Chapter 5: Brave New World (Part Four)
"Is Crow moving in with us? Great! Come here, I'll comb your hair!"
"Leave him alone; he’s still recovering from being sick. If only Crow hadn’t been born here—he’s such high-quality stock and so well-behaved. The stud Mr. Charles bought doesn’t compare to him."
"Don’t dream. Do you know how much black hair and dark eyes are worth?"
Crow obediently allowed the girls to fuss over him, and it dawned on him: no wonder they wanted to sell him.
The rat-headed people were quite scientific in raising their stud animals, knowing to avoid inbreeding by selling their home-grown studs and buying fresh stock from outside.
"Is 'that stud' really going to die?"
"Probably, since Mr. Charles said so. Good, we’re getting a new stud. I can’t stand seeing this one anymore; his skin hangs down to the ground, and he reeks. Crow, stay away from him, you’ll get smelly too!"
Crow glanced sideways at his matted hair: So, this is what 'smelling good' feels like?
"That guy’s definitely not a good breeder," said a worried-looking woman, rubbing her belly. "Mine is probably going to be a fat one again."
"We hardly keep any as studs; most of our kids end up as fat ones," chimed in a teenage girl with brown hair.
As soon as Crow saw her face, which bore a strong resemblance to the Countess, her name popped into his mind: Pearl.
Pearl's face was still round with baby fat, at most fourteen or fifteen years old, but her belly was noticeably swollen. She didn’t see anything wrong with it and proudly held up an infant still in the nursing stage. "The Countess is amazing; she’s given birth to so many of our berries. We already have two breeding females and one stud. Look at our Little Eight, with black hair and dark eyes; he’s definitely going to stay on the first floor. When Crow leaves, we can give her his name—it’s lucky and sounds great!"
Crow didn’t know how to respond and could only give a forced laugh.
As he chuckled awkwardly, the back of his head was smacked by the Countess. His biological mother commanded, "Don’t just stand there."
Under the envious gazes of the girls, Crow was led away by the Countess.
It turned out that the stairwells of each floor in this berry circle were locked to prevent the young from wandering to other floors. Perhaps because there were too many fat ones, and it was hard to distinguish them by appearance, counting each floor was too troublesome.
Only the Countess, as the "Mama," could "freely roam" within the berry circle.
As she approached the stairwell, a beam of light scanned the lock. The invisible light spot on the Countess's neck lit up again, verification passed, and the lock clicked open.
Crow touched his neck, realizing that what Mr. Charles had "copied and pasted" to him just now was probably the Countess's "permission to freely roam within the cage."
"Wonderful," he thought happily, "I’m the 'deputy Mama' now."
Each stud animal "berry" should have a small chip implanted in their neck. Even as skinny as he was, it took a while to find the slight foreign object. The core function of the chip was definitely location tracking, but whether it could monitor to what degree was hard to say. He wasn’t sure about the technological level here. At least his secret talks with the canned food hadn’t been discovered while he was hospitalized. The implantation position of the chip was delicate, and it might have electric shock… or even explosion capabilities.
After all, given the size of the rat-headed people, while they might not be able to beat an adult human, the human could certainly pose a threat to them.
As the "Mama in charge of everyone," the Countess held a superior position, owning the only room in the entire berry circle with a door and window.
The small room, tucked between the first and second floors, was a cozy attic off the stairwell, a whopping seven or eight square meters, right next to the food storage. No wonder the girls were envious.
The Countess pushed him into the room and ordered him to sit still. She then went off to attend to business: it was mealtime.
She cleaned up the water in the yard and began distributing food layer by layer—in a corner of the berry circle's yard was a shed with several large barrels filled with berry feed. The barrels had taps at the bottom, and when opened, the feed flowed out.
The fat ones were holding bowls and, under the direction of the Count, were lining up in an orderly fashion to receive their meals. After the first floor finished, the Count herded them back and locked the door before letting the next floor of fat ones out.
The wise owner of the rat-headed people not only knew how to avoid inbreeding but also implemented classified feeding. Meals for pregnant women, nursing mothers, and fat ones cubs were dispensed from different barrels.
