At 4:57 PM, the door of the detective agency was knocked on.
Oliver’s watch was three minutes fast.
Woken by the noise, Lu Li’s eyes, initially hazy and clouded like a thin mist, gradually cleared, becoming deep and tranquil pools.
This ti, he hadn’t fallen into that bizarre dreamscape again, though he couldn’t recall what he had dread about.
After freshening up, he walked to the door where Oliver was waiting. Before stepping out, Lu Li grabbed his hat from the coat rack and closed the door behind him.
Click—
The door latched shut, and the dim detective agency returned to its cold silence.
…
“Chestnuts for sale! Freshly roasted chestnuts!”
“Freshly caught eels, 4 shillings a pound—”
“Give
back my hair tie!”
The sounds of vendors filled the bustling Sailors’ Street, mingling with the laughter and scuffles of children running by. The air carried the salty tang of the sea, mixed with the sll of fish brought in by returning sailors.
“Are you coming with ?”
Lu Li turned his head slightly toward Oliver, who was walking beside him.
“No, I’m heading left up ahead.” Oliver gestured toward a corner in the distance.
When they reached the corner, Oliver waved goodbye and slipped away. Lu Li watched him leave, then donned his hat and blended into the bustling crowd.
…
“Exorcist, do you need
to close the gallery now?”
On the second floor of the gallery, Lu Li entered the office to a warm reception from Benjamin.
The bare bookshelves and spotless desk were proof that the events of the previous night hadn’t been a hallucination. Lu Li suddenly realized he hadn’t ntioned the state of the office when he’d left earlier that morning.
But seeing Benjamin’s nonchalant deanor now, Lu Li decided not to bring it up.
“Wait until regular business hours are over,” Lu Li replied.
“Uh…”
Benjamin’s face turned awkward. “There are no custors in the gallery right now.”
Ultimately, the gallery closed at its official closing ti of 6 PM. The employees left one after another, with Benjamin being the last to leave.
Lu Li stood at the door, watching Benjamin leave. Instead of turning back into the gallery, he stepped down the stairs, circled around to the back of the gallery, and stopped beneath a second-floor window. ??
It was the window to the office, the sa one where he had thrown the ghostly infant the previous night. Yet, there were no traces left on the ground beneath it.
After confirming that the infant ghost was unlikely to reappear there, Lu Li returned to the gallery’s main entrance. He removed the “Open” sign from the door and locked it.
The sky was beginning to darken, though there was still so ti before full nightfall. Lu Li lit the oil lamp, placed the wind-resistant cover on it, and quietly waited for the evening to descend.
As the gallery’s hallways dimd, becoming shrouded in an indistinct haze, only the small circle around Lu Li remained illuminated by the oil lamp’s glow.
Ssshh—
The sound of sothing scraping echoed from deep within the hallway.
The statue had co to life.
Lu Li stood, picked up the oil lamp, and walked toward the source of the noise, bypassing the desk.
After a dozen steps, he saw the statue moving toward him in the hallway.
“Good evening.”
Lu Li greeted it casually, “I need your help.”
Without waiting for a response, he lifted the statue and carried it to the end of the hallway, where a staircase led to the second floor.
“I know you can hear , and I know you can think. I need you to keep watch at the stairway and alert
if Athena appears. You should know who she is. If she cos out of the break room, co and get .”
Lu Li set the statue down near the staircase and looked into its lifeless, stone eyes. “If you don’t want to, you can leave.”
Taking a few steps back, Lu Li turned and walked away. Several seconds passed, yet he didn’t hear the sound of stone scraping against wood.
It had worked.
Passing Anna’s painting, Lu Li noticed that the girl within the fra remained frozen, showing no signs of coming to life.
Lowering his gaze, he continued forward.
But then, a pair of slightly translucent hands reached around from behind him, covering his eyes.
“Guess who?” A cheerful, lark-like voice ca from behind.
Lu Li stopped in his tracks but was a fraction too late. The hands, unable to stop in ti, pressed through his eye sockets into his head before hurriedly pulling back.
“Anna,” Lu Li said.
“Hmph! Can’t you at least guess wrong once?”
Anna pouted, dropping her hands as she floated in front of him, her face puffed out like a stead bun.
“…?” Confusion flickered in Lu Li’s dark eyes. Was this kind of “guess who” ga supposed to involve intentionally giving the wrong answer?
Quickly setting aside his confusion, Lu Li returned to his usual calm deanor and asked, “Can you sense the locations of other ghosts?”
“If they don’t deliberately hide their presence, yes,” Anna nodded.
“Good. I need your help.” Lu Li gave a slight nod of approval.
…
“I feel it… over there!”
At the back of the gallery, beneath an exterior wall, Lu Li raised his oil lamp high.
Anna floated beside him, exclaiming in excitent.
They were searching for sothing—or rather, a ghost.
Lu Li looked up, following Anna’s direction. High above, on a tree branch several ters off the ground, he spotted a dangling umbilical cord.
Raising the lamp higher, the ghostly infant ca into view, its figure illuminated by the light.
Its umbilical cord was tangled around the branch. Sensing the glow of the lamp, the infant ghost flailed its limbs.
Lu Li turned to Anna and pointed at the tree. “Bring that ghostly infant down.”
“Its form is so strange. Is this what human babies look like?” Anna floated up to the branch, muttering as she worked to untangle the cord. Despite her comnts, there was no hesitation as she gently cradled the infant ghost and floated down in front of Lu Li.
Lu Li extended his arms, taking the infant ghost from Anna’s perplexed hands.
It wasn’t fully ford. Its underdeveloped hands and feet, still webbed like a frog’s, clung to Lu Li’s arm. Its mouth opened, revealing sharp teeth—but it neither scread nor bit.
Instead, it simply smiled, delighted to see another of its kind, though its incomplete vocal cords rendered it silent.
A day ago, Lu Li wouldn’t have dared to try this. But after eting ghosts like Anna and the statue—non-hostile entities capable of communication—his attitude had shifted.
Ghosts were once human. Why couldn’t they retain their humanity?
Looking down at the ghostly infant, Lu Li observed its features. The less-than-seven-month-old spirit was far from fully developed. Wrinkled skin was covered with a fine layer of hair, and its face resembled an animal’s snout more than a human’s. It looked like the offspring of a demon.
In fact, that might not be far from the truth.
Lu Li touched its eyelids, noting that it could see. Its webbed fingers, connected by a thin, translucent mbrane, reached out to grasp at his hand.
Lowering his gaze, Lu Li glanced briefly at Anna’s increasingly bewildered expression before heading back to the gallery’s main entrance.
After locking the door, Lu Li removed his coat and wrapped it around the ghostly infant, placing it beside the oil lamp on the desk.
Looking up, he noticed Anna’s expression growing stranger. She seed hesitant to speak.
“What do you want to say?” Lu Li asked.
“Is… is it your child?”
“It’s not.”
“Then why did you bring it back…?”
“It’s Athena’s child.”
“…?”
“It can quell Athena’s rage.”
“Then why go to all this effort?”
Lu Li fell silent for a mont, eting Anna’s gaze.
“Because I’m an exorcist.”
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