Chapter 125 - Escaping from Arcanum Train (XVIII)
Editor: Kitty
As he stood in carriage No.6, in that instant before the door shut, Crow could not help but turn around to take a look.
Owl remained there, quietly sitting. His head was bowed and his bangs covered most of his face, but Crow seemed to vaguely see the black ear stud on Owl’s ear shining with a strange light.
The glimmer was not particularly dazzling, and it lasted just for a moment.
Then the door closed, separating them from Owl forever. In a trance, Crow felt—a terrifying sense—of a final farewell.
Probably because Crow was in low spirits, Black cat was particularly concerned about him, so he reached out to grasp Crow’s hand. Crow remained unaware of this and was pulled along by him as they headed forward.
Wolf, in front of them, was not aware of Crow and Black cat’s small interactions. Rather, even if he did, he was not in the mood to care. All along, he felt very uneasy. With his hand placed on his chest, he felt he was suffocating; it felt hard to properly suck in a breath, and his chest felt very stuffy since his breath could not reach his lungs.
This had been happening since Owl died in carriage No.7.
He was very curious. Why did he feel this way? It was merely the death of an unimportant guy, and it was hard to determine whether that fellow was still living or not.
But he felt unwell.
Wolf trembled, probably due to the strange suffocating feeling in his chest. He also began to feel hot, and cold sweat was constantly rolling down his forehead. The feeling of suffocation lingered, and his brain almost began to lack oxygen. Halfway through, he placed a hand on the sofa cushion beside him and turned to Crow and Black cat. He said:
“I’m going to the bathroom.”
When Wolf finished speaking, he did not care how Crow and company reacted. With a pale face, he stumbled into the toilet of carriage No.6. As soon as he went in, he closed the door, turned on the faucet of the sink, and began to wash his face with the water. His hair was a little long and scattered all around in a disorderly manner, but Wolf did not care.
A mirror hung on the wall above the sink, and Wolf raised his head to look at himself in it.
Deformed. That disfigured half of his face seemed to be possessed by some horrifying devil, and that devil’s sinister-looking face appeared on half of his face. It occupied something important in his heart, and bit by bit, it started to devour him until he himself began to be something beyond recognition.
Wolf could not help but stroke his long hair to block his ugly face with it.
He hated his face…… No, no, no! It should be said that he hated every single inch of himself.
Although he clearly did not recall anything, such feelings of hatred and disgust had also surrounded Wolf’s heart. As if a thorn in his heart, it remained untouchable but caused him so much pain that he felt suffocated.
In carriage No.6, while Wolf was squatting in the toilet for a long time, Black cat and Crow were not idle. They squatted in front of the connecting door of carriage No.6 and began to check the hint given on the door. On it, the words inscripted were as follows:
[A bird with broken wings cannot fly]
[Much like a walking corpse]
[The murderer who killed Wolf also came here]
[And placed the bird with broken wings inside a luggage]
Carriage No.6 was an even-numbered train car, so it was very clean. There was no rubbish, snack bags, or oddly enough, the presence of other pa.s.sengers’ luggage or belongings. Therefore, the only suitcase in this carriage was very conspicuous. It was placed on the luggage rack somewhere near them. It was a very large black luggage.
This baggage looked very familiar; at least, to Crow, it looked very familiar. When Black cat easily lifted the luggage off the rack, he suddenly remembered that he had indeed seen this luggage—in the train car where he had woken up, in carriage No.13! The luggage that held the corpse!
The luggage in front of him looked exactly the same as the one he saw.
Black cat calmly opened the luggage. In such a big bag, there was only a small, small…… corpse of an owl! It was a real black owl with drooping wings. Its wings looked broken, but that was not the main cause of its death.
This owl’s eyes and neck were slit.
The owl’s beak held a small key, and this seemed to be the key to carriage No.6.
Crow suddenly could not help but cover his mouth. He felt sick and the contents of his stomach were turning over, but he seemingly could not vomit out anything. He felt so unwell that he could only squat at a corner.
“Are you alright?” Black cat started to speak out more now. He worriedly expressed his concerns.
“The dead animals’ corpse…… the corpses…” Crow trembled as he said, “It’s hinting the causes of our deaths.”
Black cat looked at the poor little owl in the luggage. Somehow, he nodded and said, “Seems that way.”
Both of them were silent for some time. Black cat did not speak much, and Crow was not in the mood to say anything more at the moment. After a while, Crow raised his head to look at Black cat. He said: “I’ll open the door, and you’ll go call Wolf to come out, alright?”
Black cat looked at Crow for a long time before replying, “Alright.”
Carriage No.6 was easy to pa.s.s through, but carriage No.5 was not so easy. Now, Crow was a little afraid. He felt that these train cars were akin to the mouths of hungry beasts. As long as they went in, someone would definitely die in there.
He was really afraid, but he had to move on.
Now there were only three people left: Crow, Black cat, and Wolf. Crow knew that one of the three had killed Owl. At first, he had thought it was Wolf, but now, he thought that the silent Black cat looked to be the most suspicious one.
No, that’s not right. There must be something I did not discover.
Crow was inwardly br.i.m.m.i.n.g with uneasiness somewhere in the corners of his heart. He could not even believe what he had seen and what he judged, just like what was written on the note—Don’t trust anyone, including himself.
Crow kept an intolerant mentality, and with his heart filled with fear, as he entered carriage No.5. In here, it was as dirty and messy as all odd-numbered train cars, and the only thing that seemed a little different was that there was a clock hanging on the wall of carriage No.5.
