- 7 -
The Earl gathered all members of the Noah Clan for the Big Family Dinner in Edo.
As opposed to cozy luncheons or welcoming parties, the attendance of family dinners was mandatory for everyone regardless of excuses, personal circumstances, mutual grudges, or exigent emergencies. Tyki didn't know how the Earl enforced the rule for the rest of the family, but he kept close watch over Tyki until the time came for them to leave for Edo. Little did the Earl know that Tyki didn't harbor any intentions of running off this time. The Earl was right: Tyki belonged to one of the warring factions during a war, and there was no use wondering why he was assigned that role.
Under the Earl's watchful rule, Japan—once known as the country of the rising sun—became a country where the sun never rose. A patch of perpetually black sky stretched over the dead streets of Edo like a vast pall draping a vast tomb. Most of Edo's inhabitants had long since become Akuma or perished, and the unfortunate few who still clung to life led a miserable existence without the warmth of the sun to greet them and to see them off every day. But the cherry trees were in full bloom, and the pink froth of ethereal sakura petals lapped at the curbs of the labyrinthine streets.
In the center of Edo towered a mansion, like an arrow brazenly pointed to the sky, weighed down by an impressive granite foundation which soared above the ill assortment of low houses and storage buildings. Atop the foundation was mounted a five-storeyed pagoda with elegantly curved-up eaves on each of the four of its enormous rooves. There were no staircases leading up to the mansion's entrance door, and Tyki who arrived with the Earl and Road through the Ark didn't see any entrances either. The mansion's windows were inverted mirrors that allowed the viewer inside the mansion to see out into the street, but no one from the street would see anything but his own deformed reflection. The mansion's rooms had doors but rarely ceilings, and an assortment of various glowing objects hovering in mid-air—grinning pumpkins, candles, candy canes, round eyeballs in melted caramel of sockets—cast green and orange lighting about.
The impregnable bastion of the Earl's mansion stood ominous and melancholic in its solitude but strikingly beautiful in its own way.
A little after his arrival, half-dressed and disheveled, Tyki Mikk sat in a rocking chair, gloomily brooding over the present state of his affairs in the comfortable semi-darkness of one of the mansion's many empty rooms. His left hand was folded behind his head, and between the thumb and the index finger of his right hand he held a smoldering cigarette, watching the dance of the red light as he brought the cigarette to his lips, inhaled the smoke, and lowered it before exhaling. A porcelain ashtray on the bedstand was filled to the brim with cigarette butts, shedding ash flakes onto the wooden surface.
Tyki was not fond of belabored brooding, but under these unusual circumstances, he figured, a bit of brooding would save him from getting into a lot of trouble later.
The manner of the exorcist's gruesome death, with Tyki's arm through his ribcage, bothered him the least of all. A thousand-year-old war raged unseen and unknown to the human world, and he was one day swept into it and thrown onto one side of the scales in this conflict. Tyki couldn't imagine anything fair about being swept into wars, but moping about what was fair or unfair seemed to him an unappealing—even downright pathetic—pastime. The exorcists were his natural enemies, and they would hunt him down and kill him if only they weren't so weak.
Tyki pushed off the bed frame with his bare foot and rocked back and forth until the chair stopped moving.
What bothered him considerably more was slipping up and losing control over himself for reasons he couldn't comprehend. He came close to the proverbial end of line and glimpsed what lay beyond it—it wasn't a pretty picture. If he overstepped that boundary, would he permanently lose his ability to revert to human form? Or would he lose his mind altogether and become a puppet of destruction? And if he didn't understand the rules of the game, what was he to do to stop himself from losing control again? One thing was for certain: he had to tread carefully from now on.
And then he saw the end of the world—the world that God regretted creating, Road said, and cast down into the outer darkness for its wickedness. Only they, the handful of descendants of the original Noah Clan, remembered watching the world fracture and die. The chair creaked softly as it moved back and forth in a mundane rhythm, knowing nothing of Innocence or Dark Matter, stars, worlds, or otherworldly horrors.
