The Heartbreaking

Year: 984 - 11

Episode 1 - Episode 2 - Episode 3 - Episode 4 - Episode 5 - Episode 6 - Episode 7 - Episode 8 - Episode 9 - Episode 10 - Episode 11 - Episode 12 - Episode 13 - Episode 14 - Episode 15 - Episode 16 - Episode 17 - Episode 18 - Episode 19 - Episode 20 - Episode 21 - Episode 22 - Episode 23 - Episode 24 - Episode 25 - Episode 26 - Episode 27 - Episode 28 - Episode 29 - Episode 30 - Episode 31 - Episode 32 - Episode 33 - Episode 34 - Episode 35 - Episode 36 - Episode 37 - Episode 38 - Episode 39 - Episode 40 - Episode 41 - Episode 42 - Episode 43 - Episode 44 - Episode 45 - Episode 46 - Episode 47 - Episode 48 - Episode 49 - Episode 50 - Episode 51 - Episode 52 - Episode 53

Episode: 1
Come back, Heath.
To the manor where the last vestiges of its beauty remain in its violet flowers.
To the manor where its storm-broken breach has siphoned all that was once warm.
To the manor that gave you not only life... but also scorn and desolation.
To the manor where your place was the frozen corner that couldn't be further from the hearth.
Return from the moors.
It’s time for you to come home.
Location: Aboard Mephistopheles
Dante	<So this is what T Corp.’s Nest looks like...>
We had surprisingly little trouble making it past the Nest’s borders. I guess my concerns were unfounded.
Ishmael	Well... Somehow, we made it through this Nest checkpoint without any trouble.
Don Quixote	Ahem, ahem...! 'Tis nothing! Forsooth, such wild compliments are unnecessary, says I~
Gregor	But... we... didn't say anything...?
Rodion	She's grown so much...
Everyone seems awfully relaxed for having just entered a different Nest.
I guess everyone's gotten used to this by now. Humdrum, routine... I guess they'd be the words to describe the general sentiment among the Sinners.
Except for one, that is.
Heathcliff	…….
Dante	<We’re headed to this place called ‘Wuthering Heights’ next, right?>
I could tell from Heathcliff's glum expression that his mind was weighed down by all kinds of complicated concerns.
Heathcliff	Huh? Uh… yeah.
Though his eyes were staring at the moving scenery past the windows, his mind was affixed on something that his eyes couldn't see. Something that lay beyond the building walls.
Ishmael	'Wuthering' Heights...
Ishmael	That manor must’ve been built on one windy hill, huh?
Heathcliff	Yeah. Bloody 'wuthering', like its namesake.
Heathcliff	... Not a single corner of that place gave any comfort..
Heathcliff’s voice carried an unusually dark tone. The other Sinners on the bus noticed this and began chatting him up.
Yi Sang	A return to one’s homeland must bring forth quite the tangled mass of emotions.
Heathcliff	Homeland? Well...
Heathcliff	I wasn’t born here, I was raised here… I suppose that could still count as a ‘homeland’, in a way.
Heathcliff	But it doesn’t conjure in me the same feeling that a ‘homeland’ is supposed to.
Yi Sang	... That is to say...?
Heathcliff	You’ve no idea how many times I imagined it, played it out in my head. Returning to that bloody manor, smashing every little thing in that place to bits until there is nothing left...
Ishmael	Okay, so you’ll smash everything to bits. Then what?
Ishmael	Did you really learn nothing from watching what I went through at the Lake?
Heathcliff	... I did learn something.
Heathcliff	If I ever lose the plot and push myself to the brink of no return, I trust that one of you louts will pull me right out of it.
Ishmael	... Are you giving us permission to beat the sense back into you?
Heathcliff	Yeah. If that’s what it takes.
Ryoshu	Interesting. How far are we allowed to go with bodily harm? Amputation? Nerve mutilation?
Sinclair	Maybe we can at least smack his head really hard?
Heathcliff	All right, you cheeky bastards...
Heathcliff	Seriously, this ain't an invitation to use me as your emotional punching bag. I’m not in the mood to—
Hong Lu	Still, I think your present self can do this, Heathcliff.
Heathcliff	Huh? What do you mean my ‘present self’?
Hong Lu	Heathcliff, your present self is… deprived. You're poor, and you don’t have anything left...
Heathcliff	What? ‘Poor’…?
Heathcliff	Right, now you’re skipping past the pleasantries and going straight into personal insults, yeah? I’m—
Hong Lu	Oh, ha ha… I think you took my words the wrong way.
Hong Lu is far from the most talkative Sinner, but when he does speak… he usually has something insightful to say.
Though since he never says it in a way that’s immediately obvious, his words are very prone to misunderstandings…
Hong Lu	In a way, we’re all ‘deprived’... and that can change a lot of things. Maybe there are things that we can understand only when we’re left with nothing.
Don Quixote	Doth that poverty explain our current unsightly lack of colorfulness…?
Don Quixote looked mournfully at everything around her, then at herself. She sounded like she was about to cry.
Everything had been drained of color since the moment we entered T Corp. through the backstreets.
It feels like even more of our colors have been taken away since then.
Rodion	I was wondering when we’d bring that up~
Rodion	Haah, maybe we’ll get our colors back soon...
Rodion	… or so I thought, like ten hours ago...
Rodion	Are we gonna be colorless forever? Are we gonna be stuck in this gloomy hue for the rest of our lives? Seriously, nothing looks tasty in this sepia hue… I'm starting to lose even my will to live...
Rodion	Everything’s in that sickly brown hue! Guys, even meat looks downright rotten in this color!
Gregor	... That's a bit of an overreaction, isn't it?
Rodion	Oh, and what about those guys? They’ve got color in their clothes!
With an annoyed look, Rodya gestured toward the people outside the bus.
Faust	A sufficient amount of payment must be made in order to retrieve your colors. It must be emphasized that this question has been repeatedly answered on twentythree separate occasions.
Heathcliff	Well, let me have a gander. His coat, his trousers...
Heathcliff	Hah, That bloke’s not even that loaded. He’s only trying to come off as though he is. Real toffs spare no cash to get every single colour back, even to their trivial trinkets like the rims of their glasses.
Hong Lu	Did you also have to live without color when you lived here, Heathcliff?
Heathcliff	No. The manor had some colour, yeah. … Though it was still far from vibrant.
Ryoshu	Agreed. This is the color of shit. Blood should've remained red.
Heathcliff	That poor sod’s going to get himself jumped wanderin’ about with that look. That's just enough colour to invite the bandits, but not enough to keep ‘em away.
Heathcliff’s predictions came true soon enough; several thieves surrounded the ‘bloke who’s only trying to come off as though he’s loaded’ and bashed him on the back of his head.
Don Quixote	Fie, a bunch of shameless villains they are!
Don Quixote	Preying on a weak civilian like a pack of hyenas...!
Hong Lu	Are they... what you would call a 'gang'?
Heathcliff	Tsk, the gangs of T Corp. have certainly seen better days. I wouldn’t even call ‘em a gang… they’re just lowlives running out of ‘time’.
Heathcliff	The last time I was here, scum like ‘em couldn't even dare to infest the streets so brazenly.
Dante	<… There are gangs that aren’t scummy?>
Heathcliff	‘Course! The gang I was in would never dogpile on some poor, unarmed bloke like that.
Charon	Charon wants to vroom-vroom. Can’t vroom-vroom with a roadblock.
Vergilius	Well, there isn’t much point in waiting for the situation to resolve itself.
Vergilius finally spoke up after quietly listening in on our discussion for the last few minutes.
Vergilius	Take care of them before Don Quixote starts making a fuss about it.
Don Quixote	Ooh! An enactment of justice! I thank thee!
Rodion	He’s really starting to get the hang of this, huh...
Vergilius	... Haah.

Episode: 2
Location: T Corp.’s Streets
Urgent T Corp. Gangster	Away, ya gits. This one’s ours!
Urgent T Corp. Gangster	Looks like you lot are running low on time as well… tough luck! We’ve only got thirty minutes ourselves!
Scared T Corp. Gangster	Oi, maybe they’re one of the Dead Rabbits or somethin’.
Gregor	Thirty minutes? Thirty minutes for what?
Urgent T Corp. Gangster	Ain’t possible. The old Dead Rabbits and their vigilante ways are no more… All they do nowadays is starin’ at ya funny from behind those odd masks.
Heathcliff	Masks? What? What are you—
Scared T Corp. Gangster	Bollocks, we don’t got time for this… let’s kill 'em quick!
They began rushing at us with bloodshot eyes, not giving Heathcliff time to even finish his sentence.

Episode: 3
Location: T Corp.’s Streets
Heathcliff	Oi.
Heathcliff	... Nice hat you've got there. Where'd ya get it?
Overdramatic Civilian	EEEK!! I-I’m sorry! Please, take everything! Take as much time as you want! H-here’s my watch!
Don Quixote	SIR HEATHCLIFF…!!!
Heathcliff was looming over the man and growling threateningly... He certainly fit the look of a ‘villain’ from this particular angle.
Heathcliff	Lass, I was just complimenting him for his sharp fashion choices! The lad’s overreacting!
Overdramatic Civilian	T-this is literally everything I have…! I don’t got any money for ransom even if you were to kidnap me!
Overdramatic Civilian	P-please, please don’t kidnap me! I’ve got family… they're all waiting for me to come home…!!!
The man we inadvertently saved from the hands of thieves was shuddering and screaming incoherently, almost to an unnatural degree.
… And we were still not out of the dark alleyways where other thieves might be waiting to get the jump on us...
Overdue T Corp. Gang	The hell is this racket… Oh?
Overdue T Corp. Gang	Well, well, well. What do we have ‘ere? I think I'm seein' loads of time rolling in right before us!
Overdue T Corp. Gang	Ten minutes! No, we’ll take five minutes, too! Hand it over, now!
Gregor	Why the hell is every fella here so obsessed with time?!
Overdue T Corp. Gang	If you won’t give it up willingly, we’ll have to kill you all and take that clock for ourselves!
Dante	<Huh? Clock?>
Dante	<… Wait, me?>

Episode: 4
Location: T Corp.’s Streets
Heathcliff	You...
Overdramatic Civilian	EEEEK!!!
Heathcliff	Quiet… Or you’ll attract even more of ‘em to us.
Heathcliff	Shut your gob right now or we’ll feed you to the meat grinder back at our rickety, cannibal bus. Is that clear?
Overdramatic Civilian	T-then...
Overdramatic Civilian	You’re not here to kidnap me?
Gregor	No. For the… I don’t even know how many times we’ve told you.
Don Quixote	Of course not, indeed! For we are the Limbu— Fix— Justi—
… She is trying so, so hard not to say it.
Don Quixote	… the passers-by. Of justice. Sir Heathcliff here can be rather brutish in his manner of speech, that is all...
Overdramatic Civilian	R-right… Passers-by of justice...
Hong Lu	So why are they asking us for time, not money?
Rodion	… Maybe time’s just another commodity to be sold and bought here.
Ishmael	Guys… is it just me again…? The T Corp. pamphlet guide... did no one really...?
…Ishmael’s eyes start to glaze over. Once again, she may have been the only Sinner who bothered to read up on our destination…
Yi Sang	In T Corp… also known as TimeTrack Corporation...
Yi Sang	… its citizenry utilizes timepieces as personal identification. They oft trade with ‘time’ instead of physical currency; their means of transaction done via the timepieces they carry. Most laborers in these lands are rewarded for their efforts with time.
Ishmael	Haah… thanks for the explanation, Yi Sang. I’ll let it slide this time.
Dante	<So… is this going to be a problem? Outis is the only one of us who carries a watch.>
Hong Lu	Ohh~ you mean her broken wristwatch? I always thought that wearing a stopped watch was a neat fashion statement—
Outis	… It’s not a fashion item. It never was. How insolent of you to assume.
Gregor	Right, I’ve been meaning to ask… what got ya so freaked out about a kidnapping earlier?
Overdramatic Civilian	Oh… There’s a pretty scary rumor of indiscriminate kidnappings going around these T Corp. streets.
Overdramatic Civilian	These are abandoned streets, so when I saw a dozen or so people running around together, I was scared that you guys might be the infamous kidnapping Syndicate or something...
Outis	We need more details. I want the who, when, where, what, how, and why. Proceed.
Overdramatic Civilian	P-people have been going missing around here.
Overdramatic Civilian	This kinda became the last known location for a bunch of missing people. Everyone becomes a shut-in during the foggy days ‘cause they don’t wanna get kidnapped.
Overdramatic Civilian	L-look, it’s even on the front page of this T-Times newspaper here. Mysterious Kidnapping Fear Sweeps District… Not Even A Single Body Found… I can keep reading, if you want...?
Meursault, Rodya, and Don Quixote began enthusiastically reading the sensationalized titles and the attached articles on the newspaper he showed us.
Meursault	Hm...
Rodion	Oh… Ohoho… I gotta check out that award-winning eatery… it's not so far from where we are...
Don Quixote	Aha, so the time retrieval Fixers have said as such in these interviews...
Dante	<Are you guys even reading the same article?>
Heathcliff	... Lad’s right. There’s a lot less people around here than I remember.
Heathcliff	This street used to be packed with workers headed to their factory jobs and inventors selling their useless trinkets… It’s never been this... empty.
This empty street of T Corp. was thick with fog, the bustling crowd from Heathcliff's memories nowhere to be seen.
Maybe the lack of color made the fog appear even thicker.
Outis	This reminds me of the kidnapping ‘rumor’ we heard when we were working on the Blade Lineage case.
Ishmael	Missing people… Maybe there really is a messed-up kidnapping, human trafficking Syndicate roaming this area.
Heathcliff	I’ve never heard of such Syndicate strutting about this place. Back when I lived here, at least.
Meursault	It is a statistical impossibility for a human trafficking Syndicate to leave zero evidence behind. There is bound to be one or two they let slip between their fingers.
Meursault	Especially if this 'Syndicate' is so prolific to the point of indirectly discouraging the public from leaving their homes, a body or two will invariably be found.
Sinclair	If they really didn’t leave any bodies, then maybe it’s worse than just your usual murders...
Hong Lu	Maybe it’ll be more dangerous the more we look into it?
Dante	<If it’s not just another violent tragedy… then maybe there’s more to this than we think. Maybe there's some powerful organization pulling the strings...>
Rodion	Y’know, that’s a lot of conjecture to make just from the fact that no bodies have been found.
Sinclair	I'm sorry?
Rodion	Guys. The Night in the Backstreets.
Rodion	A single sweep from those Sweepers leaves nothing behind. Every trash in the Backstreets, including corpses, is completely cleaned up.
Gregor	Right… They'd clean up even the corpses, yeah.
Rodion	'Course, it's kinda scary that they clean up more than just trash~
Dante	<Yeah… The idea of Sweepers really freaked Sinclair out for a while.>
Sinclair	… That’s because Rodya kept making funny noises and Sweeper impressions at me every night…!

Episode: 5
Location: Aboard Mephistopheles
Sinclair	A mysterious case of missing persons in a street shrouded in thick, heavy fog...
Sinclair	It's... almost as if we're in the middle of some scary urban legend. Not that I’m scared... Not at all. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.
Gregor	Don’t force yourself to laugh, Sinclair.
Rodion	I don't like this at all~ We're this scared so soon after entering the nest?
Everyone seems to be on edge, thanks to the unsettling story we heard earlier.
... I know what to do.
Dante	<Hey, Heathcliff. That invitation… can you read it out loud for us again?>
It'll be a good idea to remind ourselves of our current mission. Besides, I could use a refresher myself.
Heathcliff	Hmph… It’s just an invitation. There ain't anything special about it.
The neatly folded invitation Heathcliff produced from his pockets completely betrayed his attempt at appearing aloof. It was folded with such tender care that it almost resembled a neat paper craft. He cleared his throat.
Heathcliff	Ahem.
Some time later...
Heathcliff	"... Please, honour this occasion with your presence."
Heathcliff	"… With great respect, Nelly."
Rodion	And…? And…?
Heathcliff	… Bollocks.
Heathcliff	"Y-you have to be here, Heath. I’ll be waiting. - Cathy".
Gregor	Daaamn...
Rodion	Oho~!
… This wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I asked him to read that letter.
Ishmael	Ugh... What are we, a party crowd at some dive bar?
Rodion	Oh, that wasn't what we were going for?
Heathcliff	I knew that this would happen… I ain't even mad.
Heathcliff	Besides… all she said is that she’d be waiting. She never said she missed me or 'wanted' to see me.
Gregor	C’mon, bud. Just look at the way she wrote it. Here...
Rodion	Lemme see, lemme see~
Some Sinners gather in a circle like they’re doing a literary analysis of the invitation letter. Maybe I was worrying too much.
Sinclair	Haha… they’re like school kids opening their first love letters.
Rodion	What, were ya never ever interested in those things, Sinclair?
Sinclair	I was…! I was… a good, diligent student. The only things I ever cared about were my textbooks and the school lectures!
Don Quixote	Sinclair, thy countenance appeareth to be turning rosy agai—
Sinclair	For the last time, I said! It’s! Genetics!!!
Rodion	What about you, Dante?!
Rodion	O-oh, nevermind...
Dante	<Hey, what’s with that oddly sorry look on your face…?>
Meursault	The manager has no need for your sympathy. I am certain that there are those who appreciate their unique appearance.
Dante	<…….>
Yi Sang	Is it not… odd?
Ishmael	What, that someone actually wrote Heathcliff a love letter?
Hong Lu	Oh my, Yi Sang… that is such a rude thing to say...
Yi Sang	N-no, I had no intention of relaying such crass sentiments to... I—
Ishmael	Just kidding, Yi Sang. Just kidding. I was actually thinking the same thing.
Ishmael	Since we’re not looking for a Lobotomy Corp. branch of T Corp., since we’re heading to this 'Wuthering Heights' manor instead...
Ishmael	… I suppose that that’s where we’ll find the Golden Bough.
Yi Sang	That was precisely what I had intended to convey, Miss Ishmael.
Vergilius	Thank you for bringing that up. I was starting to get tired of being the bringer of unpleasant news.
Vergilius	Hopefully, none of you are under the impression that we're headed to Wuthering Heights just because of some invitation Heathcliff received. Because if you are... you'll be sorely disappointed.
Heathcliff	Right, so if we're lookin' at the context she wrote this in, what she's really tryin' to say here is...
Gregor	No, no. Bud, you gotta look at the tone she used here.
Ishmael	… Sure. Moving on.
Faust	There was a report from the LCCB that a Golden Bough has been observed.
Faust	They narrowed its location down to somewhere within the Wuthering Heights manor...
Faust	But there was a significant risk, on account of the manor's unique security system, that prevented the Before Team from conducting their on-site preliminary survey. The exact location of the Bough is yet to be identified.
Heathcliff	Unique… security measures? Not sure if I remember anything like that.
Ishmael	Right, then it’s even more… odd. No other ways to put it.
Yi Sang	Indeed. Though I remain ignorant of the monetary value and the public perception of its worth...
Yi Sang	… I do know that the Golden Bough is not an item so easily obtainable that it may be housed in a normal, private manor.
Faust	It can be shared that the Golden Bough wasn’t… always located inside the manor.
Yi Sang	I see. Then, the Golden Bough, its previous location in an unknown area within the T Corp.’s Lobotomy Corp. branch, has been transferred to the manor for a reason we are yet to be aware of.
Ishmael	Right. Then... this ‘Catherine’ person will be a major part of this operation.
Ishmael	To have a Golden Bough all to herself in that manor...
Ishmael	And she’s gotta be one confident woman, too. Confident enough to believe that Heathcliff will come to the manor just to see her face, even if it wasn’t for the Golden Bough.
None of this conversation seemed to even register to Heathcliff, however.
Heathcliff	Oi, lemme know if you see a barbershop or a boutique nearby.
Vergilius	... This isn't a tour bus, Heathcliff. We will not make unnecessary stops like the ones you suggest.
Heathcliff	Right, I get it. Then why don’t you just leave me behind and go on ahead? I’ll catch up...
Hong Lu	So Heathcliff… I’ve been watching the shops very closely...
Hong Lu	… but I haven't noticed a single open shop. It might be because of the rumors from earlier, and the fog...
Hong Lu	Why don’t you just leave it to us? Rodya and I...
Heathcliff	What the hell are you... Wait, WAIT!

Episode: 6
Location: Aboard Mephistopheles
The bus emerged from the Backstreets into a rather quiet looking village.
The fog was still thick, and everything was still in that faded hue...
Even the occasional sightings of pedestrians had ceased. The very idea of color variation seemed like an alien concept here.
All I see are orange-hued lights coming through the windows of misty, grey buildings. It was as though everyone decided to stay indoors for the day.
I can’t even tell where we are, or how close we are from our destination anymore.
Dante	<Have you been here by any chance, Yi Sang?>
He was the only other Sinner who had spent a while in T Corp., so I decided to ask if he recognized anything. But it was evident that this scenery was unfamiliar to him.
Yi Sang	Though I have resided here for some time, most of my hours were spent earning a living and conducting my research when I could afford to do so. Thus I have not ventured freely the streets of T Corp.
Dante	<I can’t imagine doing any research at a place like this… Can’t have been easy.>
Yi Sang	It is quite manageable once one grows accustomed to this monochromatic sight. The presence of variance in color itself is a concept alien to those who are born and raised in these lands.
Yi Sang	And I had shoulders of those that I could… lean on, even for a fleeting moment. It helps to have such support when acclimating to a place as foreign as this.
Yi Sang looks away to a place far beyond from here. Memories of his past, most likely.
Ishmael	… Did you ever hear anything about what T Corp.’s Singularity is?
Yi Sang	… As all Singularities are, its true nature, its mechanisms, and function are all something of an enigma. Yet...
Yi Sang paused, and carefully began to speak.
Yi Sang	I am aware is that it has aught to do with time. Though I am unsure of its use...
Yi Sang	Well, I suppose all this is but meaningless conjecture, and only Miss Faust among us must be aware of the answers.
Faust	…….
Faust	Its singularity is one of the reasons T Corp. constantly drains colors from its inhabitants.
Rodion	What’s time got to do with… color?
Faust	If the control of time is so imperative to T Corp.'s operations... then they must also control the realm of ‘light’.
Faust	As light inherently has much to do with the spectrum of colors, these two subjects eventually overlap.
Faust	That is as far as I could deduce regarding the concept of time that I am aware of. Yet, it must also be said that it takes time for me to reach Faust’s specific knowledge regarding T Corp.’s Singularity.
Faust, known among us for her ‘Hm.’, ‘Maybe.’, and ‘Perhaps.’… rarely ever gave us answers this detailed.
Then now’s the time to ask her all my questions…!
Yi Sang	Miss Faust, as we discuss the subject of time—
Faust	Indeed. It would be safe for us to move on from the subject of T Corp. at this time.
Dante	<Aw...>
Rodion	There she goes again, teasing us with stuff she’s not going to tell us anyway...
Well, I guess I should be glad that she decided to tell us this much. I doubt she'll tell us more no matter how much we pry.
Sinclair	That’s… kinda sad.
Sinclair	That there are people who’s never seen color their whole lives, all because of this Singularity.
Rodion	Well, that’s just how it goes, isn't it. In the eyes of a stranger, we’d be just another one of those poor, miserable people who’s never seen color.
Rodion	That's the danger in trying your very first bite of the 'meat'. You taste it once, and you’ll never un-know the flavor. And in the end, you’ll start to wish you never tried it.
Ishmael	Hm… It is pretty disappointing that even the sun loses its vibrancy here.
Yi Sang	Oft did I long to see the colors of the sky. Especially the sky that looms over a light shower of rain.
Rodion	Yeah. Things like the color of the sky, too. You long to see it only because you've seen its beauty. If you were born here, never to escape its borders to the last of your days without ever seeing the blue sky... then I'd hardly call that death miserable.
Rodion	Calling even that miserable... is nothing but sheltered arrogance.
Sinclair	I guess that could also be true...
The atmosphere in the bus suddenly became incredibly frosty.
Rodion	Oh! Hey, speaking of color, I got something to ask ya. Have you guys ever heard of the ‘colors game’? Apparently, each type of personality has a corresponding color!
Rodya, who was the one to chill the bus in the first place, was also the first to break the ice.
Rodion	If Yi Sang enjoys the light blue color of the sky, then… Let’s see. You must be a thinker and a philosopher who prefers the calm and quiet.
Yi Sang	Ooh… How did you come to know that? That is quite the remarkable talent you have.
Don Quixote	Hark, hark! I wish my favorite color to be rated as well! Forsooth, I quite fancy the color red! Nay, yellow! Nay, red! Nay—
Rodion	Now, wait your turn. Next in the order is… Faust.
Faust	I—
Rodion	Wait up, wait up. I know exactly what you’re about to say. You were about to say, ‘Faust does not hold much belief in such ideations~’ or something like that, right?
Rodion	Which is exactly what people who like the color white would say. I'm right, aren't I? Like, your hair’s white, too!
Faust	I will not comment further on this subject.
Heathcliff	… Me? My favorite colour…?
Heathcliff	Tsk, what a stupid question. That's naff, lass.
Heathcliff	But I like…
He pauses.
A great manor begins to emerge into our view from a distance. I could immediately tell that this was the ‘Wuthering Heights’ manor Heathcliff had mentioned.
Heathcliff	... black.
Heathcliff	It’s the colour you get when you dump an entire set of paint into a bucket, innit?
Heathcliff	And that’s exactly why I tolerate it. Keep throwing paint over paint over paint… and you get black. Simple.
I can clearly hear that Heathcliff is muttering through gritted teeth.
I have a feeling that black wasn’t always his favorite color.

