"If you really can't let go, come and see him on Halloween. There are only a few days left anyway."

The traveler exhaled, raised his eyes and smiled: "He has always missed you."

The ghost looked at him with a pair of sad and gentle eyes, but there was a slight smile on his face - a very sad but happy smile.

She opened her mouth, but she could only make a hollow and ethereal sad sound from her body, like the sound of wind.

But Kitahara and Kaede knew what she wanted to say.

"Thank you." She said in a sad tone that only ghosts can possess, and the figure with a pearly white luster disappeared into the shade of the tree, as if it had never appeared before.

"She's gone..."

Beiyuan and Feng squinted their eyes and looked there, then turned to look at Verlaine beside them, with a bright and helpless smile in their orange-gold eyes: "Okay, I can confirm that she did forgive him."

"There are no ghosts in this world."

Verlaine said in a cold tone: "There are no ghosts on the night before Halloween. This is just a story to scare people."

If there really were ghosts, he would probably be dragged down to hell by the ghosts that were clinging to him now, right?

"Why not?"

Beihara and Feng seemed to blink slightly at the blank tombstone, and then asked with a smile.

There are many stories in his hometown that can only be attributed to human desires and fantasies.

The desire to meet the dead again, the desire for kind people to have a better life, the desire for miracles, the desire to break injustice and fate, the desire for happiness and love, the desire for security...

It is these that create beautiful and magnificent myths and fantasies one after another.

In this world, these fantasies that represent people’s original desires can become real realities:

You can take a look at the person you can't save, and that person can also hear the words you didn't have time to say back then.

Pretty good, really.

"In this miraculous world, apart from human beings, there are of course many lives that exist and are creating their own stories."

The traveler tilted his head and looked at the French assassin, put an index finger to his lips, and said with a smile, his orange-gold eyes seemed to be dancing with a mocking look:

"And: Non-human discrimination is prohibited, Mr. Verlaine."

Verlaine was silent for a moment, turned his head and sneered: "Speak as if you have seen it before."

"I've really seen a lot of them. Well, most of them are my friends - and I don't mind getting to know a few more. After all, non-human beings are just as cute as humans."

Kitahara and Kaede laughed as they thought of the friends they knew who only appeared in fairy tales.

"They don't have souls, but that doesn't matter."

Verlaine said nothing and just walked away from the cemetery. He seemed to have no interest in this topic.

Kitahara and Kaede said "Hmm", taking the other's sudden silence as acquiescence, and then enthusiastically told stories about the monsters and elves they knew.

"You know the mermaid-like water demon Undine in folk tales, right? It is said that they will possess human souls when they are with people. But in the end, she was betrayed by her lover."

When Beitahara and Kaede said this, their expressions became slightly subtle: "Well, speaking of it, apart from fairy tales, the endings of fairies' love don't seem to be very good... Fairy tales may not necessarily be very good."

"But that's not the point. The mermaid I knew was also named Undine. But she finally found a human who was willing to take her on a journey, and together we embarked on a journey of chasing fairy tales and music."

The traveler thought of the combination of the fairy tale writer and the mermaid girl and couldn't help but smile: "Okay, now they share the same soul. I don't know whether they went to a deep mountain, old forest or the sea. They even made phone calls recently.

It doesn’t make sense.”

The two of them walked out of this place filled with the smell of death, one talking and the other listening.

With Verlaine's acquiescence, Kitahara and Kaede kept talking about the stories of their friends: tragedy and comedy, romance and banality, and some were even just monotonous and beautiful repetitions of these creatures in countless days.

He didn't mean to make any use of these stories, he simply shared his experiences happily - just like the letters he wrote to Tolstoy in the past.

Verlaine could feel the difference between sharing and preaching, as well as the free and easy attitude of the other party, as well as the nostalgia when these stories were mentioned.

There is no persuasion, no hint or insinuation in Kitahara and Kaede's story: In other words, he simply does not want to mix his precious memories with preaching elements.

He loves these friends who have parted ways.

Even though they are not human beings, do not have souls, and even the time they spend together can only be said to be short, he is still willing to spend a long time loving and remembering them.

"I hope these little guys are alive in my memories and stories every time I talk about them."

When Kitahara and Kaede said this, they happened to pass a wandering musician on the street. The man was playing acoustic guitar at the time, and the song was related to memories.

Beautiful notes bounce in the high notes, revealing a constantly struggling spirit in the melancholy.

