Chapter 38.3

Oswald carefully unlocked the handcuffs that bound Kevin's wrists. Kevin sighed in amazement. "You must have spent all your ingenuity on this thing, haven't you?"

Oswald did not reply. He was concerned about Kevin's hands, which were once again covered in wounds. In the past two days, the wounds had not reappeared, and Oswald had thought that Kevin had fully recovered. He had planned to lift the ban on him today, but now this had happened.

"I don't know what caused it," Kevin said. "I was telling a story to your little girl when it suddenly happened."

Oswald frowned. "Why haven't they healed yet?" He stared intently at Kevin's hands, barely blinking. "It looks like they're not going to heal for a while."

Kevin tried to move his fingertips, but they were slow and unresponsive. "I think you're right," he said. "The skin and flesh should have grown back by at least half by now."

Oswald was silent for a moment. "I need to think about this," he said. "In the meantime, I'm going to keep you locked up."

Kevin nodded. "I understand."

"Has this ever happened before?" Oswald asked Kevin.

Kevin thought for a moment. "How many years have I lived? How can I remember it so clearly? Maybe some."

Oswald's anger rose as soon as he heard Kevin's ambiguous words. It was as if Kevin did not care about pain or even life and death. He could live as long as he could, but if he was stabbed in the heart or encountered other dangers, he would die if he died. Oswald even felt that Kevin's mentality was completely contrary to that of ordinary people as if his physical body was not important to him at all. He did not know if this was because Kevin had lived too long or for some other reason, but Oswald found this attitude irritating.

"You don't care about your own body at all?!" Oswald asked in a cold voice. "Is there any solution? Since you have lived for so long, there must be some solution!"

Kevin glanced at him in surprise. "Why did you explode all of a sudden?"

Oswald: "You!"

After uttering a single word, he choked and appeared so enraged that he was at a loss for words. He gave Kevin a cold stare for some time, then lowered his head and wiped his face stiffly while saying, "Let's forget about it. Think about it and see if there's any way to resolve this. If you need anything or anyone, I can dispatch someone to find them."

Kevin stared at his slightly hooded eyes for a moment before suddenly bursting out laughing. He said, "If my memory serves me right...you used to get teased a lot as a child, and you told me a few times that when you grew up, you'd make me cry like a baby. Why have you changed your ways and become my errand boy?"

Despite his fingers being nothing but bones, he managed to straighten out his blood-soaked clothes and said, "I've come to realize that I don't understand the little devil's train of thought. The gap between childhood and adulthood is quite significant..."

Oswald saw that he was starting to ramble and couldn't get angry or articulate any meaningful responses. He raised his eyes and interrupted him, saying, "Stop fiddling with your bony paws. The clothes can still be worn once the blood is cleaned off."

Upon seeing that he was finally getting mean, Kevin said, "This is just like you."

Oswald hesitated for a moment before replying, "..."

"Don't give me that stone-cold face of yours," Kevin continued. Seeing that Oswald's expression was getting worse, he smiled and said, "I've been buried underground for so many years. They can play pranks on the dead. This meager layer of skin and bits of rotting flesh are nothing compared to that. A situation like this must have occurred before. In any case, things will turn out alright in the end. I didn't explain to you before, but the wound healing process is influenced by many factors."

Oswald raised an eyebrow when he heard this and asked, "What kind of factors?"

Kevin raised his finger and pointed outside the window saying, "For instance, the environment such as the weather, different seasons, and so on. Spring and autumn are favorable because the sky heals wounds faster, and you can see that trees and fruits grow more quickly during this time. Winter is too cold, and blood tends to clot, so any wound is easily worsened if they freeze. If it gets worse, manual cutting is required, which is troublesome. Summertime is hot with heavy humidity. Meat decays more quickly if it's left in the open air like this and invites some bugs along with it."

In the beginning, Kevin was quite reasonable, but gradually, his metaphors became more and more outrageous. Oswald could see that this was causing his brows to twitch, but he still ended up following Kevin's absurd train of thought until he finally said, "Alright, I understand. If you keep this up, I'll have to make you stop talking. Are you making all this up?"

Kevin became a bit more serious and shook his finger saying, "I'm being completely honest."

"Please refrain from gesturing with your two paws as you speak," Oswald requested with an indescribable expression on his face. He had been staring at his fingers for a long time, worried that the joints were not tight enough and would fall off one by one if he moved them too much.

"Tsk," Kevin scoffed. "Why are you being so difficult? I can't feel my fingers at all, and moving them twice helps to keep them flexible. Do you have a problem with that?"

"Yes," Oswald replied coldly.

"Then hold your tongue," Kevin snapped.