The Stars That Guide Us: A New Adventure - A TSTGU Novella

【Ｃｈａｐｔｅｒ ９】

The next morning, Rita's friend took us to the airport for us to board the next plane to Cairo.

   We safely landed in the Egyptian city in the early evening and our first port of call was to contact Avdol to let him know that we had come back to Cairo.

   On the flight over, we discussed further about where in Cairo we needed to start our search. Polnareff suggested the best place would be in the building that was DIO's lair, the place where he had brainwashed me and where I fought with Jotaro and Nori under the influence of DIO's fleshbud. Hearing the mention of that place sent goosebumps up my arms. Never in a millions years would I have thought about going back to that place, but I understood that it was to give us a lead on the Stand Arrow, so whether I wanted to go there or not, I had to suck it up for the sake of finding the arrow.

   Upon landing in Cairo, Polnareff went into a phone booth to call Avdol to arrange to meet up with him.

   "Are you okay, lass?" Rita asked whilst we waited for Polnareff to return.

   I blinked and glanced over at her. "Hm? Oh, yeah. I'm fine."

   "You sure? You've been awfully quiet since we spoke about going to this DIO person's lair," she pointed out.

   I took a deep breath through my nose and exhaled. "It's just somewhere I had a bad experience that's all. Sorry if I worried you."

   Rita gave me a sympathetic smile. "It's okay. We'll make sure nothing happens while we're there. I don't know what it was you went through, but judging by your expression, it's probably a bit of a sore subject, so I won't ask what happened."

   "It's not the case that it's a sore subject... I just had a bit of a frightening experience from the result of my own stupid actions. It's bad enough I had nightmares to remind me about that place, but to actually go there... It scares me," I admitted.

   Since we returned from the journey to Cairo, my dreams were haunted with nightmares of my experiences in the Egyptian city. Scenarios played in my head about what could have happened if I ended up killing Jotaro and Nori or witnessing Nori get killed on the rooftops because I was too late to save him from DIO. My nightmares sometimes went to the extent where everyone had died because of my stupid choice to track DIO down on my own and all I could hear was their pained cries saying "It's all your fault that we're dead," and "You should have stayed in Japan because we would have had a better chance at survival without you around."

   Those nightmares caused me to wake up screaming in the middle of the night, and before Nori and Jotaro had left for college, Nori would end up running into my room with fear in his eyes, worried that I was being hurt. If I had spent a night at Jotaro's house with Nori, both of them would run into the guest room I was in and stay with me for the remainder of the night. Jotaro would pull me close to his chest whilst Nori curled his body around me and brushed his fingers along my back, kissing my head and whispering that everything was okay and it was only a bad dream.

   "Polnareff and I will be there, and we wouldn't let any harm come to you," she promised with a soft smile and placed a hand on my shoulder.

   I returned the smile and gave her a curt nod. "Thank you," I said softly.

   Polnareff returned to us, and Rita dropped her hand from my shoulder. I glanced over to him as soon as he was standing beside us and asked, "What did Avdol say?"

   "He's told us to go over to his shop and spend the night there, then in the morning, he'll escort us to DIO's old mansion," he explained.

   Rita and I nodded in agreement, and we set off to Avdol's shop.