Kallen's heart suddenly lurched.
Then,
there was a brief silence.
Strangely,
the person on the other end did not hang up either.
"You interrupted my artistic creation..."
Those words kept repeating rapidly in Kallen's mind, right down to the voice and tone.
Kallen did not think he had dialed the wrong number.
Nor did he think someone was playing a joke.
And he certainly was not naive enough to believe the person was simply an artist practicing some traditional art at the Crematorium Society.
Sometimes intuition really mattered, because it let you skip all the little preliminaries and get straight to the heart of the problem.
Although reason told him this was far too bizarre, downright absurd,
after that brief silence, Kallen still
pinched his throat with the fingers of his right hand
and said,
"Then would you like some worthwhile artistic advice?"
"Oh?"
The person sounded puzzled, seemingly not expecting such a reply from the caller. Then he laughed.
Kallen heard the laughter over the phone. It was a man's laugh, rather sinister and shrill. Kallen continued,
"Or do you actually have no confidence in your own art?"
"You're very interesting. A shame. Had you called a little earlier, I would have been willing to hear your opinion. Unfortunately, that won't work this time."
"Why?"
Kallen closed his eyes as he asked. It was a question whose answer he already knew without asking.
And the person on the other end gave exactly the answer Kallen had expected:
"Because this creation is already finished. Only a few finishing touches remain, and they're troubling me. Can you understand that frustration?"
Kallen replied, "When I took drawing lessons as a child, my teacher would point out that some corner of my picture was too empty and needed something added, even if it had no direct connection to the rest of the picture. Adding something just for the sake of adding it-that was always the most frustrating part."
"Yes, exactly! That's the frustration. That's where I am right now."
"That's actually a sign of insufficient skill," Kallen said. "That's why I never became a painter when I grew up. Someone who can't even plan the composition before painting and has to fill in the gaps at the end-how could they call themselves a painter, let alone an artist? How could they even speak of art?"
After Kallen finished, the breathing on the other end suddenly grew rapid.
A psychiatrist knew how to soothe people's emotions and avoid provoking patients. By the same token, he naturally knew how to find their sore spots.
Kallen continued,
"You think you're an artist? No, you aren't. You're just an arrogant, narcissistic fool. Please don't insult the word 'art.'"
The sound of grinding teeth came over the phone.
Clearly,
Kallen's words had struck a nerve.
Yet Kallen, holding the receiver, felt rather helpless himself. There was nothing he could do right now, not even call the police, since doing so would require hanging up first.
He could not go to the basement to find Aunt Mary or upstairs to find his grandfather either, because the telephone cord was not long enough.
If he shouted for someone... the person on the phone would certainly hear.
The man on the other end said, "I'm very disappointed in you. When we first began talking, I even thought for a moment that you might be someone God had sent me who shared my aesthetic sensibilities. Unfortunately, you aren't.
"You're still young,
"so your understanding of art is too shallow. Art has no hierarchy."
Kallen calmly replied,
"But art has standards."
Slam!
The person on the other end slammed down the receiver.
Kallen put down his receiver as well.
Frowning in confusion, he said,
"He said..."
Kallen released his throat. Pinching it for so long had left it sore, so he had to rub it gently, coughing a few times.
"I'm still young?"
With those last words, his voice changed from its earlier low pitch back to its natural tone.
"Knock... knock..."
"Come in."
The study door opened. Dis, seated behind the desk, looked up at Kallen standing in the doorway.
"Grandpa."
"What is it?"
"Something seems to have happened at the Hughes Crematorium."
"How do you know?"
"Because I just called them, and the person who answered seemed to be the killer-the psychopath from the Crown Ballroom."
His grandfather put down his fountain pen
and asked,
"Have you called the police?"
Kallen shook his head.
"Call them," his grandfather suggested.
Kallen had not actually intended to call the police, because the person on the phone had explicitly said his work was already complete.
In other words, if there was a victim, that person was already dead.
Call the police to collect the body?
