"Not much time?"
Lucian received two kinds of news from the royal city. One was from the Cecil family. There was a power struggle in the royal city, and the Cecil family needed him to go back. The other was from the Holy See. The Holy See hoped that he could find the demons in the city as soon as possible. But what made him tremble even more was the secret message in the letter.
"It doesn't matter who the real demons are. The point is that this case has been reported to the Vatican headquarters in the royal city, so it needs to be solved..."
"You just need to find one killer, and then the case is closed."
"Metropolises are always full of people of all kinds. Isn't it common for one or two people to go missing?"
The bishop of Wucheng also thought so - in the past two months, the original bishop of Wucheng was ill in bed, and the bishop replaced the old bishop. He urgently needs to solve the mystery left by the former. In addition, the Vatican is now also caught up in a power struggle...
"Shirel will be disappointed when she finds out about this."
Lucian leaned back in the chair of the cafe. The two people opposite him had already left. He said to himself, "If I were Xi Ruier, I would definitely be anxious and disappointed. He is a man with a sense of justice. The friendship he has formed with the common people of Wucheng in the past two months makes him unable to bear to see them start a multi-level struggle like this, and continue to live in the same haze from now on..."
"Interesting," he said.
He came out of the cafe and unexpectedly found that an informant who was supposed to leave did not leave. Lucian knew from the previous conversation that he was Shirelle's classmate in the church school. He looked at Lucian worriedly and said, "You look worried, Shirelle."
Lucian:
His face still had the usual Lucian smile, but the classmate patted Lucian on the shoulder and said, "Don't deny it. I know that the sadder you are, the more you will use a smile to disguise yourself."
“Maybe…” Lucian changed his tone and said, “I really feel a little uncomfortable.”
The classmate smiled regretfully and said to Lucian, "I know that your relationship with him puts pressure on you. Sometimes I regret that I persuaded you to stay closer to him. But don't worry. Even if the God of Light knows you... he will forgive your sins for your loyalty."
Lucian: ?
Cyril, who was emotionally loyal to the God of Light...was persuaded by a classmate to have more contact with Esther, and thus fell into the deep pain of betraying her own beliefs
Lucian keenly felt that this classmate might not be as friendly as he appeared, and that he was using Cyril as a tool for his own advancement. Now he needed to figure out how to get out of this copy—killing Vader wouldn't work, and he needed to figure out the knot between Cyril and Esther, so he could only find a way to put himself in Cyril's shoes.
What about from Cyril's perspective
From Shirley's point of view, this classmate who knew everything about him and was friendly with him when he was young should be a very important friend of his.
Lucian imitated Shirel's behavior. He should share his sadness with the other party under the other party's soft words, let the other party persuade him, and make a statement that he would definitely solve the case. However, Lucian was a little worried when sharing his difficulties. In the end, he complained: "Esther's bed is too soft and uncomfortable to sleep on."
classmate:…
After seeing off his classmates, Lucian was walking alone on his way back to his apartment. As he turned a corner, he saw Alman driving hurriedly in a horse-drawn carriage.
His intuition made him follow him immediately. He watched Armand enter the slums and quarrel with a family. A woman came out of the house. The woman seemed to have stolen something from Armand and refused to return it, arguing with him impatiently.
"Just wait and see! I won't let you go!" The woman shouted after Alman left. Then, she proudly shook her butt and returned to the room.
Lucian found out that the woman used to work for Alman's family and stole the ring left by Alman's deceased wife, and used it to blackmail Alman...
What would Xi Ruier think? Would he pay attention to this woman
—He will, and that’s also a clue.
“I need to understand and play Xi Ruier.” Lucian murmured, “If I want things and feelings to evolve and let me find the reason for their final dispute.”
He asked some children who were eating candy to keep an eye on the woman's family. The next day he came to Esther's house again. Fortunately, he found that Wade thought the same.
"We do need to play them." Wade said coldly, "If we just follow the development of the incident, we won't understand anything - if we need to find what Esther wants to use to change the ending in the end."
Lucian didn't expect that Wade would come to such a conclusion. He asked curiously, "What do you think the ending that Esther wanted to change will be?"
"It won't be worse than killing him anyway." Wade shrugged. "Maybe he wanted to kill Shirelle who betrayed him first, or maybe he wanted to take Shirelle back to the demon world after he left her with nothing..."
"I thought you were going to say that he regretted not saying 'I love you' to him in the end." Lucian joked.
He was joking in those words. But he didn't know that his voice was so soft and clear that at that moment it always made people feel that it was directed at him.
