Editor: Kitty
Crow woke up to a headache. It was like he had experienced a tormenting war, as if he traversed through countless battlefields filled with gunpowder and flames. He felt as if he recalled something, as if he had dreamt of something in the past, but when he carefully thought about it, he could not remember anything. Also, when he woke up, he heard a roar:
“Who killed him!?”
Crow stood up and looked at Owl instinctively. His eyes widened in horror!
Owl wasa dead.
It seemed a bit inappropriate to say Owl had ‘died,’ but Crow did not know how to describe it. Owl was sitting there in the seat he had been sitting in moments ago. He still had the music box in his hands. The music box was still playing beautiful and melodious music, but the box was stained with a lot of blood. The blood was dripping from Owl’s drooping head, and every drop fell on the box in his palm.
“What happened?” Crow walked over in disbelief. Then he squatted at Owl’s feet and raised his head to look at him.
Owl’s eyes were cut, that is, there was a long cut made by a knife. The slit went from the corners of his eyes over the bridge of his nose in the middle of his face, and the thick blood flowed down from his eyes all over his face.
But this was not a fatal injury; the most critical injury was the wound on Owl’s neck. The cut was deep, and one could see his bones. The sight was intolerable for them to witness. The blood began to flow all over his body from his neck. Owl’s blood appeared to be distinctly dark, red, and thick. It did not look like fresh blood, and the amount he bled was not much. According to common sense, the blood of people who were killed by slitting their throats would be splashed all around. The blood pressure of the major artery in his neck would make his blood surge like a fountain.
But all that did not matter. What matters was who had done this to Owl? Who ‘killed’ him?!
The first thing Crow could think of was Wolf. He shook his fingertips and turned to stare at Wolf: “Why did he turn out this way?!”
“How do I know?” Wolf rarely put on an expression without ridicule and without his usual ferocious smile. His face was a little pale, and that was very rare. Wolf looked terrible. He dropped his head; his hair scattered all around, and he was short of breath. He said, “This is what this guy looked like when I woke up.”
“Don’t make excuses! Among us, you’re the one most likely to do this!” Crow, who rarely got emotional, became agitated. He could not help but grasp Owl’s arm. Owl’s skin, which lay bare, was frigid, and this made Crow’s heart cold. He continued to glare at Wolf wrathfully.
He said: “You’ve been arguing with Owl all the time, and the conflict between you and him has been escalating. You have long wanted to kill him, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t kill him!” Wolf denied and seemed to be angry. He began to roar at Crow: “I’d candidly confess if I killed him! But I will never put a false charge on myself!”
“Where we’re at, who wished that they could kill Owl? And who has the motive to kill him?” Crow was very flustered, as if because Owl died, he had lost the reason to continue pulling himself up. Although Crow once suspected Owl, he also inexplicably believed that in this strange train, only Owl was truly trustworthy.
“You must understand that there are three of us here!” Wolf took a deep breath and adjusted the pace of his breathing. He looked at Crow and Black cat.
Wolf said, “Owl was killed before we woke up. That is to say, after Owl stopped the music, the three of us began to search the train car. At that time, I was at the aisle outside the crew lounge and toilet, and I saw Crow…… You fainted and fell asleep on the sofa, and thereafter I fell asleep. The only one awake after that was probably Black cat! You have to ask him what happened before you question me on whether I’m the murderer or not, OK?”
“I don’t know.” When Black cat heard Wolf’s words, he also opened his mouth. His voice was hoarse: “Soon after you all fell asleep, I began to lose consciousness. At that time, I saw Owl. He appeared fine.”
“I don’t understand!” Crow almost wanted to scream. He held Owl’s hand tightly, and Owl’s blood trickled down from his arm to Crow’s fingers: “The three of us are alive here. All of you have reasons to deny that you didn’t do it! Could it be that there’s someone other than us here?”
“Come on! Why do you not feel guilty when you blame me for the murder?” Wolf started to mock Crow again and sneered at Crow: “I can also suspect that you have done such a thing. Think about it: you can easily pretend to be the first one among us to faint, and after that, you can lie down and wait for me and Black cat to fall asleep. Then, you can crawl toward Owl to…”
Before Wolf finished speaking, Crow suddenly stood up! When his anger surged up his heart, he took the music box that was still playing music from Owl’s palm and cruelly smashed it at Wolf!
Wolf could not respond in due time. He reached out and knocked away the music box that was sent smashing toward him. Because the box was not solid, when it fell with a hard slap from Wolf, the different components splattered on the ground.
