The Seated Young Woman

Yu Xing entered the game in the afternoon. After being delayed at the police station for a while, he and his two teammates spent half an hour reaching the old villa at the northernmost edge of town.

That alone had cost him 15 stamina points, leaving him with only 70.

Just then, the sky darkened, and the air pressure dropped. York said there would probably be heavy rain later.

Standing at the entrance to the Brown family's villa, Yu Xing carefully examined the old building, the likes of which he had never seen in reality.

The villa was of a thoroughly English style. Its dark red brick walls lent it an air of elegance while adding a sense of strange beauty and age, making one unable to stop wondering what bloody past might be hidden in its unknown history.

The villa was not tall, with three floors. The top floor was very small, practically an attic, and not suitable for living in.

A separate little garden lay before the villa. Looking through the iron gate, Yu Xing saw lush vegetation within, with clusters of roses, wild roses, and lilies in bloom. Yet they all seemed to have grown wildly, with no sign of human care.

The villa stood out and was not hard to find, but whenever they had asked townspeople for directions along the way, the townspeople had always stopped them to give them an exhaustive rundown of the Brown family's oddities.

Masha looked around and said quietly, "The Brown family is pretty wealthy, huh? They bought such a big house as soon as they arrived."

York smiled. "Not bad."

Yu Xing had spoken with them along the way, and both of them seemed to have decent personalities... at least when they were acting normal. Before going in, he said to them, "Let's make this clear beforehand. If there really are any demons inside, I'm relying entirely on you two. I'm just a weak detective with no power to bind even a ghost—I could die very easily."

"Enmmm..." Masha glanced at him skeptically.

Everyone here was a fox, so why was he pretending to be some innocent little rabbit? The way he had handled Lucia had already exposed him, okay!

And York too—he looked perfectly normal, but her woman's intuition kept telling her, This guy is definitely bad news!

Masha touched her twin ponytails, which hung down to her elbows, and felt that she had ended up paired with two perverted men.

She immediately said, "Then I should say this too. I'm timid. Every time I exorcise demons, I hide in the back and throw talismans. Once we're inside, I hope you two brothers will look after me."

Yu Xing pressed down the brim of his hat and responded with a soft laugh.

York patted her head, like an older brother looking after his Younger Sister. "Of course. You're so cute, I—we'll definitely take good care of you~"

Yu Xing frowned imperceptibly.

Why did that lilting tone sound so familiar?

Oh, right. He usually used that tone to tease people before stirring up trouble too.

York had long since thrown away the bloodstained black robe somewhere. Standing by the gate, he raised a hand and tapped the wooden sign hanging on it.

"There's information here."

The sign was hung a little too high for Masha to see. The two people who had just said they would take care of her had absolutely no intention of reading the words on it for her. All she could do was roll her eyes inwardly and curse that men were all big pig's trotters, then rise onto her tiptoes and crane her neck to look up.

It was written in English. After silently reading it once, she translated it into Chinese: "Welcome, every guest who has come from afar. We shall receive you with the finest things, guide beautiful souls to rest here with song, and pray that God grants you endless sweet dreams."

Yu Xing had naturally seen it as well. After noting several key words in his mind, he reached out and pressed the Brown family's doorbell.

The doorbell was not that old. It had probably been installed later.

The instant the bell rang, a figure pushed open the villa's wooden door and gracefully emerged from inside.

She was a middle-aged woman of around forty-five, wearing a pale yellow chiffon dress. After coming out, she looked around, and her gaze quickly settled on the three unfamiliar people outside.

She looked surprised for a moment, then put on a lively, polite expression and warmly opened the iron gate.

"Hello, this is the Brown family." The woman's gaze swept over the three of them, her voice tinged with a question. "You are...?"

Whether judging from the townspeople's descriptions, the information Lucia had provided, or the archival records, the woman before them matched the identity of Mrs. Brown, the mistress of the Brown family. Yu Xing therefore removed his hat and gave a bow. "Hello, Mrs. Brown. My name is Roy."

