Arc 2 - Chapter 17: Regular Depletion

The tense atmosphere in the aftermath of last night's horrific event continued into the morning after Satoshi's body was buried in the Redchapel cemetery.

Everyone was down, everyone was angry. The group was afraid to talk to each other as even a single drop would be enough to overflow the glass.

Sivina tried to keep her composure, but Yu had seen how her lips were trembling, she was struggling to stay strong.

Ana was the one who broke down the most according to Yu. He didn't know if there was anything between Ana and Satoshi, but his eyes were red from crying and he couldn't say a word.

Raul was strange. Yu had felt a lot of fear himself, so he could understand what a scared person looked like, and he could tell that Raul was scared. At the same time Raul felt guilty.

"Could he be connected to the murder?" Yu could tell that the two of them liked the same girls. "Did he do it to eliminate his rival? No, I don't know... Maybe he thinks that if he was the one who took that room, he would die and Satoshi would live. That could be the reason for the guilt."

Satoshi and Raul fought over the room across from the girls' room. Satoshi won the right to stay in the room opposite the girls' room. If he had lost, Raul might have died.

"Assuming, of course, that the murder was not specifically targeted at Satoshi."

When he looked at Lylphia, he saw that her face was also sullen. But she was not as downcast as the others, and in a few days she seemed to be smiling again.

Yurine was apparently the least affected by the murder. Her expression was the same as always, perhaps hiding her true feelings under that expressionless face.

"I don't want her to get hurt and sad..."

Satoshi's death had undoubtedly shaken Yu, but he didn't want it to upset Yurine. He had to take her under his wings.

"How did this happen?"

They had met Satoshi only a few hours before the incident. He continued to react in disturbingly exaggerated ways, embarrassing Yu and making Yu want to punch him in the face.

Satoshi was alive then, and now he's lying under the ground.

The pit in his chest flared up again, drawing things in and burning them. As regret and sorrow clawed at his body again, he wondered if he could have made different choices and achieved a better outcome.

Even though they hadn't spent enough time together to claim to know Satoshi, he couldn't stop hurting. He too was someone who had lived a bad life, someone who had found hope in this world.

"Is the murderer the Redchapel Killer?" Yurine broke the silence that had lasted since last night.

Yu knew it was difficult for Satoshi's friends, but they couldn't just sit and mourn. Life was moving on and they had to do something.

"It was committed in the same manner as the murders previously attributed to the Redchapel Killer, by torture. Also Aletin's brother was killed in the same way, so we are almost certain."

It could have been someone else who wanted to blame the murder on the killer. Who could Satoshi have made angry enough to die in this way?

Yu gave two possibilities, the first was that he was the Redchapel Killer and that he had most likely committed the murder.

The second was Raul and he had killed Satoshi for the girls. Although he considered it a possibility, it didn't seem like he would go that far for two girls.

"I don't want to be rude, but in a situation like this, he probably doesn't even see Satoshi as a rival. It has to be the Redchapel Killer... But even if he's not the killer, if Satoshi's killer is not targeting us, we don't have to deal with him. I have no interest in avenging Satoshi, whoever the killer is, the person we need to find is William Berry, the Redchapel Killer."

They were looking for Sony for the sake of Yurine's wish, and to find Sony they would look for the Redchapel Killer.

Trying to solve Satoshi's murder was outside their goals.

"And what will they do?"

Yu looked at Sivina, Ana and Raul. If they gave up and withdrew, the mission to find Sony would be harder. Yu wanted to keep them on the mission and take advantage of them.

"I know it's hard for you, if you want to withdraw-"

"I'm gonna get him."

He wanted to probe them. Normally he hated being interrupted, but he met Sivina's decisive answer with a slight smile. Then he wiped it away without the others noticing.

"Good."

If Sivina was so determined, Ana would follow her, but he didn't know what Raul would do, would he follow the two of them?

"What are you going to do?" he asked to Raul.

"Of course I will follow Sivina." Raul's answer was as unexpected and as decisive as Sivina's.

"Then we have no time to lose. Immediately, the killer's previous murders-"

"Mr. Valarfin."

"Huh?"

He hadn't expected Lylphia to interrupt him.

"Please don't tell me you're withdrawing."

He had never considered that Lylphia might withdraw from the mission. Since she had been given the mission by the Wizarding Academy, she had to stand by Yu no matter what.

Fortunately Yu's worries were for naught, Lylphia was not speaking for herself.

"You have to give them time to recover."

Lylphia may have been right, but Yu had no time to give them time to recover.

They were racing against the clock, they had to finish everything before the final match. If the trio said they needed time, Yu would have to split the groups and continue alone.

"And why are you telling us what to do?" Raul and Yu's eyes locked. "We'll decide what to do as a group."

Yu kept his sharp amethyst eyes on Raul's. His cheeks were hard, his lips straight as knives. Raul looked away after a few seconds.

"I-I think it's okay," Ana said.

"Sivina?" Yu turned to face Sivina.

"We can go on."

After getting Sivina's approval, he continued without asking Raul for his opinion. Nor did he ask Lylphia or Yurine because he knew they would not retreat.

"I want a list of all the murders, Lylphia, take care of it. Raul, go to Alatin's house and find out about his family. Let's find out who his father and brother were. Sivina, Ana, you gather information about the incident that happened before Alatin's family. I'm talking about the mansion outside the town. I want to know who the victims were, their occupations, their hobbies, what they did before the murder." He wanted to solve the killer's algorithm. He wanted to know if his victims were random people or if they had something in common. "When Lylphia brings the full list, we'll look for other victims. We start right now."

After the distribution of tasks, everyone went off to fulfill their assigned tasks and they were left alone with Yurine.

