Witch trials

He looked unpleasantly at his bishop father, such an offending look would normally have drawn a reprimand from the other man, but today the other man was particularly good-tempered with him instead, crouching down to look at him kindly and levelly, smiling very lovingly, "That is a very nice dress you are wearing today, and your mother was indeed right when she said you were even more beautiful dancing than she was in her day."

"Twelve years old ......," sighed the Bishop tersely, "what a wonderful age, just right for dancing."

The bishop inquired of him with a smile, "Would you like to dance on the Sky City? That's the best place for you to dance right now."

Sky City was the place where she went dancing before, he had long wanted to help her dance, so that she wouldn't have to work so hard, so he brightened up and nodded without thinking, "I'll go!"

"No go!!!" His voice came out almost simultaneously with her hysterical refusal.

She looked at the bishop with tears of terror in her eyes, her voice trembling, "You promised me that as long as I was a card, you would never take him to the island!"

"Let's see, how long have you been a calling card ......" The Bishop swept idly over her whole body, with a kind of veiled disgust and loathing, but he was outwardly courteous, as if he were only sorry, "and I have certainly kept my word with your engagement."

"But you're a little old as a calling card, even if you're beautiful now."

The bishop smiled from ear to ear, "As you know, people don't like old business cards, and your beauty has made it hard for people to be tolerant of you until now."

"After all, you are thirty-three."

"It's about time I got a new card." The bishop's eyes looked vaguely toward him, still in his light veil, and he sighed softly and tersely in satisfaction as if he had seen a delicious fruit beyond his wildest imagination, "Will you come up to the island and dance for me tonight, for the sake of your mother?"

He agreed.

So he was taken to the island by the bishop, like Salome in the story "Salome" - he played Salome, gave his nominal father a dance, and came back.

So this was dancing, no wonder her clothes were in tatters every time she came back, he thought to himself as he was taking a shower, but he didn't really think there was anything to dancing like this, or he couldn't comprehend what it was, but he continued to run off to talk to her after he was done washing up, just as he had done when he had finished dancing, and ran off to talk to her in a happy manner.

The asshole bishop's father told him she'd never have to dance again as long as he came up to the island every now and then at night to dance for different people from now on.

He agreed very readily.

After all, it was still hard work to dance like this, he thought with a small, adult sigh - thank goodness he could dance, he could feed her on his dancing from now on.

She wouldn't have to get hurt and work so hard.

The smile on his face grew more pleasant as he thought this, and he knocked on the door of her room as if he had been listening to her stories every night before.

Then he was struck dumb, and he saw her on the bed as haggard as she had ever been.

Her eyes were hollow, she looked at him who had changed into his pajamas, looked at those bruises and wounds under the pajamas, she took two deep shuddering breaths, originally wanted to pretend that nothing had happened as if she had squeezed out a smile at him as usual to him, but in the end she couldn't control herself and howled with her face covered.

"I'm sorry!!!" She broke down and howled in heartbreaking misery as she hugged his back as hard as she could, tears dripping down her face in big drops, "I'M SORRY!!!"

"I should never have let you come into this world!!!"

"I'm sorry!!!"

"It's all my fault!!!"

He paused in place in stunned silence, still letting her tears quickly stain his shoulders.

There were a lot of things in this world that he couldn't understand, like he couldn't understand why, after he'd helped her go to the dance, she'd doubled down on her haggardness than she'd ever danced on her own before.

Every time he came down from the island, no matter how cleanly he was washed to meet her, she could still quickly tell from him that he'd gone to the dance, and then little by little, little by little, he withered away.

"I don't work hard." He expressed himself awkwardly, "Don't you worry about me, it's just dancing, what's the point, they all compliment me on being the best dancer on the island."

She looked at him with a very complicated look, like he was a child who didn't know anything about anything, and then squeezed out a smile, "Uh-huh."

"You're the best looking."

She smiled and wept, "You are most precious."

But no matter how much he tried to persuade, comfort, or do, she still pined away from day to day, as if she had a serious illness for which there was no cure, and at the end of the day, when he came down from the island, he didn't even dare to look at her for fear that she would look at her with that dead look on her eyes, while her face still squeezed out a pale smile in order to comfort him.

Finally, when he was fourteen years old, no matter how many ways he tried, she became gravely ill to a point of no return.

In just two years, she had gone from being so bright to declining to the point of death.

He stayed at her bedside, averting his face, struggling to maintain a cold, hard exterior-so he wouldn't cry out and worry her.

She lay in the hospital bed, pale and holding his hand, and smiled with sudden relief, "I never understood what I was supposed to do."

"I don't want to stay here and be something that binds you, I feel like a burden, but I know in your heart I'm not, I'm your faith, right?"

"-like you were to me in the beginning."

"I'm afraid that my leaving will leave you completely disoriented, but I'm also afraid that if I don't leave, you'll keep falling in the wrong direction."

"But now God has set me free, He made the choice for me." Her eyes were full of tears, but she smiled with relief, "Get out of Sky City, get out of here, you're such a good dancer, there's a wider place to be your stage."

"Besides those brutes, there will be plenty of people who actually watch the dance who appreciate your beauty-they exist, I've seen them."

