🍁Nine Ancient Obelisks

Rushing through the wilderness in such attire was, of course, not particularly comfortable and quite chilly, but now it was a pleasant coolness – clearing his head and leaving no room for unnecessary introspection.
Genza had always considered himself a very level-headed person, and therefore, everything that happened in Onkaihe happened against his will – he was now absolutely certain of this. The question is – how, and why in these circumstances. Despite spending almost a year outside his hometown, learning about countless new things, and making a lot of new acquaintances, he hadn't heard of anything like this. Until yesterday, the strangest and most inexplicable thing he had encountered was the black dog in Ninamiate. Could these events be related? Maybe he wants to destroy everything that is dear to his heart. In that case, Girra and Tira might have encountered something similar as well. His brother would definitely have told him about it, but maybe he is safe, because his heart, head, and other parts are occupied by an entity that is unattainable even for this ghost. It's a pity he's already left; they didn't even have a chance to talk. They hadn't seen each other for almost a year, and that's a dead end too.
He remembered the stuffy old woman at the university and how she flatly refused to give him the photo she had taken of him for some unknown reason. Could she have cursed him through the photo? All the trouble started right on that day; Genza had heard somewhere before that cameras steal souls. Maybe all this fuss about supposedly knowing about the knight – about whom she didn't say anything – is just a cover for vile deeds. But if she knew about him from the beginning, doesn't that mean he really exists, and he wasn't just a hallucination? Maybe he figured out that they were going to attack him and decided to make his move first. Why not face to face? It wouldn't be difficult for him to one-shot someone. Maybe he can't inflict direct physical harm, but instead prefers to crush the soul and deprive a person of the will to resist.

There were far more questions than answers, and nothing but a chain of guesses came to mind, which made his head want to split, but fortunately, the cold wind solved this problem.
Arriving in the city, Genza jumps off his horse, pats its neck, and hands it over. Inhaling the familiar scents of money, petty crime, and high hopes; seeing the familiar streets, which are not quite perfectly clean, with extremely diverse-looking houses on either side, he experiences a warm feeling of returning home.
It would be nice to eat, and he was thinking of going to the ogre eatery as usual, but he was sure that he would start asking all sorts of things about becoming King Sizok, about his personal life, and so on, and it would be a little difficult to answer all of that right now.
Therefore, Genza heads to "The Smile".