Meal times were a joyous occasion. Several lively, half-grown girls in the yard started singing the rat-headed people's herding song. The children upstairs joined in with "heijin heijin." Though there was no tune, the clear voices of the children and their innocent laughter were pleasant enough to fill the entire "chicken coop" with an air of happiness.
Crow, beating time absent-mindedly with his foot, thought: The first doubt—if the great owner is so reluctant, why did he make the Count the "nanny"?
The Count wasn’t the oldest here. At least from outward appearances, there were a few in the yard who seemed to be of similar age, or even more mature. They could all talk and laugh, and their limbs were intact; they could do the work the Count did.
Pondering the unpredictable rat-heart, he glanced around the Count’s room again.
The bedroom revealed almost everything about the owner, as if it would spill all the secrets.
His wandering gaze made a circuit, and he could tell that the owner of this place had a strong personality, was slightly compulsive, right-handed, slightly nearsighted or astigmatic, suffered from long-term insomnia, had an injury on the left leg, was sensitive to cold, and... hmm?
Crow’s eyes were drawn to the food warehouse.
He couldn’t help but walk over to confirm.
The items in the food warehouse, like the feeders downstairs, were placed on different shelves according to their audience. Each shelf was neatly organized by the Count, arranged by the color and size of the packaging, making it a pleasing sight to behold. Only the pile for the fat ones was quite messy.
Perhaps for a time, the owner had tried many brands, each with a different packaging style. The Count hadn’t arranged them by color or packaging size but instead by different flavors. The visual disorder was because they were strictly arranged by expiration date, even if some dates only differed by a few days.
The Count could read.
Crow flipped through the old newspapers pasted in the warehouse to absorb moisture and prevent dampness: It was probably not a coincidence that the pages facing up were all the same edition.
His curiosity was piqued, but before he could examine it closely, he heard the sound of footsteps in the stairwell.
Not good. If the nanny suspected him of stealing food, she might kick him downstairs to sleep on the floor.
Crow quickly tiptoed, took long strides, and darted back into the Count’s room, sitting upright and still.
Probably because a feeder in the yard had run empty, the Count had hurriedly carried a bag of berry grain upstairs and left again without checking on her intellectually disabled son’s posture.
Crow’s gaze followed her retreating figure and settled on the doorframe.
There was a light in the stairwell, but none in the room. The sudden transition from bright to dark made the human eye uncomfortable, and with a threshold at the door, people often grabbed the doorframe when entering.
However, the spot where the Count had touched showed only slight marks, while on the other side of the doorframe, about ten centimeters lower, there was a more obvious mark. The wood had been polished from use.
Given the Count’s height, it was unlikely she would grab such a low spot, meaning she probably hadn’t been the "nanny" for long.
Looking at that old mark, Crow imagined the appearance of the previous nanny: a middle-aged woman, no taller than 1.6 meters, stout, left-handed...
A rough outline began to form. Then, Crow’s left eye went dark, and his gaze was drawn to the realm of death.
Hmm? The previous nanny had passed away, and she died in this very room?
How fortuitous.
"Show me..."
Crow gladly emptied his useless brain, handing it over to his cheating eyes. After a moment, following his intuition, he sprawled on the floor and fished out a golden strand of hair from under the bed.
The lost hair quickly revealed the deceased’s final moments. She was about the age Crow had expected, but her complexion was rosy and full of vitality. She didn’t look like someone about to die, certainly not as sickly as he was.
"Hmm?" Crow was a little surprised. "You didn’t die of illness?"
Death never lies, and the dead answer all questions.
As his question hung in the air, the scene of death immediately replayed before his eyes.
The former midwife—let’s call her “Blonde”—entered the scene.
Snowball didn’t know her name, a sign of how much fear and respect the former midwife commanded.
Blonde directed several young girls to carry in a person.
The girls laid the person on the ground, and the makeshift stretcher in the phantom image passed right through Crow’s ankles. He stepped back and looked down to see a familiar face—the person on the stretcher was the Countess.
In the phantom image, the Countess looked rather frightening. Her swollen belly rose and fell weakly, as if she was barely breathing, with blood flowing down her bare feet.
Blonde glanced at the Countess and then shooed the girls carrying the stretcher out.
