrows since he could feel Dei is not liking his ideas. “Don’t worry, it’s not like we never protected him through the rift before.” Dei let out a silent sigh.

“Over a hundred universes?…” Kunikida was shock to hear that there were so many universes that Dei had to watch over. Not only that, Luke watched even more universes. He wasn’t surprise to hear that both of them didn’t get to sleep often. In the agency, Kunikida was the only one that who sometimes didn’t sleep due to how busy work can be.

He put his book away. He wasn’t surprise to hear that there had been others who were not as cooperative as him but… what exactly happen to that person? Did he want to know?

“What happen to them?”

He wasn’t sure if Dei could tell him since it might be confidential to the company. Them they walked out of the facility as they headed towards what he assumed was Luke’s office. Luke seemed busy as he was talking to someone and he gave an apologetic glance at Luke. His eyes wander over to the lady Luke was talking to and her expression confuse him a little. It was almost as if she knew him but he had no idea who she was.

“Yes, we did. I know there is no rush but I hoped we can discuss about the situation in my world. There is so many questions and I would want to help the investigation as much as I can.”

Dei shrugged. He prefer to not tell since Kunikida is also in the same condition as the one in the past. If he tell, he’s afraid the man would not cooperate with them as well. Lumina bowed politely towards him even though she seems awkward and she kept on standing beside Luke, her eyes dotted on Kunikida for a very long moment.

Luke nodded when Kunikida responded. “It’s fine to be curious. We will do a short meeting about it so you can question us whatever you want to know. Then you can have a rest while we worked on something.” The window’s shield slowly closed so they have more privacy. Luke turned on the display on the large monitor and large vision of multiple earths were displayed. Some of the Earth seems destroyed from afar, some of it were blue just how it is. Luke took a seat in front of Kunikida.

“I’m confident that by now you know who we are and what we do. These are Earths from several parallel universes that we have visited and studied. What appeared on this screen is the same Earth of few parallel universe, the only differences are the amount of destruction and the cause of it. Some of the destruction are made by foreign invasion- an otherworldly present who can bend through time and space, and some were caused by human themselves.”

He then turned to look at Kunikida. “A weakened reality can trigger a loose dimension. When our dimension losing it’s rigidness, then so does time and space. A weakened reality will make Earth vulnerable to otherworldly invasion- and they can penetrate through our dimension so easily using their own technology. And that’s not the only thing that would be coming for our world. In your case, we might not need to worry about foreign invasion ..for now. Your world may not be invaded by them but rather ceased to function due to man-made disaster. True to our calculation that number of population that possess supernatural ability might be little to insignificant, but, an altered reality could invite a slow yet assuring death of a star. For your world, give it only few hundred years more or so. We weren’t supposed to interfere with your business and how your world function with all of this supernatural ability people at first place. But really, one person decide to change reality and it’s already setting a trigger. I wouldn’t even take a glimpse of your world if it isn’t due to false realities being written. ...The truth is there aren’t many Earth with great survival rate. If we keep losing more, then human will cease to exist. Working with you is one of our tasks to study the nature of your own world. I’m truly sorry that I took a little fragment of your time- dragging you to our world and listening to our talk. But as you can see, you are one of the victim who’s reality being rewritten. So, I’m giving you a chance to take what’s originally as your rights; your life and your future. With this, you are not only saving yourself, you are saving others, and your effort will be a shared victory among others.”

Dei who was silent at first, thinking about something as he reads the information of supernatural ability users on his own tablet that he holds in hands. “To study the nature of his world, we will be sending a team to infiltrate and probably stays there for an amount of time. It is a costly procedure with a longer time for preparation, the usual quantum tunneling could bring one to three person without a ship. But if we are having a team larger than three, we will need a ship before reaching Yokohama to send Mister Kunikida back.”

Orianna turned to the large screen that appeared that showed the supposed ‘president’. She was at awe at how he actually looked very young and around her age group. Her attention was halted for a moment looking at Dei as he spoke.

“ From HQ? He must be working really hard if he’s busy with work but still made the time to welcome the students.” She said, and turned to see her mother out in the distance.

“ Oh! My mother is here.” Orianna smiled waving at Minerva.

Minerva came fast towards Orianna and she hugged her own child before swinging a bit, just like hugging a teddy bear. “Congratulations, my dear baby~ I’m so happy that you finally be able to work here and more importantly, a place where I can get close to my baby girl~!!”

Dei chuckled and teased Minerva. “No, Orianna belongs to us now. You had to take a break from your work and come back and forth from your lab to visit your child.”

“I see… How many universes do you look after and keep safe? It sounds like a lot of work, looking after different universes and making sure they are all safe.”

He looked down at the book and then back up at Dei. “Even if my book is in this condition, it can still be usable. I do have another book like this but it is back in my apartment and yes I would have to rewrite everything. But the fact that you recover this for me, I am thankful to you and Luke.”

