Chapter 98

Chapter 98: Alice Knew Nothing.

Imagine this scene: you were on a creaking ghost ship. You pushed open a wooden door at the deepest end of the corridor. A dim oil lamp swayed gently. In the flickering light, a headless doll in a Brother’s long dress sat in front of a dressing mirror. The doll held her own head in her hands. The head turned toward you and slowly showed a stiff smile…

Duncan felt that if he had not already been on this ship for so many days, and if he were not already so familiar with Alice, he would have already taken an instant step forward and drawn his gun by now.

Alice, however, had no idea how creepy she had just made things. She obediently pressed her head back onto her neck with a soft pop. Her reactions became quick and lively again. She smiled brightly and greeted Duncan: “Good evening, Captain! Were you looking for me?”

Duncan finally pulled himself together. He looked this doll up and down suspiciously for a long moment and asked: “What are you doing here? Why did Goathead say you were in the cabin counting hairs?”

Alice rolled her neck left and right, then used her fingers to smooth her slightly messy hair. Her expression looked a bit embarrassed: “I was just… checking how much hair I had left.”

Duncan stared at the doll as if he were looking at an idiot. Then he finally noticed something on the edge of the table. It was a spool from who knew where, with a few strands of silvery white hair wound around it. The source of those hairs was obvious…

Duncan kept a blank face: “…”

Alice noticed the captain’s gaze at once. She picked up the spool and explained to Duncan very seriously: “Look, this one is called Miffy, this one is Polly, this one is Femia, and this one, its name is…”

Duncan finally was shocked: “You even gave every hair that fell from your head a name?!”

“To keep a memento,” Alice said with a solemn look, with a bit of sorrow hidden in it. “Didn’t you say it yourself? I’m a doll, and dolls don’t grow hair on their own… If one day it all falls out, I can still hold the list and remember the wonderful times I spent with them…”

This doll left Duncan a bit dazed. He even forgot for a moment why he had come here. After staring in silence for a long time, he finally forced out a sentence: “I was only making an offhand remark back then. You didn’t need to take it to heart… No wonder you’ve been staying in the cabin these past two days. So you’ve been doing this every day? Counting hairs and naming each one that falls out?”

Alice nodded in the most harmless way: “Mm-hm.”

Duncan kept his face stiff. After a while he sighed and said: “Fine. Later I’ll look around in the city-states and see if there is any artificer who specializes in this field and can help you…”

Alice gasped: “You’re going to tie someone up and bring them onto the ship?”

Duncan glared at her: “…I’ll buy you a few wigs as backups! How could it make sense for the Boundless Sea’s mobile calamity to run to a human city-state to kidnap a dollmaker?”

“Well, a mobile calamity sneaking into a human city-state to buy wigs doesn’t sound very right either…” Alice muttered without thinking, but she swallowed the rest of her words halfway through. “Ah, I’ll stop talking, heh heh…”

“Don’t just giggle foolishly,” Duncan suddenly felt a wave of exhaustion. He waved his hand and said: “Forget it, you distracted me so much I almost forgot business—Alice, sit down. I came to you for something serious.”

When Alice saw the captain’s serious expression, she knew it was no time for jokes. She quickly put away her ingratiating smile. While she gathered up the spool, she hurried to sit on the wooden chest by the bed. Her back was straight, her hands folded on her knees, every bit the picture of elegance and poise.

Duncan sighed. For some reason, his composure always broke easily in front of Alice. Even when he had first come to this world, he had stayed cold and calm in front of Goathead. Even when he had possessed the body of a sacrificial victim with his chest cut open and faced a floor full of remains, he had kept his expression steady. Only when facing this unnervingly weird doll did his expression and aura hover between breaking and not quite breaking.

Thinking it over, this was probably the power of “style.” The style that Alice brought really made it hard for anyone to keep a straight face.

He crooked a finger to the side. A chair in the room creaked and scooted over behind him at once. He sat down on it, trying to force his expression back to gloomy majesty, and fixed his gaze on Alice’s eyes.

“Ray Nora. Does that name mean anything to you?”

“Ray Nora?” Alice blinked. Her face showed pure confusion. “Never heard of her… She sounds like a woman? And it feels very elegant and noble… Is she an acquaintance of yours?”

