As with every spring in Old Dunling, the rain came cold enough to seep into the bones, washing endlessly over the City of Steel. Though its streets and ironworks were constantly repaired and maintained, the metropolis remained cloaked in rust beneath the veil of mist. Countless lights bled through the moisture, their edges blurred into magnificent rivers of neon that shimmered across the soaked avenues.
The people of Old Dunling had long since surrendered to this climate. One by one, black umbrellas bloomed overhead until the streets resembled a sea of dark flowers drifting with the current of rainwater, flowing silently through the narrow canyons between towering buildings.
Joy walked among them, a black umbrella shielding him as his boots splashed through shallow puddles.
The rainy season had begun. For weeks to come, the city would remain trapped beneath this relentless curtain of drizzle—a world drowned in gray, where the rain never seemed to end. Sometimes Joy felt as though even his soul had been soaked through.
The mysterious meeting had concluded with Lloyd's departure.
Joy had merely been following orders, stationed outside the chamber throughout the conversation. He had no idea what had transpired within those closed doors. All he had witnessed was the hateful expression Lloyd wore when he emerged.
Arthur had offered no explanation. His only instruction had been simple: keep an eye on Lloyd afterward. Observe his mental condition.
Nothing more.
Eventually, Joy found himself once again standing before the familiar building. The weathered plaque beside the entrance read:
121A Cork Street.
He steadied his thoughts, knocked once, then pushed the door open.
"Has Lloyd come back?"
His voice carried into the house.
A moment later, Mrs. Vanlud stepped out from inside, looking at him with obvious confusion.
"Hm? Weren't you the one who took him away this morning?"
Strange people came to collect Lloyd with surprising frequency.
Each time he returned, he looked different.
Sometimes he shuffled home like an exhausted office clerk, every ounce of energy drained from him.
Sometimes he came back positively radiant, grinning as though he'd just robbed a bank.
More often than not, however, he was covered in blood.
Fortunately, it was usually someone else's.
"He still hasn't returned?"
Apparently, after leaving Arthur's place, Lloyd hadn't come back to 121A Cork Street.
That puzzled Joy.
Arthur had once said that everyone possessed somewhere they could return to.
Everyone except Lloyd.
Joy wracked his brain but couldn't imagine where Lloyd might have gone. Only now did he truly realize how untethered that man was—as if no place in the world had any claim over him.
"I see..."
It seemed he had come for nothing.
Still, worrying about Lloyd felt almost unnecessary. For all Joy knew, the man was probably somewhere in the Lower District, venting his fury upon a collection of particularly unfortunate souls in some forgotten alleyway.
"Joy?"
Another voice interrupted his thoughts.
Hig descended the staircase, having recognized the familiar voice from upstairs. When he saw who stood at the entrance, genuine delight spread across his face.
Joy looked up.
Hig was smiling.
In truth, Joy was one of the very few people Hig considered a friend, though the way that friendship had begun was admittedly rather unusual.
"Heading out?"
Joy noticed Hig was already dressed to leave, an umbrella resting in his hand.
"There's a support group meeting today. The doctor wants to talk with us about... mental health."
Hig cared deeply about those gatherings. In fact, overcoming his hallucinogen addiction owed much to the encouragement of the others who attended.
"Mental health?"
The phrase caught Joy's attention immediately.
Ever since the meeting had ended, Arthur had repeatedly circled back to that subject, almost deliberately. It seemed to have been the true focus of his private conversation with Lloyd.
And now Joy himself had come here to investigate Lloyd's state of mind.
"The doctor comes from Black Mountain Hospital," Hig continued thoughtfully. "Honestly, I've heard all kinds of stories about that place... but I've never actually seen it."
Old Dunling never lacked urban legends.
The rats that knew every secret.
The butcher birds that fed upon human flesh.
The mechanical city buried beneath the earth.
Black Mountain Hospital belonged comfortably among those whispered myths.
Officially, it was a psychiatric hospital accompanied by an enormous sanatorium sprawling across an astonishing expanse of land.
Some claimed it housed countless madmen whose endless prayers could drive listeners insane, infecting them until they joined the same endless murmuring.
Others insisted horrific human experiments were conducted there—that Ingelvig sought to create monstrous beings capable of ruling the world.
Of course, stories like these had become ordinary entertainment.
