Chapter 5

Cedine was about to take out the spare key to the monthly rental apartment when she paused to listen for any signs beyond the door. When she carefully pulled the handle, the front door opened. In this situation, what she needed to draw was not a key, but a gun.

Cedine took out her gun and bent her arms so that the muzzle pointed towards the ceiling. The unlit interior was dark and enveloped in silence. Cedine took careful steps. The faint streetlight coming through the hastily drawn curtains was all that provided visibility. She could barely make out the silhouettes of objects.

‘My eyes need to adjust to the darkness quickly.’

She reached Karen’s room, which was closest to the entrance. The door was closed. Cedine held her breath and focused all her senses on detecting any presence inside the room. She felt no signs of life. As soon as she opened the door, she aimed at places where an intruder might be hiding, but as expected, it was empty.

‘Something’s caught on my foot.’

Cedine slowly bent down. Her eyes, now adjusted to the darkness, recognized the items scattered on the floor. A hair iron, tissues, books, picture frames, cosmetics, a round mirror. It looked as if everything on Karen’s desk-slash-vanity had been swept off at once.

Cedine’s next target was the storage room that until recently had been her own room. The door there was also closed, but the interior wasn’t messy. After sweeping through the small bathroom and the living room-slash-kitchen, Cedine headed towards the entrance, still on high alert.

That’s when someone suddenly appeared behind her. It took less than a second from recognition to aiming.

“Cedine, it’s me. Ivlik.”

He showed both his hands. Cedine lowered her gun.

“There’s no one in the house. Judging by the messy state of the place, it seems there was a struggle. It looks like the Duke’s side has already taken my sister.”

After saying this, Cedine suddenly punched Ivlik in the chest. It was an attack full of resentment.

“I told you we didn’t have time to roll around!”

“Cedine, where did you learn to hit someone holding a gun? At least I don’t remember teaching you so sloppily.”

“I guess the Army Ministry teaches to pull the trigger even at this level of punching?”

“Turn on the light.”

“Changing the subject.”

“No, I want to see the scene properly in the light.”

“Ah.”

Cedine, who was about to turn on the nearest standing lamp, hesitated in the darkness. Ivlik asked why.

“What if they’ve connected an explosive detonator to the light switch?”

“So the house would explode as soon as we turn on the lights?”

“…If that’s too much trouble, how about this method? Someone watching this house from outside, ready to detonate it the moment the lights come on.”

Ivlik thought for about five seconds.

“That’s unlikely. I know the psychology of someone seeking revenge out of grudge. They must, absolutely, keep you alive as long as possible. To prolong the suffering. Sending you off with explosives in one go? That’s closer to mercy.”

Cedine turned on the standing lamp. She also turned on a light a bit further away. Both of their eyes were drawn to the kitchen knife stuck in the dining table. Cedine couldn’t believe her eyes.

“There are so many magnets for attaching notes to the fridge…”

“Crotsfield is an old-fashioned man. He’s old-school.”

Ivlik looked down at the paper secured by the kitchen knife. It had the place and time written down for where to go to rescue Karen. Below the warning to come alone without telling her husband, there were three underlines. The meeting time set by the Duke was 10 PM tonight.

At first, Cedine suspected that their plan might have been leaked. She wondered if the Duke had made a preemptive move after noticing their murder conspiracy. Then she felt something was off.

“Tonight at 10 PM. Isn’t this lacking clarity? We came to this house today and saw this, so we think it’s 10 PM on June 29th, but if we had come tomorrow, we would have thought it was 10 PM on June 30th…”

Some realizations come while speaking.

“He wrote it vaguely on purpose.”

Cedine continued.

“Whether I come today, tomorrow, or whenever, he wants me to panic when I see this. It’s an appointment for the night of the same day, so there won’t be enough time to prepare. As for the meeting place, well, they just need to station permanent personnel there.”

The Duke will appear with fully armed subordinates. Cedine and Ivlik checked their watches simultaneously, as if by agreement. They judged that they needed to move quickly to reach the warehouse at the dock by 10 PM.

