13 Mink Street

“All right, it’s done. Like I told you, it didn’t hurt at all, did it?” The captain clapped his hands lightly and examined Karon, who was currently sitting down and leaning against the stone coffin.

There were several fresh patches of red soaking through his clothes, many signs of burns across his body, and a whole arrangement of smaller abrasions in various places. The captain had even broken two of Karon’s ribs.

When it came to forgery, the captain pursued excellence.

“Captain, you can’t measure my pain by your own standards.”

“Relax. These injuries will heal easily enough. Even those two broken ribs won’t affect your movement much for now. Once Darkmoon Island’s people rescue you, they’ll surely give you the finest healing potions and arts. I guarantee, not even a scar will remain.”

“So that’s it? We’re done?”

“Yes, we’re done. I can’t make you too mutilated anyway. In your narrative, your body was supposed to be something I wanted to take over, so naturally I can’t leave it too ruined.

”Everything else has already been arranged. The statues, the position of the stone coffins, the burned remains, the thick lingering aura of Light, the traces of battle outside, even the blood trail dragged across the ground where I hauled you into the cave and placed you here. No problems.”

”All right, just sit here and wait for someone to come rescue you.

”Oh, and there’s one more thing I should remind you of. Miss Ophelia may help you conceal why you appeared in that villa at all. My guess is that she may say the two of you agreed to come together, then encountered me after I infiltrated the villa, and that once I activated the array, the two of you followed me here together. In short, she will probably try her best to erase the secret you were keeping for her.

”You never know how far a woman will go once she truly falls in love with you. So after you’re rescued, when you explain what happened, be careful.”

“I understand.”

The captain nodded, looked at Karon, and gave a contemptuous little smile. “Heh. What a scumbag, toying with another person’s feelings.”

“...”

“Hahahaha.” The captain let out another ring of laughter. “I’m leaving. Watch yourself. Don’t get eaten by the pythons. You still have mobility, and a certain degree of fighting ability.”

Then the captain left the cave.

Karon remained leaning against the stone coffin, feeling somewhat helpless. If the captain had not improvised this entire performance of his own accord, Karon would probably have been lying in the soft bed of the hotel room by now. Instead, he had to go on waiting against a cold stone coffin.

At the same time, Karon made a quiet note to himself. The next time he went anywhere with the captain, he had to take precautions beforehand. He could not keep letting the man act however he pleased.

The wait was bound to be long, because Ophelia first needed to return to Darkmoon Island, and only then would she be able to lead people back to the island. Not only that, the teleportation array inside the master bedroom of the villa, because it required a specific activation method, similar to a key, the people of Darkmoon Island would probably not be able to crack it. They would have no way of simply teleporting with that array.

Karon had wanted to lie down and sleep for a while, but although his injuries were not especially severe, the captain had made them varied enough that Karon could not truly fall asleep.

Turning his head, he looked toward the stone coffin beside him. He remembered that when the captain had briefly fallen into derangement, he had shouted the name Genevieve. This was her coffin.

Before leaving, the captain had pushed the coffin lid more than halfway open. For Phileas, the most natural reaction would have been to attempt the seizure of a new body while gazing at his wife’s corpse.

Karon went back to the woman’s coffin again. The first time, he had been standing, but this time, he was squatting beside it. The difference in height changed his angle of view, and because of that, he noticed something unusual on the underside of the coffin lid.

He immediately bent lower, and even pushed his head partly into the coffin. Rubbing his fingertips together, he activated the fire-attributed bloodline of Progenitor Allen to produce a tiny flame like a lamplight to illuminate the inside.

Beneath the coffin lid were bloody marks. Scratches.

This meant that the woman had been “buried” inside the coffin while still alive. She had struggled, but in the end, it had done her no good.

Karon reached out and lifted one of the woman’s arms, wanting to examine her hand more closely. Since she had already dried into a mummy, the hand was shrunken and withered, yet it was still possible to see signs that the nails had been pried up. Several of the fingers did not even have nails left anymore, suggesting they had fallen off long ago.

