Chapter 114 - Escaping from Arcanum Train (VII)
Editor: Kitty
Contrary to how Crow and Black Cat who were having a pleasant time communicating, Owl and the other man were almost ready to fight. They were now in an extremely perilous situation because the man with shoulder-length hair didn’t want to listen to what the other party had to say at all, and when Owl approached him, he found that half of the man’s face was disfigured.
Half of his face was intact, and if one looked carefully, one could see that he was definitely a beauty before he was disfigured. But the other side of his face was covered with scars; several streaks of scars were on his face, and they looked ugly, ferocious, and intolerable to the eye. Originally, this was nothing to Owl because Owl was not a face-con and would not be so stupid as to discriminate against other people’s defects.
But the problem was that this person’s character was…
—Wolf—was engraved on the name card of this shoulder-length haired man. It meant ‘wolf.’
The man named ‘Wolf,’ when he opened his mouth, did not have anything good to say. No matter what Owl said, he either sneered or cynically mocked him. With his abusive words combined with endless disdain, if one was human, one would not be able to tolerate him. Moreover, Owl was not someone with high tolerance.
“I say! You, I’ve been patiently trying to communicate with you! I don’t care what you’re thinking, but we’re stuck in the same boat now. We’re stuck in a train and could die at any moment.” Owl helplessly slowed down his talking speed: “As long as you are willing to cooperate a little, the situation will not be worse than our current situation now!”
“Cooperate?” Wolf tilted his head and let his hair fall in a disorderly manner in front of his forehead. He appeared very indifferent as he replied, “Why should I cooperate with you?”
“I didn’t think you would want to die. Someone trapped us here and gave us a note. I know you also have one… You can…”
Wolf impatiently interrupted Owl: “I threw it away.” Then, he looked at Owl and said with a sneer, “You won’t be so stupid as to believe an obscure note given to you, will you?”
Owl tried to take a deep breath to calm himself down, but he could not help clenching his fists. He slowed down his pace again as he spoke: “Sir, I don’t want to put everyone in a tight spot. I don’t believe that you want to stay in this boring carriage forever. You will still need to leave this place! So as long as you don’t cause trouble, follow us, don’t do anything out of the ordinary, and don’t harm others or yourself, we can successfully work together to leave here…”
“Look at your shameless request. Why should I obediently follow after you and become an a.s.s-kisser?” Wolf sneered at Owl again and looked at him with scorn in his eyes.
Owl finally got a little fed up. He gnashed his teeth and said, “Well, if you don’t want to follow me, stay here! Have it your way. You can do whatever you want. I really can’t be bothered with you!”
Owl stood up and wanted to leave, but before he took a step to leave, Mr. Wolf next to him suddenly hooked Owl back. In addition to that, worst of all, that evil Wolf stretched out his hands to strangle him.
“Truthfully, I really feel that…” The evil Wolf gracefully lifted his lips and said, “The one who stays here… should be you.”
Owl did not resist. He was choked and forcefully pushed down on the sofa seat, but Wolf’s actions didn’t seem to be able to suffocate Owl. He merely glared at Mr. Wolf. His eyes were dark and full of danger, but this did not affect Mr. Wolf. The evil Wolf grabbed Owl’s neck, and his hands gradually increased their strength. Owl’s face appeared even paler now.
“As a matter of fact, I’ve found out since moments ago.” Wolf approached Owl and whispered in his ear.
“You don’t look like a living person—”
Owl’s eyes grew, and the depths of his eyes, akin to a dark tunnel, twirled. Instead of remaining speechless and immobile, he suddenly reached out his hand to touch Wolf’s face. This action seemed to surprise Mr. Wolf for a moment, but before either party took action, in the next moment, someone interrupted the conversation between Owl and Wolf.
“Let go of him!” It was not known when Crow ended his negotiation with Black cat, but when he returned, he found that Owl was being subjected to such treatment. Although Crow had a face-off with Owl for a period, being entangled with a certain feeling that he was unaware of, he just didn’t want Owl to be bullied.
So he took the steel pole that Black cat held previously and pointed it to Wolf, forcing Wolf’s attention to him.
But when Wolf raised his head, he showed his ferocious, half-disfigured face. Under the dim light, his face appeared evil and twisted, and this gave Crow a fright, to which, Crow took a tiny step back.
The subconscious action Crow took made Wolf laugh, but he also honestly let Owl go. Owl rubbed his neck and sat up. He pulled Crow and said, “Let’s ignore him. Let’s go.”
