Flip the Coin [BL]-Chapter 312. Strange

"Counterparts?" The little girl took the sprouts and pocketed them before she looked back at me with big eyes, apparently not understanding the word but still grasping its importance.

I patted her head.

"That sounds like a job for the commander." I leaned forward to look at him standing on Henry’s other side.

"You are good with children, so explain it to her; just leave out the corruption crap." Henry chuckled, and the commander looked at me in annoyance before turning his gaze to the little girl with a light smile.

"We will talk as we go."

He glanced back at me with a frown.

"Where are we going now?"

I grabbed Henry’s wrist and flipped the coin, seeing us continuing to walk in the direction we had taken and finding more people.

"There." I motioned straight ahead before flipping the coin again on my dog, hoping to see more of the vision that had been cut off, sadly to no avail.

"Don’t frown at him." Henry hissed at the commander, who then frowned at Henry instead of me.

"Okay, we will go and get more survivors. Tomorrow a portal opens, and I think it will lead us back home." I looked at the crystalline figure in front of me.

"Home?" Birthmark looked at me with pleasant surprise.

"REALLY?" Chubby Guy was also overwhelmed with joy.

"How do you know? Where does it open?" The commander asked.

I nodded at Chubby Guy but didn’t answer any questions.

My future self said I should follow the figures, so if I asked the little one in front of me, would it cooperate?

But why do I have a feeling that there was another figure out there, taking a step every time I did but not stopping when I stood still? Someone who is really good at pointing out directions?

Henry pulled me closer to him while the girl and her counterpart returned to their mothers before he steered me forward.

Soon the others followed, and it seemed we all were just passing through this strange but colorful world, without a hurry in the world.

"I like the sunlight here." Henry hummed, his arm around me.

"It really seems to be nurturing; we are like plants now," I nodded.

Henry raised his brows, looking at me.

"We wouldn’t need to eat and drink if we stayed here?"

"Yeah." I looked at the colors surrounding us before glancing up at the sky—a beautiful blue, with a sun so big and dazzling that it was hard to make out its shape.

I looked at the path ahead, hearing the commander talk to the mother and child behind us and the office guys translating.

Yet again, it felt like a leisurely walk amidst ’nature’; everything here didn’t seem the least ’real.’

"This scenery looks like a forest..."

I chuckled.

"You only notice now?"

He squeezed me to him, smiling sideways at me.

"Most worlds I read about in the commander’s files were also forests in various variations. Then add the forest in the first world; the Deer Monster World had a forest too, and here as well. Isn’t that interesting?"

"True. What do you think?"

"I don’t know. It’s like nature is always present."

"What we know as nature." I corrected.

"You think there are worlds where there is no gravity, no sky, no earth?" Henry asked me.

I hadn’t really thought about that.

"Maybe, but we probably aren’t able to access these worlds. Was something like this in the files?"

"No. Why do you think we can’t access these worlds?"

"I don’t know. We also only know of worlds with oxygen. Where, for example, does the oxygen here come from? There are no real plants here." It didn’t make sense.

On the dead planet I fought the giant on, there were only ashes. How was I able to breathe?

"So you think we can only access worlds with a setting in which we can survive, even if only temporarily?" Henry nodded.

"Mhm. Somehow, even the crashing happens in order, with two worlds or so a year. It gives us time to face each world individually and prepare. This isn’t even the worst case; the worst case would have been all worlds crashing at once, and we would have been long dead." It feels as if the natural law was on our side, which was reassuring.

Henry chuckled.

"What an uncharacteristically optimistic mindset you have there all of a sudden."

"...True. It seems your blind optimism has rubbed off." I didn’t even notice that I was thinking positively. What the hell? I have to stop with that.

"I am good at rubbing," Henry whispered in my ear.

Ah... the cringe.

I pushed him away, and he laughed when I spotted a crystalline figure far ahead.

"Henry."

"I see it." He stopped with me, and I raised my arm to warn the others who walked behind us.

The figure a few hundred meters ahead of us came to stand still as well.

I took a step forward without Henry hanging on me, but the figure didn’t move.

"Henry."

When Henry moved, the figure moved as well.

"Hmm... your counterpart. Yours and the Commander’s." The one I had seen in my vision.

What would it do if it were confronted with two counterparts to imitate?

Well, the crystalline figures chose to imitate the ’human’ mother and daughter instead of the sprouts that the little girl carried with her.

What would this one do?

I motioned for the others to go forward again while I grabbed Henry’s wrist to continue with our walk.

It didn’t take long, and it was somewhat creepy seeing that we were walking toward each other at a slow pace. I couldn’t look away, fearing that the next second it would start to sprint at us, like the shadows had.

But everything was peaceful, and the moment it faced Henry, nothing happened. It didn’t corner him at all, only stepping beside him and adding itself to our group.

It also didn’t seem like the figure would really mirror him, just behaving like a very silent bystander.

Henry clung to me again while watching his counterpart, but the figure didn’t raise its arm.

I also didn’t take my eyes off the new addition to the group, commenting,

"Your counterparts are all strange." Well, not that I can say anything about strange counterparts, given what depraved fuckers I had to face non-stop.

But Henry’s first one knelt in front of Henry to let him absorb it. The second one is a family father and military man who doesn’t like him but asks about his future marriage plans. The third one didn’t really mirror anyone but insisted on being present nonetheless.

"...I can’t say that you are wrong with that." Henry nodded, and the commander cleared his throat in annoyance, hearing us slandering him to his face.

Under a much quieter atmosphere, as the others weren’t really comfortable with the new crystalline figures, we continued our walk.

Still using the coin for directions, we soon came across the first dead bodies.