chapter13

 All three in the room were a bit surprised when the door was knocked on.

　　Gregorio and Marvin had just arrived in the Pure White Realm, and there was no one they knew well, except for Aron, who they knew from Hamelnry, so who could be coming over?

　　Gregorio got up, "I'll get the door."

　　They were now living in the most common silo, the house was not big, one bedroom, one hall, the room key was handed to them by the clown after passing the novice box, the furniture was still complete, and the brothers took turns sleeping on the couch, it was quite peaceful.

　　Gregorio had been observing the neighbors for the past three days, and they all seemed to be new residents like them. A number of them had left the house and never returned, more likely to have died somewhere other than changing houses.

　　He opened the door and the walkway was empty, except for a delivery box sitting on the doorstep.

　　Gregorio crouched down to look at the delivery note taped to it, the recipient had his name written on it, and the sender's spot was blank.

　　This place has a lot of things that can not be explained by the common sense of the real world. Gregorio no longer difficult for himself, carries the box into the house.

　　It was heavy.

　　And ... it looks like something else is moving inside.

　　Marvin curiously came over, "What is it?"

　　"I don't know." Gregorio placed the box on the table and Sylver, who was lying on the windowsill in the middle of his memories, twisted his head, his eyes lit up when he saw the box and immediately came over, "It's for me."

　　"Aren't you a prisoner? Why would someone even send you something, and it has my brother's name written on it." Marvin spat.

　　Sylver ignored him and casually took the pen Gregorio had placed on the table, the tip of which easily scratched the tape along the flap of the box. With the sound of the courier box being ripped open, something inside let out a disturbing rattle, impatiently revealing its head.

　　It was a ... a cat?

　　The white cat lightly jumped out of the box, its triangular pink pointed ears twitching, its amber eyes clear and transparent in the sunlight like two glass beads, its tail sweeping over Sylver's wrist.

　　It crouched gracefully on the table, looking at the two brothers in front of it with eyes full of surprise, a thick Russian accent in its baritone voice: "Hello there."

　　... Wait, the cat talked?

　　And a fucking gross accent?

　　Marvin was dumbfounded.

　　What a fantastical world this was!

　　Even Gregorio, as stoic as he was, couldn't help but look surprised; in his perceived world, it had never occurred to him that there could be a cat with a Russian accent - well, he'd just seen even talking mice in vests in Hameln, so what else was impossible?

　　Sylver reached up and scratched Victor's chin, always relieved, "I can't believe he used a delivery box and wasn't afraid to smother you."

　　"He sent me over here, I just stayed in the box for a while, it doesn't matter." Viktor rubbed the teenager's palm affectionately and smiled at the startled two, "Don't be surprised, I'm Sylver's friend Viktor Vladimir Morozov, you can call me Viktor or, like Sylver, uncle. "

　　The string of Russian names with a flicking tongue straight away blinded Marvin, he looked at Sylver and the white cat, then at Gregorio, and wisely chose to keep quiet for the time being.

　　"You're not an ordinary prisoner, are you," Gregorio asked suddenly, after a moment of silence.

　　Sylver raised an eyebrow, "How so?"

　　"Although I haven't been here for a long time, it is written in the Newcomer's Handbook that once you become a prisoner, even if you have preserved your memories from before you were born, you are not allowed to have more contact in private with people you used to know without your master's permission."

　　Gregorio calmly locked eyes with Sylver and said, "You suddenly ran out of the Prisoner's space privately during the confrontation with the Pied Piper, and now an old friend is looking for the door ... You're not entirely under my control, are you?"

　　"Good point." Sylver admitted matter-of-factly, "I'm not a prisoner, and I did have other purposes for coming here with Victor, but you have to believe that with the blood bond in place, there's no way I'm going to harm you."

　　"I know, but it doesn't feel very comfortable being hidden." Gregorio wasn't used to anything out of his control, but, as it was, it would have to be a slow habit, "I'll wait until you're willing to tell me."

　　"There's no need to rush, if it's determined that you are indeed the ones who can help Sylver and me, we'll come clean about everything." Victor reached out and touched Gregorio's finger with one pink forepaw, taking the lead in a gesture of goodwill knowing full well that Sylver's personality would most likely not speak well at all when confronted with someone he didn't know well.

　　Socializing and whatnot, let's leave it to him.

　　The small white cat in front of him looked harmless, Gregorio hesitated slightly and didn't avoid it, gently holding Victor's front paw with two fingers, "Good."

　　Fluffy and soft and furry, is it a cat? Is it a cat?

　　Marvin resisted the urge to go up and pet him and asked, "That ... presumptuous question, have you always been a cat? I mean, did you learn to speak human before you got like this, or were you a human before?"

　　"I am a human." Victor replied patiently, "Only now I'm trapped in a cat's body, and one of Sylver's purposes now is to help me change back to my old self."

　　"Oh so, that makes it a little more understandable." After all, being a teenager full of marvelous fantasies, Marvin accepted this fact quickly and asked smoothly, "So what do you eat? Do you need to buy cat food or something? Or do you follow us around for dinner?"

　　"It's best to have cat food, and I can eat if conditions don't allow it."

　　"Eh - then I wonder if they sell the Crave brand here, I've heard that's the best cat food."

