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🆁🆄🅽🅰🆆🅰🆈
𝙓𝙄. 𝙋𝙤𝙞𝙨𝙨𝙤𝙣
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After long consideration and a shocking realization, they head to Poisson to unravel it more. As they arrive there Paimon notices a huge boat in the middle of the cave. "Woah, what a huge ship! Why would a ship be anchored at a place like this?"
Navia just giggled at the reaction of her partners sidekick and gifted her reassurance. "Hehe, there's no need to be so surprised. While it may look like a ship, it's actually Spina di Rosula's headquarters." The two friends both started at each other and Navia. "My father was the one who asked for it to be built like this. Perhaps our taste in exterior design is the only thing we occasionally had in common.", the girl said with her thoughts wandering to her past.
How she played with children here in her home. Especially Ruby, when she arrived at Poisson. At first she lived in the undergrounds of the Court, but after a while she also came to play with Navia. Hide and seek was something they loved to play. Funnily enough, Ruby always won.
"A gigantic and glamorous ship embodies discovery, opportunity, ambition, and conquest. It symbolizes Spina di Rosula's bright and limitless future.", she said as she returned to where she was standing mentally.
Traveler smiled at Navia, who just aswell smiled back. She knew how dear a home can be to someone, if only her home was with her and not running away from her. "I think I'm starting to get why you like it."
Paimon was just as excited and impressed by the hidden cave with an huge ship making it's way through the opening. The thing that impressed her the most was how she herself thought that the Spina was just a poor gang living in the sewers.
After talking a bit more about the cave, they made their way to the boat and just as well stopped when Melus was just in front of them.
He listened to the theory they had made just earlier after leaving Neuvillette's office.
That theory was... that the real murderer wasn't Callas, but someone who was dissolved into water just like that Oceanid that Lumine met earlier.
Navia wasn't happy with the said theory, since it means that Callas died innocent, --which she knew all along, but it still made her heart heavy -so she smiled away her pain.
"Boss also didn't tell you that he had been diagnosed with a rare illness. The doctors told him that he had no more than five years left to live...", Melus openly informed with Navia's eyes widening further and further as he went on with the secret her dear father held back from her.
He knew that once his death came along for the Spina, Navia would face the great consequences of his actions. So when he seemed to have gotten to a huge clue of evidence onto a drug called "Sinthe" which was a mixture of normal water and water of the primordial sea. Not only that, but also about the disappearances case was something he was onto. If even one scratch were to happen to his sweet daughter, he would make every single person wrapped into this criminal play pay with the evidence he "collected". Funnily enough, it worked. No one since Callas' death has tried to harm Navia, until now it seems.
Navia went through a lot of processing and held back tears to finally come to her senses to respond: "No, I don't believe it! He never appeared to look sick to me!"
Melus sighed, with his gaze wandering alongside Navia's face which only shined full of denial. "No father wants their daughter to see them weak and haggard, especially someone as proud as Boss."
The blonde girl ---who felt too much emotions at the same time--- stomped on the ground out of more denial. "Argh!", she exclaimed with her hands bawled into fists at her side.
After a while she softly chuckled to herself and tried her best not to let her legs give out. "...So he chose to die in silence so that he could protect me?"
"I'm afraid you're not understanding this correctly, Demoiselle.", Melus said while bending to his boss' hanging head. "What Boss wanted to hand to you was not a parasol, but a sword."
Melus looked at the lady happily and full of pride, as if Callas' himself was proudly staring back at his own daughter. "I'm sure he'd be extremely proud."
He truly would be. Any father would be giving such huge role to someone who wasn't just a girl back then, but Callas' always had believed in his dear daughter. Who wouldn't? Navia was a competent, smart, humorous young lady. Every person ---who wasn't her enemy--- trusted her immediately.
"That fool, couldn't he have just given it to me straight...", Navia's eyes slowly drifting from one side to the other. "No, he might have set up everything precisely because... he never thought I'd be able to understand him..."
Her denial she currently felt was something so great not even her close friends and family knew of it. She was always a person of such strong mind that such act was new to them all.
"Is that the amount of confidence he had in me? And what if I was never able to make it to where I am now...?", she asked with disbelief hiding itself inside her tone of voice.
Lumine now also had her eyes fully onto the girl's sad features. She knew what those things felt like, how couldn't she? Her kin was captured only to be found as the Prince of the Abyss Order and was confidently in leaving Lumine to fend for herself.
"He gave you the choice to live how you want.", Lumine expressed with a familiarity of these words. At the end of this journey the person she looked for everywhere would hopefully be back in her arms. Still she could turn her back to him if she desired and live her life within Teyvat to the fullest, but that was something she doesn't even think of doing.
Navia just nervously chuckled at her partners true words. "Yeah, I suppose that's true... With the way he'd set things up, if I had wanted, I could have just lived out my life without a care in the world. But thankfully, he rarely talked to me about complex matters, and thus understood little of me as a person. In this case... he really didn't need to give me an easy way out." Then as soon as the tense aura arrived it left just as fast. Navia's head wasn't glued to the floor anymore, and now was facing torward Melus. "Melus, what was the key evidence that he shared with you?"
And with that they immersed themselves into the evidence of the current case again. ______________________________________ Thank you for reading! If you liked this chapter consider giving it a star! ⭐
