It was dark red on the O’crock when the sky suddenly clouded over.
“It’s going to rain…,” Belle whispered nonchalantly, looking up. Wind blew in all directions, forming a whirlwind. Just as she had the passing thought that the clouds were moving quickly, she felt the light drizzle suddenly grow heavier.
Solists rarely used umbrellas, as they were trained to battle in any weather conditions, even torrential rain. If Belle was wearing her cape or cloak, she could cover up in that, but even when she didn’t, she didn’t mind the rain lashing against her. In that regard, she was very much a typical Solist, so she walked undisturbed under the pouring rain.
She was in Central East Town, just strolling around aimlessly. It was only when the rain started that she had remembered she’d been on her way to Adonis’s place. Now headed there again, she thought back to what she had experienced just a couple of hours ago.
So I’m both the key and the door…
That’s what had dawned on her when she faced that black instrument, and it was only after walking this far that she’d found the words to express it. It was a truly deep-rooted emotion.
The key that is me shall open the door that is me… But the door is fearing that key. Rejecting it. A part of me wishes to open the door while another doesn’t, and I’m torn over which of the two I am.
She let out a sigh that was from a place somewhere between resignation and self-deprecation.
I was confident I could take any trial head-on, but this…
In the end, what occupied Belle’s thoughts was the realization that she herself was her own final trial. No matter how strong an opponent stood in her way, she wouldn’t have been afraid of them or rejected them. However, she also hadn’t wanted the sort of battle filled with violence and enmity, an endless living hell where she drew her opponent in with tricks.
She considered herself to be someone who knew how to settle things in battle and was also aware that, given the flow of a fight, sometimes that conclusion was delayed or took a while to achieve. And as disappointing as that was, she knew not to lose heart.
But what if that opponent was herself? She could come to any conclusion she wanted to or put it off in perpetuity. The chilling thought struck her that she might be swept around in a whirlpool of her own thoughts until the end of time, unsure of what to do, never to surface.
Honestly…
She didn’t know anything for sure yet—when would she be able to play the key or how to make it happen. She wasn’t fretting over it or racking her brain to come up with answers, but simply toying around with several thoughts to figure out where she stood. And her conclusion was—
Well, I’ll figure something out.
As she came to that determination, new thoughts started racing in all sorts of different directions. Mulling things over, Belle walked to the Solists’ farm, where she headed straight for a lodging house in one of the corners and boldly entered the room.
She had gotten used to the room by now and felt comfortable there. Belle put her sword on the rack on the wall, fixing it in place. She was instantly overcome by her usual weightlessness, feeling like she was being pulled away from the ground.
Actively resisting it, she clung to the bed’s backrest, wondering what Adonis was doing at that moment.
A gust of wind blew through the room.
Belle paid it no mind but did hear the creaking window, which she’d left wide open. Something crossed her field of vision, and watching it absentmindedly, Belle paused with a start.
A black flower petal had just fluttered past her.
“No…”
Turning around, she saw a raven flower silently announcing a death. The bird flower’s feet had already settled into the hard floor, its sharp roots spreading as far as they could, as if to protest the lack of soil.
Its feathers turned to flowers, blooming an ominous black, and Belle got to her feet in alarm, as if it was a message addressed directly to her. She approached the bird flower gingerly, watching as it bloomed at her feet, and just when the text was about to reveal itself—
“My eldest brother died.”
Hearing this sudden voice behind her, she jolted and spun around.
“Adonis…”
Don’t startle me like that! she’d been going to say, but the words got caught in her throat.
Adonis looked the same as always, with his red bandanna covering his ears and brow and his expression unreadable. Yet for some inexplicable reason, Belle went speechless with alarm when she saw him. At the same time, she shuddered. Adonis looked incredibly weak and defeated. His eyes were cold and dry, wavering with an unstable light.
“The price of being a warden of the Catacombs. The miasma of the dead eats away at the body, eventually killing them. Using sacred ashes would probably prolong your life, though…,” Adonis explained with indifference, as if it had nothing to do with him. It was the tone of someone who had long since lost the sensitivity required to mourn the dead, cold and dismissive, yet missing something important.
Another petal fluttered past. The fragment of a black flower fell at Adonis’s feet. He slowly lifted his leg, raised it over the petal—and stomped on the black bird beyond it.
The sound of the flower shattering felt familiar to Belle. Maybe it was the sound of Adonis’s heart, caving under its own weight. Belle bit her lips unconsciously. Some part of her, deep down, feared having Adonis’s blue eyes directed toward her.
“Belle… I couldn’t do it…after all,” Adonis said, his gaze fixed on the flower under his feet.
“…Okay.”
Belle tried to say it as brightly as she could, but even she could tell how forced and stiff her smile was. She swallowed loudly.
What happened…?
But just as she was about to force the words out, Adonis’s frozen blue eyes looked into Belle’s, and a shiver ran through her.
Bloodlust…?!
For a second, she really felt it emanating from Adonis’s gaze. She reflexively glanced at Runding, propped silently against the wall diagonally to the side of him.
She forced a smile and looked at Adonis.