Chapter 26
Fiore’s heavy footsteps made the old stairs scream. Alice sat beside Arno, hoping Fiore wouldn’t fall, and turned Arno’s face to the side, opening his mouth.
Earlier, Fiore had said, “We didn’t give this guy any drugs.”
As she deeply swept a damp handkerchief inside Arno’s mouth, she found something like crushed grass stuck to the back of his palate. There was no need to think further.
‘First, I need to wash out his stomach.’
While preparing a low-concentration saltwater solution and a rubber tube, the door to the second floor opened. Nathan’s voice could be heard.
“Alice, what’s…? Huh? Wh-what are you—”
Bang!
Nathan’s reaction, which had been changing moment by moment, was drowned out by the sound of the door slamming shut. Thanks to that, Alice almost dropped the rubber tube.
“Fiore! What’s going on up there?”
Fiore came down thumping alone.
“The professor opened the door wearing just a gown over his pants. I thought I might go blind from seeing such an overqualified academic’s bare chest in Reki, so I had to close the door quickly.”
“You scared me! It’s his bedroom; he might have been dressed comfortably.”
“Even knowing you might be outside?”
“Well, what if he was busy?”
She had seen that man washing his hair in the lab during their college days.
A beat later, the door on the second floor opened again.
“What’s going on there? Alice! Are you there?”
“Professor, hurry down! Arno has collapsed!”
“What? Oh, for heaven’s sake…”
Fiore shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, it seems he and I think alike for once. Anyway, I’ll be on my way now.”
“Oh, wait!”
Alice waved her hand toward Fiore in a hurry. Unable to take her eyes off Arno, her hand barely brushed against Fiore’s shirt.
Fiore looked down at her hand without holding it.
“What?”
“Thank you…”
“You can say thank you with words. If you really need to do it physically, I won’t stop you.”
“That’s not it!”
Alice shouted as she looked up at him.
Ah, she felt she was getting used to how high his face was now. His brown sugar-colored eyes met hers immediately.
Fiore smiled reflexively.
“Alice!”
At Nathan’s voice, she instinctively twisted her face in discomfort.
“I’ll take my leave now.”
“Alice, what’s wrong? Why is Arno—?”
Fiore left the clinic just as Nathan rushed in, treating him like he wasn’t even there and standing beside the table.
Alice again pushed the rubber tube into Arno’s mouth as she spoke.
“It seems Arno went to the beach early this morning to dispose of the corpse. But earlier by chance…”
She revealed what had just happened moments ago. Nathan did not doubt Alice’s judgment.
“That big guy specifically said he was ‘given drugs,’ right?”
“Yes.”
“I see.”
Both knew what needed to be done next.
After placing a cushion behind the patient and slightly raising him up, Alice injected some air into the rubber tube deep inside his mouth.
Nathan placed his ear against Arno’s abdomen to listen for air sounds and confirm that the tube had entered his stomach correctly. The next step was to pour gentle saltwater into the tube.
Arno’s eyes widened slightly.
“Ugh…?”
“It will be uncomfortable.”
Feeling somewhat relieved by the patient’s reaction, Alice held onto Arno’s left arm. On the other side, Nathan pressed down on his thigh and right arm with all his weight.
As water filled his stomach, Arno squirmed for a while…
“I’m pulling it out!”
At the end of the tube, brown clumps were mixed between saltwater and stomach fluid. Alice used a syringe to break up the clumps. What slowly emerged looked like crushed leaves.
“Professor. This…”
“Is it an herb that affects the nervous system?”
“Could it be the same flower to have been found from Lord Nassau’s son?”
“No, I don’t think so. The shape doesn’t match the illustrations the dead herbalists showed us. This isn’t my field, but I’ll analyze it.”
Nathan took the herb clump that seemed likely to develop into a psychoactive drug and headed for the stairs.
In the end, it was entirely Alice’s responsibility to clean up after Arno’s vomiting.
After emptying his stomach and smacking his lips together, Arno slowly opened his eyes. Sleepy dust clung thickly beneath his eyes.
“Where… is this…?”
“Arno. Are you awake?”
“What is it, miss…? Ugh.”
“Don’t try to stand up too fast!”
Arno struggled to get out of bed but leaned back against the cushion again instead. He asked with confused eyes,
“What day is it today?”
“It’s September 3rd.”
“What day… No wait, we entered town at the end of August.”
