Chapter 111: Kup

The night was boundless. Inside a crude shelter built from mud and yellow dust-rock, Kup recalled the twilight when Kraft had left his hasty instructions.

……

Kup forced his slightly stinging eyes open, summoning his strength.

The flax-wick flame flickered, emitting the acrid smell of burning fibers mixed with grease. Staring too long made one feel the black smoke from the flame had sooted the eyelids, stinging behind the sockets, forcing the eyes to squint.

Yet as soon as he squinted for a moment, sleepiness flowed from the corners of his skull, flooding his consciousness and pushing his forehead onto the table.

He had to find a topic, anything at all, just to prevent himself from falling asleep during the watch. Peter, responsible for the second half of the night, was already asleep and could not be disturbed; the only one still awake was a colleague who hardly qualified as such.

"Mr. Kraft said it is best not to read in dim light."

As someone with no long-term intention of pursuing academics, Kup firmly adhered to the principle of "good enough," yet Yin Feng's behavior of flipping through a small booklet in the middle of the night still brought him a strange sense of pressure, even sparking an impulse to join in this self-torture.

He turned sideways to glance into the booklet. The crooked characters followed what were likely crude stick-figure drawings; the girl's instinctive thriftiness made her writing cramped. Lacking guide lines, combined with a beginner's hesitation in putting pen to paper, it unintentionally created an extra layer of encryption.

Although their learning progress was synchronized, Kup still could not find a single recognizable word on that page.

Yin Feng clearly did not want to hear his lecture. Seeing him look over, she naturally closed the booklet. Just as she had done for the past few weeks, it had become a habit. "When did he say that?"

"About..." Kup hadn't expected her to challenge him. He hesitated for a moment, then noticed the girl casually reopening her small booklet.

No, you can question me, Kup, but Mr. Kraft did indeed say those words. He was not willing to be branded with the hat of "falsely quoting Mr. Kraft," not even in thought.

Kup struggled to recall for a moment, and just as Yin Feng was about to turn the page, he unexpectedly found a scene. "It was about when we were at Consolation Port, shortly after you arrived."

Her gaze shifted from the booklet, looking at him with some suspicion.

"I remember it was night. Father Adrian lit only one candle, which couldn't illuminate the entire table." Initially, his tone carried hesitation, but then it grew faster, as if his lips were being driven open and shut by the formed words. "Mr. Kraft said it then. We were all present."

Chatting indeed worked; he felt he had temporarily shaken off his drowsy state. His spirit became active through thinking, and following the crumbling remnants of his memory, he described the situation at that time.

He happened to have a slight impression of it, just as he had an uncertain, vague recognition of those two words when Mr. Kraft asked about them. The words slipped out, followed immediately by self-doubt.

"Ah." Yin Feng opened her small mouth slightly, uttering a tone word with a hint of surprise at the end. Perhaps, possibly, maybe such a thing did happen; only after being reminded did she have a nearly non-existent, faint memory of it.

For Mr. Kraft's sake, she closed the booklet and stuffed it into her small bundle.

But she hadn't yet thought of what to do next. She had long passed the toddler stage of sleeping all day, nor was she tired like an adult. Even with her current mindset, she had sensed that something major was happening, making sleep difficult.

At her age, she couldn't help with anything. Her energy could only be spent on the one "serious matter." After putting down the booklet, she twisted left and right at the table, restless.

Kup adopted a somewhat elder-like demeanor and continued the topic. Actually, he wanted to say this wasn't a matter of one or two days. "You have plenty of time; there is no need to rush. Mr. Kraft is not a person lacking patience."

Moreover, he probably hadn't even thought of assigning you any tasks, Kup thought. He had met people from the academy; the youngest, Lu Xiusi, was roughly his age.

Considering Yin Feng started late, the requirement to "study medicine" was something only Mr. Kraft would agree to. Teaching reading and writing from scratch would take at least a year or two; he didn't dare to think about how many years it would take to "be of help."

The time investment involved and the money to be invested would be a huge sum; even ordinary small merchant families might not provide such an education to their own sons. Yin Feng, speaking without filter as a child, really dared to ask, and Mr. Kraft actually agreed.

The speed or slowness of this moment was insignificant compared to the future investment; there was absolutely no need to rush.

Now that he thought about it, if he had said "I want to learn too" back then, perhaps Mr. Kraft would have agreed?

Kup shook his head to dispel the nonsensical thought. He never felt he was the right material; answering two words at once was merely an accident. As an adult, his mindset was not comparable to a child's.