Under the careful censorship imposed by the Cleaners, such bizarre rumors survived merely as unsettling curiosities passed from citizen to citizen.
Even so, Black Mountain Hospital possessed a mystery no rumor could fully explain.
It was said to be immense.
Yet within the crowded labyrinth of Old Dunling, hardly anyone had ever truly seen it.
Everyone knew it existed.
No one knew where it was.
"...Black Mountain Hospital."
Joy quietly repeated the name, forcing himself not to remember the time he had spent within its walls.
"Want to come with me?" Hig asked carefully. "You haven't been to the support group in quite a while."
There was unmistakable hope in his voice. He clearly wanted company.
Joy hesitated.
Then Hig added,
"If you're looking for Lloyd... he usually doesn't come home until nightfall. Before then, no one ever knows where he is. Since you're just waiting anyway... why not?"
Joy fell silent.
Beyond the window, rain hammered against the city without mercy. Thick mist swallowed pedestrians whole as though some unseen creature lurked within it, devouring every passerby.
"...All right."
That was his answer.
Truthfully, Joy's own mental state wasn't particularly healthy.
On the surface, he appeared perfectly ordinary.
Yet at times, he felt he wasn't so different from Lloyd.
Not identical.
But alike in one important way.
Both of them carried a quiet despair.
Lloyd possessed a terrifying tendency toward self-destruction. Calling him pessimistic hardly seemed accurate; when death lay ahead, he pursued it with almost infectious enthusiasm.
Joy's condition was harder to describe.
Sometimes everything simply felt meaningless.
As though every action had been stripped of purpose before it even began.
He suspected it came from fighting demons.
No one waged war against creatures so grotesque and unnatural without walking away scarred in some invisible way.
The memories threatened to surface again.
He forced them back into darkness.
If he refused to think about them...
Perhaps they had never happened.
"How have you been lately?"
As they walked beneath the rain, Hig suddenly asked.
He was slightly shorter than Joy. Tilting back the edge of his umbrella, he looked up with an easy smile.
"Can't complain."
Joy answered simply.
Not wanting the silence to linger too long, he glanced toward the gray sky.
"I actually like rainy days."
He lifted his gaze.
Dark clouds buried the heavens beneath sheets of rain until it seemed the sea itself had traded places with the sky. High above, the colossal steel whales drifted through the storm, their haunting songs echoing across the city like voices from another world.
"They say rainy weather makes people depressed," Hig remarked.
"It's more about the lack of sunlight," Joy replied. "Humans are a bit like plants. We need the sun more than we realize."
Old Dunling, however, had never been particularly kind to humanity.
Clear skies were a rare luxury.
"Is that so?"
"Something like that. That's what the doctors at Black Mountain Hospital used to say. The rain doesn't cause it—it simply makes everything worse."
Their conversation drifted lazily with the rainfall.
Before long, White Chapel slowly emerged from the curtain of mist.
It had clearly been restored to use.
The weeds were gone.
The piles of abandoned junk had been cleared away.
Ancient stone walls now sheltered faint hymns rising from within, voices joined together in praise, hands linked in quiet devotion.
"Rain always reminds me of home."
Hig spoke unexpectedly.
"I haven't gone back since the day I left. It's been so many years that most of it's faded... but whenever it rains, those blurry memories become just a little clearer."
He smiled warmly at Joy.
Joy wasn't entirely sure why Hig had suddenly begun sharing such personal memories.
Perhaps this was what people meant by opening one's heart.
"It was a little coastal town..."
"I don't remember much anymore. The only connection to the outside world was a railway crossing the wilderness. Back then, I thought the town itself was a prison, and those tracks were the only road to freedom."
"Being by the sea, storms rolled in all the time. At night, rain poured from the heavens while thunder split the sky."
"You don't seem like someone who talks about this kind of thing," Joy observed.
Hig was naturally quiet.
Quiet people rarely volunteered memories like these.
"No," Hig admitted with a small laugh. "But people have to change. Change is a good thing. Just as the steam engine transformed the world, sometimes our lives need transformation too."
As White Chapel drew nearer, it became impossible for Hig to hide the excitement in his expression.
"Because of the support group?"
For reasons Joy couldn't explain, a flicker of unease stirred within him.
"I suppose so."