Episode: 7
Location: Wuthering Heights Approach
Two things changed the moment the Wuthering Heights manor appeared over the horizon.
Heathcliff	Mirror… I need a mirror. Anyone got a mirror? Come on, anyone?
Yi Sang	What has gotten into you, Heathcliff… T-this mirror isn't—
One was Heathcliff, who was suddenly overcome with intense anxiety…
And the other was the weather that grew dark and tempestuous all of a sudden.
Location: Aboard Mephistopheles
Dante	<… What a terrifying noise.>
Hong Lu	Was the weather here always this awful?
Heathcliff	It was always this… windy, yeah. Almost like a constant tempest.
Heathcliff	But this thunder and lightning...?
Heathcliff	Well, the weather at Wuthering Heights was always this awful, thunder or not.
Ishmael	That really is one massive manor if it looks that big from this far away.
Charon	Charon can’t see well. Not sure if this is the right place. But we're here.
Charon	Lightning goes boom. Eyes go ow.
This manor looked as though it came straight out of a dark, gothic tale full of mysteries. I was half expecting to hear a haunting cry echoing from its windows.
Dante	<So are we just waiting for Vergilius to go ‘off the bus’ again?>
Gregor	When hasn’t that been the case, manager bud...?
Ishmael	I mean, it's not like we're digging into a Lobotomy Corp. Branch or entering one of the Wings, right? It's just a manor, so I don't see what's stopping him from coming with us.
Vergilius	Now, off the bus.
Vergilius	Charon and I—
Rodion	—will wait outside until we're done with our mission?
Vergilius	…….
None of the Sinners were hiding their dissatisfaction with Vergilius. Some of them were even standing with their arms crossed.
Vergilius	By the looks on your faces… clearly, you all collectively have something to say.
Don Quixote	I… of course not. Ahem. I... I would hardly ever dare to challenge thee.
Well, maybe not every Sinner.
We’ve gone through a lot of things, survived various trials and tribulations. Tribulations that could’ve been easily handled had Vergilius been there with us.
So...
Ishmael	Vergilius.
Looks like Ishmael decided to step up as our representative.
Ishmael	You introduced yourself to us as our ‘guide’, didn’t you?
Ishmael	So what kind of 'guide' just tosses everyone at the start of the journey and goes off on their own with the bus driver? Where are you guys even going?
Vergilius	…….
Ishmael	I want to make it clear that I’m not being a hardass for no good reason.
Ishmael	I’m asking you, because I want to trust you.
Ishmael	After all, we’re technically all in the same boat. We're coworkers. I’d say the least you could do is to tell us where we’re headed.
Vergilius held his silence for a moment. His brows were not as furrowed as they usually are… which was the only indicator to me that he wasn’t as offended to hear this as I thought he’d be.
Vergilius	… Just like you Sinners who joined this company via your individual contracts…
Vergilius	I also signed a contract. With specific clauses and conditions I must abide by.
Don Quixote	Huh? The company made thee, a color most illustrious, sign a contract as well?
Vergilius	Of course I did. Why would I be babysitting you children on this bus otherwise? I'm not one to work for free.
Vergilius	I don’t want to bother detailing each and every clause of my contract to you, nor should I…
Vergilius	... But Ishmael, I quite liked that you used the word 'trust' in your speech. So I believe that you deserve at least a brief explanation.
Vergilius	I am not supposed to retrieve the Golden Boughs myself, nor am I allowed to provide you with any direct support. The contract stipulates that I must leave everything to the manager and the Sinners.
Gregor	Why… the hell would you sign a contract like that…?
Vergilius	As always, it's meaningless to ask me 'why'.
Vergilius	Contracts are rarely ever fully understood by those that are not a part of it.
Vergilius	But...
Vergilius	What I can tell you is that… when I ask you Sinners to leave this bus for a mission...
Vergilius	... I suppose, in a way, I... say it with a lighter heart than I used to.
Vergilius	I am no longer concerned that, in my desire to fulfill the conditions for every clause in my contract, the manager might be irreversibly... hurt. I would be left with nothing if such a thing were to happen.
Dante	<…….>
Dante	<Did he just admit to trusting us more than he used to…?>
Rodion	Don't make him repeat something like that, Dante~
Rodion	Especially when someone went through the trouble of expressing their true, hidden feelings.
Rodion	Besides...
Heathcliff	W-wait...
Heathcliff	I am NOT going in there like this.
Heathcliff	Nope, can’t do this. Oi, turn the bus around!
Charon	Mephi doesn’t do U-turns.
Heathcliff	Bollocks… I ain’t going back to the manor in these wrinkly rags!
Oh yeah, right… every single one of our elaborate plans to dress him up in fancy clothes fell through.
Dante	<Hey, you don’t look *that* bad...>
Heathcliff	If I go back in these rags, those bastards will—
Ishmael	... Those 'bastards'? Who are they?
Heathcliff	Bastards that'd always eye me up and down, trying to find a speck of dust, a single flaw, something to latch onto just to humiliate me…
Ryoshu	Then gouge out their eyes.
Outis	Oho, that would be quite the clever solution.
Heathcliff	What are you even…
Looks like Heathcliff is the only one who’s taking this seriously.
Rodion	Fuhu...
Hong Lu	Huhu...
Heathcliff	The hell is wrong with the pair of you? Quit gigglin’ like that!
Rodion	Good thing we came prepared exactly for this occasion~!
Rodion	I just couldn’t imagine Heath managing to pull off this makeover on his own.
Hong Lu	Rodya and I did some shopping in the Backstreets before we entered the Nest.
Rodion	We were waiting to reveal these just in case there was anything more impressive in the Nest, but thanks to the disappointing lack of anything even remotely interesting… we’ll just make do with what we picked up earlier.
Heathcliff	Wait a bloody second. When the two of you went off on your own… No. All you brought back was a whole basket of cookies, wasn't it?
Rodion	Those cookies were decoy cookies, Heath! Though some of ‘em did end up as a part of my daily sustenance, of course… heh.
Hong Lu	While I couldn’t find the particular brands I used back home… these should be more than enough for a proper fashion makeover.
Vergilius	Hm.
Rodion	Verg, c’mon. Can't we keep things nice and happy for once, hmm? Let him wear something else other than his uniform. Just for today.
Rodion	Like, no one wants to meet their old flame while wearing their work clothes, right?
Vergilius	…….
Heathcliff	W-well, I doubt the guide’ll ever let anything like that sli—
Vergilius	Fine.
Heathcliff	What...!
Vergilius	I would prefer it if we didn’t have to encourage another rogue incident with the Backdoor.
Heathcliff	Seriously?! Guide…!!!
Heathcliff trembled like he was about to give Vergilius a big hug.
Hong Lu	Now, Heathcliff, close your eyes...
Hong Lu	Relax… and let us take care of everything. Pretend you’re at the proverbial peach blossom spring.
Heathcliff	Wait, don’t touch my hair like—
Heathcliff	…….
Heathcliff	Woah...
Heathcliff	Oi, you ain’t half bad...
…….
Hong Lu	Shh~ Heathcliff’s getting a makeover!
Some time later...
Heathcliff	Ahem...
Dante	<…….>
Heathcliff	Um… I think you might’ve overdone it with the hair.
Rodion	Don’t touch it! Do you even have any idea how hard Hong Lu worked on that?
Ishmael	... Where'd his bat go?
Rodion	It’s a reunion of the century! We can’t possibly let him say hello to his old flame with a big brutish club in his hand~
Don Quixote	Sir Heathcliff appeareth... a tad more merciful than usual. Mayhaps he shall accept my request should I implore him to purchase me a pint of ice-crrream...
Sinclair	And he no longer looks like he's on the verge of punching me when I make the smallest noises!
Heathcliff	…….
Heathcliff	Lad, please... please don't bring up anything even remotely like that in front of Catherine…
Vergilius	Well, I'll be. Clothes really do make the man. Do let me know how this reunion goes; I’ll be looking forward to hearing that tale.
Heathcliff	Ahm… s-sure.
Dante	<So, Heathcliff?>
I’ve been meaning to ask this question for a while. I wanted to know the answer… but I couldn’t bring myself to ask him.
Dante	<Why’d you leave Wuthering Heights? It's where the love of your life lives, isn't it?>
Heathcliff, who’d been busily moving about and preparing to leave the bus, suddenly comes to a halt.
Heathcliff	... I didn’t mind it. The thrashings, the starvings, the abuse, them treatin' me like a servant, like I'm something beneath them...
Heathcliff	I didn’t mind being treated like I’m nothing more than an afterthought, like I'm some impure trash to be discarded.
Heathcliff	But when I heard what… Catherine said...
Heathcliff	… I realized that I no longer had any reason to remain in that manor.
Heathcliff did not elaborate further.
Perhaps it wasn't that he didn't, but that he couldn't bring himself to...
I didn't dare ask him what he was about to say, so I simply nodded in response.
Dante	<I see… >
Charon	…….
Rodion	Ooh, looks like Charon’s got something to say about your new fit!
Charon	Mhm, Charon has something to say. Something big.
Rodion	Great, awesome! Now, Charon! What do ya think~?
Charon	Looks oily and greasy. Charon doesn't like greasy.
Heathcliff	…….
Rodion	Oh… This… isn’t how I thought it’d go… ha ha…
Charon’s words must’ve hit him hard.
It took quite a bit of convincing for Heathcliff, who was severely discouraged by Charon’s remark, to exit the bus.

Episode: 8
Location: Wuthering Heights Front Gate
Heathcliff	Tsk… this is uncomfortable.
Heathcliff	Oi, is it normal for these clothes to squeeze harder with every step I take?
Hong Lu	That is what it means to maintain an air of dignity~ Once you get used to that feeling, you'll feel like you're missing something whenever you're dressed casually!
Yi Sang	So this must be the front… gate to your former place of abode, Heathcliff.
The massive gate alone feels downright intimidating.
Dante	<That's one big front door.>
Meursault	It is known that, in certain regions of the City, the size of the front gate is an indicator of one's social standing. The magnitude of this front gate indicates that... the owner of this home is very affluent.
Ishmael	Heathcliff, you picked on Hong Lu for being a rich kid when you were raised at some huge mansion yourself?
Hong Lu	Heh heh, I don't mind it at all~
Rodion	... I'm feeling a bit betrayed, actually.
Don Quixote	Sir Heathcliff, thou appeareth quite different today...
Heathcliff	... Keep your stupid comments to yourselves.
Some were teasing him, and some were genuinely surprised, but... it didn't matter to Heathcliff. Every word he spat out was dripping with venomous spite.
Heathcliff	I wasn't even remotely close to being rich.
Heathcliff	I was never once 'rich' in this manor. I wasn't even allowed to be content. Not even for a moment.
Heathcliff	And this manor. This manor never accepted me, not even for a—
Gregor	…!
Heathcliff	W-what the hell...
Outis	A lightning strike. It seems to have struck an area near the forest.
Dante	<That was so loud...>
Sinclair	It's okay. I-I heard that it's extremely rare for lightning to actually hit people.
Yi Sang	... A momentary musing reveals that a strike of levin brings about a sensation that is not unlike the joy of fireworks.
Yi Sang	It fills the dark and cold void of the night sky with its incandescent brilliance, even for a brief moment, before fading away into oblivion.
Heathcliff	… Right. And in exchange, it loses everything it has, burning and leaving nothing but ash behind.
Heathcliff	What joy is there to be found?
I could hear some forest critters fleeing, spooked by the thunderstrike.
Don Quixote	Ooh! Behold, a tiny squirrel over yonder!
Hong Lu	Woah… such nature so close to home? I didn't know you used to live at such an eco-friendly place. I suppose I wouldn't have to go through the trouble of building a private zoo if I lived at a place like this!
Outis	To have a garden or a forest so near their home… Even if we were to ignore everything else, that alone indicates that its owner is someone of unimaginable affluence.
Rodion	Hmm~ Right! I remember that Sinclair's home was in the middle of a forest, too.
Heathcliff	Squirrels, sure. There were other animals roaming about, too.
Heathcliff	Sometimes, when I was so miserable that I could hardly bear to even be in that manor... I’d go to the forest and not return for a long, long time.
Don Quixote	Ooh, then this tiny forest friend, little Sir Squirrel, must have been quite the jolly companion for thee!
Don Quixote	LITTLE SIR SQUIRRELLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!
The little squirrel that may once have been Heathcliff’s tiny forest friend…
… was immediately scorched down to a pile of ash the moment it crossed over into the manor’s front gate.
Gregor	That was… a weird lightning strike. Did it just curve midair?
Faust	The chance of such an occurrence is extraordinarily low.
Gregor	Um… it might just be that I’m overreacting, but it looked as though that lightning was curving itself to strike exactly where that squirrel was standing.
Ishmael	Woah… Heathcliff, I had no idea you grew up at such a dangerous place. I’m impressed you even survived…
Heathcliff	… No. Blimey… I’ve not seen anything like it.
Dante	<Right, Heathcliff. Ready to knock on the front gate?>
Heathcliff	The front gate…
He stared blankly at the front gate of the manor.
Heathcliff	I've... not knocked on this gate in good many years.
Heathcliff	I once had to wait out here for hours because they all refused to let me in. Everyone... except Catherine. She snuck out of the manor to open it for me.
Heathcliff	Walking through the heavy rain.
Ishmael	Well, then... I’m sure it won’t be different this time.
Heathcliff	So if I knock... Catherine will come out to let me in?
Dante	<…….>
Heathcliff	... Hup.
Heathcliff takes a deep breath before knocking on the front door.
Heathcliff	…….
Ishmael	Huh, nothing. That’s not what I meant when I said it won't be different this time…
Ishmael	Oh, we can try climbing over the fence. I think we can clear that height as long as we’re okay with breaking our ankles…
Heathcliff	No.
Heathcliff was a whole bundle of anxiety before he knocked on the front gate, but…
… perhaps this perceived slight reverted Heathcliff into his usual, angry self.
Heathcliff	I was invited to this manor! This invitation would be meaningless if I were to leap over the fence.
Heathcliff	CATHERINE! I’M BACK!
Outis	They’ve ignored you once. Continuing to shout won’t—
Heathcliff	CATHERINE!
Despite his efforts, not even a soul stirred beyond the front gate. None of us really believed that anyone would come out to greet him.
But…
Heathcliff	CATH—
The front gate began to creak open as though someone was answering his pleas.
Hong Lu	… The makeover was worth it, hmm?

Episode: 9
Location: Wuthering Heights Gardens
The heavy rain and the tempest only grew harsher the closer we got to the manor.
Don Quixote	Though we have long made it past the front gate, not a soul doth appear...
The bubbling excitement of the Sinners when they disembarked the bus had all but disappeared. Silent air of apprehension surrounded them as they gingerly took their hesitant steps toward the manor.
Heathcliff	Cathy! Have you been well? No… Catherine, it has been a while, hasn’t it? No, this ain't it either…
In the midst of this aura of uneasiness, only Heathcliff seemed to be preoccupied by something else. The rest of the Sinners were—
Rodion	Didya catch that…?
Meursault	A bird. A subspecies of sparrows, to be exact.
Outis	Lightning continues to strike aggressively… even this far past the front gate.
Sinclair	We would’ve been burnt to a crisp had it struck even a little closer…
Lightning continued to blast the earth, as though it wouldn't be satisfied until it's reduced every living thing in the manor grounds to a pile of ashes.
Rodion	Is it gonna hit us if we walk faster? Or maybe it hits things that are moving too slowly? Maybe we should speed up? I don’t know…
Outis	Our walking speed seems irrelevant. Instead, it's almost as if this lightning has a will of its own, striking with intent. ... This brings back some... unpleasant memories.
Hong Lu	Ohh~ Maybe it’s like this house’s defense system?
Yi Sang	Defense system… Do you imply that this may be a part of the manor's security measures?
Hong Lu	Maybe it only targets things that enter the manor grounds without permission.
Hong Lu	I've seen security measures that are more precise and more... conclusive than this.
Hong Lu	Larger manors often do install more effective security systems, after all.
Sinclair	Ohh… I think our family talked about installing a defense system at our home, too. It was one of those topics that kept coming up during dinner.
Ishmael	... That would make sense. Not that I’ll ever understand the thought process behind these… systems…
Yi Sang	Perhaps the ‘security measures’ that prevented the Before Team from approaching the manor may be…
Hong Lu	Yeah… But we have the invitation with us! I think we’ll be just fine.
Dante	<…….>
Is that really all this is?
Is this just one of those normal security measures that every rich family supposedly has?
Hong Lu	This is pretty interesting, though. I heard that the technology to change the weather itself is really, really expensive to the point of being inefficient. So expensive that I’ve not seen it myself.
I remained silent because I didn't want to concern the Sinners with something I wasn't sure about...
But the closer we got to the manor, the more confident I became that something was off.
That this extremely abnormal weather… isn’t the work of some security system.
This absolutely has something to do with a Golden Bough.
But...
This Golden Bough feels different from the ones we've encountered before.
It's a bit more... chaotic...?
Sinclair	Oh? Huh, these flowers...
Sinclair	... they've got color!
Sinclair was right. The manor’s garden was lightly littered with flowers; they were the only things of color in this dreary sight.
Sinclair	I wonder what these flowers are called?
Rodion	Huh, I guess you can return the colors even to flowers if you cough up enough cash?
Faust	Indeed.
Yi Sang	Then the proprietor of this manor must have held a particular love for these flowers.
Yi Sang	To return the colors to such transient things as flowers...
Yi Sang	Or, perhaps, it may simply be that they are preposterously affluent.
Heathcliff quietly gazed at the patches of violet flowers as Yi Sang mused out loud.
Heathcliff	…….
Heathcliff	You're wrong.
Heathcliff	There was no particular love for these flowers.
Heathcliff	There was no room, no warmth in that heart to spare for mere flowers.
Heathcliff appeared so doleful that I felt as though he had built a tall, opaque wall between himself and the world. I could not bring myself to ask further.
He did not tell us the name of those flowers.
???	My, oh my!!! Please, come this way!!!!
Someone hurriedly runs this way from the manor's front door, holding a lantern.
???	What an awful weather, hmm? Well, T Corp. is… the Wuthering Heights manor is rarely ever sunny, but this is quite the storm!
Heathcliff	... Long...
Heathcliff	… Long time no see, Nelly.
Nelly	... My word, Heathcliff? Is that you? It really is you!
Heathcliff	Y-yeah...
Nelly	You haven't the slightest idea how worried I was since you left! Have you been eating well? You’ve not been bullied by a rough crowd, have you?
Dante	<Bullied by a what…?>
Nelly	We’ve wanted to hear from you for so long!!
Heathcliff	…….
Nelly	Do come in now, come in!
Nelly	…….
Dante	<…?>
This ‘Nelly’ regarded us with a curious look, as though she didn’t quite understand what we were supposed to be…
Nelly	If I may be so bold as to presume…
Nelly	Would you be our dear Heathcliff’s friends?!
Heathcliff	Ahem...
Ishmael	Yeah, uh, well...
Sinclair	Friends...? Are we?
Meursault	The answer to that question hinges on the range of affinity one would define as a delineation that separates friends from acquaintances.
Rodion	‘Course we’re friends~ Precious friendship, forged in fire! Multiple fires, actually!
Outis	Your dear Heathcliff’s precious friends are about to freeze to their deaths in the rain, woman.
Nelly	My, what honorable guests I welcome to this place today! I must be all over the place to leave you all standing in the rain! Come in now, come in! It’s a tad warmer in here than it is outside.
The interiors of Wuthering Heights was rather dark, yet...
Location: Wuthering Heights Entrance
Don Quixote	This manor… doth have color.
Its hue appeared a tad faded from its original vibrancy, but...
… there was color in this manor.
Heathcliff	What’d I tell you? I could see colour inside this manor.
Heathcliff	Well... it's all bought by money, anyway.
Heathcliff	Believe it or not, there's something about these lanterns hanging about the manor that brings back colours.
Yi Sang	Ah, the lanterns that return the objects' original saturation. These are quite the expensive luxuries, are they not?
Heathcliff	It still doesn’t bring all the colours back. Things still remain a tad gloomy.
Heathcliff	So where’s Cathy—
Nelly	Heathcliff! Please, tell me of your life since you have left us, hmm? Where have you been staying? Have you been eating well? My, have you lost weight?
Heathcliff	Huh? Uh… I…
Nelly	I’m glad your delay wasn’t too substantial. We have all been waiting for your arrival.
Heathcliff	We…?
Nelly	Now let me get a better look at you. The refined dress clothes, the hair... My, you’ve certainly grown into a right proper gentleman, haven't you? Quite the popular lad you are, with a posse of friends and all.
Heathcliff	Well… Hm… D-did I?
Nelly	But of course! I would not have recognized you from a distance.
Nelly was talking so fast that Heathcliff wasn't spared even a second to get in a single word.
Outis	Nelly… was it?
Outis	What is your precise relation to Heathcliff? As his precious friend, colleague, and comrade in arms, I cannot help but be curious as to how you two know each other.
Outis, who was conspicuously scanning the interiors of the manor, suddenly asked Nelly the most transparently suspicious question that I’ve ever heard.
Nelly	Oh, I’m… let’s see… Heathcliff’s... hm, how should I put this?
Nelly	... Nanny, I suppose?
Ishmael	Nanny...?
Ishmael	What, like… you wiped Heathcliff's snot, changed his baby clothes, and... am I thinking of the right 'nanny'?
Hong Lu	And when the baby’s fussy about the food, nannies spoon-feed it to them.
Heathcliff	Oi, Nelly! Quit teasin’ me like that.
Heathcliff	You weren’t exactly my ‘nanny’, and you know that.
Heathcliff	We’ve known each other since we were both young.
Heathcliff	And I did not treat her like a servant or follow her around like she was my nanny.
Nelly	Fuhu. Mind you, I am now the Chief Butler of the house. You must see the other Butlers moving about like soldiers when I give a word!
Heathcliff	… Well, you were the best at your job.
Heathcliff	Nelly, I’m… getting quite impatient. So I’ve got to ask…
Heathcliff must have wanted so badly to ask her where Cathy was.
Heathcliff	So when’s the… banquet starting?
Instead, he hid his true question behind a mask of aloofness.
But...
Nelly	…….
Nelly's expression became somewhat odd upon hearing Heathcliff's query.
Nelly	The banquet...
???	Oi! When’s that witless brigand coming? Is he even on his way?
???	You can’t just leave after gathering us all down here! If I have to sit any second longer next to these mugs, I’m going to lose it!
There was a furious voice echoing from down the halls.
Heathcliff	Nelly, wait… I recognize that voice…!
Nelly	My, don’t rush! He just arrived, mind you!
Nelly	Let's join the others, Heathcliff. Like I said, we've all been waiting for your arrival.
Heathcliff bit his lips anxiously and followed Nelly.
Rodion	This… doesn’t feel at all like a manor that’s about to throw a party...
Sinclair	Yeah, that cruise ship party, this manor…
Sinclair	You can’t hide the rising sense of dread from places like these. Doesn’t matter how hard you try.
Meursault	This manor does not appear to have been a place where liveliness is an expected element.
Meursault	I see signs of rushed cleaning, conducted immediately before the guests arrived. Several cracks and areas in need of repair have been identified as well.
Meursault	Also…
Don Quixote	I was scant expecting a raucous par-tay, yet… this is quite the depressing presentation...
I followed Don Quixote to the halls. She appeared terribly disappointed.

Episode: 10
Location: Wuthering Heights Hall
Two people sat by a dying hearth, surrounded by their respective posse. It was quite apparent from the way they sat opposite of one another that their relationship was far from amicable.
On one end was a group of people dressed in mysterious masks, surrounding a jumpy-looking man who looked like he was one little nudge away from hollering foul insults at everyone.
On the other end was a group of people dressed in identical uniforms (Sinclair told me that they were wearing the outfit that most manor employees wear) to each other.
One of them stood out, as he was the only one among them in a black suit. He appeared somewhat uncomfortable; it seemed as though he was in a great deal of pain merely by being here.
And between the two groups were…
Don Quixote	Fixers…! I recognize their outfits! Forsooth, they must be Fixers from the O-Ou-Öufi Association!
Don Quixote	‘Tis quite rare to even get a sighting of a single Öufi Fixer…! They requireth quite the momentous occasion to even grace us with their presence!!!!!!
Dante	<Shh, shh… We’ll have time to ask for autographs later. Later, all right?>
I had to coax Don Quixote, who was practically quivering, from immediately running to them for signatures.
… Because we had unintentionally become the center of attention from the entire room.
The center of a very negative attention.
Josephine	By gum, that vagabond 'as returned. The bloody shame o' Wuthering Heights...
Heathcliff	… Same old Josephine, huh…
Josephine	Look at 'im, struttin' about like he owns this place... If our Mistress were to witness this travesty…
Nelly	Gosh, Josephine! That is quite enough!
Nelly	Don’t mind her, Heathcliff.
Josephine	This blessed land o' Wuthering Heights, reduced to an asylum for vagrants and drifters… if the Mistress had been here to witness this tragic, deplorable state o' affairs…
There was an old woman in the room who was muttering some choice words at us while staring with eyes full of hatred...
Hindley	Ah, the witless brigand returns, and quite delayed at that! How dare you show your face—
Linton	... Hindley, please. Exercise some restraint.
Linton	Heathcliff. I hardly did expect your return.
Linton	... You have yet to let Catherine go, still?
It was clear that the two had both been acquainted with Heathcliff for a while.
But the nature of that acquaintance was more of a longstanding hatred stemming from the deep history of contention they shared.
One of the two was hardly hiding his hatred, allowing it to fully seize control of his words and actions. But the other one’s hatred had sunk deep into his heart, boiling and writhing underneath.
Heathcliff	... Hah.
Heathcliff	Right. I wasn’t exactly expecting a grand welcome upon my return.
Heathcliff	But I ain’t here to see your ugly mugs. It's like you always said: my base nature's just incapable of change.
Heathcliff shoots back with just as much vitriol.
As though he was always used to this kind of scorn and humiliation.
Linton	…….
The man in a black suit turns away, as though it would degrade him to even entertain him with an answer. But this man they called Hindley...
Hindley	You unscrupulous shite! You bloody animal— No, a thing lesser than a savage beast!
… jumped up from his seat, his face turning bright red from anger.
Hindley	By the looks of it, you’ve found yourself a band of vagrants and vagabonds just like you, eh? Crawling back to see if there is something worth pilfering from this place?
Hindley	You lot! Beat his arse and teach him a lesson. Break a bone or two!
Hindley's Lackey	… No orders… from… boss…
Hindley	Shut it! I’m your boss’ boss! I hired him and the rest of you!
Hindley	I don’t expect these boneheaded fools to give you much trouble anyway.
Yi Sang	Head... of bone? What on earth is that fellow speaking of?
Ishmael	He’s just expressing his explicit desire to get his ass beat. Well, since he asked for it....

Episode: 11
Location: Wuthering Heights Hall
Hindley's Lackey	…….
Ryoshu	Good. Now I’ll separate the bones from your flesh and personally introduce you to your own skull.
???	Oiiii, lads.
A casual yet powerful voice booms across the hall, immediately breaking the tension in the room.
???	I was gone just for a minute to get some water… what the hell happened 'ere?
???	This is one big feckin’ manor, eh? Would’ve been faster to go bucket a cup of water from the well meself.
Hindley's Lackey	Boss… we have… a guest…
Dante	<So that's their boss…>
Outis	Yes, Executive Manager. It is immediately obvious from the way he walks and from the way he carries himself that he is someone quite experienced in combat.
Hindley	Right on time. Your lackeys are… lacking. How could they let these group of no-name hooligans knock them on their arses?
Hindley	Go on. Show them the meaning of pain!
???	…….
???	Looks like I’ve got to give my men some proper demonstration.
The ‘boss’ confidently strode toward Heathcliff.
Then…
Heathcliff	…!
… gave him a playful smack on the back of his head.
???	Oi, lad! Ain’t the first thing to do when crawlin’ back into yer neighbourhood to give a quick "'ello!" to yer dear old boss? Where’d ya leave yer manners?
Dante	<… Huh?>
???	You lot, wipe that stupefied look from yer faces and bow before 'im. C'mon, hurry up. Show some bloody respect.
Hindley's Lackey	…….
Heathcliff	W-what? No, it can’t be…
The man waded past both the aftermath of the brawl and the heavy tension that filled the manor like he was out on a stroll.
He just walked into the middle of it all, then put his arm around Heathcliff’s shoulder.
It was the kind of friendly gesture that only someone who's known Heathcliff for a long, long time could do.

