Chapter 123: What Kind of Flowers Bloom in the Dead of Winter? |
After wandering around a bit more and finding no one worth teasing, Evina left the Finance room and casually walked toward the main entrance.
Since she had nothing better to do anyway, she figured she'd take a stroll and check out the people putting up the sign at the entrance.
Arriving at the main door, she noticed Celt walking in from outside.
He wore a black trench coat and black trousers, no hat, with Sereia cradled in his arms as usual. Behind him followed a hunched-over figure leaning on a "walking cane."
A week had passed, and today was the day Mr. Pride's gathering was supposed to reconvene, so Celt had gone.
Evina just hadn't expected him to be back this soon.
And also...
Her gaze shifted, looking past Celt to the person following him.
She recognized that person.
Samuel still had a pretty strong impression of him.
Both his appearance and his unique combat style had piqued Samuel's interest considerably.
"Why are you back so early?" Evina walked up and asked Celt.
Before Evina had even noticed Celt, he had already spotted her from far away.
No helping it—she was just way too eye-catching.
"Today's gathering was canceled," Celt said, holding Sereia in his left arm and spreading his right hand. "Mr. Pride had something to take care of and left. Without him there, the others weren't comfortable conducting extraordinary trades."
"Can't hold it without one person?" Evina asked curiously.
"Can't really be helped," Celt nodded. "Most people who go to that gathering trust Mr. Pride's character and accept his protection."
"But without him as the guarantor, no one feels safe. Afraid of being cheated, robbed, unsafe, or that if the authorities come knocking, they won't be able to escape."
"So the gathering ended early," Celt explained.
"I see," Evina said, crossing her left arm over her chest with a grin. "So they're a bunch of cowards."
"Hearing you say that, doesn't that make me a coward too?" Celt shrugged indifferently.
He didn't really mind the comment, but if Evina insulted them, wasn't that practically insulting herself?
"How could that be the same?" Evina declared that her version was T0, the noble, untargetable one.
Then, she shifted her gaze to Old Stone, who was following behind Celt with his head down. She walked over and slowly circled around him.
His outfit was the same as last time—wrapped entirely in a black robe, cloth tied around his face, head bowed, long fingers pressing against the ground as he pretended to be a hunched old man with a cane.
Unlike ordinary people, Old Stone, being a Law Seeker, had strong resistance to the Siren's charm. Upon seeing Evina, aside from a slight sense of being dazzled, he showed no reaction.
Instead, his gaze lingered on Evina's fins. The eyes peeking out from beneath his hooded black robe were filled with barely concealed shock.
He had apparently recognized Evina as a Mutant and couldn't understand why she dared to display her fins so openly.
But then he thought about it—her fins growing behind her ears actually looked quite beautiful, like decorative accessories. Then he reflected on himself.
Mm...
Comparatively, his appearance didn't quite fit normal human aesthetics.
"Maybe you should put your fins away," Celt pointed with a smile. "You might trigger some Law Seekers, just like Grill."
"No way." Evina touched her fins, enjoying the sensitive sensation. "If they can't beat me, they just have to put up with it. If they can beat me... then I'll cheat and make them put up with it anyway."
Celt casually nodded, not really bothered.
He had only mentioned it offhandedly anyway.
"This is Old Stone," Celt said with a dramatic tone, introducing him to Evina, who had finished her circle and stopped. "I ran into him when the gathering was breaking up. Noticed he seemed pretty short on cash, so I brought him back."
"According to him, he can do the work of five people and can be worked like a mule."
"And he's got good skills. With his build, he could make a pretty decent clown."
Evina looked him up and down, then nodded.
"True, an old-man-looking clown might actually be pretty good."
"Does he have a name?" Evina tilted her head to ask. "He can't just be called 'Old Stone,' right?"
"He doesn't want to reveal his real name," Celt answered while stroking Sereia. "He said 'Old Stone' works well enough as his stage name."
Then, Celt turned to Old Stone behind him and introduced.
"This is Ms. Elegy. She oversees the operations of the [Theater] and will be your direct supervisor in the future."
"Also, she handles finances," he added.
After hearing the introduction—especially that last part—Old Stone bent forward, making his already hunched body look even more stooped.
"Hello, Ms. Elegy." He still deliberately spoke in a hoarse voice.
He really didn't want to interact with people, afraid of hurting innocent bystanders, but his family had been desperately short on money lately.
He had been scraping by as part of a gang in the East District, but as of yesterday, he was officially unemployed.
Because most of the thugs in the gang he'd been with were dead.
A few days ago, natural disasters struck out of nowhere.
Many people died silently and without warning.
According to autopsies, their deaths were all strange.
Some looked like they'd been blown up, some like they'd been crushed by a hammer, some like their spines had been snapped in one clean strike by a human vertebra.
So many dead. The gang disbanded. Old Stone, already poor, was officially bankrupt.
That day just happened to be the day Samuel clashed with King Kolimon.
Those small-time thugs had all died from bearing the damage transferred from Kolimon's attacks.
In a sense, they could barely be considered killed by Samuel.
Not that Samuel would acknowledge or care about that.
As for Old Stone, being a natural-born Subhuman put him outside the scope of "ordinary people."
The damage transfer couldn't lock onto him or his sister.
His sister, who had recently become the new "Stargazer," recommended he try his luck at this newly opened [Theater].
Seeing Old Stone, a sudden thought flashed through Evina's mind.
The gathering she had attended a week ago—at that time, Samuel's original body had gone. Even now that she had been split off, she still retained those memories.
She remembered that Samuel had attended the gathering because the Travel Guide mentioned he could find a Mutant there.
At the time, he thought the "Mutant" the Travel Guide referred to was either Sereia or Old Stone.
