Chapter 91

"May his soul ascend to the Lord's kingdom," Father Adrian said. To Kraft, this phrase was much like "my condolences," something to blurt out when one didn't know what to say at a funeral—useless and unlikely words, but appropriate for the occasion.

He gripped the double-winged ring pendant at his throat, tried to suck in his belly to appear more formal, and added with a professional demeanor, "I have seen many long torments of illness; for him, release is not a bad thing. Even setting age aside, you have done enough, better than most people I know, so there is no need to blame yourself."

These words provoked no reaction. Yvonne gave a soft "hm," squeezed past the priest, passed them, and walked toward the depths of the alley.

The priest, carrying the apples, followed a few steps, then, realizing there was nothing more he could do, stopped dejectedly, watching her leave without looking back. Kraft heard his muttering: "Oh, Heavenly Father..."

Objectively speaking, it was indeed a good thing—for the deceased, and perhaps even more so for his daughter.

Fingers pinched the holy symbol for a long while; a certain priest realized he should still be able to do something to ease his conscience.

"Where was he buried? I can help with prayers."

Normally, a clergyman must recite a eulogy at burial, serving as the guide leading the soul to the Heavenly Father's kingdom. Given Yvonne's situation, going to the church to find another priest was clearly impossible.

"Not yet."

"As it happens, I no longer serve in the church, so the rules about charging fees don't apply to me." It was rare for a priest's expulsion from the church to count as a good thing; perhaps he had just made it up on the spot, but it seemed credible enough.

Yvonne seemed swayed. In this port, few were non-believers; everyone had some spiritual solace. The hope that a loved one lives in another world is a crucial part of the church's influence, often surpassing the aspirations of the living.

After all, however mature she was, she was still a child. The possibility of her father ascending to heaven after death, however slim, was something she longed for.

Her pale lips pressed together; the bite marks took several seconds before filling with blood. She was still hesitant. Even while her father was alive, those frequent visitors bringing doctors or people claiming to summon souls came and went, all for some secret she still did not understand.

Now, with the person dead and the matter settled, the secret departed with the soul; what could anyone plot? At the same time, another question made it hard for her to decide.

"Not yet."

It was not that no one had prayed yet; she meant something even earlier.

"Oh, Heavenly Father." Adrian tossed the bag to Kraft and broke into a run to catch up.

They pushed open that door and entered the windowless interior. In the corner leaned a hard bed without a blanket; a straight figure lay arranged on the bedboard.

A smell akin to mold and rot permeated the sealed space, growing increasingly pungent as they approached, reminding Kraft of his experiences in the Salt Tide District, though even more unbearable. The repulsion existed not only physically but also psychologically.

"Oh, Heavenly Father." The priest had been repeating this phrase since earlier; upon entering the room, he dared not step forward.

"Now someone needs to find a coffin. Priest, you should know such people." After overcoming the physical difficulty through adaptation, the psychological barrier was not too heavy for Kraft. He gave the priest at an impasse a reason to leave and walked alone toward the bedside.

After opening the door for them, Yvonne stood aside watching. Kraft looked at her inquiringly; she showed no clear sign of refusal.

She might be thinking of a more decent ending; at the very least, the body could not be simply thrown outside. Yet, given the three days of delay, she probably had found no solution and lacked the money to resolve the problem, so she could only close the windows to slow the decay.

Fortunately, the recent weather was not hot, and no active gas-producing bacteria were visible nearby to bloat the corpse; the body largely retained its normal shape.

That smell... was still hard to accept. He could not imagine how Yvonne had endured these three days. The feeling surpassed even his first time opening an iron cabinet filled with formaldehyde fumes—the lingering breath of death.

The corpse could be described as emaciated. The chronic course of illness had worn him down continuously and painfully; muscles had atrophied and thinned from lack of movement, covered by rough, yellow skin. His slender frame could not support clothes of the original size; they hung loosely over him, the collar open down to the sternum.

Incongruous with the overall appearance were his relatively thick fingers, resembling pestles swollen at the ends on his withered palms, the nails raised and high. This was hyperplasia caused by chronic oxygen deprivation at the extremities.

【Coughing, wheezing】

The priest had once described the condition he saw when visiting Yvonne's father. He must have suffered from some chronic respiratory disease; oxygen supply had been insufficient for a long time, causing chronic hypoxia at the extremities, which formed clubbed fingers.

An urgent sense of suffocation forced him to breathe with all his might, "like pumping a bellows," pulling the ribcage, expanding the thorax to inhale more air. The ribs splayed outward into a barrel shape, while negative pressure caused the unsupported skin between the bones to sink inward, carving grooves between the ribs and above the clavicles.

These two opposing movements shaped the patient's upper body beneath his clothes into a clearly skeletal form, like a walking corpse draped in dried skin over a skeleton, as in legend.

His parted, bluish-purple lips showed he had been struggling to breathe even before death, though the oxygen reaching the functional alveoli was completely insufficient for the body's needs, unable to sustain even the minimum physiological requirements.

A bitter death. The deceased had been unable to express his own pain while alive; that fall may have injured the brain's language area, depriving him of the ability to speak.

"Oh, Heavenly Father." Kraft unconsciously began to speak like the priest. Any meaningful words appeared pale and powerless before such an encounter; only a sigh remained, directed at the imagined cruel master of human fate. He would rather have understood nothing at all.

The priest soon returned with people and a coffin. Together they lifted the deceased from the bed into the coffin. On the bedboard remained the silhouette of a bloody, foul-smelling liquid stain; from his angle, it was unusable.

Blocking the lid from closing, Kraft beckoned to Yvonne. "Would you like to see him one last time?"

"Thank you." She thanked the stranger standing in the room, held the edge of the coffin, and gazed at that emaciated face. Only then did age-appropriate sorrow and confusion surface on her face, reminding onlookers that she was merely a girl of thirteen or fourteen.

This gave the waiters more patience, allowing enough time to complete this farewell in silence.

In the quiet environment, with nothing to do, Kraft's thoughts began to wander, inappropriately recalling matters of age.

If Yvonne was only thirteen or fourteen, then calculating her father's age would place him around thirty. In an era with a bleak average life expectancy, he was still a young, strong laborer at the peak of his physical condition.

There was no tobacco, and Yvonne, who shared the room, did not appear to have contracted a severe respiratory infectious disease. Logically speaking, he should not have deteriorated to such a state at his age unless some external factor was involved.

What could that be?

The priest was already preparing the eulogy. Yvonne stepped away from the coffin as the lid was being nailed shut. While no one was paying attention, Kraft briefly opened his spiritual senses and swept over the corpse's chest cavity inside the coffin.

Countless round and irregular nodules occupied the entire lung field, scattered like star points, merging into large lesions where dense.