The Bizarre Detective Agency

Chapter 1007: Fulfilling an Obsession

"Who's there?"

Lu Li spoke calmly, loud enough for those in the hallway to hear. Holding the oil lamp, he moved to the window and silently slid it open.

"Mr. Detective, we have a case we'd like you to investigate," said the voice from behind the door, dropping its deliberate muffle and returning to a normal tone.

"Let's go."

Lu Li grabbed the picture frame, stepped onto the sofa, climbed over the windowsill and out onto the cool, quiet street, speaking to Anna, who was watching him with curiosity.

"Mr. Detective?"

The police officers outside knocked and called out a second time, then noticed the sliver of light from beneath the door had disappeared.

"The lamp's out! Break down the door!"

"Wait, officers."

The landlord, rushing over with a set of keys, was too late to stop them, and the old wooden door gave way under the impact. With a dull thud, it flew open, and two officers stormed into the living room.The oil lamp they carried cast its light across the gloomy detective agency, revealing footprints on the sofa, an open window, and curtains swaying in the breeze.

...

A warm haze seeped from the windows of the houses along the street, making the long, night-shrouded lane feel cold and quiet, yet not lonely.

Occasionally, a late-night resident would hurry past, their way lit by an oil lamp.

Once another passerby had gone, Anna materialized next to Lu Li. The light from his oil lamp shone through her spectral form, but her eyes were as clear as ever.

"Aren't you afraid of me?"

"No."

"You should go to the police station and confess your crime."

Anna drifted a little behind Lu Li, staring at the back of his head. She wondered if she should just knock him unconscious—she was abetting a robber, after all! But the thought just made her spirits sink. If she did that, she would most likely be captured too, and then destroyed in an exorcism...

"It was an exceptional circumstance," Lu Li explained, walking along the edge of the street.

"I have more important things to do."

"More important things?"

Tired of her dull, monotonous existence in the art gallery, Anna felt a flicker of excitement in her dormant heart. She drifted ahead of Lu Li, turning to face him as she asked with renewed curiosity.

He was handsome and mysterious, rational and calm—he seemed like a man full of stories! Was this the tale of a young, ruined nobleman seeking revenge, or...?

"I didn't have the money to buy it, so I tied up the owner and took it," Lu Li answered honestly.

He didn't mention that it was a Spirit Gun, as that would have frightened Anna.

The romantic picture Anna had painted in her mind deflated, and her excitement cooled just as quickly. Still, she pressed on:

"Um... Was that man a bad person? Did you have some kind of feud with him...?"

Remembering how Gades had sold him, a complete novice, a Spirit Gun worth three hundred shillings for two thousand, Lu Li gave a slight nod.

"You could say that."

Anna found that she could reluctantly accept his answer. It was only natural to judge by appearances, after all, and the same act committed by an attractive person versus an unattractive one was often treated very differently.

Especially for someone like Anna, who was still just a young girl at heart.

Upon reaching the stables at the edge of the Sailor Street district, Lu Li used his last few coins, along with the deposit from his previous rental, to hire a new carriage. Soon, the clatter of hooves broke the silence of the night.

A short while later, a group of policemen hurried past on the road, failing to notice or recognize Lu Li at the reins of the carriage.

After passing through several districts, the carriage turned onto the road connecting the summit of Sugard Mountain to Port Roadster and started down the slope.

Anna's face quietly phased through the wooden wall of the carriage. Like a spirit's face emerging from a tree trunk, the sight was both cute and unsettling.

She asked nonchalantly,

"Mr. Robber, where are we going?"

"West."

Lu Li didn't want Anna to know their final destination, worried it might affect her emotional state.

It was a method Lu Li had devised to keep the dream stable.

"Why did you bring me with you?"

Getting no reply, Anna asked again,

"Don't want to say? Then why did you go to the gallery to buy... to get me? Or, I guess, to steal me..."

"Because you're my family."

"You're a member of the Bessy family too?!" Anna exclaimed in surprise, but her excitement was quickly followed by a brief, inexplicable wave of disappointment.

"Are you my brother, or some other relative? But why do you have black hair and eyes?"

"Not that kind of family."

Anna, who was meeting Lu Li for the first time, couldn't grasp his meaning.

"You're my love."

After a brief silence, Anna's flustered, stammering voice broke the quiet.

"Are you saying... you love me?"

"Mhm."

"But... but we don't even know each other..."

Embarrassed, Anna pulled her head back inside the carriage, but it wasn't long before she began telling him her story.

For the third time, Lu Li listened patiently, offering a quiet response now and then.

Meanwhile, the carriage crossed over Sugard Mountain, descended its far side, and traveled along a trade route that remained busy even at night. It passed the Sentry Post and continued on its way.

There was no moon that night, and a deep darkness shrouded the land.

An old horse pulled the carriage, managing to follow the well-trodden dirt road by the faint glow of the oil lamp.

They weren't entirely alone, however. Occasionally, strings of flickering lights, distant as stars, could be seen both ahead of them and behind.

But by this hour, the wilderness was no longer safe. As midnight approached, the last of the distant lights vanished, and a profound solitude and darkness enveloped the carriage—

—a solitude broken only by the dim glow of the oil lamp, the dull thud of hooves, the rumble of the wheels, and the sound of the story being told from within the carriage.

At some point, Lu Li spotted a patch of moving darkness, denser than the surrounding gloom, wandering across the misty heath.

The old horse snorted nervously and veered off the road, trying to give the dense patch of darkness a wide berth.

Lu Li didn't stop the horse, and he dimmed the oil lamp.

Once they had skirted the wandering darkness, Lu Li glanced back, watching until it vanished from sight before guiding the horse back onto the road.

They encountered no more anomalies after that.

"Mr. Robber, where have we arrived?"

Anna's voice piped up as morning approached.

"The outskirts of Himmfast."

Anna slipped out of the carriage. The deep darkness of predawn had passed, and in the misty light, she could see a brightly lit city in the distance.

"Why are we here...?"

"This was your home."

It was also the source of her obsession, a place Anna both yearned for and feared.

"The old estate is an academy now, and Aunt Mery is its director," Lu Li explained.

Anna gazed quietly at the city of arts, a mixture of longing and apprehension in her heart, not even thinking to ask how Lu Li knew all this.

The carriage rolled slowly into Himmfast. It passed through streets just beginning to stir in the dim morning light and finally arrived at the former Bessy family estate.

The main gates of the estate were chained shut. Just as Lu Li was about to rap on the iron bars to summon the gatekeeper, Anna stopped him.

"Follow me."

With a complicated expression, Anna led Lu Li to the side of the estate and pulled away a loose section of the fence.

It was the "secret passage" she had used as a child to sneak out and play.

Slipping through the opening, Anna found herself back on the grounds of her former home. Though the shrubs and flowerbeds were now withered and neglected, she still recognized it all.

Anna's obsession was fulfilled. Lu Li could now leave the dream at any moment.

"Enni..."

She spotted a withered sapling, drew closer instinctively, and stared at it intently.

Lu Li followed Anna, coming to a stop beneath the long-withered tree.

At that moment, Lu Li suddenly sensed a faint yet intimate feeling emanating from the bark of the tree—a presence that belonged to Enni.

The emotion struck a chord deep within Lu Li, awakening a more profound power that rose like a storm and shattered the dream like glass—

Lu Li awoke from the dream.

The branches of a sapling, emitting a faint glow, unfurled behind his back.