Chapter 145: It does look like I belong!
Chapter 145: It does look like I belong!
Blake stood in front of the bathroom mirror with the Blank Mask covering his face.
For several seconds, nothing happened.
His reflection remained identical to his own, dark blonde hair, brown eyes, the same nervous expression he had been wearing all afternoon.
The mask only changed his appearance once he imagined someone else, and unlike the first time he’d used it, he wasn’t planning on closing his eyes.
Last time, using the item itself hadn’t been difficult. The difficult part had been constructing a face quickly enough. Every feature had required conscious thought, every detail had to be assembled one by one.
If he ever needed to change identities while someone was walking toward him, that delay alone could get him caught.
For the past weeks, he has been training this, and well, it was getting faster, just his imagination needed some work.
He stared straight into his own eyes.
’Come on, I gotta do this better.’
He pictured a completely ordinary cleaner. Dyed green hair. Blue eyes. Slightly longer nose. A thinner face. Tired posture.
The image formed in his head almost instantly, and, like ink spreading through water, his reflection began changing. His dark hair shifted to a faded green, his jaw narrowed, his eyes became bright blue, and even the wrinkles around his eyes looked a little more pronounced.
"...Twenty seconds and I don’t look too unoriginal. Eh, not too bad."
Without hesitating, he imagined another person. This time an office worker in his thirties. Black hair neatly combed to one side, blue eyes again, average features, someone whose face would disappear from memory the moment you looked away. The transformation happened even faster than before.
He smiled faintly.
Practice really did make perfect.
Finally, he focused on the disguise he would actually need.
Originally, he’d wanted to become a soldier. It sounded like the safest choice on paper.
After giving it more thought, however, he’d discarded the idea.
Soldiers belonged inside military facilities.
Office workers, on the other hand, especially in a logistics company, blended together far more easily.
This past week, Blake had spent nearly an hour a day searching every publicly available image of A-exp. There weren’t many, but there were enough to understand the facility’s public face.
Officially, A-EXP handled export operations connected to one of the smaller ports near the border. Most of the people entering and leaving weren’t armed guards but logistics employees carrying folders, tablets, and stacks of paperwork.
That was perfect.
He reshaped himself one last time before going out.
Black hair, brown eyes with an average height and average build, wearing a plain collared shirt beneath a dark company jacket, black slacks, comfortable shoes.
The sort of employee nobody would remember seeing five minutes later.
Blake examined himself in the mirror for another moment before nodding.
"Good enough."
The disguise disappeared as soon as he removed the Blank Mask.
***
Around five in the afternoon, Blake quietly left the house.
He boarded the first bus without incident and deliberately chose a seat near the center. Neither the front nor the back attracted as little attention as the middle.
Surrounded by ordinary commuters exhausted from work, he became just another passenger looking out the window while the city slowly rolled past.
Eventually, he stepped off to transfer onto another route.
The next bus wouldn’t arrive for another fifteen minutes.
Blake sat down on a bench beneath the bus shelter, stretching his legs slightly. There wasn’t much traffic this far from the city center anymore, and only a handful of people waited nearby.
A bird landed a few meters away.
Blake barely paid it any attention, but then, it hopped closer and closer, until it landed directly beside him on the bench.
"...Hm?"
He turned his head slightly.
The bird simply stood there, perfectly calm.
Blake frowned.
’Since when are little birds this tame around people?’
Almost as though it had heard him, the bird tilted its tiny head upward.
Its dark eyes locked onto his.
For several strange seconds, neither of them moved.
An odd feeling settled in Blake’s stomach.
Then, without warning, the bird launched itself into the air. One wing brushed lightly through his hair as it flew overhead, startling him enough to flinch backwards.
"...Jeez."
He watched it disappear into the evening sky before letting out a quiet sigh.
’Weird.’
The second bus finally arrived, Blake climbed aboard.
Three hours later, he stepped off onto an almost deserted roadside.
The surrounding landscape had changed completely.
The city lights were gone, replaced by long stretches of empty pavement, patches of woodland, and scattered industrial buildings standing in silence beneath the night sky.
A-exp waited somewhere ahead.
Keeping to the shadows, Blake slipped into a narrow alley where nobody could see him.
He inhaled slowly.
[ I’ll Sneak For My Lover activated. ]
The familiar sensation spread through his body.