She was gone, and one quiet afternoon he sorted through her belongings and found among them a picture of her sitting on a bishop's knee, smiling sunny and bright.

In the photo she is not yet aware of what she is about to experience in her future, but is smiling happily.

He didn't like the picture, but there were so few pictures of her, let alone one with such a happy smile, that he fought back the nausea and left it - he was going to cut up the bishop behind her, but in the end he couldn't bring himself to burn and damage the picture for fear of actually damaging it, and so disgustingly, he left it.

He buried her in a field of flowers, and then stood alone in the daylight for a long, long time, and then suddenly, madly, he turned away.

His tears flowed freely as he ran.

She said she wanted him to go further afield, so he must go.

But he failed, and the bishop soon captured him, and with the whole island surrounded by ecclesiastical ships, he had nowhere to run.

He had lived on an island in the sky above the sea since he was born, and after she left, he had nowhere to go and no one to cling to.

As he looked at the bishop's back after his sixty-seventh failed escape and being stuffed into the Island in the Sky for forced hospitality after a severe beating, he developed a strong, strong desire to pick up the fork from the nearby candlestick and stab the man who was his nominal father to death.

But he knew it couldn't be, the guy was surrounded by three to four less of the Order's men defending him.

As he was about to be pressed into action on the stage again, the bishop, who had always had a haughty attitude toward everyone, suddenly became terrified in his attitude, "What? That gentleman went to the island?!"

"That gentleman doesn't like outsiders, clear the floor, clear everyone out of the inner circle! Only receive him alone!"

He knew what kind of people are in the inner circle, these people randomly pick one out to go outside are the existence of the wind and rain, and now for a guest whose name he doesn't even know, actually like being driven out of the house like a dog from the inner circle of the zone.

Even he was left unattended and casually tossed aside with his hands and feet tied.

It was the first time he had seen this treatment in the two years or so he had been on the island.

The bishop bowed his head respectfully, and welcomed a certain man in, who, tied and thrown aside, made an effort to probe and look over.

The man was clad in a raincoat cloak and boots, with a black whip dangling to the ground in one hand, and a ghostly mask on his face - guests to the Inner Circle were required to wear masks with voice changers in them, to make it easier to hide each other's identities and moralize about their visit to the Sky Isle.

But familiar customers everyone recognizes.

"It's been a long time since I've been on this island." The man's voice was soft and laced with laughter, coming out of the voice changer in his mask with a sort of hum that was not very clear to hear, "You seem to have turned this island into a stage?"

Facing this man, the bishop didn't even dare to raise his head, sweating coldly, "I'm counting on you to buy and sell the island to us."

"There's no need to be nervous, I won't care about the seller's business, since I've sold this levitating island to you, you're the master and I'm the guest." The man smiled, "I came up here today, I just encountered a sad thing, so I wanted to find someone to keep me company for a while."

"I've heard that you're a membership organization, but I didn't have a business card or a referral, so I just came up here like this and took offense."

The Bishop shook his head frantically and looked up with glowing eyes, "Of course you don't need these!"

"What kind of person do you need to keep you company? We have everything here."

The man laughed a little, "Good imitation of others."

The bishop and the fallen man were both in a lurch.

--There would be no better imitator of people on the whole island.

Because he was considered to be like a [headliner], there were all kinds of customers who came to him with all kinds of requests, and he had been immersed in a kind of role-playing atmosphere for two years, and had developed the skill of instantly mimicking the feeling that the other person wanted as long as they gave him a picture that needed to be mimicked.

So having just been severely beaten, he was brought up again by the bishop to be cleaned up and sent to his room at the request of this strange guest.

The bishop warned him fiercely that if he dared to be dishonest and do anything to this gentleman, he would take out her bones buried under the field of flowers and thwart them.

So he held back the feeling of restlessness in his body and sat down in his room, wishing that tonight's [dance] would end sooner.

Instead of asking him to do something in a great hurry, as the other guests had done as soon as they entered, this strange guest very slowly and methodically unfastened his cloak, placed on the table the same playing card he had drawn on the upper island, and then sat down in the broad sofa opposite to him.

The room was very dim, hung with draperies of burgundy velvet, and only the wrist-thick red candles lighted on the sconces on either side burned with a misty light, by which he made out, with difficulty, the playing-card labels which this guest had placed on the table--the

--This is a Spades card, can't tell exactly how many.

The guest's face and form were even less visible as he sat in the shadows of the flannel and candlelight, all that could be seen was the silhouette of a humanoid figure sitting with legs folded and black leather gloves and a black bone whip resting casually on his knee that peeked out vaguely in the candlelight.

It was raining off the island and the man had water on his gloves and whip.

He was not surprised by such customers who brought their own supplies to the door, and was ready to be whipped later, but this customer suddenly asked him a very strange question:

"Do you like water?" This guest asked him softly.

He paused, "More like it."

So this guest smiled, "Me too."

"But the child closest to me hates the water, yet he was born in the midst of it."

"I gave him life, but he was unable to produce a soul and succeed me as I wished." This guest's voice was very soft, as if he was telling him a story, "And the moment he was finally willing to produce a soul, he was leaving me."

