<h4>Chapter 124 - Escaping from Arcanum Train (XVII)</h4>


    Editor: Kitty


    Crow woke up to a headache. It was like he had experienced a tormenting war, as if he traversed through countless battlefields filled with gunpowder and mes. He felt as if he recalled something, as if he had dreamt of something in the past, but when he carefully thought about it, he could not remember anything. Also, when he woke up, he heard a roar:


    “Who killed him!?”


    Crow stood up and looked at Owl instinctively. His eyes widened in horror!


    Owl wasa dead.


    It seemed a bit inappropriate to say Owl had ‘died,’ but Crow did not know how to describe it. Owl was sitting there in the seat he had been sitting in moments ago. He still had the music box in his hands. The music box was still ying beautiful and melodious music, but the box was stained with a lot of blood. The blood was dripping from Owl’s drooping head, and every drop fell on the box in his palm.


    “What happened?” Crow walked over in disbelief. Then he squatted at Owl’s feet and raised his head to look at him.


    Owl’s eyes were cut, that is, there was a long cut made by a knife. The slit went from the corners of his eyes over the bridge of his nose in the middle of his face, and the thick blood flowed down from his eyes all over his face.


    But this was not a fatal injury; the most critical injury was the wound on Owl’s neck. The cut was deep, and one could see his bones. The sight was intolerable for them to witness. The blood began to flow all over his body from his neck. Owl’s blood appeared to be distinctly dark, red, and thick. It did not look like fresh blood, and the amount he bled was not much. ording tomon sense, the blood of people who were killed by slitting their throats would be sshed all around. The blood pressure of the major artery in his neck would make his blood surge like a fountain.


    But all that did not matter. What matters was who had done this to Owl? Who ‘killed’ him?!


    The first thing Crow could think of was Wolf. He shook his fingertips and turned to stare at Wolf: “Why did he turn out this way?!”


    “How do I know?” Wolf rarely put on an expression without ridicule and without his usual ferocious smile. His face was a little pale, and that was very rare. Wolf looked terrible. He dropped his head; his hair scattered all around, and he was short of breath. He said, “This is what this guy looked like when I woke up.”


    “Don’t make excuses! Among us, you’re the one most likely to do this!” Crow, who rarely got emotional, became agitated. He could not help but grasp Owl’s arm. Owl’s skin, whichy bare, was frigid, and this made Crow’s heart cold. He continued to re at Wolf wrathfully.


    He said: “You’ve been arguing with Owl all the time, and the conflict between you and him has been escting. You have long wanted to kill him, didn’t you?”


    “I didn’t kill him!” Wolf denied and seemed to be angry. He began to roar at Crow: “I’d candidly confess if I killed him! But I will never put a false charge on myself!”


    “Where we’re at, who wished that they could kill Owl? And who has the motive to kill him?” Crow was very flustered, as if because Owl died, he had lost the reason to continue pulling himself up. Although Crow once suspected Owl, he also inexplicably believed that in this strange train, only Owl was truly trustworthy.


    “You must understand that there are three of us here!” Wolf took a deep breath and adjusted the pace of his breathing. He looked at Crow and ck cat.


    Wolf said, “Owl was killed before we woke up. That is to say, after Owl stopped the music, the three of us began to search the train car. At that time, I was at the aisle outside the crew lounge and toilet, and I saw Crow...... You fainted and fell asleep on the sofa, and thereafter I fell asleep. The only one awake after that was probably ck cat! You have to ask him what happened before you question me on whether I’m the murderer or not, OK?”


    “I don’t know.” When ck cat heard Wolf’s words, he also opened his mouth. His voice was hoarse: “Soon after you all fell asleep, I began to lose consciousness. At that time, I saw Owl. He appeared fine.”


    “I don’t understand!” Crow almost wanted to scream. He held Owl’s hand tightly, and Owl’s blood trickled down from his arm to Crow’s fingers: “The three of us are alive here. All of you have reasons to deny that you didn’t do it! Could it be that there’s someone other than us here?”


    “Come on! Why do you not feel guilty when you me me for the murder?” Wolf started to mock Crow again and sneered at Crow: “I can also suspect that you have done such a thing. Think about it: you can easily pretend to be the first one among us to faint, and after that, you can lie down and wait for me and ck cat to fall asleep. Then, you can crawl toward Owl to...”


    Before Wolf finished speaking, Crow suddenly stood up! When his anger surged up his heart, he took the music box that was still ying music from Owl’s palm and cruelly smashed it at Wolf!


    Wolf could not respond in due time. He reached out and knocked away the music box that was sent smashing toward him. Because the box was not solid, when it fell with a hard p from Wolf, the differentponents sttered on the ground.


