Chapter 81

Chapter 81: Memory Deviation

A scholar who for some unknown reason had gone to a commoners’ school to teach history, a teacher well versed in ancient history who also seemed to get along quite well with Nina—his coming was an unexpected situation for Duncan, but also an opportunity.

Old Mr. Morris’s learning in his field would surely help Duncan solve many questions. And if he could build a good relationship with such a professional, it might bring unexpected convenience in the future—a well-regarded old scholar was bound to have some connections in the city-state.

Nina did not know why her Uncle Duncan had suddenly agreed to the home visit. She did not think too deeply about it; she only felt especially happy.

In that hazy moment she even had an illusion—as if her life was really moving in a better direction, slowly… going back to how it had been in the past.

Outside the window, the veil of night deepened. The pale, cold light of the World’s Wound shone on the windowsill of the antique shop’s second floor. Under the quiet night, the whole city slowly grew still.

In this world filled with strange and eerie things, most people had no such thing as nightlife.

“Come eat,” Duncan called to his dazed “niece” by the window. He set the pot of fish soup on the table, along with the bread Nina had bought that afternoon and the onion rings he had just fried on a whim. In his eyes this dinner was not really rich, but considering how special the “fish” was, this meal might even count as a feast in a place like the Lower City. “You still have to get up early for school tomorrow.”

“Oh, all right, Uncle Duncan.”

Nina answered and obediently came to the table. The aroma of the fish soup had already spread. She sniffed in surprise and looked at Duncan in disbelief. “It smells so good… Uncle, when did your cooking get this good?”

“You call this good cooking?” Duncan could not help laughing. He thought that his cooking skills were probably only a little better than Alice’s, and yet someone was actually praising him. “Was I really that bad before?”

“‘Bad’ isn’t enough to describe it. You used to cook by the standard of ‘as long as it doesn’t kill you’. And even though your cooking was awful, you always wanted to ambitiously try new dishes, and every time you dragged me along to be your test subject…” Nina chattered on and on as she recalled the old days, actually a bit animated. “Once you made something so disgusting that even you couldn’t eat it. You had to throw it into the trash, then you dragged me to the family restaurant on the next street for lunch. When we came back, we saw the neighbor’s dog squatting by the trash can at the door, throwing up all over the place. After that, whenever the dog saw you, it walked around you in a big circle…”

As Nina spoke, her voice slowly faded.

“Forget it. That was years ago, and you never liked me bringing it up…”

Duncan stayed silent.

In the memories left in this body, there was not the slightest trace of what Nina was recalling. These were almost the only good memories she had with her uncle, yet they had all vanished completely with the wayward man’s last breath.

Nina silently broke apart the dry, hard bread and used the rich soup to soften it bit by bit.

Duncan suddenly reached out and ruffled the child’s hair.

Nina looked up in surprise. “Uncle?”

“Your uncle’s new recipe experiment was a success,” Duncan said with a perfectly serious face.

Nina stared at Duncan in a daze. Her expression changed several times as who knew how many thoughts circled in her mind. In the end, all those expressions turned into a smile she could not hold back. “Uncle, you look so funny when you act all serious!”

“Don’t make fun of your lord,” Duncan glanced at Nina, then as if suddenly remembering something, he added casually, “Oh, right. I’m planning to sort the shop out properly over the next while. If you see anything strange and unfamiliar on the first floor, don’t touch it.”

He was preparing for the coming shuttling between two places and the flow of “supplies” back and forth.

As AI’s abilities were developed, he would have to teleport cargo back and forth between the Vanished and the antique shop more and more often. It would be hard to hide all of that from Nina’s eyes—so it was better to give her a little warning ahead of time.

Nina did not doubt him at all and quickly nodded. Duncan then went on: “Also, I’m thinking of adding another pair of hands at the shop. That way, if I go out during the day, someone can stay and look after the place. Of course, it’s only an early plan, it might not work out. I just wanted to tell you in advance so you won’t feel strange if you suddenly see a stranger in the shop one day.”