Episode: 12
Location: Wuthering Heights Hall
Heathcliff	Boss…? Matthew…?
???	Right on, you muppet! You’ve been gone for so long that people don’t even recognize the infamous Mad Coney!
Rodion	Mad... Coney?
Hindley	Y-you’ve known that vagrant for long? Why haven’t you told me so?
???	Well, I hardly imagined you'd be interested in hearin' about every little friend I made back when we were just another gang rollin' in the sweaty, muddy streets.
Heathcliff	Boss, why are you working with this blighter… Wait, no. But…
Heathcliff	That mask… those rabbit ears…
Heathcliff	Wait, you're still with the Dead Rabbits?!
Dead Rabbits Boss	Yeah, we’ve uh, changed a tad, eh?
Dead Rabbits Boss	Remember, lad? Back in the day, all we needed to crack some Addams Family 'eads was some tattered scarf 'round one arm and bottles of beer on tab.
Dead Rabbits Boss	We even named one of them beers after you, didn't we? The pub that used to sell that beer closed shop a few weeks ago. Ain’t got much business around with that dreadful rumor keepin’ everyone home nowadays.
Heathcliff	What?! The Wolf’s Fall closed? Bloody hell...
Sinners	…….
Heathcliff	Oh… I suppose I’m leaving you all out the loop, eh?
Heathcliff	Well, allow me to introduce the gaffer.
Heathcliff	He was a boss of the old Syndicate I used to run with.
Dead Rabbits Boss	They all friends of yours, eh? Joined some posh proper company after running out on us outta nowhere, did you?
Heathcliff	Well… things just worked out that way.
Dead Rabbits Boss	Are all them lads and lasses your lackeys? Blimey, got a walking timepiece with you too... You daft bastard, you’ve certainly moved up in the world, eh?
Heathcliff	Heheh...
Ishmael	Lackeys…?
Ishmael glared at Heathcliff with a look that could kill… but she decided to hold her silence and merely shook her head in disbelief. She probably decided that it was not worth the trouble.
Heathcliff	So what’s up with the masks, boss?
Dead Rabbits Boss	What, is it odd? Trends change with time, lad! The time for scarves with rabbit embroidery is long past!
Heathcliff	Uh, is that so? It looks a bit…
Dead Rabbits Boss	‘Course not! Who do you think we are? We the Dead Rabbits ain’t a bookish rabble that follows the coattails of some naff trend.
Dead Rabbits Boss	You’ve… really not once returned to this place since you left, have you?
Heathcliff	No. When I left this manor… and eventually, the Dead Rabbits…
Heathcliff	... I made a promise to myself that I’d not return.
Heathcliff	Not even a step closer to this place until I’ve made something of myself. Not until I can return as a successful man.
Dead Rabbits Boss	Well, you’ve always hated this place. Even when you were one of us.
Heathcliff	…….
Dead Rabbits Boss	I’ve got news for ya, Heathcliff. We’re no longer the same lowly Backstreets gang yer familiar with.
Dead Rabbits Boss	I ‘spose we’ve also ‘moved up in the world’. Someone from the Ring who'd been keeping their eyes on us plucked us right off the streets and into their fold. We’re bigger now; we’re one of the up-and-coming Syndicates.
Rodion	T-the Ring? One of the Fingers?
Ryoshu	… Must be the Fauvists of the Ring, then. They’re the only ones who’d outfit their underlings with these cheap, tacky animal masks.
Heathcliff	Then you’re…
Dead Rabbits Boss	Yeah, ya little shite. I’m the top boss of the Dead Rabbits now.
Heathcliff	Boss...
Heathcliff	Remember what you always used to say when we’ve each filled up with more than three bottles of beer?
Dead Rabbits Boss	What we drank were some lousy beer made from halfway rotten wheat, Heathcliff.
Dead Rabbits Boss	All that I remembered come the next morn was a poundin’ headache and the light feeling of our emptied pockets.
Heathcliff	You used to tell me that it hurt like hell every time one of your own men came back to us hurt. Even the recruits.
Heathcliff	Like they hurt not just any underling, but an extension of you.
Heathcliff	I knew you’d make it big one day, boss.
Dead Rabbits Boss	Well, I 'spose drunk me knew how to wax poetic.
Heathcliff	I knew it was you, Matthew. The mask threw me off for a moment, boss.
Hindley	What a sorry sight this is.
Hindley	I sincerely apologize to you two sweethearts for crashing your tearful reunion…
Hindley	But the point is, while you were wandering the streets, wasting away the best years of your life on the road…
Hindley	Matt’s made something of himself. Which is why I hired him as my bodyguard. You hear me?
Hindley	Not like you and your merry band of no-name, second-rate hooligans!
I could think of more than a few Sinners who would've gotten angry enough to brandish their weapons at such an insult...
... but they all seemed to remember that responding to such insults with violence only begot pointless turmoil. So, instead, they all began sighing heavily in an attempt to vent some of their pent-up anger.
Heathcliff	... Hindley. You seem to be sorely mistaken. This isn't the same winter you thrashed me, treated me like an indentured servant, and abused me like a hound.
Heathcliff	I won't deny that I spent many days and nights imagining tearing that foul tongue from your gob.
Heathcliff	But…
Heathcliff glanced briefly in our direction.
Heathcliff	Even a poor sod like myself found a place to belong. Went on adventures to places you couldn't even imagine. Learned a thing or two from 'em.
Heathcliff	So I just… feel bad for you, mate.
Hindley	What…?
Heathcliff	Because you really haven’t changed one bit.
Heathcliff	Besides…
Heathcliff	The hell is that rag you’re wearing? You look more like a drifting vagabond than I do.
Hindley	What? ...WHAT? Y-you insolent fool…!
Ishmael	That man’s been saying some pretty nasty stuff about us…
Ishmael	But he doesn't even look like someone that's worth arguing with...
Heathcliff	Haah… mate, did you even check yourself in the mirror in the last week?
Heathcliff	I can’t bear to look at you so down in the dumps, Hindley.
Of course, we had no way of knowing what Hindley looked like in the past. But…
We could pretty easily tell that he was far from the most stable person in the room.
Hindley	You… you fucking bastard…!
Dead Rabbits Boss	Now, now. Mister Hindley, why don't ye seat yerself on this sofa and calm down?
Dead Rabbits Boss	Be more considerate of our boys standin' in that corner, watching the whole thing go down, huh? They don’t even get these comfy-looking leather sofas.
Hindley	Tsk…
Hindley grumbled for a moment before slumping down on a sofa.
And even that simple action was stumbling and pathetic.
Gregor	I see what happened.
Gregor	He let the alcohol consume him, and not the other way around. Fell into a big, nasty barrel with no way out.
Ishmael	I’ve seen the same look on some sailors. Failing to pull themselves out of that habit… would lead them straight into the merciless maws of the Lake. Not even a trace of them would be left.
Dead Rabbits Boss	Well, this man’s still my client.
Dead Rabbits Boss	Mister Hindley hired me for some job, which is why I’m here at Wuthering Heights.
Heathcliff	Job?
Heathcliff	Catherine's hosting this banquet, ain't she? What kind of job could possibly need the Dead Rabbits’ help here?
Linton	… What?
Hindley	… Hah. A banquet?
Hindley	Well, I suppose there is one thing that hasn't changed with time. It's that witless, useless idiot brain of yours, you absolute dullard
Linton	Hindley…!
Linton	Please, cease this at once. I implore you.
Linton	I do not wish to see my manor sullied by such... foul obscenities.
Hindley	This is not your home, Linton. It's mine. It’s my manor!
Hindley	You’re the one who sullied this noble Wuthering Heights, MY birthright bestowed upon me by my father, by taking it from me by the means of trickery!
Hindley	Was your own family manor too small for you, Linton Edgar? Your oh-so-noble Edgar Family?
Don Quixote	… Edgar Family?
Linton	The time for whining, crying, and throwing a tantrum to get what you want is… long past. Cough.
Hindley	Bold words for some milksop who’s about to choke himself to death on air!
Discreet Butler	Please maintain your distance, Mister Hindley.
Hindley	I’ve seen mongrels more loyal than you lot! I was your master only a few years ago! Have you cast aside your memories as well when you did your loyalty?
Nelly	Cease this at once, Master Hindley. The Butlers have all left Hindley Earnshaw behind, as you are very well aware yourself.
Nelly	And you too, Butlers. We do not want to make further trouble here, hmm?
Discreet Butler	Understood, Chief Butler Nelly.
Heathcliff	…….
After a brief silence, Heathcliff finally brought up the question he'd been stewing for so long.
Heathcliff	Nelly, where is Catherine?
Heathcliff	You must know, Nelly, that Catherine never did like these commotions. So many guests making so much noise in her home... she won't be pleased.
Nelly	... I suppose she never did.
Heathcliff	I've been... keeping my volume in check because I didn't want to offend her. But it's getting harder and harder to keep it down.
Nelly	…….
There was a look of unfathomable, immeasurable grief on both Linton and Nelly.
Hindley was absentmindedly mumbling some foul language at the ceiling...
... and Heathcliff probably sensed from this ineffably dark and ominous silence that something was terribly wrong.
It was setting in for us as well.
After all we've been through in this journey... this kind of silence was all too familiar.
Heathcliff	Where is Catherine? What's with this dour look on everyone?
Nelly	I'm terribly sorry, Heathcliff. I...
Heathcliff	Why... why are you sorry? What the hell are you sorry about?!
Nelly	…….
Meursault	Heathcliff.
Meursault	I may have a correct assumption as to what this silence indicates.
Meursault	So I have no other choice but to tell you, as it is common courtesy to do so, that I am very sorry to hear that.
Heathcliff	What the fu— aagh!
Heathcliff	Can't you talk normally for once?!
Nelly	I hardly know how to tell you this, but...
Nelly	Miss Catherine... isn't here anymore.
Heathcliff	What do you mean she's not...?
Linton	Catherine, she's... dead.

Episode: 13
Location: Wuthering Heights Hall
Heathcliff	…….
Linton looked up at Heathcliff. His eyes were bloodshot.
Linton	As you said earlier... none of us are here to see each other's 'ugly mugs'. What other reason could we possibly have to reconvene like this?
Heathcliff	…….
Heathcliff	That... can't be real. What kind of insane—
Öufi Assoc. Director	Now.
Fixers of the Öufi Association, who have remained silent throughout the entire commotion, suddenly spoke up.
Öufi Assoc. Director	The promised hour is come.
Öufi Assoc. Director	Mister Hindley Earnshaw, a blood-relative of the deceased.
Öufi Assoc. Director	Mister Linton Edgar, the spouse of the deceased.
Öufi Assoc. Director	And Mister Heathcliff, an individual mentioned by name in the will.
Öufi Assoc. Director	Now that the three relevant parties are all present, we, as the executors of the deceased's will, may begin the ceremony.
Öufi Assoc. Director	The first order of business will be the execution of Miss Catherine's will.
Öufi Assoc. Director	Thus commences this solemn occasion of Miss Catherine's funeral rites. As per the deceased's wishes, the will shall be read out aloud here, at Miss Catherine's manor, in attendance of all those present. Then—
Heathcliff	No.
Heathcliff	You... stop. Shut up for a second.
Heathcliff	Whose funeral rites?
Heathcliff	And...
Heathcliff	What... what was that about her 'spouse'?
The man they called Linton rose from his seat for the first time since we arrived here.
Linton	After you abandoned this place with nary a word to her...
Linton	... Catherine immediately turned to me.
Linton	Then we married. Every waking hour we spent together were filled with happiness and joy. We were happy to the very last day, to her very last breath...
Heathcliff	Shut your stupid gob.
Heathcliff	The moment I set my foot in this manor...
Heathcliff	... I heard her voice. I *felt* her presence. So what the bloody hell are you even talking about?!
Heathcliff	This has to be some ploy. These fucking bastards, they must've... This... This can't...
Heathcliff paused for a moment, struggling to find the words.
Heathcliff	... This can't be how it ends.
Heathcliff	I won't believe a single shite coming out of your mouths until I see her body with my own eyes! Where is she?! Bring her here, now!
Linton	What a repulsive sight. The least you could have done was to show some proper respect for the dead, but I suppose even the bare minimum was too much to expect from someone like— cough.
Nelly	I understand how you feel, Heathcliff. So please, calm yourself and take a seat—
Heathcliff	Get your hands off me! You can't just decide for me that she's dead! I won't accept any of this, not until I see Cathy with my own—
Öufi Assoc. Director	Warning. Should this interruption to the will-reading continue, we may have to resort to use of force to ensure the full execution of this will.
Heathcliff	Shut up! You don't know shite, so shut your fucking mouth!
Heathcliff was gasping. The sheer momentousness of the emotion overwhelmed him; it looked as though he was about to lunge at anyone who even dared to get close.
I could hardly tell whether it was sorrow or wrath that came over him.
Hindley	Ha! Ha! Heathcliff, why don't you go have a look in the mirror yourself? What a pathetic mess you've become.
Hindley	It doesn't matter what posh garb plebs like you wrap yourselves in; that filth from your low birth seeps right through the fabric at the slightest provocation!
Hindley	You'll eventually see Catherine's corpse all right. It's all part of the funeral process, so don't be in such a hurry to get there. I can't wait to see how well she's resting after what she's done to me.
Öufi Assoc. Director	Mister Hindley Earnshaw. Mister Heathcliff. We order that both of you immediately return to your seats. This is your final warning.
Don Quixote	Manager Esquire...! We must do aught anon...! Fixers of the Öufi Association may even execute those involved should there be a breach of contract!
Don Quixote	I ill wish to see Sir Heathcliff be executed, nor do I wish to have to battle the honorable Fixers of the Öufi Association...
I agree with Don Quixote. There is... no need for us to get involved in an unnecessary conflict, but...
Dante	<I don't think Heathcliff's going to listen to us...>
I don't even know if there's anyone who can talk Heathcliff down when he's that agitated.
Öufi Assoc. Director	You have refused to comply.
Heathcliff	Kah, gahh...
We had no choice but to watch as Fixers of the Öufi Association struck Heathcliff with their weapons. He fell to his knees with a painful cry.
Ryoshu	... Y.S.
Yi Sang	Do speak.
Ryoshu	Not you, Yi Sang.
Yi Sang	... Speak still, your intentions notwithstanding.
Ryoshu	You, Stop. All of you. Something's off about this whole thing.
Öufi Assoc. Director	Would you like to speak for this individual?
Gregor	... Was what she was going to say, but she decided to remain silent in favor of not getting in trouble, ha ha ha ha ha... ... Right?
Ryoshu	Haah? What are you doing, B.G.?
Gregor	Ryōshū, I understand that seeing our fellow Sinner get smacked around like that can be pretty aggravating, but…
Gregor	... once you get involved, peace will simply no longer be an option...
Dante	<…….>
Dante	<... Didn’t know you cared so much about Heathcliff, Ryōshū…>
Ryoshu	... N.C.
Ryōshū flicked her cigarette indifferently as though she was no longer interested. No comment.
Heathcliff	You... you bastards...
Heathcliff	Fine. Let's crack some skulls then, shall we?
Heathcliff stumbled to his feet with the club in his hand, glaring at everyone that stood before him.
Öufi Assoc. Director	I see that you are still refusing to comply, despite our initial attempt.
Öufi Assoc. Director	Should you refuse to let go of your weapon within the next minute, we will have no choice but to escalate to our next steps.
Heathcliff	I couldn't care less about your 'steps'. Give me Catherine, or...
Heathcliff	... none of us are leaving this manor alive. You lot, me... we're all goin' six feet under.
Dante	<Heathcliff!>
Heathcliff	SHUT IT, CLOCKHEAD! This ain't the time to bring up shite like the company rules. Stay out of my way.
Dante	<Ah...>
Sinclair	I... I don't have anything to say. If someone that important to me died... I'd be blinded and deafened to all reason, too...
Rodion	Hey, Heath... I understand how angry and frustrated you must be. But you can't—
Heathcliff	Shut your trap! All of you, don't you dare touch me unless you want your faces caved in too...
Nelly	... It's nap time, Heathcliff.
Heathcliff	Gah!
Ishmael	Woah...
Rodion	D-did she just knock him out cold with her bare hands?
Rodion	And it wasn't even a punch! It was just a light tap...!
Meursault	His breathing is stable. It appears that she gave the nerve on the back of his head a precise, focused strike, which led to his loss of consciousness.
Hong Lu	What a flawless execution of that move... I can certainly say that I've seen something like that before. Reminds me of my family's—
Don Quixote	S-Sir Heathcliff hath been defeated with a single fell strike...
Nelly	Every self-respecting Butler has to be equipped with one such move. What other choice have we got when the child fusses and fusses for twenty hours instead of going to sleep?
Don Quixote	F-forsooth, I can say with quite the confidence that I can immediately slumber to the dreamlands upon tucking myself in bed! F-for truth!
Öufi Assoc. Director	Though it was not by his own volition, we have confirmed that he is no longer in possession of a weapon, and has been... subdued.
Öufi Assoc. Director	We will allow for a ten-minute recess to let things calm down for a moment, then we will proceed as planned.
Sinclair	Um, excuse me, Lady Nelly...?
Nelly	Lady Nelly?! No need for such honorifics! Please, just call me Nelly~
Sinclair	The contractors that Mister... Linton Edgar brought... they once worked at this manor, right?
Nelly	Yes, indeed. Some Butlers from the Earnshaws, like myself, followed Miss Catherine to Master Linton's. Of course, most of Master Linton's Butlers are from his own Edgar Family.
Sinclair	So... if he gives the order to... attack us, Lady Nelly would...
Nelly	Oh, pish posh! Ridiculous!
Nelly	I was a Butler in direct service of Miss Catherine.
Nelly	Young Master Linton could plead and beg all he wants, but I won't always be taking his side.
Gregor	So, uh...
Gregor	What exactly are the Butlers?
Don Quixote	Butlers? Forsooth, I am quite well-acquainted with this matter! They are—
Ryoshu	House dogs on tight leash, groveling before their masters.
Hong Lu	The most trustworthy and loyal people I've ever known, I'd say.
Don Quixote	—Fixers bound to families!
Gregor	... Nice. Gotcha. Some great help you fellas are.
Dante	<Well, I'm glad that I'm not the only one out of the loop for once.>
Nelly	At least some of you know who we Butlers are. It is a rather rare occupation, so not many people even know that we exist.
Rodion	Mm~ doesn't sound like most normal folk would have a reason to know anything about 'em.
Rodion	... Unless they're in a position where they have no choice but to work at the rich folks' homes.
Gregor	Well, one of us is quite... a passionate fan of Fixers.
Nelly	Quite. Oh, I'm very pleased to know that our dear Heathcliff made some very intelligent friends!
Don Quixote	Lady Nelly...!
Don Quixote	I promise thee that, once I make my return to the bus, I shall have my hands on the Butler figurine I had given up on acquiring! It shall stand tall and proud on the front-most row of my display shelf...!
Don Quixote's eyes were practically exploding with joy at having her Fixer obsession positively acknowledged and accepted for once.
Don Quixote	Allow me to explain! Butlers are Fixers, indeed; yet they are raaather distinct from most Fixers thou hast encountered thus far.
Don Quixote	A 'Fixer' oft refers to those who accept contracts as a part of an Association or an Office! Alas, there exists a distinction when it comes to Butlers!
Don Quixote	Butlers join families or manors to serve them, and only them, on long-term contracts! Forsooth, like any other Fixers, Butlers may be hired by a single person to serve them and only them as well!
Nelly	Do note that our service is not limited to combat; we also conduct household management and care as well.
Nelly	It must also be mentioned that proficiency in many fields is a necessity to be a respected Butler~ This is no easy occupation, mind you!
Don Quixote	Yet from what I have learned... to hire a Butler is to pay an inordinate amount of salary...
Nelly	Indeed. While Butlers are always oh-so busy, we are promised expensive compensation at every contract extension, with stable bonuses such as pensions.
Nelly	Many famous Association Fixers also retire to serve as Butlers as well.
Nelly	I was once a Butler in service of Miss Catherine's family, and was transferred to Master Linton Edgar's family to join their ranks when she married him.
Nelly	Still, after a rather peaceful, mutual 'debate' we came to the conclusion that I would be assuming the position of the Chief Butler... leader of the Butlers in that household.
Gregor	Gotcha... totally peaceful. Mhm... I'm sure it really was one peaceful transfer of power.
Don Quixote	Ooh... 'tis quite fascinating to imagine that even Sir Heathcliff once had been a tiny bairn... How was he as a youth?
Nelly	Mm, he was... quite the special child. I do not believe that I would have become a Chief Butler had it not been for him.
Nelly	Oh, what a lovely boy he was~
Don Quixote	Umm... lovely... quite...

Episode: 14
Location: Wuthering Heights Hall
Heathcliff	Ugh...
Dante	<Are you okay, Heathcliff?>
Heathcliff	... It's that classic Nelly technique, eh... Her secret technique to send us hurtlin' into the dreamlands. ... Been a while.
Nelly	I am terribly sorry, Heathcliff. I was hoping to avoid having to use the 'sleepy smack' on you, and not after a reunion like this...
Heathcliff	…….
Heathcliff	Is it true, Nelly...?
Heathcliff	Is Catherine really... gone?
Nelly	Yes.
Nelly	And Miss Catherine...
Nelly	... wrote your name into her will.
Heathcliff	…….
Ishmael	... Her will, huh? We should at least give it a listen to hear why she mentioned Heathcliff.
Heathcliff sat down wordlessly.
Hong Lu	So... was this manor Miss Catherine's?
Nelly	Well, it used to be Young Master Hindley's, once. Then...
Hindley	... Catherine, that shrew. She stabbed me in the back.
Hindley	Why don't you elaborate on that injustice, Linton? Share the tale of how Catherine and Linton Edgar stabbed me in the back! How the pair of you destroyed me!
Linton	There was no injustice. It was done in a perfectly legal manner; bring the case to T Corp. courts if you wish. It will change absolutely nothing.
An Öufi Association Fixer carrying a piece of paper stepped in between Hindley and Linton as two men continued to growl at each other.
Öufi Assoc. Director	The allotted recess has expired. We will now proceed to the inheritance bequeathment will-reading.
Öufi Assoc. Director	This is the will of the deceased. It has been verified via multiple tests and screenings that no counterfeiting or tampering of a similar nature has occurred.
Rodion	If they're verifying if it's a counterfeit or not, who verifies if they're not just straight-up lying about it?
Ryoshu	Good question.
Hong Lu	Maybe it's just a standard industry practice?
Öufi Assoc. Director	Miss Catherine has requested that this letter be read in audience of the three attendees...
Öufi Assoc. Director	... before the bequeathment of personal property commences.
Öufi Assoc. Director	I will now read the full contents of her will.
At last.
You are all gathered here.
My only wish is that my words will be met with respect, without hostility among you.
I hope that none of you become incensed during this occasion. It's my one and only funeral, after all.
I am at peace; there is no pain, no suffering where I am.
So do not consider my death a tragic one.
Because by the time you are hearing this, I must have reached my own heaven.
This is not to say that you mustn't let sorrow into your hearts.
Weep, if you will.
So that I may feel your grief and know that you have all truly loved me.
Wuthering Heights. An old and desolate manor.
I have always been afraid of this place. Fear and nightmares would consume me every night.
... But now that I stand before the end of my life, I have come to accept this manor for what it is.
This manor, which I will leave...
... to my husband, Linton Edgar.
Keep this manor, and remember me by its presence.
Linton	…….
Hindley	What the fu— Dammit...!
And my brother, Hindley. My one and only brother.
Hindley	Right...! I knew I'd be in there somewhere...!
Hindley's legs began to shake nervously. So did his voice.
I heard that you are mired in quite the heavy debt.
And that you have been spending most of your days drinking and gambling.
So I...
Hindley	Come on, Catherine. Give me something, anything...
... signed you up for the 'Abyss Trauma Correctional Facility' at M Corp.
If you don't visit the facility within 1 week after attending this will-reading...
... they will come to take you in.
Hindley	Wha... what?
I truly hope that your heart will be healed, dear brother.
Hindley	NO! That's absolute nonsense...! How the hell am I even supposed to get to M Corp. in a week?!
Of course, I have already prepared a WARP Train ticket to M Corp. for you, so please don't worry about the travel fees.
Hindley	No, this is a load of shite!!!
Öufi Assoc. Director	Should another instance of disturbance to the execution of this will occur...
Öufi Assoc. Director	... we will take forceful action without warning.
Hindley	H-how dare you, you plebs...
And you, Heathcliff.
Heathcliff	…….
Welcome home.
Heathcliff	Cathy, I'm...
Linton	…….
Once the seventh strike of lightning falls upon this manor...
... my Golden Bough shall be yours.
Ishmael	... Huh?
The mere mention of the Golden Bough...
... suddenly intensified the sensation I felt earlier. I definitely sensed that the Golden Bough was located somewhere within this manor.
Dante	<…….>
But I already figured that the Golden Bough was somewhere in here. I've known that ever since we stepped foot into this manor.
Yet, I couldn't quite pinpoint its exact location, because...
I will leave my Golden Bough to you, Heathcliff.
Ishmael	The Golden Bough... was her personal property? Not even her estate's or her family's? Just her?
Sinclair	Seventh strike of lightning? What do you think that means?
Dante	<It's not 'a' Golden Bough...>
Hindley	What the bloody hell is that supposed to mean? What...!
There's more than one here.
Faust	Dante. Are you all right?
Dante	<There is... a second Golden Bough in this manor.>
Heathcliff	No... this isn't at all what I... I...
Heathcliff	Come back, Cathy. Please...
Heathcliff	Hear my voice just this once, Cathy!!!
Catherine	I'm serious! Oh Nelly, this room is haunted! I saw a ghost!
Nelly	Again with this, Miss Cathy? What did I say? I told you I would thrash that evil ghost and hang them to dry on the rack.
Hindley	Ghosts aren't real. She's such a big liar.
Catherine	I'm not lying!
Mr. Earnshaw	I'm sorry, children. Have you been waiting long?
Hindley	Dad, where's my violin?
Catherine	What about my X Corp. all-purpose wrench?!
Mr. Earnshaw	Again, I'm sorry. I did not have the room for the violin or the wrench.
Hindley	What room...? Ugh, what's that?
Catherine	What's that dirty rag? Eww...
Mr. Earnshaw	I found this child dying alone in the streets. He was without parents or a home... the boy would surely have died in a weather like this.
Catherine	So what? I don't want that gross, dirty kid living here.
Hindley	Yeah! I want my violin! Throw that thing out...
Heathcliff	... What are you gawkin' at?
Catherine	…….
Hindley	Violin! I want! My violin!
Catherine	... Papa, why was he all alone? In the streets?
Mr. Earnshaw	Because there wasn't anyone to take care of him. Poor child...
Mr. Earnshaw	There are other children like him in the Backstreets. No parents or relatives to look after them, no homes to shelter them...
Catherine	Then... what does he have now?
Mr. Earnshaw	Well, Cathy, now he's got us to look after him. And this place as his home.
Hindley	NO! I don't want that ugly thing.
Catherine	So you're saying that you don't wanna have him... right?
Catherine	Wind's howling. I can hear something wailing; its cry is echoing through the manor halls.
Nelly	I hear it too, miss. Close the windows; there is a nip in the air outside.
Nelly	Do you remember still? As a child, you were terribly afraid of these howling winds...
Nelly	That you're seeing ghosts...
Catherine	Nelly. I see them still.
Nelly	Miss. You've grown far too weak ever since Heathcliff departed the manor. That is why you are seeing things.
Catherine	That is all right, Nelly.
Catherine	I no longer fear the ghosts.
Catherine	Because all fear stems from the ignorance of its origin.
Catherine	... Where do you suppose he is? Heathcliff.
Nelly	Miss...
Catherine	He doesn't have anything left. I am everything he has...