There was a loud knock on the door. "Hey, Tyki, are you there?" Road asked. "Can I come in?"
"Don't you see a 'Do Not Disturb' sign on my door, Road?" he muttered, irritated.
"But Papa arrived, and he's been asking for you."
That would be Sheril, his older brother. Tyki's relationship with Sheril was complicated, to say the least, not through any fault on Tyki's part. Sheril's overprotective personality made him prone to showering Tyki with dubious kinds of affection, leading to squabbles between the two of them. Unwanted, overbearing affection suffocated Tyki, but Sheril never bothered to take the hint.
In his current mood, Tyki's best bet was to stay away from Sheril for as long as he could put off their meeting without giving away that he was deliberately avoiding his brother.
"Tell him I'll be out in a minute."
"I also need to give you something. It's a gift from Lord Millennium. He wants everyone to wear matching neckties to the dinner tonight. It's an important family tradition."
"Now the Earl tells me what to wear. I'm touched."
"Oh, don't be like that. Millennie tried so hard to take care of us and to please us. It won't hurt you to meet him halfway at least."
"All right, you can drop all that stuff on the chair by the door."
A narrow strip of bright light revealed Road's dark silhouette. She lingered on the threshold to hang a clean, well-ironed suit on the back of a vintage upholstered chair.
"Your room stinks. How can you breathe in this smoke?" she said before she slipped out of his room and closed the door. Tyki didn't deign her with an answer.
Later, after Tyki donned the expensive black suit and a men's blouse with an elaborate frill, Road stopped by again to give him a critical once-over before they headed to the dinner hall. Road wore a neat short-sleeved dark-blue dress with a puffy white blouse underneath it and with a double-layered skirt studded with pink ribbons, and her unruly, spiky hair was combed and styled with an elegant ribbon. Her brilliant amber eyes set off her dark skin exquisitely, and the curve of her delicate neck teased the eye through the white foam of lace.
"Your new tie, Tyki… something's just not right with it." She frowned assiduously. "Let me fix it for you. Millennie explained to me how you're supposed to tie it."
Tyki handed the elaborate cravat to her, and she turned it over in her hands, played around with the ends of it, putting them crisscross with the left band on top or with the right, until the arrangement satisfied her. Then she tried to put it on him. She stood on her tiptoes and extended her arms towards him, but even at her tallest, she could barely reach his face with her fingertips. The sight of her greatly amused Tyki.
"Tyki, you're so tall, it's annoying me," she complained after the second unsuccessful attempt to slip the cravat around his neck.
"It's not my fault you're so short. Oh well," he sat down on the nearest chair and let Road fumble about with the necktie until she wrapped it nice and snug around his neck.
The tie squeezed his neck a bit too tightly in a few spots, and when Road left to assemble the others at the dinner hall, Tyki loosened it. He looked prim and posh in the Earls fancy tweed suit, as if he made a detour to Sheril's court, and his reflection brought back memories of balls, masquerades, soirees, and evening poker games—the trivialities he indulged in when he was still human. The Millennium Earl loved to complicate everything, but Tyki had to admit that for all his faults, he had a good sense of fashion since the suit appeared to be tailored perfectly for his height and slim build.
On his way to greet Sheril at the dinner hall, Tyki ran into Skinn who dressed up in a slick dark-blue suit complemented by the Earl's signature cravat and tied his spiky hair with a ribbon to make it appear at least half-decent, in Tyki's view.
"What's going on, Skinn?" He greeted the fellow Noah. "I kind of forgot you existed for a moment."
"Do you have any sweets on you? Instead of running your mouth, you should get Skinn more of those tasty pastries."
"That was a one-time deal, and we're square. Unless of course, you're blackmailing me—"
"What's that you're saying? I don't remember promising you anything. You got me sweets, and I think I told you how to get off the Ark."
'Oh boy, he's such an idiot. Why do I even bother with him?' Tyki thought.