These were details Karon had not noticed the first time he opened the coffin.

He turned to look at Bernard’s statue over there. There was a smile on its face, as though he were watching Karon.

Then, all at once, Karon realized that Bernard may not have set those statues there merely to create the atmosphere that the two sides had once still been friends. He had deliberately brought “Lady Poelle” there to admire his work.

It was an act of display.

That was why the smile on the statue, and the gesture of its other hand, had felt so uncomfortable at first sight. The entire scene seemed to be saying: “Look, just look, how stupid they were. Hahaha.”

It was hard to imagine the kind of rage the “he” inside of the captain must have felt upon returning to this old place and seeing all this.

Even so, the captain had still managed to control the derangement.

Fortunately, Pu’er herself had not been a simple person back then either. She had once been praised as a genius of her family, and she possessed immense self-confidence and the ability to protect herself. Only because of that had she been able to express her impatience so clearly in the face of Bernard’s pursuit.

Had it been some other woman facing a man like him, the result...

Perhaps Bernard had never truly loved Pu’er at all, but had truly loved the feeling of not being able to have her after being rejected. That frustration wounded his pride, yet at the same time gave him the pleasure of moving himself. What he was addicted to was that pleasure itself.

If he had actually succeeded in winning Pu’er over back then, perhaps there would never have been any moving love story left for later generations to pass down.

A woman’s intuition really was frighteningly sharp. Karon believed Pu’er at home knew nothing about this side of Bernard. Otherwise, she would surely have told him long ago, instead of merely repeating that Bernard was irritating.

Now, Karon actually found himself supporting one of Pu’er’s old reactions. Once her strength recovered, she really ought to come to Darkmoon Island in person and dig up Bernard’s grave.

The most pitiable one, in the end, was still the captain. He had endured the grief of losing the woman he loved twice.

The captain’s will was also quite formidable. A man who could tear off his own face, wage a battle of consciousness against himself, and still wrest back control enough to remain who he was, possessed a resolve worthy of admiration.

So this was why he had insisted on leaving something behind. He had forced down that grief and fury and awakened from a brief derangement, but no one could emerge from such a thing untouched. The trace it left on him was this: having suffered twice the pain of losing the one he loved, he instinctively wanted to make something right through Karon.

He had ignored Karon’s objections and forcibly given him a grander role, staging a life-and-death rescue so that Karon would leave behind a mark in Ophelia’s heart that could never be erased.

And the reason was simple: he had suffered too much bitterness himself. He wanted, however briefly, to see something sweet happen.

Time passed, second by second. Karon’s thoughts drifted wider and wider, until finally exhaustion overtook him. He climbed into the empty coffin beside him and lay down. It was not his first time lying inside a coffin, and it was not his first time discovering that a coffin could feel comfortable.

Ordinary people felt instinctive aversion toward coffins, but that was not really the whole truth. The environment inside a coffin could give one both psychological and physical security. In that cramped space, you were the master. No one would disturb you. At last, you are cut off from the world. At last, you could enjoy silence.

Karon closed his eyes. He fell asleep, though not completely, because a part of his consciousness remained watching the outside the whole time. Every member of the Hunting Hounds possessed that ability, the common saying of sleeping with one eye open.

He did not know how much time passed. He only knew that the sky outside was beginning to pale when sounds entered from the mouth of the cave. A group of people was approaching.

Karon kept his eyes closed, but inwardly he was already calling to his symbiotic companion.

The array the captain had left on the coffin lid activated, producing a white light. Once the light appeared, the array itself dissipated.

The captain always handled things with this level of attention to detail. He never left flaws behind.

The white light was guided by Karon and condensed into a figure. It was Pu’er.

It was Pu’er’s human form.

She lay atop the coffin lid, as though accompanying Karon in sleep. Everything looked perfectly natural, because this really was how Pu’er behaved in everyday life.

