Ichijō Mirai had a clear goal.
Once inside, he headed straight for the third floor as if the flames and smoke blocking his view and route didn't exist.
The third floor is the dining area, and while most of the stores sell drinks and desserts that can be prepared in advance, Ichijō Mirai went to the sushi restaurant.
The sushi bar is almost entirely made of wood, and is decorated in an elegant, refined, aristocratic style that requires customers to take off their shoes and change into wooden clogs, which is part of the style and a small way to raise the price of the food when there's no fire, but at the scene of a fire, it's a bit of a hindrance to the customer's ability to get out of the building.
Since it's on the third floor, most of the customers either took the initiative to escape when things got bad, or were swept away by the crowd, and only a few stayed behind due to unforeseen circumstances, as they didn't get out in the first place, and were now trapped by the engulfing flames.
Ichijō Mirai turned right as he entered the door, and after a straight line of about ten meters through the flames leaping up from the wooden table, he saw two people.
It was a young couple, and the male appeared to be in bad shape, sitting against the wall in a dying state, one leg folded up and the other wrapped in a plaster cast and stretched out straight, looking like he was already counting down the days.
His mouth and nose were covered by the woman with a wet dress, she was coughing rapidly, but her eyes were staring at the male's mouth and nose, very anxious, "Geez, you'd better stop, go out and then blame yourself, shut up and slow down!"
The wet dress was a woman's jacket, not completely wet, only a large part of the hem was wet, and there were a few pieces of tea leaves on it that had not been skimmed off.
"Towel," Ichijō Mirai said, walking straight over to the young man, picking up the young man's arm and placing it over his shoulder as the two men who had heard the noise looked up, half pulling the young man to his feet, half pulling him up, and handing the young man the towel, "cover yourself with it."
"Cover your mouth and nose with your clothes, hold on to my clothes, keep your head down and follow me, and be careful not to fall."
He spoke briefly to the young woman again, grabbed the young man and walked away.
With the injured man there, it was not possible to jump and jump in the shortest straight line this time. Ichijō Mirai walked down the original corridor of the store, sweeping away any obstacles with his legs as he went, and he walked so fast that he cleared the fire five or six times in just ten seconds to the door of the store and waited for a few seconds with the young man, who had jumped all the way down the corridor on one foot, until the young woman followed him out in a stumbling manner.
There was a fire in the hallway as well, not as raging as the one at the wooden sushi restaurant, but more smoke, almost blocking normal people's view of it, so that all they could see was the red that belonged to the fire and the ash of the smoke.
"Follow me, I'll lead you to the stairway, you can go straight down when you get there," Ichijō Mirai swept his eyes over the young woman, and when he saw that she was in good shape, he continued on, "My friend and I cleared the obstruction at the exit, so be careful, you can pass through it, you guys go normal, follow the path and you'll make it all the way out."
He reached the stairway, stopped, and handed the young man's arm to the young woman, signaling for her to hold it, "Don't go too fast, walk normally."
Then he turned his head and continued up the stairs.
The young couple was a bit confused, Ichijō Mirai had appeared and left so suddenly, but he was so natural, probably as natural to him as picking up food at dinner, even if it seemed to be picking up food while passing by a stranger's table.
He was dressed in civilian clothes, wore no equipment, and appeared so quickly that he didn't seem to be a police officer, but the tone of his voice was...
Like a command, but a little more imperious, like a statement of truth with no second choice.
It was strange to rush out to save someone from such a serious fire, and even stranger to leave them at the top of the stairs and let them go down, and then head for the upper floors.
The young couple looked at each other hesitantly for a few moments, but finally, as Ichijō Mirai's footsteps moved two or three floors above them, the young woman thanked him loudly and then supported her boyfriend as he headed down the stairs.
The sound echoed down the stairwell and swirled to Ichijō Mirai's ears, who, with an unchanged expression, stopped on another floor for a moment, picking up two or three groups of rescuers in bad shape and disarming the bombs in the process.