    Therefore, the wonderful violin instrumental music stopped abruptly.


    “F*ck!” Wolf red at Crow indignantly: “I knew it. You want to kill all of us!”


    “Then go to hell! You despicable bastard!” Crow had long been so angry that he lost his sense of reasoning. He reached out, grabbed a ss bottle on the table, and smashed it on Wolf’s head. Wolf dodged and just as he wanted to fight back, ck cat suddenly squatted down and picked up something from theponents that were sttered everywhere.


    “Stop fighting. I’ve found the key.” ck cat said.


    But since the duo were still muddled with anger, even the surprise of finding the key could not stop the fight between Crow and Wolf. Owl’s death made Crow so upset and furious that he went insane. Perhaps since the death of the Two-headed snake, negative emotions had started umting within him. And all clues leading to the one that spearheaded the contradictions was Wolf.


    Crow decided that it was Wolf who killed the man.


    But Wolf felt inexplicably slightly aggrieved because he thought he had done nothing.


    ck cat stood by and watched them fight with the key in his hand. His eyes were a little dark, as if they could prate through the darkness. ck cat had very few expressions on his face, and he rarely felt any emotions. He also rarely expressed his feelings, and the look in his eyes would not change, but this did not mean that he did not understand anything. It also did not mean that he would simply follow orders.


    However, Wolf, who was targeted by Crow, was not reconciled and began to counterattack. The two fought while mocking each other. At the beginning, Wolf was still restrained. Because Crow never took part in fights, he always felt that this fool was a little weak, so he didn’t dare to go all out because he was afraid to kill him. However, as the fighting continued, he was unable to restrain himself, so he began to pay no heed to his moves.


    When he woke up and found that Owl was dead, Wolf had started to feel bouts of pain in his chest. It was not awful to bear, but it did not make him feel good. This made Wolf irascible, especially when Crow sent himself to his door. After seeing Crow, he felt it was hard to level his emotions. When he sent a fist to Crow’s stomach, he felt his eyes turn bloodshot.


    If there was no one there to stop the fight, maybe one of them would really kill the other. Only one of them would survive.


    However, ck cat finally stopped the fight. He cut across the air as he entered the battlefield. He grabbed Wolf’s dominant arm and gave him a kick, forcing Wolf to fall down, and just like this, he face-nted on the ground.


    Then ck cat grabbed Crow by his neck and pressed him onto the sofa cushion.


    “Calm down...... Now that the music has stopped, we have to open the door.” ck cat’s voice was very gentle although there was no expression on his face.


    Crow did not speak and gasped in confusion, but his body rxed slowly. He closed his eyes and covered his face with his hand.


    “Why don’t you all care?” Crow sounded as if he was weeping. His sad voice asked in a soft tone: “Although I don’t remember anything, I think all of you are important to me before I lost my memory.”


    “But neither of you are upset—are you strangers just because you lost your memories?”


    “They are all dead...” As Crow muttered, he started crying. His hands were still covering his face, and as tears seeped out between his fingers, they mixed with some of the blood on his fingers, turning into shiny, bloody water. He gritted his teeth to stop his sobs and curled up on the sofa as he buried his face in the rough cushion.


    “I’m not willing to—” Crow’s voice was hoarse. He sounded like a small animal that was sadly calling out as it was not willing to die.


    ck cat sat by Crow, lowered his head to look at him, and touched Crow’s soft ck hair with his hands.


    “Don’t be afraid. Everything will be fine,” heforted him. Incredibly, his voice was strangely gentle.


    Carriage No.7’s door was finally opened by ck cat. Now there were only three people left in the team of five, and the group had be so fragile that it was on the verge of copse. Before leaving, Crow went back to Owl to look at him. Now, Owl could no longer move. As he sat on the sofa, Crow touched Owl’s cold hands.


    “You should know what had happened, right?” Crow squatted beside Owl and asked him in a low voice.


    Owl did not move. The blood on him had stopped flowing and began to dry up.


    “You’re not dead, I know......” Crow said, “Or rather, from the beginning, you were already dead, though it’s really inconceivable.”


    “I think you can hear me—” Crow sadly stated, “I’m sorry. It’s all my fault.”


    Over at the other side, ck cat opened the door and called Crow’s name.


    Crow turned around to look at ck cat and thereafter, at Owl.


    “I’m sorry—” He repeated his apology.


    “I have to leave you here.”


    Following that, Crow got up and walked toward the door connecting carriage No.7 to carriage No.6. Now, they had to depart for carriage No.6.


    T/N: .... :/