Although Crow had some doubts, because of his bad first impression of Wolf, he didn’t particularly like this half-disfigured man. Therefore, he did not pay much attention to Owl and Wolf. He followed Owl, but just when he had yet to take a step, Wolf’s voice sounded from his back in a gloomy and sinister tone.
“Such a small little one. Don’t let others break your neck.”
Crow turned back to look at Wolf, but Owl in front of him was indifferent and did not turn his head around.
“What’s the matter with that guy?” When Owl and Crow went to the corner a distance far from Wolf, Crow couldn’t help but ask Owl. “He’s so enigmatic that I’m getting gooseb.u.mps.”
Owl seem to fall into silence. His pale face made him look weak and feeble. He instinctively touched his neck, and on it, a green mark could be seen. After a while, he turned back to look at Crow.
“Are you alright?” Crow thought that Owl’s face was too pale. Such whiteness appeared like a corpse’s, and it always unconsciously reminded Crow of the one curled up in the luggage… the poor victim.
“…… I’m fine.” Owl remained silent for a long time before answering Crow.
“But you don’t look well. Are you sick?” Crow wanted to feel Owl’s temperature. He reached out to touch the other party’s forehead, but before his fingers touched him, Owl shrank his head back and dodged.
“Don’t worry…” Owl’s voice was very low, and using a tone as if he was muttering to himself, he said, “I’m still alive.”
The atmosphere in carriage No.11 was very grim. Although the four people had already agreed to form a temporary team, one of them did not compromise and refused to communicate with others. Moreover, the man was sitting on the sofa seat in the corner, staring at the deep darkness outside the window, and no one knew what he was thinking.
Thus, the remaining trio—Crow, Owl, and Black cat, who remained silent—was left in the team.
Black cat was also troublesome to deal with despite looking very honest. He seemed to have a favourable impression of Crow. He always followed Crow around, and wherever he went, Black cat would follow. When Crow and Owl squatted at the door connecting carriages No.11 and carriage No.10 to read the hint engraved on the door, Black cat squatted not far behind them and looked at him with a scorching hot gaze… Owl could not help but look behind him and said to Crow:
“Is that guy interested in you?”
Crow’s ears became slightly red and replied, “I don’t know.”
“Alright then,” Owl shrugged and said, “If you’re going to have a h.o.m.os.e.xual relationship with each other, you’d better wait until we escape from this d.a.m.n train.”
“Stop kidding around! I’m not going to… ” Crow retorted in a low voice, but his ears became redder.
Owl did not continue to tease him. He lowered his head to read the new hint engraved on the door, and the message on the metal door in front of them was almost engraved in the same position as the one between carriages No.13 and No.12.
On it was written:
[There are four people in carriage No.11 at this time]
[One of them is harbouring evil intentions]
[Be careful when he swings his butcher’s knife at you]
[Don’t let blood stain the gla.s.s]
“Looks like we are in an awful predicament.” After reading the message on the door, Owl turned to ask Crow, “What do you think?”
“The meaning of it is obvious. It’s probably implying that the murderer is among the four of us, right?” Crow frowned and began to speculate.
“That is to say, if we meet a fifth person in the next carriage, we can probably exclude him from being suspected of being the murderer?”
“No, not completely,” Crow denied, “You should have found that when we woke up, two of us were in one carriage, and the carriage number was odd.”
Owl thought for a while and replied, “It’s true that when we woke up, we were in carriage No.13, and we had to spend some time looking for the body to find the key, but carriage No.12 didn’t require much effort. The message on the door even indicated the location of our key straightforwardly.”
Owl continued, “And in carriage No.11, Black cat and Wolf are in the same carriage.”
“The number 11 is odd.” Crow continued where he left off, and the two people’s ideas strangely began synchronizing: “The hint provided in this carriage seems to be obviously trying to make things difficult for us, and there is that kind… implication that we will kill one another.”
“Do you think there’s a pattern… If we successfully open the door and enter carriage No.10 and carriage No.10 easily indicates the location of the key and lets us through the carriage, then we can be sure that the train cars are indeed following a certain pattern.”
“Odd… and even numbers?”
The discussion between Crow and Owl had reached a bottleneck. They gave up studying the relationship between the train car numbers and the difficulty of opening the train carriage and began to focus on the hint provided on carriage No.11.
“The whole gist of this is obvious. The last sentence is the main point,” Crow concluded.
“Don’t let blood stain the gla.s.s.” Owl repeated, “What does that mean?”