The Exorcist Doctor

Chapter 157 - The Shape of a Prisoner // Worth Looking At

Wedged between two extremely narrow streets, the noodle shop Maeve chose for Jin and herself was little more than a slit of warmth cut into stone. One counter, four stools, and a cramped aisle in front of them where the chef could barely turn without brushing both wall and shelf—that was the entire shop.

There were no windows or vents to push out all the smoke, which meant sitting and eating in-shop was a suffocating experience. Just how Jin liked it. Unlike the other posh and luxurious restaurants with golden goblets and velvet curtains, the old chef behind the counter had barely said six words since the two of them entered, and Jin respected him for it. ‘Let the craft speak for itself’, his father had always said.

And the noodles were good.

“So there are shops like this in Bleakhearth, too,” Maeve said cheerily between slurps of her eel-broth noodles. “I didn’t think I’d find anywhere this quiet and low-down here. I’m definitely coming back here.”

Jin glanced sideways at her, then back down at his owl bowl. He’d picked a plain pepper and salt broth with some Wraithpier seaweed in it, thinking it’d at least be palatable, but somehow the noodles were thick and springy, and the broth was hot enough to scald the toxin out of any man. It was like the accumulated toxin in his blood burned away the more he ate, so he ate like his life depended on it. The bowl tasting well was just the extra cherry on top.

After several days of eating nothing but plain boiled Myrmur meat, something like this was heavensent.

While he kept to his own bowl, Maeve went back to ranting about her original topic again: some movie she’d watched earlier with Gael. He couldn’t catch most of her rapid-fire points, but as far as he could tell, she was saying something about how the movie had a ‘brilliant’ ending, but that Gael couldn’t appreciate the scene-by-scene compositions and thought it was a ‘dogshit movie’. Maeve thought the villain had ‘real ambitions’, but Gael thought the man was a ‘damp handkerchief’. Maeve also thought the lead man had ‘real charisma’, but Gael thought he looked like a ‘kicked choirboy’.

It was a full-on rant. Jin ate quietly, filtering out most of her arguments to nobody until her ankle jerked suddenly. Her bloodshackle snapped taut just long enough to make her wobble on the stool, and she shot an irritated look down at the chain trailing out the doorway into the street.

That caught Jin’s eye.

“Tch,” she muttered, jerking her ankle back before returning to her noodles. “Anyways, as I was saying—”

“Aren’t you tired?”

Maeve paused with noodles halfway to her mouth. “Tired of what?”

But the question had come out before Jin had fully decided to ask it. It sounded clumsy now that it was out in the air—too vague and maybe too personal for a stranger like him—but he couldn’t possibly take it back now.

So he raised another mouthful of noodles to his lips and tried again, slower this time.

“Aren’t you… tired of being partnered with a Raven?” he muttered. “You’re Vharnish. You’re born Vharnish. You of all people in Bharncair should know the stories of the Ravens.”

“What stories?” she said plainly.

He finally glanced at her then.

“The horror stories,” he said. “They’re monsters, for better or worse, for Vharnveil or Bharncair. How could you possibly tolerate being partnered with one?”

Maeve just kept chewing. For a few moments, that was her only answer. She slurped in the last of the noodle strand hanging from her chopsticks, swallowed, and sat there with her head just slightly tilted, as if his question had arrived in a language she knew but didn’t especially understand.

Then she tilted her head the other way.

“Huh?” she mumbled. “What are you talking about again? I’m technically married to him, you know. Would I be scared of someone I’m married to?”

Jin stared. That wasn’t a proper answer to his answer, but… maybe it was. He’d just expected something more defensive coming from her. Something more principled coming from the strongest Exorcist Hunter he knew. Simply being ‘married’ to a Raven didn’t mean—

“I mean, I get it though,” she said, wiping the back of her mouth with her glove before going on with her bowl. “Ravens are scary. It was a Raven who killed my birth parents and led me to joining the Exorcists. I’d like to think I, of all people, still hate them. I don’t really feel like knowing more about any of them, but…” A faint smile tugged at the edge of her mouth. “Gael alone I’m interested in. The fact that he’s a Raven comes second to that.”

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“But there are plenty of stories about Ravens taking lovers, then going insane later and killing them,” he argued back. “You’re interested in him now because of his ‘dream’ or whatever, but what if—”

Maeve laughed. “He’ll never raise a hand to me. He’s too weak! If he ever tries to hit me, I’ll smack him over the head and shake him upside down for loose change!”

Jin remained quiet at that. It was partly because the image arrived in his head too clearly—somehow, he could imagine Gael getting rattled like a piggy bank under Maeve’s hands—but it was also partly because she’d said it with such calm, practical faith that it left no room for argument.