Kallen saw little point, unless the killer happened to fall and break his leg while leaving the crime scene, and a police car happened to pull up right in front of him.
"Are you worried it might be a prank?" his grandfather asked. "Don't worry. Even if it's a false report, you'll only have to pay a fine."
Kallen shook his head again.
"Then what do you want to do?"
"I want to go to the Hughes Crematorium now and take a look."
Take a look at his latest work.
Dis raised his teacup, took a sip, and nodded slightly.
"You may go. You have my permission."
Kallen remained in the doorway without moving.
"Hmm?" Dis set down his cup. "What's wrong?"
Kallen licked his lips
and said quite bluntly,
"I'm afraid to go alone."
"Heh, heh." Dis suddenly laughed. "That's exactly what you used to tell me when you were little and afraid to go to the bathroom at night."
Suddenly,
Dis fell silent.
A trace of awkwardness appeared on his face.
"What's wrong, my little Kallen?"
"Grandpa, it's dark. The bathroom. I need to pee. I'm afraid to go alone."
"Then I'll stand here in the hallway and wait for you. You go inside and do your business, all right?"
"Come with me, Grandpa. Come with me."
The taxi drove from Mink Street all the way to the Hughes Crematorium in the suburbs. It was quite far, taking more than twice as long as Kallen's taxi ride home from the Crown Ballroom.
When they reached the entrance to the Hughes Crematorium,
the driver turned toward Dis in the back seat and said with a smile,
"That'll be 45 Lu Coins, sir."
Dis handed him a fifty-Lu-Coin note. The driver passed back five Lu Coins in change, which Dis accepted.
Then,
grandfather and grandson got out.
Watching the taxi drive away, Kallen silently muttered,
Fuck.
The Crematorium Society's gates were tightly shut. A battered motorcycle stood outside, with a bundled quilt tied to its seat. A man and a woman stood beside it, looking very anxious.
The quilt probably held a body brought here for cremation.
Yet a "Closed" sign hung at the entrance.
"Excuse me, do you work here?" the woman stepped forward and asked.
Kallen shook his head. "No."
Hearing this, the man angrily kicked a pebble away from the gate and cursed,
"We made an appointment yesterday! Why are they closed today? Absolutely shameless! Shameless!"
"Why don't we try somewhere else?" the woman suggested.
"There's no time. It's almost dark. Any other crematorium will be closed by the time we get there."
"Has this place been closed all day?" Kallen asked.
"We've been waiting here since one," the man said resentfully.
Kallen noticed the quilt on their motorcycle. A little white hair showed from one corner. It was probably an elderly family member who had passed away.
People who could afford funeral arrangements through the Immerlis Family were hardly ordinary folk; most were middle-class. Even Mr. Mossan's children, whom Aunt Mary had complained about repeatedly, had spent several thousand Lu Coins despite cutting many services.
Several thousand Lu Coins was no small sum for a family at the bottom of society.
And the Welfare Form was only available to people without relatives. Even if your family was too poor to afford a funeral, as long as you still had relatives around, you could not receive a Welfare Form like Jeff. You were not pitiful enough.
Thus, when the poorest people in Rojia City died, their families brought them straight to the Crematorium Society for cremation.
Uncle Mason had once said that customers the Immerlis Family considered "penniless" were already premium clients in the Crematorium Society's eyes.
Just then, an aging red Caiman pulled up and stopped at the entrance.
When the car door opened,
to Kallen's surprise, the person who got out was Mrs. Hughes, wearing a long blue dress with a brown down jacket over it.
The still-"living" Mrs. Hughes immediately smiled upon seeing Kallen, but when she noticed Dis beside him, she quickly resumed a dignified manner.
"Oh? Why are the gates locked?"
Mrs. Hughes walked over, puzzled, and took a spare key from her bag to unlock them.
"Why have you only just arrived?" the man could not help stepping forward to demand.