"Pleased to meet you, ma'am. I'm York."

"I'm Masha."

After his teammates had introduced themselves, Yu Xing sighed. "We're travelers from out of town. We spent half the day sightseeing here and were just about to leave when we realized it was going to rain."

He innocently pointed at the dark sky and the clouds gradually gathering overhead. "And it's getting rather late. We heard that your family is very hospitable, so we wanted to ask whether my companions and I could stay at your home for one night?"

"You are very welcome here. Our family loves having company. Please, come in."

As expected, Mrs. Brown agreed without hesitation. She led the three of them through the center of the garden and directly into the villa.

A draft swept through, carrying the smell of earth and something else.

According to the information Lucia had provided, the Brown family consisted of five people: Mr. Brown, Mrs. Brown, and their three children—the eldest daughter Angel, the second child and only son Alex, and the youngest daughter Susan.

Angel, the eldest, was twenty-one and unmarried. Alex was eighteen, while Susan, the youngest, had just turned fifteen.

They had no servants. Although the house was large, they were only an ordinary family with no social standing to boast of. Thus, there were only five NPCs or bosses in the villa.

Why was it always Mrs. Brown who came out to welcome guests? Where had Mr. Brown gone?

Following behind Mrs. Brown, Yu Xing watched the hem of her dress and quietly filed away the question.

He would find the answer somewhere in this house anyway.

Mrs. Brown opened the villa's double doors. The hinges hanging from the inside swayed with her movements, blending with the unlubricated creak of the front doors.

The distinctive warmth of a fireplace washed over them, mingled with the clear tinkling of a music box. Two children were sitting on the living room sofa reading.

Calling them children was not quite right. There was a boy and a girl, eighteen and fifteen respectively. The former was already an adult, while the latter... might even have been older than Masha.

The hall was exquisitely decorated. When Yu Xing stepped inside, he almost felt as though he had traveled back to the Middle Ages. A square red velvet carpet lay off to one side, and the floor was spotless. Unlike the garden outside, the interior clearly received regular cleaning.

Several oil paintings, frames and all, hung on the walls. They all appeared to depict people, but their subjects were much the same: young women sitting quietly.

The paintings made Yu Xing feel rather uncomfortable.

Now was not the best time to study the paintings. Yu Xing swept his gaze around and was surprised to find an actual fireplace on one side of the living room, burning quite inappropriately—after spending nearly half a day in town, he had judged that it was autumn, not cold at all.

Alex and Susan seemed accustomed to having guests. Susan looked up at the three of them, paused when she saw Masha, then lowered her head and turned another page of her book.

Alex did not even greet them, merely saying in a low voice, "Susan, your music box is too noisy."

"Fine, Alex." Susan pouted and switched off the Little Princess Music Box that had been spinning on the coffee table.

Yu Xing glanced at it casually, then looked toward the fireplace.

The fire burned fiercely, the logs crackling and popping. While making the room feel both dreamlike and real, it also sent a wave of scorching heat toward him.

Mrs. Brown followed his gaze downward and immediately smiled. "Sorry, my husband is ill and needs to stay somewhere warm at all times. If you feel hot, you may take off your coats."

"Of course, ma'am."

Yu Xing hung his suit jacket and top hat on the coat rack by the door, then naturally walked toward the sofa. He heard York, who had likewise hung up his coat, ask Mrs. Brown, "Forgive my presumptuousness, but what happened to Mr. Brown?"

Asking such a question upon their first meeting seemed somewhat impolite, yet it also sounded like the harmless curiosity of an ordinary guest, making it hard to take offense.

Mrs. Brown probably thought that her husband would be coming downstairs for dinner anyway, so there was nothing to hide. She gave a strained smile. "My husband fell seriously ill some time ago. The Doctor said it might not be curable, so we respected his wishes and brought him home from the hospital. His body cannot tolerate the cold. I have no choice but to keep the fireplace burning all year round."