She trusted Gael, and that, if nothing else, was such a… foreign concept to him.

Maeve noticed his befuddlement, of course, so she turned on her stool just slightly enough to look at his face properly. Her chin was propped lightly against one hand now, mouth curving in a small, teasing smile.

“What?” she said. “Are you having relationship troubles with Vivi?”

“No,” he muttered quickly.

“Oh, you are.” Her smile widened even further. “Come on, come on, tell me all about it. I’m no Cara with her handbook of a thousand human hearts, but—”

“It’s not anything,” he said, gritting his teeth. “It’s just… Vivienne is… she’s too—”

“Weak in both body and spirit?” she finished. Then she tilted her head, grinning at him. “Is that it?”

Then she finished the last of her noodles and leaned back on her stool, letting out a low groan of contentment.

“Saintess,” she muttered, patting her stomach lightly. “That healed something in me.” She raised a finger towards the chef behind the counter. “One more bowl, please.”

The chef barely gave a nod before he immediately set to work once again. Meanwhile, Maeve leaned back forward and propped her chin up on the counter, looking sidelong at Jin.

“You know how I didn’t finish my full Hunter training,” she started, “but from what little I saw up in Vharnveil, most Exorcist Hosts don’t even dare be in the same room as a Myrmur during an exorcism unless they really, really have to be there. Training says Exorcist Hosts have to fight Myrmur Hosts, but I don’t think that’s realistically true, either. Most Exorcist Hunters are the ones fighting two-on-one.”

Her mouth tilted faintly.

“In that sense, Vivi following you all the way down into Bharncair—an entirely unfamiliar city full of unfamiliar people and unfamiliar filth—and then still being willing to stand in the same room as living Myrmurs during most of your exorcisms…” She shrugged. “That sounds brave to me, you know? You wouldn’t find many Exorcist Hosts in Vharnveil willing to stick this close to you on your exorcisms. Do you know why then, that she’s willing to go this far for you?”

Jin scowled. “It’s not—”

“Important?” Maeve cut in. “It is important, though. Do you know why Vivi became an Exorcist Host?”

He opened his mouth—and then realized nothing useful would come out. He thought about Vivienne as he knew her now, with her silk skin hidden beneath practical clothes, a posture too straight to go for a Bharnish, a rifle she hesitated to use, and eyes that kept betraying more feeling than she ever meant them to. He thought about the first day she’d been placed beside him. The weeks after. Her persistence, her awkward efforts, and her refusal to leave his side even when she was obviously not fit for the job…

Then he thought about how little any of that actually explained about her.

“... No,” he muttered at last. “I don’t.”

Maeve shrugged back. “Just about everybody in Blightmarch already knows both of your backstories at this point. Apparently it’s only the two of you who don’t know each other’s. So ,if you don’t know who she is, how exactly do you know she’s really weak in both body and spirit? What do you know of the resolve she must’ve mustered to follow you all the way down here?”

The chef over the counter must be the saint of noodle-making, because Maeve only put down her new order a minute ago, and already he was placing a new bowl before her on the counter. Her eyes lit up in delight as she clapped her hands, immediately digging her chopsticks into the oily broth.

“Well, it is true that Vivi’s… erm, weak in body,” she said, her voice muffled between bites. “But don’t be fooled by that. I read this in a philosophy book written by a Professor Fabre some months ago, and in it, he wrote… what was it? ‘As chains become an accessory, submission becomes second nature, and a man’s posture, their nature, and even their fate begins to take the form of a prisoner. Don’t imprison a man by treating him like something, and you won’t get a man who is that something’. Something of the sort.”

She finished the quote and smiled at him, tapping her chopsticks against the rim of her bowl.

“People can change down here,” she said. “You may not like Vivi right now for being an upper-city lady who’s weak in body, but keep an eye on her. Look at her. Compliment her when she does well. Don’t treat her like a weakling, and you may be surprised at just how strong a Vharnish lady can get down here. You only need to look at me to know that’s true.”

Jin’s fingers tightened slightly around his own chopsticks.

His noodles had gone soft now. The broth would still be good—he knew that—but the appetite he’d had earlier had dulled under the weight of her words.

I was… chaining her?

He’d been irritated at her, yes. Frustrated, even more so, but chaining?

Beside him, Maeve finally followed his gaze down at his bowl—perhaps to see whether he’d gone mute on purpose or because his noodles weren’t that good—but then her eyes moved even lower as she seemed to have caught something interesting.

Then she blinked.

“Huh,” she muttered. She leaned slightly sideways on her stool so she could get a better peek beneath the counter. “Where’s your bloodshackle?”

That pulled his attention back. He glanced down reflexively at his own ankle.

“I detached it,” he said plainly.

“You did what?”