13 Mink Street

Richard opened the door and stepped in from the entryway into the living room, only to find two people sitting there. They sat facing each other like strangers. One could not tell at all that they had once produced a child together.

Yes, sitting in the living room were his father and... his mother.

The woman turned and saw Richard returning. She immediately stood up, opened her arms, and said happily, “Oh, my dear son is back!”

“Mom!” Richard gave his mother a hug.

“I heard you went on a mission?”

“Yes. Because I wanted to earn some credits through my own ability, so that on the next birthday of my most beloved mother, I could give her an exquisite gift.”

“Oh, how sweet.” Casey kissed her son on the forehead.

At that moment, Eisen stood up and said, “Richard, entertain your mother.”

After saying that, he walked into a room on the first floor as if fleeing from disaster and shut the door behind him.

“If only your father could be as cheerful as you.” Casey sighed.

“That’s because Father gave all his sunshine to me.”

“You’re becoming more and more eloquent, my son. How was it? Was the mission tiring?”

“Not tiring; very fulfilling.”

“Then what were you responsible for in the squad?”

“Hiding in the shadows with my captain and teammates, protecting the target.”

“Is that so? Then it must have been exhausting. Would you like to go take a bath first?”

“All right, Mom, then I’ll go upstairs and wash up first.”

“Oh, right. Your grandfather is upstairs. Go greet your grandfather.”

“Grandfather is here too? All right, Mom.” Richard went upstairs and knocked on the door of the study.

“Come in.”

“Grandfather.”

“You’re back.” Derron was not sitting behind the desk, but standing in front of a wall, looking at that old family portrait.

“Yes, I’m back. The mission is over.”

“Tired?”

“Not tired. It was my first mission, and from beginning to end it felt very fulfilling.”

“Your father and mother are talking downstairs?”

“Even if you came upstairs and left the downstairs living room to the two of them, do you really think they would talk?”

“Sigh. I really don’t know how your father turned out like this. When he was little, he was only a bit withdrawn, but now, when his own son is already grown, he somehow seems to be regressing further and further.”

“I think Father should see a psychologist.”

“Would that help?”

“If he doesn’t see one, it definitely won’t help.”

“Then let’s give it a try. You keep an eye out and look for one.”

“All right, Grandfather, but once I find a suitable doctor, it will still require you to speak up and make Father go.”

“Of course I know that.” Derron took two steps back, but his gaze remained fixed on the photograph.

“Grandfather, are you thinking about my eldest aunt again?”

“Yes. When your father was little, only when your eldest aunt took care of him would he smile or become a bit livelier. I keep thinking that if your eldest aunt were still alive and still living with this family, your father probably wouldn’t have turned into what he is now.

“Your eldest aunt’s child would probably be about your age, or maybe just a little older. You might have had an older cousin.”

“Oh, right, Grandfather, why are you, Father, Mother all at home? Did Mother come back from Port Mulberry just to visit the family?”

“She has official business in York City, so she came home to have a look.”

“Oh, so that’s how it is.”

“Richard, do not blame your mother.”

“I’ve never blamed Mother. If I were Mother, I think I would also find it hard to face a husband like that every day.”

“As his son, those words aren’t very suitable for you to say.”

“We’re all family, so naturally we can understand. Grandfather, I’m going to bathe first.”

“Go on.”

Richard closed the study door. Hearing movement downstairs, he moved toward the stair landing and discovered that his younger aunt’s voice was coming from below. She’s here too?

Richard did not go downstairs, but instead entered the washroom. While taking off his clothes, he paused for a moment. The whole family had returned, and all of them were at home? This house had not been so full for years.

Richard could not help recalling what the captain had said to him before he came back. “It looks like something really is about to happen.”

After bathing and changing clothes, Richard entered his room, but deliberately did not shut the bedroom door. He lay down on the bed.

The sounds from the downstairs living room came up intermittently. It was mostly his younger aunt and his mother talking. After a while, he also heard his grandfather’s voice. His grandfather had likely gone downstairs as well.