They’ll need a lot of bullets. It would be good to have a military knife that Cedine handles well too. The two closed the front door and went down the stairs, muffling their footsteps. Before getting into the parked car, Cedine stared intently at the alley across the street. Ivlik asked why she was doing that.

“No… It’s nothing.”

Cedine shook her head briefly.

“I think I imagined it because my nerves are too on edge. I thought I saw something moving, but it was a tree.”

At this, Ivlik also looked at where Cedine had been staring. The streetlight didn’t reach deep into the alley. A cat emerged leisurely from the darkness. It was carrying its daily bread in its mouth.

“A cat was hunting.”

“Oh, really? It was a cat?”

Cedine responded quickly to Ivlik’s words, but somehow seemed unsure. “It was bigger than a cat,” she muttered softly. Ivlik started the car. The black car quietly left the neighborhood on Friday night. Cedine had been silent since getting in the car.

“What are you thinking about, Cedine?”

To Ivlik’s question, Cedine answered while staring out the window.

“I’m thinking that your handwriting is much better than the Duke’s.”

* * *

Ivlik parked the car in a deserted area one block away from the meeting place. Cedine suddenly spoke up.

“You said the Duke died the year after I died. But the three of us regressed together. How long did you live, Ivlik? If he waited until you died… The two of us who died first must have waited quite a long time.”

Ivlik was silent for a moment.

“Lieutenant Colonel, is it difficult for you to understand my question?”

“…Don’t call me by that heart-dropping title. We did a lot earlier, didn’t we?”

Ivlik casually added right after his mischievous joke.

“I committed suicide right after the Duke died.”

“……”

“Lieutenant Liere left a farewell message before I died, saying she would visit your grave and then go somewhere. She said she didn’t know where she’d go, what she’d do, or how she’d live. Like someone who had finished their revenge, the Lieutenant’s voice was as dry and empty as mine. But seeing as she didn’t regress…”

Ivlik pulled up one corner of his mouth crookedly.

“I guess the Lieutenant lived on after that and closed her eyes without regrets.”

Cedine imagined Karen living alone in a world where her parents, her beloved sister, the man who loved that sister, and finally the enemy who caused her sister’s death were all buried.

No one knows what kind of life she lived, but it was impressive that she had nothing she wanted to undo even through regression at the moment of closing her eyes. In a way, it was very much like Karen. Cedine and Ivlik agreed on this point.

Cedine hesitated to ask more about Ivlik’s death. You shouldn’t make someone with so much curiosity hold back their questions. Ivlik decided to answer first, as was his duty as a husband.

“It was a gun suicide. I shot myself here, in the temple, with that revolver I used to shoot the thugs in front of St. Agnes Cathedral.”

He tried to recreate the exact posture with the gun he was holding. Cedine panicked and pulled Ivlik’s gun down. An undisguisable smile spread across his face.

“I didn’t have much intention to live even before catching Crotsfield. But I couldn’t involve the employees, so I gave them severance pay and sent them all away before that. Only the butler stubbornly resisted. He didn’t even want a long vacation, so we finally compromised on a few days’ holiday and sent him out of the capital…”

The butler might have collapsed, realizing his bad premonition had come true.

“MacGray must have cursed me quite a bit.”

Ivlik chuckled softly. Cedine wasn’t in much of a laughing mood.

“Anyway, back to the main point. Originally, you would have visited the Lieutenant’s house the day after tomorrow. Because it’s Lieutenant Liere’s birthday.”

“You even know that?”

“I know pretty much everything I can about you. And it’s not just anything, it’s the Lieutenant’s birthday.”

Ivlik continued with a face that seemed to say, why are you surprised by this much?

“Anyway, the day you were most likely to go to the dock warehouse at 10 PM was the day after tomorrow. Two days after Crotsfield kidnapped the Lieutenant today. That bastard probably planned to torture the Lieutenant while waiting for you to come.”