Episode: 15
Location: Wuthering Heights Corridors
Rodion	What just happened? Everything went dark for a sec...
Sinclair	I think the lightning caused a brief power outage... the power's back now, though.
Ishmael	What we just saw were...
Ishmael	... Catherine's memories, right?
Heathcliff	... I think so.
Faust	As it has been in the past, such occurrences can be attributed to the influence of the Golden Bough.
Ishmael	Hold on. This is...
Ishmael	... This is the corridor we walked through earlier, isn't it? This isn't where we were before the power outage.
Dante	<I don't see Hindley or Linton anywhere, either.>
Nelly	Oh my word... what just happened...?
Rodion	But... we didn't, like, take a step or anything, did we?
Yi Sang	Mm. I do not believe that any of our fellows have moved.
Hong Lu	If we were all standing still, then I suppose this means that it's the house that moved!
Gregor	What the... Know anything about this, Nelly?
Nelly	I-I haven't the slightest idea.
Nelly	I have been away from this manor for many years myself. I seldom had any reason to return ever since Miss Catherine married Master Linton and left this place to live with him.
Outis	Catherine, the deceased... didn't someone mention that she purchased this manor, Wuthering Heights?
Nelly	Yes, indeed. But she did not immediately move here after the purchase.
Nelly	Oh! Now that you mention it... I see that some changes have been made to this manor since I was gone.
Nelly was probably referring to the numerous exposed cables, holes, and cracks that seemed to have been painted over.
Nelly	Had I been the Chief Butler of this manor... I would not have let such slovenliness slide.
Nelly	But...
Hong Lu	Maybe she was trying to make modifications to the manor?
Rodion	Is it normal for rich folks to just buy a whole manor and modify it to their liking?
Hong Lu	Mm... I'd say it's kinda like changing your hairstyle once in a while!
Hong Lu	Maintaining the exact same style of hair for too long gets pretty boring, you know~
Rodion	Uh-huh. So that's how, uh, casual a full-on house remodeling is like for rich folks. I see.
Nelly	Heathcliff...
Heathcliff	…….
Nelly	I hardly know what to tell you. I do not know what words could possibly comfort you now.
Nelly	But what you said about Miss Catherine's death... and how you didn't believe that she was truly dead...
Heathcliff	... What.
Nelly	... I gave that idea some thought.
Nelly	And I agree. To an extent.
Heathcliff	... What?
Heathcliff's pupils suddenly dilated.
Nelly	Even I... haven't seen Miss Catherine's body.
Nelly	I was so beside myself when Master Linton told me of Miss Catherine's passing... that I did not even care to verify it with my own eyes.
Heathcliff	So what you're trying to say here is...
Heathcliff	Uh... is it really what I think it is? You're saying that Cathy might... still be alive?
Nelly	Nothing but a suspicion at this point. ... Besides, you know how Miss Catherine can be.
Nelly	Stubborn as a mule, sometimes doing things so unexpected that they're almost frightening...
Nelly	Honestly, I even wondered if this whole funeral business was but an awful, elaborate jest from the Miss.
Heathcliff	…….
Nelly	What's certain is, however, that the will was undeniably in her own handwriting.
Nelly	And Master Linton, he... never once stopped making modifications to the manor...
Nelly	... even after Miss Catherine passed.
Heathcliff	That bastard Linton made these modifications to the manor?
Nelly	Yes. I haven't gotten a good look at this place, nor did I personally ask him of his motives, but...
Nelly	... it is quite evident that something is to transpire here, isn't it? ... Or that something had already happened.
Heathcliff	Bollocks... I don't understand any of this.
Sinclair	What do you think the 'lightning' in her will is talking about?
Ishmael	Maybe she meant it literally. Seven lightning strikes.
Outis	Are you suggesting that she knew we would arrive precisely under this weather, on the day of her funeral? Unless she moonlighted as a renowned prophet, I don't see that happening.
Gregor	Who knows? I don't even understand what Miss Catherine was trying to do here with that will.
Rodion	Right... We can't... ever know the will of the dead.
Nelly	Oh...!
Nelly	Perhaps there is something, a clue, to be found in Miss Catherine's room?
Nelly	She did visit Wuthering Heights from time to time, even after her marriage to Master Linton.
Nelly	Don't you remember, Heathcliff? Miss Catherine...
Heathcliff	... Yeah. She always liked riddles.
Nelly	Not like you, who preferred a more... direct approach. Which involved smashing everything to pieces.
Heathcliff	Got me in plenty of trouble for trying to brute force problems without even trying to think about the intent.
A faint smile appeared on Heathcliff's face as he seemed to recall a fond memory...
Heathcliff	... I don't know if I've gotten any better at it since.
But the heavy, somber expression soon returned.
Dante	<I guess... our next order of things is to find where that room is.>

Episode: 16
Location: Wuthering Heights Corridors
Don Quixote	I espy blood, everywhere on the floor...
Rodion	I doubt anything nice went down here, that's for sure...
Gregor	And I doubt there's anyone nice down here, either. Look.
Hindley	Get back! Back off, you dogs! Have you even an inkling of who I am?!
Josephine	Speak plainly, Hindley. What have ye done to this manor?
Hindley	Hells, I do not know! I'm just as lost as you are!
Hindley	Nelly, get these brutes off me!
Nelly	What are you all doing here?
Josephine	My, my. If it isn't Nelly, the vagabond child, and his gang o' uninvited guests.
Rodion	... Is... is she talking about us?
Nelly	Josephine. Something is terribly wrong with the manor. Is there anything you know about this?
Josephine	Wuthering Heights has always been like this. More importantly... how dare ye bring those louts to this place! Mistress would have had ye whipped, had she been here to witness this desecration!
Nelly	We are in the dark as much as you are! Everyone was displaced when the lights flickered. Besides... what is this noise?
Josephine	How are you still unaware? The Dead Rabbits louts and the Butlers are battling in all corners o' this manor! Ripping, tearing, biting... Oh, what I wouldn't give to have them kill each other until they all lay dead!
Nelly	They're fighting...? But why?
Josephine	After the lightning struck, after the lights flickered...
Josephine	The Dead Rabbits suddenly charged us.
Josephine	Hindley... that fool must be scheming to take over our manor.
Nelly	What in the blazes...
Josephine	Do you fail to heed the voice of Wuthering Heights... the voice of the Mistress?!
Hindley	What the bloody hell do these out-of-control Dead Rabbits have got to do with me?! I haven't even given them any orders!
Nelly	…….
Gregor	Nelly, is there something you can do to deescalate this? We'd rather not get involved in something like this...
Rodion	Josephine and those Butlers... Didn't they serve Hindley once?
Nelly	Their service is to Wuthering Heights, and Wuthering Heights only.
Nelly	Strictly speaking, Josephine and her Butlers are bound to a contract different from mine.
Nelly	I am contracted with a specific person within the family, while they are contracted with the manor and the estate itself...
Rodion	Wow, okay. I get wanting to work for a rich family to make yourself some dough, but... is such a complicated contract worth it for Butlers who are bound to the manor and its land?
Faust	That depends on the terms of their contracts.
Faust	Once they have completed their duties as Butlers, which may be over a set period of time or over specific conditions stipulated in the contract...
Faust	... they may be able to raise their Fixer grades or gain the rights to certain valuable assets tied to the land itself.
Nelly	Therein lies the irony... Butlers bound to manors and estates often inherit their parents' careers and contracts. Sometimes, it continues for generations upon generations...
Nelly	... until the initial contract is eventually forgotten.
Rodion	Ugh, really? What if they forget what the contract was even about?
Nelly	Ha ha... Still, the contract isn't voided merely because people stop remembering it. Breaking it may invite the Taboo Hunters from an unexpected Nest or Fixers from the Öufi Association we had the pleasure of meeting earlier.
Nelly	And that Josephine is obsessed with following the long-dead Mistress' orders and won't listen to anyone else.
Josephine	Ye know me well, Nelly. Well enough to get out of my way while I remain courteous.
Josephine	Do not get in my way of punishing this rat that dared to scheme, to take our Wuthering Heights from us.
Rodion	S-sure thing~ We'll just go, 'kay? Let's just pretend we didn't see anything.
Heathcliff	…….
Hindley	I'm locking the door now, Heathcliff. You don't deserve to come indoors.
Hindley	Do you really think that a thing like you deserve to sit next to our family? To dine alongside us?
Hindley	Stay put in the barn. If I see you wandering in the living rooms without my permission, I'll...
I hear Hindley's voice echoing from Heathcliff's memories.
Dante	<…….>
This revenge may not be so difficult after all.
We just had to pretend we didn't see anything, leave Hindley behind, and have Josephine and her Butlers take care of him for us.
Even if he does put up a fight, there is no telling how long he could hold out against all of them without backup.
Heathcliff	Haah...
I can feel Heathcliff turning slightly to look in my direction.
I'm sure he's thinking the same thing as I am.
Heathcliff	... No, Clockface. I won't leave him to die.
Dante	<... You won't?>
Heathcliff	I won't...
Heathcliff	Because Cathy... wouldn't have wanted me to abandon that sod to die by their hands. Not like this.

Episode: 17
Location: Wuthering Heights Corridors
Josephine	... Understood, Mistress. I shall do as you command.
Josephine	We will not waste any more time here. Let's go and clear out the Dead Rabbits rabble.
Josephine	... We'll put the rest of you in the bin should our paths cross again.
Hindley	Tsk...
Hindley didn't show even a hint of gratitude.
Hindley	Well… I could’ve handled them all on my own. I didn't need your help to beat up some insane old hag and her pawns…
Dante	<... Maybe we should’ve just left him behind.>
Hindley	And that ‘Boss’ of yours… you don't even remember his name properly, do you? So much for your loyalty.
Rage slowly returns to Heathcliff's face and draws a deep crease between his brows.
Heathcliff	… What dodgy nonsense are you blathering about?
Hindley	He goes by 'Matt'. Not Matthew, or whatever you decided to call him.
Heathcliff	What? What are you... have you finally gone mad? I've known the gaffer for years, and you think I'd get his name wrong?
Faust	…….
Hindley	Besides...
Hindley	That insane old hag still has some of her wits about. Because I do intend to take this manor back. No matter what.
Hindley	I almost had it! If only I hadn't gotten that confounded card in that round...!
Hindley	No, the game must've been rigged. That’s the only way this makes sense. Nothing else explains how Catherine could have had the funds so ready to purchase Wuthering Heights the moment it was put up for sale at the auction.
Heathcliff	You lost this manor in a gamble? And Catherine bought it back?
Hindley	Yes! That girl was always as insane as Josephine.
Hindley	But mark my words, Wuthering Heights shall be mine again.
Hindley	Matt's made a deal with me.
Hindley	He promised to help me retrieve this manor, as long as I let him and his Dead Rabbits into Wuthering Heights.
Nelly	Master Hindley, wait. Where are you going?
Hindley	You didn't seriously expect me to be cosy with you lot after that, did you?
Hindley	I'll find Matt. And I'll do everything I can to make this place mine again.
Hindley	... And don't be so quick to assume that you've really changed, Heathcliff.
Hindley	You haven't. You simply can't change.
Hindley	You're nothing but a ragged sack of waste. Don't you forget that.
Gregor	What an asshole...
Don Quixote	Ahem, Sir Heathcliff... I am quite unsure as to how much of my words may reach thine ears, given thy fury, but...
Heathcliff	Hah.
Some Sinners attempted to cheer Heathcliff up, who would normally be seething with anger upon hearing abuse like that, but...
... this was different. It wasn't anger.
Heathcliff	Back then... whenever I heard that kind of contemptuous shite from that bastard...
Heathcliff	... it felt as though every word he spat out rang true. That I really was just a useless lowlife who deserved nothing but the rags.
Heathcliff	I've spent days and nights coming up with all kinds of ways I'd exact my revenge on 'im. But now it's...
Heathcliff	Hah, bloody hell. I can't even put this feeling to words.
Ishmael	He's the one that couldn't change, not you. Look at him, clinging desperately to his past like it's the only thing he's got.
Ishmael	He's just... he's just like an immature kid who never grew up past ten.
Outis	Where is Catherine's room? We would do well to be on our guard in this manor. We must always be wary of our surroundings in this field of battle.
Nelly	It should be there once we turn right here. Odd... I don't recall the corridor being this long.
Nelly	Heavens! There...
Outis	Dead Rabbits. At the end of the corridor.
Rodion	Is it just me, or do they look a bit different from earlier? I'll take "it's just you" for an answer, by the way.
Nelly	That reminds me... I have heard tales from the streets about those strange, wandering Dead Rabbits.
Nelly	Word on the street is that we should steer clear of the Dead Rabbits with red eyes... Just... like... the ones they have...
Strange Dead Rabbits Henchman	…….
Nelly	Excuse me, are you looking for something... or someone?
Gregor	Just for your information, that 'Linton' fella ain't here! Those 'Butlers' of Wuthering Heights ain't here either. They all went that way, past the hallway. Clearly, you've got no beef with us, right? Ha ha ha.
Strange Dead Rabbits Henchman	…….
Ryoshu	Looks like they've got plenty of beef with us.
Outis	Can they even hear what we are saying? If you have demands, then state them. If there is room for negotiation—
Strange Dead Rabbits Henchman	…….
Dante	<They all look a bit... no, they all look completely out of it, don't they?>
Outis	What a shame. I, Outis, would have loved to demonstrate my excellent negotiation skills to the Executive Manager.

Episode: 18
Location: Wuthering Heights Corridors
Ishmael	You all heard that too... right?
Ishmael	That noise every time we killed one of them. That noise from beyond their masks...
Yi Sang	... The sound of mirrors.
Yi Sang	They made a sound not unlike a shattering mirror.
Ishmael	... Wait.
Ishmael approached the Dead Rabbits henchman's corpse and unmasked him.
Ishmael	...!
Sinclair	... Wait, something's wrong...
Outis	... We should unmask the rest of them to get a better picture of what is happening here.
Things became even more puzzling once they were all unmasked.
Sinclair	I don't want to judge a book by its cover, but...
Don Quixote	... Hardly do they appear to be members of a violent Backstreets Syndicate.
Outis	I can tell from their build that none of them were ever part of a Syndicate. They look more like… civilians.
Sinclair	But... they attacked us first, right? We were just…
Outis	Eyes up. More Dead Rabbits... Red eyes, all of them.
Don Quixote	Hark! Heed mine words! Whatever is thy—
Strange Dead Rabbits Henchman	…….
Don Quixote	Gah...!
Ishmael	I don't think this is the best time to attempt the diplomatic approach...

Episode: 19
Location: Wuthering Heights Corridors
Heathcliff was digging through the deceased Dead Rabbits' pockets.
Dante	<What are you looking for, Heathcliff?>
Heathcliff	They don't have 'em.
Dante	<The timepieces that Yi Sang mentioned earlier?>
Heathcliff	Yeah. Everyone born and raised in T Corp. carries a watch. They have to.
Right... the Kurokumo Clan officer we fought in Yong-jin building was looking for a timepiece, too.
Heathcliff	It's... like a form of personal identification. It's something you carry around to show others that you are who you are.
Heathcliff	I abandoned my watch when I left T Corp., but...
Nelly	I see... They don't even have their pocket watch chains with them.
Nelly	If they did carry a watch, we would have been able to learn at least where they were coming from.
Rodion	So someone either doesn't want people finding out who they are... or they're simply not from around here. Right?
Yi Sang	I have witnessed such garb commonly worn about within the T Corp. territory. I have no doubts that they must be locals...
Outis	There are many unanswered questions... but let us save that discussion for later.
Heathcliff	... Here it is.
Nelly	Whew... Now that was quite the journey, wasn't it? Shall we enter?
Heathcliff	... Nelly. Tell me.
Heathcliff	After I... left without a word... how did Catherine fare?
Nelly	…….
Heathcliff	Of course, I already know that she lived happily ever after with that sod, Linton. But...
Nelly	Are you sure you want to know?
Heathcliff	Dammit, I do. But... I also don't.
Heathcliff	I must look so... pathetic. If Cathy was here, she would've mocked me mercilessly.
Nelly	I would have brought you a mirror so you can see that priceless look on your face...
Nelly	... if I hadn't removed them all from the premises... Ha ha.
Heathcliff	Tsk, I'm not interested in your stupid jests.
Heathcliff	But has Catherine ever, even once, talked about me at all since I left?
Nelly	... No.
Heathcliff	…….
Heathcliff	Of course she didn’t. A witless brigand, a scoundrel like me… I’m sure it didn’t matter to Catherine whether I—
Nelly	I wouldn't be so sure, Heathcliff.
Nelly	That is not what I meant.
Nelly	When you left, Miss Catherine… she began withering away. She skulked in her room for days upon days, refusing to eat or even speak.
Nelly	Then she’d suddenly grow lachrymose, scream, cry, whisper things to herself… Master Linton would come by to coax her, but it hardly helped matters.
Nelly	She was so ill that I was worried that we might have to start making arrangements with a mortician in advance.
Heathcliff	Really? I... Catherine… she was in that much pain?
Heathcliff asked, incredulously.
Nelly	Yes. It pained us to even watch her suffer. And one day, she…
Catherine	Nelly, look. Linton’s left a flower on my pillow.
Catherine	Oh, it’s golden. I didn’t know that spring had come to Wuthering Heights already. I suppose the snow has all but thawed, too.
Nelly	Is that not so romantic of him, miss?
Catherine	I suppose it could appear that way. He must have paid quite the fortune for this.
Catherine	But if Linton truly cared for me, truly wished to return a color to a flower for my sake...
Catherine	... then he should have brought me a violet flower.
Nelly	…….
Catherine	So... he did not bring this flower for my sake. This was only for his own satisfaction.
Nelly	Are you... okay, Miss?
Catherine	Whatever do you mean? I have never felt better than I do today.
Catherine	Walk with me, won't you? I would like to see which flowers have weathered the wintery cold and bloomed.
Nelly	After that day, Miss Catherine truly appeared convalescent.
Nelly	We were all happy to see Miss Catherine be herself again, but...
Nelly	... now that I think about it, it was a tad strange. She suffered for months upon months from fever; how could anyone so suddenly recover from all that after a single night's repose?
Nelly	That is also when she purchased Wuthering Heights from Mister Hindley Earnshaw...
Nelly	... and started making sweeping modifications to this place.
Nelly	I thought the two of them had intended to return to Wuthering Heights, so I asked them what exactly they planned to do with it… but they never gave me a straight answer.
Nelly	Haah. I'm just as in the dark as you are. I've not the slightest clue as to what she was thinking...
Heathcliff	What about... my letters?
Heathcliff	I sent her letters. I haven't been able to since I joined this company, but... when I was a part of that gang...
Heathcliff	... I wrote her letters. Though I didn't sign my name on 'em.
Heathcliff	I... just wanted to let her know that I was doing fine.
Nelly	Well, I don't recall her ever opening a letter.
Nelly	Seriously, once she has her mind set on something, no one could convince her otherwise. No one...

Episode: 20
Location: Catherine's Room
Nelly	You... What are you doing?
The room, now without its master, was completely turned upside-down.
And in the center of all that mess were Butlers, awkwardly standing, frozen mid-movement as though they'd all been caught red-handed.
Discreet Butler	... We were cleaning the room, as per Master Linton's orders.
Nelly	You lot were clearly ransacking the room!
Firm Butler	... Chief Butler Nelly, have you seen any of the Dead Rabbits or the Wuthering Heights Butlers on your way here?
Firm Butler	We have good reason to believe that the Wuthering Heights Butlers are scheming with that villain Hindley to harm Master Linton.
Heathcliff	... The Dead Rabbits ain’t the type of gang to kill people for no reason.
Gregor	Okay, but they did try to kill us for no reason.
Heathcliff	I know, dammit! The boss can't be doing all this for nothing. He must have a good explanation for this.
Heathcliff	Just tell us what dodgy shite you were up to in Catherine's room.
Discreet Butler	We told you, Heathcliff. We were... cleaning the room.
Discreet Butler	Or have you sided yourself with the rest of those lowlives, the Dead Rabbits?
Heathcliff	Like Master, like Butlers, eh? Just as stupid and soft as Linton himself.
Discreet Butler	That was uncalled for.
Heathcliff	No. This dodgy shite you're trying to pull here is what's uncalled for. You've crossed the line.
Heathcliff	I’m the only one who can tell you what to do with this room. Not that posh wanker.

Episode: 21
Location: Catherine's Room
Nelly	That's enough, Heathcliff!
Discreet Butler	Gaah... Cough...
Ishmael	We can't kill her. Otherwise we won’t know what they were looking for, or why.
Heathcliff	... Speak.
Heathcliff	I am going to take your utensils and cut off your fingers one by one with each dodgy answer you give me.
Heathcliff	You must know how sharp your own blades are.
Nelly	... Please cooperate, won't you? I don't want to have to use the sleepy smack on my own subordinates.
Discreet Butler	The... diary.
Discreet Butler	Master Linton told us that we must find the diary in Mistress Catherine's room.
Discreet Butler	That she must have hidden her diary somewhere in here as they were making modifications to the manor...
Nelly	I see. So why do you think Master Linton's looking for that diary?
Discreet Butler	Master Linton told us that it was to find... a way.
Nelly	Please, do keep up your mysterious attitude. A few more answers like that and I will personally demonstrate how I managed to become the Chief Butler.
Discreet Butler	It's the truth. He did not let us in on what this... 'way' is. I have told you all that I know.
Heathcliff	That's it. Looks like I'll have to—
Nelly	That's enough, Heathcliff. I believe that she is telling the truth. All of you, leave us. Now.
Discreet Butler	…….
Nelly	And please, do stay out of my sight.
Discreet Butler	Chief Butler Nelly...
Discreet Butler	According to what intelligence we could gather...
Discreet Butler	The 'Dead Rabbits', the Syndicate of an Urban Plague classification, had long been obliterated from the T Corp. Backstreets.
Heathcliff	… What?
Nelly	…!
Discreet Butler	They have been inactive for a long, long time—in other words, they have already been vanquished. Other gangs have not seen the Dead Rabbits in the Backstreets in a while, either.
Discreet Butler	We have no way of verifying their identities. Please, do be careful.
Nelly	Who in the blazes did Mister Hindley let into this manor...? And that diary...
Dante	<A diary, huh... I'm not sure what to expect from it, but...>
Ishmael	If we do find it, it'll at least clue us in as to what kind of situation we've just walked into.
Outis	A small container, a space to hide such a thing as a diary... would be these bookshelves or drawers.
Outis	But it appears that the Butlers have combed this room clean already.
Don Quixote	Hm hm...! I have once beheld such a sight.
Don Quixote	Forsooth, 'tis oft the case that a hidden button exists somewhere! We ought to scour this room from corner to corner with magnifying glasses much larger than even Gregor's...!
Gregor	These are glasses for my myopia...
Catherine	There are a thousand feathers of so many birds in this pillow.
Catherine	Other people of means like to collect rare bird feathers and stuff their pillows with them. But... I don't like that.
Catherine	Do you know... why?
Heathcliff	…….
Heathcliff	Because birds are meant to fly. Not to be killed like that.
Catherine	Yes. Birds do not belong in their cages; they are beings born to soar the skies.
Catherine	So I am going to empty this pillow of their feathers.
Catherine	Instead, I will fill it with my secret.
Catherine	So that I will always have it at an arm's reach.
Hong Lu	Heathcliff...? Why are you tearing that pillow open...?
Heathcliff	This is where... Cathy would have...!
Outis	... A diary. Hidden within the pillow.
Hong Lu	Hm... it's stained by ink. Even the cover, too.
Rodion	I wonder why anyone would do this to their own diary...?
Hong Lu	Mm... when I would hold my pen against the paper for a long, long time, because I'm not sure what to write...
Hong Lu	... the ink will start to pool and spread, leaving big stains like these.
Faust	These ink stains appear to have been made from nonstandard, special ink. A pool of ink that stained this page has left no marks on the subsequent page.
Faust	Perhaps...
Faust	... these stains were made on purpose to hide the words under them.
Ishmael	If that Linton guy's trying so hard to find this diary, then...
Ishmael	... I'm willing to bet that it's something important.
Heathcliff	Most of these pages are stained.
True. Most of the pages were stained, and their contents were rather difficult to read.
Heathcliff	... I would have liked to read them. Even a little bit.
That's when...
... the pages suddenly began to flip rapidly, until it came to a stop at a page with actually legible words.
It couldn't have been the wind. There weren't any open windows.
XX/XX
Heathcliff left me. Without a word.
A terrible thunderstorm rages outside.
Will he cease to pain my heart and return home once the rain passes? Like Nelly said?
XX/XX
Fine. Don't come back.
I don't want to see your face ever again, either.
XX/XX
This manor and me... we're all you have. You don't have anything else.
Will you truly abandon what is everything to you?
Gregor	Boy, this all feels extremely private. Should we...?
Sinclair	Why don't we leave Heathcliff alone so he can...
Heathcliff	... No. This entry seems... off.
XX/XX
A guest paid me a visit. The first in a long time.
Conversing with someone new... really cleared my head.
And I saw my shape in the mirror before me.
I know what to do now.
The basement.
We... must descend there.
Sinclair	Who do you think this 'we' is?
Nelly	The basement... the basement...?
Heathcliff	From what I remember, Nelly...
Nelly	I agree, Heathcliff.
Nelly	Everyone, it appears that our next destination lies at the basement of this manor.
Outis	What makes you say that?
Nelly	The old Mistress, who passed many years ago, ordered us to seal the entrance to the basement.
Heathcliff	…….
Nelly	Which means that the basement was unsealed when the modifications were made to the manor.
Heathcliff	But why... why the basement...?
Heathcliff	Cathy hated the dark. Enough to keep her room always lit with several lanterns.
Nelly	Indeed. I recall having to purchase an entire set of lanterns whenever I left the manor to procure the groceries.
Outis	That is certainly suspicious.
Gregor	Got any idea as to where we might find the basement, Nelly?
Nelly	Well~ It's usually by the kitchen, isn't it? Let us investigate that place first, shall we?

Episode: 22
Location: Wuthering Heights Corridors
We had a rather spirited start to this investigation, but our journey to the kitchen was far from straightforward.
Nelly	Odd... from what I recall, turning right here should have led us to the first floor.
Heathcliff	No. We should have found the kitchen ages ago.
Heathcliff	And Nelly, it makes absolutely no sense that you of all people would be lost here.
Nelly	Indeed. You could blindfold me and I would still know where everything in this house is.
Yi Sang	This feels quite familiar. It is like...
Ryoshu	The corridor.
Yi Sang	... Indeed, like the corridors of the Backdoor.
Faust	Yes. Considering the exterior of the manor and comparing it to its internal map, its shape and size is far from being even remotely reasonable.
Heathcliff	…….
Dante	<What's on your mind, Heathcliff?>
Heathcliff	This feels familiar. Like it's all just one big riddle Cathy used to give me.
Heathcliff	I'd sometimes get the right answer early in the game. And every time I did, she kept making the answer more and more convoluted, annoyed that I actually managed to get it right.
Heathcliff	This... is exactly what that felt like. Like she's cross with me, hiding the basement from us, making us go in circles...
Rodion	Darnit, lemme see the diary. I wanna see if it says anything else about the basement.
Rodion	This is like the third time we're walking through this hallway, 'kay? I'm starting to lose my cool.
Rodion	Look! That picture frame again! Oh, I could recognize you from anywhere now!
Heathcliff	There wasn't anything else in the diary, lass.
Rodion	Just lemme have a look, Heath. What if you missed something?
Don Quixote	EEAAUGH!
Sinclair	... Was that overreaction really necessary, Don Quixote...?
Rodion	…….
Rodion	What... the heck... was that?
Meursault	Hm. A window shattered, quite literally, out of nowhere.
Rodion	Aww, my bad, Heath. I dropped the diary. That noise really got me.
Heathcliff	Don't bother. I just need to dust it lightly...
Heathcliff	... Huh?
Heathcliff	Wait. This page wasn't here earlier.
Rodion	Huh, you're right. That page was one of those ink stained pages, wasn't it?
XX/XX
The basement.
We... must descend there.
In a not so far future, I would like to hang my portrait at the entrance of that basement.
A portrait of my most beautiful, most spirited... yet fleeting present self.
In those rare days when Josephine wasn't haunting that area of the manor, I'd sit there for hours with him by my side. Just chatting our day away...
Do you remember those days?
Rodion	This is a riddle, isn't it...? So where could this be?
Nelly	If this is her riddle, then the only one who can solve it has to be...
Heathcliff	The entrance of that basement... just chatting our day away...
Heathcliff briefly closed his eyes as if to recall what these could be referring to... then squinted them open.
Heathcliff	…….
Heathcliff	The fireplace in the dining hall.
Heathcliff	Catherine enjoyed chatting with me before the fireplace.
Hong Lu	... I see.
Hong Lu	Those moments must have been very precious to her.
Hong Lu	Precious enough to write about them in her diary, so that she will always remember them.
Heathcliff	…….
Heathcliff	You lot again.
Strange Dead Rabbits Henchman	…….
Heathcliff	Where is he? Where's... boss?
Strange Dead Rabbits Henchman	…….
Outis	Any further attempts to communicate with them appear futile. They're clearly—
Heathcliff	No... the Dead Rabbits, they...
Heathcliff stopped himself, then scratched his head. He sighed deeply.
Heathcliff	Dammit... I suppose it doesn't matter what I've got to say.
Heathcliff	I don't know. None of this feels real.
Heathcliff	They're saying that Cathy is dead... the Dead Rabbits have changed... and this bloody maze of a manor...

Episode: 23
Location: Wuthering Heights Fireplace
There already was a group of people by the fireplace.
Nelly	Master Linton...
Linton	So you've arrived...
Heathcliff	This can't be a coincidence, can it? I suppose you're also trying to enter the basement.
Linton	…….
Nelly	Master Linton, what are you hiding in the basement?
Linton	... I see that they have gotten their hands on it first. Despite the fact that you had the head start.
Discreet Butler	Our most profound apologies, Master Linton...
Linton	... Return that diary to me.
Outis	Why must we?
Linton	... Is it that unreasonable for a husband to request that you return his loving wife's memento to his hands?
Heathcliff	Don't provoke me.
Heathcliff	Tell me why Catherine died.
Heathcliff	And like I said earlier... I won't believe a word from your gob until I see her body for myself.
Heathcliff	Even your claim that she married you.
Linton	How desperate.
Linton	Allow me to offer you an alternative. Go hide in some corner of this manor. Wait until the lightning strikes seven times... Then take the Golden Bough Catherine left you, leave, and never return to this place ever again.
Linton	It is what you do best, Heathcliff—turning tail and hiding. Shrouding your shameful, tear-soaked face from the world, fleeing from the beatings, abandoning Catherine... because you were too busy running away from the gnawing hounds.
Heathcliff	... Keep talking, 'Young Master' Edgar. And you'll find that I'm no longer that weak child you once knew.
Linton	Well... I'm not so sure what has really changed about you since then, Heathcliff.
Linton	And those... cheap, tacky letters you sent...?
Linton	All burned with the rest of the trash in the incinerator.
Heathcliff	…….