“In theory, she should be someone ‘you’ know, but you say you don’t… Fine, I believe you.” Duncan was not very surprised by Alice’s answer. He went on: “Then what about the city-state of Frostholm? Are you familiar with it? Does it leave any impression on you?”

“Frostholm city-state?” Alice thought for a moment. “I heard about it when I was in the box. It seems to be a city-state on the Frost Sea. There is also a place called Cold Harbor, a gateway between Frostholm and the Central Seas. But I don’t know the details. I only ever heard the names.”

“Then what about ‘Alice Guillotine’?”

The doll looked completely puzzled: “I know Alice, that’s my name—but what is a guillotine?”

Duncan asked several more questions in a row, and the answers he got were all more or less the same.

This result was basically within his expectations.

Alice was utterly in the dark about all of this. Just as she had said on the first day they met, she had no idea about her own past. She did not know the truth behind “Anomaly 099,” she had never understood that city-state of Frostholm, and she had never even heard of the Frostholm Queen who had died half a century ago.

Even though her face was exactly the same as that Frostholm Queen’s.

Duncan had not expected many direct answers when he asked these questions. He only wanted to test whether Alice would have any special reaction when she heard these “key words.” Now the test was over, and the doll was still the same simple-minded doll as before.

He believed that this timid doll would not dare fake her real reactions in front of him—and her level of intelligence probably did not support such advanced tricks anyway.

So… perhaps what he should focus on was not the doll, but the “spirit coffin”?

Duncan’s gaze slowly sharpened. His attention fell on Alice’s ornate, heavy wooden chest.

That ornate chest, once used to contain the doll, still sat in the room, and Alice was sitting steadily on top of it now.

Alice liked her chest very much. She used it as a stool and a storage box, and sometimes even slept inside it—though the room had a perfectly normal bed.

“Open the chest and let me see,” Duncan said.

Alice felt a bit puzzled, but she still quickly hopped down from the chest and casually opened it.

Duncan stepped forward to look.

Inside, the chest was lined with soft red velvet. In one corner lay a small pile of odds and ends: a comb, a spool wrapped with hair, a pocket mirror, and several small metal trinkets.

“I found them on the ship, in other cabins,” Alice said carefully, pointing at the clutter in the corner of the chest. “I asked Mr. Goathead. He said these were ownerless things. I… can I keep them? I think they are very pretty…”

Duncan looked at those old ornaments.

Perhaps, a century ago, someone on this ship had worn them at the tips of their hair or on their chest.

They were traces from when the Vanished had still belonged to the Mortal Realm.

“They’re yours. Keep them,” Duncan said with a nod. But then his gaze suddenly caught on a small object in the pile of clutter. He could not help reaching out to pick it up. “This thing…”

It was a small hair clip, so delicate it did not seem like something that should appear on the Vanished. It looked like a silver-white feather, with tiny breaking waves carved along the edge. Though a century had passed, it was still as bright as new—completely different from those old items.

Duncan frowned. For some reason, when he saw this hair clip, a faint feeling of… longing rose in his heart.

There was even a name that almost slipped from his lips.

But he still could not remember what that almost-spoken name was.

Duncan blinked, a bit bewildered, not knowing where this sudden feeling from deep inside had come from. But gradually, he understood.

Just as, the moment he came onto this ship, he had known the name “Duncan Abnomar”… just now he had once again touched the “echo” still remaining in this body!

He lowered his head to look at the hair clip in his hand, wondering how such a delicate, tiny thing could resonate with the greatest calamity on the Boundless Sea. But soon, Alice’s voice jolted him out of his thoughts: “Captain? Captain, you…”

“Sorry, I can’t give you this hair clip,” Duncan came back to himself and said to Alice. Then he felt that sounded a bit too cold toward the doll miss, so he added: “When I get a chance later, I’ll buy you some new ones in the city-states—these things are all old anyway.”

“Really?!” Alice’s face lit up with delight. “Captain, you’re so nice!”

“Don’t praise me yet,” Duncan shook his head and casually put the hair clip away. “I haven’t finished the serious business… Alice, I’m going to tell you some things now, about your ‘true nature.’ You need to listen carefully.”