Therefore, the wonderful violin instrumental music stopped abruptly.
“F*ck!” Wolf glared at Crow indignantly: “I knew it. You want to kill all of us!”
“Then go to hell! You despicable bastard!” Crow had long been so angry that he lost his sense of reasoning. He reached out, grabbed a glass bottle on the table, and smashed it on Wolf’s head. Wolf dodged and just as he wanted to fight back, Black cat suddenly squatted down and picked up something from the components that were splattered everywhere.
“Stop fighting. I’ve found the key.” Black cat said.
But since the duo were still muddled with anger, even the surprise of finding the key could not stop the fight between Crow and Wolf. Owl’s death made Crow so upset and furious that he went insane. Perhaps since the death of the Two-headed snake, negative emotions had started accumulating within him. And all clues leading to the one that spearheaded the contradictions was Wolf.
Crow decided that it was Wolf who killed the man.
But Wolf felt inexplicably slightly aggrieved because he thought he had done nothing.
Black cat stood by and watched them fight with the key in his hand. His eyes were a little dark, as if they could penetrate through the darkness. Black cat had very few expressions on his face, and he rarely felt any emotions. He also rarely expressed his feelings, and the look in his eyes would not change, but this did not mean that he did not understand anything. It also did not mean that he would simply follow orders.
However, Wolf, who was targeted by Crow, was not reconciled and began to counterattack. The two fought while mocking each other. At the beginning, Wolf was still restrained. Because Crow never took part in fights, he always felt that this fool was a little weak, so he didn’t dare to go all out because he was afraid to kill him. However, as the fighting continued, he was unable to restrain himself, so he began to pay no heed to his moves.
When he woke up and found that Owl was dead, Wolf had started to feel bouts of pain in his chest. It was not awful to bear, but it did not make him feel good. This made Wolf irascible, especially when Crow sent himself to his door. After seeing Crow, he felt it was hard to level his emotions. When he sent a fist to Crow’s stomach, he felt his eyes turn bloodshot.
If there was no one there to stop the fight, maybe one of them would really kill the other. Only one of them would survive.
However, Black cat finally stopped the fight. He cut across the air as he entered the battlefield. He grabbed Wolf’s dominant arm and gave him a kick, forcing Wolf to fall down, and just like this, he face-planted on the ground.
Then Black cat grabbed Crow by his neck and pressed him onto the sofa cushion.
“Calm down…… Now that the music has stopped, we have to open the door.” Black cat’s voice was very gentle although there was no expression on his face.
Crow did not speak and gasped in confusion, but his body relaxed slowly. He closed his eyes and covered his face with his hand.
“Why don’t you all care?” Crow sounded as if he was weeping. His sad voice asked in a soft tone: “Although I don’t remember anything, I think all of you are important to me before I lost my memory.”
“But neither of you are upset—are you strangers just because you lost your memories?”
“They are all dead…” As Crow muttered, he started crying. His hands were still covering his face, and as tears seeped out between his fingers, they mixed with some of the blood on his fingers, turning into shiny, bloody water. He gritted his teeth to stop his sobs and curled up on the sofa as he buried his face in the rough cushion.
“I’m not willing to—” Crow’s voice was hoarse. He sounded like a small animal that was sadly calling out as it was not willing to die.
Black cat sat by Crow, lowered his head to look at him, and touched Crow’s soft black hair with his hands.
“Don’t be afraid. Everything will be fine,” he comforted him. Incredibly, his voice was strangely gentle.
Carriage No.7’s door was finally opened by Black cat. Now there were only three people left in the team of five, and the group had become so fragile that it was on the verge of collapse. Before leaving, Crow went back to Owl to look at him. Now, Owl could no longer move. As he sat on the sofa, Crow touched Owl’s cold hands.
“You should know what had happened, right?” Crow squatted beside Owl and asked him in a low voice.
Owl did not move. The blood on him had stopped flowing and began to dry up.
“You’re not dead, I know……” Crow said, “Or rather, from the beginning, you were already dead, though it’s really inconceivable.”
“I think you can hear me—” Crow sadly stated, “I’m sorry. It’s all my fault.”
Over at the other side, Black cat opened the door and called Crow’s name.
Crow turned around to look at Black cat and thereafter, at Owl.
“I’m sorry—” He repeated his apology.
“I have to leave you here.”
Following that, Crow got up and walked toward the door connecting carriage No.7 to carriage No.6. Now, they had to depart for carriage No.6.
T/N: …. :/