The group that had just entered the cave immediately broke into startled exclamations, full of agitation.

Karon heard Ophelia’s voice. “Karon...”

Good. Time to sleep.

***

Far away, on the large bed in the master bedroom behind a funeral home in Veyn, Pu’er suddenly opened her eyes. She sat up, rubbed her eyes with a cat paw, looked at the sky outside that had only just begun to brighten, and muttered in confusion, “Karon’s only just left, and I’m already having insomnia. Meow?”

***

Karon did not know exactly how long he slept. He had long since lost track of time, and he woke many times in between. Each time, there was a different person beside him, but every time, he quickly closed his eyes again.

One brief awakening, however, remained especially vivid in his memory; Ophelia herself had been changing the medicine on his wounds, but because the woman was only good at wielding a sword and had never cared for someone before, she handled everything too roughly. She accidentally tore one of Karon’s wounds open, and the pain made his whole body jolt.

After that, he could sense that he was given quite a number of potions, and he could feel his body wrapped in the warmth of healing Arts.

Finally, once he had slept enough, Karon slowly opened his eyes. Ophelia was not sitting beside his bed, exhausted from watching over him and having fallen asleep there.

Across from his bed sat a man in a chair. His face was cold and severe. His skin was very pale. Both hands rested on the chair’s armrests.

In a certain way, he resembled Bernard’s statue in the cave, not in exact features, but in a certain bearing.

Although Karon had hidden behind the curtain that time and never seen his face directly, he had a feeling that this was Ophelia’s uncle, the man who had voluntarily given up the position of clan leader to his older brother. General Tafmann.

As Darkmoon Island was an island power, and its geography determined that its strongest force would inevitably be its navy, and this man was the commander of that force.

When Tafmann saw Karon wake, he showed no particular surprise. He simply reached for the cigar already cut on the tea table before him, lit it with a lamp, took a pull, and exhaled the smoke, not in the least concerned that this was a sickroom.

Karon slowly braced himself with a hand on the bedboard and sat up.

He had always heard that the healing power of church hospitals was astonishing. The treatment he was receiving this time was certainly even a step higher than that. The wounds across his body had already scabbed over, and he could feel them repairing themselves from the itchy sensation all over him.

He did not take the initiative to try to grow closer to the man in the room, nor he did speak first. He simply sat there with his shoulders slightly lowered.

Tafmann continued smoking his cigar slowly, making no attempt to hide the fact that he was observing Karon.

Karon, meanwhile, maintained the same expression. After lying down for so long, sitting up honestly felt rather pleasant.

The captain had only warned him that Ophelia might conceal the matter of him appearing behind the curtain in the villa. Beyond that, the captain had said nothing. This was because what Karon needed to do next was simply play the part of a gifted clansman chosen and protected by the ancestor.

And as for how to play a genius, the captain believed Karon would find that easy: he only had to act as himself.

At last, Tafmann set the cigar against the edge of the ashtray, adjusted his sitting posture, and spoke, “I am Tafmann, Ophelia’s uncle, commander of Darkmoon Island’s outer-sea fleet.”

From that sentence alone, Karon knew Ophelia had helped conceal matters for him. Otherwise, Tafmann would not have needed to introduce himself so deliberately. “Hello, General.”

Tafmann rose, walked to Karon’s bedside, looked down at him, and said, “Darkmoon has guided the arrival of a genius for us. Though he once drifted alone beyond the seas, in the end he still returned to Darkmoon’s embrace.”

Karon said nothing. He only looked at him in silence.

Tafmann smiled. “Karon, do you believe in fairy tales?”

Karon still said nothing.

“Most fairy tales that manage to survive are false, but false in a way so captivating that it no longer matters whether they are true or not. In other words, as long as something captivates people, they cease to care whether it is real.

“Just like... you.”

Karon remained silent.

