- 4 -

The sun was setting, painting the sky in saffron-red hues and throwing off wild shadows across the fields. A tall, slim man in a black suit and a top hat was walking down a dirt path through the fields, with a willowy girl hanging on his arm. The girl was singing a quiet tune:

The Lord Millennium will come back for you,

He has marked you up, looking for a clue.

Running far away won't help. He will find you soon—

Ask him for your brother's soul. That's what you can do…


"Today we'll finally get to play a game," said Road, glancing meaningfully at Tyki. "We can find the exorcists or destroy some pesky Innocence, but it'll spoil all the fun."

"Does it matter so long as we fulfill the Earl's request?"

They stood on the edge of a peaceful village which gently sloped down to the lake on one side and on the opposite side bordered on a coppice lush with wild shrubbery. The lake was buried in verdure which now receded, exposing bald patches of ground here and there dotted with sparse grass, now advanced to the shore, and a few cheerless willows bathed their overhanging branches in still waters. Behind them the path wound uphill towards the train station which was obscured from view by a scattering of trees. The lake was strewn with fishing boats, and the water around them was vibrant with colors from the reflection of the setting sun.

Such villages, charming and decorous in their bucolic isolation, were not uncommon in France. Everyone who lived in these villages knew how their neighbors and the neighbors of their neighbors spent their free time, with whom they quarreled, and what they ate for supper, hence the news about mysterious disappearances in one such village spread like wildfire. A few people who one day vanished without a trace found their way back to the village with lapses in their memories, having forgotten entire episodes from their past lives. The Earl sent them to investigate whether the bizarre incidents were the work of Innocence or an amazing fluke, or some other hidden hand.

But Tyki felt that he was banished to some faraway, godforsaken place as punishment for making a mess in London after it attracted the Vatican's attention. Sheril was supposed to pull some strings, but instead, Tyki received his first assignment from the Earl with little to no explanation.

"The sullen attitude doesn't suit you, Tikie." Road stood on tiptoe and peered into his face. "It's my favorite game, and I hope you will enjoy playing it with me. The exorcists are weak and boring, and I hate boredom."

Tyki leaned against a warm tree and took one last puff at his cigarette, following a thin wisp of smoke with his eyes until it was blown away by the gentle wind. He had accepted his new role in the Noah family, but a suspicion persistently gnawed at him that he understood very little about himself or the Earl. He'd rather spend the evening playing cards with Momo and Clark than running errands for the Earl, so it couldn't be helped that he wasn't in one of his jovial moods.

"Tell me, Road, why does our dear Earl worry about these accommodators and exorcists if they are as insignificant as you say?"

"When he is in a foul mood, Millennie likes to remind the Black Order that he has them at his mercy. But there's dangerous Innocence out there. Time-altering, mind-altering powers are a nuisance, and there is also one special kind of Innocence…"

"Go on."

"Never mind what I've just said. You'll learn about it soon enough. I think Millennie would have explained it to you himself, but he was having a bad day."

"Come to think of it, the Earl was very upset yesterday. He got all weepy about some event that happened thirty-something years ago."

"He was mourning for us," Road said enigmatically.

"The Earl was in mourning... You aren't telling me everything, Road. When we met, you acted as if you knew me from before, but I don't recognize your face."

"You've asked me this question twice already, and I said it was a private matter."

"The third time's the charm."

"If he's pestering you, mistress Road, we can push him through one of your doors again, lero," squeaked Lero, peeking from behind Road's slim shoulder.

Tyki shot a withering glance at the golem. "Does he need to come with us?"

"It's no fun hunting exorcists without Lero. You'll get used to him." And, swinging the umbrella left and right, with a spring in her step, the girl walked down the rutty road which wound snake-like towards the village.

"At the very least, no one asked me to give the Earl a hug," muttered Tyki. "That fat squishy belly gives me the creeps." And he grudgingly went after Road.

