City of Burning Snow

"To...protect..."

The sentinel muttered indistinctly.

The impact of rails and wheels shook.He yelled loudly, as if breaking free from a nightmare from which he could never wake up again. He opened his eyes and saw that he was locked in a small white space. Such a quiet environment does not belong to a building. The outside rustled past, it was a car.

He got up and looked around again carefully.This is the auto-guided car from New Russia. The interior of the car is all white and dazzling, and the dam has disappeared behind him at some point.Dostoevsky is not here.But his spiritual body is sitting beside Gogol, and the spiritual body "Punishment" is humming "Ode to Joy" melodiously. He seems to be in a good mood, resting his fingers on the edge of his cheek and tapping the music lightly rhythm.Seeing him waking up, he stopped humming.

"Woke up again, Mr. Monster, did you miss me?"

"...Punishment!" Gogol's question came straight out of his throat, and he coughed immediately, "Where's Fedya? How is he? I'm now..."

"I had a good 10 minutes with no one to pass the time. Man, you're in good spirits."

"what?"

"—'what', 'how', 'why'."

Punishment did not answer his question directly.

Under Gogol's stare, Punishment smiled to himself like sleepwalking.He obviously likes to arouse the anxiety of the other party, because his speaking speed has obviously slowed down.

"Do you know what character you remind me of? The Mad Hatter who was deliberately lost at the forest tea party by Lewis Carroll: Tyrone Hightop. As soon as he woke up, he stared at a pair of curious eyes and talked about all kinds of things. The problem... Actually? Actually, he doesn't want to know anything at all..."

"Listen to me!" Gogol felt a strong sense of guilt in his stomach, and the touch of Dostoevsky's scars was still in his palm, but he couldn't see anyone.He figured that since the punishment was in front of him, Dostoevsky was at least alive.He may also be in a dream or a memory somewhere, and he urgently needs to know what is going on outside now—did Dostoevsky survive?

Just when the word "memory" jumped into his mind, Xing's smile was greatly evoked.

"You see, Mr. Tyrone himself will know what his tea-party is about, but he hopes he never wakes up, preferably sleeps like the Dormouse."

"You are here to show that Fei Jia is still alive! Ping, listen to me, our previous bet seems to be void, I—"

"You revealed the secret between us to sin, didn't you?"

Punishment suddenly came to him during his words.The faces are very close together, nose to nose.Punishment widened his happy eyes, like a demon that had captured a human being, he stared at Gogol, and his voice began to overlap ear-splittingly.

"You have broken your promise, Gogol/Yanovsky. You may despise a spiritual bet, but because of your negligence, Dostoevsky may not wake up."

"You nonsense!" Gogol trembled for a moment.He clenched his fingers. "Aren't you still alive? If something happens to Fedya, both you and I should know. You can't be safe and sound like this!"

"Really?" Punishment looked at the humans playfully.He seemed to have a completely different view on this, but he didn't intend to reveal it all. "I've never lost a game, as long as the other party is a human being... However, I'm afraid you will forget your promise if you don't confirm some of our bets with you."

"……promise?"

Gogol's foot hits a small bag.The case popped open, and he looked down to see that it contained a coat, an old pocket watch, and some fountain pens.For some reason, there was a hand puppet he sewed for Dostoyevsky in his luggage. Judging from the arrangement, it seemed that he had organized the items himself, but he had no memory of it at all.Xun's head was leaning against the car window, and his hair was softly messed up beside his ears.He looks sideways at Gogol and folds his arms casually across his chest.Unlike Gogol, he is most at ease in the spiritual world, where there is nothing to worry about.He began to tell, and while he was talking, a deck of cards appeared in his hand.

"Four hours ago, when we were sitting in this car, you started to run away because of my presence. Ah, of course, you must not know it, the sentries who ran away were not aware of their aggressiveness."

Punisher played with the poker cards in his hand, shuffling the cards skillfully and skillfully, which attracted Gogol's attention.The cards were originally the most common printed matter with a blue check pattern. In the process of drawing and cutting cards continuously, their backs gradually changed their patterns, turning into eyes one after another.These eyes are different from Gogol's own nightmare vision. They are all painted with a monotonous dark red, and the black line outlined is very thick, with an ancient Nordic style.

Xun arranged some cards on the seat, the order was random, but every time he turned over a card, Gogol's memory was opened up a little bit.

"You also know that your rampage is very different from ordinary sentinels. Its attack on the spirit body and the guide is too weird. In order not to shorten my outing time unexpectedly, I have to use my method to let Your spiritual power can be stabilized in your own body again."

"Tarot... By the way, you seem to have made a few prophecies," Gogol frowned and recalled carefully, and the lost memory returned to the same way as the pattern on the card. "You said that at some point in the future, I will completely...destroy Fei Jia's mental power. In order to prevent this from happening, you need to make a deal with me."

"That's right, if I spoke directly at that time, you didn't seem to receive it at all. But your understanding of pictures is far better than words... I came up with this method."

