Chapter 7: Portraits as Art

A bright future definitely did not include a room that smelled this awful.

“What the hell is this place…” Nunnally pinched her nose and spoke in a muffled voice. Every wall was covered in oil paintings, all by a terrible artist. There were either extremely simple still lifes or hastily daubed portraits, and every one of them was dreadful. The artist didn’t even understand perspective, and the colors were sticky and unpleasant. Calling them children’s drawings would have been too generous.

“Turpentine,” Roche explained. “Bear with it.”

“Do you like my little brother’s paintings, too?” A girl’s voice suddenly overlapped his explanation.

It was the girl from behind the hedge. Roche couldn’t help feeling awkward.

“Who are you?” Nunnally asked.

“I’m Lulu. Lulu Escher. It’s a strange name, isn’t it? I’ve asked so many times, but no one will tell me who gave it to me.” She glided closer, one unsteady step at a time, as if dancing. It was as though someone had pulled her spine out, leaving her unable to support herself properly.

She pitched headfirst into Roche’s arms, complete with a deliberate, breathy little gasp.

Nunnally’s eyes widened until they were bigger than eggs.

“I hate it here. It always makes me feel like I have no strength.” Lulu clung to Roche’s clothes, her actions contradicting her words. She even leaned her head against his chest. “You’re so tall, much taller than my father. And you’re much better-looking, too. I like the color of your hair. It’s just like the flames in a fireplace, isn’t it?”

As soon as she finished speaking, she giggled, her eyes full of expectation.

Pressed tight against him, she wore only a nightdress. As she moved, one strap slipped off her narrow shoulder, dragging the fabric down with it. She was very thin; her ribs showed faintly whenever she breathed. But that didn’t stop her from rubbing against him like an eel.

“Gross,” Nunnally said bluntly.

Roche’s face turned nearly as red as his hair. “…What are you doing? Stop that!”

He tore himself away in a panic, moving so abruptly that he fell on his backside.

“Wow, you’re moving fast. Do you always act like this when guests show up? It’s exactly what I’d expect from the decadent upper classes.” Nunnally kept right on going.

Lulu stumbled a couple of steps, then steadied herself and looked up. She drew a deep breath, as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing, and stared at Nunnally. Anger burned in her almond-shaped eyes.

“What do you know?” she said viciously. She turned to leave, then looked back. “I had a dog! He was very obedient, and he was better than you. Better than all of you!”

“You’re sick,” Nunnally said calmly.

Tears welled in Lulu’s eyes. She let out a sob, covered her face, and ran away.

Nunnally looked at Roche and nodded toward the door. The message was probably, What are you waiting for? Go after her.

“Forget it.” Roche got to his feet. “There’s something a little… off about her. We have work to do. What was that she said? Her brother?”

“No idea. Never met him.” Nunnally answered lazily. “And those paintings are ugly. He’s got some nerve hanging them up where everyone can see. He must have been spoiled rotten, so he’s developed this wildly distorted confidence in his own talent.”

“Don’t say that… People have to start somewhere.”

Nunnally listened, then gave the painting the finger.

Roche rubbed his temples helplessly. He was sure the other four had dumped Nunnally on him because none of them wanted to babysit. People probably assumed medical staff were endlessly patient and good with kids. That was a stereotype. Most of the time, he dealt with injured soldiers. He could only… only what?

His memory was empty.

Fine. Roche was used to that by now. He pulled out his device and began his routine sweep of the room. Meanwhile, Nunnally rummaged around, tapping every painting as if she expected a secret passage to spring out from behind one.

“It’s very rude to treat someone’s paintings that way.”

The voice sounded like Lulu’s. She’d come back quickly. Roche turned and saw her standing in the doorway. She wore a different outfit now: a close-fitting red dress and a black shawl. Her nails were painted bright red, and she tapped one against her dry, chapped lips.

Wait. Wasn’t Lulu too tall? She was almost as tall as Roche.

Roche pulled Nunnally behind him. “Who are you?”

The woman put a finger to her lips and gestured for him to be quiet.

“You’ve hurt my feelings so much,” she murmured. “Come be my models, both of you. Make it up to me.”

Before she’d even finished speaking, there was a thud behind Roche.

Nunnally had collapsed. Yellowish foam bubbled from her mouth, little by little, like a crab foaming at the mouth.

“You—”

The world began to spin around Roche. He wanted to shout and call the others, but his throat felt as if someone had a tight grip on it. Even breathing was difficult, much less making a sound.

“How pitiful.” She came over and gently embraced Roche as he swayed. Her hand stroked his back again and again, as if soothing a beloved pet. “Don’t fight it. Just give in. No one’s ever stayed conscious after drinking my mother’s flower tea.”

That cup of tea. There was something wrong with it!

Roche wrenched himself free and staggered toward the door. He tried to call the others, but his earpiece only carried silence. Come to think of it, the channel had gone quiet as soon as they entered the painting room.

A terrible thought began to take shape.

Maybe the others had been taken out even earlier than they had.

The woman caught up with him easily and wrapped her arms around him again, slowly sinking to her knees with him. She pulled out Roche’s hairpin. His long red hair spilled down like a waterfall, covering his upper body.