On entering the village, they looked for an inn, but around them the nightly gloom fell quickly, and the little town was shrouded in mist from the lake. A petite middle-aged woman saw in them a handsome man traveling with a younger woman and took pity on them. She invited them to her hearth, offered them supper and modest lodgings for one night. Tyki introduced himself as a wealthy merchant and explained that he was taking his niece to a Paris carnival, but their train broke down and they found themselves, famished and tired, in an unfamiliar town. Road, with an air of childlike innocence about her, added that her legs ached, and the woman brought out a few steaming dishes and arranged them on the rough-hewn table. They struck up a conversation, and their artless hostess who enjoyed spreading idle gossip about her neighbors told them everything she knew about the strange events that terrified the village.

"The disappearances began about two months ago," she said, looking into the fire. "At first, our butcher went missing, but he was a drunkard and a no-good, and his prolonged absence didn't surprise anyone. But not a week had gone by, and that scoundrel comes back to the village, all dressed up like a fop, and to our greater astonishment, he is as sober as a newborn. We thought that maybe he decided to go straight. He began drinking heavily after his wife died... Ah, it's all too sad! But he—the heartless scoundrel!—doesn't even remember her."

"And you're not making it up, woman?" asked Tyki.

"Why would I, good master? It's all too sad, I tell you... After the butcher, the priest of a small parish vanished, and we haven't seen him since. There was a fisherman with two children... He also wandered into the village without any memories of his sons. These poor boys!"

"The priest didn't return to the village, but the butcher and the former fisherman did."

"What are you thinking, Tyki?"

"It's nothing," admitted Tyki, helplessly shrugging his shoulders. "Nothing important, anyway."

Lero tried to interpose in the conversation, but Road shoved her elbow into his mouth and smiled sweetly at their hostess.

"Go on with your story, we're listening."

"That's just it, I don't know what happened to them afterwards... The butcher left for Paris again, and the former fisherman opened a pastry shop in the village. I hear he refuses to see his sons."

"You'll buy me a delicious cotton candy tomorrow, won't you, uncle?" Road asked, propping her head up on her hand.

"If you behave well," Tyki played along, "I'll buy you sweets for the road."

Road burst out laughing, dangling her small foot, and the heel of her shoe clattered against the bench. She was probably thinking of a prank because her eyes now and again turned to Lero who had quietened down and lay still by her side, like an ordinary umbrella.

"Thank you for the food. We'll be retiring for the night."

Road made a small, astonished face, but she didn't resist when Tyki decidedly took her by the wrist and led her to the guest room. The door had scarcely closed behind them when Road's light gown changed into a dark attire and the stigma of the Noah family manifested itself on her forehead.

Tyki threw his coat on a chair, took off his glasses, and sprawled out on his bed without disturbing the covers.

Road ran up to him at once and snatched the glasses out of his hands.

"You don't need these silly glasses." She gracefully avoided the lunge of his lanky arm and fell onto her bed, giggling. "The glasses didn't change your appearance. You were so convinced they had magical properties that you kept changing back and forth when you took them off or put them on. Your inner power obeyed your unconscious wish or whim. That's how our abilities work. See?" Road donned his glasses that were too oversized for her face but didn't revert to her human guise.

"Cut it out, Road," Tyki said sternly. "Give me back my glasses."

"And if I don't?"

"I narrowly escaped humiliating punishment for taking the Earl's reading glasses, so I intend to keep them. I'll just tell the Earl that we have failed this assignment because you stole his glasses from me."

"You're no fun."

Tyki caught the spectacles by the silver flash of the rim when it flew out of the opposite corner of the room and twirled the weightless frame around his forefinger. "Road, what's the story with us and the Earl?"

"There's no story. We've sworn an unbreakable oath of fealty to him all those years ago. No matter how many times we die and reincarnate, our service to him will never come to an end."

"Don't you feel at least a little resentment for this lifelong arrangement?"

"It's not thankless servitude because Lord Millennium protects us from many dangers. Deep inside, we understand that the debt we owe him cannot be repaid… We're at war with the Black Order. Humans don't notice it even if this war goes on right under their noses, so it's all new to you." Road leaned over him, her face alight with curiosity. "But you've seen a glimpse of this war the other day. How did you like it?"

"I… killed someone. Am I supposed to enjoy this sort of thing?"