Episode: 24
Location: Wuthering Heights Fireplace
Outis	What have you done to this manor?
Linton	I did not... tamper with the manor myself. I have not once been anywhere near the subject of workshops or engineering in my life; I am but a sheltered child of the esteemed Edgar Family. How would I have the capacity to do the modifications myself?
Linton	All I have done is... make a few investments in a separate organization that worked on the construction.
Linton	They were introduced to me as a group that was once a part of this... Syndicate called 'the Ring'.
Ryoshu	... Hah.
Rodion	The Ring...? Didn't the Dead Rabbits guy say something about being plucked by the Ring?
Heathcliff	What the hell are you doing... bringing those blighters here...?
Linton	I don't know... I never really cared much about the details of how this manor was modified. If my brother found out what I was doing, he would have tried to kill me... but I cared not.
Ishmael	How did you even come across the Golden Bough? It's...
Linton	... impossible for a private individual to acquire the Golden Boughs? Indeed. But the Edgar Family is a family of vast means.
Linton	When my eldest brother left, most of the family fortune became mine. I quite enjoyed the affluence. One could say that it's the only thing of my possession that I liked. Though I have spent most of it... procuring... the Golden Bough... Cough...
Linton was coughing harshly between every couple of words. It seemed as though he was pushing himself just to finish a sentence.
It wasn't that the battles had been grueling; it was merely that he was someone of a frailer constitution.
Don Quixote	The Edgar Family... I believe that I have once espied that name in the Fixers Monthly magazines... Mayhaps...?
Heathcliff	Haah... what have I got to say to a bloke who looks like he belongs in the infirmary?
Heathcliff	Just tell me what happened to... Catherine. That's all I'm asking.
Linton	Do you really think that you even deserve to meddle in my family's affairs...? To meddle in this business between me and... my wife?
Heathcliff	Don't talk like that to me, dammit! What, are you trying to flaunt those words at me or something...?!
Linton	We were married. De facto, de jure.
Linton	I was Catherine's lawfully wedded husband, and we lived under the same roof. We built a family together.
Heathcliff	…….
Linton	Right, 'husband'. I suppose you will never know how it feels to be called that... am I wrong?
Linton	It's only expected at this point, is it not? Who in their right mind would leave everything behind just to be with some... poor Backstreets vagrant... like you...? Cough.
Heathcliff	... I told you to stop provoking me.
Heathcliff	It's... Agh. Dammit...
Heathcliff fell silent for a moment. What Linton said hurt him so much that he could not even come up with a rebuttal.
Linton continued, somewhat emboldened by his silence.
Linton	You were the first to leave her, yes... but I assure you, it was certainly for the better.
Linton	Because she would have... left you first if you hadn't. Because she would have grown tired of you!
Heathcliff	Tired... of me...?
Catherine	Linton. You said that on purpose, didn't you?
Linton	What do you mean?
Catherine	Just now. You provoked Heathcliff. So that you'll anger that boy, so that he'll attack you first.
Linton	No! I never said anything to him. You see, I was just talking to Hindley.
Linton	Besides, let's be honest. Just look at him. His unkempt hair, the rags he's wearing... He's laughable, isn't he?
Catherine	Do you even know what you've done? Hindley will thrash that boy once you leave! Do you understand?
Linton	No, no!
Catherine	Quit your weeping, Linton! You have no idea how unhappy your tears make me.
Linton tortures Heathcliff like that on purpose.
Every time my brother speaks ill of Heathcliff, he giggles with him or mutters in agreement. As if he wants Heathcliff to hear.
And Heathcliff would always attack Linton. Because he is an impulsive child.
Why can't the people I love... also love one another?
Catherine	Linton. You love me, don't you?
Linton	Of course, dear Catherine.
Then how far are you willing to go for love?
What does 'love' mean to you?
... If you truly love me, then...
... perhaps you could bring Heathcliff back to me?
Linton	... That... diary...!
Linton	You can... read it...?
Linton looked downright pathetic. He was gasping for air with every breath, trying to read the open diary.
It was a wretched sight; the rapier in his hand clattered pitifully to the floor.
Heathcliff	Yeah. As you can plainly see yourself.
Linton	When I tried to read it, it was full of nothing but pages upon pages of ink stains...
Linton	So why does it refuse me but not...
Linton	... Hah.
Linton	Catherine... this is your answer, then?
Linton	I no longer know if I even have the right to stand in your way.
Linton closes his eyes for a moment, and backs away from us.
He activates a button somewhere within the fireplace, and...
... the fireplace opens, loud with the sound of moving mechanical parts. Before us appears a long staircase leading downstairs.
Linton	…….
He is watching us with a hollow, dejected look.
Nelly	Master Linton...
Ishmael	This staircase leads to the basement...? What the hell were you doing down there...?
Linton	All I can say is that... I have been preparing to invite a new guest.
Linton	Descend. Whatever appears before you, whatever transpires...
Linton	... it shall all be as Catherine willed.

Episode: 25
Location: Wuthering Heights Basement Stairs
This staircase descended for much longer than we had anticipated. We couldn't even guess how far we were from the bottom.
Rodion	Is there even an end to these stairs...?
Hong Lu	I wonder if this depth was really that necessary? The servants must've had quite the hard time putting these stairs together.
Yi Sang	If they operate under the identical mechanisms as our corridor, then there is a chance that they may not have been installed by hand.
Sinclair	…….
There is a dark look on Sinclair's face.
... This is a grim reminder of our experience back in the basement of his mansion.
Sinclair	This is... exactly what the basement at my home felt like.
Dante	<Sinclair, what happened back then... it still haunts you, doesn't it?>
Sinclair	Can't say that I've completely moved on from it...
Sinclair	But... I'm moving forward, little... by little.
Dante	<... Yeah. I can clearly see that.>
Sinclair	... That's good. Sometimes, I'm not sure if I'm just imagining that I'm getting better.
Dante	<…….>
A sudden yet familiar sensation tickles my head.
It is soon followed by a noise just as familiar.
The unpleasant sound of something approaching, dragging itself across the floor...
No... crawling...
Gregor	Something's crawling this way... It can't be an Abnormality, can it? At a place like this?
Dante	<No, this is... it's gotta be...>
Sinclair	…!
Faust	The Peccatula.
Meursault	However, this place does not appear to be the Lobotomy Corp. branch, nor does it appear to be connected to one as Sinclair's mansion was.
Faust	Correct. The L Corp. branch in T Corp. is a fair distance away from this manor.
Meursault	Causeless effects. I fail to see why this is happening.
Faust	As always, even in seemingly inexplicable circumstances such as this, laws of causality remain constant. There is always a cause to an effect.
Meursault	... Understood.
Ishmael	Well...
Ishmael	I guess we'll find out what that 'cause' is at the end of this stairwell.

Episode: 26
Location: Wuthering Heights Basement Entrance
Gregor	I haven't the faintest idea as to who might be behind this, but...
Gregor	... man, someone really doesn't want us reaching the basement.
Gregor	We're finding more and more Peccatula the closer we get to the entrance.
Sinclair	Since we haven't come across any other entrances on our way down... I guess the only place they could be coming from is the basement.
Rodion	What... the heck are they keeping in this basement...?
Gregor	Don't the rich families with big mansions usually keep basements for...
Gregor	... fancy, classy stuff like fermenting some good whiskey?
Rodion	They also use 'em for storing treasures... Hehe, I have many fond memories of raiding their basements.
Hong Lu	Hmm... It probably depends on the family, but if a rich family wanted to hide something they're doing, they'd do it in the basement.
Rodion	Can you check the diary again, Heath? Maybe something new appeared on the pages like it did earlier.
Heathcliff	It can't possibly be that easy. This is just a diary, nothing more. You can ask these papers all you want, but—
Heathcliff	…….
Dante	<... Is there something wrong with the diary, Heathcliff?>
Heathcliff	I felt an odd sensation earlier. I dismissed it, thought it was just the chills.
Heathcliff	But I just felt it again.
Heathcliff	This diary... I ain't even sure how to put it... haah. The point is, I just had the strangest sensation.
Heathcliff	The same feeling I felt earlier when that glass window suddenly shattered all on its own.
Faust	…….
Faust	Heathcliff, if I may...
Heathcliff	I know! I know I must sound like I've gone barmy. But...
Faust	No, Heathcliff. It appears rather obvious that the ink used to write the entries was not an ordinary ink.
Faust	There is a small chance that your 'suspicions' may be true. That is what I believe.
Ishmael	What are you two even talking about...?
Faust	I would like to recommend that you open the diary yourself, Heathcliff.
Heathcliff	…….
Heathcliff opened the diary with a somber expression...
... and once again, the ink stains on the page had transformed into a series of legible alphabets.
XX/XX
I once had a dream.
A dream of my own death, or an eternal slumber.
I found myself in heaven upon my waking.
It was just as it was described in the books. I was surrounded by angels who sang a song for me.
But at that moment, I also understood that I belonged elsewhere.
I cried and pleaded with the angels to send me back...
And the angels were so furious that they cast me out from heaven back into the middle of the violet flowers on top of Wuthering Heights.
Only then did I truly awake in this world, sobbing for joy.
Now that I reminisce upon that memory...
... I no longer believe that it was a mere dream.
It was just as real as the ghost from my youth that I have seen haunting this very manor...
Yes. If we were in heaven, we shall be eternally miserable.
Thus we must embrace the encroaching sins and descend into the world beneath.
Sinclair	Here it is again. The 'we'...
Ishmael	Most diaries are written in first person. Do you know anything about this, Heathcliff?
Heathcliff	No... She's never once mentioned this dream to me.
Yi Sang	Though it may be baseless conjecture...
Yi Sang	But to say that we must "embrace the encroaching sins and descend into the world beneath"...
Yi Sang	... Perhaps the diary means to instruct us to face the Peccatula and continue to descend into the basement.
Heathcliff	You're saying that Catherine... planned all this?
Yi Sang	Mm. Though I remain uncertain if this is what Miss Faust had implied earlier, yet...
Yi Sang	... Heathcliff, did it not appear to you that the diary is answering directly to your beckoning?
Heathcliff	... Right, it's not just me who felt that, then?
Sinclair	Miss Catherine, she...
Sinclair	I don't want to speak so ill of the dead, but she seems a bit...
Nelly	Yes, she was quite the character. And she could be a tad frightening, from time to time.
Heathcliff	... Nelly. Linton said... something about my letters being burned at the incinerator, didn't he?
Heathcliff	You think he's really the prick who nicked all my letters before they reached Cathy?
Nelly	Well... I wouldn't put such behavior beyond Master Linton.
Heathcliff	…….

Episode: 27
Location: Wuthering Heights Basement
Yi Sang	…….
Ryoshu	What an ostentatious production.
Sinclair	... Is everyone seeing this?
Sinclair	There are people... in those glass tubes. Their eyes are closed... no, some of them are open...
Sinclair	Are they... dead?
Rodion	Dead or alive, it doesn't make sense either way. I just don't understand why there's something like this under this manor...?
The room was filled with rows upon rows of mysterious glass pods, each housing a completely still person inside.
Meursault	... They are all dressed in different garbs. I don't see any recognizable age or gender patterns among them.
Meursault	Recall that large-scale cases of missing persons have been sweeping T Corp. lately.
Meursault	Then...
Nelly	T-there! Is that the Golden Bough you were searching for...?
At the end of the basement was a woman lying inside a coffin...
Heathcliff	CATHY!!!
... and Heathcliff was the only one who immediately recognized her face. She appeared to be at peace, as though in a pleasant dream.
Outis	... Look. There are machines attached to her coffin.
Meursault	Mm. I see two levers, both pointed downward.
Attached to the coffin was a Golden Bough, shimmering with the golden light we'd grown familiar with.
Heathcliff	Cathy... Cathy, wait for me!
The room, the glass pods, the chaos... none of it seemed to register for Heathcliff. He began sprinting toward the coffin like a madman.
Dante	<... Don Quixote?>
Don Quixote, who I was ready to see sprinting alongside Heathcliff, was standing still, aghast.
Don Quixote	There... there ought to have been a misunderstanding...
Dante	<A misunderstanding?>
Ishmael	What misunderstanding? Those people in the pods are clearly the same people who were kidnapped at T Corp.
Don Quixote	Lo, at those who stand flanking the machines...
Don Quixote	We have seen them afore at the manor, have we not?
Don Quixote	... Fixers of the Öufi Association.
Don Quixote	H-honorable sirs and ladies.
Öufi Assoc. Director	…….
Don Quixote	Oft was I told that I am rather ignorant with the goings of the world and my surroundings, so I wish not to so carelessly assume...
Don Quixote	Thus I must implore thee to answer us.
Heathcliff	All of you... out of my way. Now.
Öufi Assoc. Director	This area is off limits.
Heathcliff	Off limits...?
Heathcliff	She's there. I can see Catherine right there, before my eyes.
Heathcliff	I won't let you fucks stand between us.
Öufi Assoc. Director	…….
Öufi Assoc. Director	Didn't expect them to get here so soon... well, we need to buy some more time.
Öufi Assoc. Director	Unlease the dregs.
The Fixers began fiddling with the lab machines...

Episode: 28
Location: Wuthering Heights Basement
Faust	This is...
Sinclair	…!
Sinclair	They're crawling out of the pods! The pods that people are trapped in...!
Sinclair	N-no...! This shouldn't be happening...! Why are the Peccatula...!
Yi Sang	... Miss Faust.
Faust	Speak.
Yi Sang	I am certain that you, with your gift of omniscience and brilliance... already hold the knowledge the rest are not privy to.
Yi Sang	Yet you have deemed that there must be some things better left unuttered, thus you have not shared with us all that you know.
Yi Sang	So allow me to ask first.
Yi Sang	As this sight is all too familiar to my eyes.
Faust	…….
Yi Sang	I wish to hear your opinion on my conjecture, in case that I am found to be incorrect.
Yi Sang	This is an experiment on the subject of 'humanity', is it not?
Faust	... Faust explains that the purpose of this experiment is to use the energy stored within the Golden Bough to utilize every strand of possibility. It is but one of many experiments made possible using the Golden Bough's powers.
Faust	To be more precise, it is... it is an experiment to birth a human...? It is an experiment to create a certain kind of human.
Faust	If we were to cast a wider net of possibilities... it can be assumed that this basement is merely an engine room where the power source is activated...
Faust	... and that the entire manor itself has become a laboratory of its own.
Dante	<... Sometimes, Faust looks like she's pausing to look at something before speaking.>
Yi Sang	…….
Hong Lu	Does any of this resemble what you've seen before, Yi Sang?
Yi Sang	Resemble? Nay... they lie plainly before me.
Yi Sang	The machines of my very own design, my very research.
Yi Sang	This... is not what I had hoped my research would be used for. Not for such hideous purposes, not to exploit humans... not to 'produce' them...
Ishmael	... You're turning pale.
Ishmael	... The fact that your research is being misused... isn't the only problem, is it?
Hong Lu	Oh... is there something that you fear, Yi Sang?
Yi Sang	…….
Yi Sang	What I fear...
Yi Sang	Though parts of these machines are of my design, none of these could have been... Nay, I could not have, not without the assistance from my fellows...
Yi Sang	Not without...
Yi Sang falls silent, unable to finish his sentence. He faces forward.
Dante	<That man is…>
???	…….
Yi Sang	... You have recognized me long ago, have you not?
Yi Sang	Do not stand there in silence; utter aught to me.
???	What better response is there for you than my utter silence...
???	... when the customary greetings, words of antagonism, and inquiries about your well-being all feel so inappropriate?
???	This is no different from how you had always remained a close fellow of silence then... no?
Yi Sang	If you can speak so placidly, surrounded betwixt these abominable horrors...
Yi Sang	... then you must have always been a part of this.
Yi Sang	Aseah.
Aseah	Well... it was not by my sole volition.
Aseah	You must already know that I am not one for such grandiose ambition.
???	Hey, you shouldn't reveal yourself just like—!
Aseah	They are already all aware of who we are. To hurriedly hide in the shadows when the light has already shined upon us is an unsightly cowardice.
???	We are getting tired of playing by your whims. We will make sure that they will hear of everything that has happened—
Ryoshu	Oh, 'they'? Interesting, who might this 'they' be? Docents? Or Maestros?
Rodion	What are you talking about, Ryōshū? They're...
Ryoshu	I did say that there was something off about them.
I remember Ryōshū telling the Öufi Association Fixers to stop. That there was something off about them.
Then...
Ryoshu	They're not Öufi.
Ryoshu	They're nothing but cheap imitations.
Don Quixote	Huh?!

Episode: 29
Location: Wuthering Heights Basement
Researcher?	You... you were to be sacrificed for the ritual in this laboratory. You should never have been down here...
Researcher?	You are ruining our plans. Who sent you down here?
Rodion	Well, I don't know if you guys will believe what we've got to say, but it was a diary.
Yi Sang	Aseah... stop. Please.
Yi Sang	Why do the faces of those I once longed to see... appear at such unexpected times, only to depart in such a hurry? I...
Aseah	You do remember, do you not?
Aseah	That I never had any talent in fisticuffs. Well, perhaps I may one day allow myself to use the Mirror as you do.
Aseah	... This experiment would have been a tad more entertaining had you been here beside me all along.
Aseah	Do not be so sorry for the brevity of this reunion, dear old friend. We shall see one another again in due time.
Aseah	Regrettably, I must make my exit. I rarely ever leave work on time, for I wear so many hats.

Episode: 30
Location: Wuthering Heights Basement
Ryōshū stops one of the fleeing enemies with a swift swing of her scabbard.
Researcher	Ugh...
Ryoshu	I normally couldn't give any less of a crap about what kind of art the Ring makes.
Ryoshu	But this one... I find this one quite interesting.
Ryoshu	The Ring playing at being the Öufi... What is this, some kind of pop art?
Rodion	They're... the Ring?
Dante	<What's the Ring? The Middle's neighbor, or something?>
Rodion	Neighbor... ha ha. Yeah, I don't really know much about them. What I do know is that they are all at least halfway insane. Obsessed with what's beautiful and all that...
Ryoshu	They run their own gallery and display their own art, but none of their work is quite to my taste.
Researcher	How... pitiful... you... do not understand the true philosophical beauty of Pointillism...
Ryoshu	Is a Maestro involved in this? Where are they?
Researcher	A Maestro wouldn't bother to be in a place like this, would they...? Besides, we're not even a part of the Ring anymore.
Ryoshu	Then what are you?
Researcher	Ahahahahaha! You think I'd tell you that so easi—
Heathcliff tore the man's head clean off with a full swing of his club.
None of this chaos mattered to him.
Only the coffin he was walking toward mattered.
Catherine's coffin.

Episode: 31
Location: Wuthering Heights Basement
Nelly	Heathcliff!
Ryoshu	Tsk... and it was just starting to get interesting.
Dante	<... What are you going to do, Heathcliff?!>
Heathcliff	Obvious, innit? I'm going to get Cathy out of there. Out of that experiment pod, a machine, a coffin... whatever it is.
Dante	<But what about...>
Heathcliff	But what about all those people in the glass pods...?
Heathcliff	... Don't think you can stop me with your meaningless pleas.
Heathcliff	You already know what a heartless bastard I am. You know how much I've been waiting for this moment.
Nelly	Heathcliff...
Ishmael	W-wait. Give us some time. There has to be a way to shut down the power supply.
Ishmael	Then we'll pick up the Golden Bough from this coffin, then—
Heathcliff	DON'T! Don't lecture me! Don't you even try. Do you really think you can change my mind?
Ishmael	…….
... Maybe this is the time to beat the sense back into him, like we discussed earlier on the bus.
And that's when...
Hindley	I knew it... You were all nothing but a band of thieves, eh...? Coming to pilfer my home...
Nelly	Mister Hindley...!
Nelly	You. What order did you give to the Dead Rabbits?
Heathcliff	... Boss.
Heathcliff	Where have you been this whole time? Do you even have any idea the state the Dead Rabbits are in?
Heathcliff	Not to mention the rumor I heard. They said that the Dead Rabbits were long—
Dead Rabbits Boss	Woah, Heathcliff. Take it easy, lad.
Hindley	This was my home, dammit...
Hindley	I nearly had that game. It was mine! If only that bloody bastard hadn't gotten that card...
Dead Rabbits Boss	But... Mister Hindley.
Dead Rabbits Boss	I did advise you that such problems require a deeper consideration.
Dead Rabbits Boss	When everything suddenly starts going wrong in your life...
Dead Rabbits Boss	... the cause has got to be lurkin' somewhere, hidin' out of your sight.
Hindley	... Right. I've given it some thought.
Hindley	I've given some thought to when or where everything went wrong.
Hindley	And I see it now. The cause of all this misery...
Hindley	It's because of that thing that everything went wrong.
Heathcliff	…….
Hindley	That day... that one bloody windy winter night.
Hindley	When some lowlife, vagrant child arrived at my home, before my eyes, with the broken pieces of my violin.
Hindley	That's when everything went wrong.
Hindley	He should've died that day. Succumbed to frostbite, all alone...
Hindley	... in some colourless Backstreets shithole.
Dead Rabbits Boss	... Calm yourself, Mister Hindley.
Dead Rabbits Boss	I've got to tell ya that I am runnin' rather low on manpower. There is no need to waste our strength against 'em.
Hindley	No! I can handle them! I'll have you know that I—
Dead Rabbits Boss	—have gone through several augmentation procedures and was sent to a boarding school by your father where you learned how to fight?
Hindley glared at Matthew with a look of reproach for a moment, as though he was about to lash out at him for cutting his sentence short... then scoffed.
Hindley	Haah... I was once... the master of this manor. Not like you lowlife hooligans who crawled in here, looking to reave what does not belong to you.
Hindley	Stay out of my way, then.
Hindley	I'm going to kill that mangy dog... I should've killed him when I had the chance.

Episode: 32
Location: Wuthering Heights Basement
Hindley	Gah... Agh... Shite...
Dead Rabbits Boss	Haha. What did I tell you, Mister Hindley? Again and again?
Dead Rabbits Boss	Beware the obsidian grass.
Hindley	...!
Hindley	You... You...!
Ishmael	…….
Ishmael	Wait, wasn't the Dead Rabbits boss supposed to be working for Hindley?
Ishmael	So why...
Ishmael	... why does it look like he is provoking Hindley to fight us? Why is he trying to rile him up...?
Gregor	And what's that about the obsidian grass?
Rodion	Haha... Don'tcha get it?
Rodion	He's talking about black clovers...
Rodion	Like playing cards for poker. The shape and the color...

Episode: 33
Location: Wuthering Heights Basement
Hindley	The obsidian grass...? Ha... hahaha...
Hindley	Dammit, I see now. It was you. It was you all along!
Hindley	No, it was always like this.
Hindley	I was surrounded by those opportunistic, backstabbing fuckers whose only goals were to suck my fortune dry...
Hindley	There never was a place for me.
Hindley	Not even in here, this vast manor of Wuthering Heights.
Hindley	WHY? It's that bloody vagabond who invaded our home! Why... why should I be subject to such—
Hindley	... Huh? Who's that...?!
Dante	<…?>
Hindley begins flailing his arms at nothing, then speaks into the void.
Hindley	Yes, exactly, you understand...! All I wanted...
Hindley	... all I wanted was a small, fancy violin. That's all it was. But he tossed me to the mud pits in the rain like I was a rabid dog...
Hindley	Yes! I remember every single word of what my father told me! OF COURSE I DO! I can even recite it from the top of my head!
Dante	<He's distorting...>
Hindley	Hindley!!! I regret that I cannot bring myself to consider a reprobate like you as my own child. That boy, Heathcliff, is more like my son than you shall ever be! HAHAHAHA!!!
Yi Sang	All those who found themselves at the edge of suffering, as my old fellow Dongrang had...
Yi Sang	... muttered aught to themselves. As though they were conversing with an invisible partner.
Yi Sang	Then...
Dante	<Meursault, can you stop this, like you did last time?>
Meursault	It is impossible. I am attempting to approach him, yet I feel an equal force pushing me in the opposite direction.
Faust	... Unlike the case with the Monolith, this is a Distortion occurring as it normally should. Faust explains that such Distortions occur as though it has been ordained by fate itself. Once the sequence has started, it cannot be stopped without a strong will from the subject of Distortion.
Dante	<Then...>
Faust	... Yes. He will Distort.
Hindley	Yes. Yes... Of course.
Hindley	I have no reason to protect Wuthering Heights anymore. Not a single one!
Hindley	This place that never once welcomed me... This 'home'...
Hindley	Can't you see? Wuthering Heights is rotting away.
Hindley	This sickening, rotting stench that penetrates your nostrils! Gah... Can't you feel it? This rot?!
Heathcliff	You...
Hindley	Hahaha... this isn't much of a surprise, is it? It has absorbed so much hatred over the years.
Hindley	Even Catherine must have hated me as she expired.
Hindley	So...
Hindley	Wuthering Heights, this decaying manor... must crumble.
Hindley	It is simply as it should be... haha!

Episode: 34
Hindley	I know this for certain...
Hindley	That Catherine died... because you dared to set foot in our manor, interloper.
Hindley	You... you are but a wretched devil...
Hindley	... that never should have come to our home...
Heathcliff	Well...
Heathcliff	Your father likes me more than he likes you.
Hindley	...!
Heathcliff	You might be the one warming yourself by the fireplace now, but...
Heathcliff	I'm the one your father truly cares about. Me, a poor child from the filthy Backstreets.
Oh... poor Heathcliff. He should never have said such a thing.
Hindley	You... you fucking mutt...!
Heathcliff	Come on, hit me if you wanna. I can take it.
Heathcliff	What do you think your father will have to say when he sees the wounds you've inflicted on me?
His words would turn into thorny roots and bury themselves in my brother's heart as long as he lived. No matter how many times he thrashed Heathcliff to exhaustion, no matter how much time passed after our father's death, they remained.
Yes. That is when Hindley began to believe...
... that Heathcliff was here to take everything he ever had.
Hindley	Give it back...
Hindley	Give it back...! My home! My violin! My future! Aaaahhhhhh!

Episode: 34.5
Location: Wuthering Heights Fireplace
Catherine	Where is Heathcliff?
Hindley	I haven't a clue. Most likely dozing off in some corner, like the lazy bum he is. Oi, Heathcliff! Where the hell are you? 'Lady Catherine' has finally returned!
Hindley	Chop chop, come on out and bid her welcome like the other servants have.
Catherine	…!
Catherine	Heathcliff! What are you sulking for...? Have you forgotten me?
Heathcliff	…….
Hindley	How insolent, Heathcliff. I don't recall ever permitting you to act so disrespectfully before my dear sister.
Heathcliff	Why... are you... laughing at me?
Catherine	Huh?
Catherine	Why... would you say a thing like that? I... never laughed at you.
Catherine	I simply wanted to know why you don't appear very happy to see me. It's been so long since we've last met.
Catherine	And... my, you are so dirty!
Heathcliff	... Hah. Dirty?
Heathcliff	You're right. That's just the way I was born.
Heathcliff	I like to be dirty, and I'll be as dirty as I want to be!
Catherine	What are you... Heathcliff!
The day when Heathcliff denied me for the first time...
I've never seen a prouder smile on my brother than when he watched it happen.
I wonder if Heathcliff, who stormed off to the barn...
... was weeping.
Hindley	Catherine, you shrew... You dare conspire with your husband to take my home away from me?
Hindley	The only thing my father ever... ever gave me...!
I did not want the pain from your youth to hold you back from living your life, dear brother.
The same pain you wielded like a cudgel to thrash Heathcliff. To hurt me.
I will try all I can so that you may recover.
Catherine	…….
But if you would rather choose to abandon every opportunity that was ever given to you... if you would rather walk yourself into that abyss...

