The Exorcist Doctor

A week after the scuffle in the Endless Masquerade, Vivi found herself on the roof of the Grand Bleakhearth Hotel, watching repairmen toil away in the middle of the night.

The Grand Ball stood far, far in the distance, yet it was still too large compared to every other building in Bleakhearth. Even from the hotel roof, she saw the workers shimmying along the outer galleries and upper walkways, having hung curtains over broken walls and repositioned lanterns to hide the damage caused in last week’s battle. The repairmen in dark coats moved only when the spotlights weren’t shining on them, because no matter what, the dance couldn’t be stopped. The show couldn’t be stopped. They’d rather skulk around like rats and delay how long it’d take to repair the damages than do so out in the open, which… was a way to go about it, Vivi supposed.

She couldn’t claim to understand the priorities of the Three-Faces, and she wouldn’t dare question their methods now.

Right after that red-lensed Raven had escaped with the Breeder and the masked lady, the Heartcord Clinic, the Saint’s Hands, and the Three-Faces recovered the kidnapped Hosts stored in the catacombs and extracted them from the Grand Ball. From there, they’d all been sent down to the Heartcord Clinic for mass treatment. With great effort from the Rot Merchants and the Saint’s Hands aboveground, they managed to do all of that without causing too much of a fuss. Most normal patrons didn’t know any better—probably believing it really was just a show—but she’d heard from Cara that the shrewder patrons who did know had been bribed by the Three-Faces to stay absolutely quiet about the whole ordeal.

What was it Cara said?

Something something north of a few million Marks spent on hush money?

It was an incomprehensible amount of money, even for her, but apparently the Master of Masks valued having the Heartcord Clinic around just enough to shell out the funds—so as far as she could tell, their battle that night was nothing more than a one-time performance meant to spice up the dance. Vharnveil probably heard nothing of it, which meant the clinic’s presence that night—and the existence of the symbiote elixir, by extension—remained under the table.

All things considered, it could’ve turned out really, really poorly, but it’d all worked out in the end somehow. The laboratory was destroyed, the catacombs were filled with cement, and none of the patrons had been harmed. She hadn’t seen Gael or Maeve the past week since they were so busy operating on all the rescued Hosts down in Blightmarch, but she was sure the Hosts would be fine as well.

The only problem left was the Breeder.

While Gael and Maeve left to operate on the rescued Hosts, the rest of them had stayed behind to look for any traces of the Breeder. That they had a face and a name to put to the man behind it all meant even the Saint’s Hands and the Three-Faces had joined in on the manhunt, but… nothing. They’d combed through every passage, every false wall, and every hidden service route beneath the Grand Ball. Sometimes they stumbled upon a few dead Myrmur scraps in the catacombs, but in the end, they’d found neither the Breeder, the masked lady, or the red-lensed Raven.

And if the Three-Faces couldn’t find someone in their domain, that meant the Breeder was most likely no longer in Bleakhearth.

She shivered and hugged her knees as she stared at the distant Grand Ball.

… It was impossible for her to forget. Her mind still swirled around that Raven’s red-lensed mask. Gael’s green-lensed mask had frightened her when she first saw it, too, but Gael himself was noisy enough with crass jokes and drunken grins to have never made her too anxious.

That Raven was different. He’d looked at all of them like they were already specimens pinned to a board.

And what was that Gael had whispered at the end?

Surely, he didn’t say…

…

She didn’t want to finish the thought.

But if she hadn’t unconsciously understood it before, she had to admit now that she’d been dragged into something far deeper than she’d signed up for.

So why was it that she didn’t want to give up and go home just yet?

Beneath her—somewhere in their penthouse—Cara and Fergal were talking aloud. They were filling out documents they had to hand over to the Three-Faces in regards to compensation to be paid for the repairwork on the Grand Ball. Elsewhere below, Evelyn and Liorin were playing their respective instruments that they’d stolen from the building: that strange wind instrument and that equally strange string instrument. At least the two teenagers who’d become addicted to their newfound toys were having fun. She couldn’t say the same for Gael and Maeve, who she hadn’t seen in a while, nor for Cara and Fergal, who’d been scratching their heads for the better part of the past twelve hours.

