Bailonz Street 13

Episode 16. The Man of the Mist (1)

It seemed that Jefferson had come to discuss the case.

As soon as I stepped out of the room, the eyes of the gathered crowd fell on me. It was a bit overwhelming, but I refused to let it faze me. Thinking that I was just being prideful? Clearly, they didn’t know me well. Among the crowd was Hershel Hopkins from yesterday.

“Good morning,” I greeted them. Pulling my thick indoor robe tighter around myself, I sat next to Liam and naturally took the newspaper from him.

The table between the sofas was piled high with newspapers, ranging from reputable dailies to gossip rags, as if we had bought every paper in London. The front page featured an article about the ongoing construction on the Thames River bridge and a story about a young couple causing a commotion by attempting to jump off the Strand Bridge. The police had to intervene. That bridge had been a known suicide spot for over thirty years. The nerve! Especially with Scotland Yard not far away.

I noticed a consistent detail in all the newspapers.

“…the culprit of the case,” I started, but nowhere, not on the front page nor in the classifieds, was there any mention of the incident at Lambeth’s Old Paradise Gardens. It was as if it had never happened, as if the people who died there were just fools.

Jefferson continued, visibly agitated. Higher-ups had forbidden any further investigation. The Brothers of Turc, the religious fanatics they had captured, were released early in the morning due to lack of evidence. They couldn’t be held any longer. I understood their situation to some extent.

‘Personally,’ Jefferson had found a corpse at the place the fanatic claimed to be staying. The man had clearly poisoned himself overnight. Though Jefferson suspected foul play, he wasn’t given the chance to perform an autopsy or further examine the crime scene. The room was quickly cleared, and anything useless was burned. Soon, someone new would move in. In London’s shadowy corners, there were always people ready to live anywhere with four walls and a roof. Who knew how many more would be used like this?

The dead man’s body was buried in a common grave for the unclaimed. In London, this was the usual end for the poor, with the process moving swiftly as if they had been waiting for him to die. Such was the fate of these people, always.

All I could send the deceased was a bit of pity. It was clear they had severed the tail, yet none of us could pursue it further. Tobias Jefferson had a wife and daughter, and Liam and I also had families, strained as our relationships might be. We couldn’t stir up trouble that the high-ranking officials at Scotland Yard wanted to ignore.

People with much to lose always choose silence. You might call it cowardice. The identities of those attacking people were never revealed, and the murder case would forever drift in the fog of London’s unsolved mysteries.

We did catch the Misty Murderer. Even if we didn’t identify every person involved in the killings, we managed to separate the chaff from the wheat in society. The Brothers of Turc were all apprehended by the London police, and the many visitors to Old Paradise Gardens were managed. It was remarkable that no one died in the process, but that was the end of it.

Only then did I remember there were quite a few high-ranking officials among those present at the scene. The case was closed. For the sake of the noble lords’ honor, their honor and wealth which would vanish come the 21st century.

Let’s be honest here. I’m opening up to you. Honestly, I am bewildered. I wasn’t surprised by the London police’s response. I vaguely knew that the high-ups had a strong aversion to sinister religions and had anticipated their reaction. Even so, curiosity or genuine belief might have led some high-ranking officials to get involved in this sinister religion, wanting to keep it under wraps. I understood this situation. I knew that many of these attacks and murders were the work of those fanatically devoted to the cult.

So, what confuses me?

Listen closely, dear readers. What truly confuses me is that despite doing ‘nothing,’ Episode 1 concluded because we ‘caught the mastermind.’

I still hadn’t received any answers from them. I knew they attacked people for some cultic rites, but I couldn’t understand anything from start to finish of what those involved were saying.

Everything I’ve encountered so far has been like that!

Honestly, solving cases with Liam Moore usually involved proper investigation and inquiry, providing valuable criminology insights. But in this case… it was filled with surreal elements.

There are countless questions. For instance,

What was the mist? Did they predict the foggy days? But how could it be so dense on the days they committed the murders? What about the disappearing people? Were the empty streets my hallucination?

Who is Lucita? How did she enter a locked office? What was Plurititas? The automaton-like people in that house? Those containers filling the library?

If being led to Big Ben was merely the cultist’s trap, why did they commit murders in such a convoluted way?

So many questions, yet no answers.

Since when did Liam Moore get used to such things? What was his drug? Now that I think about it, he injured his arm, so how did he shoot a gun so accurately? How? Are the things I know correct? Was everything just MacGuffin’s, the game creator, intent? But if that’s the case, how many plot holes does it create? These creators don’t know how to write a story. They should quit if they can’t do better.

Everything was just a series of coincidences and surreal events. It felt like I had glimpsed a world I didn’t intend to see.

Liam Moore remained the same, and so did I, but I didn’t feel like we had ‘solved’ the case. There was only unease left, a lingering discomfort like drinking tea with too much sugar, sticking to my tongue and throat, bringing this persistent doubt.

Did we really solve the case?

Yet, the game system remained unchanged. It must have heard my doubts, yet it continued to shimmer in the corner of my vision. What a broken game.

At that moment, I felt a certain anger.

A broken game.

It was a flood of emotions, overwhelming and disregarding everything in its path, leaving only sharp anger.

To include such an incomplete, hole-ridden scenario as the first episode, were they showcasing an unfinished work, or was this ‘how it was supposed to be’?

There have been many games that fell into the category of broken games. The elements of a broken game are numerous.

Half-baked story, incoherent plot development, shameless monetization strategies, endless gacha with no ceiling, the constant rotation of pushing popular characters, story development worse than a school assembly’s ‘let’s all get along’ narrative. I’m familiar with it. The lag caused by new characters entering the battlefield or the poor polygons are understandable.

But this, this was a kind of absurdity I had never experienced before. It was as if they were determined to create a broken game. They poured their hearts into character and background accuracy, leaving the story hollow. I couldn’t even begin to guess what was in the creator’s mind. What a broken game.

A hand rested on my shoulder. Liam Moore watched my expression briefly. Only then did I realize I was crumpling the newspaper as if ready to tear it apart. Everyone had been watching me in silence during my brief distraction.

“Let’s have breakfast outside,” he suggested. “You could use a change of scenery.”

He must have thought I was angry about the police’s decision. Let him think that; I muttered inwardly.

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