"... Love?" He heard Wade chew on the word strangely, "Do you think they love each other?"
"A question for your little lover?" the ghost whispered in his ear.
"Lucian is good at laughing off questions to avoid them," said Vader.
He didn't think Lucian would give him any answer, nor did he think Lucian could understand the feelings between the two.
Lucian had not yet realized what Vader was feeling. Vader looked at Lucian, his eyes were heavy, and he didn't know what kind of answer he wanted to get from Lucian. But what he didn't expect was that Lucian actually smiled, and his expression didn't seem to be joking with him.
"I think at least they are satisfied with each other's bodies." Lucian closed his eyes and said with an expression as if thinking, "Ester likes Shirelle - or rather, he likes her very much. Otherwise, he wouldn't play a spy game with him, nor would he try to bring him back to the demon world. But he just likes her, just possesses her. Just like a child likes his toy, the only thing he cares about in this relationship is his own feelings. He wants Shirelle - so how Shirelle feels has nothing to do with him, he just wants Shirelle to make a choice centered on him."
Wade did not hear the ghost's words. He looked at Lucian quietly. Lucian closed his eyes, as if he was smelling the outline of the love affair from the smell of the sun, or as if he was sleepwalking.
"What about...Shirel?"
Wade thought he was the one who should say this, but he realized that this sentence was said by the ghost.
Lucian didn't hear it. He still had his eyes closed, describing it like a sleepwalker.
"Cyril likes Esther, a handsome, elegant, wealthy nobleman. For a young man like him who has always been lonely, he meets all his imaginations. What's more, their sex life is so harmonious. Every climax is a deepening of his addiction - when he is with him, he doesn't have to think about those painful and complicated things, even though those were originally his principles. As for love..."
"I don't think he loves her." Lucian said, "Shirelle is a very stubborn person. Esther was the first stunning beauty that moved him when he was young, but it was not a love that he, who likes stability, could accept calmly."
Lucian looks like a little devil when he closes his eyes, Vader thought.
The little devil closed his eyes and described everything about the other two people from the ashes, vividly and colorfully. He could tell what others were thinking, but no one knew what he was thinking.
At that moment, Vader suddenly felt that Lucian did not belong to this world. This little devil was always so sensitive to other people's emotions, but always insensitive to things that concerned him - perhaps not insensitive, but he just isolated himself from the world, so he never cared about anything related to himself.
Like drifting duckweed.
The drifting duckweed...would it want to have roots
"So it's addiction. Just addiction, right?" Vader said.
Lucian nodded, blinked, and said, "Of course, if Master Wade has a different judgment, I will obey you unconditionally."
The male protagonist's judgment is always right.
"Your lover is such a little devil." The ghost whispered in Vader's ear.
Lucian wanted to say something to Wade, but he found that Wade didn't look smiling or fierce. He just looked ahead, with a rare absence of hostility in his scarlet eyes - at that moment, he even looked a bit scholarly.
Lucian was stunned for some reason.
Wade didn't move, and he didn't say anything about leaving. Lucian lay on the sofa, playing with the teacup again and again, until he finally heard Wade speak again.
“…Lucian, are you afraid?”
He never expected that Wade would say something like this after he opened his mouth.
Fear
"Master Wade." Lucian shrank back exaggeratedly and said, "This is an illusion. You are not going to do this to me again..."
Vader: …
Lucian has escaped again, he thought.
Lucian was like a slippery cat, and whenever he encountered a question he didn't want to answer, he would run away from his hand.
He wanted to catch him and interrogate him, but he was afraid of hurting him.
"Let's play the roles of Xi Ruier and Esther from today on - if we want to know the real solution to leave the illusion." Lucian winked at Wade, "What do you say?"
"… "
Wade didn't say anything.
Lucian then came closer to him and wanted to use his fingers to touch his hair, but immediately, his hand was grabbed by Wade.
"Okay." He heard Wade's hoarse voice, "Ester is a gentleman. In that case, let's imitate them and have a 'love story' between them."
"A gentleman shouldn't have hurt my hand by scratching it, Master Wade."
Vader loosened his grip.
The butler brought afternoon tea, and Lucian went to drink it happily. Wade was still sitting in the chair, looking at the ceiling, thinking of two words.
"indulge."
"Ved." Suddenly, he heard the ghost's voice. The voice was dull and without frivolity. It seemed to be a sincere word. "I have to say..."
"What."
"Stop it," he said. "You can't outsmart him. You're giving your heart, but he's just playing."
"… "
"… What a joke." Vader said finally.