Death. The moment life fades away. A body without a soul.

The first and last death Kisa had encountered in her life resurfaced in her mind.

It was the same back then. Following the servants with dark faces, she found her mother lying in bed with her eyes closed as if asleep.

Though they had spent time together every day, she happened to draw her last breath when Kisa wasn’t by her side.

Everyone spoke of her death, but the thin hand Kisa absentmindedly grasped still held a lingering warmth.

Just like now.

“……”

As she bent her stiff neck to examine the cat in the boy’s arms more closely, things that weren’t visible before now came into view.

The unusually dull fur, the body that had thinned in just days, and the numerous wounds hidden beneath the fur.

Especially the wound on its paw, which seemed recent as it was still stained with blood.

“This was probably the decisive cause that led to its death.”

The boy, noticing Kisa’s gaze, kindly explained in detail what he had observed and deduced.

“When I looked earlier, there was a long trail of blood in the alley. Judging by the wound, I think it might have been caught in a device like a mousetrap. Did it injure an artery? Anyway, in an already weakened state, losing a large amount of blood could easily cause excessive bleeding.”

Faced with an array of words she couldn’t understand, or rather, didn’t want to understand, Kisa’s body began to tremble slightly.

“The other wounds on its body seem to have been there for some time, and judging by their shape, they look like scars from animal claws or teeth. It’s likely the work of other stray cats or dogs. Maybe it was a territorial dispute. Given its apparent age, this cat was probably at a disadvantage.”

However, seemingly unaware of this fact, the boy continued speaking.

“It’s just my speculation, but that might be why it suddenly disappeared after visiting your house every day. It couldn’t roam around as before for fear of being attacked again, so it must have been hungry. That’s probably why it entered a place like a food storage it usually wouldn’t approach…”

Only then did the boy stop talking and look closely at Kisa, who had been quiet all this time.

Then he asked like this.

“What’s wrong?”

With an expression that seemed genuinely puzzled.

Kisa, her gaze fixed on the dead cat as if nailed in place, took one step back, then another.

“Ugh, ugh.”

A groan escaped from her small mouth, and her head moved left and right as if denying reality.

“Are you feeling unwell? You don’t look good.”

The boy tilted his head and once again closed the distance.

And as if that wasn’t enough, he held out the corpse in his hands even closer to Kisa.

“If so, it would be better to say your goodbyes quickly and return home to see a doctor.”

In the process, as the cat’s paw pointed downward, it was only natural for the blood soaked in the wound to fall due to gravity.

The moment the ominous liquid from the dead body began to stain the ground was the turning point.

Kisa had to acknowledge the cruel truth unfolding before her.

Whiskers Jack was dead. No longer in this world.

The cat that had brought back Kisa’s lost smile after her mother’s passing was gone.

What lay before her eyes resembled Jack but was nothing more than an empty shell he had left behind.

A shell without a soul, no longer able to eat the food Kisa gave, with only decay awaiting it.

“No!”

A sharp scream rang out.

It was a scream so desperate and eardrum-piercing that even Kisa, who let it out, found it unfamiliar.

“No! I don’t want this! Don’t come near me!”

The boy’s eyes widened as he saw Kisa violently shaking her body in refusal.

As if he had realized something, the boy stopped approaching, but Kisa’s state did not calm down.

Thick tears flowed from the eyes of the child who had collapsed in place, her legs giving out.

“Jack can’t be dead. Jack, Jack……”

Though she tried hard to deny it, the reality was all too clear even to young Kisa.

The crying sound grew louder and soon turned into loud, wailing sobs.

And as the commotion grew, passersby gradually gathered around Kisa and the boy.

“What’s going on? What happened?”

“Oh my, why is that little girl like that?”

“Did that boy bully her?”

At that moment, among those who each uttered a word, a boy darted out like an arrow.

“Kisa? Damn, it really is Kisa!”

It was Daniel Lowens, who had left his fiancée alone earlier to go play with his friends.

“Get out of the way!”

Daniel, who had rushed out, pushed away with all his might the red-haired boy who was trying to approach the girl after putting the cat down on the ground.

“Why are you here? What about the house? Is no one else around?”

Then he grasped Kisa’s shoulders and questioned her, but she was in no state to answer.

Kisa, not even properly realizing that Daniel had arrived, just kept shedding tears.

