[Undoubtedly, July sixth had brought immense losses; the ruin of a precious pair of sheer summer nylon stockings eclipsed the pain inflicted upon my legs and backside.]
[A peculiar doctor, Lottus-Callan—or, as I’ll refer to her for now, Miss Callan—had become the new neighbor. Her age, I surmised, was only marginally greater than my own, perhaps by two or three years at most? Beyond her ability to devour intensely spicy peppers without so much as a flicker of emotion, her remarkable heedlessness of caution, her seeming indifference to the scrutiny of others, her habit of unceremoniously lifting one’s skirt without consent, and her distinct disdain for others, there was little else to be said about this individual…]
[Scope of knowledge: Currently unknown…]
[Assessment: …Inaccurate based solely on first impressions; to be supplemented later.]
[Ah, but she was undeniably beautiful to an almost absurd degree.]
A sigh escaped her lips.
Setting down her pen, Ghervil felt a flicker of uncertainty regarding the accuracy of the diary entries she had transcribed from memory.
By all accounts, they should have been correct; at most, the handwriting might have been less than immaculate.
Her tasks mostly complete, she rose from her chair with a yawn.
Behind her, the inviting softness of her bed beckoned, promising rest after a bath.
As she changed her clothes and passed by the window, a flicker of light inadvertently caught her eye.
She paused, turning her head, only to find herself staring directly at a face propped against the second-story window of the house opposite.
“…”
‘What on earth was going through that person’s mind?’
Rolling her eyes, a blush crept across her cheeks as she slammed the window shut with undue force.
She drew the curtains, then returned to her desk and picked up her pen once more.
[And yet another deplorable habit: a penchant for nocturnal voyeurism coupled with public disturbance. No, this was not mere voyeurism; it was an escalating transgression! Without the slightest attempt at concealment, she had produced a pillow, draped a towel around it as a skirt, and then, as if offering a demonstration, proceeded to lift the ‘skirt’ and meticulously wrap bandages in circles around what lay beneath!]
****
The following morning, at the early hour of five, Ghervil rose to retrieve her dried club uniform from the backyard.
After scanning her surroundings, she suppressed a shiver of dread and descended into the cellar.
This time, she navigated the stairs without incident; there were no red-eyed swarms of rats lurking in the darkness, nor any rooms where stern women in nun’s habits might appear.
It was merely an ordinary cellar, albeit slightly larger than expected, yielding nothing of note.
Returning indoors, she began to search for the key to the third-floor attic.
Since the basement held no such items, the firearms Ramsey had mentioned could only be in the attic.
Still, she resolved to venture out, regardless of whether she found any weapons.
An hour later, she abandoned her search, having even ransacked the study, a room overflowing with books.
She had come close to opening every single volume, scrutinizing each page to see if a hollowed-out compartment might conceal a key.
She had neither the patience for such tedium nor the luxury of time; today, crucial matters awaited her attention.
The lady of the house had not explicitly forbidden her from going out, yet to spare her any worry, Ghervil needed to conceal her movements as much as possible.
Having left Number 100 the previous night, she had visited the Keith household to express her gratitude.
She had used the excuse of needing further treatment at the doctor’s house the following day, requesting that the lady of the house needn’t prepare a full day’s worth of food for her.
This way, there would be no concern of her absence being discovered during meal times.
As for the doctor… if she truly was a doctor, she would undoubtedly be occupied with work during the day, with little time to concern herself with such matters.
Perhaps she would even be rushing between consultations all day, never returning home.
The probability of her testimony clashing with the lady’s was exceedingly low.
She had considered rising even earlier, hoping to slip out before the lady of the house awoke.
However, the relentless ache in her backside had kept her tossing and turning all night, making sleep elusive.
She had only managed a fitful slumber in the dead of night, forcing herself awake at five.
Her eyelids and head felt impossibly heavy, a dead weight dragging at her neck, threatening to send her collapsing back onto the bed at any moment.
Only after inhaling the scent of ‘Nightmare Revelation’ and splashing her face with cool water did she begin to feel some semblance of improvement.
Lily of the Valley Street boasted few residents; one rarely encountered passersby, much less carriages.
Silence was the street’s constant companion.
Exiting through the front door carried a high risk of discovery; she needed to find an alternative route.
‘A way out of Number 101…’
In the backyard, propping a high stool against it, Ghervil carefully hoisted her skirt with one hand and began to scale the waist-high wooden fence.
With utmost caution, she placed one foot on a connecting crossbeam nestled within a gap.
Half her body leaned forward, peering into the misty depths of the forest beyond, where thick weeds obscured the very ground outside the fence.
Indeed, the house hadn’t even been fitted with a back door; its original design had clearly never accounted for anyone wishing to depart from such a place, much less to take a stroll.
‘Dr. Callan, you cannot fault me for exposing you; your excuse was simply too clumsy.’
