Before lunch, a glass case filled with metal butterflies had appeared in the southeast corner of the living room in Room Number One on the Second Floor of Shade's house. Shade was quite satisfied with this purchase.
As for buying a frame from Old John, it was for the oil painting "Mermaid." "Desire" had asked Shade to hang it in his home, claiming that the painting itself no longer possessed supernatural power, but Shade would not be put at ease so easily.
Worried that Old John might be affected, he had not left the framing work to him and had done it himself. Though the Outlander was not skilled at framing, fortunately the task was not particularly difficult. For safety's sake, he had even carefully drawn the holy emblem of the Old God—the God of Love—on the white backing between the painting and the wooden backboard.
Then, for extra insurance, he added the holy emblems of the five orthodox gods before securing the oil painting to the backing with canvas tape and attaching its edges to the inside of the frame.
Once that was done, the vividly colored oil painting lay quietly sealed behind a pane of glass. The orange-red-haired Mermaid in the painting gazed out with a half-smile, showing only her profile. Shade held the painting and stared blankly at it for a second before finally looking away. Even if it truly no longer had an Elemental Reaction, the Mermaid in the painting was still beautiful.
What remained was deciding where to hang it. Shade absolutely would not hang the painting in his bedroom. He could not bear waking in the middle of the night, or seeing "Desire" staring at him while he was embracing a young lady—such things were not good for his health.
But hanging it in