Then she heard the ladder behind her creak.

She didn’t turn. Somehow, she already knew who it was coming up to the roof.

A few moments later, Jin stood beside her at the edge of the roof.

Unfortunately, even Gael’s miracle drugs could only heal so much. Jin’s right arm was bound in a cast, and plenty of bandages were peppered across his face, neck, arms, and legs. If Vivi were stronger and had any more blood to spare, she’d use her Swarmblood Art on him to heal him even more, but she’d been anemic trying to do so over the past couple days, so Jin told her to save her blood.

Jin didn’t usually tell her to do anything. More often, he’d tell her to not do anything, so him asking her to look out for herself was a strange gesture.

Even this—standing right beside her without so much as a single sound—was strange.

But, eventually, he cleared his throat.

“... Can I sit?”

Vivi blinked up at him. “Huh? Yes, uh… of course.”

So he sat beside her with some effort, jaw tightening slightly when his injured arm shifted, and now they both watched the Grand Ball in the distance.

She was about to break the awkward silence with a lighthearted comment about Evelyn and Liorin’s playing when again, he spoke first.

“My father was a most talented potter,” he said. “He had multiple small shops in Vharnveil and left each of them to me and my brothers to run. I think I was good at sculpting. My brothers definitely were. Father used to say we were all destined to make it big in the sculpting field, and I believed him—until he came to my store one day, implanted with a Myrmur, and I had to kill him to put him to rest.”

Vivi went utterly still.

And Jin’s expression didn’t change, either, as he spoke of his past. He spoke of his father’s dying words. He spoke of his mother and elder brothers telling him to keep his father’s reason of death a secret to all their patrons. He spoke of the marriage he’d run away from so he could run away to the Exorcists instead, intent on devoting his life to nothing but the sole purpose of hunting down the man who’d killed his father—and the more Vivi listened, the more the pieces started to click together in her head.

When he finally finished, she found her mouth hung half-open.

“… Oh,” she said.

That was all she had in her. She stared down at her hands, feeling heat crawl up her neck for an entirely different reason than embarrassment. All these months, all these hunts, all his silence, all his anger, all his stubborn refusal to turn away from Myrmurs even when he was bleeding and exhausted and half-poisoned—and she hadn’t known.

She’d followed him down here thinking of marriage and pride and the lovely little future she’d envisioned for herself, but he’d been thinking of nothing but walking through fire for a father he’d already lost.

Such a simple reason. Such an obvious reason.

She felt stupid.

She was stupid.

“I…” Her fingers curled into her dress, her teeth clenching tight. “I’m sorry. I should’ve—”

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“You did well back there,” he said.

She stopped looking down at herself.

And slowly—very slowly—she looked over at him instead.

Jin wasn’t smiling exactly. His face wasn’t built for the easy sort of warmth Gael threw around like loose change, but… for once, he didn’t look annoyed at her, either.

“... Huh?” she whispered.

“Back at the Endless Masquerade,” he said curtly. “You did well.”

Vivi stared at him for another moment.

Then she lit up so fast she couldn't even feel embarrassed by it.

“O-Ohh,” she stammered. “I… uh, thank you.”

“You’re good at dancing.”

“Yes!” she said quickly. “I am. I mean, I had… lessons. A lot of lessons. Too many lessons, actually. My third instructor used to tap my ankles with a cane whenever I stepped too far out, and I hated him for it, but I suppose it became useful… eventually.”

Jin made an amused sound at that. She hesitated, then gathered a pinch of courage from somewhere terribly reckless.

“That… wasn’t my best performance, though,” she muttered, looking away. “If you’d like… do you want to have an actual dance again?”

