Volume 3 - CH 2.3

The building was high-ceilinged, spacious, and uniformly white. The vast floor was filled with piles of goods, and expensive jewelry, teddy bears, women’s underwear, and other items were sold in individual stores, some of which were separated by glass doors.

The staff were all young men and women with pleasing apperance. They were of various nationalities, including a young Scandinavian man with chiseled features and a young girl with exotic olive skin.

Kazuya asked the young Scandinavian man about the location of the Blue Rose. In broken French, he told him that it was at the far end of the department store. Kazuya wondered why such a popular product was being sold way in the back, but he followed the directions and took the elevator to the top floor, then headed for the end of the corridor.

The higher the floor, the more classy the stores became. The white corridor went on and on. Despite the glittering signboards, there were no customers around.

“Is this the place?”

Kazuya stopped in front of a door. It was definitely the place the man told him about.

It was a room with no signage, and the door was not made of glass, but of sturdy oak. Doubtful, Kazuya gently opened the door. It looked like a store. Checkered tiles on the floor. Brown walls. A chandelier in the shape of a flower shone in the elegant room.

Sparkling jeweled watches, crown-shaped ornaments, and jeweled daggers were displayed inside glass cases.

There wasn’t anyone around. Puzzled, Kazuya stepped inside.

“There it is!”

A Blue Rose paperweight was sitting carelessly on top of a glass case. A glass replica of the real blue diamond, it was transparent and sparkly, with a wonderful shape reminiscent of a large rose. It was just big enough to fit in the palm of Kazuya’s hand. If it were a real diamond, it would cost a fortune.

There were also porcelain plates, brooches, and finely-crafted combs. Kazuya picked them up and studied them.

“Who’s there?!”

Startled, Kazuya dropped all the items in his hands. He quickly grabbed the porcelain plate. The paperweight, brooch, and comb fell to the floor, but none of them broke despite the loud noise they made. He stroked his chest in relief.

“I-I’m sorry!” Kazuya said.

Picking up the items he dropped, he looked up to see three people standing there. One was a large man in a well-tailored suit. Seemingly in his mid-thirties, he was tanned and had a well-toned body. His gaze was sharp.

Behind him were a man and a woman in the purple uniforms of Jeantan’s sales staff. The man was staring at Kazuya, while the woman had her head inclined.

The large man gave Kazuya a reproachful look. “What are you doing here?”

“I, uh… came here to buy a Blue Rose.”

The two men looked at each other.

“Come back at night,” the older one said.

“A-At night?” Kazuya looked puzzled. But they’re open the whole day. “Why?” he asked.

“You wanted to buy a Blue Rose, no?”

“Yes. Three of them.”

The two men slowly exchanged glances. The female staff whispered something to them from behind. The two men nodded.

“Three Blue Rose paperweights?”

“Yes.”

“Head to the stationery section on the second floor, then.”

“Oh…”

Kazuya left the room feeling confused.

He was lost.

It was not until a while after he rode the elevator down to the first floor and started walking down the dark corridor that he realized he had lost his way.

As he hurried back down the corridor, it dawned on him. When he left the room with the glass cases, he had inadvertently taken a different elevator than the one he had taken when he came up. He wondered if that was a service elevator. The lighting was dim, the floor was covered with strange reddish-black stains, and there was an odd smell that permeated the air.

The corridor where the elevator descended was also poorly-lit and very narrow. It felt suffocating. Simple, unadorned gas lamps hung in wide intervals from the high wall like sickles, illuminating Kazuya with a pale light. Between the lights there was a shadowy darkness, so deep that it was hard to see where wall and floor met.

The gas lamps flickered uneasily. It looked like they would go out at any moment. Feeling scared, Kazuya hastened back the way he came.

Then he heard a voice. He looked at his feet. The voice seemed to be coming from under the floor. He stopped in his tracks and listened closely, but he couldn’t hear it anymore.

He resumed walking, when he heard it again.

“I knew it! I hear a voice… A girl.”

