Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle- Volume 24 by CLAMP

Fai, Syaoran and Kurogane enter the Kingdom of the Clow that Fei-Wang Reed had constructed apart from time. Dressed in their original outfits, the people welcome them warmly as travellers from far away. One young boy, saved from tripping and losing a load of apples by Syaoran, invites them to stay with he and his mother at their home overnight.

The travellers are reluctant to agree, discussing what a place outside of time could mean, but as the sun is setting, they agree, and share dinner with the boy and his mother. She prepares Par-yu, a sort of apple pastry, for their breakfast, and tells them to enjoy it in the morning before she and her son go to sleep.

In the morning, the house is empty, and the food, strangely, is gone. Back outside, the town is as it was the day before... exactly as it was the day before. Right down to the boy nearly tripping and Syaoran catching him, being invited to stay, and the sun going down. Syaoran and Mokona try to stay awake, but fall asleep after a very short time.

They next "day", they go back out into the marketplace, but this time, they are able to notice differences. Not everyone they first saw was there. But where could the people have disappeared to, and why does nobody else seem to notice that the missing people are actually missing?

Over a couple of "days", they find out the secret. People only disappear when they seem to notice something is wrong, and when Syaoran points this out, all the people turn into gushes of water and disappear. The last to do so is the young boy, who Syaoran promises to avenge by finding out what is really going on.

And in the temple of the Clow, Syaoran discovers that Sakura here is but a child, and he remembers meeting her when he, too, was but a child. Somehow, he managed to stay with her for years, and then turned back time through the help of Yuuho. But what does all this have to do with Fei-Wang Reed?

This volume was a little sad, with the disappearing people, but it also managed to feel quite creepy and mysterious as well. The mystery of why people are disappearing and how long a "day" actually lasts prevents them from leaving the city for "days" of time.

I started to wonder what the point was with Fei Wang Reed and why he wanted them to be trapped in the village. Did he have a vested interest in delaying them from moving on? All it seemed to make them do was be more determined to stop him. But being that he's a megalomaniacal jerk in the first place, maybe he doesn't think things *won't* go his way.

This manga appears to be heading for another meander as we find out about how Syaoran met and why he really was living in the Kingdom of the Clow, but it also promises to hold interesting secrets and information that might help us understand how Fei-Wang might be destroyed. Recommended.