When he stopped for the third time to save someone's life, he reached the eleventh floor.
The eleventh floor belongs to the amusement area, half of the floor is a game hall, usually like a huge neon ball, the whole floor is flooded with a variety of colorful lights of the game machine crane machine, now there is a spread of the stench of burnt smell can not be ignored.
Game room karaoke machine trapped two people, because the game machine has a certain sound insulation effect, also wearing headphones, ears echoing their own and their companion's singing, they did not find the first time out of the fire, and later found that the outside is already a rolling smoke, but also filled with the smell of the machine was burned, and then left the danger of heavy, they can only continue to stay inside, with a drink to wet the clothes and cover their mouths and noses.
They were still alive, but their hiding place was too small and closed, and they were in bad shape.
Most of the game machines in the arcade were in disarray, and Ichijō Mirai simply pushed out a single-person path to bring out the karaoke machine.
"Go out in the direction I came from and that's the direction of the stairway, I've cleared some of the obstacles along the way so you can walk normally," he said quickly, "just go straight down the stairs, there's only smoke in the stairwells, so remember to cover your mouth and nose and keep your head down to avoid inhaling too much of the smoke."
As he said this, he showed his mouth and nose without authority, without the slightest intention of covering them.
The two trapped men, like fish that have been sweltering in a can for too long, still a bit dizzy and unable to come back to their senses, processing the information slower than usual, looked at each other blankly before responding, and inquired in a somewhat dazed manner, "Wait, you're still going in there?!"
Ichijō Mirai had already continued deeper into the game room, taking the wet clothes from one of the men in hand, "Yes, I need to, thank you."
As he spoke, the trapped man asked dizzily, "That, you want wet clothes, hey?!"
It's more than 'Is it the police? Firefighters? Or was it a passerby who acted in the name of justice? than the doubt of 'Is he a police officer? Fireman? Or just a passerby?', his high efficiency in clearing roadblocks, saving people, and carrying out the next rescue mission without answering the instructions, and the lack of any equipment on his body as if he wasn't in a fire scene gave people a cold chill and a creepy feeling of doubt: 'Is it a robot?
Is it a robot?
The person who can move freely in the fire is not a normal person at all, right?
Ichijō Mirai headed straight for his target, stopping along the way, running through the game room, entering the children's playground, getting his bearings, and pulling out three people from the office.
A couple and a kid, to be exact.
The couple looks more than forty years old, the child is eleven or twelve years old, they are not in good condition, even if the face is covered with clothes, others can also be seen at a glance that the face has a different degree of mutation, and can be judged that their state is very bad.
The one in the worst condition was the child.
"Come with me," Ichijō Mirai said as he opened the door, replacing the child's clothes that were covering his mouth and nose with wet ones, "the firemen are here and have set up a fire bed downstairs, so you'll be jumping off in order, with the child in your arms first."
He looked at the woman, signaling that he was talking to her, and added as he walked out, "you must jump down, take the stairs can not, time is running out, even if I hold this child jumping down from the stairwell, he will go into shock, must immediately leave the smoke environment."
The eleventh floor was filled with thick smoke, too much smoke inhalation can slow down the human brain, as the child was carried away, the couple followed without thinking, only to react halfway, the male who had just carried the child looked at his empty hands, then at the Ichijō Mirai and the narrow path that had been cleared along the way, and hesitantly inquired, "Are you-"
"A fireman?"
The middle-aged woman took on the inquiry, to the window when she rushed to take the child, more hesitant: how can any firefighter not wear equipment, but also come up to hold a child?
Even if it is a good intention to save a normal person will not come up to take away other people's children, right?
However, if the child is not taken away, they will certainly be vigilant and hesitate for a long time before following...
Thinking this way, the middle-aged woman's hesitation added a new one: they wouldn't have already known about it, so in order not to waste time, they would just take the child and leave, right?
