Chapter 542

Chapter 542: Alice’s Simple Theory

Since their “reunion”, this was the first time Lucretia saw such a complex, heavy, yet warm expression on her Father’s face.

Before this, Father had smiled at her, and he had shown many human-like gestures. But for some reason, she always felt a faint wrongness behind those smiles and actions. It always felt like a “kind face” he tried to put on after losing his memories in Subspace, a careful act that kept her faintly uneasy.

Yet in this moment, she finally saw something truly from the heart on his face – a touch of guilt, and a regret no outsider could easily understand.

She did not know whether that guilt was really meant for her.

“I still don’t understand enough,” the witch said with a soft sigh. “I thought I had more or less caught up with you.”

“…the Vanished finally fell into Subspace. It’s a good thing you didn’t catch up,” Duncan shook his head. He gave the quietly floating “Moon” one last look, then turned toward the gangway leading off the platform. “Let’s go back, Lucy.”

Lucretia was a little surprised: “You’re not going to study it a bit longer?”

“I’m not a scholar, and I don’t have proper methods or equipment for research,” Duncan waved a hand. “I only came because I wanted to see it with my own eyes. As for how to uncover its secrets, that’s for the professional scholars.”

He paused, then added: “I’ll be staying in Lightwind Harbor for a while. I’ll keep an eye on your progress on the ‘Moon’ at all times. Also, if any other elves show the same situation as Taran Ael, tell me at once.”

“I understand,” Lucretia nodded at once. Then she hesitated and asked: “About your arrival… can I tell Governor Sara Mell? Of course, I won’t tell anyone else casually…”

“As you like,” Duncan nodded. “Tell whoever you want – however they react has nothing to do with me.”

Lucretia lowered her head slightly: “Yes.”

A short while later, on the Vanished, which was lying on the sea outside the glowing geometric body, a whirling door of flame suddenly opened on the foredeck.

The door opened with sharp popping from the flames, and Duncan stepped out from within. Alice, who was nearby hugging a big mop and scrubbing the deck together with several other mops, instantly dropped what she was doing and ran over happily: “Captain, you’re back!”

Duncan flicked his hand and scattered the flames behind him. He looked at the doll in front of him, clutching a mop and grinning from ear to ear, and gave a simple nod: “Mm. I’m back.”

“Did it go well?” Alice tossed the mop aside without thinking and looked at the captain, excited. “You were gone for so, so long. Did you talk a lot with Miss Lucretia? Did you go to that ‘ball’ thing? What does it look li—ah!”

The mop Alice had thrown aside suddenly jumped up. It smacked the excited doll on the head with its wooden handle, then hopped and clattered away across the deck to rinse itself in a bucket.

Alice clutched her head, staring at Duncan in confusion and hurt: “Why did it hit me?! It almost knocked my head off…”

Duncan looked at this simple, straightforward doll – her bright smile just now, her baffled grievance now – and without even noticing, the stuffy gloom and sense of loss in his chest eased a little.

Alice still felt wronged.

“…You’d better check if that mop is for scrubbing the deck, or if it ‘works’ in the dining room,” Duncan laughed and reached out to press her head. Then he asked, curious: “There’s something I’ve always wanted to ask you – the mops and buckets on this ship can clean the deck on their own. Why do you insist on doing it yourself?”

“I’m helping!” Alice straightened her back proudly. “It’s so tiring for them to scrub all by themselves!”

Duncan’s eyelid twitched. He silently turned his gaze away and looked at the mops and buckets in the distance, racing over the deck as if terrified that if they slowed down by even a step, some doll would grab them to ‘help’. After a moment of silence, he shook his head: “If you’re happy… if you’re all happy, that’s fine.”

Alice nodded in a muddled way. Then she saw Duncan turn as if to head back to the captain’s cabin and couldn’t help asking: “Captain, are you going back to rest?”

“…Yes. I’m a bit tired.”

“Captain…” Alice still looked uneasy. She walked over and tugged on Duncan’s sleeve. “Are you alright?”

“Why do you ask?” Duncan stopped in puzzlement and turned his head to look at the not-so-bright doll.

“Because you’ve been sighing a lot these past two days. And you’ve been spending more time in the captain’s cabin than outside – even Miss Nina thinks you have something on your mind, but she’s too shy to ask you,” Alice answered honestly. “And just now, when you came back, your face looked bad, like… you had a lot of things bottled up inside. But you look better now than you did a moment ago.”

Duncan looked at the doll in front of him in surprise.

He had not expected Alice, who usually seemed carefree and scatterbrained, to notice all this, much less to grab him and say all of it straight out.

