Volume 3 - CH 3.4

The kid frowned, and his whole body shrank in horror. “They went in and never came out the front or the back. Even after days. There are customers who enter Jeantan and disappear. All young women.”

“Shouldn’t you report it to the cops?”

“I did tell the cops,” he snapped, baring his yellowish teeth. “I told them about the disappearing women. But they just hit me. They thought I was lying. They beat me up and kicked me out of the station. They said there’s no way I could remember that accurately. That I was lying. I never said anything after that. I just watch from here.”

Kazuya stared at the kid’s face the whole time. He himself could not remember exactly when he entered and exited Jeantan. There was no way this kid could remember everyone who came in and out of the department store.

Yet strangely enough, he sensed credibility in his words. The old woman from earlier pointed to the department store and said that her daughter was eaten. Perhaps she meant that her daughter had gone inside and never came out.

And then there was the girl in the crate…

Ah! He suddenly remembered something.

When he first met this street urchin, he mumbled, “957”. At the time, he had no idea what it meant, but now that he thought about it, the kid said it when he spilled the coins from his wallet onto the street.

No way…

Kazuya took out his wallet and began counting the coins inside. He gave the kid and the driver bills.

The coins amounted to a total of 957.

Wow!

Kazuya turned his gaze back to the kid. He was incredibly sharp, but his face was dirty, and he was covering his head to avoid getting hit.

Bewildered, he tried to talk to the boy. “Can you—

“Give me back my daughter!”

The old lady appeared again and grabbed Kazuya. Jet-black, animal-like eyes glinted on her dirty face. She grabbed his collar with terrifying force, staring straight at him.

“Please find my daughter!” she cried in accented French.

“Uhm… please let me go!” Kazuya shouted.

The old lady retreated. Then she looked up at Kazuya in horror, tears forming in her eyes. “Please help me find my daughter!” Her voice faded, and she cast her gaze downward.

Like the wind blowing the clouds away to reveal the sun, the madness vanished from her face, and reason returned to her eyes.

“She disappeared from here four years ago,” she said. “My daughter and I were tourists. We both entered that department store, but she never came out!”

“Seriously?”

“My daughter wanted a dress. I told her I would buy it for her. She took the dress and went into the fitting room by herself. I waited for her to come out, and when I opened the door, she was gone. There was nobody there.” She started sobbing.

Kazuya suddenly remembered a very similar horror story he had heard from his classmate Avril—a noblewoman disappearing from a department store’s fitting room. The old woman’s story was very similar to a story from that book, which was a collection of rumors circulating in Saubreme.

Inspector Blois also mentioned a case about the ones who vanished into the darkness.

Perhaps customers really did disappear in Jeantan sometimes, and though the matter never came to light, rumors started spreading among the common folk.

Tears streaming down the old woman’s wrinkled, soot-stained face created horrifying patterns. The wrinkles that ran along her eyelids hung down to her eyes. Her ragged clothes were bulging, as if they were filled with something.

Kazuya recalled another story that Avril shared—a killer disguised as a hobo with children’s corpses hanging inside his clothes.

The old woman raised her voice, snapping Kazuya out of his reverie. “All their employees are weird. They say they never saw my daughter. Even the staff who recommended the dress said I’d been alone in the store the whole time. The doorman—everyone—said they never saw my daughter. They showed her the dress, said it looked good on her, and told her to try it in the fitting room. But no one listened to me. My daughter disappeared, and I never saw her again. It’s been four years now. I don’t even know if she’s still alive!”

Kazuya thought about the second time he entered Jeantan. Everyone insisted that they had not seen him, and even the interior of the room he was supposed to have entered had completely changed. Not only that, he also saw a girl coming out of a crate, asking for help. He was sure of that.

Kazuya pondered it over for a while.

Slowly, he opened his eyes. He glanced at his hand. He was holding something—a wrapping paper with red ribbon. It contained a pretty pipe holder in the shape of a shoe, which he had bought at a pipe shop right after arriving in Saubreme. It was a souvenir for Victorique.

Kazuya thought about her.

I wasn’t dreaming. If she were here, she would have solved the mystery in no time, yawned, and complained that she was bored again. Yes, if only you were here…

Her husky voice came to mind. “It’s simple desire.”

A glimmer of hope returned to Kazuya’s eyes.

The small, mysterious figure of his intelligent friend appeared in his mind. She once talked about the supernatural story trend in the quiet conservatory at the top of the library. He remembered the words she uttered in her husky voice.

“The desire for the unseen and the incomprehensible to exist. Some look to religion, because they have not yet seen God. Some look to love, because they had not felt it. And some began looking to the supernatural.”

When he declared that he didn’t believe in the supernatural, she said, “People who say such things tend to have cold feet when something inexplicable happens.”

Kazuya nodded to himself. On his face was a smile of relief.

Victorique… Mean, whimsical, arrogant, and downright irritating Victorique… I’m sure you’d believe me and listen to what I have to say. Of course, you’d get mad at first, mock me, and hurl insults. But you’d nevertheless uncover the truth. All that’s happened earlier was not a dream. They’re just fragments, nothing but a headache for me, but for Victorique, they’re fragments of chaos. She would reconstruct them in no time, providing a little relief from boredom for the Princess Locked in a Tower. Besides, she was just whining to me yesterday.

“Get yourself involved in some incident by tomorrow.”

“Don’t worry.”

“I will solve the case once I feel like it.”

The last part was slightly, or rather quite disturbing, but Kazuya tried not to think about it.

He headed for the café across the street from Jeantan, with the odd street urchin following him behind.

The relaxing café, which opened onto the street, was crowded at lunchtime. Kazuya asked a staff if he could borrow their phone, and they gladly lent him one out front.

Kazuya picked up the phone. He asked the operator to connect him to St. Marguerite Academy.

“Did they have Blue Roses?” Ms. Cecile asked in a carefree tone.

“There’s more pressing matters at hand, Teach,” Kazuya replied. “Please get me Victorique.”

“Did you suddenly want to hear her voice?”

“That’s just creepy. It’s an emergency.”

“Got it. I’ll tell her that you called under the pretext of an emergency just to hear her voice.”

“I wouldn’t do that! Hello?! Just give her the phone!”

Ignoring Kazuya’s cries, Ms. Cecile put the phone down for a moment with a chuckle, leaving him on edge. He wondered what he would do if she told Victorique exactly that. It was hard to imagine Victorique missing him or wanting to hear his voice if he was away. As a matter of fact, she might not even notice his absence. Even if Kazuya was away from school for a week or a month, Victorique would be completely unperturbed, blowing her pipe in her usual spot in the conservatory, buried in a pile of books, and when he returned one day, she would say, “Oh, it’s you,” like she always did.

A disgruntled glance would be the best she could offer.

Tsk.

The thought made Kazuya feel sad. And angry, for some reason. All of Victorique’s flaws flashed through his mind.

That bossy, stubborn, little crybaby…!

He felt dejected.

Victorique was still not on the phone.

The blinding early-summer sun shone on the cafe’s storefront, reflecting off the stone pavement.