Siren?

Flustered at being caught, Arthur scrambled for an explanation. Even though he wasn't looking at her due to salacious reason, Arthur realized it was impossible to explain himself. Therefore, he opted to change the topic instead. In that moment, he picked the most convenient one but later, he realized it also turned out to be the most crucial question he had asked that night, "You haven't mentioned where K usually likes to roam, and where was the last place you've seen him?"

Miss S. narrowed her eyes at Arthur, and the young man could feel the warning in them. He froze where he was. Just as Arthur thought he was going to die by the hands of this woman whom real identity he was not privy to, the atmosphere relaxed and Miss S. said, "Where else but the lagoon?"

Then, she exited the Midnight Emporium, closing the door behind her.

"The lagoon? What kind of lagoon?" Arthur asked but his client had already left. The echoes of the question reverberating against the walls of the empty store was his only answer.

Arthur sighed and finally dared to grumble his real thoughts after the scary Miss S. had left. "If all of the clients are like this, then I'd rather give up right now. A lifetime of torment will probably be easier to survive than this."

Of course, Arthur was only venting, he was not a quitter... at least not so soon.

"Let's see whether the Book of Thoth has been updated or not." Arthur turned to the tome and flipped to the page for Client Profiles. The first profile was starting to shape itself.

Profile 1-

Name: Miss S.

Profession: Dancer

Mythos Identity: --

Note: One of three sisters.

The rest of the page was still filled with unintelligible squiggles. Arthur was very unsatisfied with the progress he had made. "This barely tells me anything. So she's a dancer, that's understandable based on her professional sense of rhythm." Arthur thought back to how his client swayed and glided across the floor. Yes, he would have no problem believing Miss S. was a dancer. "However, the book doesn't provide me with the most important information, which is her real identity. If I know who she really is, then perhaps I can come up with some ways to protect myself. After all, all these mythical creatures should have their corresponding weaknesses."

Arthur focused on the other piece of valuable information. "So she has two other sisters. I'm sure that's relevant... when I have more information on her in the future. Couldn't the book at least tell me whether she was the eldest or youngest sister?"

Arthur sighed. The fact that Miss S. had two siblings could be an important clue to pinpoint her identity but he was hoping for a more concrete answer than this guessing game. It was why the young man was feeling so frustrated.

To cheer himself up, Arthur turned to the page for Ability and Power. He had been silently recording the woman's voice and he hoped that the Whispering might be able to provide with the information that the Client Profiles failed to.

The result surprised Arthur because a lot more thing than he expected had been changed. The description of his power wrote the following.

Current Voices in the Whispering (4/5): The Girl [pirated], the Woman [pirated], the Prince [pirated], the Siren's Song [pirated].

Two major changes caught Arthur's attention. One was the added voice called the Siren's Song and the other was the added tag [pirated].

Arthur compartmentalized his thought and decided to analyze this one by one. First, the Siren's Song. Through their popularization in current media, Arthur knew a thing or two about sirens. They were creatures from Greek mythology, having the form of beautiful women and they used their mellifluous voices to lure unsuspecting sailors into the depths of the ocean. To put things simply, they were like the more dangerous type of mermaids.

To brush up on his knowledge, Arthur took out his phone and went online to do a keyword search on sirens. The result pretty much confirmed what he thought. According to myths, sirens inhabited islands with jagged rocks and cliffs so they could use their voices to lure ships into violent crashes.

However, there was one thing Arthur read from the internet that didn't match his current understanding of the mythical creature. Painters in early Greek art represented sirens in the combination of a woman and a bird, while the sirens represented in modern culture were often a creature with the upper body of a woman and the lower body of a fish.

Arthur could not help but draw comparison between Miss S. and the mythical sea creature. Miss S. was definitely beautiful and the way her dress covered the lower half of her body aroused more than a bit of suspicion in Arthur. He wondered whether it would be a slithering tail or a pair of bird's claw underneath it. Based on Arthur's observation so far, he leaned towards the former.

Arthur didn't want to jump the gun and equated Miss S. to a siren but her recorded voice was called a Siren's Song and her name was in itself a huge-giveaway. Miss S. and Siren?! It was the most logical conclusion.

"But if Miss S. is really a siren, doesn't this mean her voice has hypnotic quality? That would be immensely useful to me if it's true!" Arthur exclaimed with joy but he figured that wouldn't be true after he calmed down. "If it has hypnotic power, then why didn't it work on me? I didn't feel affected in any way."

A more worried voice said in his mind, 'Or perhaps I've already gone under but I just don't know it?'

In any case, Arthur was glad that the cloud of mystery surrounding Miss S. was getting slowly cleared up and he could end up with a potentially powerful weapon in the Siren's Song.

"Then, onto the next bit of business, what is this [pirated] tag then?"