"Listen, Skinn, why don't you go look for Road's secret stash of candy? I'm sure she's got one around here somewhere."
Skinn hung his head. "I looked for it all over the place. In the mansion's attics. Lots of spiders there, but no candy. In the Ark's gardens. I even looked in the back room behind the library. But I never found it."
"Let me tell you something I heard from a trustworthy source. You know that tall tower in the center of the Ark? Road's stash is in the last room at the top of that tower."
"You're not messing with me?"
"Cross my heart." Tyki let out a snicker and walked off down the shadowy corridor. It would be nothing short of a miracle if Skinn showed up for the family dinner tonight.
The dining hall in the Earl's mansion was shrouded in the familiar eerie gloom of the room where Tyki dined on the first day of his awakening, but the sheer magnitude of it exceeded any imagination. The portraits hovered overhead because there were no walls as far as the eye could see or windows, just the twilight murk, which connected the dinner hall to the intricate cobwebs of corridors in the mansion. No matter which hallway one took, it inevitably led to the threshold of the same door that opened into the dining hall at the mansion's heart.
A round table under the snowy-white tablecloth occupied the center of the room and surrounded it six identical tall chairs upholstered in scarlet velvet. A full dining set with silverware was placed in front of each chair: two plates of different sizes, a fork, two knives, a tiny silver spoon, an ornate teacup, and a crystal wine glass. A set of mundane-looking gilded candelabrums provided illumination, each bearing two or three blazing candles which could neither melt nor burn out.
As soon as Tyki stepped into the room, he felt someone's arms around his shoulders, and he was pulled into a tight embrace which would have ended with a sloppy kiss if Tyki hadn't instinctively pushed away the intruder and leapt away to the side.
Tyki's eyes widened when he recognized the man, and a cigarette fell out of his slightly open mouth. "What the hell, Sheril? That's a new low, even for you."
With a brother like that, it was hardly a surprise that Tyki preferred to spend most of his time away from home. Sheril's affections for him bordered on lust, and it made his skin crawl unpleasantly, but truth be told, Sheril behaved similarly towards most people—half the court in his country has seen the inside of Sheril's bedroom on more than one occasion. It boggled Tyki's mind that Sheril was a married man, unless he reckoned with a possibility that the sham marriage fulfilled some twisted fantasy of his.
"I've missed you so much, my beautiful brother." Sheril made a comically whiny face, losing his monocle and bending to retrieve it. "We barely see each other these days. You didn't attend my wedding even though I've written to you several times. Lord Millennium also told me about your awakening, but I had a full-blown political crisis on my hands, so I couldn't make it. I'm so, so sorry about that."
"Well, no one missed you at my party except maybe Lord Millennium. But you'll have to ask him."
"That's such a cruel thing to say to your brother!"
"Maybe you should be more considerate of other people's feelings before whining." Tyki quickly looked round himself, noticed Road standing in the doorway behind him, and ducked behind her before Sheril took another step towards him. "Here, hug Road," he put both hands on her shoulders and pushed her into Sheril's embrace.
"My Road! My darling daughter!" Sheril squatted to even out the difference in height and flung his arms around Road's small form.
"I missed you, too, Papa," said Road sweetly and settled comfortably in Sheril's overly affectionate hug. "How's Tricia?"
"Her frail health kept her in bed for much of this week. I carried her to the rose garden in the morning and left her sitting in her favorite chair."
Tricia was Sheril's mystery woman. The more Tyki learned about her, the less he was looking forward to their inevitable introduction.
"That's right, Tyki never met auntie Tricia," said Road as if she had somehow read his mind. "She's lovely," she added with an expression of faint disgust. "I hope she feels better soon."
"And the Earl agreed to this marriage?"
