[WP] Chapter 3 Funeral

[WP] Chapter 3 Funeral

After explaining his own affairs, the detective on the bed closed his eyes. Shade pursed his lips and waited for a while, then pulled his hand out and tested his breath and pulse.

"Dead?"

He couldn't believe that the other party died so easily, and it took almost ten minutes.

Before he could react to the next step, a black light suddenly flashed across the face of the corpse. Shade's heart tightened for no reason, and extreme terror instantly overwhelmed him.

But when he came to his senses, the black light dispersed in the air and disappeared.

As the light disappeared from the corpse, the skinny corpse that looked like it had starved to death gradually became fuller at a speed visible to the naked eye, as if someone was inflating the inside of the corpse until it became a normal corpse.

"How can this be considered normal? What is going on now?"

In the silence of the room, Shade looked around with some uneasiness. The uneasiness was not because he was alone with the corpse, but because he was in a strange environment. This world is not the same as before. He has seen a corner of the truth of the mysterious and dangerous world.

The woman's voice in his mind sounded again.

[You have come into contact with 'whisper'.]

"What contact? What is whisper? Can you tell me in detail?"

But the voice still did not answer.

[Whisper] is one of the "four mysterious elements" that the detective just mentioned. The so-called [relics] and [whisper] are the truth that led to his death.

Although Shade was at a loss for what to do with the repressed and unknown truth, he was unexpectedly not too frightened when looking at the corpse on the bed.

"It would be great if someone was joking about all this."

He hoped that this was acting at this moment, but he knew rationally that it could not be acting.

He stood by the bed in silence for a while and then walked around the four-poster bed as quietly as possible to the window, carefully and calmly opening the heavy curtains. Immediately, the weak sunlight of the early morning shone through the gray fog on the street and the glass on the window.

This light seemed to temporarily dispel the uneasiness in his heart.

"Is it morning now?"

Because of the heavy fabric curtains, he thought it was night.

Bang bang bang~

The sound of knocking on the door suddenly sounded at this time, which scared Shade. He subconsciously let go of the curtains but immediately held them and pulled them open completely. Squinting his eyes and looking out the window, the street is outside this window. He has no time to look at the strange scenery of the steam age in the fog. First, he looked down to make sure that the person knocking on the door was a corpse carrier. He could see the carriage pulling the corpse and then turned to open the door.

"Because he can accurately know the time of his death, the corpse carrier he contacted can come so accurately."

He said it in his heart and pushed open the bedroom door. Outside is the living room, where there are also gas pipes that look like they were from the steam era climbing up the walls, hand-polished solid wood furniture, and various stacked letters, books, and documents scattered everywhere.

The small blackboard hanging on the wall, the formal coffee table, and the fabric sofa combination also look like the style of a detective agency.

The living room has no curtains, allowing the dim morning light in the fog to shine in, and the light shines obliquely on the floor in front of Shade's feet.

In the light, the floating dust is floating quietly, like strange, tiny creatures swimming. This sense of reality makes Shade a little creepy.

Open the cold bolt and anti-theft chain of the door, and there is a dark staircase spiraling downwards directly opposite, there is another door next door, which means that there are two residences on this floor, which is a bit like the apartment building Sherlock Holmes' novels.

No lights can be found, so he can only spiral down the dark and depressing stairs, and his heart seems to tremble wildly with every step. In the dark environment, Shade, whose mind was too divergent, felt that there was something terrible watching him.

From the second floor to the first floor, the stairs lead directly to the foyer. On one side of the foyer, the passage connecting to the first floor was completely blocked by wooden boards, as if it were a sealed coffin, leaving only the foyer available on the entire first floor.

This scene made the already nervous stranger even more confused:

"Why is the first floor sealed? What is going on here?"

He passed by the shoe cabinet, picked up the fallen umbrella, and glanced at the gas lamp on the wall above the shoe cabinet. After carefully unscrewing it, the light made his heart calm.

Took a deep breath and opened the door.

The silent old man in a black coat stood at the door, with a sign of overlapping leaves hanging on his chest, and behind him was the gloomy sky and choking fog. The old man looked up at Shade, and his voice was as low as leaves scraping against the wet and cold ground.

"Shade Hamilton?"

The language he used was the same as the dead detective, both of which were so-called Delarian language.

"Yes."

Shade nodded a little stiffly, motioning for the old man, who looked numb, to follow him upstairs.

So the old man greeted the depressed middle-aged man who was comforting the horse behind him, and the latter's face was gloomy, just like the weather now.

The three of them walked up the stairs together. Shade didn't know what to say, so he led them silently to the bedroom on the second floor with the number "1.".

Almost no one spoke during the whole process. The old man and the middle-aged man smelled like corpses. They first put on gloves and confirmed that the detective's body on the bed was dead, and then handed Shade a document for him to sign.

That was the confirmation document confirming that the body was handed over to the city public cemetery management office for processing, and there were two official seals of the city public cemetery management office and the city funeral committee below. At the bottom was a prayer for the deceased, and the translated meaning made the living Shade very uncomfortable.