But later, from Grill's explanations, they learned that Mutants, Subhumans, and Exceptional Creatures were three different categories.
Obviously, Sereia was an Exceptional Creature, not a Mutant.
And Old Stone dared to live in human cities. Though he concealed himself, it was mainly to keep his appearance from being seen as monstrous.
He was probably a "Subhuman," not a "Mutant."
That said, there should have been a real "Mutant" present at that gathering.
Who could it be?
Evina thought of the assassin from back then, but something didn't quite feel right.
With too little information to go on, she couldn't make a judgment.
"This was only my second time attending," Celt said helplessly. "A shame I couldn't participate in person."
"Well... more accurately, it was one and a half times," Celt added. "Last time, I only had a fraction of my consciousness over there."
"And I was low on energy back then, so after watching for a bit, I went to sleep," Celt shrugged.
"Yeah, I think I remember something like that," Evina recalled the scene.
Seeing Old Stone still standing off to the side, Evina waved at him.
"Since Chord has taken a liking to you, you don't need an interview."
"Your weekly salary is five Yur. Finance is that way," she pointed in a direction. "Ask someone for directions and go pick up three months' pay."
"There are some rules around here. Go ask the others yourself."
"Understood." Seeing they wanted to talk, Old Stone lowered his head and tactfully walked away.
Evina continued conversing with Celt.
"Speaking of which, I remember you said back then that after Samuel got home, you wanted to tell him something interesting. But then Samuel got locked up in Liant Town and didn't come back for a week."
"Yeah, that's right."
"We just arrived here in November. Now it's December, right?" Celt said.
"Mm-hmm." Evina nodded.
Celt took out his phone, opened a few photos, and showed them to Evina.
They were of the small flower garden in front of Samuel's villa and the flower stand in Samuel's room.
The flowers were blooming beautifully.
"What kind of flowers bloom this well at the end of November into December?" Celt asked Evina.
"Hmm... I don't know much about flowers," Evina shook her head.
"Right, we don't know much about flowers." Celt nodded, confirming Evina's point. "But even if we don't know much about flowers, we always recognize sunflowers."
Celt zoomed in on one photo. Inside, the sunflower planted in a pot was blooming just as well.
"I don't recall sunflowers blooming in winter."
"Oh?" Evina let out a rising tone of curiosity.
"After I got back, I checked with the Travel Guide," Celt said, pointing at each flower in the photos one by one. "Sunflowers, winter violets, dancing lady orchids, yellow daffodils, black roses, wisteria, golden bell flowers, evening primrose..."
"Only a very small few bloom in winter. Most of them aren't supposed to bloom at this time."
"Are these Exceptional Plants?" Evina rested her chin on her hand, tilting her head to ask.
"They're not, which makes it even stranger." Celt put away his phone. "Which makes it even stranger."
"I had a guess—maybe the villa had its time fixed to a certain period, and only started flowing after we crossed over. After all, when we first crossed over, that house was way too new, like it had just been built."
"But that doesn't make sense either. These flowers' blooming periods are far apart, spanning from January to December."
Back when they first crossed over, there was always that "of course" feeling that came with being a transmigrator.
Feeling like having a Golden Finger was normal, thinking starting with "beginner equipment" was normal.
So, assuming having a villa was just a transmigrator's perk seemed natural.
But what was the reason? Why was there such a perk?
Thinking about it carefully, it was really strange.
Evina fell into thought as well.
"Maybe it's some kind of surveillance device?" Evina guessed. "Maybe some Law Seeker has an ability to share senses with flowers, so they knew no matter where we hid, we'd find them, so they just put them in the most obvious place."
"That's possible, but I checked—they're just ordinary flowers, not affected by any ability." Celt shrugged. "And like I said, if they were really for surveillance, they'd only need to plant flowers that bloom in winter."
"Planting so many flowers that aren't in season is too strange and too obvious."
"If they had only planted dancing lady orchids, I probably wouldn't have noticed the anomaly this quickly, and I wouldn't have started suspecting the villa itself so fast."
"After all, even if I hate to admit it—whether due to our strength or our status as transmigrators—they've always had a special kind of confidence, never taking anything seriously."
But after Samuel split off the slightly more normal part of himself, Celt immediately spotted the problem.
"If we focus more on the 'flowers,' then the problem isn't just our house." Celt continued.
"Remember the first meal we had after arriving in this world?"
"I wasn't around back then," Evina teased. "It was just you two big men having a candlelit lunch."
"Don't interrupt." Celt waved his hand dismissively. "That restaurant was called Flora Restaurant."
"Mm-hmm." Evina nodded lightly.
"Flora—that's the name of the Roman goddess of flowers in mythology. You should know that, right?" Celt asked.
"I know," Evina nodded. "So you're saying that place is suspicious?"
But Celt just shook his head.
"I don't know. Just making some connections."
"Could be a coincidence, but it's a bit too much of one."
"Maybe you're overthinking it?" Evina clasped the chains on her hands together, reforming them into a single handcuff. "After all, this world doesn't have Roman mythology."
"I don't know." Celt shook his head. "But it never hurts to pay more attention."
"The conclusion is—maybe we were being watched from the very moment we crossed over," Celt gave his final verdict.
Evina, while uploading this information to the "cloud" and sending it to Samuel, said:
"Then why didn't you mention something this important sooner?"
"I thought you'd already figured it out. It wasn't until you asked today that I realized neither Samuel nor you had given any of these details any thought at all." Celt smiled and shrugged.
He only explained part of the reason, but the other part both Evina and Samuel could easily guess.
No matter.
Whatever the problem was, it didn't matter.
A decent play. Some interesting details.
Let them come.
They welcomed all comers.