The silence was almost loud enough to cover the sound of the emotional rollercoaster crashing.
"You refuse ?" Jeanne finally spoke. "We haven't even discussed the price yet."
"I will refuse no matter the price."
"We can help you out on something else. We could do other missions and give every reward to you." Evans probed, feeling something was off.
"You cannot offer anything of sufficient value."
After a short silence, Jeanne finally asked : "You can't give us a single reason why, but you will refuse no matter what ?"
Dow feigned a baffled expression "Do my ears decieve me ? Did I not literally just say that ? Oh, I must be getting old. Too bad none of these fix hearing." He flexed his multiple intricate, rune carved rings. "Please note they also don't cure stupid, you'll have to look somewhere else."
Evans frowned deeper. The tone with which he spoke sounded like he was worried, which was so unusual it almost made Jeanne jump. "Why can't you give us one reason ?"
Dow drank his glass in one gulp and immediately refilled it with the bottle Evans had ordered. "I don't owe you an explanation. In fact, you could say I've been preeetty generous with you, giving you so much of my time. Scram. Go play elsewhere, I have an actual job to do."
Evans stayed silent.
Motionless.
... Then suddenly got up and walked out, still not saying anything. Jeanne was also stunned, but she followed calmly.
Frowning, the captain was so deep in thought he almost bumped into a waiter.
'This is not right. He's not supposed to be loyal. They're new. They're weak. This equipment might look fancy, but I'll bet most of these rings are just normal jewelry. His armor's too heavy, and his sword is too long. Why would he turn down free money ?'
He stopped dead in his tracks and looked back over his shoulder.
'...Why could he not even tell us a false reason ?'
This was extremely weird. Normally, even if the reason has to be kept secret, people just invented one to stop further probing. Doing this was trivially easy, and could hardly ever be detected. Evans had become used to recognising false claims and exaggerations in negotiations such as these.
But this time, there was none. Of course, he could be wrong, but his sharp instincts told him that this strange, clearly dishonest man had not lied once.
'Why ?'
Something was going on here.
"Do you have an idea, agent Dark ?"
She thought for a bit, then sighed. "None. I just can't conceive of a good reason for this behaviour. We can be sure, at least, that he is hiding something, something other than what we already know. But it could be anything. For all we know, he could just be playing a prank on us."
Evans leaned on a wall while rubbing his temples with a completely straight face. "This might actually be the most likely hypothesis. But let's not go with it, there are other possibilities that might require us to act on them."
"Naturally."
'First the church acting weird, and now this... What is going on in this town ?'
Another captain might have left already, scared off by all the future headaches. But Evans wasn't going to do that. He had to be perfect. If he fled at one simple mystery, what would he do against the Lord ?
He couldn't choose the easy way. Forchrit did not take the easy way. Forchrit obliterates the rough path until everyone can choose for themselves. No benefits come from safety, only weakness and compliance.
'That said... This is still going to be tough.'
He took a crumpled piece of paper from one of his hidden pockets and read it.
"... Jeanne, could you go back and think it over with the rest of the team ?"
She tilted her head a little. "Aren't you coming too ?"
Instead of answering, he took a second look at the mysterious note that somehow got in his pocket. It read "The bench by the lake in the park has a pretty good view. I'm sure trying it wouldn't hurt !"
The writing was rough, and the ink had smudged like a hand was rubbed on the fresh ink. The paper itself was torn at the edges and had a strange quality to it.
He put it away.
"I have to investigate something of my own."
***
'Hmm.. it is pretty good view.'
Evans sat on the bench by the park's lake.
He had already been here before, when he visited the city to familiarise himself with the layout, but he had assumed that at night, the lake would simply be dark.
However, now that he sat on this comfortable wooden bench, he saw every fish and plant glowing a small, pure white light. The light illuminated a faint mist on the surface of the calm water from underneath. One could see all the small insects flying around in it, follow a specific fish a they went on about their life, or just take in the global scene, and feel the humid and fresh breeze on their face.
He didn't know why everything was glowing. It was probably a mystical kind of food source, of maybe magic water, but he couldn't bring himself to just assume this phenomenon was magic just because he didn't understand it.
Behind him, a surprising amount of public oil lamp poles illuminated the colourful garden in dim shades of red. A number of couples were having picnics. Evans could understand them. The whole picture made for quite a romantic setting.
An imperfect person would probably have been disturbed, almost crushed by the overwhelming emptiness of the spot to his right. That absence could feel like acid to them.
Evans, him, was busy thinking about other things.
The idea of a park in a city surrounded by forest seemed silly to him, until he remembered that this forest had a bunch of monsters swarming the walls. Now he just wondered why there was only one park.
But mostly, he was searching.
For what ? He didn't know.
But the person that put the paper in his pocket wanted to lead him here, and since they didn't show up in the last half hour, Evans had to assume he was meant to find something on his own.
'The view from the bench... It's probably visible from here then.'
'Not there...'
'Not there...'
'Not there.....'
'There.'
He got up unhurriedly and picked up another piece of crumpled paper from a little boat hidden in a patch of reeds.
"From here, I usually follow the milky way in a straight line, until I reach the best sandwiches in town. They're so good."
Evans stayed immobile for a good while. Still dazed, he instinctively collected the small boat before it floated away. Finally, he realised.
'... Is this a treasure hunt ?'
'... At one in the morning ?'