Perhaps to bridge the distance between them, Lalviye-Komel began recounting her past on the journey back, speaking as if to herself.
Ghervil, having firmly declined the invitation to sit in the passenger seat, remained alone in the back, letting the wind play through her hair as she listened without offering a single comment.
She treated it merely as a story, a tragic tale tinged with horror.
In the summer of 1945, an unknown calamity—the plague—descended upon Mistfall City.
No one could have foreseen such an abrupt onset of disaster. On the day of the ‘Long Night,’ individuals within their homes began to show varying degrees of infection symptoms.
Robust young people developed fevers, convulsions, and bouts of vomiting.
The expelled contents far exceeded the food consumed during the day, accompanied by an eerie squeaking; upon flicking on a light, some discovered wriggling, furless infant rats.
Terror spread like wildfire as they shrieked for their loved ones, only to find that the frail elderly and young children had been completely devoured by rats in their sleep.
It all happened too swiftly; no one had imagined that even dreams, blessed by the Goddess, would offer no sanctuary from such a devastating invasion.
The agents responded with utmost speed, deploying every available officer and police force to conduct house-to-house inspections amidst the shrouding mist.
They soon realized their efforts were futile.
Within approximately two hours, the rat population swelled to an unimaginable, terrifying number, their crimson eyes gleaming densely through the nocturnal mist.
The swarms of rats launched organized, large-scale attacks on the living.
Human ranks shattered, the city fell into utter chaos, a veritable boiling pot of disarray.
Lalviye-Komel’s parents—her father an agent with the Epidemic Prevention Bureau, her mother a doctor from the Sanctuary—were caught in the pandemonium.
Amidst the chaos, her mother, the doctor, disregarded their pleas, leaving her daughter and injured husband behind to tend to the infected patients.
At this point in the narrative, Ghervil found herself skeptical, unable to believe that anyone would prioritize strangers over the safety of their own family.
Yet, out of politeness, she refrained from interrupting or questioning.
The subsequent ending proved rather unexpected: the patient was a disguised Ratmire White Rat, and in a final, desperate act, the agent, enduring his grievous wounds, fought to the death with the creature, plummeting off a cliff—his body never to be recovered.
When the story concluded, Ghervil remained silent, surmising that the most likely reason for the missing body was that it had been consumed by other rats.
She briefly considered offering comfort, then realized it was unnecessary.
“Are you asleep?” Lalviye-Komel mused. “Perfect. I can continue our date now. Perhaps when the little nun awakens and sees the scene I’ve meticulously arranged, she might even fall in love with me.”
“Then you had best have the patience to wait until the world ends,” Ghervil retorted.
Lalviye-Komel clearly saw Ghervil intently listening through the rearview mirror.
Ghervil offered a look she believed conveyed extreme disdain.
“Will you love me when the world ends?”
The woman, far from being abashed, merely winked in response.
“No,” Ghervil stated. “The outcome will be you becoming a regret-filled specter for all eternity.”
“Quite a romantic end,” Lalviye-Komel countered. “At least after I die, I’ll remember that I fell deeply and irrevocably in love with a nun at first sight.”
‘How utterly greasy!’
Ghervil ceased looking at her through the rearview mirror, shifting her body to sit directly behind the driver’s seat.
She realized this person possessed a thicker skin than her own, persistently clinging despite her explicit rejection.
Even the respectful ‘you’ (您) she typically used had been replaced with the more familiar ‘you’ (你).
‘When did we become so familiar!?’
“Please, come sit back,” a voice from the front pleaded regretfully. “Driving is so dull without something beautiful to admire. I promise to be mindful of boundaries.”
“If you continue this, I’ll have to ask my…”
“Your agent friend? I’m not afraid of them,” Lalviye-Komel scoffed with a dismissive laugh.
“My… neighbor and employer, who also happens to be a doctor. I’ll ask her to treat your strange gender identity disorder and childhood psychological traumas.”
Dressed like a man yet attracted to women, it was difficult not to suspect a malady. To utter such strange, cloying words so soon after meeting—from an outsider’s perspective, she might well be perceived as a pervert.