Put that way, it somewhat explained why the Brown family never went out.

"I'm sorry to hear that. Still, your love for your husband is truly moving." York's hair was long enough to be tied into a bun at the back of his head. A few loose strands curled lightly beside his cheeks, and his side-parted bangs barely covered part of his eyelids.

His tall, upright figure was exceptionally striking. As he spoke to Mrs. Brown with a foreign accent, an air of quiet nobility naturally radiated from him.

Yu Xing's peripheral gaze lingered on York for a moment longer. He had not felt it before, but hearing York speak now gave him an inexplicable sense of familiarity, as though he had heard that voice somewhere recently.

But if he had truly met York before, he could not possibly have forgotten someone with that kind of presence. So perhaps the familiar voice was only an illusion.

"Please sit for a while. I'll go arrange your rooms. Oh, and what is the relationship between you three?" Mrs. Brown drew back the foot she had already stepped out with, her gaze shifting among Yu Xing, York, and Masha.

Yu Xing seemed to see every possible arrangement of the three of them flash through her eyes.

Right. This was England. Anything was possible.

Masha carried a large bag on her back. After entering, she had carefully identified every person in the room and, upon finding none of them particularly ghostlike, finally relaxed and turned her attention to Mrs. Brown's question.

Isn't it obvious, handsome guys? I want both of them!

Even if they're perverted handsome guys, I still want them!

"I—"

The excited gleam in Masha's eyes was caught by York. Realizing she might say something outrageous, he placed one hand on top of her head and covered his mouth with the other as he coughed twice, strangling her unspoken words in the cradle. "Ahem. Roy and I are good friends. Masha is my younger sister."

After saying that, he released her. Masha only felt a chilly breeze atop her head, cold to the bone.

What the hell? How could I feel cold in a room with a fireplace? York was warning me, wasn't he?

Masha was clever. She rubbed the cold spot on her head.

Tch. Younger sister it is, then.

Mrs. Brown went off to prepare the guest rooms.

While the other two were fooling around, Yu Xing had already walked over to the sofa, sat down, and struck up a conversation with Susan.

"Hi, I'm Roy. Sorry to trouble your family tonight. What's your name? How old are you?" With his devilishly handsome face, Yu Xing spoke to Susan in the gentlest tone.

Susan was no longer a simple little child. At fifteen, she was right in the middle of adolescence, and kids these days knew plenty. If he spoke to her in the tone one used to coax a child, she might very well call him an idiot in her heart.

So Yu Xing treated Susan the way he would treat an adult.

"My name is Susan. I'm fifteen." Susan's amber eyes stared at Yu Xing, then she suddenly covered her face shyly. "You're not troubling us. Not at all."

Yu Xing: "..." The kid had reached the age of awakening romantic feelings.

He had not expected Susan to become shy around him, so he could only lean back slightly and give her time to recover.

As his gaze shifted, it landed on the music box atop the coffee table.

A bow-shaped winding key protruded from the back of the music box, while a princess-like young woman sat on its round base.

The young woman was dressed very dreamily, in a layered pink cake dress with an elaborate crown and braided hair. The only thing that caught Yu Xing's attention was that she was sitting.

Sitting again.

It was exactly like the oil paintings on the walls of the hall. Even the poses were nearly identical.

There was nothing strange about sitting, of course, and the music box itself did not seem improper. He was simply too perceptive—perceptive enough to recognize the source of the discordance after only one glance. The young women in the paintings, who should have been modeled after real people, were quiet and stiff like dolls.

At that thought, Yu Xing could not help raising his head and meeting the eyes of one of the young women in the oil paintings.

Ah. They had made eye contact.

Yu Xing smiled at the young woman.

He remembered that, when he had looked earlier, this quiet blonde girl in a black dress had still been gazing at the cat in her arms.