The that Vans’s brain needed a second to understand what was happening. Suddenly, the ground vanished. The sky stretched into a line, the reality itself melted into blurs, and both of them plummeted at impossible speed—like bullets fired from the roof of a skyscraper.

  “AAAAHHHH!!!”

  The scream of Vans was swallowed by the roar of the wind. Reality fractured around him; color and shape broke apart into shards of light, and his body no longer knew if it was falling or being dragged through a tear in the air itself. His stomach twisted into a knot that climbed to his throat. He shut his eyes and covered his face, praying for it all to stop.

  And then… it did.

  When he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was the blinding headlight of a taxi driven by an orc, speeding straight toward him in the middle of the capital’s traffic. The horn blared like an alarm of doom, and for a second both he and the driver shared the same terrified expression: one man realizing he was about to die, the other realizing he was about to kill someone.

  “Oops~! Houston, bad landing~! YOU'RE GONNA DIE!”

  Smiley’s voice burst through the chaos, absurdly cheerful. His hand clamped onto Vans’s shoulder —the hand of a creature who never should have been smiling in such a moment— and then—

  FWOOSH!

  In a blur, Smiley yanked him aside with effortless strength, dragging the much taller man onto the sidewalk as if he weighed like a feather. The orc’s furious curses followed them, along with the echoing honk of the taxi that had nearly erased them from existence.

  No one would ever know if it had truly been an accident, or just another of Smiley’s wicked jokes. His favorite pastime: playing with the border between life and death for the sake of making you remember what being alive means.

  The noise of traffic replaced the deafening howl of the void. Vans was still screaming, arms flailing, standing in the middle of the sidewalk like a madman waiting for an explosion that never came. Pedestrians stopped and stared. Some whispered. Others laughed nervously.

  His chest rose and fell in erratic gasps. Sweat clung cold to his forehead. When he finally turned to Smiley, his face was the perfect mix of shock, fury, and exhaustion.

  Smiley only tilted his head, grinning like a mischievous fox.

  “Hehehe… what’s wrong~?”

  Vans clenched his fists. His voice broke through gritted teeth.

  “You stupid piece of—!”

  “Relax, man! Was a friendly joke!” Smiley interrupted, patting his back with a friendliness so false it bordered on cruelty. “First time in a short-range teleportation? Heh, I don’t even want to imagine you on a long one.”

  Vans glared, pale as paper, still struggling to accept that they were now standing safe and sound in front of a small downtown café, as if the universe had simply skipped a few frames of his life.

  Smiley, ever the showman, straightened his tie and gestured toward the entrance with a theatrical bow.

  “After you~!” he sang, his grin gleaming just as brightly as the sunrise they had left behind.

  …

  It took several minutes before Vans could even process what he was seeing.

  The new Smiley—the being who moments ago had been an immortal puppet—was now in front of him, stacking donuts like a professional competitor. One after another piled up into a ridiculous sugary tower, while the waitress—wearing a tense smile and trembling eyes—asked him for the fifth time if “that would be all.”

  “No-no, dear,” replied Smiley without even glancing at her. “Bring me six more… no, eight! Twelve! And coffee! Strong, like my patience. Pretty please~!”

  The young woman looked at Vans.

  “They fed him industrial paint instead of milk when he was a baby.”

  “Shhh! Silence! I need to focus on my tower.”

  She nervously smiled, and decided to walk away, unsure whether to laugh or call the police.

  Vans still held the menu in his hands, motionless, his eyes sunk into the letters as if they were hieroglyphs. He had barely slept. He barely remembered how he’d gotten there. Across from him, Smiley devoured one donut after another with an almost comic elegance—pinky raised, sugar clinging to his lips, every movement methodical and absurdly precise.

  “So…” Smiley finally said, half a mouthful of pastry, taking a long sip of coffee. “Tell me, my detective. What did our dear Sebi say before dying?”

  Vans let out a heavy sigh, folded the menu, and set it aside. He took a chocolate-glazed donut without thinking, bit into it without tasting, his gaze drifting into emptiness.

  “It’s them again,” he muttered hoarsely, lowering his voice to avoid curious ears. “They lied to him to keep working on a machine… one supposed to give magic.”

  Smiley interlaced his fingers, resting his elbows on the table. His expression grew serious, but his eyes still gleamed with the sharp intelligence that sliced through the air like a scalpel.

  “”

  Vans rubbed his temple with two fingers, as if doing so could erase the memory of that night.