This time, he was laying the groundwork for Alice’s arrival—just laying the groundwork, for now.

Bringing that doll girl into the city-state still involved many problems. Teleporting her here was only the least of them. He also had to think about how to keep Alice’s true nature as a “doll” from being discovered. Alice looked almost no different from a real person. As long as she wore long gloves to hide the joints of her hands, there would be no big problem. At most she would need a veil to cover that face of hers, which was even more delicate than a living girl’s. Those were all small issues. The real problem… was that thing’s head.

He was bringing Alice over to help him. He could not have that one running around in front of people, clutching her head and bolting away all day.

Nina, on the other hand, looked at Duncan in surprise. “Uncle, you’re actually going to hire a shop assistant? That’s a big deal… Do you already have someone in mind? What kind of person is it?”

Duncan thought for a moment and carefully filtered out a whole string of less-than-flattering adjectives from his mind. Then he put on a straight face. “I have an initial candidate. She’s a… hardworking young lady.”

He considered it carefully. “Hardworking” seemed to be the only praise that still fit Alice.

Then he saw Nina’s expression suddenly turn subtle.

The young lady looked her uncle up and down several times and finally could not help herself. “A young lady? Uncle, don’t tell me you…”

Duncan had seen enough of the world to know what she was thinking the instant he saw her face. He knocked his fingers on the table at once. “Eat your food properly! What are you imagining!”

Nina instantly tried to hold back her laughter, making little snorting sounds as she lowered her head and kept eating. After tasting a piece of fish, she opened her eyes wide in surprise again. “It’s really good!”

Duncan laughed and tore off a bit of bread, tossing it to the pigeon pacing nearby. “Then eat more. There’s plenty left in the kitchen.”

On the small second floor of the antique shop, Nina and her Uncle Duncan finished this simple yet long-lost kind of dinner.

After dinner, once everything was cleaned up, Duncan called out to Nina just as she was about to go back to her room to rest.

There were some things he wanted to confirm.

“Nina,” he said, looking at the girl who had just come out of the kitchen with the dishes. “I have something I want to ask you.”

“Huh?” Nina was a little curious. “What is it?”

“Do you still remember… things from when you were little?” Duncan chose his words carefully as he spoke, while recalling the information he had heard at that cultist gathering. “When you were six.”

Nina frowned. She did not know why her uncle had suddenly brought up something from eleven years ago, but she still began to think.

It had been eleven years, and she had only been six back then, so when she thought back on it now, she did not actually feel much sadness.

“I was still very young then, so there are many things I can’t remember clearly. I only remember that day was very chaotic… there were panicked adults everywhere. Some people said a factory near Crossroad District had a leak. Some said there was mass hysteria on Lower Third Street. Some even said something had happened in the Upper City… A lot of it I didn’t understand at the time. I only matched the pieces later, when I heard the adults talking about it again.”

Duncan thought for a moment and looked into Nina’s eyes. “Then do you remember a big fire? I carried you out of the fire that time. Your parents… they were in that fire…”

He was only testing the waters, but to his surprise Nina’s eyes suddenly went wide. “The fire? Uncle, you really remember that there was a big fire back then?!”

“…Of course I remember,” Duncan said. Her reaction told him at once that something about it was wrong. “Is there something wrong with the fire I remember?”

“I also remember there was a fire. A huge, huge fire,” Nina said quickly, a little excited. “But later, when I told the adults around me about it, not a single one of them remembered. They all said I’d been scared silly, that there hadn’t been any fire at all… When I got older, I even went to look for the newspapers from back then on purpose…”

She stopped there and slowly shook her head, a strange look on her face. “But even in the newspapers there was no mention of any big fire… All the records only said that a factory had leaked chemicals, and that the chemicals had caused mass hallucinations…”