Volume 3 - CH 6.2

He climbed the stairs to the fifth floor and quietly made his way down the darkened hallway.

“First window… Second… Third…”

He kept counting as he went along. The numbers faintly glowed bluish-white in the darkness. It looked as if letters just floated in the air. Kazuya went on.

“Eleven… twelve…”

He stopped.

There was a wall between the twelfth and thirteenth windows. It was hard to grasp the space inside the store, cluttered with shelves of merchandise, small aisles, mannequins. Kazuya walked around the wall.

He could hear the footsteps of officers climbing up the stairs.

It’s very thick for a wall…

The wall was crammed with expensive tapestries and Persian carpets.

There’s definitely another room here. A room with a large window and a view of the Royal Square. It has to be behind this wall.

Kazuya flipped through the carpets and tapestries one by one.

“Kujou!”

The footsteps were coming closer. He could also hear Inspector Blois calling to him. Kazuya was between the wall and the carpets. Suddenly he was struck by an odd feeling. He thought that if he continued on, he would be sucked into a bizarre space inside the wall and dragged into another world, and Inspector Blois would never find him. His head would remain, but his body would be gone.

There were killers lurking in the department store.

No, demons.

Crazy people who devoted themselves to devil worship.

The looking glass.

Kazuya found a door.

It was hidden by a piece of tapestry hanging on the wall. A small door. He thought it was locked, but when he gently grabbed the doorknob, it turned to the right.

Kazuya slowly opened the door and peeked inside.

The room was surprisingly crowded. It was much larger than it seemed from the outside, and it was darkly lit. Paintings hung on the walls, and glass cases containing glittering jewelry sat on what seemed like a small stage.

About ten children stood on the platform, their faces contorted with fear.

Around them stood a few salestaff from Jeantan, dressed in purple uniforms. The people crowding around them were customers. Dozens of people stood there in the darkness, staring coldly at the podium.

Kazuya’s breath seized. Anastasia’s voice rang in his ears.

“Demonic rituals! Demons! Demonic rituals!”

“Strange rituals. We are sacrifices. Demons surround us and recite weird incantations. They raise their hands like this.”

Right now, in this very room, the demonic ritual that Anastasia described was about to begin.

One of the staff stepped forward and pushed a small child to their feet. A sacrifice. Then they smiled at the demons—the customers.

“The bidding starts at thirty thousand.”

A customer quickly raised their hand. Just like what Anastasia said.

“Thirty-five thousand. Any others?”

Another customer raised their hand.

The staff nodded. “Thirty-seven thousand. Forty thousand. Forty-two thousand. Fifty thousand! I have fifty thousand. Do I hear a fifty-one? Fifty-one thousand. Fifty-two thousand!”

The weird incantation continued.

It’s an auction! It’s not some demonic ritual. It’s an auction for the stolen artworks and the girls who disappeared. Anastasia doesn’t understand French, so it sounded like some strange ritual to her.

Victorique’s voice replayed in his mind.

“I believe something terrible is happening in the secret room.”

“This case is just like an alexandrite.”

“It changes color if you look at it from different angles.”

“But it’s the same stone. Do you understand?”

The long-established department store Jeantan was showing a different color. Kazuya recalled vividly the moment when Victorique’s magic ring changed from red to green.

The darkness of the city, opening its mouth wide and swallowing people, which in turn was swallowed by horror stories, human desires given form.

Darkness.

“This case is an Alexandrite, Kujou.”

“Kujou!” The inspector grabbed him by the shoulder.

Startled by the man’s voice, the dark room became silent. The staff and customers turned around slowly at the same time. Their faces were devoid of emotions, expressionless as Noh masks.

Outside the window, the moon turned brighter. The wind had blown away the clouds that were covering it. Moonlight shone on all their faces.

Cold, expressionless faces that did not seem human. A crowd of ghosts wrapped in darkness.

The silence only lasted a moment. The staff screamed, and the customers scrambled in all directions, trying to escape.

“Round them all up!”

The police officers surrounded them.

One by one, the staff and customers were arrested, handcuffed, and taken away. There were glass cases in one corner of the room, filled with works of art. A necklace inlaid with a huge gem, a crown, a black-and-white pearl pendant—items Kazuya had seen in art textbooks at least once.

Kazuya reached for the glass case in the middle with shaky hands. Inside was a rare blue diamond, shaped like a large rose in bloom.

Sauville’s national treasure—the Blue Rose.

