The walk to the Holmes residence was marked by a heavy, suffocating silence.
The air in the residential district of Geld Square felt stagnant, as if it were holding its breath, anticipating an intrusion.
When Yuxuan and Emma finally arrived, the house stood before them—a modest, two-story structure framed by a small, overgrown garden.
It was a picturesque scene of domestic normalcy: oak trees provided a canopy of shade, while a chaotic, beautiful mess of dandelions, tulips, and roses choked the garden beds.
An elderly woman greeted them at the threshold.
Her skin was a map of deep, fine wrinkles, her movements slow and deliberate.
She had been waiting, her posture rigid with an unspoken, gnawing anxiety.
“Oh!
I was waiting for you, gumshoes,” she breathed, her voice raspy.
“We are from the Suiban Private Detective Agency,” Emma replied, her professional demeanor smooth and unyielding.
“Are you Ms.
Vena?”.
“Yes, yes.
I am Vena Holmes.
Please, come in,” the woman ushered them inside.
The interior was starkly ordinary.
It was a space designed for a couple, evidenced by the pair of slippers placed neatly by the door.
Vena led them toward a bedroom, her hand trembling slightly as she grasped the door handle.
“You’ll have to meet my husband,” Vena whispered, a strange, frantic look crossing her features.
“He…
he doesn’t like to speak with strangers.
I must ask you to allow me to talk to him first, alone”.
Emma exchanged a glance with Yuxuan before nodding.
They waited in the hall, the silence stretching tautly between them.
From within the room, they heard Vena’s soft, melodic voice: “Dear, I’m back.
Meet the detectives.” There was no response—only a hollow, resonant stillness.
When Emma finally led Yuxuan into the bedroom, the room was bathed in a clinical, antiseptic white.
A brown carpet stretched across the floor, centering on a bed where a frail, bald man sat motionless. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
His eyes remained fixed on the ceiling, unblinking, utterly unresponsive.
“What happened to him?” Emma asked, her voice dropping to a low, cautious tone.
“He’s paralyzed,” Vena replied, her gaze avoiding her husband’s vacant face.
Emma’s brow furrowed.
“And you say someone has been calling your telephone repeatedly?”.
“Yes.
Again and again,” Vena confirmed.
“But there is never anyone on the other end.
No voice, no background noise—just silence”.
The investigation bled into the garden.
As Emma meticulously examined the perimeter, her boot brushed against something metallic nestled in the damp earth beneath the bedroom window.
She knelt, retrieving a fountain pen, its casing tarnished by the soil.
“Wait,” she murmured.
Vena Holmes, who had followed them outside, gasped as she caught sight of the object.
“That…
that is Grey’s pen.
I gifted it to him for his birthday years ago.
What is it doing buried out here?”.
“Your husband is paralyzed, isn’t he, Ms.
Holmes?” Yuxuan interjected, his voice cold and analytical.
“And yet, we find his personal property discarded beneath his own window.
Isn’t that suspicious?”.
Vena’s expression soured, her face flushing with sudden, jagged anger.
“Are you accusing us?
Why would we—”.
“We are simply observing facts.
Let’s return inside”.
Back inside, the tension in the bedroom was palpable.
As they approached the bed, Grey Holmes began to shudder.
A low, guttural groan escaped his throat, and blood began to seep from his eyes, staining his pale skin a morbid crimson.
“Stop!” Vena shrieked, her composure shattering.
“Don’t touch him!
Go away!”.
She lunged toward the bedside table, frantic, and shoved a drawer shut before handing a document toward Emma with trembling fingers.
Emma took it, her expression hardening as she realized they were being dismissed.
As they retreated to the quiet of the street, Emma’s frustration finally boiled over.
“This is infuriating,” she muttered, her eyes narrowing.
“I’ve been a Ranker for years, and this is the kind of mission I get?
We are being played”.
Yuxuan looked back at the house, the silhouette of the bedroom window looming like a dark, unblinking eye.
He didn’t share her frustration.
A cold, sharp clarity had settled over him.
“What is it?” Emma asked, catching his look.
“I know who the culprit is,” Yuxuan said.
The truth in Hullsperk is not a destination; it is a weight.
Yuxuan has peered through the thin, fractured veil of a domestic tragedy and found the jagged gears of something far older and far more cruel.
He believes he has identified the culprit, but in a city where shadows are commissioned to perform their sins by the calendar, one must wonder if a culprit is merely another gear in the machine.
As he stands on the precipice of his first solved case, the cold, metallic reality of the Suiban Organization begins to crystallize around him.
He is no longer looking into the darkness; the darkness has finally blinked back.
And in the silence of Geld Square, the question remains: is Yuxuan hunting the truth, or has the truth finally trapped its hunter?