After school, Maiko would always inevitably find herself at the local Mainichi Shinbun distributor. She worked there, after all, and she had a paper run to do today much like any other day, even if the city was going to hell in a handbasket. Strange Gospel had affected her life as much as anyone elses; more so in fact, as not everyone who had touched it had found their own family disappearing on them. But people were definitely disappearing, and stuff like that didn't go unnoticed.

Leaving her bike at the door, Maiko went in to her workplace, greeted by the familiar sight of one Mr. Kawachi, who was basically her boss. Before she started work, she always came in to chew his ear off for a while. "Heya, Mr. Kawachi. What's happening?"

"What do you think?" He held up a copy of the paper, the latest issue to be printed. "Strange Gospel. Everyday, Strange Gospel makes headlines. You'd think it was the only thing happening in the world."

"Well, it is super serious business, sir..." She had told him about what happened to her brother.

"Yeah, I know." He sighed. "I dunno, it used to be these things would resolve themselves eventually, but despite how long this has been going on, nobody seems to know the first thing about it. Even these stories are mostly scuttlebutt. I just wish something will be done about it sometime soon."

"You and me both, sir." 

"Yeah....something up with you, Maiko? You don't look as chipper as usual."

"Oh, uh, I guess I'm just feeling a little tired lately." That wasn't entirely true, however. Even with her brother's disappearance, she had been keeping up her regular schedule without missing a beat. Anyone that knew her knew how full of energy she could be. But on today of all days, she had fallen asleep at school. She never slept at school, even when she was bored stiff. Not to mention there was that wacky dream she had, which was the same dream she had many times before. More than feeling tired, she felt worried. Like something weird was happening to her. "Surely there's something else in the good ol' Mainichi?" She asked, trying to change the subject.

"Eh, there's the usual about politics and war and climate change. Well, there is a local story that's worth a laugh..." He pointed to the story in question. "'[u]Mysterious trench-coat girl seen again![/u]' Honestly, who cares about a random girl wearing a trench-coat running around? It's like they felt they had to write about [i]something[/i] other than Strange Gospel just to pretend there's something else going on. It's stupid, I tell you."

"Haha, yeah, that's weird." Maiko had heard about this one. She had to agree that she couldn't see why anyone would raise a fuss about one person. "Anyway, I guess I had better get to work. See ya later, sir!" She grabbed her delivery bag and made her way to leave.

"See ya...and be careful! Goodness knows there was enough reason to worry on the streets before." Maiko could guess Mr. Kawachi was talking about the disappearances. Between Strange Gospel and these weird dreams, Maiko did worry she was going to go the same way as her brother. Sometimes she cursed herself for having too strong a work ethic not to just go home and lay low. All she could do was try and get her run done faster than ever.