LOST TIME MEMORY Vol. 1

Chapter 3.3

Shintaro unintentionally looked over to where their voices had been to see if they were alright, but they must have gotten back inside the dressing room for shelter because he couldn't see them out. Then, his eyes drifted to his side, underneath the table, where he could clearly see Konoha talking to himself.

"Ow. That hurt."

As if affected by Konoha's lunacy and impressive ability to call a bullet wound an 'ouchie,' two main trivial thoughts appeared inside his head. I shouldn't have thrown that, and oh, her name's Hiyori. And as he was thinking about this, Konoha rose precipitously upward. His feet disappeared from Shintaro's vision. What followed next was a sound akin to that of a shooting rifle just fading out of existence and then silence. No more gunshots. Just a single yell from downstairs:

"HEY, WHAT HAPPENED!? YOU GUYS OKAY!?" But nothing more after.

Slowly, cautiously, Shintaro got up and peeked his head out from a pile of bright pink tank tops. What happened in front of him was nothing short of amazing. Konoha hadn't just knocked the man out; he'd somehow tossed him across the room and made a dent in the wall where the man had likely gotten his breath slammed out of him. If the previous guy wasn't dead, this guy must be fine, too. Somehow. He was lying about five or six meters away from Konoha, who was now holding the rifle, only it was bent out of shape. He had his hands on each side of the rifle's ends. Can't we just make him take down all of the gunmen and blast through the exits at this point? Shintaro thought to himself. But then he noticed Konoha's shoulder. There was definitely a bullet wound there, and blood was prominently flowing through his white shirt. Or maybe let's not.

Shintaro grabbed one of the pink tank tops and went over to Konoha, who, for some reason, still wore the same aloof expression he'd had since staring at the wall in the dressing room.

"Here, um... Let me get that for you." Shintaro grabbed a hold of Konoha's shoulder.

"Ow," Konoha said but didn't complain as Shintaro bandaged his wound. Instead, he was awfully quiet and obedient all of a sudden.

"Sorry. Okay. So, I'm not a doctor... but you should probably get that checked." He looked up at Konoha's eyes. No reaction.

"HAH! Funny!" a robotic yell came from the counter.

"Thanks," Shintaro said and gave himself a wry smile.

From the store's rear came Hiyori and Hibiya, who gave tentative looks around before the former confidently ran straight toward Konoha and exclaimed:

"That was incredible, Konoha! I mean, you were just handing them their own butts!"

"Pretty cool, not gonna lie. Or actually, err... Thanks for saving us, dude," Hibiya said, though his eyes were looking bashfully away from Konoha himself, his hand rubbing his neck. He then looked toward Shintaro. "And you, too."

"Yeah, thanks!" said Hiyori.

He gave them a smile. I didn't do shit. His attention turned anent the entrance, and then specifically to the stairs. They weren't coming. Obviously, they'd heard the noise, and yet none of them were sending backup from neither upstairs nor downstairs. Something was going on. Did they find Momo!? His mind kicked to full gear again. He abruptly and quickly began giving out orders and instructions:

"Konoha, there's an emergency power room at the back of the third store to the left of this one. They would've had to manually deactivate it to stop it from automatically supplying electricity. Find it and turn it back on. Please. And hurry." At the utterance of Shintaro's last few words, much to his surprise, Konoha disappeared off into the hallway without any hesitation. "E-Ene, be on standby! I'll go see what's happening and distract them again."

"Alright! No, wait, don't go out. You'll definitely get shot this time." It hurt Shintaro to ignore her, but he did. He couldn't allow her to persuade him away from this; he had to make sure Momo was okay, he couldn't see her dead.

"You guys, stay here and hide," Shintaro told them.

"Shintaro. Please. Don't do it," Ene solemnly said, before he went out of the store.

Hibiya and Hiyori looked at each other, then nodded in agreement with the plan. Shintaro adamantly made his way to his destination, despite Ene's continuous protests. He slapped his cheeks and took deep breaths to maintain his composure and focus.