“Sleep,” she crooned, gently humming a lullaby. “Sleep, my darling…”

Roche struggled to breathe. With his first gasp of air, he saw countless black, shapeless creatures crawling across an ice shelf. When he drew in a second breath, every one of them opened its eyes. On his third, they came crawling toward him. Their black bodies blocked his vision.

Roche couldn’t see a thing.

“Want some jelly?”

He wasn’t dead yet.

Roche opened his eyes. He was in a basement, and the woman from before was sitting nearby, scooping orange jelly out of a glass bowl.

“What are you going to do? Where are the others?”

He tried to move his arms. They were tied up, but that wasn’t much of a problem. He could easily break restraints that tight.

“You woke up fast.” The woman tilted her head and smiled. “I guess it has something to do with your ability?”

“If I’m guessing right, you’re Lulu’s younger brother.” Roche kept his voice calm.

She—no, he—nodded.

“You’re lucky. We only want the girl as a model for our paintings. I bet you’re wondering if someone would need a model for a painting that bad.”

Roche had to admit he’d been wondering exactly that. He tried to break free of the rope, but he couldn’t muster any strength. His whole body was limp as a noodle.

“Don’t waste your energy. This is our home, our domain. Your ability won’t do you any good here. If we don’t allow it to exist, it doesn’t exist.”

His long nails traced the side of Roche’s face.

“You should be grateful for your family name. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have spared you. We would have killed you just like the other four.”

What was he talking about? Koin, Drake, Nangong, and Xu Shi—had this person killed them?

Roche couldn’t even feel grief or shock. He couldn’t believe those two could be killed. Drake had died once right in front of him, then come back to life. Roche didn’t know what Koin’s ability was, but he simply couldn’t believe Koin was the kind of person who’d die so easily.

But Roche had become an ordinary person. If the others’ abilities had been suppressed too, it didn’t seem impossible that they’d been picked off one by one.

“Don’t glare at me like that, poor thing.” He murmured, “You’ve lost everything, haven’t you? You gave so much and still couldn’t save the person you wanted to save. You had to watch him die right in front of you. And now you’ve even lost the companions you just met.”

“What did you say?”

He put down the glass bowl and crouched beside Roche. “I know all about it. Your current ability is just a by-product of a deal with the devil. The devil kept his promise and collected the price of the contract. Whether your wish came true properly is none of the devil’s concern, is it? Devils. Bad.”

“Hey, Roche.” His eyes glimmered with a strange light. “You really don’t remember how Cosmo died?”

“Cosmo…” Roche felt as though a burning coal had been shoved down his throat. Every word tore open the scorched wound again. “He died in a car accident.”

The young man in front of him froze, his features locking into a ridiculous expression.

Then he doubled over and began to laugh wildly.

“A car accident! My God, you actually believed that excuse?!”

He laughed so hard he could barely breathe, rolling on the ground as if he might laugh himself to death. “What’s next? A tiger getting killed by a cockroach?”

After a while, he finally sat up. “Come on, don’t make me laugh. That’s ridiculous. It’s the funniest joke I’ve heard all year.”

Roche felt as if there were a balloon in his chest. Every time the man laughed, the balloon grew a little bigger. It had completely filled Roche’s chest now. He couldn’t breathe. He didn’t even feel as if he needed a heartbeat anymore. He just wanted to break free, grab the man, gouge out his eyes, tear out his tongue, and rip the flesh from his face. When he was half-dead and groaning, Roche would break his fingers to wake him up and make him face the endless torture that came next.

He would enjoy it. He was sure he would—

“You hate me now, don’t you?” The man stuck out his tongue with a smile. “Fine. I’ll be merciful and tell you my name. I’m Jodie. Jodie Escher. Don’t tell me you can’t even remember the name of someone you hate.”

Jodie smiled at Roche, then pressed a hand against his lower leg.

“Why did you have to refuse my sister’s invitation? Lulu’s very easy to get along with.”

“Nunnally was right. Both of you are sick.”

At the mention of Nunnally, Jodie’s face darkened. “That rude little brat with no taste. Her only value is being a model for us. Oh, speaking of models, I haven’t shown you our paintings yet.”

He produced a painting as if by magic. The same sticky colors, the same awful brushwork, the same distorted bodies.

Roche didn’t bother to maintain even the barest courtesy. “You’ve got some nerve showing that to anyone.”

“That’s only the surface.” He ran his fingers over the frame. “Let me show you what the painting really looks like.”

He pressed a switch. The ceiling light changed from an ordinary lamp to ultraviolet. Under the purple glow, the painting filled with fluorescent green flames. They leaped and twisted, sprouting faces and grinning madly, as if they were alive.

The flames wrapped around a woman and burrowed into her body, tearing at her flesh and entrails. The woman, charred and flayed, was bound to a chair and unable to move, left with no choice but to endure it. Her twisted features and unnatural pose suddenly made sense.

“Of course we had to record the beauty of the moment she became one with our—our Lord!”

Jodie’s face lit with fanatic fervor. The madness twisted his features until his once-handsome face looked frighteningly close to that of a beast.

He seized Roche by the hair and dragged him deeper into the basement. The rough, splintered floor scraped Roche’s skin raw, leaving streaks of blood behind them.

“You have to see it,” Jodie panted excitedly. “You have to see how our Lord chose us, and how He bestowed miracles upon us!”