“No thanks.”

“Oh.”

“The last time I danced, I fell through three floors, ruptured my eardrums, got chased through a ballroom by a scorpion grandfather, and ended the night in a catacomb. I don’t think I’m skilled enough to survive a second date.”

Vivi blinked.

“... Huh?” she said.

“What?”

“Was that a joke?“

Jin blinked back at her. “Was it not funny?”

The question wasn’t fair, because she found herself scoffing, then giggling right after—the sound slipping out before she could stop it.

“It wasn’t funny,” she said, covering her mouth with the back of her hand. “It was… well, you could’ve done better.”

Jin furrowed his brows. “I’m not Gael. I don’t know where he gets his quips.”

“Then you still have much to learn of the Bharnish oration.”

“So do you.”

“So do I.”

She giggled again—a soft, hearty laugh this time—and her own sound startled her just as much it did Jin.

He wouldn’t understand it. Nobody would. But hearing a joke come from his mouth, terrible as it may be, made her feel so incredibly warm and fuzzy inside.

“What about you?” Jin suddenly asked.

“Hm?” she replied, still wiping tears from the corners of her eyes.

“Why’d you decide to come down here with me?”

Her heart immediately tripped over itself and landed face-first. Jin looked at her directly now, and she wished he wouldn’t. His stare was too blunt. Too steady. He didn’t have Gael’s sly knowing eyes or Maeve’s kind patience. Jin looked at everything like he expected the truth to come out, bruised but intact.

So her face went hot.

Horribly hot.

“Oh. Well…” She looked away too quickly. “I just… wanted to help you. Isn’t that good enough?”

“Huh.” Jin’s brows drew together. “Okay then.”

While Jin turned away to stare at the distant Grand Ball, Viv clasped her hands tighter in her lap and stared at the Grand Ball even harder.

She couldn’t tell him. She couldn’t possibly say she’d come down here to chase him as a husband because her family expected it and because pride had wrapped itself around her throat—and the truth was, she didn’t have to say it. It wasn’t like they needed a genuine kinship to make their marriage work up in Vharnveil. She’d never thought she actually had to like him to charm as a husband, nor had she ever thought he actually had to like her back to accept her as a wife.

But for some reason—right here, right now—she found her heart beating like a drum in her chest.

It’s… because of that bad joke.

It was so bad my heart’s still palpitating.

Yes.

That’s… the only reason why.

She let out a small breath, one hand rising to her chest to calm herself.

She was the deceiver. She was the temptress trying to lure him away from this city. She was the vain, selfish one who cared only about her own future and her own prestige, and she was going to make Jin regret ever opening up to her, because he was the one who was going to fall for her.

She was absolutely not going to fall for him.

The Breeder’s laboratory in the upper floor of the Grand Ball wasn’t technically open to visitors, but Gael had managed to sneak in through the broken dome anyways.

The place had possessed a certain honest disorder. Smashed glassware, crushed lab equipment, and broken pipes laying in scattered piles all over aside, the entire floor was littered with torn notebooks and papers. For a normal man, it’d take years to go through everything. For an academic, it’d take weeks, if not months, but Gael’s handwriting was just about as legible as the Breeder’s, so he’d already gone through about a third of them since he broke in about two hours ago.

Two hours ago?

Maybe it’s actually been three hours? Four?

Time was pretty slippery when he was tired and sober. He’d rushed back up to Bleakhearth the moment he finished his last surgery on the rescued Host, and that was… at least six hours ago.

Six hours?

Six hours.

He bent down at the end of the laboratory—right before the shattered window nobody had replaced yet—and picked up yet another notebook.

‘Grave-Class incubation in anesthetic suspension…’

‘Parasite viability increases with ‘spiritual’ depletion…’

‘Host memory suppression unreliably above type three body mass threshold…’

After skimming through the book and committing all the information to memory, he tossed it away and picked up another one.