"Everyone has flaws. Here, we encourage each other to overcome them—to become better versions of ourselves."
His gaze settled on Joy.
When he spoke again, there was something strangely compelling in his voice.
"You're the same, aren't you, Joy? I can see it."
"You and I... we're carrying the same confusion."
Joy froze.
After a long silence, he answered quietly,
"...Maybe."
Every member of the Purification Bureau underwent regular psychological evaluations.
Joy's records had always been impeccable.
But paper could be deceived.
With sufficient mental discipline, numbers meant very little.
He knew perfectly well how lost he sometimes felt.
He simply refused to seek counseling.
Opening one's heart was no simple matter.
Not everyone wished to throw open the doors within themselves.
Behind every closed door lay secrets never meant for another soul.
"Good afternoon, everyone!"
Hig's unusually cheerful greeting pulled Joy back to reality.
The chapel doors closed behind them, shutting out the icy rain.
Warmth slowly embraced them.
Countless candles burned like a tranquil sea of fire.
People of every age, every profession, every walk of life sat together in a great circle.
Different in every imaginable way.
Yet together they resembled nothing so much as a family.
At the very front stood a man, smiling gently at the gathering.
Joy noticed him immediately.
Unlike the others, his place was upon the raised steps.
Though physically close to everyone else, he remained subtly above them all.
He wore glasses.
There was an undeniable gentleness about him.
Unlike the grim, intimidating physicians Joy remembered from Black Mountain Hospital, this man radiated calm—as though he were a beam of warm sunlight piercing the endless rain.
For a doctor, such warmth was an extraordinary gift.
Without speaking more than a handful of words, patients would instinctively trust him.
Confide in him.
Expose the darkest corners of their souls.
Only the doctor seemed to notice the newcomers.
The others remained immersed in conversation, laughter filling the chapel.
Outside, the storm raged on.
Cold.
Lonely.
Merciless.
Inside these white brick walls, however, strangers gathered in warmth, sharing burdens hidden deep within their hearts.
The contrast was almost overwhelming.
For a fleeting instant, Joy found himself tempted to surrender to that warmth.
Then the sensation struck him as profoundly wrong.
His instincts screamed.
Something here was dangerous.
He simply couldn't identify what.
Then he noticed it.
The difference.
He remembered these people from his previous visit.
Back then, they had been burdened by guilt, weighed down by regret.
Now...
The repentance was gone.
Every face shone with relentless optimism.
Not natural optimism.
Something harder.
Something absolute.
As though every smile had been rehearsed until perfection.
Beneath all that warmth lurked an unsettling disharmony.
Even Hig dissolved seamlessly into the gathering, laughing and chatting with effortless ease.
The atmosphere no longer resembled a support group.
It felt like a congregation.
Suppressing the growing discomfort in his chest, Joy slowly lifted his eyes toward the man at the front.
The doctor was awake.
So was he.
An uncanny stillness settled over the chapel.
Everyone else had surrendered themselves to that inexplicable bliss.
Only the two of them remained clear-headed.
Joy reached a silent conclusion.
He couldn't yet determine the source of the unease.
Until he did, he would pretend to notice nothing.
He would treat this as nothing more than an ordinary support group.
The doctor began walking toward him.
As he approached, he removed his glasses, polished the lenses with a handkerchief, and calmly placed them back on.
"Joy Joshua."
He spoke before Joy had the chance.
"I remember you."
"Last time, I wanted to introduce myself."
"But you left before I could say a word."
Joy answered with silence.
His eyes remained fixed upon the doctor's face, searching desperately for some flaw, some crack in the immaculate façade.
There was nothing.
The disguise was flawless.
So flawless that its perfection became the only thing suspicious about it.
It was a face like untouched snow.
Blank.
Unreadable.
Then the doctor extended his hand.
Seeing that Joy had no intention of speaking, he introduced himself instead.
"I currently serve as the consulting physician for this support group."
Lightning split the heavens beyond the stained-glass windows.
Its ghostly white brilliance flashed across the doctor's lenses.
For the briefest instant, another pale fire seemed to ignite within those reflections, overlapping the lightning before vanishing into darkness.
"My name..."
"...James Moriarty."
The name settled into Joy's mind like an ancient curse, echoing over and over in the silent depths of his consciousness.