Intuition

"Did you already know they were going to clash?" Hope asked Wilbur on the way back.

"Why would you think that?" Wilbur countered.

"Intuition."

"That's just your imagination."

"Did you do something?"

"Are you suggesting I caused their clash?" Wilbur scoffed. "Go to hell, Hope! Their business has nothing to do with me."

"But how am I supposed to believe you? Wilbur, you said this was compensation for me. But how do I know you aren't just staging all of this yourself?"

That seemed to have some effect on Wilbur. He seemed to care a lot about the compensation he had promised. He hesitated for three or four seconds, then asked, "Why do you think I already knew?"

"I already told you. I don't know. It's just intuition."

"Right, intuition." Wilbur nodded.

Hope frowned. "Are you saying you knew all this through intuition? Are you kidding me? You might as well say you figured it out through divination."

"The two aren't actually that different," Wilbur said.

"What we usually call intuition is actually a kind of unconscious logical deduction. For example, you said your intuition told you I'd already foreseen this, but you'd actually noticed a few details that didn't add up. You might not even know what those details were, but your brain had already reached a conclusion based on them."

"So what? You noticed the chance they'd clash three days in advance..."

Wilbur shook his head. "I don't have that kind of ability. The intuition I mean isn't the same as yours. It's real intuition. No logical deduction, no prerequisites. It's like divination—it lets me foresee the future to a certain extent. Three days ago, I knew I could compensate you at the funeral. Then, just before they clashed, I found out this was how."

"A supernatural ability?"

"Yeah, a supernatural ability."

Hope fell half a step behind and pretended to think. Then, while Wilbur wasn't paying attention, he kicked hard at the back of his knee.

Wilbur's "supernatural intuition" didn't work at all. He never noticed Hope's movement. The leg Hope struck buckled forward, and the sudden loss of support on one side sent the two-meter-tall man's center of gravity pitching sharply backward and down.

He threw out one hand to brace himself against the ground and ended up crouching awkwardly, but at least he didn't fall.

"Damn it, Hope!" Wilbur roared.

He didn't use a single spell. Instead, he scrambled to his feet and tackled Hope, relying on his overwhelming size. His black-haired hand clamped around Hope's throat.

"Did you do that to prove I was lying?" Wilbur's face grew even uglier with rage.

"Anyone but you, Hope!" Wilbur said. "I can even predict what my grandfather will do. You're the only exception. I can't predict you!"

He stretched out his other hand and held it open beside Hope's ear. Then he said, "I'm going to catch a falling leaf. It'll have a spiderweb on it, and I'll stuff it into your mouth."

Hope's eyes widened. He saw a speck of green slowly approaching from the sky. It was a slightly yellowed leaf, drifting down until it landed precisely in Wilbur's open palm.

He turned to look at the leaf. It had been chewed by insects, and a white spiderweb clung to it.

It was early summer. Without the insect damage and the spiderweb, a leaf like this wouldn't have fallen.

"Mmph... mmph..." Hope struggled to get free, but Wilbur had one knee pressed against his chest and now gripped his cheeks, forcing his mouth open.

Wilbur stuffed the leaf into Hope's mouth, then forced it shut.

The bitter taste of the fresh leaf mingled with the stringy feel of the web. Hope didn't dare move, afraid that moving his mouth would tear the web and release whatever insect or spider was inside.

More than ten seconds passed. Just as the weight on his chest started to make him feel like he was suffocating, Wilbur finally let him go.

"Ugh... mm..." Hope dropped to his knees and gagged.

"Do you believe in my intuition now?" Wilbur asked.

Hope nodded.

Paul lay in bed, staring blankly at the ceiling.

Colin was busy taking care of the guests for him. Paul had irresponsibly said he wanted to be alone for a while, and the guests had all said they understood.

He didn't really feel sad. The guests thought he was so grief-stricken that he couldn't control his emotions, that he'd been overcome with sorrow and fainted—maybe they were right. But he only felt a little lost.

He'd just finished enrolling that day when an upperclassman called him over to take a phone call.

When he saw the upperclassman looking down instead of meeting his eyes, he had a bad feeling. He asked if there was news from home. The upperclassman stammered and refused to say, and Paul was nearly certain something terrible had happened.

When his aunt tearfully told him to hurry home, he could only think, I knew it.

He wasn't sad then, because his parents' deaths were just a few words spoken by his aunt—light and insubstantial, with nothing to make him believe them.

He asked the freshman adviser for leave, and the adviser had no reason to refuse. He bought the soonest train ticket and took no luggage, thinking that once he got home and saw the bodies, he would burst into tears.

The train stopped midway. Workers there were on strike and had blocked the tracks. He couldn't exchange his ticket for any compensation. The railway company staff weren't difficult to deal with, but he felt that someone like him shouldn't make a fuss over something like that.

He spent all the money he had on him to hitch a ride back to Arkham. There, the red-haired Colin found him, starving, and told him they hadn't found his parents' bodies.

Everything after that was a blur. He became the center of attention for the neighbors and relatives, all of them hovering around him. His aunt handled everything, telling him which things he had to do, but that Colin could take care of the rest if he was too exhausted, physically or mentally.

He didn't care about any of it. He asked his aunt how his parents had died. She stammered, then finally said they had fallen from a waterfall and been swept away by the water.

He nodded, but he knew it was a lie. No one was more afraid of water than his father. That strong man would cry when he took a bath; there was no way he would have gone to a waterfall.

Even now, he wasn't sad. He hadn't shed a single tear.

Staring at the ceiling, he remembered his mother's broom, attached to a long wooden pole. Once a month, she would raise it and sweep across every part of the ceiling, so the ceilings in their home were always spotless.

The guests outside were making a racket, starting to argue about something again. Colin knocked on the door and asked if Paul wanted some corn liquor. He said the strong alcohol might help Paul feel better, but Paul politely declined.

He didn't need strong alcohol to numb himself. He didn't feel bad or sad. He just thought the house felt a little empty, and he wasn't quite used to it.

Someone sat down on the other side of the bed and lay down beside him. That person was as pale as an evil vampire from a story.

He had a feeling he was about to find out how his parents had died.