"What are you talking about? Lord Millennium was ecstatic about it. Tricia's family is rich and influential, and her father played a key role in getting me the position of the minister of foreign affairs. We need to look normal to the outside world and avoid arousing suspicion of the simple-minded humans whose trust we gain and manipulate to our benefit. And no one tends to suspect a devoted family man of ill intentions." Sheril paused in his long tirade and raised his finger in a patronizing manner. "Speaking of marriage… Lord Millennium can arrange a decent marriage for you with one of Madame Crawd's daughters or—"
"I'll pass," Tyki cut his brother off before he would give him another speech about the rich and attractive girls he should be noticing. Girls from noble families were prone to melodramatic fits of fainting and sobbing, and their fretful madames assumed that one dance with their daughter would lead to serious courtship. He suspected that the Noah inside of him didn't improve his tolerance of their irritating behavior. "What's the news from Vatican and London?"
"That young Inspector is persistent like lice. He hasn't gotten anywhere with his investigation yet, but there have been worrying developments. My sources say that one exorcist sustained bizarre injuries. The inside of his ribcage was crushed, but many of his ribs remained miraculously intact. You've got some cool powers, brother, but you can't show yourself to the world before Lord Millennium allows you. Otherwise, you'll screw up his plans."
"Yeah, passing through solid matter cannot be considered a trivial ability," Tyki said with an air of smugness about him.
"Can you at least pretend to be serious just once?"
"All right, all right, I got it. I'll be careful when I'm using my powers from now on."
The appearance of the Millennium Earl in Lulu Bell's company saved Tyki from carrying on with the boring conversation about his reckless use of his powers. The Earl was concealed by flitting shadows, and Tyki's gaze lingered on Lulu Bell for an instant. She wore a dress of the color of midnight sky which fit her figure well and left her long arms bare from her shoulders to her elbows. Long tight-fitted gloves from lustrous satin covered the rest of her arms.
Tyki saw Lulu Bell's human appearance for the first time—she was a dark-haired, petite, and pretty woman of a reserved and polite demeanor to match her calculated coldness. Tyki wouldn't have much fun hanging out with someone like her, and he dismissed her out of his mind.
"Is there a particular spot where we should sit?" he asked, turning to Road.
"No, but you can't sit at the head of the table in Lord Millennium's chair. And I want to sit on the right side next to him."
Tyki slipped into a chair next to Road and put a white napkin across his lap.
"Good evening, my darlings," the Earl greeted them from the threshold. "Please, take a seat at the table. We gathered tonight to eat as a family and discuss our plans for the near future. The food will be arriving shortly."
Tyki leaned his head against the back of the chair, smiled to himself, and lit a cigarette.
"Tyki, my boy, smoking is not allowed at the family table." The Earl's annoyed voice was an unwelcome interruption of his idle reflections.
"Seriously, Lord Millennium? It's not like anyone here is in danger of dying from secondhand smoking."
Road made an exasperated grimace at him and yanked at the sleeve of his brand-new suit. "Tyki, you're really trying to get in trouble. When I said that Millennie was a pushover, I didn't mean that he wouldn't enforce any rules. And he's very strict about dinner etiquette."
Tyki would have put up a more spirited resistance, but the Earl said something that threw him off his game:
"You should watch that sharp tongue of yours when elders are speaking. Or did I teach you so poorly when you were just a boy? Maybe it's time to fill in some gaps in your education."
'Ah, so that explains why I remembered him before. We did know each other back when I was a boy.' Tyki pressed the cigarette butt into the rim of a porcelain plate to extinguish it. 'It was the Earl, wasn't it? That strange man who gave me my first deck of cards made up of nothing but Jokers.' It was as though the man was telling him that destiny would guide his hand, not luck.
"That's much better. Akuma, bring him a new plate."
An Akuma in a handmaid's outfit appeared seemingly out of nowhere and took away the dirty plate just as another servant placed a clean plate in front of Tyki.
The Earl stepped out of the shadows into the dim light thrown off by the candles, and any doubts Tyki had about meeting the Earl in the past vanished. Before Tyki stood the same long-nosed gentleman with a strong chin in just the right age for a respectable member of high society—not too old but without the frivolity of youth.