His eyes moved with the fine fingers.The ancient Waite Tarot pattern exhibits spine-chilling implications.The face of the first card is light blue, with bright yellow starlight flowing from the human cup.The second one is shrouded in gloomy black tones, it is the Tower of Babylon broken by the lightning of the gods...

"It's not so much a prophecy, but a more accurate explanation is just a derivation from experience! Whether it's cards or words, as long as the thoughts can be conveyed, and your subconscious mind can be extracted from a state of disorder—"

A demon card was pinched in his fingertips, his face was stuck next to the card, his head was tilted, and he squinted and smiled at Gogol. There was a dark purple abyss at the bottom of the eyes that humans could not understand.

"Once I tell you that if you keep getting out of control like this, you're going to hurt your friend. You seem to quiet down like a collie. It's been tried and tested."

As he spoke, the lover's card fell upside down and fell out of the palm of the penalty.He sighed and picked it up nonchalantly.He started shuffling the cards again, and placed "The Fool", "Temperance" and "Chariot" on the previous card formation, and spread them out in front of Gogol like a fan.

"Four days ago, when you tried to maintain your will by cutting off drugs, you not only grasped the node that has kept you from being free for a long time, that is, the capture and control of you by New Russia-and committed your most fundamental crime. One mistake: You are always too eager for quick success.”

Knocking on the head of the Fool's card, the young man in the card is carrying a wooden stick, and his head is up to bathe in the warm sunshine behind him.The Fool is dressed in fine clothes, and white roses grow out of his palms because of his ideals. There is a cliff at his feet, and he will fall into the abyss if he takes a step forward.

"You don't have the ability to control your mind yet, so you stopped taking the medicine out of enthusiasm. He had already expected that it might become like this, so he asked me to pick you up, not himself."

He chewed on his nails and focused his attention on Gogol's expression. Gogol thoughtfully, moved his eyes from the cliff to the lion on the temperance card, and then slowly moved to the two beasts on the chariot card.

"Fei Jia has long been disappointed in me."

Gogol chewed on the bitterness in his heart, he felt that this loss was completely unimportant in front of the mistakes he made.

Wasn't he exactly the kind of fool the punishment implied?

There was never a realistic consideration in his mind that he could neither help Dostoevsky resolve Belinsky's interrogation nor protect his guide from his own monster-like abilities.All he did from beginning to end was to do whatever he wanted like a child.He disrupted all of Dostoevsky's plans, he wounded Dostoevsky to pieces...

His hands trembled, but he no longer showed his victim's face.

His heart had never been so calm, and he remembered that a few hours ago, maybe a few days ago, when he re-entered the threshold of Dostoevsky's office, he thought he had it all figured out... at all Not so.

"I made a bet with you."

He recalled word by word, for no other reason, because he remembered that even now, every word he said was likely to be part of his bet with the punishment.

"Before I made the bet, the reason why I agreed to the bet was because you said...you believe that I, Gogol, cannot control all my mental power, and this may affect Fedya's choice of me."

"Yes, yes, continue talking. I'm listening." Punishment said with a smile. "What else did I say?"

"You also said that all this is just a matter of time." Gogol recalled, his right hand moved slowly to the eyes unconsciously, "You said that you have a way to let me remove the unstable factors before I have mastered the ability. Separated, you said that I have a small part of the spiritual power of the guide, which cannot be integrated with the body of the sentinel, so it always causes a rampage—"

His right eye ached.

Gogol raised his head warily, he remembered, he remembered everything!

He couldn't dodge, he took the sharp knife in his hand one step earlier - pushed him down, pressed him on the seat, and before he broke free, the tip of the knife had already pierced his eyes...

"Ah ah ah ah ah ah ah--"

Xun licked the blood on the tip of the knife, and a bright, golden-orange light shone on the tip.

That is the small part of the guiding ability in Nikolai Gogol's spirit. It has been combined with Dostoyevsky's guiding ability. When it was extracted, the figure of punishment also briefly Blurred for a moment.

"Hehe, I've come to take what belongs to me, Mr. Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol."

Gogol was panting heavily, and when he fell to the ground, the silent carriage around him had disappeared.All the punished cards disappeared, all of which were just preparations made by the mental body to reclaim the bet.

"Sin always makes me punish others and treats me like a tool... He often forgets one of the most basic things. 'Sin' and 'punishment' are both friends and enemies."

He squatted down, his face belonging to Dostoevsky was so handsome, but when he looked at Gogol, Gogol deeply understood one thing, that was not his Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky.

This is another person that Dostoevsky deliberately created and trusted in order to restrain himself.A mindset closer to gods and demons.

"If human beings must have sins due to self-limitation, the first thing I focus on must be the one who created me. I have long wanted to obtain part of the power of sin... Fufufu, it's really delicious."

Retracting the knife, he restrained the cruel pleasure on his face, bent down, and stretched out his friendly right hand to Gogol.