The sound of breaking glass interrupted her hesitation.
Aerial glass is supposed to be strong, but Ichijō Mirai broke it with a few strokes, as cleanly as if he were breaking ordinary, fragile glass.
He turns around and commands even more crisply, "Jump."
Couple: "..."
They stared at each other for a few seconds, looking at each other's red, swollen faces, at the shards of glass scattered at their feet, and at their children's faces, which were already red and turning purple.
...As if the gap between the two sides is too great, there is no room for struggle.
The middle-aged woman probed and looked at the bottom, from the smoke downstairs to distinguish between the crowd on the first floor and the fire bed, gritted her teeth, "There really is a fire bed, then I jumped."
She jumped, holding her child tightly.
The middle-aged man chased after her anxiously and fearfully for a few steps, his line of sight trailing straight down, seeing the middle-aged woman land on the fire bed before he breathed a sigh of relief, he repeatedly clenched his fists, "Then, then I'll jump too!"
"Are you," he said apprehensively, plucking up the courage to look at Ichijō Mirai again, "a fireman?"
"Nine, actually."
"There are people in the supermarket on the ninth floor, I know," Ichijō Mirai interrupted, "Jump."
He didn't wait for the middle-aged man to jump, he turned his head away and started to go to the rescue mission on the ninth floor, "By the way, when you jump, take a message for me, tell them it's Kujō Mirai telling them to be ready to give first aid, there'll be three old people and two children needing first aid later."
There's a large supermarket on the ninth floor.
Supermarkets are normally crowded places, and so was the fire, and when the crowd panicked, it could be very destructive. The supermarket was already a mess, most of it caused by the crowd stepping and shoving, and a little of it caused by the fire.
Ichijō Mirai went upstairs to defuse the last bomb and take the red banner before going to the ninth floor.
But he didn't go straight to the ninth floor, he went to the tenth floor, broke the window, tied the red banner and swung into the ninth floor.
There were cries of alarm downstairs and on the ninth floor.
The screams belonged to the old and the children.
Ichijō Mirai jumped into a supermarket, but only in the department store section, where collapsed shelves formed a thick outer perimeter that kept the fire out in the first place.
In a sense, it was a protection for the trapped people, but when the fire spread to the shelves, this protection turned into a death wish, and the trapped people could not get out through the intertwined collapsed shelves one after another, but could only wait for their deaths in the circle in despair, like a fish that watched itself being roasted.
And because the trapped people were old people and children, the despair of not being able to fight back and only waiting for death was even more prevalent.
The three old men looked about the same age, all about 50 or 60 years old, and the children were of similar age, only 4 or 5 years old, probably just starting kindergarten.
They held each other in their arms, both the old man and the child with deep red faces and tears on their cheeks. Before Ichijō Mirai's arrival, they were probably comforting each other and giving their last words, waiting for death to come, and after Ichijō Mirai's arrival, they were dumbfounded.
One of the old men was the first to react, looking at the broken window, then at Ichijō Mirai, and immediately struggling to stand up with his child in his arms, stuttering, "Is there a bed for receiving people downstairs, downstairs?!"
"Yes," Ichijō Mirai replied, "but you can't jump."
Old people can't jump, jumping from the ninth floor, even if there is a bed downstairs to catch them, the impact is enough to make them drink, not to mention that they are still in a state of impending GG, and the same goes for children.
"You'll die after about ten minutes of jumping and resuscitation."
Ichijō Mirai recalled, adding.
The eyes of the old man who had asked the question dimmed again, and the eyes of the others who had brightened up a few beats slower also dimmed, and the old men looked at each other for a few moments.
Between their pleas to let themselves jump with their small children in their arms, Ichijō Mirai looked at the time and said to himself, "Good, the rhythm is good, if we can get out of here we can probably meet up on the seventh floor..."
[Number of people to be rescued: 156.
(53 rescued, 0 dead, 103 to be rescued)]