　　While Marvin and Victor over here chatted merrily, Sylver picked up the Pure White Earth Realm Newcomer's Guidebook on the table and casually flipped through it. The one he took was supposedly Gregorio's, and it was heavily marked with how to behave in the box to get more points, the rules of Clearing Night, and so on, which was a good indication of the man's seriousness and caution.

　　"There's still a lot I don't understand about this place." Gregorio snapped as he leaned against the wall and looked over at the teenager who was looking down at the manual.

　　Sylver looked up at him, "Such as?"

　　"The Joker said that to get out of here, you have to participate in a pilgrimage to reach Hera's palace and make a request to Hera, and that's what the manual says." Gregorio's voice was steady, the question had been bothering him since he arrived, "But has anyone managed to go back? Everyone came here after they died in the real world, and Marvin and I's bodies are probably out of shape by now, so if we went back, what form would we take?"

　　"..." Sylver was silent for a split second, "That's something I can't tell you right now."

　　Gregorio pressed keenly, "Is it that you can't or that you don't know either?"

　　"I do know, but it may not be much of a reference."

　　After all, he was the only one who had ever managed to get out of the Pure White Earth Realm since the time it existed.

　　On the night of his sixteenth birthday, the family made a nice dinner and waited for their son to come home from school, but there was no news until seven in the evening. The news of the prisoner's escape blared repeatedly on the TV.

　　The mother stayed at home with her sister, and the anxious father came out to look for him and found his son's body, stabbed a dozen times, in a remote alleyway, collapsed in a pool of dried blood, already cold and stiff.

　　Before the man, who had almost fainted, could let out his first cry, he saw the teenager's bloodstained eyelashes flutter gently, slowly opening his eyes-

　　Sylver had been struggling in the Pure White Realm for three years and four months, but in reality, only two hours and thirty-seven minutes had passed.

　　With everything from eight years ago still fresh in his mind, Sylver closed his eyes, thinking of the tears of his parents and sister before his departure, his heart was devoid of any ripples, only a dull ache.

　　"Alright then, I'll change the question." Gregorio turned to the question, "Can you tell me about the pilgrimage?"

　　The question was well answered as Sylver said, "The geographical layout of the Pure White Earth realm can be interpreted as a circular target, where we are now on the outermost level and Hera's palace is in the center of the target, with distorted space filling the space between each of the two zones, which can only be passed through by the Endless Train.

　　"Countless people who wanted to get out went out of their way and risked their lives to cross half of the Pure White Earth to petition Hera, and over time the journey to the central region came to be known as the Pilgrimage.

　　"As for the process ... it's all about entering the box, getting points, props, clues inside, improving yourself, getting a ticket into the next region, and repeating the process over and over until you reach your destination."

　　Then meet lies and death.

　　As Sylver explained Victor and Marvin unknowingly stopped talking as well and listened to him quietly. The teenager's distinctive voice rang through the living room, Victor's tail, which had been wagging gently in the air, dropped to the coffee table, his white eyelashes drooping to hide the sadness in his amber eyes.

　　--He couldn't remember how many deaths he'd witnessed.

　　"That must have been hard," Marvin murmured.

　　Sylver Ahmed, "It is hard, that's why some people choose to live here forever, not going on pilgrimages, just periodically entering some low-level boxes to earn points that they can live on for a while, but it's still very easy to die in a box due to a lack of strength and other kinds of accidents."

　　"There are also a very small number of people whose certain characteristics are recognized by the Pure White Earth Realm, acting as weapon manufacturers, ticket checkers or guides or something like that here, earning qualifications to live by working."

　　Everyone fell silent as Sylver's words fell.

　　"That's probably the situation." It was he who finally broke the heaviness, "So what are you guys going to choose?"

　　Is it to count the points in hand and struggle to live on, waiting at the mercy of God to be chosen to work for the Pure White Earth Realm for eternity, or to risk ten deaths to embark on a pilgrimage to chase that nebulous chance of going back?

　　It's a hard choice, isn't it?

　　But for Gregorio, the equivalent of no choice exists.

　　He's never been a believer that fate is only in his own hands, and any way to leave it up to fate was rejected outright by him at the very beginning.

　　Stay here for the rest of his life? Impossible.

　　"We're going on a pilgrimage." The man said dryly, he didn't notice the slightest ripple in Sylver's eyes the moment he heard his answer and looked to Marvin, "Want to come with me?"

　　"Of course!" The teenager immediately replied loudly, "I don't want to stay here for the rest of my life, might as well put up a fight, at least there's hope."

　　"Then it's a deal." Sylver snapped his fingers as the teenager leaned against the wall, a slight smirk escaping the corners of his lips without even noticing it, "I'll help you on your pilgrimage, and I hope you two live long enough to let me share the secret with Viktor."

　　"Definitely." Victor corrected him, the man in this cat shell was as gentle as ever, firm, "It will work."

　　Small seeds were planted at the moment, quietly brewing, waiting to set off a thunderstorm that would turn the world upside down.

　　Sylver looks to the sky once more, knowing that in another dimension beyond the reach of his vision, his family is waiting for him to return once more.

　　The bonds of the Prisoner's Card had allowed Gregorio to choose him in the most critical of moments, and he, in turn, had chosen Gregorio in this moment.