So the traveler stood there, pulling the reluctant Verlaine to listen to the entire three pieces of music, and even went over to chat for a few words, while giving the other party a thick tip.

The two of them were the only spectators standing in front of him.

The down-and-out musician who had been standing on the street all day with no one paying attention seemed so moved by the "recognition" he received that he almost refused the generous tip.

"Why, are you still thinking about that acoustic guitar player?"

Kitahara and Kaede's smiling voices rang out, bringing Verlaine's thoughts back to the present.

The two of them were standing on top of the Raphael Tower, facing the mighty cold wind, and above them the magnificent and brilliant sunset, like a rose garden blooming in the sky.

"Actually, you like it too, right?"

The traveler's beautiful orange-gold eyes narrowed slightly in the strong wind, and he looked at the Transcendent beside him with a smile, with a relaxed tone in his tone:

"After all, you listened very carefully...Speaking of which, if I were not here, would you smile and listen to the end, and then chat with him casually? I feel that you are really leisurely at ordinary times, and you also like to do this.

A 'meaningless' thing."

"So you really don't like poetry? Or music?"

He said thoughtfully: "Speaking of which, I always feel that you have an artistic temperament..."

Verlaine did not immediately answer the question.

In fact, he himself doesn't know why he does so many meaningless actions.

For example, when he was passing by a clothing store, he remembered the birthday gift Rimbaud gave him. He should have put this annoying partner behind him long ago.

There is also art. Those things created by humans are completely useless, but he will always stop and pay too much attention to them.

Maybe it's because the name of the artificial power generation program book written by "Shepherd" is called "The Secret of the Gentle Forest", and the name sounds like a poem.

...Yes, it's just because of the program book.

Verlaine chewed the word in his mind, and suddenly felt uninterested again, as if all the happy emotions today had flowed away down a black hole.

Human happiness can never remain in the heart of this monster for too long.

The black hole in his body was like an evil dragon that humans could not fill by any means. Only the snuggling of the same kind could make him feel spiritually full.

Because he is not a human being, there is no way for any human being to understand his "loneliness".

"I'm just interested in human beings' loneliness."

"Lonely?"

"Yes, human beings know nothing about true loneliness. They believe that without family and no one to talk to, this state is loneliness. And they use art to depict this unworthy emotion in an extremely exaggerated way."

In the end, Verlaine just said lazily, and the look in his blue eyes slowly became colder, even taking on a hint of sarcasm: "It looks like he has a sense of humor."

Beiyuan and Feng seemed to be silent for a moment amid the mighty wind.

No family, no one to talk to...

He admitted that for a moment he thought of the world he didn't know how to return to. But soon, this feeling was once again placed deep in his heart.

——Yes. This is just a feeling of loneliness that is not worth mentioning. Especially in front of a person who is more lonely, empty and sad inside, there is really no need to mention it.

So the traveler smiled instead, tugged on his scarf that was blown up by the wind, held the end in his hand, raised his eyebrows and asked curiously:

"So? This is human loneliness - and what is yours? A comet that humans can never get close to and touch?"

"Any questions?"

Verlaine asked in a very calm tone: "Has human thinking surpassed its own limitations and is enough to understand the logic of another monster that was forcibly brought into the world?"

Kitahara and Kaede raised their heads and met those blue eyes that always seemed to remind people of cold gems or the cold deep sea.

It looks so cold that it almost looks like the sharp edge on the side of a knife, but deep down there seems to be an expectation that even the owner himself cannot explain.

He exhaled a little melancholy.

Verlaine is certainly not an exception. Travelers also know many people who should not exist, but were forcibly brought into the world and were born merely as tools.

For example, Sigma and Nakahara Chuuya from Bungou Stray Dogs.

For example, in the past life... well, there's actually nothing to say about the past.

"If things develop normally, I should, as a close friend with sufficient experience in facing this kind of case, tell you the answer seriously and then give you a hug."

Beiyuan Hefeng muttered, his hands resting on the railing, and his eyes looking towards the sunset on the horizon.

"But I won't do that," he said, and then laughed, "because it's not my place to tell you the answer. There's only one thing I can tell you, and it's simple."

"——Go to him, Verlaine. Go and ask if he has forgiven you, go and ask if he loves you, go and ask if he understands you."

Verlaine's blue eyes widened slightly. Obviously, he did not expect this answer. All the drafts and rebuttals he had prepared before suddenly became useless.
To be continued...