The Earl looked around the room with his piercing amber eyes and said to no one in particular, "Where's Skinn?"
"Tyki, did you have a hand in Skinn's disappearance?" asked Road as they made their way through the lower levels of the Ark to Skinn's rainbow room. The sunlit streets of the Ark were a welcome change after the gloomy atmosphere of the mansion. "If you did, you should come clean to me now."
"And why would you think I had anything to do with that idiot getting lost again?"
"You have that look on your face like you know exactly what's going on."
"I have my suspicions, but I'm not watching his every step."
The Earl dispatched several search parties to look for Skinn, and Tyki refused to go with Sheril or join the Akuma and Lulu Bell.
"Why are you trying to upset the Earl by delaying the dinner?"
"You got it all wrong. It was just a friendly joke. You can't blame me if he's too stupid to get my joke… All I told the idiot was that I knew where to find your secret stash of candy."
Road threw back her head, giggling. "You told him that I have a secret stash of candy?"
"He didn't need much convincing… Wait, don't tell me that you don't keep the leftover candy in a special place."
"I leave candy in my room on occasions, sure, but there's no big secret. And I share my candy with Skinn because I feel some responsibility for his love of sweets. During his awakening, he kept biting his nails and fingers to drown out the intense pain in his stigmata. So, I gave him candy to chew on."
"I guess I should be glad that you didn't try to turn me into a sweet tooth."
Road gave him a thoughtful and serious look. "Your awakening was nothing like Skinn's."
Skinn's rainbow room was a bizarre and barren landscape of scattered boulders and mounds under the sky that looked like a sloppy child's painting of rainbows and clouds. Skinn stood near one of the boulders, pounding it with his fists, and small pieces of stone flew in all directions around him.
"Calm down, Skinn, or you'll ruin your suit," Road called out to him. "Lord Millennium is waiting for you to join him at the dinner table."
Skinn turned his head to Road and noticed Tyki. "That's him!" He flew into a rage, and his Dark Matter began crackling violently around his fists. "He made me very angry. He said—"
"I know, and it wasn't very nice of him. But you can't behave like a baby every time someone makes fun of you."
Skinn roared, discharging a bolt of lightning in their direction, but he aimed it so poorly that it grazed the rock above Tyki's head and dissipated harmlessly in the distance. Tyki took a step in Skinn's direction, but Road held out her hand in front of him.
"Whatever you're thinking of doing, don't do it," she warned him, eyes flashing fire. "Skinn, it concerns you, too! You don't want me to call the Earl, do you?"
Road's words had an immediate effect on Skinn: his fury waned, he quietened down, and his shoulders drooped.
"No need to get the Earl involved," he muttered, but then he glared at Tyki again and stuck an accusatory finger at him. "I'll get back at him, and he's going to pay for making me climb all these stairs to the top floor."
"How scary," Tyki said with a shrug and a self-satisfied grin. "And just for the record, I didn't make you do anything. You were pretty excited to get your hands on Road's candy."
"Now he's just pissing me off with his yapping."
"Tyki, stop egging him on! Please, let's have dinner together as a family."
It was so easy to taunt Skinn it was almost not worth it. Tyki pushed open the door into one of the Ark's many streets. "Sure, I have no problem with that, but I'm not sitting next to sweet tooth."
When at long last everyone has gathered at the round table and the first course of cold meats, sushi, cheeses, and vegetables was served, the Earl rose to his feet and, watching them eat the food with zest, said:
"Now that all of us are here at last, we shall begin without further delay. As some of you already know, we have recently welcomed a new addition to our family. Tyki, my boy, why don't you introduce yourself?"
Tyki put down his fork with a piece of delicious ham on it. "Lord Millennium, I'm not good at these formal introductions. Besides, I've had the pleasure of meeting most of you."