His bloodshackle suddenly reconnected with another’s, but he didn’t look back as Maeve stepped into the laboratory, pushing through the heavy front doors as quietly as she could. He still didn’t look back as she walked up, stood behind him, and peered over his shoulder as he flipped through his hundredth notebook for the night.

She remained silent for several minutes while he read, sorted, discarded, and picked up more papers. For anyone else, the silence would be unbearable, but Maeve had seen him focused before. She had more patience than most—yet still it wasn’t infinite.

Eventually, she asked, “What’s up?”

Gael turned a page. “Not much.”

“You didn’t even tell me where you were going after we finished the surgeries.”

“Sorry.”

“So?” She shifted closer, looking down at the page in his hands. “What are these things about?”

“Artificial Myrmur Hosts,” he said plainly, flipping another page, “and how to make them. How to store the Myrmurs safely as Grave-Classes before implantation, how to stimulate their evolution into Wretch-Classes through controlled sickness, then into Blight-Classes through stress, fear, blood pressure changes, and other nasty little funeral spices.” He flipped the notebook around so she could see a diagram of a Myrmur lodged neatly beneath drawn ribs. “Some notes on memory suppression, some on surgical wound concealment, some on the exact dosage of anesthesia needed, some on stabilizer substitutes… complicated stuff. It’s hard to explain.”

“Can you use any of it?”

“To find the Breeder? Maybe if he left a clue to his second hideout or something.” He tossed his current papers away and picked up a new notebook. “There are thousands of books in here, though. It’ll take me at least another day or two to go through all of them properly.”

“I’ll help.”

“Nah, no need for you to be here. Just detach the bloodshackle and go do your own thing. I heard Old Banks is hosting a buffet in his manor for our patrons, so—”

“Gael.”

He kept his smile still as stone as he turned another page. “Mhm?”

“How is he still alive?”

His fingers stopped.

Only for a second.

Then he continued flipping through his pages.

“... Back when we first met, we exchanged a bit of our memories, didn’t we?” she said softly. “You saw a bit of my past, and… I saw yours. Your father—Cara’s father as well—he was killed for trying to develop the symbiote elixir, right?”

Gael stared down at a diagram of a larval Grave-Class Myrmur in a nutrient jar.

“Yeah. He died.”

“So if he died, how—”

“That man isn’t Cara’s dad,” he said, flipping another page. “He’s mine.”

Maeve frowned.

“But… if I remember correctly, your birth father was the one who died doing that experiment,” she said. “The one that scarred your face and caused a Myrmur to burst out of your mother’s chest.”

“Yup.”

“Then isn’t your birth father… dead as well?”

“Well, I never actually saw his body,” he said, shrugging. “Never went back to the house right after either. By the time I was old enough and stupid enough to check, the Exorcists had already demolished the whole place, burned the lab, and sealed everything under layers of security checks. I figured he’d probably croaked, since the last I saw of him he was getting his face clawed off by the Myrmur, but… I guess not. But hey. If he’s still alive, I can also guess what he’s trying to do: finishing that experiment the two of us didn’t manage to complete back then.”

Maeve hesitated. She reached for his sleeve, and he almost moved away. Almost. But he didn’t. Her fingers curled around the torn edge of his coat, not pulling, just… holding.

For a moment, Gael wished he were drunk.

“What experiment?” she whispered. “That tiny house… that dark, tiny lab with all the vats and pipes… what were the two of you really trying to do?”

Gael kept his eyes on the Breeder’s pages.

Artificial Myrmur Hosts. Myrmur incubation. Evolutionary forcing. Host control. Parasitic obedience. Red mist flowers. Silver crystal mask. Cold dead eyes.

A boy screaming in a room full of broken glass.

His mom’s body opening.

His dad’s hands, steady and loving and insane.

He stopped reading the pages.

“... I didn’t fully understand it back then, and I still don’t fully understand it now,” he said, “but I’m pretty sure dad was trying to bring mom back.”