"What should I do?"

"Let's think about it," he said, studying Yurine's face. "Get rid of that indifferent expression, you're still cute, but if you can smile, you'll be even cuter. Oh, and don't leave my side. If you do these things, you will motivate me."

"I asked you a serious question!"

"My answer was serious too, Yurine."

Yurine turned around and met Yu's seriousness.

"Do you have to catch the killer to find that bastard's son?"

"We have no evidence that William Berry, the Redchapel Killer, ever met Sony. Even it could be a completely different Sony that he's talking about." Now, as so often, they could only talk in terms of possibilities. "But we've been told that Sony can't go far from Redchapel, and we have a lead, so that's what we're going to do."

"If we can't find-"

"If we can't find it..." It would make it harder for Yurine to bring her mother. That's what he wanted to say, but he couldn't. Yurine understood immediately. "If there is a way to turn back time-"

"I know." this time Yurine interrupted Yu.

"Maybe we can find something at the Wizarding Academy, but other than that I don't know what we can do."

His thoughts were chaotic. He wanted to believe but couldn't, pretended to believe, imagined what he was trying to achieve, said why it would be impossible, and then wanted to believe again.

"Then we must find him."

"Yes," Yu said. For now, they would focus on solidifying their resolve and focus on their small mission.

"What do we do?"

"We'll look for someone who knows the forest outside the town."

***

"What's that noise?"

It was late at night and Yu was still awake, studying the report Lylphia had brought.

His assignments were carried out. Lylphia brought a list of all the murders for which William Berry was considered responsible; Raul did a detailed investigation into Alatin's family; and Sivina and Ana gathered information about the mansion murder.

Yu was trying to find a connection between all this, but...

"What is this?"

He first looked around to find the source of the sound, but it couldn't have come from outside. Because it sounded like a signal from an electronic device, and there was no such device around Yu.

"My ears are ringing."

He put his pinky finger in his ear and looked for dirt on his fingernail, but there was no dirt on his fingernail and he had hurt himself trying to put it in deeper.

"Is there dirt deep down?" He had never encountered such a problem before, what could he do to stop the ringing?

He stood up and walked a few steps around the room, then sat back in his chair and looked at the papers on the table.

"Alatin's brother..." Like Satoshi, he was eviscerated, the difference being that he was nailed to the wall. "He's been knighted. His father was a knight."

Not counting Satoshi, Alatin's brother and father were the killer's last victims. Before that, there was the mansion murder, which he first heard from Lylphia.

"But I can't focus."

He stood up again and put his pinky finger in his left ear. The ringing was in both ears, but stronger in the left.

He played with the inside of his ear with his fingernail, but all he was doing was hurting himself again. He took his finger out and tried to cover his ears, which helped him hear the ringing more strongly.

"Fuck off!"

When he realized that this was not going to happen with his finger, he sat back down and looked at the papers.

But his thoughts would not let him read. Stella came to his mind again. She was a mother, she had given birth to a son and raised him for seventeen years. She had dreams about him, she wanted to see him married, she wanted grandchildren.

And none of her dreams had come true.

Losing a son... He never wanted to know her pain. He clenched his fists as he remembered the moments when she cried and begged for her son. He wanted to punch the walls. He wasn't angry with Yurine, but the way she had treated her and the way she had broken her heart was tearing at Yu's heart too.

Then he thought of Satoshi. Thinking about him was inevitable. Like other times, the last time he spoke to him he was rude. He had broken his heart, insulted him. He hadn't cared for him, had thought he is unimportant and had ostracized him.

He knew that if someone just like Satoshi appeared tomorrow he would do the same thing, but it still bothered him.

"I wish I was friends with him... But how sincere saying that after I lost him? Am I just trying to comfort myself?"

He forced himself to read the text, even though the signal-like ringing in his ear made it difficult to focus.

"A war hero, huh?"

Sir Richard Henry, the man who owns the mansion where the Redchapel Killer entered, was a famous hero who thirty years ago fought on the front lines in the conflict between the Storm Kingdom and Rolderhelm.

Richard's family, the Henrys, had many powerful warriors in their ranks, even though they had turned to trade after all the wars were over.

But only one member of that family, Richard Henry, the owner of the mansion, was killed. The other two people who died that day were ordinary citizens.

The murders he knew about included an old man, two servants, three knights and a healer. How should he connect them?

"Algorithm... Algorithm... How can it be?" He needed more information to make a sound deduction. "Tomorrow."

Already the sudden ringing would not allow him to work any longer.

"We have a lot of work tomorrow," Yu sighed. They have to meet the families of the other victims and learn about them. The more he knew about the victims and the more commonalities he could find, the better his chances of deciphering the killer's algorithm.

"Who would have thought it would come to this?"

His mind was still on Satoshi, he never thought he would die. He felt guilty for mistreating him.

He didn't know him, but if he were here now he would want to treat him better. He sighs again and puts his hands to his face, Yu Valarfin was an asshole.

"Satoshi must have thought like me, but this world is cruel."

When he first came to the Second World and met Rie, he thought they were going to have a nice adventure. His story would go perfectly, he would have a romantic adventure with Rie, he would be involved in funny events and at some point he would have a happy ending. That would be the first thing most people would think.

But now Rie was gone and Yu was alone with a girl he hadn't even met for a month. He was playing detective to bring back the girl's mother, whom he barely knew.

He looked at Yurine who was asleep in bed.

"I..."

He smiled. Seeing her sleeping peacefully softened the grip of troubles on his chest and lightened the burden on his heart.

He blew on the candle on the table and put out the fire. Then he lay down next to Yurine and pulled the covers over her.