Mrs. Hughes glanced at him, then at the motorcycle, and replied,
"I don't know either. There were only two bookings today, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Yes, the afternoon one must be yours. So I gave myself and another employee the day off and left one longtime employee here on duty.
"If the owner of the cement factory up the road hadn't driven past, seen customers waiting outside, and called me, I wouldn't have come.
"How strange. Did Old Darcy skip work today?"
"I don't care what the reason is. I've been waiting here with my mother today for..."
"You can complain to the government, or go straight to the police and file a report. I've already explained it once. You have every right to complain, but keep your distance from me now. This is a place for burning bodies. Believe me, I'll throw you into the furnace and burn you too!"
Faced with Mrs. Hughes's sudden ferocity, the man was frightened into silence.
A woman who had run a crematorium alone for so many years was bound to have a fierce side. Otherwise, she would never have lasted this long.
"By the way, Mr. Dis, what brings you here today..."
"My grandson wanted to come and see you," Dis replied.
Mrs. Hughes blinked. She dearly wanted to tease the handsome young man of the Immerlis Family with a few dirty jokes, but Dis's presence was simply too imposing. No wonder Mary always revealed her awe of her father-in-law whenever the women got together.
Once the gates were open, Mrs. Hughes went inside. The man picked up the quilt-wrapped body, his wife helping support it, and they followed her in.
"Do you need to go inside?" Dis asked.
"Yes," Kallen replied. "If Mrs. Hughes isn't the artwork, then it must be someone else."
Kallen still firmly believed his judgment, and the previously locked gates were themselves evidence that something was wrong.
They proceeded in three groups.
Mrs. Hughes walked ahead, calling Old Darcy's name.
The couple carrying the elderly woman's body followed.
Behind them came Kallen and Dis.
Finally,
they all arrived at the glass wall outside the cremation room.
The cremation room door stood open, and no one was inside.
"Please cremate my mother first," the man said.
"I need to find my worker!" Mrs. Hughes snapped. She was furious because she had discovered the furnace was hot, which meant an enormous waste. "Old Darcy! Old Darcy!"
Kallen's attention settled on the counter ahead-or, more precisely, on the urns atop it.
The last time he had come, the urns had been neatly displayed beside their price tags. Now they were neatly stacked like building blocks, not in a triangle, but in an upright rectangle.
Besides, all these urns were lying on their sides, with their lids facing outward rather than upward.
Kallen stepped forward,
his gaze settling on the far left of the bottom row. He reached out, gripped the lid fitted onto the urn, and opened it.
"Aaaah!!!!"
The woman screamed.
"Ah!"
The quilt fell from the man's hands, and his mother rolled out of it.
"Oh my God!" Mrs. Hughes covered her mouth.
Dis silently moved a little closer.
Inside the urn Kallen had just opened lay... a foot, a bloody foot.
There was even a price tag tucked between its toes, marked at 1,500 Lu Coins.
Kallen opened the urn above it, revealing a knee.
It felt like opening blind boxes,
but with a little less uncertainty.
Kallen reached up, caught hold of the lid of the topmost urn, and pulled it open.
Inside the topmost urn,
there was a head,
Old Darcy's head,
and in Old Darcy's mouth was a price tag marked at 10,000 Lu Coins.
Old Darcy had been taken apart,
his separate parts placed into urns. Then, as though stacking building blocks, someone had "assembled" Old Darcy again.
Just then,
Kallen's gaze fell on the desk diagonally ahead of him. A telephone sat on it.
Walking over to the telephone,
Kallen picked up the receiver,
and when he turned back toward the urn stand,
he realized that he stood directly in front of the "assembled" Old Darcy!
This
was the best spot to admire him.
In Kallen's field of vision,
a figure in black seemed to appear.
The figure had been standing with his hands held in front of him, admiring the building blocks he had just finished assembling.
Then the telephone beside him rang.
He frowned slightly and did not answer.
Soon, the telephone rang a second time. This time, he picked up the receiver:
"You've interrupted my artistic creation..."
Before you continue