Lying on the bed, Richard began to feel sleepy. For the past few days, he had been standing inside the elevator, sleeping only by leaning against its wall. After not touching a bed for several days, as soon as he laid down on one, he suddenly found it hard to leave again, and drowsiness came tugging at him along with it.

Even so, Richard forced himself not to fall asleep. In a bit, he found it too painful to keep forcing himself to stay awake while lying on the bed, so he simply got up and leaned sideways against the wall by his bedroom door, as though he were still in the elevator carrying out his mission.

Half-asleep and half-awake, he did not know how much time passed before he noticed that the voices downstairs had stopped.

Richard immediately opened his eyes. It was like someone had pressed the elevator button, and he snapped straight into alertness.

He went downstairs. Sure enough, he happened to see his grandfather, father, mother, and younger aunt just walking from the living room into the entryway.

“Younger Aunt, you’re here!” Richard greeted his younger aunt enthusiastically.

“Look at that, our glorious Whip of Order member has come home.”

Casey looked at her son with concern and asked, “Didn’t you sleep?”

“I slept for a bit just now. I was just about to go on a date with Belina.”

“Who’s Belina?” Casey asked in confusion.

“She’s a girl your son has recently been seeing,” the younger woman explained. “I remember that name.”

“Yes, she’s a very gentle girl. Her father is a missionary officer from the Church of Reincarnation, and her mother is from Swillen. She’s supposed to be very good at making Swillen dishes, and I think tonight I might finally get the chance to taste them.” Richard noticed that as he said these words, his father, mother, and younger aunt all remained completely normal in expression. Hmm? Not right?

“Richard, my grandson.” At that moment, Derron, who had just walked to the doorway, stepped back again and pointed at Richard. “After coming back from completing a mission, I think that what you need is rest, proper rest. I know young people like to go out and enjoy themselves, but there is a time for that. So, for the sake of your health, I hope you sleep at home tonight. You are already an adult. You need to know how to control the rhythm of your life and work, do you understand?”

“I understand, Grandfather.”

“I do not want you deceiving me. If you agree to something, you must do it. Otherwise, your grandfather will be very angry.”

“Yes, Grandfather. I’ll listen to you. I won’t go anywhere tonight. I’ll stay home and rest properly.”

“Mm. Good.”

“Rest well, son.” Casey gave Richard a hug, then followed the others out of the house.

Richard did not return to his bedroom. Instead, he went and sat down on the sofa in the living room and muttered to himself, “Grandfather reacted very sensitively, while Father, Mother, and Younger Aunt didn’t react at all. Doesn’t that mean that the place they are about to go and the mission they are about to carry out are things only Grandfather knows for now, while Father, Mother, and Younger Aunt still do not have the clearance to know? So, the secrecy procedure is really this strict? Strict enough that even their own children have no privy to it.”

Ring ring ring... The phone rang, and Richard picked it up.

“Hello, it’s me.”

“Captain!”

“Did you say it?”

“Captain, I followed your instructions and said it. Grandfather... had a reaction.”

“Good. I understand. Rest well.”

“Yes, Captain.”

***

Nio put down the receiver in the phone booth and looked at Karon. “I’ll give you a chance to guess. Which orthodox church do you think it is?”

Karon answered, “The Church of Reincarnation.”

“Why?”

“Because when we first met Delius, he immediately gave us one hundred thousand Reincarnation credits to treat us to afternoon tea. I think he must have brought quite a lot of credits with him this time for the negotiations. Under those circumstances, Spacegem credits would have been unsuitable to hand out, because they had been depreciating for some time, and they were no longer stable credits issued by an orthodox church.

“The fact that he could casually take out one hundred thousand credits to tip us proves he still had quite a lot of Reincarnation credits on him, which also proves that the relationship between the Church of Pamireth and the Church of Reincarnation is close.