“I believe in Darkmoon, and I also revere Ancestor Bernard, but I’m sorry, I’ve drifted at sea for too many years. I’ve seen too much filth and too much vileness. I’ve witnessed too much despair and too much numbness.

“I always thought faith was something one pursued bitterly, until at last one obtained a thread of comfort, but I truly never imagined that faith could, in such a direct way, deliver a gift to our door, and even thoughtfully ring the bell for us.

“What do you think?”

Karon kept silent.

“You have nothing you wish to say to me, Karon?”

Karon shook his head, then finally spoke. “I don’t know what I should say to you.”

“You could begin with the reason. For example, why you refuse to address me with honorifics.”

“Why should I address you with honorifics?”

“Because if you consider yourself to be of the same generation as Ophelia, then I am your elder.”

“But, General, are you treating me as a junior?”

“Not yet.”

“Then why should I treat you as an elder?”

“Mhmm. That’s fair.”

“If we begin from identity and position, you believe in Darkmoon, while I believe in the God of Order. Although the Church of Order and Darkmoon Island are currently in a period of cooperation, I hold your faith in contempt, and therefore I also hold your status in contempt. So why should I address you with an honorific?”

“Are those truly your inner thoughts?”

“Yes. Those are my true thoughts. From the very beginning, I have never felt any joy in having the Darkmoon bloodline flowing in me. Oh, the only happy thing is probably that Darkmoon Island can provide me with some financial support in credits, but even that is based on mutual use. I am not taking your credits for nothing, and you are also expecting a return on your investment in me someday.

“You were the ones who came to find me and support me. I was not the one who begged you for it. So, forgive me, but when you compare me to a gift Darkmoon delivered to your doorstep, and you still feel uncertain, as though it’s all too unreal to trust, it’s truly laughable. Because in my heart, there is only Order, there is no Darkmoon.”

“I can understand you not regarding yourself as one of the Darkmoon clan, but even from the perspective of a partner in cooperation, you should not speak so directly. Are you certain I won’t be angry?”

“You will be angry. But what can you really do about it?”

Silence settled between them.

“I like your character. It reminds me of myself when I was younger.”

Karon knew General Tafmann was allowing both sides to step back gracefully. “It’s obvious that you’re different from the other people of Darkmoon Island. So in front of you, I can speak my mind without concern.”

“Hehehe.” Tafmann laughed for quite some time, then said, “Ophelia’s original marriage partner was the grandson of the Archbishop of the York City district.”

“I know. He’s staying in the same courtyard of the hotel as I am.”

“A very interesting arrangement,” Tafmann commented, the implication unmistakable.

Karon smiled faintly, but offered no explanation.

“All right. Next, I want to speak to you as Ophelia’s elder.”

“Please go ahead.”

“I have always supported Ophelia’s own choices, including in marriage. She is the pearl in my heart. I have no children. She is my daughter. And I believe that if you and she were to marry, it would become the continuation of Ancestor Bernard and Lady Poelle’s love story. You may not understand the position that story holds on Darkmoon Island. In any case, if that came to pass, Ophelia would be assured of becoming the next clan chief of the Darkmoon clan.”

“I already have a fiancée.”

“Your fiancée may remain with you as a future lover. I believe Ophelia would accept that compromise.

“In the near future, she is expected to become clan leader. But judging from your nature, and from your bloodline, whether that seat ultimately belongs to her or to you is still uncertain, is it not? You would have the chance to become the first person beneath Darkmoon.”

“Heh heh...”

“What are you laughing at, Karon?”

“Do you know, I often dream of a woman. Sometimes she appears as a woman, sometimes as a black cat. In those dreams, she repeats the same sentence to me over and over. Would you like to hear it?”

“What did Lady Poelle say to you?”

“She said she deeply regretted choosing the family faith system. She never imagined the progenitor would be so weak, nor that it would limit her so greatly.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“Darkmoon deserves only to mirror the shadow of Order.”