"Then we can move on to the first agenda on my list. But before we do, I'd like our servants to bring in the hot course." The Earl clapped his hands, and several Akuma entered the room, carrying trays full of steaming dishes. They put several pots of noodle soup in the center of the table, and next to them, they arranged a large skillet with chicken stew and two deep plates with fried fish and spicy veal with roasted potatoes.
"I want some chicken stew," Skinn said at once, and one of the Akuma servants filled his plate with the stew that smelled as appetizing as it looked.
Skinn asked the servant for something else, and she brought him a gilded sugar bowl decorated with an ornament of blue fishes and flowers. Skinn opened it with his large fingers, shoved a dinner spoon into it and generously sprinkled his stew with sugar.
"What kind of pervert puts sugar in his chicken stew?" remarked Tyki.
"Who did you just call a pervert?" Skinn flared up, menacingly shaking a clenched fist at him from across the table.
Tyki propped up his head with his hand. "Do you see anyone else in this room eating an over-sweetened stew? Now then, don't tell me that such a simple deduction is beyond your comprehension, sweet tooth."
Under the table, Road kicked him in the leg; Sheril threw an exasperated glance at him, and only Lulu Bell sat motionless and imperturbable as always. Tyki looked at them with defiance. As far as he was concerned, he merely stated aloud what everyone else was thinking to themselves.
For a moment, it seemed that confusion and chaos would erupt at the family dinner, but the Earl looked at Skinn with an admirable stoicism and said, "Skinn, my dear, you need to grow a thicker skin." Then he turned to Tyki. "And if I were you, my boy, I wouldn't test my patience again today."
"Don't get so worked up, Lord Millennium. It's bad for your health—"
Sheril pushed back his chair with a loud scarping sound and jumped to his feet. "Lord Millennium, we are ready and eager to hear your plan. And you, Akuma, fill my plate with veal and potatoes before I demote you to dish washing duty."
If Sheril's spiteful gaze could kill, Tyki would be dead.
They ate in silence for a while. The food was savory and delicate, notably the fish and the chicken stew, and Tyki admittedly enjoyed the meal.
After they had their fill of the food, the Earl dabbed the corner of his mouth with the napkin. "What we will discuss today concerns the events that happened thirty-two years ago," he said gravely. "As some of you know, a traitor appeared in our midst. We call him the Fourteenth."
Tyki set aside his spoon and listened with eager interest.
"Was he one of us, Lord Millennium?" asked Lulu Bell.
"As much as it saddens me to admit, he was once a part of our family, but he turned his back on us. He slew the Noah disciples from the previous generation one by one and sabotaged the Ark. That's why the Ark is no longer fully operational. After the traitor had transferred the sacred knowledge of its controls to a replacement Pianist, the Ark is permanently anchored here in Edo." The Earl made a meaningful pause. "The Ark is one of our greatest weapons against the exorcists and the Black Order because it can travel through dimensions. We cannot let it fall into the filthy hands of humans. So, we need a new ship with different capabilities before we begin our search for the Heart."
Tyki already knew what the Heart was—a powerful Innocence that was particularly loathsome to the Noah inside of him, the beginning and end of all things. The mere name of it roused cold fury within him, and he felt the faintest echo of pain in his stigmata.
"Road and I cannot repair the current Ark because an unknown replacement Pianist exists," the Earl went on, "and if we can't fix this ship, we have to abandon it. It is regrettable, but this Ark is no longer worthy of serving us as our vessel."
"Lord Millenium," said Sheril, "our memories contain no knowledge about building a new Ark."
"Road has the necessary knowledge to transfer the operating data to the new Ark, but the Fourteenth had foreseen this possibility. The old Ark was equipped with a Dark Matter Conduit, an integral part of the Piano mechanism. The Piano won't play until the Conduit is installed with it. There were two Conduits on the original Ark. I only know where one of them is, and it's not on this Ark."
"We think it's in the vaults of Vatican, but we cannot be sure," said Road.
"But how did it get there?"