  “Turns out our Dr. Frankenstein found they were deforming non-magic children… turning them into abominations. Demons.” He swallowed hard. “Why kids? Why now? It doesn’t make sense.”

  Smiley leaned back in his chair, exhaling through his nose with a smile that wasn’t one of amusement.

  “Oh, it does make sense.” His words came out soft, almost paternal—but cold enough to freeze the blood. “It makes perfect sense…”

  He lowered his gaze. Took one of the donuts from the tower, examining it as if it were a delicate artifact.

  “They ‘purify’ species while manufacturing their new little biological weapons. Two birds, one stone. How cute~!” His voice dropped, low and grave. “Do you know why they go after children, Vans?”

  The detective shook his head silently, too exhausted to attempt a guess.

  Smiley held the donut between his fingers and began to stretch it slowly.

  “Because they are the best vessels.” The dough yielded easily between his hands, deforming. “Flexible, adaptable, fresh.”

  He paused. The café was full, yet for a moment all sound seemed to vanish.

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  “With or without magic, every living being has a soul,” he continued, never looking away from the pastry.

  He pulled a little harder. The dough tore with a wet sound, and strawberry filling oozed out—bright, viscous, red.

  “And young souls,” he said, his smile curving into something predatory, “always, always twist and rot far faster than the grown ones, HA HA HA!”

  People briefly glanced at them, their attention caught by the short and sinister laugh. The detective looked away, stomach churning, feeling scared by a second. Smiley licked a bit of the filling that had dripped down his fingers, as if he had just explained a recipe and not an atrocity, ignoring the subtle stares.

  “That’s not everything.”

  Smiley lifted his gaze, an innocent “Hm?” escaping his throat, as if pulled out of the trance his own explanation had drawn him into. Vans took a long sip of coffee, the kind that feels like finding a spring in the middle of a desert.

  “They’re after two of your 1st year students specifically,” he said at last, bluntly. “Begged me to protect them in any way I could...”

  The air between them seemed to freeze. For the first time in the entire conversation, Smiley’s smile vanished. His gaze turned heavy, fixed, bearing a funereal seriousness that didn’t belong to any human being.

  The detective watched the man idly play with the donuts on the tray, while his lower right eyelid twitched in a nervous tic betraying restrained fury.

  A second later, the headmaster laughed. Not a laugh of amusement, but one of bitter resignation. Almost weary. He had long ago learned that laughing was easier than screaming at the sky.

  “Of course,” he murmured. “Of course the universe decides to mock me once again…”

  He grabbed two donuts: one coated in bright red glaze, the other in soft sky blue. He held them up before his face, placing one over each eye as if they were binoculars.

  “My dear crow and swan,” he said aloud, wearing a smile so calm it was unsettling. He tilted his head, pretending to observe the world through his improvised lenses

  “Geesh, those two are nothing but a magnet of problems, am I right?!”

  Then he slowly lowered them, his expression sharpening into something colder, keener.

  “Who else knows about this, detective?”

  Vans frowned and merely shrugged.

  “Good, good” Smiley replied, his tone almost theatrical in its firmness. “Then it stays between us. Normally, I’d share everything with my dear and precious Astie…” A shadow crossed his gaze. “But after this morning, I’m not sure who I can trust anymore.”

  Vans leaned forward, elbows resting on the table. He watched the man play with the donuts with that mix of curiosity and exhaustion one reserves for dangerous geniuses.

  “And why do you trust me?” he asked quietly, tired of the theatrics. “I have no magic, and you have always avoided me in the school inspections.”

  Smiley fell silent. A calm, almost paternal smile curved his lips. He brought the two donuts together, and with a motion so smooth it seemed a sleight of hand, both fused into a single pastry covered in violet glaze. He took a small bite and spoke while chewing with serene ease.

  “You see, I do really enjoy keeping my privacy while spying on others! And because I read your file. Many times. Keeping an eye on you now and then.” He pointed at him with the remaining piece while munching. “And if a man is capable of arresting his own corrupt colleagues in secret, then he’s a man I can totally trust!”

  Vans blinked once, slowly, before releasing a long sigh through his nose. He leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and let his head fall against the backrest.

  “I suppose you already have a plan, don’t you?” he muttered.

  “Mhm, mhm,” Smiley hummed, nodding with childlike enthusiasm as he finished the rest of the donut. “I’ll pay some little visits tonight. Just to tie up a few loose ends.”