"No need to rush," he repeated earnestly. "No one will snatch anything from you."

Yin Feng lowered her head, silent and unresponsive. Sometimes, what drove her was more like an inescapable sense of insecurity. Kup could vaguely perceive that among those in the Salt Tide District who had lost parental care too early, nine out of ten were like this, becoming obsessed with demonstrating their own "value."

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And the intuitive manifestation was comparing oneself with others; for anything, as long as there was a visible standard.

This was not something that could be resolved in a few words. He moved his chair to the wall, leaning against the dirt-streaked wall to make his back more comfortable.

"Thank you," the girl said after a long silence. "But I still want to do something. Can you tell me exactly what happened?"

"As you can see, Captain William got lost on the mountain, and Mr. Kraft has to go retrieve them." That was the procedure, at least; the specific execution details were slightly off.

However, he had a blind trust in Mr. Kraft. He couldn't say where this trust came from: perhaps from the feat of facing that writhing light directly, or from the subtle influence of his daily words and actions.

"No need to worry."

Because worrying wouldn't help.

He looked up at the narrow window high above. In that square of night sky, neither stars nor moon were visible. Without any reference point, there was no way to define the first half of the night. He hoped Peter would wake up on his own to take over the watch.

Kup yawned. Sleepiness grew stronger, but he did not want to fall asleep. That face would not fade; it lingered in his memory, as if it might emerge at any moment from some blind spot outside the light.

There was also the face on the rock painting, the boy's face. When relaxed, it was repeatedly recalled, cycling and alternating in the form of an uncertain image, sometimes overlapping with each other.

For a moment, he felt the boy bore some resemblance to a certain broad, flat face on the rock painting. Although their facial shapes were vastly different, there was a similarity akin to a blood relation, like a middle-aged father whose figure had distorted standing next to his son.

"How strange."

"What's strange? I always feel you haven't told me everything..." Yin Feng held her hands in the air in front of her chest. This gesture seemed to imitate Mr. Kraft, who would do so when he had nothing to do and nothing to hold. With her image, she simply could not produce that prayer-like, inexplicable sense of ritual.

"Dong-dong-dong!"

The two looked at each other, then both turned to look at Peter, certain the sound did not come from inside the room.

"Dong-dong!" The knocking sound that interrupted their idle chat rang out again, coming from the door. "Is anyone awake? I left something at home."

They remembered this voice. It belonged to the original owner of the house, that robust woman who wielded a pickaxe with ease.

Yin Feng went to open the door but was held back by Kup, who had risen quickly. She turned back, puzzled, seeing him cover his mouth and make a "shh" gesture.

【Go there】

He pointed to the space under Peter's bed, where he slept deeply. It was a small, inconspicuous area; half the luggage was piled there. The remaining space could not fit an adult, but it might barely fit a child.

"What thing? Where did you leave it?"

Mr. Kraft disliked harmony; Kup also had things he hated, and doors and windows making noise in the middle of the night ranked first. The knocking sound swept away all sleepiness, and his breath hitched.

A coincidence? The homeowner who had just moved into the next room temporarily happened to forget a necessary item.

Only when invisible did these thoughts become so active, driven by a fear even he might not fully perceive, combining with the irrational and the strange totems of the heathens, guessing the worst possibilities.

He turned toward the space behind him, only realizing a moment later that he wanted to seek someone's opinion. Outside the door was a tide-like darkness; the grim night curtain could hide the worst contents and their associations from the depths of his memory.

【Now this is a place I can no longer cover.】

"Damn it," Kup muttered to himself. From the moment the door bolt fell, he had been the one in charge here.

Quick! He mouthed the word to Yin Feng, rushed to the bedside first, pulled out Kraft's mixed bag of miscellaneous items, and made room for her.

Peter woke as the bed creaked, his mouth suddenly clamped shut. A delayed reply came through the door crack, "Firewood, I need to get some firewood."

The guide looked confusedly at the sky outside the window and shook his head, dismissing the possibility of a local custom.

"Please, open the door, I just need to come in and get some firewood, I won't disturb you long." The voice carried a hint of pleading; it was indeed the woman who had taken them up the mountain that morning.

"Alright, wait, at least let me put on my clothes." Kup unhooked the page hammer from his waist, glanced around, and handed Peter a stool.

This time, Kraft couldn't spare a thought for this side, but the good news was his hands were not shaking.