Episode: 35
Dead Rabbits Boss	Ha ha...
Dead Rabbits Boss	Ahahahahahahaha...
He did not seem to mind at all that his client had died right before him.
Heathcliff	What are you laughing at, boss...?
Sinclair	What's he doing there... right next to the coffin...?
Meursault	His motives are unknown. But I see that an additional lever has attached itself to the coffin.
Ishmael	When did it...?
Meursault	Immediately after the power outage.
Dead Rabbits Boss	What's...
Dead Rabbits Boss	What's there to not laugh about?
Dead Rabbits Boss	Oh, how I've spent days upon days wishin' he'd survive no matter how long I had to wait. That he'd survive until I could be there to watch him die with me own eyes.
Dead Rabbits Boss	I imagined it every single day. Wonderin' what kind of death would befit a prick like him.
Dead Rabbits Boss	Yet every time, there was something so unsatisfying about the way he went out. There was always something... missing.
Ryoshu	"Every time"?
Faust	…….
Dead Rabbits Boss	But this one... oh yes. I quite enjoyed this one. A dog's death, stinking with that hideous stench of defeatism...
Heathcliff	... So pulling that lever kills the power. But I doubt that's the only thing it does. Am I right?
Heathcliff	... Are you going to pull it?
Dead Rabbits Boss	Yes, I am.
Before anyone had the chance to stop him, Heathcliff bolted up to the machine and grabbed the Dead Rabbits boss by his collars.
Heathcliff	I knew that something was off about you earlier.
Heathcliff	Now, I can think of two possibilities.
Heathcliff	One. The gaffer's lost it while I was gone, and it's going to be up to me to beat the sense back into 'im.
Dead Rabbits Boss	…….
Heathcliff	... Two.
Heathcliff	He's some deranged lunatic who's only pretending to be the boss. Some mental fuck who should never be allowed anywhere near Catherine.
Heathcliff	If you're really him, you must know at least know your own name. What is it?!
Dead Rabbits Boss	Matt.
???	... I suppose he didn't go by 'Matt' here, then?
Heathcliff	What...?
???	... I've grown complacent. I wasted quite a lot of time and effort in an attempt to learn his mannerisms.
???	Just like this.
???	Seat your arse down and pour me a pint, Heathcliff. What a bloody gloomy day it is.
Heathcliff	You... You!!!

Episode: 36
Heathcliff	What the hell do you want?
Heathcliff	Hindley, you, and your mysteries... everything. I'm tired of it.
Heathcliff	If you won't talk, then I'll...
???	Ahaha...
???	What, kill me?
???	You're going to kill... *me*?
Heathcliff	...!
Heathcliff?	I suppose introductions are unnecessary.
Heathcliff?	I am you, as it is plain to see. And I have clawed my way back from hell.
Sinclair	... H-how can there be two of the same person...?
Faust	They are... not the same people.
Faust	This one is an Identity.
Outis	Identity...? He's an Identity?
Sinclair	So he's a Heathcliff... from one of the Mirror Worlds?
Heathcliff?	All those who challenged me, stood in my way. All those who humiliated me.
Heathcliff?	I intended to find them one by one, to give them deaths that befit their crimes.
Heathcliff?	And in the end...
Heathcliff?	I would kill... the one who killed my Cathy... with my own hands.
Heathcliff	My Cathy? The one who— Who... no, what the bloody hell are you talking about?!
Heathcliff?	Obvious, is it not?
Heathcliff?	It's you. And... me.
Heathcliff?	Do you still fail to understand? We are her murderers.
Heathcliff	What a load of rubbish... talk like a normal person or...
Heathcliff	... Wait.
Heathcliff	How much do you know about Cathy's death?
Heathcliff?	I have no love left for anyone in this world. This world has none to spare for me, either.
Heathcliff?	I had but two paths before me. Death, or inferno... because I was already cast into the depths of hell upon Cathy's demise.
Heathcliff?	But you...
Heathcliff?	I watched you going on your puerile adventures, dreaming of some saccharine, heartfelt reunion with her.
Heathcliff?	Thus, I have journeyed to this world. To devour every one of those hours.
Heathcliff?	So that you may be stained with the same despair that painted me...
Heathcliff	Stop talking in circles!
Heathcliff	Are you saying that you're the one who killed Cathy?
Heathcliff?	Us, Heathcliff. It's us.
Heathcliff?	That's what we are. How we were born to this world.
Heathcliff?	A witless brigand. A vagrant. A thing wrapped in a filthy, stinking rag of a sack.
Heathcliff	A witless brigand...
Heathcliff	... Yeah.
Heathcliff	That's what I always was.
Heathcliff?	Tell me, Heathcliff.
Heathcliff?	What was your first thought...
Heathcliff?	... when you first heard the news of her death?
Heathcliff	If she was killed... I would pursue her murderers to the ends of this earth...
Heathcliff	... and kill every last one of them. Whoever that may be.
Heathcliff?	YES!
Heathcliff?	A bloody wretch like 'em! ... Should not be allowed to live. ... Don't you agree?
Heathcliff?	You could kill them and tear their corpses from limb to limb a hundred times, but it still wouldn't be enough.
Heathcliff?	Because it won't even compare... to the terrible suffering that awaits you.
Heathcliff	And I... I am Catherine's murderer... I am the wretch that killed her...
Heathcliff?	Endless, excruciatingly sleepless nights lie await in your future.
Heathcliff?	Though you will not see her, her beckoning voice shall haunt and torment you until you draw your last agonising breath.
Heathcliff?	Can you not hear her? Cathy, she weeps!
Heathcliff?	You would not know this, but it snowed the day they buried Cathy. I stood there alone by her grave, nothing but the cold, wintery gust to accompany my vigil.
Heathcliff?	Ah... I hear the howling blizzard still.
Heathcliff?	Where are you, dear Cathy?
Heathcliff?	Resenting me still, from whence I shall never reach?
Heathcliff?	You are beside me, are you not? Not under me—but with me, upon this very earth!!!
Though he looks just like Heathcliff, he appears beaten down, distraught, and insane. Heathcliff from another world mournfully roars Catherine's name.
Heathcliff?	Yes, Cathy... torment me. So that I may never rest until my very last breath!
Heathcliff	Cathy... You... no, we...!
Heathcliff?	Yes. Break me to a thousand shards.
Heathcliff?	So that I may be driven mad with suffering!
Heathcliff?	So that Cathy may forgive me... even a little.
Heathcliff	STOP!!!

Episode: 36.5
Heathcliff?	Every Catherine... was destined... to be miserable.
Heathcliff?	Because of Heathcliff.
Heathcliff?	That is why... I must kill... every Heathcliff, in every world.
Heathcliff?	You would have... done the same.

Episode: 37
Location: Wuthering Heights of a Distant World
Heathcliff	Is she... dead?
Heathcliff	Tell me everything. Please, give me a true history of the event. How did... How did C-Cathy die? Did she pass away with the same kind smile on her face?
Nelly	Quietly, as a lamb.
Heathcliff	And—did she ever mention me?
Nelly	She could not; for her senses never returned. She lay with a sweet smile on her face. Her life closed in a gentle dream... may her final slumber be a peaceful one.
Heathcliff	No...
Heathcliff	No... May her... May Cathy...
Heathcliff	... May she wake in torment!
Nelly	Wha... what?
Heathcliff	I... I-I... I... I killed Cathy, didn't I? I am her murderer, aren't I?
Heathcliff	Haunt me then, Cathy! Be a ghost and haunt me, be with me always! Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you. I cannot live without you!
Nelly	H-Heathcliff?
Heathcliff	Cathy, you... may you not rest as long as I am living! And nor shall I!
Location: Aboard Mephistopheles
Dante	<Why’d you leave Wuthering Heights? It's where the love of your life lives, isn't it?>
Location: Abo&#42;#d Mep@istopheles
Heathcliff	Yeah, Clockhead. You've asked me that question once.
Heathcliff	But that was a wrong question to ask. ... You should've asked me why I endured, not why I left.
Location: Ab&#&#36* M#&#36%ito@#eles
Heathcliff	The thrashings, the humiliation, the scorn, the pain, the starvings... I could endure it all. I just had to weather it, let it pass over me. That's what I always did, anyway.
Heathcliff	Despite all that, I decided to leave Wuthering Heights behind because...
Location: &*@#!#$ @#%&@@&#^%les
Heathcliff	... because I finally realized something.
Location: Wuthering Heights Past
Catherine	... So Linton will be made quite affluent soon. If I were to marry him... I shall be the greatest inventor of the neighborhood, no? Perhaps I shall be awarded the 'Inventor of the Year' award from T Corp!
Nelly	Then... what of Heathcliff, Miss Catherine?
Catherine	Nelly, please! Don't say such foolish things. It would degrade me if I were to marry Heathcliff.
Catherine	We'd both be destitute if such a thing were to happen.
Tell me. Tell me why you couldn't bear to remain at Wuthering Heights anymore.
Location: &*%@#!#$% @#~*
Heathcliff	Because I finally understood that Catherine...
Heathcliff	... did not love me.
Heathcliff	And if I had to stay here and watch her marry Linton, right before my eyes...
Heathcliff	... I would have done something so violent, so brutal against Linton... or even against Cathy.
Heathcliff	I could not stand that. Not even the idea of it.
Heathcliff	So I ran.
Heathcliff	From this manor that degraded me, made me a wretch.
Heathcliff	From this manor that taught me love, only to deprive me of it.
Heathcliff	... No. I was always a wretch. From the moment I was born.
Heathcliff	A lowly thing like me should not have been allowed to be here in the first place. That's why I tore myself from it.
Heathcliff	But... I've never given up on Cathy.
Heathcliff	I only wanted her to realize that she was wrong. To regret what she's done. So that she'll one day return to me.
But... what about now?
Heathcliff	Pointless. It's all pointless.
Then... what can you do now?
Öufi Assoc. Director	'As per the deceased's wishes, the will shall be read out aloud here, at Miss Catherine's manor...'
Linton	‘Catherine, she's... dead.’
Linton	'We were married.'
Heathcliff?	‘Catherine lies dead... because of you.'
Heathcliff?	‘Do you still fail to understand? We are her murderers.’
Heathcliff?	‘Every Catherine... was destined... to be miserable.’
Heathcliff?	‘Because of Heathcliff.’
Heathcliff?	Behold! The fragments of every possible world!
Heathcliff?	In every world, in every single strand of infinite possibilities... Heathcliff breaks her heart, condemning her to a death most wretched.
Heathcliff	My head hurts.
Heathcliff	I'm bleeding. And this...
Heathcliff	... this is the sound of my... distant self bashing his head against the tree trunk.
Heathcliff	I'm back...
Heathcliff	I said I'm back, Cathy...
Look at him. What do you feel?
Heathcliff	... Is that even a human?
Heathcliff	Isn't that thing just a bundle of waste, wrapped in a filthy rag that only resembles human flesh?
Heathcliff	I've changed? That I'll show her how I've grown as a person?
Heathcliff	No. Of course not. It never could have worked from the start.
Heathcliff	How could it, when I'm not even a person?
What do you think of yourself, Heathcliff?
Heathcliff	Do I even deserve to speak as humans do?
Heathcliff	I, who killed Catherine...
Heathcliff	You, who deprived me of Catherine...
Heathcliff	... Must be a thing lesser than a savage beast.
Heathcliff	Then...
Heathcliff	... why should I even keep pretending to be human when I am not?
Heathcliff	If they were right... that if I really were to become nothing more than a howling, savage beast...
A wild, heartbroken hound, abandoned by his master...
... that is the shape of your heart and its desire, isn't it?
Heathcliff	Yes. I shall become an infernal hound; snarling, tearing at the fabric of the City... And I will shove its remnants into this sack... and grate it across the broken earth.
Heathcliff	I curse myself... and everything that did this to me and Cathy...
Then it can be as you wish.
Catherine	Run, Heathcliff!
Catherine	Run!
Heathcliff	Cathy, your ankle...!
Catherine	Go! I said go!
Heathcliff	I... I promise I'll...!
Heathcliff	I promise I'll come back for you.
Welcome home, Heathcliff.

Episode: 38
Location: Wuthering Heights Basement
Researcher	W-we gotta run!
Heathcliff, The Heartbroken	…….
I see Distorted Heathcliff before me.
He mauls, rips, and tears into everything before him...
... but his mournful howling is tinged with so much pain that it hurts me to even listen.
Ishmael	He's killing everyone... the researchers, the Dead Rabbits, even people trapped in the glass pods...
Dante	<If we were to get in his way...>
Outis	Yes, Executive Manager. He will not hesitate to attack us as well.
This will be a difficult battle for everyone.
And it will leave nothing but deep gashes in our hearts.
But...
Dante	<Even so... >
Dante	<We have to bring him back.>
The clock turns.

Episode: 38.5
Location: Wuthering Heights Gardens of an Uncertain Time
Catherine	... So if she catches us red-handed, Nelly might give us the super sleepy smack.
Catherine	Besides, the front gate has got to be closed and locked by now.
Heathcliff	…….
Heathcliff	This is...
Catherine	Now, ready?
Heathcliff	Ready for... what?
Catherine	My, Heathcliff! Didn't I tell you to pay attention when I'm speaking?
Catherine	Ready to race from the top of that hill to the gardens?
Catherine	I'll win this time, I'm sure of it.
Heathcliff	But Cathy... you don't have your shoes.
Catherine	Heh, I suppose Nelly will have to lecture me, then. Doesn't matter, though!
Catherine	Oh! See that magnificent house over there?! Why don't we head over there and peek through its windows? I want to see who lives in such a big house.
Heathcliff	…….
Heathcliff	Cathy, we can't...
Catherine	Why not?
Heathcliff	Because...
Heathcliff	If we go there now... they'll spot us...
Heathcliff	... and sic their monstrously large hounds on us.
Heathcliff	One of them will bite your ankle. You won't scream, but...
Heathcliff	... you'll bleed a lot. Enough to keep your wound bandaged for weeks. I regretted it, day and night, that it should've been me who was mauled in your place.
Catherine	... And?
Heathcliff	The people in that house will take you inside to dress your wounds...
Heathcliff	... and there, you'll meet... Linton...
Catherine	How did you feel about that?
Heathcliff	Everyone was entranced the moment they saw you... Of course they were. Because you are the most beautiful person in the world.
Catherine	But... Heathcliff.
Catherine	You left me behind in that manor.
Heathcliff	My heart sank to its deepest depths. Then, instead of hitting rock bottom, it kept sinking.
Heathcliff	Now that I think about it, I felt... wretched. Miserable.
Heathcliff	I was angry that you hurt your ankles. I hated that I wasn't a part of that posh picture with you and the others. But more than anything, I...
Heathcliff	... felt that we could no longer be together... ever again.
Catherine	That incident really drew Hindley's ire. So he ordered Nelly to completely neglect your care.
Catherine	I stayed at this manor for five weeks... grew closer to Linton and his little sister Isabella...
Catherine	... It was the stay which, eventually, became the reason you denied me for the first time.
Heathcliff	My life until this moment... they were the happiest times of my life. It was all I ever wanted.
Catherine	But I must leave now. Because this is but a diary of mine.
Catherine	You can't change the past.
Heathcliff	I... I still cherished this day. The day I could run so freely across the gardens by your side...
Catherine	I did too, Heathcliff.
Catherine	That is why I wrote my diary. So that I will hold these memories to eternity's end.
Catherine	My... most precious memories...

Episode: 39
Location: Wuthering Heights Basement
Dante	<Are you okay, Heathcliff?>
Heathcliff	…….
Ishmael	... How are you feeling?
Heathcliff	Like shite.
Heathcliff	And miserable.
Heathcliff	These bodies... your wounds... I did that, didn't I?
Heathcliff muttered, looking around at the mutilated, mauled corpses of the researchers.
Heathcliff	Strange.
Heathcliff	I thought... if I went wild, smashed everything to pieces...
Heathcliff	... the weight in my heart would be lifted.
Heathcliff	But no. Not this time. Not at all. This... this feels awful.
Heathcliff	How am I any different from that prick, Hindley?
Heathcliff	Full of blind hatred against everything in front of me, desiring nothin' but destruction...
Heathcliff	But the worst thing is... that I wanted to be like that forever.
Heathcliff	Because...
Heathcliff	I couldn't bear to simply sit there and do nothing.
Dante	<No. You're not like him.>
Dante	<Because you came back.>
Heathcliff	…….
Heathcliff	This time, sure. But what if it happens again? Who's to say that there won't be a next time?
Heathcliff	Maybe Hindley, that prick, was right.
Heathcliff	I'm unsalvageable. Did I change? No. I deluded myself into believing that I did, like the dullard I am.
Heathcliff	This is what I do, what I am. A destroyer who brings ruin to everything until there isn't anything left to pulverise.
Dante	<…….>
Dante	<If it happens again... I can't guarantee that I'll succeed, but I will try again.>
Heathcliff	Hah...
Heathcliff	Oi, Clockhead.
Heathcliff	You wouldn't know this, but... Well, everyone but you would know.
Heathcliff	When I'm starting to lose my mind, when I'm completely blinded and deafened...
Heathcliff	When I feel my sense of self, my very being, slowly fading away into the dark...
Heathcliff	... I hear that faint noise.
Heathcliff	That damned noise of a clock.
Heathcliff	It opens my eyes. Drags me back to reality.
Dante	<Well, that's...>
Dante	<Because I'm your manager. Bringing you back to your paths is what I do.>
Things became a lot clearer when I said that out loud.
The sound of my clock awakens them, steers them back to their paths.
I don't really know what their 'paths' really are, or how we'd go about following them, but...
... we're forging on anyway.
Like feeling our way through a dark maze, learning its shape with every step we take.

Episode: 40
Location: Wuthering Heights Laboratory
Ishmael	You guys might want to come take a look at this...
Ishmael	Look at the corpse of the Dead Rabbits boss we defeated earlier.
Ishmael	This... isn't Heathcliff from the other world. I don't think we've ever seen this person before.
Nelly	Heavens, this is...!
Heathcliff	I know her.
Nelly	Miss Isabella, how... how could this...!
Dante	<Isabella?>
Heathcliff	Isabella Edgar... Linton's younger sister. She came by this manor a few times along with Linton.
Dante	<They overwrote Linton's sister... with Heathcliff's Identity...?>
Heathcliff	He wasn't even real... We lost him.
Dante	<... This technology they're using to summon Identities... it's definitely a lot like our own.>
Yi Sang	…….
Meursault	There have been a total of four separate instances of lightning strikes.
Meursault was the first to break the silence.
Meursault	The most logical course of action, from the perspective of our company...
Meursault	... would have been to wait until the Golden Bough becomes available to us. Just as Linton had suggested earlier.
Heathcliff	What, hide in the barn and wait for the seventh strike of lightning like cowards?
Heathcliff	What a helpful lot you are. Thank you kindly for your words of encouragement. You know what? We should've done that from the start... It was foolish of me to even—
Meursault	... Allow me to finish, Heathcliff. I am beginning to feel the need to practice hastening my speech.
Meursault	We have experienced consistent escalation of risk merely by moving about the manor. Moreover, it is growing increasingly difficult to ensure Heathcliff's safety.
Meursault	Therefore, in conclusion...
Meursault paused for a moment.
Meursault	... I judged that we may have to stop the lightning from striking.
Meursault	Even if that decision leads to our failure to obtain the Golden Bough.
Everyone fell silent, deep in thought after hearing Meursault's judgment. It wasn't a decision based on cold, hard facts that we had come to expect from him.
Outis	Agreed...
Outis	It never appeared that the lightning strikes were a result of natural phenomena. It always struck at the most dramatic moments. Always on a certain trigger, killing the manor's power without fail.
Gregor	Okay, let's think about this. Let's think about the circumstances...
Gregor	... surrounding each strike of lightning.
Ishmael	First one was... yeah, at the funeral.
Ishmael	When they were reading Catherine's will...
Rodion	No, we can get a bit more specific than that.
Rodion	It was when Heath called out Catherine's name.
Sinclair	The second one...
Sinclair	... was when Linton said something hurtful to Heathcliff. All that verbal abuse...
Yi Sang	The third was when Hindley drew his last breath. And...
Linton	Thus all is ruined...
Linton's exhausted voice broke through our musings.
He looks around at the destroyed laboratory, the corpses, and the husks of dead Peccatula. There was a hollow look in his eyes.
His face, already so sallow, had lost even more of its color. But he stood tall.
Linton's gaze lingers for a moment on his sister's mangled corpse before moving toward Catherine in the coffin.
Linton	Isabella... my dearest sister.
Linton	So this is how our reunion was to be. It feels like it was just yesterday that you left our home without a word...
Ishmael	You didn't even write to each other?
Linton	She did send me a few childish letters. That she'd met her fated partner... That she's found true love. But she couldn't possibly introduce me to this person, as I would surely refuse to give my blessings...
Heathcliff	You...
Heathcliff	Do you even understand what you've done?
Linton	I merely follow the path laid before me.
Linton	... The lightning has struck four times.
Gregor	Yeah, we know. We know how to count, y'know...
Outis	Executive Manager... I can tell from the way that man is speaking...
Outis	... that he may know the conditions that trigger the lightning strikes.
Outis spoke plainly without even trying to lower her voice.
Linton	Lightning strikes...
Linton	Each strike of lightning is a blessing...
Linton	For it signifies that you have a place in her heart.
Linton looked straight toward Heathcliff, and I could finally see his face clearly for the first time.
He wore the expression of deep, bottomless pain...
It didn't change the fact that Linton was still extremely suspicious, and had quite a lot of things to answer for, but...
... it began to sink in that he was also a man who was grieving for someone he loved.
Linton	I lied to you, Heathcliff.
Linton	Our marriage... was never happy.
Linton	But I have spent my entire life struggling to earn a place in her heart.
Linton	Knocking and knocking so that she would let me in.
Linton	Yet there was nothing. She never once gave me an answer. Even now, she remains silent.
Yi Sang	Linton.
Yi Sang	Nothing... none of that justifies the atrocity that you have committed in building this abominable laboratory.
Linton	…….
Meursault	I have given some thought as to how so many people could disappear without leaving a shred of evidence.
Meursault	It cannot be said that gangs kidnapped them by force, for there were no signs of resistance.
Meursault	There have also been cases of simultaneous disappearances. Sometimes, even entire families would disappear all at once.
Rodion	You actually read... the whole article?
Meursault	Then, it can be reasoned that they weren't taken against their will. It would be more believable to say that they followed their would-be kidnappers willingly.
Linton	…….
Ishmael	Which means... the kidnapper was someone well-known. Someone with a decent reputation.
Ishmael	What, did you offer them a job at the manor? Promise to treat them to a nice meal or something?
Linton	…….
Yi Sang	An experiment to 'produce a human', or so it was called.
Yi Sang	Yet I cannot imagine a single human being for whom these heinous experimentations, all this sacrifice, this suffering... would have been worth it for.
Nelly	Master Linton, even if it was Miss Catherine who asked you to do this, this is too—
Heathcliff	... What?
Nelly	Oh...!
Heathcliff	Catherine... she asked you to do all this? No, that's... impossible.
Linton receives the Sinner's deluge of resentful accusations with an unstirring expression.
Linton	Yes. I will not deny that everything was by Catherine's request. But it was by my will that every one of her requests were carried out to the letter.
Heathcliff	I'm asking you why—
Linton	The 'why' never mattered to me. So I never asked her.
Linton	All I ever cared about was endlessly endeavouring to carry out her wishes, to do as I was told.
Ishmael	Yeah, still... why? With your family's wealth, you could've just lived out the rest of your days in complete luxury with money to spare. So why...
Yi Sang	Should T Corp. be made aware of what has transpired here...
Yi Sang	... you may be subject to a high degree of punishment, even if your family name were to mitigate it.
Linton	You ask me why? Is it not obvious?
Linton	Because I loved Catherine. Ever since the moment I laid my eyes upon her, to this very day. I have spent every single moment of my life pining for her.
Ishmael	You're just desperately begging for her affection, blinded by your own obsession...
Linton	Speak ill of me as you will. I care not.
Linton	Because my joy comes from what morsel of affection she spared me.
Linton	So... you have no idea how much I envied you, Heathcliff.
Heathcliff	You envied... me? You?
Linton	Even in her youth, when I would come to spend time with Catherine at this manor...
Linton	She would always ask me the same question.
Linton	"I wonder where Heathcliff has gone to? I wish he was here."
Linton	Of course, you must have been hiding from her. For you could not bear the sight of us.
Linton	And believe it or not, it was not I who burned your letters.
Linton	In truth, I would have delivered them to her myself had I had my hands on your letters. Because that was how desperately Catherine was waiting for your news.
Linton	Once you left, Catherine... she shut herself off in her room, refused to eat, and withered away.
Linton	Gazing into a mirror, day and night... until one day, she calmly emerged from that very room and asked me for my hand.
Heathcliff	A mirror...
Heathcliff	... She mentioned the same thing in the diary. That she saw herself in the mirror.
Linton	Yet we kept no mirrors at the manor we lived.
Linton	The mirror she looked into was, according to her, a gift.
Heathcliff	... A gift from who?
Linton	If you would like to know what she saw in that mirror, what it was that she saw that prompted her to ask to marry me...
Linton	... Why don't you ask the diary yourself?
Linton	Ask that old diary that remains in obstinate silence before me.

Episode: 41
Location: Wuthering Heights Laboratory
Gregor	... You're going to fight us? In your state?
Linton	If you seek to disturb this experiment... then it falls to me to stop you.
Heathcliff	What are you even looking to gain from this? By going this far?
Linton	The same thing as always. I love Catherine, so I shall do as she wills me to.
Linton	So that I may enter her room. I dare not wish to become a master of it; I merely wish that she would let me in...
Linton	The mere sight of an opened door, that little gesture, would be more than enough.
Linton	The thunder of every lightning that struck the manor...
Linton	... was the sound of her breaking heart.
Heathcliff	…!
Linton	With every heartbreak, the lightning strikes. The pain, the bereavement, the shock... are all manifest as lightning, then darkness...
Linton	Thus, the lightning only indicates that the person in question was so important to her...
Dante	<Heathcliff, I think...>
Dante	<Nelly was right.>
Dante	<Catherine's still alive...>
It wasn't exact science or anything like that, but...
... I've been feeling that gaze, coming from somewhere within the manor.
Not an aggressive gaze, no. But it was certainly stubborn and lingering.

Episode: 42
Location: Wuthering Heights Laboratory
Linton	So there isn't anyone left...
Linton	I won't last much longer.
Linton	This is how I was born. How I've lived my entire life.
Gregor	Yeah. Glad you know that. So why don't you—
Linton	What... admit my sins and... surrender...?
Linton	Ha ha... why would any of that ever matter to me?
Linton looks up with a lighter expression, as though a burden has been lifted from his shoulders.
Linton	This is as far as I will go.
Then, with the gentlest voice, he begins speaking to... someone.
His voice was overflowing with intense, fervent affection.
Linton	As I have always told you... I have no regrets.
Linton	I merely think that... we were both walking in different paces.
Linton	And you always happened to walk ahead of me.
Linton	Yet, even a sight of you from behind summoned butterflies in my stomach.
Meursault	This man will die without immediate and appropriate medical attention from a professional doctor. He is extremely weakened.
Linton	Still...
Linton	Catherine, I wish you would...
Linton	... I wish my death would bring you even a trace of sorrow.
Catherine	Even before I first laid my eyes upon that child, Linton...
Catherine	... he was watching me.
Catherine	Unable to look away, even for a moment.
Catherine	That child is wealthy. He looks like the prince charming from fairy tales of my childhood.
Catherine	And he loves me so, so much.
Catherine	See? His eyes glimmer like the very stars of the night sky with every second he lays them upon me.
Catherine	I love Linton who loves me.
Catherine	His eyes that twinkle for no one else but me.
Catherine	His flaxen locks that flow for no one else but me.
Catherine	His radiant smile that flashes for no one else but me.
Catherine	Linton, who finds happiness through nothing else but me.
When light returned to the manor, when I could finally see again...
There stood Linton, wearing the brightest, happiest smile I had ever seen.
... The machines of the laboratory were linked to his body.
Linton	Ah... did you hear... the thunder...?
Heathcliff	…!
Linton	Catherine weeps for me.
Linton	Oh... Catherine!
Linton musters every strength in his body and reaches out toward Catherine's coffin.
Heathcliff	Wait, what are you—
Linton	So now... is the right moment to...
Heathcliff	... STOP!
I thought I saw tears of joy rolling down his cheeks, but...
Dante	<…!>
... they were his flesh beginning to melt off his face.
Linton	Even if you will not permit me into your chambers... It's all right.
Linton	I will await you within its walls forevermore.
Aseah	To bring forth the pure form of humanity that once existed... was quite the simple task.
Yi Sang	…….
Aseah	You never had any talent in the culinary arts, Yi Sang. So you wouldn't understand.
Aseah	Any kind of Identity could safely and securely be applied to it, as long as the 'dough' is in its purest form.
Ishmael	What happened to... Linton?
Aseah	Can't you see? He's become a dough, a batter; a pure being free of dregs.
Aseah	So that it would always yield the finest results, regardless of what other ingredients you mix into it.
Heathcliff	You call that mass of flesh... human?
Faust	... No. Creation of a new human is but a stepping stone in that process.
Faust	Their ultimate goal must be to go even further beyond that 'dough'; they seek to reach the very origin... the primordial human. This is but a part of that process, merely an experiment along the way.
Aseah	Oh…
Aseah	Consider yourself fortunate that there aren't any other surviving researchers here other than myself.
Aseah	If Director Hermann or any of the other higher-ups heard what you said, I'm sure they would be pulling all kinds of strings to take you in.
Gregor	Mother... dammit, I knew that woman would be...!
Yi Sang	The 'dough', the being you refer to as a human... I presume that one could apply any Identity from any possibility, no matter how distant and irrelevant the world, to that being...
Aseah	Yes, Yi Sang. I knew that you would be most overjoyed to hear of this breakthrough.
Aseah	This is the apex of what the Mirror technology is capable of.
Aseah	Now all we have left to do is to leap from that apex, to soar beyond its limits.
Faust	From what we know, there is... another Golden Bough located inside the manor.
Faust	This 'dough' is a part of an experiment that can be conducted only with a preposterous magnitude of energy output.
Faust	So the Golden Bough to accumulate that much energy...
Faust	... must be located on the rooftop of this manor.
Aseah	…….
Aseah	Correct. The Golden Bough acts as a lightning rod, draws the merciless strikes of lightning, then harnesses it into a form of energy for itself. Your breadth of knowledge is starting to get unsettling.
Aseah	Well, now that everything is in order... I must really make my exit.
Gregor	Not so fast! I'll get you and find out everything you know about what mother is planning—
Aseah	Please, let us not waste each other's time by playing this pointless game of cat and mouse.
Aseah	When the perfected Identity is applied over a dough, one such opaque, murky mist emerges. What a picturesque moment, most apt to bid you all farewell, is it not?
Aseah	Director Hermann's son, was it? I hear that you are a veteran of the Smoke War. Then perhaps this may be a familiar sight to you, if a tad different in a few places.
Aseah	And Yi Sang, my dear fellow.
Aseah	Live. So that I may have aught to look forward to in the time I have left.