"I watched him grow up and never got his watchful eye."

"What a sad thing to hear." This guest handed him a shirt, his tone gentle, "Tonight he is going to betray me forever for where his soul belongs."

"Can you play him and keep me company?"

He stood up hesitantly, not understanding for a moment what kind of paly this man was trying to play, but went behind the curtain and took off his clothes, changing into the one this guest had handed him.

It was a very raggedy orphanage outfit that looked like something a teenager would wear, complete with a bandage over the eye.

The more he looked, the more confused he became, and for a few minutes as he dressed and walked out he even wondered if there was something wrong with the man's xp.

"Is that how you wear it?" He asked.

That guest smiled, "Yes, you're dressed beautifully."

He pursed his lips and sat down, very naturally about to move closer to crouch on the other man's knee, but the other man cried out to stop.

"Don't come over." The guest's tone was flat, even a little lazy, "Just sit there and don't look back at me."

Confused, he inquired, "...... And what am I looking at?"

The guest handed him a book, "Read the book."

It was a fairy tale style book, but it was full of all sorts of details of killings, and it was still broken and then put back together, and he flipped it over to read the title - The Long, Skinny Ghostly Murder Fact Book.

So he just half sat there like that, reading the book as this guest told him to, while the guest quietly watched him, and after a while he couldn't hold it in any longer, "I just have to read ......"

"Don't look at me." The guest's voice was flat, "He's not going to look back at me, and you're imitating him, so don't look back at me either."

"Just read the book."

The rain was pattering off the island, and he was looking down in the dim candlelight at a fragmented book of spooky stories, and there was a strange guest sitting across from him, not making a sound at all, looking up at him, and the flannel was flicking back and forth very gently between them.

It was such a quiet atmosphere that for a moment he was in a trance.

It was as if he was sitting on a chaise lounge in the back of his little yard, and she was watching him tenderly as he read a storybook, rather than playing a character for someone else to dance to in this dingy room on the island.

After an indeterminate amount of time, so long that he felt like falling asleep, the other man suddenly said with a smile, "You're sleepy aren't you?"

He jolted awake and subconsciously denied, "No!"

"Do you have any other requests, guest?" He asked, fighting the urge to yawn, but still couldn't hold back a yawn.

The guest across the room seemed to hear the yawn and laughed softly.

He broke into a blush and composed himself to sit upright again, straightening up and inquiring in a taut tone, "Is there anything else you require?"

-Finally getting to the dance is it.

"No, the night is over." The guest across the table replied with a smirk in his voice, "You've made it a very enjoyable evening for me."

He was stunned - hadn't that line come up a little too soon.

"Why are you pleasant?" He was too curious to ask anyway, "I'm just reading here."

The guest laughed a little, "For with the aid of you I miss a soul I could not get and have betrayed."

"He is never so quiet with me." After this guest finished speaking, he got up and picked up his whip, ready to leave, the masked face glancing back at him, half crouched on the ground, his eyes still a little misty, and smiled up, "But you will."

"Thank you for your company tonight."

He almost stammered, "No, you're welcome."

--For the first time in his life, on this island, he got words like thank you.

"To thank you for taking my mood from bad to good tonight." The man smiled, "Is there anything you want to do?"

What kind of strange sentence was that, and what was the first time he'd heard it.

He searched his mind for an answer to this guest but in the end just carefully inquired, "Is this payment guest? If it is payment you have already paid when you came to the island."

That asshole, the bishop, would burn down the garden she'd left behind if he knew he dared to take tips from his guests in private.

"It's not a payment, it's a deal." The guest dropped to one knee and crouched in front of him, the masked face slightly crooked as if looking at him and smiling, "A deal for you to put me in a better mood."

"My mood is a valuable thing, so you can make slightly more expensive demands."

His fingers curled and tightened slowly, "I-I don't want to dance for the rest of the month."

The guest smiled, "Yes."

He grew bold, "I want to carry a man's bones out and bury them in a real, unseen grave."

The guest still just smiled, "Yes."

His tone slowly diminished again, and with a very careful glance at this guest, he made one last request, "I, for one, would like to leave the island."

"Just for one night today, is one night okay? I'd like to go outside."

The guest stood up, his expression cooling for a moment as he gritted his teeth in remorse - surely he had asked for too much! This kind of wrongdoer is not easy to find!

Then the next second, the guest held out his hand to him, smiled, and said, "Yes."

He was completely stunned, staring blankly at the mask of this guest.

"You don't hate the water, do you?" The guest asked with a smile, "Would you like to go under the sea if you leave the island?"

He put his hand tremblingly into this guest's, then swallowed and said, "Think."

What's up with this guy.

And what's wrong with him.

At the sight of the schools of fluorescent fish and whales drifting past overhead, he looked with a blank expression at the guest standing across from him.

The guest smiled at him and said, "It's beautiful, isn't it?"

"So I don't understand." The guest inquired of him with one hand against his jaw, as if in deep thought, "How can anyone hate the water? It's obviously so beautiful underwater."

And his mind was empty, with only one thought--

--- Has he met God?