Gritting her teeth, she pulled her skirt even higher with her left hand, ensuring it wouldn’t snag.
There was no room for hesitation; she pushed off with her back leg, and the stool, at the most inopportune moment, tilted precariously.
“Ah!?”
“Thud…”
The young woman landed most ungracefully, tumbling into the thick grass with a soft, yielding part of her chest as the unfortunate point of impact.
****
The narrative shifts back to the afternoon of July sixth, to the western stretch of Canary Street Market, specifically Enshe Alley.
Having traversed a filthy lane replete with mud and carriage wheel ruts, they stood before the last house in a row of cramped, ancient dwellings.
“Hold there, Sergeant Godfrey, if you would be so kind as to withdraw your men.”
A uniformed police officer, his peaked cap askew as he knocked on the door, was halted by Ramsey’s voice from behind him.
“Get over here, you imbecile! What are you gaping at? Do I have to spell it out for you?” The stout sergeant strode forward, seizing the man by the collar and yanking him backward with force.
Hauling and pulling, he swiftly retreated with seven or eight officers, putting ten meters between them and the two agents.
Agents of the Epidemic Prevention Bureau outranked a local precinct sergeant like him by a significant margin.
To put it bluntly, the two agents could have conducted this investigation entirely without police assistance, and it would have been perfectly within their rights.
Their current courtesy was already a considerable show of deference.
‘If anything, he would have preferred the agents to dismiss him as incompetent or too arrogant, choosing not to involve him at all.’
Truth be told, were it not for his uniform and the agents’ peculiar status, he genuinely wished to avoid any involvement.
During these extraordinary times, with two previous arson cases having stirred widespread panic, the proper course of action was to delegate such matters to his subordinates and quietly enjoy tea in his office.
“Shall we breach the door?” Helm inquired, his hands tucked into his pockets as he lifted a foot, poised to kick it open.
A door of such decayed wood would present no obstacle to him.
Before arriving here, they had visited the carriage shop where Angeli worked, learning that he had inexplicably failed to report for duty that day, which prompted their visit.
“Something isn’t right,” Ramsey murmured, his eyes narrowing as he glanced back at the police officers.
“Stand back even further.”
The officers muttered amongst themselves as they retreated, several of them seasoned veterans adept at reading expressions.
Upon noticing the subtle shift in the temporary leader’s demeanor, they promptly withdrew to an even greater distance.
“Bang!”
A deafening gunshot rang out, causing Helm to stumble back, nearly falling to the ground.
Who could have predicted that Ramsey would suddenly fire a shot beneath the door crack without a word of warning?
‘He told the *police* to retreat, but not *him*.’
“What are you doing!?”
“It seems Mistfall City has enjoyed peace for far too long, my partner.”
“Bang!” Another shot rang out, aimed at the door’s lock.
“So peaceful, in fact, that our agents’ reactions have slowed by half a beat.”
With a hint of indignation, Helm straightened his cap, the curse he had been about to utter dying on his lips.
He watched in stunned silence as the agent, having holstered his gun, crouched down and picked up a black-furred rat, the size of an adult’s palm.
Half its head had been blown away by the bullet, blood streaming onto the agent’s glove.
Its blackened fangs were stained with gore, and a bulging, crimson eye rolled wildly in its socket.
From its mangled, half-open maw came a faint, desperate ‘squeak.’
“Why isn’t it dead yet? Its head is practically gone…”
“Wait!”
He abruptly turned his gaze to the door crack, now open by about five centimeters, through which he could just make out two bodies lying in the courtyard within.
One of the corpses was missing a leg; from beneath the trouser leg, the ankle and foot were stark white bone, glistening with blood that had soaked the concrete.
Portions of it were covered in shredded flesh, as if something had gnawed it away.
Even more chilling was the sight of the blood-stained trouser leg, which, though not particularly loose, should have been deflated, now distended by something within.
Several oval-shaped bulges twitched subtly, and a mass of dense, black, hairless long tails extended from the stretched seams of the trousers, writhing intermittently over the exposed bone and the ground.
Listening closely in the sudden quiet, a dense, crunching sound accompanied the slight tremors of the bare bone.
‘Those bulges… they were about the size of the rat he’d just killed.’
Even Helm, seasoned agent that he was, found himself frozen in stunned disbelief at the sight.
“Plague creatures.”
Ramsey’s low voice, equally fixed on the scene beyond the door crack, jolted Helm from his stupor.
The red-eyed rat, half-dead with its head crushed, was then squeezed lifeless in Ramsey’s hand.
His gloved fingers dug deep into the rat’s bulging belly, and blood seeped down his glove, pooling into a foul, reddish-black stain on the ground.
“Alert!” the now-recovering Helm bellowed at the distant police.
“Evacuate the surrounding residents! Seal off the entire area!”