Road smiled from ear to ear. "It can be fun sometimes or not so fun, like a tedious chore you just need to get out of the way. See, Tyki, we are attracted to danger like moths to a flame. It's our nature. But our powers are so superior to the rest of humankind that we forget how to fear death. And if you don't fear dying, someone else's death cannot terrify you either."

"Mistress Road is right, lero. Humans are humans and Noah—"

"Be quiet, will you!" Tyki caught the overly glib umbrella by the handle and flung him into the wall.

Road giggled and hurried to retrieve Lero, holding him upside-down and swinging him from side to side.

"So, everything becomes a game. Is that what you're saying, Road?" muttered Tyki, pulling a pillow over his eyes and ears so that he wouldn't have to listen to Lero lamenting about the ill treatment he suffered at the hands of his mistress.

They lay in silence for a while, each with their own thoughts. Tyki rolled over to the side and began to slip into dreamless slumber when an unexpected thought occurred to him. He raised himself on the elbow.

"Road?"

"What now, Tyki?"

"On that day we met in London… What did you show me in your vision?"

Road's voice was barely a whisper. "An end of a world."


In the morning, they said their farewells to the hostess and made their way to the pastry shop like a pair of ordinary travelers, and though they were anything but ordinary, Road in her dress with red ribbons and Tyki in his dark suit and glasses passed for a wealthy family and were treated with respect by the townspeople.

The little town was waking up slowly. Women hurried to the lake to wash clothes. Men went to the fields with various implements for ploughing the land. Children were left to themselves, and they were seen playing in the dust or splashing around in the shallow water, carefree, sunburnt and freckle-faced. The bells in the small abbey struck nine times, and the loud chime resounded across the gentle monotony of fields before it was swallowed up by the profound emptiness of the sky.

The pastry shop under a new signboard in the shape of a horn of abundance from which poured forth knot-shaped biscuits, gingerbread cookies, jam tarts, candy in motley wrappings, marmalade jars, and so on, stood aloof from the other buildings in the village. Road pushed the door with the tip of her umbrella, and they entered a well-lit room. A cheerful man behind the counter asked them if they wanted to buy sweets.

"Isn't that the fisherman?"

Road nodded, raising her left arm in the air. "Let's take a stroll through the old geezer's painful memories!" A bright-purple flower made of light bloomed on the tip of her fingers, and when she lowered her arm, the world around them cracked under the onslaught of her Dark Matter, folding inside out.

They stood—or, rather, hovered—in the middle of a vast ocean of darkness, darker on the edges than in the center where the giant gift-wrapped, ribbon-tied boxes were piled up so high they reached the limits of Tyki's vision.

"Welcome to my dreamworld, Tyki," Road said, pointing Lero at the trembling solitary figure of the shop owner standing against the bizarre and haphazard heap of boxes. "Let's take a looksie into that hoary head of his."

"Mistress Road's power is terrifying, lero."

Suddenly, the hunched-up figure of the fisherman began radiating soft greenish light, and Road stumbled backwards, bumping into Tyki.

"Are you all right, Road?"

"Don't interfere, Tyki!" She angrily threw her head back, and purple mist of Dark Matter began emanating from her. "Innocence has blocked his memories."

A dark maelstrom sprung forth from under the fisherman's feet and enveloped him from head to toe, swallowing the light. Road snapped her fingers, and the light was utterly extinguished, baring the fisherman's trembling figure. He sat on the floor, having wrapped his arms around his shoulders, and his teeth were clattering from terror.

A vision appeared in front of Tyki. A familiar expanse of fields unrolled itself before his eyes. A fisherman and a stranger dressed in a red-and-gold uniform crossed the field and approached a hut with a low door and a dead chimney on the roof. The stranger pushed the door open with a creak and entered a kitchen where two children huddled together by the oven.

"Where's the child?" the stranger demanded.

The fisherman pointed to the older boy of the two. "You understand, we are very poor, my boys and I," he said in a shaky voice. "I only want my sons to grow up in want of nothing. But my older boy, he's a troublemaker. That awful thing in him... Innocence, you say? Well, he behaves strangely sometimes, and people forget. He only wishes to heal them, but their memories—"

"I'm here for the child." The stranger passed a small bag to the fisherman. "That's the remainder of the payment. The Black Order paid you generously, and you understood that you'd never see your son after today."