Episode: 43
Location: Wuthering Heights Laboratory
Ishmael	A perfected Identity...?
Hong Lu	... Who is he talking about?
Nelly	He's... coming back.
Nelly	Heathcliff... now fully primed...
Dante	<…!>
Heathcliff?	Yes. I have returned.
Heathcliff?	I, whose existence itself has become a sin... have returned to put an end to us all.
Heathcliff	... You...
Josephine	…!
Josephine	... You accursed beast...! Infernal demon... you've finally come to take our manor, 'ave you...?
Josephine	Mistress, I shall not let that interloper... who dared to stain the honour of our manor...
Josephine	Gah, kaugh...!
Heathcliff?	HAHAHAHAHA!
Heathcliff?	Every Wuthering Heights, at the end of all things in every world, eventually became mine!
Heathcliff?	Every single death Hindley and Linton suffered was pathetic and writhing. And that shall be an immutable truth for all eternity to come.
Heathcliff?	Thus Josephine, it is only right that you are mine as well.
Heathcliff?	You are bound to heed my commands.
Josephine	M-Mistress, this vagabond... he's...!
Heathcliff?	I tire of your ramblings of your 'Mistress'. She is nothing but a rotting corpse, her flesh decayed and bones desiccated.
Josephine	…….
Josephine fell limp and motionless in Heathcliff's grasp.
Heathcliff?	Ah! Josephine, Hindley, Linton! All of their pitiful souls tangled and fettered to this accursed destiny in every world! I have seen you far too many times in far too many worlds.
Heathcliff?	I shall take you away from here, you pitiful souls who remain bound to Wuthering Heights even in death.
The husks of dead Peccatula, Lintons, Hindleys, Josephines... all began to materialize and rise. They begin to form a procession.
The countless bodies, husks, the wailing things in their wake...
... all join the march.
Heathcliff?	Thus approaches the final chapter of this tale.
The other Heathcliff stands on the vanguard of the march, and lifts Catherine's Coffin onto his back.
Heathcliff	You... you can't do that to Catherine—!
Heathcliff?	Fine. I suppose we could play a game. It has been a while, hasn't it?
Heathcliff?	Remember? We used to play games with Catherine on the rooftop of this manor. Why not reminisce upon that sweet memory, hm?
Heathcliff?	If you wish to join us, pursue me. Pursue me and rise through the stairwell until your strength fails, Heathcliff.
Heathcliff takes a step forward to seize him, but...
... the endless march stands in his way.
Heathcliff?	Oh, but it will not be that easy. Nor should it be.
Heathcliff?	Your heart toward Catherine shan't be realized so painlessly.
Heathcliff?	You must suffer more. Let desperation consume you. Become frenzied in your pursuit.
Dante	<The rooftop... >
Faust	Indeed, the roof houses the Golden Bough. When the two Golden Boughs come into physical contact with one another, they...
Outis	... I can think of a thousand different outcomes.
Heathcliff	I don't know what he's planning to do with Catherine, but...
Heathcliff	We have to stop him... we have to...!
Gregor	Our retreat's been cut off. No way forward, no way back.
Dante	<Are they... Hindley, Linton, and Josephine from other worlds?>
Faust	They appear to be imperfect Identities, summoned from worlds chosen at random. It is the fate that awaits all those who become thralls to that Heathcliff.
Faust	A phenomenon in which a Mirror World entity wreaks havoc across the dimensions in pursuit of every Heathcliff... In other words, the 'Wild Hunt'.
Ryoshu	Like the Nocturnal March of a Hundred Demons.
Dante	<So... there's no end to them?>
Faust	He is the conduit that has brought them all to this world. He leads this army at its vanguard, as its Erlkönig... or the Erlking.
Faust	This army will never stop until the Erlking's orders are withdrawn.
Nelly	A brutal tempest... descends...

Episode: 44
Location: Wuthering Heights Laboratory
Heathcliff was heavily wounded. It looked as though he could hardly stand, let alone wield a weapon.
Heathcliff	Fuck... fuck!
The club clattered to the floor and rolled away as the last vestiges of strength left him.
Heathcliff	When I left this manor by my own volition, I...
Heathcliff	... I promised to myself that I would return a changed man.
Heathcliff	So that I could at least stand proud before Catherine. So that she won't be embarrassed of me.
Heathcliff	But... look at me. I couldn't protect her in the end. I can't even get nearer to her or hold my weapons proper, like an idiot.
Dante	<Heathcliff...>
Heathcliff	I know. I know that I don't... I know that I don't have anything to show for in my life.
Heathcliff	I ain't educated. I've got a short fuse and a brutish personality.
Heathcliff	Tell me, Clockhead... no, Manager.
Heathcliff	This endless, overwhelming flood... Is this what it's like to face my sins?
Heathcliff	Was my life so wretched that I deserve to suffer this endless swarm of sins?
That can't be true.
I wanted to believe that it can't be true.
That, with the will and the determination to forge on...
... the mist that once seemed impenetrable will one day part, and we will see the light at the end of the tunnel.
That every struggle he endured, every lesson he's learned in this journey... couldn't have been for nothing.
So please, please don't doubt the path I'm showing you.
But...
Meursault	There's... more of them.
Meursault	They number greater than the last.
But when I've led you into such absolute darkness... without even a hint of light...
Dante	<What should I...>
When even I'm starting to feel lost... What should I... do...?

Episode: 45
Location: Wuthering Heights Hall
Ishmael	... So how are there two Golden Boughs here? I mean, it's a rich family manor, but it's not like they're a corporation or a Syndicate.
Hong Lu	Mm... One was acquired by Linton, who spent nearly all of his fortune on it, and...
Hong Lu	I wonder how he got his hands on the second one?
Meursault	It is possible that there may have been an involvement of a third party that helped Linton and Catherine.
Outis	With what information we gathered from this Aseah... all evidence seems to point to Director Hermann of N Corp. being our 'third party'.
Rodion	Right... hiring former Ring researchers of all people? That's not something you see every day.
Nelly	So you have all been traveling with Heathcliff, collecting the Golden Boughs... Yes?
Outis	... Yes.
Nelly	Then you must have had to fight so many people in your journey.
Gregor	Hm. I suppose every day's been like a battlefield. We've all seen more than enough of our share of battles.
Outis	Can't say I disagree with that comparison. Except we have tasted nothing but victory so far.
Nelly	I see.
Nelly	So... why are you looking for the Golden Boughs?
Ryoshu	Boredom.
Rodion	Well... maybe it'll lead us to loads of money?
Don Quixote	Aha! Because that! Is an act of justice!
Ishmael	It's all just a part of our contracts. I don't know what they're planning to do with the Golden Boughs, though.
Nelly	So none of you even know why you are collecting the Golden Boughs.
Nelly	... Aren't you scared, Heathcliff?
Nelly	Doing everything the company asks you to do, without asking a single question...
Nelly	Do you ever worry about... what comes next...?
Heathcliff	Nelly. I've always had a singular goal.
Heathcliff	We all do. Because Clockhead keeps reminding us of our individual goals.
Heathcliff	So... no. I've never been afraid.
I could hear the faint sound of horse hooves echoing from above us.
Heathcliff	And now, I have but one goal.
Heathcliff	We have to go after that git. We can't let him take Catherine to the rooftops where the Golden Bough is.
Nelly	But...
Nelly	Isn't it too late now...? We are slow, yet he is swift.
... Vergilius bought us this opportunity.
He must have had to sacrifice something of his to get here. He made that decision for our sake.
I will not waste this chance.
Ishmael	This is the only way to the rooftops, right?
Nelly	Yes.
Outis	Agh... that bastard keeps sending those dregs after us...
What we need...
... isn't the strength to defeat them.
What we need is a little time.
Dante	<…….>
Dante	<Faust. I'm asking this out of pure curiosity, but...>
Faust	Do ask.
Dante	<There's gotta be a good reason my head is, of all things, in the shape of...>
Dante	<... a clock, right?>
Faust	It can be said that its shape was not determined randomly and without intent.
Faust	As every shape is followed by concepts and symbols adherent to the laws of causality.
Dante	<And the Golden Bough has powers that I am yet to be aware of.>
Faust	You are not asking a question. You are asking for a confirmation.
Faust	If that is the case...
Faust	Simply do as you will, as one seeks the stars in the night sky.
If I can... I mean, my clock or the Golden Bough... or whichever it is... can turn back time...
... then what's there to say that I can't accelerate it or shorten it?
Besides, I...
... I did not want my Heathcliff to be tied down to his past like the Heathcliff from the other world was.
Dante	<…!>
Sinclair	Woah...! Do you feel that?
Sinclair	We're... faster. Fast enough to outrun our enemies.
Faust	This is not temporal acceleration, to be precise. It would be more accurate to say we are in a temporal deceleration field that slows everything except us within a certain radius.
Rodion	Whatever it is, we'll catch up to him in no time!
Heathcliff	Oi, Clockhead. ... Is this your doing?
Dante	<I... think so.>
The Sinners could've complained that 'this would've been very helpful a while ago!'... but I had nothing to say to them.
Even I didn't know that I had access to such power. I just began to feel the possibility out of nowhere.
Heathcliff	Everyone I've gone through in my life...
Heathcliff	Either ignored me, scorned me, or I simply lost the plot before we even had the chance to build anything. It was always a mess.
Heathcliff	But you, Clockhead...
Heathcliff	What is wrong with you...? Why do you still hold any hope for me?
Heathcliff	You needn't go this far for my sake. The company won't give two shites about any of this. The other Sinners won't, either. So why are you... why are you trying so hard?
Heathcliff	I don't deserve any of it. I ain't worth—
Dante	<Because...>
Erlking Heathcliff	…….
Ishmael	Heathcliff, focus! He's getting away!
Heathcliff	Bollocks...
Heathcliff	Let's crack on for now.

Episode: 45.5
Location: Wuthering Heights Laboratory
Dante	<…Vergilius?>
Rodion	Woah... Am I seeing things? Guys, is it just me, or is that...?
It was that very same Vergilius, who's never once seemed to care about what's happened to us, who never once took part in our journey...
... wading through the Wild Hunt, into the basement.
Don Quixote	S-Sir Vergilius... Most illustrious Color...!
Don Quixote	My deepest apologies, for mine alertness is not as keen as it oft is. Could this be a dream...? Is it truly thee? May I pinch thy cheek, to ascertain my suspicions?
Vergilius	Sounds like you've got enough energy to flap your gums.
Don Quixote	Ooh...! What biting words! Forsooth, our very own Color has arrived indeed...!

Episode: 45.5
Location: Wuthering Heights Laboratory
Rodion	Why... why are you here? I mean, I'm not saying that you shouldn't be here, but still...
Vergilius	I simply could not bear to walk past this familiar sensation emanating from underneath the manor.
Vergilius	The thick stench of the husks...
Vergilius	... and the terrible wailings.
Vergilius gazes at the destroyed laboratory and the march of the Wild Hunt in collected, assured silence.
Though I couldn't know everything about the path he walked...
I could see the smallest glimpse of it.
Ishmael	But you... you've never...
Vergilius	... involved myself? No, I haven't. And I shouldn't have.
Vergilius	But it is pointless to waste your time on those whose path has ended.
Gregor	On those whose path has ended...? You mean the Peccatula?
Vergilius	Yes.
Vergilius	I will handle this 'Wild Hunt' and the Peccatula born from the basement.
Sinclair	But... there's literally no end to them. Can you...
... handle it? But we were in no shape to deny his help out of worry.
Sinclair barely stops himself. He couldn't bring himself to finish his sentence.
Yet Vergilius understood the meaning of that silence.
Vergilius	Yes. That is why I am handling this.

Episode: 45.5
Location: Wuthering Heights Laboratory
Faust	…….
Faust is looking at Vergilius with an inscrutable expression.
Faust	... Vergilius.
Vergilius	Yes, I am aware. I won't be receiving everything I wanted from the contract. I will have to forgo my avarice, make compromises, or even give up a few clauses. I suppose I'll also be summoned to some bothersome meetings.
Vergilius	Yet I was compelled to come here nonetheless.
Vergilius	Ah, so much for my determination to follow the great flow. ... But I simply could not permit this stench, this sight to exist any longer. Even if it meant that I must swim against the flow.
Faust	Very well.
Heathcliff	…….
Heathcliff	Oi, I...
Heathcliff	... I don't do shite like leaving a family behind.
Heathcliff	At least, not... usually...
Vergilius	You are all awfully talkative today. Whatever happened to following orders without questions?
Vergilius	As you can see, I am not so weak that you must concern yourself with my well-being when there are much more pressing concerns. Besides, I know a more effective way of taking care of them.
Vergilius	And...
Vergilius looked down at the sword in his hand.
Vergilius	I once left this weapon in the care of a kid I knew. When I returned, he... who should have returned this weapon to my hands... was no more. This blade was all that remained, abandoned on the ground.
Ryoshu	The Gladius.
Vergilius	My wish is that...
Vergilius	... no one will ever have to understand the meaning of that sight.
The endless onslaught of the Peccatula and the Wild Hunt began swarming toward Vergilius.
Vergilius	Family...
Vergilius	A word I haven't heard in such a long time. What a... blood-drenched word it is.
Blood poured from Vergilius' head like sweat and tears, seeping from where the crown dug under his skin.
And a mantle began to ripple into existence once again.
A mantle of blood.
Dante	<... Let's leave this to Vergilius. We have to keep moving.>

Episode: 46
Location: Wuthering Heights Hall
Erlking Heathcliff	…!
Heathcliff	Stop...
Heathcliff	I won't let you get away this time.
Heathcliff	Give my Catherine back, you git.
Erlking Heathcliff	... Even if you were to pursue me, even if you were to grab me...
Erlking Heathcliff	It will change nothing. Catherine has already left you.
Erlking Heathcliff	That is the most undeniable truth, isn't it? Shovel up the soil and exhume her body for all you want. But this is an immutable truth.
Erlking Heathcliff	There she lies, wearing an ineffable, ethereal smile. She always is.
Heathcliff	I know. But I am trying my damnest to change it. So shut up and—
Erlking Heathcliff	Hahaha! Change it?
Erlking Heathcliff	Allow me to relieve you of the struggle. You will suffer, longing for her for as much as eternity permits... Searching for Catherine, who is long gone from this world...
Erlking Heathcliff	... until your heart finds peace.
Erlking Heathcliff	Every strand of despair leads to the same answer. At the end of every path, you will mutter to yourself.
Erlking Heathcliff	That once your repentance is complete, you shall lie beside her in that coffin with your cold, still heart.
Erlking Heathcliff	I merely mean to lift the years of that suffering from your shoulders. Join the other Heathcliffs in their trail of penitence, and I shall grant you the early peace of your heart that you so deserve!
Heathcliff	Sod off! I don't need your shite idea of 'peace'...
Heathcliff	That's... not how I want to find my peace.
Erlking Heathcliff	I wonder if you would say the same thing, even with the revelation that all of this... is exactly what Catherine wanted?

Episode: 46.5
Location: Wuthering Heights Hall
Heathcliff	Give Catherine... back.
Erlking Heathcliff	... She is forever lost. Her consciousness is broken, scattered to a thousand places.
Heathcliff	Shut up! You'll have to do much worse to make me give up!
Erlking Heathcliff	Gah...!
Heathcliff the Erlking falls to his knees.
We were less than ten paces from the rooftop; we had to stop him from going up the stairs no matter what.
Location: Wuthering Heights Hall
Location: Wuthering Heights Hall
Meursault	He is bound. I cannot hold him with these chains for much longer; neutralize the target as soon as possible.

Episode: 47
Location: Stairwell to the Rooftop
Nelly	I'll knock that wretch unconscious! It is one of many lesser-known skills of Butlers to keep their foes neutralized.
Faust	Dante. Our foremost priority should be...
Faust	... finding out who it was that showed the Erlking Heathcliff about Heathcliffs and Catherines in every world. The one who opened his eyes to the Mirror Worlds.
Dante	<... I see now. Faust, you only have the potential to know all things... not the knowledge of all things.>
Faust	... If that statement pertains to me, then yes. But that is—
Dante	<I suppose I'll find out when it's your turn. One thing at a time, Faust. Let's think about this from the very start.>
Faust	Understood. The very first question we must ask is how Catherine suddenly gained a keen interest in studying the Mirror Worlds. Considering that she had led a relatively normal life before Heathcliff's departure, this behavior seems highly irregular.
Ishmael	So it's pretty much a given that there was someone acting behind the scenes, egging her on...
Faust	Indeed. Someone who handed the mirror to Catherine, leading her to create the library. Someone who had to have invited Erlking Heathcliff to this manor.
Meursault	It must be someone close to Catherine. Someone who she heavily relied on.
Outis	…….
Outis	Executive Manager. If you would allow me to voice a few suspicions.
Outis	Do you recall what Nelly said, when we first discovered the Golden Bough in the basement?
Nelly	T-there! Is that the Golden Bough you were looking for...?
Dante	<Right... she did say that.>
Outis	Executive Manager. She couldn't have known that we were actively seeking the Golden Boughs. We never shared that information with her. The only thing she should have known at that stage is what Catherine's will stated: that she was leaving the Golden Bough to Heathcliff.
Outis	And...
Outis	When we encountered the Dead Rabbits in the corridor...
Outis	She claimed that the 'word on the street' is that we must be wary of Dead Rabbits with red eyes, but... as you are well aware yourself, in the 'streets', their eyes would not have had any color.
Rodion	Right? She wasn't even at an angle where she could see their eyes.
Outis	It can only mean that she was already aware of that fact before we encountered them.
Dante	<Nelly...>
Dante	<Don't let Nelly anywhere near Heathcliff...!>
But we were too late.
Nelly	Now ascend to the rooftops... Heathcliff.
Heathcliff	... Nelly? Why are you talking to him...?
Erlking Heathcliff	Do you still not understand?
Erlking Heathcliff	It was Nelly who invited me to this manor!
Erlking Heathcliff	She summoned me here, gave me information I needed to utterly destroy that fool Hindley.
Erlking Heathcliff	Oh, and it was Nelly who introduced me to that girl, Isabella.
Erlking Heathcliff	Do not ask me why, for the answer is quite plain. Because we were both tired of enduring!
Erlking Heathcliff, now freed by Nelly's hand...
Dante	<NO!>
Disappeared to the rooftop of the manor.

Episode: 48
Location: Stairwell to the Rooftop
Heathcliff	Nelly...
Heathcliff	You... betrayed me?
Nelly	This manor has never been on your side. Not even once.
Nelly	And Heathcliff, I find it rather vexing that you would use the expression 'betrayal'.
Heathcliff slowly approaches Nelly.
I can't imagine the level of betrayal he must be feeling.
Heathcliff	…….
Heathcliff	Tell me... tell me why.
Nelly	You've really changed, Heathcliff.
Nelly	The old you wouldn't have bothered to ask even a single question before swinging that big club at my skull.
Heathcliff	I'm asking, because it's you!
Heathcliff	Do I really have to destroy... even our childhood?
Nelly	…….
Nelly	Heathcliff... what are you most afraid of?
Nelly	I... wasn't afraid of the ghost that Miss Catherine claimed to have seen. I wasn't afraid of the tempest that sometimes shook this manor. Or how violent Mister Hindley would get when he was drunk.
Nelly	Until one day... I became afraid.
Nelly	I became afraid of an old woman whose heart and body were aged beyond their years.
Nelly	I was that old woman. An old woman who suffered because of you, Heathcliff, and Miss Catherine in every world.
Nelly	Round and round you and Miss Catherine went, both plagued by the hatred, the misunderstandings, the terrible obsessions...
Nelly	And I, in every world, was always dragged under that wheel of destruction, suffering and struggling to my last haggardly breath. Again, and again, and again...
Nelly	The worst thing...
Nelly	... was that all of us were ignorant of our doomed fates. I hadn't even an inkling that the two of you were consuming every minute of my life, little by little.
Nelly	So... I showed it to her, too.
Nelly	I told her that... it was a mirror shard that showed the beholder whatever their heart wished to see.
Faust	The glass shards can make countless cracks in the hearts of humans.
Faust	It shakes the very foundation of one's existence.
Faust	The knowledge of Mirror Worlds can suck the meaning out of every struggle, everything that one has worked for their entire life...
Faust	... and plants the seeds of doubt in their heart.
Faust	Doubts about the very path one seeks to take in their life. It's...
Faust	... enough to make them attempt to meddle with the selves in other worlds. Believing that it is the right thing to do.
Faust	If someone has shown Nelly that mirror... then that must have been precisely their intended outcome.
Yi Sang	... Yet, a mirror technology that allows for such high degree of interactivity must be...
Nelly	Then... everything began to unravel all on its own.
Nelly	She conversed with someone on the other end of the mirror for a long time. Someone who was suffering as much as she was.
Nelly	Then the laboratory began to take shape.
Nelly	Oh, she mustn't have known even in her wildest dreams. She never once doubted me, even as she closed her eyes forevermore in that coffin! As naive as any other sheltered child, a caged bird.
Nelly	I suppose it wasn't only naïveté, but also her own temperament. She was the kind of person who always had to be the center of everything.
Heathcliff	…….
Nelly	But please, do not deny every memory we've shared together.
Nelly	The pity I felt for you as they abused you, wishing that you would live your best life, a life better than anyone else's... were all my honest feelings.

Episode: 49
Location: Stairwell to the Rooftop
Nelly	Miss Catherine was... difficult from time to time, but I do not wish to deny even the times we've spent together.
Nelly	I even miss the late Mister Earnshaw Senior from time to time.
Nelly	No... I never lived a life full of hate, animosity. I am just struggling desperately to change my destiny.
Nelly	To get here, I worked myself to the bone... trained and worked harder than anyone else to become a Chief Butler...
Heathcliff	... Move...
Nelly	... You still endeavour to reach the rooftops? I must tell you that it is a fruitless effort. That other Heathcliff is already there.
Nelly	And that is how this tale shall end.
Nelly	This is the better ending, isn't it? You two couldn't even summon the smallest courage to talk to one another.
Heathcliff	... Stop it...
Nelly	You two always believed everything I told you, without even one iota of doubt. Every little twist, every little nudge I made in my tales... taken as truth.
Location: Catherine's Room
Nelly	... No, Miss. He hasn't sent you any letters. Though I am quite certain that he must be living a good life somewhere out there.
Nelly	I'll send the invitation, Miss. It's still that same Heathcliff who didn't even bother to write you, but... when he sees this, he will have no choice but to return to this manor.
Location: Wuthering Heights Corridors
Nelly	Well, I don't recall her ever opening a letter.
Nelly	Seriously, once she has her mind set on something, no one could convince her otherwise. No one...
Location: Wuthering Heights Fireplace
Nelly	You two have mired more people than you could imagine into your business. Yet you do not even talk to one another, nor do you ask questions.
Nelly	Do you really believe that you even deserve to move on? With such slothfulness?
Location: Stairwell to the Rooftop
Nelly	No more. This tale ends here.

Episode: 50
Location: Stairwell to the Rooftop
Nelly was right. Heathcliff the Erlking had already disappeared into the rooftops.
The only chance Vergilius gave us... the awakening I managed with my clock...
The very last of Heathcliff's hopes...
Heathcliff	Yeah... It's...
Heathcliff	... over.
Heathcliff	Endless vortex of colours, mixing into a sludge.
Heathcliff	A splash of grey paint over the heart that once gleamed violet.
Heathcliff	A splash of bloody red paint. Splashes of faded colours.
Heathcliff	Again and again... until there was nothing but blackness.
Heathcliff	Unseen by all. Unnecessary to anyone. The colour of the pitch-black night.
Heathcliff	The colour of the Backstreets.
Sinclair	Another power outage...
Dante	<... Huh? Where did Heathcliff go...?>
Hong Lu	Yeah, he disappeared all of a sudden...
Heathcliff	What are you talking about? I'm right here.
Nelly	A predictable ending, is it not? He returned to the Backstreets. The place where our dear Heathcliff belongs.
Nelly	Poor Heathcliff. Once again he turns his tail, tasting nothing but defeat and despair.
Heathcliff	Stop... stop it. I don't want to hear any more of it!
Nelly	Pitiful... isn't he? He would not have changed one bit, no matter how much time he spent in your company.
Nelly	Look at Heathcliff the Erlking. Heathcliff the devil.
Nelly	The very same end that awaits Heathcliff.
Dante	<I disagree. You probably can't hear a thing I'm saying... but I still do.>
Dante	<Because...>
Heathcliff	I'm hurting. I don't want to be here anymore.
Location: Wuthering Heights Past
Catherine	... So I must marry Linton in the end.
Catherine	Because it would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now.
Heathcliff	Oh... bloody hell. It's this memory again.
Heathcliff	Cathy and Nelly must be talking about me in that room.
Heathcliff	Haah... I have to get out of here. If I had to stay and listen... my heart will crack and fall apart... until it completely shatters.
Location: Wuthering Heights Past?
Heathcliff	And this bloody clock noise is back...
Heathcliff	... It could only mean that time's passing, no matter how much I suffer.
Heathcliff	But... would waiting, letting time pass, change anything?
Heathcliff	What difference would it...
Heathcliff	Fine. I'll wait a little. So shut up and—
Catherine	Marrying Linton would give me the means to help Heathcliff. I could make him a better person.
Catherine	So he must never know the immense love I have for him.
Heathcliff	…….
Heathcliff	No. This time...
Heathcliff	I don't want to shut this open door.
Heathcliff	I'm still scared. Terrified, even. But...
Heathcliff	Cathy, I'm sorry.
Heathcliff	I've disappointed you.
Heathcliff	Because I was too afraid to hear your true feelings.
Heathcliff	I know. This future... is a future that will never come true. Not for us.
Heathcliff	I wrecked everything with my hesitation.
Heathcliff	I hurt more than just us; I hurt Nelly, too.
Heathcliff	I have to start... fixing the things I've wrecked.
Catherine	…….
Location: Wuthering Heights Hall
Dante	<Because...>
Dante	<... I don't want my Heathcliff...>
Dante	<... to live the rest of his life in regret.>
Dante	<That is why... despite everything...>
Dante	<I want Heathcliff to forge on to the rooftop.>
Heathcliff	…….
Location: Wuthering Heights Past
Catherine	Those flowers bloom in places like desolate moors or steep cliffsides.
Catherine	So they may appear more lonely than anything else in the world.
Heathcliff	…….
Catherine	Do you want to know why I still love this flower the most?
Catherine	All other flowers lose their colours and fade as they wither away.
Catherine	But this flower... even as it withers and wilts...
Catherine	... remains the same colour.
Catherine	So when you're gone, I will dry these flowers and decorate my room with them.
Heathcliff	Uh... what, like make rings of them flowers? Don't say something so foolish.
Heathcliff	Why would I ever leave you?
Heathcliff	So stupid...
Heathcliff	I never once realized what she meant by those words.
Heathcliff	Everything you've ever said, Catherine... was an expression of love.
Heathcliff	Oi, I'm back.
Dante	<Heathcliff!>
Ishmael	Where the hell did you go? You blipped out of existence when the lightning struck, and...
Hong Lu	Are you okay, Heathcliff?
Heathcliff	No. It hurts. It still hurts like hell. But...
Heathcliff	I will move past you and make my way to the rooftop, Nelly.
Nelly	... You're... what?
Heathcliff	Heathcliff the Erlking will not be my future.
Heathcliff	You, him... you both had access to every knowledge, but made the same choices anyway.
Heathcliff	Not me. I'm going to make a different choice.
Heathcliff	... Thank you so much for looking after us, Nelly. It must have been very hard.
Faust	Among the three individuals mentioned in Miss Catherine's will...
Faust	Since Hindley and Linton are now both clearly deceased...
Faust	... it can be said that, at least on paper, the ownership of Wuthering Heights has been transferred to Heathcliff.
Heathcliff	I'll give you a new future, Nelly. I'll give you freedom.
Heathcliff	So start writing as you will.
Heathcliff	Write your own tale. Or whatever else it is that you wish to do.
With that, Heathcliff left Nelly behind and began making his way to the rooftop.
Nelly collapsed to the floor, making an odd noise that sounded like a mixture of laughter and sobbing.
Nelly	I'm... free to go...? I've been... freed? Then I... I can finally...
Heathcliff	The hell are you lot doing down there, faffin' about? Come on up.
Dante	<…….>
Dante	<For the first time... I really have no idea what you're thinking right now.>
Heathcliff	Thinking?
Heathcliff	I don't really 'think' that hard, mate.
Heathcliff	I just clearly know what I have to do.
Heathcliff	That's all.

