"Do you remember the fool in the story I just told?"
Arthur asked Tallit.
The pigeon keeper nodded.
"I do."
"Actually, in that story, the fool didn't die by accident. He... wanted to die!"
Arthur spoke slowly.
The pigeon keeper froze, disbelief rising in his eyes.
"Impossible!
How could someone who only knew how to show off possibly want to die?"
The pigeon keeper shook his head rapidly, refusing to accept it.
"Of course he could!
That fool was consumed by guilt. To make up for it, he had to turn himself into a fool-because he discovered that whenever people mocked him and humiliated him, the person he felt guilty toward would be happy.
And so, he became a fool."
Arthur sighed as he spoke.
"But, but..."
"The pain?
That fool was willing to die, so of course he could bear it. Even when someone stabbed him four times in the chest and abdomen, and then the person he felt guilty toward slit his throat, he never made a sound. He even lay there holding his breath, pretending to be dead.
That fool had known all along what the person he felt guilty toward was planning.
He chose to cooperate.
After all...
She was his little sister."
Listening to Arthur, the pigeon keeper sat there in a daze, his expression blank.
What the young Medium said had never even occurred to him.
All he knew was a bastard who, jealous of his parents' affection, had deliberately pushed his sister out of a tree into the pit below, then kept mocking her.
This...
Instinctively, the pigeon keeper raised his head and looked at Arthur.
The young Medium stood where he was, his expression calm, meeting his gaze without flinching.
Instinctively, the pigeon keeper believed the young Medium.
"I, I..."
The pigeon