"Not so saintly, are they?" Road whispered to Tyki.

"Of course, master, he's all yours." The fisherman beckoned the child.

The boy no older than ten winters had dirty smudges all over his face, and his rags hung loose on his thin, gangly limbs. He untangled himself from his brother's embrace and adopted a hostile posture while his Innocence revealed itself in his hands as a small golden cube.

"No, father, I'm not going anywhere. I promised my brother that I wouldn't go anywhere without him."

"I'm here to help you, child," the stranger said, stepping in front of the fisherman. "Please, listen to me—"

"I want you to forget about us! All of you—just forget! Forget!"

There was a flash of golden light and the stranger screamed, trying to protect his eyes, but the child's fury burnt brightly and stung poignantly.

"Poor child," said Road and erased the vision with a wave of her hand.

The fisherman began weeping. "My sons… I took the money, I opened a shop, but I abandoned my own sons. Whoever you are, if you're my punishment, I accept it."

"You want to be punished, old man?" Road asked with glee. "I can deliver your salvation!" She pressed her palm to the fisherman's forehead, and the man began wailing, writhing on the floor that she had conjured up for him, until his eyes went blank, and he was awfully quiet after that.

They stepped out of Road's dreamworld into the sunlight. The shutters on the only window in the shop were quietly creaking on their hinges. The fisherman's lifeless body was hunched over by the counter where on happier days, children bought and ate candy and their parents discussed boring gossip.

"Are all of us so wicked?" Tyki asked half in jest. Road's display of power was impressive and mesmerizing and oddly familiar like a calling card of an old friend. His innermost memory played such tricks on him from time to time, rousing in him feelings that weren't his.

"You've seen nothing yet of our wickedness," answered Road and opened the door into the street.

The sun was in zenith and a warm gust of wind ruffled Tyki's hair, carrying the dust and the scent of what eastward where the shaggy clouds of a passing thunderstorm swirled.

"Do you think we should look for this Innocence near the fisherman's hut?"

"The Innocence alters the townspeople's memories, and it protects itself, erasing all recollections of the events leading up to the memory loss." Road, who was walking a few steps ahead of him, turned her head. "It's a dangerous Innocence, Tyki. Who knows what else this boy can do if he's allowed to achieve greater synchronization with it."

"Then we destroy it. It'll make the Earl happy."

"Weren't you watching that old man's memories? Or do you want to leave this village as a bumbling idiot? That Innocence looked like it was about to go out of control… No, I have a better idea. Let's look for that Crow. Maybe, I can patch him up a bit, and we can find out why the Order sent him here."

"The Vatican watchdog, huh?"

"Stop acting so clueless all the time, Tyki."

"There's no act. I am utterly clueless, Road." He smirked. "Or did you forget? I'm still new to this complicated business of hunting exorcists and Crows."

She gave a suspicious pout. "And why are you so smug about it all of a sudden?"

Tyki loosened the upper button on his blouse. "Because I intend to leave the investigation in your capable hands, Road, while I'll be taking a nap."

His words struck a nerve with her. She caught up with him, her small feet quickly pattering on the pavement to match his wide stride, and blocked his way by pushing the tip of her umbrella into his chest. "Lero," muttered the Earl's golem, looking more apprehensive than usual.

"Don't you even think about leaving me here by myself, Tyki."

Road's eyes shone bright with fury, but the mask cracked a bit, and an expression of bewildered helplessness surfaced on her countenance. A feeling of deep satisfaction washed over Tyki. He grew tired of letting her have the upper hand over him. He couldn't shake off the impression that he was swept into her twisted game with lousy cards in his hands. Back at the Ark, Tyki suspected that Road was different, and she lived in harmony with her Noah memory unlike Skinn and the others. She had all answers but shared few secrets.

But underneath it all, was there more than a mere despot's whim?

"Calm down, Road. I was joking," he said, airily, and flicked away the umbrella. "Let's go find that watchdog."