Maybe it was exactly because she never thought about many things that she did not know how to hesitate or hold back?

Some half-serious thoughts flickered through Duncan’s mind, but when he looked at the doll still full of worry and confusion, he didn’t know what to say.

After all, even when he faced the well-read Lucretia, there were too many things he could not explain clearly.

“You wouldn’t understand,” Duncan said at last after a brief silence, shaking his head. “It’s very complicated, so complex that it can’t really be explained to anyone. Not just you – even Morris probably couldn’t understand.”

Alice only blinked, then spoke without hesitation: “You can still tell me.”

Duncan didn’t know whether to laugh or cry: “Didn’t I just say you wouldn’t understand…”

“But there are lots of things you say that I don’t understand anyway,” Alice said as if it was the most natural thing in the world. “There’s a lot I don’t understand, but you still tell me. I’m really good at listening to people talk about things. I’ll listen whether I get it or not…”

Duncan’s expression suddenly turned a little strange. Hearing this silly doll speak so bluntly, even with a hint of “pride” in her odd logic, he could not find any way to refute her for a moment.

Alice kept staring straight at the “captain” in front of her. She did not think it was embarrassing that she usually could not understand many things, and she did not feel there was anything wrong with what she was saying now. She thought of it, she was curious, so she said it.

If there was something in your heart, you just said it out loud – in Alice’s simple view of the world, that was how everything worked.

She suddenly ran off, hurried to fetch a big wooden barrel about half her own height, and set it down on the deck near the rail. Then she brought another barrel and set it beside the first.

She nimbly climbed onto one of the barrels, sat down, and waved at Duncan with a smile: “Captain, you should sit too. Miss Vanna said if you let the wind blow on you and look at the sea, you’ll feel much better.”

Duncan hesitated for a moment, then suddenly smiled.

This doll was trying – using her limited knowledge and experience – to find a way to lift the captain’s spirits, even just a little.

Duncan walked over and sat on the barrel beside Alice.

His mood did not change just because the sea breeze blew over him – but it did get a little better.

“Alice.”

“Mm?”

“I want to ask you something,” Duncan said. At first, he had been trying to figure out how to explain the ideas of the “Moon” and the “starry sky” in a way Alice could understand. Now he suddenly realized he did not need to explain those complicated things to her at all. “Let’s say you live in a certain place, and there is something that belongs only to that place. It absolutely can’t come from anywhere else or belong anywhere else. As soon as you see it, you know it comes from there…”

Alice thought for a moment, then asked curiously: “Like how I live on the Vanished now, and you’re the only captain of the Vanished?”

Duncan froze for a second, then said, a bit unsure: “Your example isn’t quite right… but you can understand it that way.”

“Oh. So then what?”

“…Then you leave that place, and you can’t go back,” Duncan’s voice sank slightly. “You go to a very far and strange place. Everything there is different from home. You live there for a while and try to find a way back. But all of a sudden, you see that ‘thing’ – the thing that should only exist in your homeland, that should never appear in this foreign place no matter what…”

When Duncan finished speaking, Alice was still sitting there, blankly thinking. But she hadn’t thought for long before she suddenly broke into a smile.

“Then I must have gone back to the Vanished!”

“Gone back to the Vanished?”

“You said I could understand it that way,” Alice said. “You’re the only captain of the Vanished. One day, I get sent somewhere very far from the Vanished, and I can’t find my way back to the ship. Then you suddenly appear in front of me again. That means I’ve gone home! As long as you’re there, that’s the Vanished.”

The doll beamed, looking at Duncan with full confidence.

“You said that thing can only appear in ‘your homeland’. If it’s in front of you now, that means you’re at home right now!”

Alice finished her theory, then shuffled around on the barrel, turning so she faced the sea. She propped her chin in both hands, leaned forward, and smiled brightly:

“Captain, was that a trick question?”

Duncan was a little stunned.

He stared blankly at the doll on the barrel opposite him. When the sea breeze swept by, Alice’s silver hair lifted and fluttered, like her forever bright and lively mood.

Then he laughed.

“Yes, it was a trick question – and we both figured it out,” he said with a smile as he jumped down from the barrel. “Also, there’s one more thing.”

“Mm?”

“That pose isn’t very stable.”

Still leaning forward with her chin in her hands, Alice blinked in confusion: “Huh?”

The next second, she heard a small click at her neck.

“Pop -”

With two dull thumps, Alice hit the deck in two pieces. Right after that, the deck rang with her trademark stuttering cry:

“Captain, he-help, help… help…”