"Who are you?" Valentina asked me in a serious tone.
"What's this? You forgot who I am?" I replied, maintaining my poker face. Attempting humor in this situation only earned me a steely glare from Valentina.
"Edward, Edward Blackwood."
Valentina nodded, then asked, "Are you human?"
"What else would I be? A doppelgänger?"
"Doppelgänger, huh? It's not entirely impossible. The real Edward must have been devoured by you."
"Really now?"
Valentina shrugged, continuing, "Where were you for the past 14 years?"
"Straight to the point, huh?"
Valentina did not reply, only staring at me, waiting for my answer. Let's see if I could bluff my way through.
"I lived in homeless shelters. If you don't believe me, there's plenty of evidence too."
"They were fabricated. The earliest evidence of you being there was three years ago when you were 16." Valentina squinted her eyes, with a frown on her face. "Where were you when you went missing?"
"Don't know. I don't seem to recall where I was when I got separated from my parents."
I wasn't exactly telling the truth. I only wanted to see if she could refute me and find out the extent of her information network.
Valentina seemed a little flustered, tying her hair back into a ponytail.
"This is getting annoying. You don't really want to take it easy and spill the beans, now do you?" Valentina replied, almost done tying her hair.
"I am telling the truth. Not sure what else you want me to say."
"Oh, really? Okay, let's continue then. Were you taken in by someone or some organization when you were little?"
I paused, realizing she had dug up some information about me, so there wasn't much point in lying now. I shrugged.
"Yes."
"Were they followers of the church or maybe some concealed orphanage?"
"Nope." When I replied, Valentina made a face, somewhat relieved.
"Okay, then." She replied, the air around her now somewhat different and dangerous.
"Do you know about us?"
"I do."
"How many have you encountered?"
"Other than you, Thomas, and your fancy butler, none."
"Hmm... I see. That's good then." Valentina replied, relieved, before suddenly turning to me and asking, "One last question. What's your goal here?"
When I did not reply, she added, "Since you know about us, that must mean you know about those monsters too. I won't ask much about what you intend to do to those monsters, but what do you intend to do with us?"
'What I intend to do with you people?' I thought to myself, recalling what my teacher had taught me. When I come face to face with them, if an opportunity presents itself, I shouldn't hesitate to take them out.
They are cancers of humankind.
"Nothing much, really. I'll just make sure you people stay hidden forever and cannot be found in this hide-and-seek game that your kind seems to be playing. That's all."
Valentina's countenance shifted as she listened to my response, her brow furrowing in a perplexed frown, betraying her inability to grasp the implications of my ambiguous answer.
However, as she processed it in her own interpretation, a chilling transformation overtook her.
Her expression turned icy, devoid of warmth or empathy, as her features contorted into a mask of coldness and disdain.
The once serene visage now radiated with an unsettling aura of anger and malice, as if a tempest churned within her.
With a steely glare, her eyes gleamed with an ominous intensity, reflecting a hidden intent that boded ill for our interaction.
Each word she spoke dripped with venom, laden with an underlying threat that hinted at the potential for harm.
"What do you mean by that?"
Valentina's approach was deliberate, each step calculated to exude an aura of dominance and menace.
As she closed the distance between us, the air seemed to grow colder, suffused with the palpable tension of impending conflict.
Her voice, once soft and melodic, now dripped with icy scorn as she echoed my words back to me. "You'll make me disappear? I wonder how you'll do that."
"You seem to not understand, here let me demonstrate." I replied, feigning ignorance to the storm that was about to descend upon us, knowing full well that I stood in the path of her wrath.
I took out a coin and tossed it in the air before catching it with my hand and opening it, only for nothing to be there. "See, like this, poof." I exaggerated a little, while making a poof sound.
I looked at Valentina, clearly she was not in a good mood and was barely paying attention to my coin vanishing trick, her eyes were only locked with mine.
She closed the distance by a lot, now we were only about 20 feet apart. She asked once again, her tone cold as ice, "how will you make me disappear?"
Since she does not seem to understand, without beating around the bush, I came up with a very provocative answer to her question.
"That girl, what was her name again? Ah, yes, Luna." As those words left my lips, her eyes shot up and glared at me, her eyes red in color, now strangely glowing.
But I wasn't intimidated at all and continued to provoke her.
"She seemed quite attached to you. It's a pity she'll be used as nothing but bait to get rid of you."
I told her without changing the tone of my voice, as I kept it the same from the very beginning of our conversation.
I observed her facial expression; she was, to say the least, fuming.
"Don't bring her into this. If you so much as lay a single finger on her," Valentina spoke in a low voice, her eyes now focused on the ground.
"I'll kill you."
'She's finally taking this seriously now that I brought Luna up.'
"She must be in so much pain right now," I replied, as if Valentina wasn't even a threat to me.
"What?" Valentina asked, shocked, finally lifting her eyes off the ground to look at me.
The gravity of my words seemed to hit her like a physical blow. For the first time since our conversation began, I could see a flicker of uncertainty in her usually composed demeanor.
But beneath that shock, there was something else in her eyes—a glimmer of fear, fleeting yet unmistakable.
It was a small victory, knowing that I had managed to unnerve someone as formidable as Valentina, even if only for a moment.
As her gaze bore into mine, I could sense the tension crackling between us.
'Weaker than I expected.'