Episode: 51
Location: Wuthering Heights Rooftop
Erlking Heathcliff awaits us on the rooftop. Just as Faust expected, the powerful and oppressive energy that surrounded him had only grown more ferocious since our last encounter.
This must be because of the Golden Bough and the 'pure' form of humanity.
Heathcliff watches us stumbling up the stairs through our exhaustion. He lowers Catherine's coffin to the rooftop floor.
Erlking Heathcliff	What a sorry ending to this tale, is it not?
Erlking Heathcliff	You have no idea of the lengths I've gone to destroy both Hindley and Linton. How much I have pushed myself to the brink again and again.
Erlking Heathcliff	This is my own heaven. It is finally within my reach.
Heathcliff	... Heaven? This shite is your idea of a heaven?
Heathcliff	Look again. You're in hell. Right in the middle of it.
Erlking Heathcliff	When I heard the news of Catherine's passing, I... began to see her face in all things.
Erlking Heathcliff	Even my very own face brought back her memories. Everything in the world became an unending reminder of who Catherine once was.
Erlking Heathcliff	A reminder of the fact that she once existed, only to be forever lost because of me...
Erlking Heathcliff	So... to breathe, to let my heart beat... I had to think of nothing but that singular wish.
Erlking Heathcliff	That burning, unchanging desire. My wish.
Heathcliff	…….
Heathcliff	To kill every Heathcliff in every world.
Erlking Heathcliff	Yes. That singular wish is the ultimate proof of my love.
Erlking Heathcliff	Through my campaign, I have seen so many versions of Heathcliff. Some grew wrathful. Some begged for mercy, for their lives...
Erlking Heathcliff	But in the end... they all admitted that they all had to perish for the good of Catherine, and willingly forfeited their lives.
Erlking Heathcliff	I found no pleasure in my work.
Erlking Heathcliff	How could I, when I made it my mission to slay those poor, wretched souls? When all of them died so alone, unloved by all that is living, by the world?
Erlking Heathcliff	Did you know that no one ever weeps for Heathcliff's death? So, the task falls to me to bury them. To shed my tears for them. Yet, only silence shall attend my own demise.
Heathcliff	No. You're method's all wrong.
Heathcliff	Of course, I would have given anything to make Catherine happy. Anything. But...
Heathcliff	... even you, who saw the possibilities of every world... missed something.
Erlking Heathcliff	What do you mean?
Heathcliff	You said that in every world... Catherine and Heathcliff were destined to be miserable, didn't you?
Heathcliff	But we could have been happy. We just missed that smallest key to happiness.
Erlking Heathcliff	No. No such world exists.
Erlking Heathcliff	Because of me— No, us! Because of our existence, Catherine will...!
Heathcliff	Haaah... Bloody hell. I'm telling you that it's got nothing to do with our existence. The problem was that I wanted to believe that it was.
Heathcliff	All I had to do...
Heathcliff	All I had to do was to get over my embarrassment. That little fear. I just had to scrounge up the smallest morsel of courage to open the door... and talk to her.
Erlking Heathcliff	…….
Erlking Heathcliff	... But how will you prove your theory when we have nothing left to prove it with?
Erlking Heathcliff	When my Catherine is long gone?!
Heathcliff	Right.
Heathcliff	I can't change the past, like you said. I can't prove it to you, either. Maybe none of this matters in the end, and Catherine might never wake up again no matter what I do. But...
Heathcliff	... I'm here anyway. On this rooftop.
Heathcliff	Do... you understand what that means?
Erlking Heathcliff	…….
Heathcliff	You, me... we're both wretches. I understand that...
Heathcliff	But... I refuse to break like you did. Leaping from world to world, seeking to kill everyone that you deemed to be the cause of that misery...
Heathcliff	... No matter how broken my heart has become.
Erlking Heathcliff	Your speech rings hollow, Heathcliff, for the outcome is already decided. I will end your life and leap over to the next world to do the same.
Heathcliff	Then what the hell are you waiting for?
Heathcliff pulled the Golden Bough from the roof of the manor, where it was installed as a lightning rod.
Erlking Heathcliff	Haah... your struggle is meaningless. You cannot destroy the Golden Bough.
Heathcliff	I can't destroy it, no... but I can stop it from working.
Erlking Heathcliff	You mean to kill me? You?
Heathcliff	No. I will stab myself, just as you wished.
Erlking Heathcliff	... You're... what?
Heathcliff	I see.
Heathcliff	I don't exactly understand why, but this Golden Bough bein' imbued with lightning is a necessary part of your plan, innit?
Heathcliff	What if I just... drained its powers? That'd cock up your grand scheme, won't it?
Dante	<Wait... how do you even know that, Heathcliff?>
Heathcliff	I ain't educated, but you know I'm good at sniffing these things out.
Dante	<Heathcliff!>
Heathcliff	Catherine...
Heathcliff	I'm back.
Heathcliff	Please, open the door.
Ishmael	Why... why did you stab yourself? Is this how you wanted this to end?
Heathcliff	Because I need Cathy in every corner of this manor to hear my call.
Heathcliff	From what I've seen, the Golden Bough...
Heathcliff	... connects the hearts... together. Look, I'm flying by the seat of my trousers here.
Sinclair	What are you...
Heathcliff	Catherine... has become Wuthering Heights itself.
Heathcliff	I don't understand how that happened.
Heathcliff	But if Cathy... if she saw the same mirror that Nelly and this git peered into...
Heathcliff	And if her heart was the same as mine all along...
Heathcliff	... I feel like I'd know what kind of choice she made.
Heathcliff	Now that I think back on it... from the moment we set our foot upon this manor, Wuthering Heights kept pushing me away while the diary continued to soothe me.
Heathcliff	We were never honest. Cathy, I... both of us.
Sinclair	Heathcliff, what are you talking about...?
The diary flips through its pages until it comes to a stop on the last page.
Catherine	Would you like to hear a story, Heathcliff?
Catherine	Long, long time ago, Josephine told me a little tale.
Catherine	She said that there is a deep, ancient river flowing beneath this manor.
Catherine	Every architect said that this was not a good place to build anything, let alone a house. That nothing should ever be built atop this hill.
Catherine	Wuthering Heights was built here nonetheless. Over the unseen, hypogean river.
Catherine	Ever since I was a child, I saw... the ghost of my late mother, wandering the halls of this manor.
Location: Catherine's Room
Catherine	Nelly... can't you see that ghost?
Nelly	I told you, Miss! There are no such things as ghosts!
Nelly	Why didn't you take your nap like I asked you to?!
Catherine	…….
Location: Wuthering Heights Fireplace
Josephine	Ooh... Mistress...
Catherine	Thankfully, I wasn't the only one who was seeing ghosts.
Josephine	I, Josephine, knew that you would one day return to our side.
Josephine	That the river flowing beneath these lands would bring your grace back to this manor...
Josephine	That, should my duties at this manor be complete, you would allow me to drink the river's waters...
Catherine	And I've repeatedly seen that vision as I grew up.
Catherine	After Heathcliff left me, after I'd lost every will to live...
Catherine	... Nelly brought me a mirror.
Location: Catherine's Room
Nelly	Miss, I... found an interesting mirror.
Nelly	It shows you some fascinating things; I suppose it is a magic mirror of sorts?
Nelly	I thought you might enjoy such an invention.
Catherine	…!
Catherine	In that mirror, I saw the infinite variations of Heathcliff and I.
Catherine	I pulled Heathcliff to the utter abyss of desolation. He grew cold and unhappy... mired in an endless cycle of misfortune.
Catherine	It was as though his fate was already written to be miserable. No matter what he did, he would always meet a wretched end.
Catherine	Do you see that? I see... another ghost.
Nelly	Miss, you are still very ill. Please do not let the chill winds sicken you further.
Catherine	Why does that ghost weep so tragically? And why does she appear so... familiar?
Catherine	I... I must gaze into the mirror again, Nelly...
Catherine	I wished to find that single strand of possibility where Heathcliff can be happy...
Catherine	So I gazed into that mirror night after night, night after night...
Catherine	Until blood began to stream down my cheeks in place of tears...
Catherine	At the end of the ceaseless wailings...
Catherine	I found the Catherines who tasted the deepest despair.
Catherine	You are... No other Catherine weeps as terribly as you do. Not in any of the worlds I have seen.
Every Catherine	Because in this world... I am Heathcliff's murderer...!
Every Catherine	We were just like you... desperately searching through every world we peered past the mirror...
Every Catherine	But in no world are Heathcliff and I together in happiness. Our tale always ends in tragedy.
Every Catherine	Thus suffering is all that remains! I have nothing to live for alone. I have no reason to go on. Ahhh...
Catherine	Why can't Heathcliff be happy? Why can't *any* Heathcliff be allowed even an ounce of happiness?
Every Catherine	There is but one answer.
Every Catherine	That we are the cause of his misery. Because Catherine's existence is what brings misfortune to Heathcliff...!
Catherine	…….
Catherine	Every Heathcliff is miserable... because of me...
Catherine	If I were to no longer exist in any world...
Catherine	... will every Heathcliff in every world find happiness?
Every Catherine	Yes, he will. So... it's not too late. For the sake of every remaining Heathcliff in every world...
Every Catherine	Please, invite us to your world beyond.
Every Catherine	So that we may kill you first...
Every Catherine	... and move on to the next, to kill the Catherine of a different world. Again, and again...
Catherine	Then...
Catherine	... only then can every Heathcliff reach his own heaven. The heaven where I no longer exist...
Catherine	It felt as though I was freed from a heavy yoke.
Catherine	It felt as though this was precisely what I was meant to do.
Catherine	Because I love every Heathcliff.
Catherine	Because he deserves to be happy.
Location: Catherine's Room
Nelly	I have done as you ordered. I have used some of my... connections in the Backstreets...
Nelly	... to bankrupt Mister Hindley. Last I heard, he gambled everything he had away.
Catherine	I used Nelly, who asked her acquaintance to bankrupt my brother. Then I took the ownership of Wuthering Heights from him...
Location: Wuthering Heights Basement
Former Ring Researcher	Don't worry about the results. We've done similar experiments in the past.
Former Ring Researcher	It'll all work out as long as the laboratory is ready.
Catherine	Certainly. The laboratory will be completed as you have requested. The price is not a matter of concern.
Former Ring Researcher	And... like I've told you repeatedly...
Former Ring Researcher	This method will overwrite your identity with that of another.
Former Ring Researcher	Which is to say that your body should be free of consciousness.
Former Ring Researcher	We've learned from one of our previous experiments that full, complete Identities can be summoned only when the body is empty.
Catherine	I installed a massive laboratory in our basement to invite Catherine to our world.
Catherine	I acquired the Golden Bough with Linton's help. However...
Hermann	To summon a fully intact Identity... is an incredibly power-consuming procedure.
Hermann	A single Golden Bough won't be enough to power it.
Hermann	Lucky for you, we have recently procured ourselves a Golden Bough.
Hermann	This Golden Bough, once installed on the roof of your manor, will collect all the necessary energy and relay it to the Golden Bough installed in the laboratory.
Catherine	You are so kind.
Catherine	What kind of payment do you ask in return?
Hermann	Not monetary, that's for certain. Instead...
Hermann	... allow us to make a 'dough'. That is all I ask.
Catherine	A 'dough'?
Hermann	Yes. A pure, uncontaminated dough.
Every Catherine	Invite me, please... please...
Catherine	Mmhm. The experiment should be complete soon.
Catherine	Nelly.
Catherine	I no longer fear the ghosts.
Catherine	Because all fear stems from the ignorance of its origin.
Catherine	Maybe that is why I was so afraid of talking to Heathcliff.
Catherine	Because I could not know, nor could I understand his ever-distant heart.
Catherine	What I had thought to be ghosts... were just us from the other worlds.
Catherine	Suffering, in wretched pain, yet wandering the manor still, determined to end my life.
Location: Wuthering Heights Basement
Hermann	Now, after the lightning strikes seven times upon your coffin...
Hermann	... the path to the other world will open, summoning the Catherine you want from the other world here.
Catherine	I am certain that Linton will be happy.
Catherine	Because you are doing this for me, whom you love so much.
Linton	Once this coffin closes, that is it. You won't ever open your eyes again.
Catherine	I know.
Catherine	But this is not the end. I will always be watching over you, wherever you may be.
Linton	... Your word is my command. Everything shall be as you willed.
Linton	Sweet dreams, my love...
Hermann	Oh, a 'dough' of such high purity can become pretty much anything.
Hermann	What I seek lies beyond that dough, however. It's something more primordial, something at the far beginning of all things...
Hermann	But for you, I present a different Heathcliff...
Hermann	Not your Heathcliff who left you without a word, and doesn't even care to return. A Heathcliff who exists for Catherine... and only Catherine.
Hermann	And the river that flows beneath your manor... will be of great help to the both of us.
Hermann	It may be that your consciousness isn't lost forever. Because the deepest river... arrests them from moving on.
Hermann	Perhaps you would have a front seat to everything that is to transpire.
Catherine	Heathcliff who exists just for me...? What are you talking about?
Catherine	And... why am I watching all this happen?
Catherine	Where am I?
Catherine	Can anyone hear me?
Hermann	Don't you worry. We will make sure that this summoning ritual is a resounding success.
Hermann	And just in case you forget... remember to hold steadfast. Remember that all of this is for the good of Heathcliff whom you love so much.
Location: Wuthering Heights Rooftop
Every Catherine	…….
... The clock turns to revive Heathcliff, who stabbed himself with the Golden Bough...
Heathcliff	... Catherine.
Eventually... Catherine from a distant world is slowly pulled from the Coffin the other Heathcliff is carrying.
The Golden Bough that impaled Heathcliff began to return to whence it came...
... Back to where Heathcliff first tore it from, like it was meant to be.

Episode: 52
Location: Wuthering Heights Rooftop
Catherine, who Heathcliff desired so desperately to reach... she was walking out of the coffin, her eyes opened.
Yet...
Heathcliff	No.
Dante	<The seventh lightning has struck...>
Dante	<She's... being overwritten by a Catherine from a different world...>
Heathcliff	Please don't do this to me, Catherine.
Heathcliff	I endured everything for you. Everything at the manor. Everything I suffered out there.
Heathcliff	All I ever wanted was to see you again... to return to this manor, to meet you...
The space surrounding Catherine, who is screaming and wailing... begins to bend and refract as though something has gone wrong.
Every Catherine	…….
Every Catherine	Catherine!
Every Catherine	Why have you changed your mind?! Have you forgotten our wish?
Every Catherine	You have spent countless days and nights watching how Heathcliff suffers! The suffering that we have inflicted upon him!
Catherine	No...
Catherine	It's... different.
Catherine	The only person who can tell me something like that is...
Every Catherine	Does it not matter to you, what happens to every Heathcliff in every world? Are you truly so selfish that you feel detached from its consequences?
Every Catherine	I am Heathcliff. My greatest miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I have watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself!
Every Catherine	If all else remained, and he were annihilated... no Catherine should seem a part of that world any longer!
Erlking Heathcliff	Cathy! You are here, somewhere...! Where are you?!
Dante	<The Identity... something's gone wrong with the summoning.>
Faust	It is likely that Miss Catherine's will is intervening in the summoning.
Ishmael	She's... refusing the summoning?
Every Catherine	Do not obstruct me! Summon me, if your love for Heathcliff is true!

Episode: 52.5
Erlking Heathcliff	Where are you? Come to me, Catherine!
Every Catherine	Heathcliff!

Episode: 52.5
Location: Wuthering Heights Rooftop
Dante	<Faust. If... if things don't get any better...>
Dante	<What will happen to them?>
Faust	Erlking Heathcliff, once he kills Heathcliff of this world for good... will leap over to other worlds to slay other versions of Heathcliff.
Faust	If Catherine's summoning succeeds... she will become another Catherine who leaps between every world, creating more Catherines like herself.
Dante	<... To what end?>
Ishmael	... To an end where there is nothing but the silence and the lamentation of both Heathcliff and Catherine. Wouldn't you agree?
Dante	<...Huh?>
Dante	<There's a sound... coming from my device... >
Catherine	Dante.
Catherine	I see that you write a diary of your own.
Dante	…….
Dante	I wouldn't call it a diary. It's not like I record what happens every day in here...
Catherine	That counts as a diary still.
Catherine	It is a record of your life.
Dante	Then... I suppose it is.
Dante	Catherine.
Catherine	Just before the break of dawn, during the quietest hours of the day... I would write my diary.
Catherine	Especially on days when I suffered from fevers. I could not bear to keep going without vomiting every fault of mine on a piece of paper.
Catherine	I was always honest with my diary.
Catherine	But...
Catherine	It seems that I could never be honest anywhere else.
Catherine	While I hid my true feelings from the ones I loved... while refusing to communicate myself... I became angry at those who couldn't understand me.
Catherine	Heathcliff shall never know.
Catherine	He will never know how much I...
Catherine	How much I...
Heathcliff	No. I have to know.
Catherine	Heathcliff? How did you...?
Heathcliff	I needed a lot of courage to get here.
Heathcliff	Catherine.
Heathcliff	It’s all so easy for you. For you to topple me...
Heathcliff	For you to ground me up until I'm nothing.
Heathcliff	I was so happy whenever you came to visit me. A single glance from you in my direction could brighten my entire day. You were almost like a calamity.
Heathcliff	And I have always, always...
Heathcliff	... always loved that very calamity that swept over me like the tempest, Catherine.
Catherine	…….
Catherine	Thank you. For having the courage.
Catherine	Finally, our hearts...
Catherine	... are no longer broken apart.
Catherine	Dante. May I borrow your diary for a moment?
Catherine	The Golden Bough has far more impressive powers than any of us could have ever imagined.
Dante	What powers...?
Catherine	It has been bringing your own wishes to reality, has it not?
Catherine	So...
Catherine	The key to my Heathcliff's happiness...
Catherine	…….
Catherine	... is in your diary.
So I...
... looked down at the screen of the device I carried. Something I used to think was nothing but a tool for recording things.
Catherine	Thank you so much for being the first one to talk, Heathcliff.
Catherine	I don't love every Heathcliff in every world.
Catherine	I love you. As you are now.

Episode: 52.5
In every world of possibilities that may or may not have been.
Every Catherine and Heathcliff of all worlds call out to each other, feeling the echoes of their partners.
They struggle for the one last unseen embrace.
Location: Wuthering Heights Rooftop
Erlking Heathcliff	Where are you, Cathy?! I wish to have you in my embrace again.
Erlking Heathcliff	I have felt your presence all along. I knew for certain that you have been haunting me.
Erlking Heathcliff	You lie not beneath the cold earth; you are beside me, are you not?
Every Catherine	Heathcliff! Why do you refuse to embrace me?
Erlking Heathcliff	I have not broken your heart—you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine...!
Every Catherine	Do come to me, Heathcliff! Whisk me away and embrace me in your heart—the gust here is too cold; my body is turning into ice. Only by your warmth shall the frost thaw!
Millions of worlds made real by Catherine and Heathcliff begin speeding by before us.
Every possibility of Heathcliff and Catherine.
Most end in a tragedy, full of suffering and lamentation...
Location: Wuthering Heights of a Certain Future
But among the infinity, I catch a glimpse of tranquility.
Outside the manor, there are two gravestones marking Heathcliff and Catherine's final resting places.
And in the desolate, forlorn moorlands of Wuthering Heights...
... are two youths who each resemble Heathcliff and Catherine. They gaze deeply into each other's eyes; their mouths drawn into the sweetest, happiest smiles.
The hearts connected. Despite everything.
Location: Wuthering Heights Rooftop
Erlking Heathcliff	They were...
Erlking Heathcliff	I see... I let my conviction... blind myself to the other possibilities...
Erlking Heathcliff's last words are hollow and bittersweet. Its echoes scatter into nothingness.
Catherine begins to disappear from every world.
As though she was never there.
And when Every Catherine eventually disappeared...
Millions of changing possibilities appeared before us.
Mr. Earnshaw brings Heathcliff from the Backstreets.
Hindley's scorn and hatred for Heathcliff remained the same...
... but without Catherine, Heathcliff had no reason to endure the suffering in Wuthering Heights.
So he quickly moves on from Wuthering Heights. Each Heathcliff...
... lives a different life, meets all kinds of different people...
... and lives on without Catherine.
Heathcliff	…….
Our Heathcliff watched as the worlds transformed.
Each Heathcliff living a life of his own, and Catherine's existence slowly fading away from him.
Dante	<…….>
I would have understood if Heathcliff were to curse me with weeping, cruel words. I would have understood if he were to grab and shake me by the collars.
To erase someone's entire existence... is an unimaginably terrible thing.
But Heathcliff was watching all of it in silence. As if he wished to carve each and every single one of them into his memory.
And...
Nelly	Finally, there isn't anything left.
Heathcliff	Nelly... are you taking the Golden Bough?
Nelly stood atop the railings of the rooftop and gazed down at us.
Most Sinners had fallen or were unconscious.
In her hands she held the Golden Bough that appeared to have been pried from the rooftop.
Nelly	But Heathcliff...
Nelly	You are a good, kindhearted boy, aren't you? I'm certain you understand.
Nelly	I suppose I will bring this to the one who first showed me the mirror shard.
Heathcliff	…….
Nelly	You know it's futile.
Nelly	You and your friends... have fought battle after battle, pushed yourselves past the brink of exhaustion. How will you stop a Chief Butler who has waited for this precise moment?
Nelly	They can turn the clock, but I will no longer be here once the hands turn once.
Heathcliff	…….
Heathcliff	Sure. I can't stop you now. But...
Heathcliff	But I'll get it all back.
Heathcliff	The Golden Bough. My Catherine.
Nelly	…….
Nelly	Catherine? Who are you talking about?
Nelly	I can't say I understand what you are talking about, Heathcliff.
Heathcliff	... I know.
Heathcliff	That name no longer means anything to you or anyone else. Nothing but an ink stain remains where she once stood.
Heathcliff	But she's never been clearer to me. So, so clear that it can never be erased.
Nelly	Well, if you are that desperate... then I hope your wish shall come true one day.
Nelly	It is said that the Golden Bough can make any wish... any heart... come true.

Episode: 53
Location: Wuthering Heights Rooftop
All that remained on the rooftop was a burnt Golden Bough in the coffin.
Faust	The Golden Bough is burnt white. It appears that someone has made off with the other.
Dante	<Nelly... took the other one. The one that's intact.>
Gregor	She must've taken it to her.
Gregor	... Hermann.
Heathcliff	…….
Heathcliff	This isn't a failure.
Heathcliff	We'll get it back.
Heathcliff	Even if our hearts may be broken apart, if I give it my all... we'll be connected once again.
Heathcliff	As it did, even in the world where we were both dead.
Sinclair	Is Catherine... the name of the person in this coffin?
Sinclair	I'm sorry, everything feels so... foggy...
Faust	The coffin and the person that lies within will be retrieved to the headquarters by the After Team.
Dante	<…….>
I wanted to ask him if he was okay, but... I already knew the answer. So many things had gone wrong.
Heathcliff	No. I'm still... not okay.
Heathcliff's one and only goal... was gone.
But Heathcliff was no longer trapped in a living dream.
... Perhaps that is precisely why he could open the door to see a new, wider world.
Not a single color remained in the silent Wuthering Heights once the tempest passed.
All monochromatic, save for...
... patches of color...
Heathcliff	Those flowers... are called heath.
Heathcliff	The loneliest flowers that take root and bloom in the wild moorlands... But they're also flowers that survive no matter what devastating tempest comes their way. They endure it all and wait.
Dante	<Wait for... what?>
Heathcliff	I don't know. The time, I suppose.
That is when Heathcliff finally told us the name of the flowers.
Location: Backstreets of T Corp.
Gregor	Woahh! Go after it! GO!
Heathcliff	Oi, it took off. Where the bloody hell are you lookin' at?!
Sinclair	Well, maybe you should've told me that first?!
Another day, another Distortion hunting in the streets of T Corp. as per LCD's orders.
Looks like it didn't take too long for Heathcliff to be his usual energetic self once agai—
Heathcliff	Oi, I told you to send 'em this way! I'll smash your head in once this is over!
... Maybe he's gotten too passionate.
Dante	<…….>
Dante	<Long time no— Wait. Why are you... how do you still have color?>
Demian	Because the light is yet to reach me.
Demian	Because a star is an unfathomable distance away.
Demian	Do you like flowers too, Dante?
Dante	<Um...>
Dante	<I think I've come to like them.>
Demian	Imagine that there was a single rose you've cared for a long time.
Demian	Your room was always brimming from the sweet aroma of that flower.
Demian	But one day, you leave the rose behind to go on a long, long journey.
Demian	In your journey, you come across a large garden... and there, you see thousands of the very same rose you once you cared for. That sight... brings you to tears, and you drop to your knees.
Demian	... Why do you suppose that is?
Dante	<…….>
Demian... he's appeared before me in the past. He would always leave me with these cryptic riddles.
But I'm starting to understand what his riddles are supposed to represent.
Dante	<Because I've finally come to understand.>
Dante	<That the one I truly loved was the rose I'd left behind.>
Demian	Correct.
Demian	Even though there are thousands of roses in this world, there is but one rose that is mine.
Demian	You've watered it diligently, Cared for it, even as its thorns pricked your fingers. So that your care makes its aroma bloom.
Demian	I suppose that's how it was for Heathcliff and Catherine as well. Knowing that there are infinite Catherines and Heathcliffs in countless worlds... they wished not for the happiness of infinite Catherines and Heathcliffs but for the happiness of each other. Because to them, each other was the one that truly mattered.
Demian	But it would take most people a long, long time to understand that. Because most people are foolish.
Demian	Do you understand? Once I learn to properly love my very own flower...
Demian	I no longer need to protect the thousands of other roses in the world.
Demian	People of this star care for thousands of rose blossoms in their own gardens... but still fail to find what they really desire.
Dante	<... But what of the other flowers that's already bloomed?>
Dante	<What happens to them?>
Demian smiled at my question.
Demian	You will find the answer to that question yourself...
Demian	... when you can draw me a sheep.
With that, Demian disappeared.
... I hear the faint cry of a distant lamb.
Previous Chapter - Back To Top - Next Chapter