Body-language was one of the only hints you could get in this place and for whatever reason, it was always very strongly shown. Like actors on a stage, their movements were broader and exaggerated, like catering to an audience that had to watch from farther away.
The child was making wide, aggressive moments and was stomping as it was running. According to the clothes, it was likely a girl, but she was dragging up her skirt to run quicker.
All about her screamed anger, maybe driven out of sadness. He wouldn’t be able to tell, he didn’t have enough information.
Honey looked at River in the meantime.
Aspen wouldn’t leave his side, like a well-trained dog, despite looking around a lot and taking a few steps away once in a while. River himself was completely focused on the direction that the girl had run in.
“Well”, Honey started and felt herself inexplicably falling into a more polite tone as she addressed the younger guy. “You also want to get out, right? Let’s look around together and share our information. We don’t have to stick as one group, but cooperation would be good.”
River hummed in response. Not minding her any further, he went to look around the corner that the girl had come from.
Inside the beautifully designed courtyard, a woman was desolately picking up what was the rest of a destroyed snack. Dumplings were lying on the ground, some squashed by tiny feet. A cup had fallen down.
A fight between mother and daughter?
“How do you plan on acting?”, Aspen asked in a quiet voice, approaching the woman and looking over the tray on the ground. It was all food suitable for a child and for snacking in-between. “Use the first round just for watching?”
River nodded and circled the woman.
There wasn’t a lot you could see with her being nothing but a three-dimensional shadow, but her hair was put up in the traditional hairstyle of a married woman. She was slender and graceful, with only a simple hairpin in her hair.
Because they couldn’t be too certain about the breaking point, they’d need at least one round to simply watch to the end and find out about what was happening at all. So far he only knew there was a funeral, but not of whom or who else was living here or even the layout of the building.
The girl had appeared very close to their starting point, making it likely that it was important for them to see her and her mother.
In the last act, the butler would regularly pass by the starting point. By following him alone you’d be confronted with the young miss often enough to get some hints about the problem.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
A second person stepped out into the courtyard. Crisis had to go to the side to avoid her walking into him.
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“Who is this? Her mother?” Rhythm frowned and tried to guess from her behaviour alone.
Everyone uniformly looked at River, who answered their unspoken question without a change in his voice. “Her hairstyle is that of an unmarried woman, she cannot be someone who has a child. The people who would be here right now are all family members. If we can reject the possibilities of her being a wife or concubine, there is only a daughter or sister of someone from here left.”
“She looks close to that woman, so I’d vote sister.” Honey nibbled on her lip in thought before snapping out of it. She was wasting time here, it was more important to explore. “Anyway, we will be looking around. Let’s exchange what we know whenever we need.”
River nodded and continued watching the two women.
The rest of the group dispersed, planning on checking out the rooms as much as possible.
River decisively passed the courtyard to get to the building with the most decorations and passed through the open door. He wasn’t sure if everyone was assembled, but it should be most people.
There was a man standing a bit farther to the side, next to a woman. He had a longer beard and very broad stature.
A second and third man, giving off younger impressions, were talking to what appeared to be a group of quite uniform servants.
There were more women and children of varying age around, but none of them had any distinctive features.
River judged only a group of people to be of interest.
Number one was the corpse inside the room – not visible to him, as it was inside the coffin, but River had assumptions.
He did not see anyone of the older generation here, which was very weird. He did however see everyone paying respects and with the custom of not paying respects to a junior, it must be an older person. It should be either the grandfather or the grandmother.
That said, someone had placed an old sword in front of the coffin. Weird, but he assumed person one to be the dead patriarch of the family.
The two women outside – sisters? – who were either daughters of this man or one married into this home.
The first man, with the broad stature, who was somewhat estranged to the rest. The second one – arguably a bit younger but not the youngest, at least the other man seemed to act obedient to him – who was the tallest of them, and the meek third man.
The little girl outside, daughter of the married woman.
Well, so far, all of these were assumptions and he wasn’t sure on how he would be able to find out whether any of his claims were correct, considering he couldn’t understand their conversations.
Hesitating, River glanced at Aspen.
The man had put his hands inside his pockets and was looking around as if he was sightseeing. Nothing suggested he was stressed in this situation.
Upon feeling River’s gaze, only Aspen’s eyes moved to fall on him. His lips drew into a slight, very emotionless smile that did not reach his eyes at all.
The eastern man twitched and redirected his gaze away. He didn’t know if it would be a good idea to ask for his help in scouting but something about this puzzle felt more complicated than the last one.
In the mansion with the little lady, everyone’s role was very obvious and the general conflict was easily visible.
This time, he didn’t know who was who or what their relationship was, but it would be needed to solve this puzzle.
For example, if he tried to make someone uncover the murderer who was in a really good relationship with them, they might not do it and he would have wasted a round.
He wanted to know what the girl was up to, but he also wanted to keep an eye on her mother and this room.
“The girl?”, Aspen asked in his sweet voice that tickled River’s ears. “I’ll see what she’s up to.”
As if he had read his mind, Aspen moved away from River and went to find the little girl, leaving the other behind with a stunned expression.
Aspen found the girl curled under a table in the currently empty kitchen at the end of the hallway she had run into.
Her shaking shoulders suggested she was silently crying and Aspen scrunched his nose in disgust. He couldn’t stand crying children; they simply didn’t do anything against their problems except for whining.
He looked around himself and found a corner for him to sit in, where people wouldn’t be able to walk into him.
The girl caught herself after a while and rubbed an arm over her face. She curled herself up further, trying to hide. Ultimately, even if she was only a couple of years old, it was unlikely for an adult to not notice when a child is sitting under a table without any cloth covering it.
One of the suspicious men from the funeral hall found her in passing and lifted her up. Aspen couldn’t tell who that one was, but either way, he spoke in a soothing and somewhat joking tone.
The girl squealed at being lifted up and hugged, and tried to hide her face.
When the man saw it, his tone changed to one of worry.
Aspen watched the girl shake her head resolutely and shut her mouth. She was unwilling to talk, so the man didn’t press her.
Aspen followed them with a sigh.
If you asked him why he was doing this, you could say it was a gamble.
He was breathless in the real world. A drowning person gasping for air. If there was one, only one person that he could understand and would be understood by to some extent, he wouldn’t be suffocating like this.
Just because he liked ignoring common conventions did not mean he didn’t know what they were about. He had always used the internet to somehow keep up with what people were like and had lived most of his life in a normal environment.
That’s why he knew.
If you wanted to find out more about a person, get to know their true selves, you had no other way but to forge a relationship with them.
And that included not doing things they hated – such as unnecessarily touching River, who’d tense up immediately – or supporting them. That was what he was doing now.
Although admittedly, he found the thought that this was all a huge puzzle fascinating. It was somehow enjoyable, he wanted to participate in solving it as well.
As annoying as it was that this meant having to follow a little-girl shadow around.
Thank you for the chapter!! ❤️❤️
Oh je wants a relationship 😃
Thanks for the chapter good as ever ♥️♥️♥️
Thanks for the chapter~
Oooohh, they started having physical contact, nice. (◍•ᴗ•◍)✧*。