  “What kind of visits are we talking about?”

  “The kind where people like you shouldn't be. Unless you’d want to dance with the corpses~!” he cheerfully sang.

  The detective sighed in defeat.

  Between this lunatic and Astera... I’ll stick with the soul-piercing-stare-elf. At least she takes her job seriously. How the fuck can she deal with this freak on a daily basis?!

  Thought Vans as he sipped his coffee. He set the cup down with such force that the impact made the table tremble, shaking the tower of donuts in front of Smiley. The headmaster raised an eyebrow, curious.

  "Who is Carmilla?"

  Smiley’s movements stopped entirely. His hands froze midair, a donut halfway between the tray and his mouth. For a moment, the always theatrical headmaster seemed… empty.

  His once lively eyes turned translucent, and within them flickered a pulsating white glow—cold, mechanical, like a machine processing millions of lines of data.

  Vans watched him in silence. For a second, he could swear he heard a faint hum, like an old projector rewinding memories.

  Finally, Smiley blinked, and the glow vanished.

  "I have absolutely no idea who that might be," he replied in an overly casual tone, as if he’d just woken up from a pleasant nap. “First time I hear it.”

  He picked up a donut and took a bite.

  "Sounds like an evil old lady’s name, ew!" he said with a fake look of disgust, sticking out his tongue like a child. "Imagine having a mother-in-law called Carmilla. Ugh, no thank you."

  Vans watched him silently, not sharing the joke.

  "It’s the name Sebastian warned me about," he said firmly. "And honestly, I’m surprised you don’t know something."

  Smiley shrugged carelessly, brushing sugar from his hands.

  "Hey, I haven’t even hit my first millennium yet." He raised the back of his hand to his forehead theatrically. "I’m just a young lad with a whole life ahead of me!"

  His exclamation was loud enough to draw the attention of several customers, who looked at him with a mix of amusement and alarm.

  Vans exhaled slowly, feeling his patience evaporate. He was on the verge of standing up and leaving. Talking to a schizophrenic, he thought, might have been more productive.

  "Human. Short white hair, golden eye, black patch over the left one," he finally said, refocusing. "I’ll search the civil archives, but it’ll take me ages to find anything by myself."

  Smiley stood quiet. His face went cold dead for a moment, as if he just heard something terrible being described from his deepest memories. He let out a long sigh, this time more genuine. Keeping the truth under his sleeve.

  "Don’t even bother," he said in a deeper voice, lowering his tone a little. "If our wicked pirate is part of the Design, you won’t find anything on printed paper."

  Vans frowned. "How can you be so sure?"

  Smiley leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms, his expression now more serious than usual.

  "I imagine you were still a mere cadet when the last attacks happened," he replied. "But those people... they get everywhere. Governments, academies, ministries, data banks. They’re like cockroaches."

  He leaned forward, his voice dropping another tone, losing the lightness that usually defined him.

  "You burn them, crush them, bury them, spit and piss on their graves… and still, they come back. There’s always another one. There’s always someone else waiting in the shadows to simply hurt other people for the sake of hurting."

  Vans felt a chill run down his spine. For the first time, he sensed that behind the jokes, the sugar, and the smiles, Smiley knew far more than he ever let on.

  He reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and pulled out a playing card. He slid it face down across the table toward the detective.

  “We’ll stay in contact. If things get messy, don’t hesitate to tear it in half.” He arched a brow with a grin. “Poof! And I’ll show up to save your ordinary ass. Can’t guarantee punctuality—but I do guarantee a nice spectacle!”

  Vans picked it up skeptically. It was a joker card, with the words Break Me written by hand in the center.

  He rolled his eyes at yet another of the headmaster’s eccentricities and slipped it into his pocket.

  “Thanks… I guess.”

  He looked up, ready to ask another question, but the words died before leaving his mouth. Smiley was gone.

  The seat before him was empty. No sound. No shimmer. Not even a single breath. Only the scent of fresh coffee and a neatly folded bag of donuts, ready to go.

  The waitress approached, smiling politely.

  “Would you like the check, sir?”

  Vans looked at her with the weariness of someone who no longer found anything surprising. He pointed to the empty seat across from him.

  “Did you… see where my companion went?”

  She looked at him in mild confusion, then gestured toward the table. Five folded bills lay neatly on the saucer, and the coffee still steamed patiently.

  Smiley had left the way he’d arrived: with an invisible grin and one more mystery to add to the list.

  …

  …

  …

  ?