As she turned away, the “semi-conscious” Countess on the stretcher suddenly opened her eyes. Her dark brown eyes were cold, and her sharp gaze seemed to cut through space and time, stabbing even the distant onlooker, Crow.
Crow couldn’t help but lean back as he saw Blonde return with a basin of water.
As soon as she entered, the Countess immediately resumed her shallow, rapid breathing and pretended to be dead. Blonde knelt down and slapped her face twice, muttering something that was hard to lip-read, but it was probably not something nice. Every wrinkle on the midwife’s face seemed to wish the Countess would “deliver the child and die peacefully.”
She disinfected the birthing tools and then gagged the Countess, preparing to tie her limbs down with cloth strips. Her rough handling didn’t resemble a midwife’s care but rather that of a butcher.
The scuff marks on the threshold and the deep scratches on the floor suggested that Blonde had poor eyesight, so when she tied the cloth strips, her face was very close to the Countess’s.
Suddenly, something unexpected happened.
The “dying” pregnant woman sprang into action, and the Countess’s fingers accurately and fiercely stabbed into Blonde’s eye socket!
The excruciating pain from the dead woman’s eye was transmitted directly to Crow, who cursed in surprise: “Damn it, cat! Hiss—”
Before he could catch his breath, his throat tightened—the Countess had pulled the cloth strip half-wrapped around her wrist and used it to strangle Blonde.
Crow didn’t want to comment on the situation, feeling wronged: if he had known it was a murder, he would have made sure not to watch!
What did I do to deserve this?!
Blonde struggled for her life, her sturdy elbow continuously hitting the Countess’s belly. The Countess was even more ferocious, her cold sweat pouring down, veins bulging, and her hands not loosening for a second.
In the struggle between life and death, the former midwife managed to gouge out a piece of flesh from the Countess’s hand. The Countess didn’t care at all, using her swollen side to prop up her upper body and slamming Blonde’s head against the bedpost.
Thud!
Crow’s eyes twitched along with the dull sound.
Thud!
In the dead of night, with mice silent, the people upstairs and downstairs were locked in their cages. The only audience to this fight to the death was a viewer from the future.
Crow’s left eye, marked with a hexagram, dilated and spun wildly, as if trying to escape its socket.
Finally, the ordeal ended when he locked eyes with the dead woman.
The scene froze at the moment of Blonde’s death. The suffocating sensation eased, and Crow fell onto the bed in the small room, his fragile windpipe almost scratched by the sudden rush of air. He coughed, struggling to breathe.
After a long while, he looked, half-dead, at the dead woman’s outstretched hand: the murder scene had finished playing, and it was time for the post-show interaction.
“Hello, ma’am,” he cleared his hoarse throat, “Meeting you is truly my misfortune.”
The living and the dead meet across time and space, the deceased's fear and resentment coming crashing down like a tidal wave. But Crow half-heartedly waved his hand, as if swatting away the overwhelming emotions, muttering hollow words: "Yes, yes, I understand how you feel..."
A strange, elderly female voice rang out in his left ear: "I want..."
The shadow of the contract floated up, and Crow forced himself to maintain a professional demeanor: "Uh-huh, go on?"
Deceased Party A: "I want revenge, kill her! I want her to die in the most horrific way, I want her to suffer ten thousand times more than I did!"
Crow: "..."
He used all his strength to suppress the urge to roll his eyes upwards, forcing a fake, customer-service smile: "Sorry, but my services are limited to clearing memory and hard drives, relaying final messages and passwords. Revenge and debt collection are not part of my scope."
As soon as he finished speaking, the unformed contract abruptly dissolved, and the last remnants of the deceased vanished.
Crow's left eye vision returned to normal, and the blood-stained bed and floor vanished without a trace. Only the lingering phantom pain in his eye and neck remained, adding a new ailment to his already fragile body.
Crow clutched his throat, trying to calm the urge to vomit, berating himself for his morbid curiosity: "Why did I have to watch?! What was I thinking?! Now look, my cozy little room has turned into a haunted house."
And just then, footsteps were heard outside, and the Countess opened the door.
Crow looked up and saw her right hand on the doorframe, with a scar on her hand where a fingernail had been gouged out.
He swallowed hard, and from the depths of his soul, he cried out, "Mom!"