Dei tried to recount amount of universes he have to look over. “Hmm. we have a department where each of them are assigned to watch over up to hundred of universes. Like me, I was assigned to few hundreds of it, and the numbers will add up. It’s a lot of work, often, I don’t sleep. Luke got it worst sometimes.”

The blue haired young man looked at the book. “No problem.. Honestly, we should thank you too for being cooperative. The last time we saved someone, it doesn’t really ended well.”

They walked out of the facility and approached Luke’s office. The entire office was lit brightly, clean and cold. There’s a big desk situated by the end of the room, and behind the desk is a clear large window extended to the end of the wall’s corners. They can see the entire facility on the ground, partially covered in green trees, the cities in the distance, and the bright blue sky.

Luke was discussing over something with a young woman that looks like her assistance. She had an appearances of a fair skin, soft pink orange-ish hair. Their discussion was interrupted when Dei and Kunikida came in. The young woman confused at the moment before her eyes fixed on Kunikida. She looked startled. Her expression was clear. She looks like she haven’t met someone for a long time.

“ A pleasure to meet you Dei.” She bows again after learning his name. But his next words came to a shock to her when she was going to be recruited as a Peacekeeper for the top organization. “ R-really? So, President Luke wanted me to be on his team?” 

Orianna shook her head at Dei’s comment regarding Luke’s personality and smiled, “ It’s not a problem for me! I’m honored to be joining such a prestigious team!”

“ I’ve heard of President Luke but I have not seen him up and close. So this will be my first time to meet him.”

Orianna’s gained some recognition for being the top of the Peacekeeper graduates. Her methods are often ‘trivial’ or ‘odd’ but it has gain her the honor of being the ‘innovative peacekeeper’. Some say that her smile was enough to be used as peace treaty during one of her exams. But some say she had a terrifying method that often worked.

It’s not really ‘nice and cute’ to look at when she’s smiling pointing a gun at you.

A large screen suddenly prompted and displaying Luke in his presidential suit, representing himself as a head of the organization and he started talking. “Welcome, and I hope everyone have a good time for your first day. A heartfelt congratulation for everyone that made it to this day. Whether you are a Gatekeepers, Peacekeepers, technicians and others.....” As he appeared on the screen, people started to focus on him.

As Luke continued to speak, Dei pointed towards the screen and chuckled. “Oh, it’s him. He must be giving speech from the HQ office.” 

Minerva who came later approached her daughter, but she also looked up on the screen, waiting for the president to finish his speech for a few minutes before looked down at Orianna.

Orianna was thrilled to be part of the Peacekeepers now. This was a role not taken by many as most preferred to be with the Gatekeepers. Though, like the latter, Peacekeepers had their own significant roles in keeping the peace of other worlds. 

Her mother, Minerva has been supportive of her ever since and had done hall she can to provide for her baby daughter.

It was nerve racking that she was at the very front with the few Peacekeepers but it did have a sense of accomplishment that she would take on such a role for the organization.

When it was lunch time, Orianna was just mingling with her fellow Peacekeepers when the supposed vice president introduced himself. She immediately stands up and greets him. “ Its’ a pleasure too meet you and thank you so much for your kind words sir. I hope to contribute greatly to the organization purpose.”

Dei smiled. “Just called me Dei. Besides, I came here to tell you that we will be in the same team soon. Our team need a Peacekeeper. Honestly a lot of team need one but you know the requirements were set high by Luke because ..a lot of things happen. Also, be patient with Luke. He have quite a temper and a perfectionist.”

All of sudden Dei got a notification in his phone and it was from Luke. “Ah, Luke said he will personally greet you soon~ By the way, have you ever meet or seen him before?”

They had to listen to some speech and briefings before they are finally served lunch. Peacekeepers team seems preferred to be mingling with themselves since they look a little distinguished than the rest.

The Vice President; Dei seems to walking around and greets everyone and he directly greeted Orianna. 

“Oh, you must be Orianna. I have heard about you from your mother. She looks very happy when she heard you passed the final exam for this job. From the previous entry exam you really did well. You scored the highest and in our priority list to get hired, if you wanted to know. You can just call me Dei. I’m sorry on behalf of President Luke, he can’t attend this event for today. ”

So Dei was his name and… “Vice president…” Now that he thought of it, both Luke and Dei looked to be very young to be president and vice president. While he did not know their age, they looked to be even younger than him! “I see. Being the vice president, I am sure it is a lot of responsibilities.” As vice president, he probably had a lot of duties to complete. He could have easily gave the job of guiding him to another person but instead he chose to take his time and guide him around. “I apologize for taking up your time, Dei.”

He followed Dei to the chamber. He waited for Dei to unlock the box and took his book from Dei. While the book look burnt, it still looked usable.

“It is more than just a book to me. This is a book of my ideals and also a book that I use for my ability.” He glanced at Dei with a confused look. “I am not allow to keep my book yet?" 

Dei chuckled. “No worries. Your universe is directly under my observation after all. So I have to be responsible for it as well. I have done this kind of mission a lot previously. I’m getting used to it.”