HALLO ELM

The door of Hallo’s room creaked open, and an extremely bright light—which was in vast contrast to that of the candlelight on his desk—poured out from a bronze hand-lantern and shattered the dim darkness enveloping him where he was seated.

He was not pleased at that interference disrupting the peaceful atmosphere he was being bathed in, and his countenance did not fail to hide it. Regardless, he was not surprised about what had just happened; in fact, he looked like he had been expecting such to happen.

Rain was a stubborn boy who never listened to him after all.

“What are you doing?” Hallo grumbled tiredly as he shifted his gaze from the candlelight and array of messy papers on his desk toward the young boy standing at his door. “Can’t you see that I’m in the middle of work?”

“Oh! I didn’t know that. My apologies—As if!” Rain wrung up his nose. “How was I supposed to know that with all the darkness in here?” He shifted forward, allowing the glow of the oil lamps in the corridor to further spill into the room and join that of his lantern to frustrate Hallo even more.

Rain was just as ebony skinned as Hallo, and even though his tone was far lighter, it was impossible for anyone to miss out on the fact that they were genetically brothers.

But despite their resemblance, their features still differed somewhat.

Unlike Hallo who had taken the blue eyes and black hair of their mother, Rain had gotten the brown eyes and hair of their father.

And this also proved the same for their characters.

Hallo was just as nocturnal as their mother, preferring to sleep during the day and work at night; while Rain always assumed diligence when it was required of him. But no matter how much Rain tried to help his elder brother change, it always never worked. Just like now.

“The darkness is my comfort zone,” Hallo scoffed as he turned back to the papers on his table. He was garbed in a woolen nightcap the same color as his warm red flannel nightshirt and the cashmere socks keeping his feet cozy. “And you’re disturbing me.”

“Sure,” Rain snorted. “I’ll leave you to your beautiful darkness soon, demon,” he mocked while flaying his eyes about the room, nothing besides the desk Hallo was seated before coming into his view because of its greatly unbrightened state. “I just came to tell you that your dinner is ready.”

Hallo grinned sarcastically. “Oh, how nice of you to do that. You’re one fine maidservant.”

Rain’s face visibly flushed despite his skin tone. “Don’t call me that!” he hollered in a mild fury, his soft voice making him seem ever so childish within the two-piece purple pajama he was in. “I’ll have you know that I’m not your maidservant, you…” He eyed his elder brother. “You flapdoodle!”

Hallo wheezed softly before bursting out into a laughter, one which twisted his belly so much that signs of tears came upon his eyes, and he had to slap his thighs continuously, but gently, in an attempt to control himself.

Gosh, Rain was so amusing sometimes.

“What… What is it? What’s so funny?” The young boy of fourteen was left dazed where he was standing with a lantern in hand a few steps into Hallo’s room.

“No. Nothing. Nothing, really.” Hallo slowly calmed himself, after which he wiped the tears that had rolled down onto his cheeks. “Quite a word you learnt. Do you even know the meaning?”

Rain pouted. “Hmph… Why wouldn’t I?”

“Oh… Then what is it?” Hallo shifted on his chair, placing his left arm over its top rail as he turned to face his younger brother with a smile.

Up went Rain’s bushy brows as he jutted his chin and maintained a probing eye contact with his brother.

“It means a sexually incompetent man.” He sneered at that.

“Is that all?” Hallo asked with a slight tilt of his head indicating surprise. And Rain was undoubtedly influenced by it.

“What do you mean?”

“That is not all there is to a flapdoodle. It means a sexually incompetent man who is either too young to have had sex, or too old to attempt it. I’m twenty nine; I’m none of those. Heh.” Hallo gave out a low grunt and turned back to his desk, away from Rain’s hunched shoulders. “I’m disappointed in you, Rain,” he began saying jokingly. “How can your brother be so smart and you’re lacking? This is why—”

“I’ve told you already. I’m not going to school.” Rain interrupted, leaving Hallo’s words lost in the air as his countenance shifted dramatically into a somber one. The young boy sighed then. “We don’t have the money. You already send the bits you earn to father and mother already. So just focus on using the rest for rent and food. School is quite expensive, I don’t have to keep telling you that.”

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Hallo smacked his lips with a pinch of his eyes and leaned back on his chair. “My earnings put us in the middle class, you know?” He turned his gaze back toward his door, putting it on the figure wielding a lantern there.

“The lower part of the middle class,” Rain countered, his eyes crinkled into slits. He no longer had the expression of a child. “I don’t know what had made you think simply becoming a bounty hunter would give us enough money to become nobles. What if you had died when you had taken that elixir?”

Hallo shrugged in a carefree manner. “Well I’m alive and earning, aren’t I?”

Rain shook his head with an exhale. “There’s no reaching you, is there?” He turned around, prepared to take his leave.

“Just agree to go to school. I’ll take care of it. I promise.” Hallo dropped his head backward onto his chair’s top rail, still looking at his brother. “Don’t bother about mother and father; their bills are not that huge after all. Uduak is not too expensive. The rents will always be sorted out, and food too. I’m constantly making money from bounty hunting.”