Immediately afterward, looked ahead, picturing the person he wanted to become.
Within seconds, his reflection in a nearby window no longer belonged to him.
Brown hair and brown eyes, with completely average facial features. The same forgettable office employee he’d practiced earlier, dressed like the logistics workers he’d seen in the online photographs.
Satisfied, Blake tucked the mask away and began walking.
His pace wasn’t hurried, nor was it particularly slow.
It was the confident walk of someone returning to work after finishing a break.
The facility gradually came into view.
From the outside, A-exp looked disappointingly ordinary and old.
Large concrete walls surrounded warehouse-like buildings, their age visible in cracked paint and faded company logos.
If Blake hadn’t known better, he would’ve believed the official story that this was simply another export administration center.
Two employees walked out through the front entrance just as he approached.
They wore uniforms identical to his own disguise.
One briefly looked in his direction.
Then both continued walking without even acknowledging him.
The skill, as always, was doing exactly what it promised.
Blake calmly entered the building.
The moment he stepped inside, however, his expectations vanished.
"..."
The interior looked nothing like the exterior.
Bright white lighting reflected off polished floors. Transparent digital displays floated above reception desks.
Employees carried sleek tablets instead of paper files, while security gates equipped with facial scanners and fingerprint readers guarded the main corridors.
It looked less like an aging logistics company and more like a cutting-edge research facility pretending to be something else.
An employee ahead placed his face in front of a scanner before pressing his thumb against a biometric reader. The security gate opened immediately.
Rather than following him, Blake casually stepped around the identification area, timing his movement with several other workers crossing the lobby. Thanks to his skill, nobody questioned why he hadn’t scanned himself.
Not even the guards.
Once he reached an inner hallway, he quietly deactivated I’ll Sneak For My Lover.
Looking around, he quickly noticed several other employees dressed like his current disguise. At least for now, blending in wouldn’t be difficult.
Without hesitating, Blake headed toward the route he had memorized from the blueprints.
Every turn matched perfectly.
Left.
Straight.
Another right.
Then, he stopped.
The heavy door leading toward the underground section stood directly in front of him.
"...As expected."
Mounted beside it were two scanners.
One for facial recognition.
One for fingerprints.
Blake quietly studied the mechanism.
Technically... this shouldn’t have been impossible.
If the Blank Mask truly copied every physical characteristic of the person he imagined, then perhaps it also reproduced fingerprints and facial data. If that were the case, all he needed was to transform into an employee with sufficient clearance.
But there were too many unknowns.
First, he didn’t actually know whether the mask replicated biometrics with that level of precision.
Second, even if it did...
Was the scanner checking for any authorized employee?
Or was it expecting one specific person’s biometric profile?
If it was the latter, randomly trying different faces would only trigger alarms.
"...Not worth it."
He quietly stepped away.
There would be time to investigate that question later.
If he learned how the system worked first, then he could take the risk.
Not before.
Instead, Blake followed the rest of his planned route and entered the first accessible office.
Inside, everything appeared... normal.
Employees quietly typed away at computers while others sorted stacks of documents. Shelves overflowed with shipping manifests, export declarations, customs paperwork, and invoices relating to electronic equipment moving through the nearby port.
Nothing looked suspicious.
Nothing stood out.
If anything, it reinforced A-EXP’s public identity as an export management company.
Still...
Blake couldn’t help wondering.
’Do these people actually know what’s happening here? Or are they simply ordinary office workers unknowingly employed by something much weirder?’
He quietly examined several files while pretending to organize paperwork.
Everything remained perfectly legitimate.
At least on the surface.
Eventually, he made his way toward the staircase.
The first floor had been exactly what he expected.
The second, not so much.
The atmosphere changed the moment he reached the landing.
Security personnel stood outside a reinforced doorway.
Two guards.
Armed, watching everyone who approached.
Blake stopped just out of sight.
Silently, he reactivated I’ll Sneak For My Lover.
Then he walked forward with the same steady confidence as before.
One of the guards raised a hand.
"Identification."
Blake didn’t answer, he simply continued standing there.
Several long seconds passed.
Then, the guards simply started to stare ahead blankly
"Go ahead."
The reinforced door unlocked with a mechanical hiss.
Blake walked through without another word.
The door closed behind him.
He took one slow look around.
A faint smile appeared on his face.
Now...
Things were finally starting to get interesting.