“If one uses the Church of Pamireth as a springboard to attack an opponent, then ideally, that opponent should be one very familiar with the Church of Pamireth, and ideally their overt relationship should be very good as well. Only then would the effect of the surprise attack be best.”

“Very good reasoning,” Nio said.

“I think my reasoning is a bit forced.”

“No. That’s only because the information available to you is too limited. Investigating and confirming things is often like that. You can’t always expect to obtain sufficient information every single time.

“Order’s target this time is the Church of Reincarnation. At first, my analysis was the same as yours, but before, it was still just a guess. After all, this concerns my entire savings, so naturally, I can’t afford to be careless. That’s why I had Richard help me ask. Well, it wasn’t really asking, but more that I handed him one possible answer and had him conduct a little test.”

“You were certain the Gorman family would know?”

“Yes. Do you remember the collapse of the Church Affairs Building last time?”

“I remember you saying that the department director under Mr. Derron was exposed as a traitor, and before being arrested, he activated the ritual array of the Church Affairs Building.”

“Yes, that’s right, and the facts are indeed like that. But don’t you think it’s strange?”

“Strange?”

“Our church actually started arresting traitors.”

“...” Karon.

“This is something the upper ranks might not necessarily have been unaware of. They may have been too lazy to investigate, or perhaps deliberately allowed it to continue. After all, all the major churches infiltrate each other and mix sand into one another’s ranks. Everyone knew it in their hearts, so what happened at that time was clearly rather abnormal, to the point that it looked like they deliberately screened a team before preparing to do something urgent and important.

“And once the director of that department ran into trouble, the man who had been the deputy director, our old Mr. Derron, would naturally become the real person in charge of that department, wouldn’t he? There are some things the Bishops here in York City district may not know, but Mr. Derron would know, because he is the hilt of that blade. And no one can doubt the absolute loyalty of the Gorman family to the Church of Order.

“I think tonight, in coordination with the departure time of those several Knight Regiments over there, they should also begin some sort of action, such as... using ritual arrays in advance to seal off the Church Affairs Building of the Church of Reincarnation in York City, as well as several important missionary points?” Nio looked toward the big screen, where Reincarnation credits, as credits from an orthodox church, were listed near the top. “What’s the point of Spacegem credits? Shorting the credits of an orthodox church is the truly interesting thing.”

“Captain, Fannie still has one hundred thousand Reincarnation credits.”

“Given Fannie’s habits, she probably already exchanged them for Order credits on the black market the moment she separated from us, so you don’t need to worry about that. Besides, after this incident, there should be a major internal purge aimed at traitors within the church. The main targets will be those who leaked and sold information during this time. That’s also why I had you beat those three until they bled. Otherwise they might well have been implicated.”

“But Captain, what about the two of us right now...” Compared to Paige and the others merely selling bits of information, Karon felt that the two of them were much more like true spies, and they had already accomplished something even an excellent spy might not be able to pull off.

“Do you have a handler?” Nio asked Karon.

“I don’t...”

“What a coincidence. Neither do I. So neither of us has a handler, how does that make us traitors?”

“This...”

“You know, a lot of the people buying internal church information are church people themselves. Fishing is always easier than jumping into the pond and trying to catch fish with your bare hands, isn’t it?”

“I understand, Captain.”

“All right, I’m going to place the order. Go downstairs and order me another glass of Delna Blood Wine. I think after I finish placing the order, my hands will probably still be shaking a little, after all, it’s my entire savings.”

“All right, Captain.”

A short while later, Karon came back up carrying a glass of blood wine and saw that the captain had already placed the order and was sitting there, looking at his hands as though they really were trembling. “Captain, your drink.”

Nio took the glass, drank a large mouthful, and asked, “Going home next?”

“Do you have any other plans, Captain?”

“I’d like to go admire the moonlight outside the Church Affairs Building of the Church of Reincarnation.”

“I’d like to go too.”

Nio looked at Karon and asked, “So when you saw our Church Affairs Building collapse last time, especially when you saw the warehouse and shop floors fall down, did you also feel an impulse in your heart?”