"The Fourteenth had many valuable associates, including General Cross Marian. That's my best guess. Our top priority remains to find out where the Conduit is and retrieve it. But while we are searching for the Conduit, we should also compile a list of names of people associated with the traitor. These will be our next targets… I suggest you start with the local Brokers. They maneuver splendidly in the shadows of the human world, and someone probably heard a rumor or two over the years. And, lastly," the Earl concluded with a grim determination, "keep in mind that for now we have to limit the scope of our operations and remain hidden from the watchful eye of the Black Order. Secrecy is our best weapon."
"We understand, Lord Millennium," Sheril chimed in. "I suggest that we move our base of operations to my country within the next few weeks. I will use my connections at court to find out everything I can about the location of the Conduit. We will host splendid balls, parties, and poker games to widen our network of faithful agents."
"That's an excellent idea." The Earl glanced around the dining room. "Does anyone have any questions before I order tea and dessert?"
"Yeah, Lord Millennium, what's our roles in your plan?" asked Tyki.
"Lulu Bell will infiltrate Central while you and Road will be assisting Sheril. I'll join you as well after I give Skinn a separate assignment. Charm the nobility, contact the Brokers, and report to me as soon as you learn the exact location of the Conduit. Then we'll figure out how to take it back from them. Am I clear?"
There were a lot of enthusiastic nods around the table, and no one voiced any objections.
"Lord Millennium, I think we're ready for some dessert."
"I agree, Road." The Earl clapped his hands again, and the Akuma carried in trays crammed with all manner of extravagant ice cream desserts topped with cherries, strawberries, and pear slices.
"That's my favorite part of the dinner," Road whispered to Tyki and stuffed a spoonful of whipped cream into her mouth.
"What do you think about the Earl's plan?" he asked in the same hushed tone. "And the traitor? That's the first time I'm hearing about him."
She pouted. "Way to spoil the mood, Tyki. Enjoy your ice cream."
"At least, tell me what happened to this traitor. The Earl didn't say."
"What do you think happened? He's dead." Road's voice trembled from deep emotion, but she turned away from him, and Tyki couldn't see her face.
After dinner, Tyki didn't linger about. Sheril was saying a dramatic farewell to Road who would come to live with him in a few weeks at most, and Tyki didn't wait for his turn to become the target of his brother's abundant affections. He quickly changed in his room, grabbed a small knapsack where he put a set of spare clothes and the Earl's reading glasses, and headed out for the Ark.
Road waited for him in the hallway outside of his room: she leaned against the wall with her legs crossed and slowly licked a lollipop. How she could enjoy candy after the flavorful, enormous ice cream dessert they just ate passed Tyki's comprehension. He couldn't even look at food without feeling a bit nauseous.
"See you later, Road," he said with a casual wave of an arm.
"Running off somewhere again?"
"How's that any of your business? The Earl knows how to find me if he needs me before we meet up with Sheril."
"So, you decided you're going to play coy with me." A ghost of a smile played on her lips.
"I need a breath of fresh air. These doom-and-gloom kinds of places aren't my cup of tea."
"If you're going up to the Ark, you should know that Lord Millennium closed that London exit. It no longer exists. What are you going to do, Tyki?"
"If that's another one of your attempts at extortion, I'm not in the mood to indulge you this time. I'll think of something to get out of here."
"On the contrary, I brought you a gift." A heart-shaped door covered in red-and-pink patterns of tiny squares landed in front of him with a loud thud. "Next time, Tyki, you should just ask me. You know what it means to be the Noah of Dreams, right? My door connects all dimensions like a crossroads."
Tyki touched the doorknob with hesitation. The door felt real, even though he expected to be tricked as payback for his behavior during dinner. The last question about the traitor upset Road deeply, so she withdrew into herself and didn't talk to him until the conclusion of the family dinner.
Yet, Road didn't trick him. Tyki paused on the threshold, with his leg lifted above the muddy-blue mist of the inter-dimensional portal.
"Thanks, Road," he said and walked out onto a desolate evening street in London.
Behind him, the door disappeared, and Tyki was left to his own devices.