Yet, truthfully, Ghervil felt a profound uncertainty; she wasn’t sure if Dr. Callan would even be willing to help her deal with this person, and even if she were, could a mere doctor from the Order possibly persuade or deter someone holding the dual identities of an agent and a Dream Society scholar?
‘I’m truly numb.’ (TL Note: A Chinese slang term, ‘rén má le,’ used to express exasperation, feeling overwhelmed, or being completely speechless.)
She had no background, no influence, and the Abbot needed to feign death for unknown reasons.
She regretted this journey, though it seemed unavoidable; the letter had already indicated she was being watched.
Her only hope rested with Dr. Callan, though she had no idea what standing the doctor held within the hospital department.
‘Neighbor?’
‘Employer?’
‘Doctor?’
Lalviye-Komel pondered these three seemingly unrelated identities with a hint of hesitation.
Pressing down on the accelerator, she gripped the steering wheel, seizing an opportune moment to overtake a sluggish carriage ahead.
The closer they drew to the city’s outskirts, the more treacherous the roads became; potholes, pedestrians, and carriages perpetually tested her driving skill.
She had deliberately slowed her pace, hoping to prolong their conversation and extend her time alone with the nun.
After a particularly rough patch, and coupling it with the latest intelligence her organization had just synchronized into her mind, she roughly deduced the identity of this person.
If it truly was the chief doctor known by the title ‘Crimson Lotus,’ she would indeed be a difficult opponent to handle.
However, one was the Order’s executioner, the other a potential plague patient; for them to be neighbors, no professional deduction was needed—it was a glaringly obvious fact that the doctor was monitoring the nun.
This was akin to a hunter and their prey; why would a hunter side with their quarry, let alone meddle in her ‘private affairs’?
Thus, there was nothing to worry about at all.
“Then I look forward to her curing me,” Lalviye-Komel quipped.
With that jest, she focused on her driving.
The central rearview mirror now reflected only the empty, dry seat, offering nothing of interest.
Each lost in their own thoughts, they remained silent for over ten minutes before Ghervil finally broke the quiet, initiating a new topic.
She directly asked Lalviye-Komel how she had discovered her illness.
Bishop Sartre knowing was understandable, given his incredible precognitive abilities.
Yet, this woman had declared her affliction from the very beginning; surely the Bishop hadn’t told her, especially since their relationship seemed rather strained.
The answer she received, however, left her utterly bewildered.
“Our people surveyed the scene where the Ratmire White Rat incident occurred afterwards,” Lalviye-Komel explained. “Through our investigation, we discovered that the Ratmire White Rat didn’t attack you in its final moments because it fell into a deep sleep for some unknown reason.”
“Unable to pinpoint the cause, and after ruling out all the police officers present, we eventually deduced the problem might lie with you. Using certain methods, we uncovered someone isolated from the dreamscape.”
“What do you mean, ‘isolated from the dreamscape’?”
“It means precisely what it says.”
“…”
‘She wanted to curse.’
“It’s a bit troublesome to explain, as it involves a certain degree of Oneirology and Epidemiology,” Lalviye-Komel said cheerfully, imagining the cute, exasperated expression on the nun’s face behind her.
“You can understand it as us reconstructing the scene through certain means, presenting the entire process of your battle with the Ratmire White Rat as a dream.”
“And then?”
“We discovered that one crucial person was missing.”
“Me!?” she exclaimed, her mouth forming a perfect ‘O’ in astonishment.
“Including myself, there were three of us reviewing the dream at the time, and none of us found you at the scene within the dream,” Lalviye-Komel nodded gently.
‘This feels like a horror story, like an editor cutting a film only to discover someone missing from a frame.’
Ghervil straightened her arms, propping them against her knees, and nervously gripped the hem of her robe.
This was far more terrifying than a dark cellar connected to a murder scene.
The car had entered a desolate stretch of road; no one was visible ahead or behind, and the sparse trees and weeds, veiled in a thin mist, swayed in the wind. Leaves drifted past the car window, and the cicadas’ hum was low and eerie.
From the driver’s seat in front, a voice that was both familiar and strangely alien resonated.
“The prevailing view regarding such occurrences is that the individual has lost the Goddess’s protection and is, without a doubt, a severe plague patient,” Lalviye-Komel explained. “Of course, it could also be the body of someone long deceased…”