The woman who called herself Miss Stillwell put down her teacup and sighed, then took off the coat on her own initiative. The rain did not make the room cooler but made it more stuffy.
Unexpectedly, what Miss Stewell wore under her coat was not a common dress, but a nun's dress. Judging from the style, it was definitely not the nun's costume of the Sage Church, and because there was no holy emblem on the chest, Jenkins couldn't tell which church this unique robe belonged to.
"Could she be performing an undercover mission?"
Jenkins guessed absently that he originally had a lot of questions to ask, but now facing the person he had been looking for for a long time, he found that he didn't know what the first question should be.
"Well, Jenkins, that's what I'll call you. We've never met, but I've noticed you since your first edition came out half a year ago. Daddy's apprentice, it's different Usual status. I don't know what motivated you to become an apprentice in an antique shop, but it always reminds me of my past... Please don't guess my age, young gentleman, your eyes are very rude."
She said this to Jenkins, and Jenkins sighed and turned his head to look out the window. He knew the answer was right in front of him:
"Then why did you come to Nolan to look for me? Just because I wanted to find you, you returned to Nolan, where you have been away for many years? To be honest, Miss Stewell, I am facing a lot of troubles now. If you came to see me for other things, please tell me as soon as possible, otherwise once it is involved with the things I am facing, you will not be able to explain clearly."
"trouble?"
The woman tilted her head slightly to observe Jenkins' expression, and only after seeing his serious side face did she believe that it was not a lie. Like Jenkins, she turned her head to look at the running water on the window and the unfamiliar but familiar Nolan in the distance. The wine-red haired woman felt a lot of emotion for a while.
"I didn't come to you for anything. I just wanted to see you and find out what kind of apprentice my father found. I didn't have the chance to meet the young gentleman who died in the undead disaster. I don't know about this matter." Regretted for many years."
"Come to see me? Why haven't you returned to Nolan or communicated with Dad for so many years? I found the bark you gave Dad at the end of a certain year. I think if you still keep in touch , you should have told him about the bark, instead of being discovered by me until last week."
"That was years ago... Jenkins, what do you think Pop is like?"
she asked instead.
"Kind, optimistic, open-minded, with a great sense of humor..."
Jenkins picked as many positive adjectives as he could. In fact, apart from his occasional miserliness, Dad really didn't seem to have any shortcomings.
"Have you noticed anything wrong with him?"
"I know he's going to live a very long time, it won't be below triple digits."
Jenkins once discovered that Papa had a relationship with Dolores' great-grandfather, which confirmed that Papa was definitely not the fifties he appeared to be.
"That's right, this is one of Dad's secrets. He once suffered a terrible curse. Although the sage's gaze can dispel the curse, it may completely shatter Dad's soul, so he refused. Mortals are like this fragile~"
"The curse of eternal life?"
Jenkins asked, if he didn't know that his father was actively investigating the Kamel family, he would have suspected that his father was actually the mysterious person who carved "dream awakening" on the tree.
"Yes, this is a permanent scar on Dad's heart. But it has nothing to do with my leaving. I left Nolan because of another matter, another secret..."
Her words stopped here, she frowned and looked towards the corner of the wall, not intending to continue explaining. Jenkins waited for a while, and could only ask actively:
"What secret does daddy have?"
"Father is back! I live here, within half a month you can visit me after 6pm on any day, don't tell dad that I'm back in Nolan!"
She quickly threw the business card to Jenkins, stood up and took the overcoat that was draped aside, and was enveloped by an inexplicable white mist with the sound of snapping her fingers. And when the white mist disappeared, Miss Stillwell had disappeared.
"Ah, Jenkins, where are you going? Come here, things may be more troublesome than we imagined!"
The person who came back in a hurry made a daddy voice. He didn't seem to have an umbrella. When Jenkins saw him, he seemed to be swimming in the river with his clothes on and then just climbed ashore.
There was no umbrella or suitcase in hand, not even a hat, and a string of wet footprints stretched from the door into the store.
"Follow me!"
When the old man said this, he stretched out his hand to pull Jenkins. Jenkins didn't understand what happened for a moment, but he quickly picked up the cat, picked up his coat and umbrella, and followed his father out of the door.
The rain outside was bigger than Jenkins imagined. The dense raindrops fell on the ground and splashed in all directions, as if they were going to penetrate the ground. The shocking sound of rain made people feel a little scared for no reason.
The father pulled Jenkins and wanted to run into the rain. Jenkins turned around to close the store door, but the father yelled at him:
"It's too late, don't worry about the store."
"No, you're not Dad! Who are you?"
Flames gushed out of Jenkins' hand, and the "father" who was holding his hand shook off Jenkins' hand like an electric shock. The pretender jumped back and stood in the middle of the street in the rain, and the remaining inextinguishable fire in his hand was actually extinguished in the rain.
The scorched hand quickly recovered, and the raindrops from the sky seemed to be absorbed by the palm, constantly replacing the burned skin, muscle and nerve tissue.
"No matter what kind of things happen to Dad, he will never ignore the store. His feelings for this store are beyond my imagination."
Jenkins also stood in the rain, letting the downpour drenched his body. Something squirmed in his chest, and then Chocolate the Drowning Cat squirmed out of there, then sprinted to the ground, and then quickly stepped on the low-lying puddles back under the awning of the store.
The rain wet its fur, and the cat fur was tightly attached to its body, which made Chocolate look thinner. The cat shrugged its back and shook its body so quickly that Jenkins couldn't even see its shaking figure from the corner of his eye. Then most of the rainwater was thrown out, but the chocolate was still soaked.
"Besides, I'm really angry now. You interrupted my important date. Do you know how long I've been waiting for this day?"