Having been through thick and thin, Xerxes and the rest arrived back at the station. Halfway through some street, they managed to get a carriage. Although it was a bit small for the five of them, it dropped them at their rightful place.
Xerxes was sure they all had homes somewhere in the city. However, not a single one of them remembered anything about their characters in the dungeon. Without a place to stay, they could only be accommodated at the city's police station, which was open day and night.
Outside the station door stood another tired man. Dark souls resided under his eyes as he smoked from his pipe, puffing out smoke under the lamplight. He appeared a little startled when his eyes met Xerxes'. Hastily, he hid the pipe behind his back and straightened up.
"Welcome back, Sergeant," he greeted in a rough voice.
Xerxes felt uncomfortable being greeted this way by someone much older than him. He awkwardly nodded in response.
Damn, just how old am I in this dungeon? he thought. There's no way a 22-year-old could become a Sergeant...
"Nova, when are you planning to take the kid back? His mother must be worried. Don't make the kid work so hard—take him home for some time," the man said, patting Nova on the back in a carefree way.
"Kids should be sleeping at night. What are you thinking, taking him back into the station? Tsk, tsk," he added, clicking his tongue in disapproval.
Nova was surprised to learn that he and Kai were related to each other in this 'world.' Taking Kai in his hold, he smirked. "He doesn't miss anyone as long as I am with him, right, Kai?" He looked at him for approval but was only met with a death stare.
"He must love his uncle more than his own parents. Don't let his mother hear that," the man chuckled, hitting Nova hard on the back before leaving to return to work.
Xerxes, standing at the station entrance, lingered to listen to their conversation. Hearing about their lives from the NPCs was amusing, to say the least. Returning to the backroom, they all sat down, their limbs instantly falling to the ground lazily.
"You two being related was the last thing I was expecting," Xerxes said, moving the files and folders aside to make space for himself on the table.
"I must be his nephew," Kai said bluntly, without expression.
"How do you know that? Wait, don't tell me you already knew this," Alexa asked dramatically.
"We're the only ones with the same smell on our clothes," Kai explained briefly, which was enough.
"Ugh... I just got goosebumps again," Alexa shivered visibly before pausing. "Did you smell all of us and the others in the station?"
Kai ignored the question, shifting the attention to their earlier visit. "The man we just investigated has a cat. It has white and black fur. I don't know if he got rid of it recently or where it was, but there should be a cat in that house somewhere."
"Everything just screamed poverty to me," Nova added.
"If Kai says there's a cat, there should be. His behavior was definitely strange when Kai asked about it. There has to be a connection," Lucas said, scrambling through the written responses of the man once again.
"The address Lucas got from him might give us something more to work with. For now, we still only have guesses based on our gut feelings and not enough material to prove anything," Xerxes said, grabbing an empty wooden stool to prop up his legs. "Let's get some sleep tonight. We don't know when we'll get the chance again. So goodnight for now."
He stretched out on the chair, his legs supported by the stool, managing to lie down somewhat comfortably.
"We're sleeping here? Just like this?" Alexa asked, but before she finished, everyone else had already made themselves comfortable in their seats. Sleep was all they could think of as of right now.
"Goodnight," Nova said.
"Night," Kai murmured.
***
"ACHOO!" Xerxes sneezed, sniffing through his freezing nose. It was colder today than the previous day. If he guessed, the temperature was in the negatives. The sun hadn't even glimpsed at the people, and the fog made it impossible to see into the distance.
"This is the tree he was talking about," Kai said, pointing to the deciduous tree next to the burned black remnants of what used to be a house.
The tree's dark branches twisted, almost strangling each other. From a reachable branch hung a thin piece of rope, worn through by the seasons, rain, and wind. Surrounding the tree, they examined it carefully.
"Seems normal to me. What are we even looking for?" Nova asked, his hand under his chin as he looked the tree up and down.
"Why are you sniffing everything? That's so weird," Nova exclaimed.
"It's the same smell..." Kai murmured under his breath.
Xerxes, standing next to Kai, overheard him. "What smell?" he asked.
"It's hard to describe. It just smells like a cat—a male cat, specifically."
"...?"
How do you know it's a male cat from an indistinguishable smell? Xerxes thought, unable to understand. Still, if Kai said it, it had to be true.
"Everyone here knows a cat was hung here, so of course, it would smell like it. But how is your sense of smell so strong?" Nova asked, confused.
Kai paid him no mind and moved to smell the house. Ever since he entered this dungeon, he'd developed a strange habit of sniffing everything repeatedly until the scent was registered in his mind. He did it almost instinctively.
The burned-down remnants of the house and the remaining tree provided little to their investigation. The neighborhood had undergone many reconstructions over the years. The new residents didn't even know the story of the burned house and the hung cat. Interviewing them proved fruitless, leaving them with only one option: to visit Mr. Pyncheon again.