“Good grief! Don’t tell me you snuck out alone? Just to find a cat? You fool!”

After scolding her once, Daniel glared at the being he thought was the cause of his fiancée’s tears.

“You, bastard! What did you do to her?”

“……”

However, regardless of Daniel’s actions, the boy stared at Kisa with an expression difficult to read.

“Hey, who do you think you’re looking at? I asked what you did to her! Answer me straight!”

It was Kisa who restrained Daniel, who looked ready to rush in and throw punches at any moment.

“Daniel, Jack… Jack……”

Seeing Kisa mumbling as if out of her mind while holding onto his sleeve, Daniel clicked his tongue.

Faced with the choice between prioritizing punishing the bad guy and protecting his fiancée, Daniel chose the latter.

“You, just wait. I’ve memorized your face clearly. I’ll definitely find you and beat you to a pulp, so look forward to it.”

He warned through gritted teeth before helping Kisa up and supporting her body.

“Jack, Jack……”

“Kisa, pull yourself together. We need to go back quickly. They must have noticed you’re gone too by now.”

As she was being dragged away by Daniel, Kisa felt a gaze sticking to the back of her head and turned to look back.

The red-haired boy was still looking at Kisa. Steadily. Without even glancing at Daniel.

Startled, Kisa turned her head away.

Even as the sorrow of losing Jack overwhelmed her entire heart, a clear fear raised its head.

The reddish-brown eyes that had seemed dry yet warm until just moments ago now felt infinitely cold.

‘I’m scared.’

Indeed, red hair is scary.

That boy is scary.

Jack’s death is scary.

The red-haired boy who held out Jack’s corpse with a calm face.

It was a sight too difficult for young Kisa to accept as it was.

She just wanted to forget.

‘Yes, let’s just forget it.’

Forgetting was Kisa’s specialty.

Even the memories of when Baroness van Spelt passed away were somewhat vague, except for a few specific scenes.

Kisa closed her eyes tightly and muttered to herself.

Let’s forget everything.

Kisa took a sharp breath.

Quickly looking around, she saw the dark room lit by a single lamp come into view.

The headache was gone, but as her head was still foggy, a sense of reality slowly began to return.

‘The memory that just came back…’

Was it something that really happened?

Moments too vivid to be called a dream argued for the reliability of the memory.

It was surprising enough to have forgotten such an intense event entirely, but what was even more shocking was something else.

That boy in the memory and…

“This scarf.”

Kisa looked down at the colorfully knitted wool in her hand as she sat on the floor.

There was no need to recall again; Kisa was clearly wearing this scarf knitted by her mother at the time.

But given that she had no memory of wearing it after that, she most likely lost it then.

“I wasn’t in my right mind.”

Even if the knot had come undone and the scarf had fallen to the street due to her violent movements, she wouldn’t have noticed, and there was no one to ask about the whereabouts of the scarf to Kisa who had gone missing and returned.

Therefore, the identity of this dark red stain on the scarf must be Jack’s blood that had soaked into the ground.

When thought of like that, everything fit together.

“But why is this here……”

There was only one possibility she could think of.

Someone must have picked up the scarf there at the time and put it in this wooden box.

As if by incredible coincidence, both the boy who was closest to Kisa at that time and the owner of this room had red hair.

No, there’s no need to go that far; aren’t the two individuals’ faces very similar?

Even now, she clearly remembers the boy’s neat features.

Not only did he closely resemble the young brothers in the portrait she had encountered recently in this mansion’s picture storage room, but if he were to grow into an adult, he would look just like a certain person she knew well.

‘Seyerd.’

However, there was one critical contradiction in this assumption.

“It’s strange. The name I heard then was……”

The boy’s name that sounded similar to ‘biscuit’.

“Visjak. That’s my name.”

He had definitely introduced himself that way, which made Kisa even more confused about what was what.

This room is where Seyerd kept his precious belongings, but suddenly his brother?

Kisa tried to calm her confused mind as she got up.

The shock was indescribable, but she had confirmed what was in the box.

‘I’ve achieved my initial goal, so I should leave here first and then think−’

But in the next moment, Kisa was startled and had to stop her thoughts.

The door that she had surely locked was opening by itself.

And the figure that appeared beyond the door was…

Kisa found herself calling out that person’s name without realizing it.

“Seyerd?”