Kazuya took the Blue Rose in his hand. It was much heavier than it looked. He raised his arm and slammed it down.

The Blue Rose fell and caused a scratch on the floor. There was no scratch on the glowing diamond. A police officer picked it up and confiscated it as evidence along with the other artifacts.

Inspector Blois nodded in satisfaction. “I have solved both the art theft and the missing persons cases. Gentlemen, go report to Mr. Signore.” He then turned toward the door.

The door slowly opened, admitting Mr. Garnier. He looked at Inspector Blois with a soft smile of resignation. His lips curved cynically. “End of the line, I suppose.”

“It would seem so,” the inspector replied.

“Wealth and status built up over six years since the end of the Great War, gone in the blink of an eye.”

“We’ll hear what you have to say down at the station.” Inspector Blois puffed out his chest and cuffed Mr. Garnier’s hands. There was a loud clatter. “Take him away.”

The officers nodded and left the room with Mr. Garnier.

The next morning.

Kazuya was summoned by Inspector Blois to the Sauville police department.

In the brick building across the Charles de Gilet train station, countless police officers milled about, apparently busy with last night’s incident.

Mr. Garnier and his gang, who were arrested last night, were being questioned by the police.

Mr. Garnier was surprisingly quick to confess to his crimes. He was part of the gang that raided the Sauville royal treasury during the Great War, and with the money he made from the looting, he bought the long-established department store Jeantan. The store became the base of his operations, and Mr. Garnier’s business grew rapidly in just six years after the end of the war.

Meanwhile, the rescued kids were confined to the hospital. They would be asked questions once they had recovered.

Kazuya met the Russian girl, Anastasia, in a room at the station. She seemed to be in remarkably good health, and when she noticed Kazuya, she smiled.

“Thank you,” she said. “When you opened the crate and I saw your face, you seemed kind-hearted. I thought you might be able to help me, so I asked for help. Thank you so much.” The terrified look she had on her face was gone, replaced with the carefree smile typical of a girl her age.

Kazuya was relieved. Apparently, Anastasia had contacted her relatives in the suburbs of Saubreme, and they were taking her in.

“I’ll write you,” she said with a smile, and Kazuya left the room.

The old lady in front of Jeantan was also taken into custody because of her connection to the case. The police asked her to testify about her missing daughter and said they would search for her daughter along with the other missing people.

The old woman was sitting meekly on a chair. She wasn’t wearing her coat this time, so Kazuya could finally see what was swaying eerily inside her clothes. A girly hat with a ribbon, a rolled-up dress, and a bag, all tied together with a string, hanging from her neck. The officers said that they probably belonged to her missing daughter. That was what was actually hidden inside her ragged clothes, and what inspired the horror story.

Inspector Blois disappeared in a hurry when he was told by an officer that the Superintendent-General Mr. Signore and other bigshots wanted a report. Kazuya was sitting in the small room with nothing to do, when he noticed an officer standing in the hallway.

“Can I borrow your phone?” he asked.

“Sure, but who are you calling?”

“Um, a friend of mine.”

The officer nodded and led Kazuya to the room with a phone.

Kazuya thanked him, picked up the receiver, and asked the operator to connect him to St. Marguerite Academy. He explained the situation to Ms. Cecile and asked her to reroute the call to Victorique’s dorm.

Victorique seemed to have recovered from her cold overnight, but she was in a terrible mood. Or maybe she was just skittish because of her cold yesterday, and now she had reverted back to her usual self.

“I’m not talking to you!” she snapped.

“Why not? Anyway, forget that. Listen.”

“Forget?!”

Kazuya, perhaps because they were talking over the phone, was speaking with the same bold attitude as yesterday. A new discovery—Victorique de Blois was not as scary over the phone.

“You had a fever yesterday, didn’t you? If you’re feeling a little better now, I need to know something.”

“You want me to explain the mystery to you?”

“Yeah…” Kazuya nodded.

“No.”

“No?! Why not?”

“I hate boredom, you see,” she said. “So when I find chaos, I gather up the fragments and reconstruct them, and that way, for a brief moment, I am free from boredom. It’s comforting to the soul. But only for a short while.”

“And…?”

“However, whether or not I will further verbalize what I have reconstructed for a helpless simpleton like you depends largely on my mood. What I’m saying is, I’m not in the mood for it right now. Bye.”

“No!”

“No?!” Victorique sounded shocked.

After a brief back-and-forth, Victorique sighed in resignation. “Fine,” she said, and reluctantly started explaining.