Karon nodded. “It’s a pity there were several Expositors guarding that section of the building at the time.”

Nio let out a sigh and said, “What I regret is that it was daytime.”

***

Creak... An iron door opened, and Delius, wearing shackles, was escorted out of his cell and into an office. There, he saw his father, Bishop Byrne, dressed in black armor.

Byrne spoke first, “I’m sorry. The garrison cells haven’t been used for a long time. The environment inside must have been very bad.”

“You are... part of the Knight Regiment?”

“You should feel proud of that, because your father is not merely a Bishop of the York City district. He also once served as a glorious member of a Knight Regiment. Though I am already retired, I still retain military rank in this garrison. Strictly speaking, my identity as a Bishop is the side job.”

“You reached a cooperation agreement with the Pontiff long ago. Order’s target this time is not the Church of Pamireth, but just to use the Herald’s Domain as a springboard.”

“So you finally understand?”

“The moment I learned that the spatial prison had collapsed, I understood. Without the Pontiff’s approval and cooperation, this entire performance could never have been carried through.” Delius had informed the Pontiff in time, yet events had still not changed. He firmly believed that the Pontiff had the ability to stop all of this from happening.

“Yes, that’s right. In truth, the length of time that Order has infiltrated and controlled the Church of Pamireth is much longer than you imagine.”

“Then who is Order’s real target this time?”

“Do you know who destroyed the spatial prison? The maintenance squad leader Kandar. You shouldn’t be unfamiliar with him. He once competed with you for the position of Divine Progeny, but lost to you.”

“It was him?”

“Yes, him. After he and his accomplices sabotaged the spatial prison and tried to flee, they were captured in time, along with a team that had come to receive them.

“Besides that, the Pamireth spatial divine artifact Silentium that he stole and used completely recorded the entire criminal process. It can truly be called a case where both criminal and stolen goods were caught together, and the evidence is thorough.

“In fact, he is very much like you. These past years, while you have always said you wanted to publicly praise Order, he probably wanted just as badly to loudly praise Reincarnation.”

“So the target is the Church of Reincarnation.”

“When attacking a medium-sized church like the Church of Pamireth, using excuses and justifications would not really be appropriate, but when the target is an orthodox church like the Church of Reincarnation, Order does indeed need a reason capable of convincing the entire ecclesiastical world.

“And we obtained that reason, a reason that cannot be argued against, cannot be denied. A reason whose facts are clear and plain: it was the Church of Reincarnation that first made a move against Order. Order is merely striking back in self-defense.

“Tomorrow, the Senate of Order will present this evidence to the entire ecclesiastical world and expose the evil deeds of the Church of Reincarnation. Our Church of Order will declare war on the Church of Reincarnation!”

“Hehehe... hehehe...” Delius began to laugh, laughter so intense that tears ran from the corners of his eyes.

Byrne simply sat there and let him vent his emotions, though from time to time he glanced at the clock, as if calculating how much time he was willing to tolerate his son’s emotional release. At last, Delius lifted his head again and looked at the father seated before him. “So you had already planned everything; the war’s target, its justification, its springboard, all of it laid out in advance. Then just what was I in all this? Was I just a clown? A clown who did not even know he was playing the clown and still performed with all his effort.

“Hehehe, how ridiculous, because no matter what choice I made, no matter what I did, it would not actually have changed the course or outcome of this matter at all, would it?”

“Yes.”

“Then why did you still send me to the Church of Pamireth! If it could all begin again, I would not want to become any Divine Progeny. Even if you are not a good father, I would still rather have stayed with my family all along.”

“In fact, you were always with your family.”

“Who?”

“After you entered the Church of Pamireth, who gave you the greatest help and support all this time?”

A look of utter disbelief appeared on Delius’s face. He stared, wide-eyed and dazedly asked, “The Pontiff?”

Byrne smiled and said, “You ought to call him... Grandfather.”

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