Kazuya stopped again. He looked up at the ceiling. He thought he heard it from above this time. The ceiling was empty, of course, and the only thing he saw was some pattern made by a reddish-black stain of dirty water or something. It looked slightly like a human face.

“There are demons here!” someone shouted in his ear.

Kazuya yelped and turned around. There was no one there. At the edge of the corridor, there was only a pale blue darkness, shifting under the gas lamps.

Demons?

The gas lamp suddenly hissed loudly. Blue flames flared up to nearly the ceiling for a moment, illuminating the far end of the dark hallway. He spotted long, white objects tangled with each other.

Kazuya yelped. “…People?”

Several large, wide-open eyes were staring vacantly at him. The white things were limbs. Their bodies were twisted and entangled in an impossible manner, becoming one distorted mass, glaring at Kazuya resentfully with countless wide-open eyes. He cautiously approached them.

“Oh…” He stroked his chest.

What appeared to be a pile of fresh corpses was, upon closer inspection, all mannequins. Some were lying in their storefront poses, others were missing their limbs, and some only had their torsos.

At the far end of the pile of mannequins were a disorganized stack of crates. Through the half-open wooden boxes, Kazuya glimpsed white mannequin legs.

There was a peculiar reddish-black stain on the floor, the same as the one on the elevator. The stain was dry, seemingly old, with cotton-like dust on top of it.

Curious, Kazuya approached the crate with the closed lid at the far end. He opened it gently.

Inside the crate was a mannequin, curled up in a fetal position. Its long, sand-colored hair concealed its body. Before he closed the lid, he realized something odd.

Why was this mannequin’s eyes closed?

A chill ran down his spine.

The mannequin’s eyes snapped open.

Kazuya jumped and shrieked. Before he could back away, the mannequin spoke.

“There are demons here!”

It was a thick Russian accent. Her eyes were a deep purple, and glassy like a drop of thick milk. The girl sprang up from the crate and grabbed Kazuya’s wrists with both hands as he tried to escape. She was terribly strong. So strong, in fact, that it was hard to believe she was a girl.

But her hands were shaking violently. Her pearly teeth were chattering as she cried “Demons!” over and over again in an accented French. She spun around in an odd manner; one would think she wasn’t even human. With each twirl of her head, her sand-colored hair bounced up in the darkness and smacked Kazuya’s face.

“Wh-What’s… What’s wrong with you?!” Swallowing hard, Kazuya managed to ask the question.

But the girl did not listen, and instead, in a thick Russian accent, said, “Demons! There are demons here!” She screamed again.

She then pulled Kazuya and opened her thin, colorless lips. Two small, but pointed canine teeth peeked out from behind her lips, glinting in the pale light of the gas lamps.

“C-Call the police,” she said. “There are demons here. Lots of them! They’re gonna kill me!”

“What? Did something happen here? In that case, I’ll call the staff.”

“No. Call the police. The police!”

The girl released her grip on Kazuya and grasped her own neck. She groaned loudly, as if she was having trouble breathing. Kazuya backed away from the girl.

The gas lamps hissed again, flickered, then went out.

“H-Hello?” Kazuya called out to the darkness.

There was no reply.

Kazuya started running. He didn’t know what was going on. He just wanted out of there.

As he stumbled out of Jeantan, Kazuya whistled to hail a horse-drawn cab. The small, one-horse carriage was driven by an old man with a large scar running diagonally from right to left across his face.

Kazuya quickly got in. “To the Sauville Police Department, in front of Charles de Gilet station!”

The man nodded, his scarred face contorting.

Snap!

A whip cracked and the horse moved.

Kazuya looked up at the octagonal building. As he wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, he noticed two blue eyes staring at him from behind the building’s exterior decorations.

Small eyes. The eyes of a child. The one from earlier.

The peculiar street urchin that tricked him.

Kazuya recalled the child mumbling “957”. For a moment he wondered what the child was talking about, but there were more pressing matters at hand.

The child was staring at Kazuya. His lips seemed to curve into a smile.