“Do you think I’m so uneducated?! Uduak is literally the most expensive of the cities of Fitzroy besides the Capital city. The water bill in that desert is five times the price we pay for it here, and it dries up far quickly too. How is that not expensive?” Rain roared. “You’re an Echelon 7 Ascender, dumbass. Don’t you see? There aren’t many jobs for your status. Yes, the jobs you get bring in a large sum, but how many times do you get one? The Baseborn jobs you take once in a while don’t bring enough to cover our expenses, and if you add my school fees and all to our expenses, then… We’re fine the way we are. I go to the free lending library either way. Just think of it as I am homeschooling myself.”

“That’s nonsense.” Hallo jerked forward. He was not having it. “Even children from the working class attend school; some peasant children do too, why wouldn’t you? And as an elder brother I’m just meant to leave you be? You want to turn out the same way I have? Unable to get any reasonable jobs because I’m uneducated? Get a grip, Rain. Go to school, study from actual schoolmasters and Misses, and become anything like a doctor, lawyer, engineer, anything. You could even work in a bank, become a high-ranked civil servant; there are a lot of options if you just take your stubborn self to school.”

Rain remained silent for a couple of seconds, then finally said, “Just… Come and have your dinner.” And with those words he evacuated the room, leaving Hallo once again in his peaceful darkness; only it was no longer that.

Feeling a stiffness in his neck, Hallo threw his eyes back onto the exposed papers on his table, each one filled with words that made up clues, references, and researches on his current job.

A short moment later, he separated from the pile a sole piece of paper with detailed notes and muttered, “Elmer Hills.” He then singled out another piece, this one with a unique sentence: “Death Comes Knocking Only Once…”

A sigh he heaved out next, falling backward onto his chair. “Four deaths since November. MO is the victims’ heads exploding, and every single one of them committed a crime nothing less than a week before their deaths. Hmph… He's using his abilities to make money through killing. Typical for a corrupted one.”

Hallo scratched his disheveled black hair as a result of a slight frustration creeping onto his skin.

“If only they were talking.” His words were directed at those who he felt had employed Elmer Hills.

He’d made use of the help of the police force, through his license, to find out information on the crimes the murdered assailants had committed, and their victims. Then he’d tried reaching out to all of those victims, the latest being Elia Brentford, a young lady who had once been a mixer at the now shut down Egor’s Chocolate Factory. But just like the rest, she’d chased him away cursing at the law for neglecting her, and now seeking her help to reprimand the only one who had come to her aid.

Hallo pinched his eyes and heaved out an exhale.

Even though every single result of his personal findings were merely speculations, he was quite sure of each. The only problem was that Elmer Hills had covered his tracks perfectly, and it was almost impossible to get ahold of him.

He’d tried using the license form the corrupted one, Elmer, had once been in possession of to perform a divination, but he always met interferences no matter how many times he attempted. It was always like a supernatural force was preventing him from accessing the corrupted one’s whereabouts; though he felt like that was a heavy reach.

The only beings he knew of that could disrupt something as otherworldly as divination were none other than the Gods themselves.

There was no way a God was backing Elmer Hills—a murderer. There was no way a corrupted one was in cohorts with a supernatural being well above the strengths of mere Ascenders.

But still, Hallo could not shake off that reasoning. It brought an explanation to most of all that happened after all. How Elmer had been able to become an Ascender without passing through the Church’s college, bypass the keen eyes of a clerk of the Glowing Eye bureau even after forging his certification seal, and finally, kill a High level corrupted one and two Lower Echelons all by himself in a night.

The latter was a feat a Baseborn without his unique ability unlocked should not have been able to carry out. It was a feat worthy of someone with the makings of a legend.

And even though Hallo couldn’t bring himself to make sense of how such an unlikely alliance between a corrupted one and a benevolent one could have been possible, he was slowly bringing himself to grab onto it to keep his sanity.

He thought for a moment then shook his head.

It’s impossible for that God to be Chronos… There is no way He would keep a killer of his believers safe… I have to get rid of that parasite in the Pathway of Time…

Well, at this point, Hallo knew he only had one option left. He had to visit Katherine Smyth at the Church’s college.

That was going against the rule of the church which stated that cases involving Ascenders should never be exposed to a normal human, especially one who was either directly or indirectly a victim. They were to be left in the shadows so as not to push them into tampering with the supernatural.

This rule helped maintain stability in the society. And that same rule had kept Katherine Smyth from knowing the murderer of her mother.

Hallo was about to stir a ripple in that pool now. That was the only way for him to figure this all out and attain the price for reprimanding the corrupted one who was Elmer Hills.

Apart from ridding the world of a crazed person, he needed the ten thousand mints bestowed to this job by the Church. It would make Rain’s life a lot better.

“When Sunday comes I’ll pay her a visit. No more hesitating.”