“That’s right. Do you remember why we came?”
He pressed his forehead and looked around.
The clinic, bags scattered on the floor, sheets, Alice, stairs leading up…
Fortunately, as he took in each part of his surroundings one by one, confusion seemed to fade from his expression.
“I remember… Of course I remember. The pretty countess asked me to rescue her fiancé and pushed me into a madman’s den.”
“Haha… So you remember everything.”
“But… we…”
Arno gestured for her to come closer. Alice reluctantly moved toward him as he smelled of dirt, salt, and crushed grass.
A low voice whispered in her ear.
“We… killed someone yesterday, right?”
“Mr. Arno…”
“That’s right? I’m not mistaken?”
“…Yes, he died here; his insides rotted away.”
“Oh right. He crossed over the fence.”
Arno snapped his fingers.
“That’s right! We definitely did! We all chopped him up; I took his arms in the morning…”
As if carrying a burden while saying this, Arno mimicked holding something heavy. But soon after that thought faded away from him.
“I think I left the house…? Why am I here now?”
“Don’t you remember? Mr. Arno, you went alone to the cliffs this morning! But when we met on your way back, you were acting like you had taken some drug and lost your senses!”
“……”
“What happened at the cliffs? Did you hear any voices?”
There was such content in their rules:
‘Even if you hear voices at the seaside cliffs, ignore them; they will become more demanding as you listen and will ask unreasonable things from you.’
Arno shook his head with dazed eyes.
“I don’t know…”
“Ha…”
“Where are the arms? Did I throw them away?”
“Probably. The bag was empty.”
“If I threw them, I definitely would have looked down at the cliff first. It would be a problem if the thrown object got caught somewhere unexpected. But then… ugh.”
“Ugh, Mr. Arno!”
Arno vomited again. Alice held him up, trying to suppress her frustration. She had just saved him; she couldn’t let him cross over to the afterlife again due to aspiration pneumonia.
“Cough, cough!”
While watching Arno squirm in her arms, Alice noticed something unusual.
Earlier, she hadn’t realized it due to the chaos…
‘These stains on his shirt… They don’t seem like they just happened from rolling around.’
What seemed like a strange pattern didn’t look like mere coincidence.
As she traced the outlines of the fishy-smelling stains one by one, Alice came to a late realization.
What was all over Arno’s clothes were…
Handprints.
There were hardly any complete handprints with five fingers, so she hadn’t noticed right away.
***
Arno finally regained his senses just as the afternoon was nearly ending.
The long shadows crawled low across the field like snakes. Arno leaned against the wall of the clinic, turning his back to the view outside. Seeing him trembling with an unusually pale face didn’t even spark any surprise in her.
“I’m sure I… checked that nothing was in the way below the cliff, threw the item, and even confirmed it fell into the water. My memory is hazy, but if it were me, that’s what I would’ve done.”
“Do you have any memory of hearing voices from beyond the cliff?”
“I don’t know… But honestly, if I heard suspicious voices, I think I would have listened. Just pretending to give them what they wanted while gathering information and then escaping.”
That would be true.
Arno was a villain, but he certainly had consistency in that regard.
“Maybe the ‘something at the bottom of the cliff’ was one step ahead of you?”
“Or maybe there were too many of them.”
It was clear from the shirt stains that there wasn’t just one or two opponents. Even counting two palm-sized prints for one person meant at least three people.
Arno washed his face with water.
“Ha… Alice. You said the residents just watched me?”
“Yes.”
“If I had broken any rules, Adelaide would have rushed over immediately. There’s something dangerous below the cliff, but it seems unrelated to the village.”
Arno looked at Nathan. Nathan shook his head.
“I don’t know anything either.”
“Yeah, I didn’t expect much from you. Miss, do you have anything to add?”
Alice thought for a moment before shaking her head.
If she mentioned that “the residents seem to have animal traits,” she would probably just be laughed at. With her flimsy evidence, the best hypothesis she could propose was that “the residents generally have keen hearing and smell.”
It was better to keep quiet for now.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, that makes sense. The residents seem to know something about the cliffs… Even though there’s no rule against going there, no one goes…”
Without needing to say it aloud, all three of them shared an unspoken agreement.
It was certain that something existed below the cliff… and…
Taking a step further into that realization, Arno roughly raised the corners of his mouth.
“Don’t you think the residents’ weakness is there?”