While the old man and the middle-aged man checked the condition of the body, Shade sat at the desk in the bedroom and picked up the cold pen.

He was a little confused in his head now, but he also realized that he could understand what he heard and read, but he couldn't write. Fortunately, the knowledge he just received not only gave him the ability to speak but also the ability to write. He translated his name into the "Delarion language, the common language of the northern region,"  which had a similar pronunciation, and he planned to sign his name.

There was nothing noteworthy on the cold paper, probably just confirming the transfer of the body and that the money entrusted for the funeral had been settled.

"But judging from the signature of the committee secretariat on the other side of the document, the name of this world is very similar to the West in the previous life, divided into three parts, and the middle name must be added to the official document. The first name is 'Shade', and the last name can follow 'Hamilton', but the middle name."

The confused and uneasy stranger did not know whether the dead Mr. Hamilton gave the original owner of the body a middle name. But now is not the time to search the room, and a name must be thought of immediately to deal with it temporarily.

[Suellen.]

The whispering voice sounded again in his mind, and the whispering almost made Shade jump up. The voice gave a word, that existed in the ancient language used by the woman and the common language of the Northern Kingdom used by the detective, and its meaning was [Silver Moon].

"I can use this as my middle name, but you have to explain."

Shade tried to communicate again, and his heart was unusually nervous, and the woman's whispering voice sounded:

[This is fate, stranger; the silver moon is your fate. When you gather the four elements, push open the door to the extraordinary, and see this horrible world, the meaning will naturally appear.]

Frowning, Shade suppressed his inner panic, thought for a while, and signed his name forcefully:

Shade Suellen Hamilton.

The corpse carrier did not ask Shade to provide a death certificate or a death report, nor did he mean to notify the police to perform an autopsy. It was as if the death of the detective was as common as the departure of a stray dog on the street.

After taking back the "corpse transfer authorization letter" from Shade, he gave him a receipt with the location of the grave and then silently moved the body of Mr. Hamilton in pajamas away.

Shade sent them to the door downstairs, and he did not go out himself. The body was placed in the narrow coffin in the carriage, the coffin was covered with brown cloth, which seemed to be stained with blood.

The middle-aged man drove the carriage, carrying the coffin and the old man, deep into the thick fog at the far end of the street.

"Well, goodbye, Mr. Sparrow Hamilton."

Thinking silently in his heart, Shade closed the door and stood in the dim hallway light for a while before going up the dim stairs that frightened him. The steps of the stranger were a little heavy, but there was no one else around, and there was an inexplicable sense of relief in the tension.

"It's simpler than I thought. He didn't ask about the cause of death of Mr. Hamilton and didn't even care whether I was Shade Hamilton. He didn't even ask for a tip for moving the body. Detective Hamilton has taken care of everything."

The body left here with many secrets, leaving Shade, a despicable stranger who occupied someone else's body, with countless mysteries. He has many questions that he wants to ask Mr. Hamilton, and countless questions are waiting to be answered.

But the dead cannot be resurrected; he must accept the fact of the other party's death and try to gain a foothold in this world that seems abnormally wrong.

The only good news is that the house on the second floor that used to belong to Mr. Sparrow Hamilton now belongs to Shade, and he has become a homeowner in this strange world that resembles the Victorian era in the mid-nineteenth century.

The first floor is sealed with wooden boards, the next room "No. 2" on the second floor is locked from the outside, and the stairs leading to the third floor are completely broken. Therefore, Shade is the only one left in this empty house.

He returned to room number "1" on the second floor and carefully checked every corner of the study, living room, bathroom, and bedroom with the lights off. After confirming that there was no one in the shadows, he breathed a sigh of relief and sat on the sofa in the living room, tilting his head to look at the morning mist outside the window with a little peace of mind.

Shade finally had time to sort out the current situation.

"I traveled through time and inherited a detective agency. The original owner of the body may have a brain problem and was trained by the previous detective to help him complete a seemingly simple task after his death. Detective Sparrow Hamilton has a secret. There is a mysterious power in this world. The death of the detective and the voice in my brain have proved this. What I need is to gather the four elements. The death of the detective has already brought me into contact with "Whisper."

Rubbing his face, although worried, the current situation is at least not bad. Although Mr. Sparrow Hamilton died suddenly, at least Shade has a foothold in a brand new world.

This is enough to support him to live, explore the secrets of this world, and maybe find a way home.

Shade is not a person who goes with the flow, but he is not a person who complains about everything. It is unfortunate to leave his hometown and come here inexplicably. All he can do for the time being is to accept it, live well here, and try to live better.

"By the way, let's go see this extraordinary world, the mystery of the steam age; how can those secret rituals and spells be willing to be ordinary?"

Shade sighed softly, and the woman's laughter sounded in his mind, as comfortable as the breeze blowing through the lavender field.

(End of this Chapter)