This clock had no second hand. It only had a minute hand and an hour hand. The hour hand pointed to the middle of the two numbers 4 and 5 while the minute hand was at the position of 6. This showed that the current time is 4:30 p.m.
“We have an hour and a half left on this train,” Crow declared as he gazed at the clock for an extremely long period.
“How do you know?” Wolf’s voice was feeble as he posed the question.
Crow’s voice did not fluctuate at all, as if he was mechanically reading out: “If we started at 12 o’clock…… and we can only stay on this train for six hours at most, twelve to one is one hour, one to two is two hours, two to three is three hours, three to four is four hours, four to five is five hours, five to six is six hours.”
“Thus, surely, we only have an hour and a half left.” Wolf thought: “But we are still spinning around carriage No.5. There are at least two odd cars ahead, so look, we don’t have enough time.”
“Then let’s not waste time. Let’s get it over with quickly.”
The three men soon arrived at the connecting door of carriage No.5 and began to check the hint left on the door. They only saw the following words inscripted on the door:
[There are only three people in carriage No.5]
[How terrifying; the murderer is still among you]
[But time is running out]
[Let the G.o.d of death be the judge!]
“What does it mean? What’s written became even more puzzling.” After reading the mystifying hint given on the door, Wolf and company had expressions as if they understood what it was implying, but they simply seemed to not understand. Crow shook his head powerlessly and said, “In this way, we’d better search through this carriage.”
Fortunately, the process of searching through the carriage had been familiar to them, and they quickly found something valuable in this messy car, but…… the valuable item…… seemed to be an awfully horrifying object.
What Black cat found was a large piece of cloth. In the middle of the cloth, there was a round, half-black, half-white yin-yang eight trigrams. Around the eight trigrams, there were numbers, letters, and various common Chinese characters.
“There’s this next to this cloth—” Wolf said as he took out a small, white dish.
As soon as Crow saw the two things they found, he asked tentatively: “This is…… the dish deity?”
“It seems to be. These are all the tools used to play dish deity,” Wolf said.
“We found it on a table with cups filled with water and similar things. The candle there was also lit. It looks like someone had been sitting there playing that game previously.”
“Nothing but these?” Crow stared at the cloth and asked in trepidation.
“It doesn’t look like there’s anything else there. There’s only rubbish in this d.a.m.n carriage.” Wolf was not in a good mental state now, and now, he also appeared to be less vigilant. He had honestly answered that.
But Crow became agitated. He gnashed his teeth and thought of the hint on the door. He could only sigh and say, “It seems that we have to play this interesting game.”
“Alright! I don’t find it interesting at all. This game is killing me.” Wolf felt extremely terrible. He rubbed his chest impatiently, and the suffocating feeling grew stronger and stronger.
The three men each had their own worries, but they still had to continue to escape from this enclosed carriage. There was not much time left for them. As long as they wanted to leave this strange train, they could not stop moving forward.
So they took over the players who had played dish deity and sat where they had sat. They spread the cloth full of various Chinese characters and put the small white dish in the middle of the black and white eight trigrams.
“Have any of you ever played this game?” Crow frowned and asked, “What I meant was, what do we need to prepare for this game?”
With one hand on his chin, Wolf felt even more dispirited: “I only heard that we must turn off the lights and light a candle. In other words, we must create a scary atmosphere that will scare one’s pants off while keeping our lives.”
“I’ll turn off the lights.” Black cat took the initiative and stood up to look for the light switch.
So only Crow and Wolf sat there, facing each other.
Crow took out a lighter to light the candles that had not completely turned to wax. During this period, he could not help but observe Wolf, who had sat opposite him. Wolf’s face looked sinister under the light provided by the dim yellow candle. Although he looked lazy, he did not look to have the slightest hint of vitality now.
“You don’t look well. What’s wrong with you?” Crow asked him suddenly.
Wolf raised his eyelids, took a look at him, and sneered: “Are you showing concern for me? How interesting.”
Crow narrowed his eyes and lowered his head to look at the candle he had lit in his hand. The flame moved slightly, reflecting off Crow’s pale palm. He said, “I just want to tell you something.”
“What’s the matter?” Wolf was absent-minded.
“I found a wonderful pattern on your arm…… There, it looks like a tattoo.”
Wolf’s attention was finally attracted, and he took a look at Crow. There was a tattoo of a flower on Wolf’s arm. This was a kind of flower called the ‘love flower,’ and it is tattooed on the inner side of Wolf’s left arm. Wolf had no impression of this tattoo. After all, his memories were gone, so how would he know when he got that tattoo? But Crow knew that maybe because he had unintentionally seen it when Wolf rolled up his sleeves.
But Wolf asked thoughtfully, “So what? You won’t allow me to have tattoos on my body?”
“That’s not what I mean…” Crow lowered his head a little. He surrounded the little candle on the table with his hands. The flame lit on the candle flickered when surrounded by his hands. The expression on Crow’s face was strange. It was as if he was smiling. He said, “I have seen this tattoo on someone else…… It’s exactly the same.”
Wolf suddenly widened his eyes, raised his head, and fixed his eyes at Crow. He asked in a low voice, “Who? Whose body is it on?”
At this time, the lights in the entire carriage went out, and darkness fell upon them suddenly. Only by Crow’s table was there a candlelight flickering.
T/N: Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who has the most motives of them all?