"Okay, don't pretend that it hurts, it's just cutting out the part of your ability that you don't want all the time, it's a good thing for yourself."

The latter stared at the hand, did not extend it, but stood up unsteadily.

"Since you already have this ability...you have long wanted to take this kind of thing away, why didn't you do it in the first place."

If the punishment on the car hadn't been such a roundabout way of making a bet, instead of playing virtual cards, if it had directly taken away his Gogol's guiding ability, Dostoevsky would not have suffered so much. sin.Seeing Gogol's slightly disgusted eyes, Xing withdrew his hand innocently.

"Because that is what sin itself wishes."

"Impossible...he is so smart, he has a better solution! He should abandon me..."

"In one of his guesses, he did estimate that the compatibility with you is too high, and this will lead to an irreversible impulse to combine. But he has long been mentally prepared for this, Mr. Nikolai -"

Ping slowly paced around him, with his hands behind his back, just as excited as when he was admiring Gogol's nightmare in the dam.As he dropped his words softly, white pigeons swarmed out from the ground behind him.

"—he just wants you."

"He... wants me?"

Gogol's thinking stagnated for a long time.

Like a desperate lover, he knelt by the spring pool and lost his most precious ring in the water.Flocks of bird wings flitted across the stone brick floor in front of him, and he watched his reflection in the orange and white brick surface.

He knew that everything Xing said was true, because he was completely integrated with Fyodor Dostoevsky after all, and he could feel whether the other party was telling the truth or lying, even if it was just the other party's spiritual body.But he could no longer accept such happiness at the moment.

How much he needs such a sentence... But now, holding such a need for implementation, it is like holding him to wear the shackles of sin.Everything is from him.It was because of him that Dostoevsky was always silent...

Sitting on the edge of the white marble of the fountain, the toes of his shoes skimmed the clear water.

"He wants me to punish him, and he wants you to love him. He needs us as much as the world needs him. You, you were so stupid, you missed so many good opportunities to hear him Saying these words, what you think in your heart is like a mirror in the eyes of sin. You think that your health is not good, you think that your status is not good. You even think that important words must be accompanied by a bouquet of flowers... In your scruples At this and that time, seven years have passed away. Sin has been waiting for you to pass away, but you have not come."

Xun stirred the spring water, stooped to pick up a marble from the pool, and looked into it facing the sunlight, his eyes shining with the golden color of Gogol's pupils.Gogol listened to him quietly, the weather was getting colder, and there was no longer the scorching daylight in Roman towns.He knew that the penalty was ready to leave, and returned to the spiritual world that belonged exclusively to Dostoyevsky. Of course, he could also follow the penalty and go in together. Now he can enter the world of Dostoyevsky's mind. any corner.But he doesn't want to go.

He watched as Punisher stood up and shook the water droplets on the tip of his shoes.He also took a few steps forward, and he felt that the world in front of him was slowly leaving his vision.

"Before you wake up, let me remind you kindly. Count it as a tip, after all, your eyes are very delicious."

Xun Xing walked slowly along the fountain pool to the distance, his back was getting farther and farther away, and the voice entered Gogol's mind faintly.Gogol woke up, fully awake this time, and found himself emerging from the soft and heavy velvet quilt, next to the bed with a four-poster net, and floor-to-ceiling windows projecting colorful colors on the quilt .

The words of punishment echoed in his mind for a long time. It will eventually be forgotten by his memory, but it will always be engraved in Gogol's soul.

"When you feel loved, don't worry too much, just run as hard as you can. Who do you think your Fedya is? Doesn't he think about you? Don't underestimate us. Nikolai Gogol, never underestimate us..."

Punishment told him that in this world, in the end, only sin and punishment will stand by God's side, and he only needs to make human efforts. It is useless, naive, powerful, disorderly, disorderly and disturbing to continue like this. fascinated.It is quite enough for Gogol to be like that, it is good that he exists as Gogol.

Beside him, the real Dostoevsky was sleeping in a soft white pillow, his beautiful cheeks were carefully pasted with white cotton and bandages, his head was stitched up, and the bandages were scattered broken hair.Gogol leaned down and kissed Dostoyevsky's forehead like a cicada's wings.

The door was slowly pushed open, and the white-haired man cast uninterested glances at the two of them.

"When did you wake up?"

"...Mr. Shibusawa."

"I asked when you woke up."

"just now."

The red eyes flicked for a moment, Shibusawa glanced at the sleeping Dostoevsky, and there seemed to be an imperceptible "tsk" between his lips and teeth.

He put the two glasses of water and the glass water jar on the chair at the door, and did not explain to Gogol that he was in his mansion. He was not interested in discussing the next action with the sentry, and did not ask him what he was doing now. No matter how the injury was, he seemed to treat Gogol as a decoration.

Shibusawa Tatsuhiko's indifference was very frank. Since Dostoevsky was still awake, he turned around and left.

tbc.