Chapter 112 - 113. Sign
For some time Yuurei was silent. I was worried if she would let me down my request which would mean I had to go there directly by myself.
"I cannot," Finally she replied to me. Her voice was cold. I was very disappointed to be honest. "You don't need it because 'He' is not a seeker. Your friends just made up stories that the creature was collectors." I didn't understand what she came up with.
"If that creature is a seeker, it just needs one form. Your friends fooled you because your knowledge about our world is too little, so does that little girl." After that Yuurei came closer to me and she whispered something to my ears.
"Tomorrow afternoon at two in the afternoon, go to River Mother. Meet Charon there. He will take you to that place. I will tell you one other thing, make sure you call your friend, a young man in that marionette, to accompany you there," Yuurei was gone after telling me that.
Now I suspected that Winnter had hidden something from me. Actually, I started feeling odd when she was so angry just because I allowed that old woman to come into my house. Her behaviour had changed a lot since then. I would meet Charon tomorrow afternoon and it looked like I needed permission from school the following day.
...
"Tha, what are you thinking about?" Winnter put a glass of water for me a bit rough so that I was awoken from my daydreams.
"Hm? No, I am just a bit tired," I lied, " I was cramming the whole night until in the morning to finish my job," I smiled lightly to convince her.
"You've got to manage your time wisely because we must watch this house too," She said. "We will share the responsibilities, you, I, Yuurei, and Mirai."
I felt that the sharing of teams was not fair at all. "Yuurai and Mirai?!" Winnter nodded. "Mirai should be with me or with you. That why there is someone who takes care of her. That is safer."
"Uniting you and Mirai is a bad idea," Winnter said curtly. "You two will be like kids who play hide and seek with that creature if you both belong to one group." Her eyes stared at me, her expression underestimated me.
"Hm, alright," I started eating my breakfast, ignoring her inquiry look.
…
When I arrived at school, the situation was a bit chaotic. Because I was relatively new there I did not know that the person who died last night was the younger brother of the school principal.
"Tha, your house isn't far from the house of the younger brother of the school principal, right?" A teacher was whispering to me..
"No, it is not. But I just knew that he was the brother of our school principal." I said slowly due to shock too.
That teacher looked at me in annoyance, then knocked my head lightly. "You need to spend time after the class is over. Don't go home right away." Her words were a bit sharp. I decided not to take it personally.
"I am sorry," that was all I could say. I had to go home because my schedule was really a mess and Winnter had said that I needed to manage my time well.
"Is that true that he died and he was skinned?" She asked again, "Many people said so. You know it well that there are many strange murder cases recently. And they have not yet revealed it to the public because they are unable to solve the problems yet!" I just listened to all her noisy comments without bothering myself to reply to any of them. "Aren't you a witness in one of the cases? How is it going now? It has remained unanswered, right?!"
I could not say anything. It was all true. The government tended to leave the cases just like that. It was not known if they were able to solve the puzzle or it was left fading. Such as the Mirien case, it ended without any clear points.
'Skinned', the teacher said that the victim was skinned. Actually, I took notes of the symbols with an application on my cell phone. Both signs were different which might represent different meanings and intentions. Suddenly there was an urge to visit Mirien's house and shop before I met Yuurei. I wanted to see if there was a similar sign there.
The shop had been closed since the murder of Mirien. It was quite chaotic inside the shop although the stuff was still the same. Dirt, leaf garbage, and food wraps were everywhere in the verandah. It was worsened with graffiti on some of the walls.
That afternoon the weather was pretty supportive, not too many people passed by because the shop was not located on the main street. I looked around for a symbol of if my prediction was correct.
I didn't want Winnter to know what I did in that place so I did it without her knowing. For almost an hour I searched for that symbol but I found nothing. 'Is the kind of ink used for that symbol faded away due to the long period of time since that incident?'
I almost left that place when suddenly my eyes caught white colour on the crossing that was a bit different from the other parts. The shop was located right in front of a crossing so it is no wonders that before it was closed, the shop used to be open until late at night.
When I looked at that sign again, I just realized that the letter was not in the shop part, but it was right at the crossing. I rewrote it and compared it with the two previous letters. This sign looked different, none was identical. Apparently, that creature killed its victims for special purposes, especially it just took one part of the victims.
I didn't know the meaning of the symbol at the houses and at Mirien's shop but I knew that the symbols meant 'heart'. I predicted every sign made was an organ that would be taken from the victims. But it was just a prediction because the symbol from the last house the previous day had not yet happened.
The first case which was no doubt Mirien's murder was slightly different from the sister of the school principal. The sign was made not at her house but at her shop. So, my presumption was the creature would do the killing at the place where the signs were made.
Dark clouds drifted slowly while I was waiting for someone in a food stall not far from River Mother. I was half shrieking when I suddenly found Mickey sitting by my side--from nowhere. "Mickey?! What are you doing here?!"
"Do you think I would stay at home and wait?" He cleaned his face with his front leg. 'Yuurei told me you needed information from her. I wonder why you didn't tell your other friends, but went alone, instead? I can't imagine what will happen." Mickey was right, but I felt that it was better if I did it alone first.
The rain was drizzling and the water was as cold as ice. The weather dropped too, making it even more piercing cold penetrating to my skin. I held Mickey and went into the food stall. We took a seat a bit inside the stall. In the midst of noisy water showering the earth, I heard the wood knocks of footsteps very familiar to my ears. My heart bit faster. In the past, I would have run due to fear, but now I was very long to meet him.
"Tha?" I could not hide the happy feeling when I heard that voice again after so long. Zie walked to me with his stiff steps.
"Hi?" that was all I could say despite so many words I wanted to say to him. That was strange.
"Have you been waiting for me for a long? I'm so sorry if I am a bit late." I saw that the way that marionette walked was getting stiffer by the day, even when he waved his hand to me, it looked so stiff and clumsy with broken movement.
"We just arrived," I told him, "Can we go to Charon after the rain is over? It seems it is not just water that falls," I laughed out loud because I saw grains of ice were scattered around the puddle in from of the stall yard.
"Sure," Zie asked me to sit by his side and at that moment I really wished time would stop for us for a moment. Under the silence, we would enjoy the noise of the rain mixed with the grain ice. I was locked in silence, I didn't know what I had to say, what topics to discuss, until the voice I really longed for came to my eardrums. "What do you want to know? Yuurei told me that you needed some information.." He asked, straight to the topic.