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While working in one of Ray’s commissions, Wise had requested Hugo and to help out while his sister Belle controlled Eous to be their additional support from the video store. Things were smooth in the first area of the lost void, including their usual bickering over the older Paethon that was already a routine to him.
However, when entering the next fissure that was supposed to be a break room to rest, Wise found himself separated from the group in an unknown area. The carrot data in his phone malfunctioned the whole system, unable to reach for anyone to get help.
He lifted a hand to rub his head tiredly to mutter. “I could still do a manual calculation for the next fissure to appear but… I hope Belle is safe with Lycaon and Hugo.”
Something about this place was unusual even though the desolated streets were familiar and no different from the ones he explored before. Just before he could resign his fate to wait for his team to arrive, a familiar voice called out to him. “I knew it. So that’s where you have been, manager.”
Wise immediately turned to where the voice was and sighed in relief. “Hugo! Thank goodness you’re here!”
Hugo’s tall silhouette emerged from between two fractured buildings, coat-tails fluttering as if they caught a wind no one else could feel.
“Relief is mutual, my dear manager,” The blond-haired thief acknowledged with a teasing lit in his voice. “Your signal vanished the moment we crossed the last threshold. Lycaon and the second manager is combing the western quadrant; I circled east.”
The silver-haired Proxy let out the breath he’d been holding. “Good. My carrot is still acting crazy on my phone, so I can’t ping coordinates. The topology here is… Wrong.”
He gestured at the crumbling street: the lamp-posts leaned inward like iron trees, every shadow bent toward a single distant point. Hugo’s heterochromatic gaze followed the gesture, narrowing. “A focal distortion. Something wants us to walk that way.”
Wise’s phone beeped a noise, on the screen showing a blinking dot for him to analyze. “There’s a fissure near us a few meters ahead. We should stay cautioned—Woah!”
Hugo immediately pulled the younger man close to him by the waist, chuckling amusedly at the shade of red coloring his cheeks. He murmured, the smirk evident in his voice as his grip lingered a second too long. “Careful. You almost tripped into a sinkhole without watching your steps, my dear Proxy.”
Wise’s pulse stuttered at the contact, but he quickly pushed away from Hugo’s hold, trying to regain composure. “Y-You could’ve just warned me….”
“And miss the chance to catch you like a knight in shining armor?” The blond-haired man quipped, stepping around the glitching spot on the street. “Perish the thought.”
Wise rolled his eyes, face still warm. “Focus, Hugo. We need to locate that fissure before the terrain shifts again.”
“As you wish,” Hugo held out his hand to him and smiled. “Let me lead you the way to the exit before we stay too late in the void.”
The older Phaethon nodded and when he reached out to hold his hand, he shivered sharply at the powerful energy that stung the inside of his eyes and quickly pulled back to rub it. Hugo raised an eyebrow at him curiously. “Manager?”
“I’m fine…,” Wise quietly groaned. It was weird that the implants were behaving abnormally right now. “Sorry, let’s get going, Hugo.”
Hugo’s eyes lingered on him for a moment longer, lips parting as if to press the matter—but he said nothing. Instead, he merely dipped his head with that ever-enigmatic smile and turned to lead them through the flickering eerie glow purple portal to the next area.
-x-
The next section of the desolated and corrupt street they entered was as vicious as the previous. The air too quiet and heavy with pressure from Ether energy. With each step closer to the marked fissure, Wise’s vision wavered slightly, the lines of the world bending subtly at the corners of his green eyes.
“Something is wrong,” The silver-haired Proxy thought, blinking hard. His implants had been calibrated this morning. There was no reason for—
“You’ve gone quiet,” Hugo remarked lightly without turning around, his voice oddly grounding in the surreal atmosphere. “That usually means your mind is on fire with questions or paranoia.”
Wise muttered and rubbed his eyes. “Both. The terrain distortion’s affecting my implants. Vision’s warping at the edges. And my perception matrix is misaligned.”
“Do you wish for me to carry you, my dear princess?” Hugo teased, glancing back with a wolfish grin. “You know I don’t mind playing the hero for you, even if dear Lycaon would throw a fit.”
“‘Dear Lycaon?’ Had they really been that close and make up now?” The silver-haired man questioned curiously in his mind. The last thing he recalled before losing the two older man, they were still at each other throats on who got in the way from the last elite monster like old enemies.
Maybe for his own sanity sometimes, it was better that they argued less for their own health.
Hugo chuckled lightly as if he could hear the thoughts racing behind Wise’s sharp green gaze. “Oh, don’t look so surprised. We’ve 'mostly' called a truce. Nothing brings people together quite like being trapped in a Hollow.”
Wise snorted, despite himself. “That’s comforting.”
“But don’t worry,” Hugo added with a wink. “Even if Lycaon and I are pretending to get along, 'you’re' will always be my favorite source of chaos.”
Wise snorted softly—but something tugged at his gut. Hugo’s charm was as sharp as ever, but underneath it...
Something was wrong.
Before he could dwell on it, a low growl echoed ahead. They both turned.
Three malformed shapes emerged—ether-corrupted horrors, all angular limbs and smeared void-faces. The phantom thief clicked his tongue with a cold look. “It seems some nitwits wish to interrupt our moment together.”
Without hesitation, Hugo swung his briefcase to transform it into the large scythe. The curved blade catching the strange, fractured glow of the void. And the weapon shimmered as if it remembered blood from the hunt.
From the shadows ahead, three creatures lurched into view—manifestations of corrupted Ether, jagged and skeletal, with flickering limbs that bent wrong. Their faces were faceless, smeared voids stretched into hungry maws, leaking raw code like ink.
“Ethereals,” Wise identified quickly, eyes narrowing. “Keep your distance while I—”
“Fret not, my dear,” Hugo interrupted, spinning his scythe into a low, loose stance. “They will never lay a single hand on you while I’m here by your side. However… You always attract the creepiest admirers, manager.”
The older Phaethon didn’t grace that with a reply, already gone off to find a safe place to hide and support as his usual protocol of a Proxy while his Agents handled the combat.
As Hugo stepped forward, the scythe in his hands danced like a living thing—an extension of his will. The corrupted Ethereals shrieked, an unholy cacophony of code and malice, and rushed forward with glitching, twitching limbs.
In a fluid and practiced motion, Hugo spun into the first strike—an elegant arc that cleaved through one of the creatures cleanly and swiftly. The impact scattered corrupted data into the air like dying sparks.
The second monster lunged, but Hugo sidestepped, using the momentum to hook his scythe around its neck and yank it down. With a second motion, he severed its head from its body, all in a flourish of silver and glee of his mismatched eyes.
Finally, the last Ethereal screeched and tried to head towards where Wise was, splitting away from its comrade. But Hugo intercepted with his scythe raised high and swung it downwards in a single powerful movement. The clean cut slammed the creature into the ground, where it glitched violently and disintegrated.
The silence that followed was heavy, the void almost seeming to hold its breath. Hugo murmured, brushing imaginary dust off his coat. “You’re safe now, my dear Proxy. No one will dare to lay a hand on you anymore.”
Wise’s chest was tightened as he darted his eyes between the hand and the man himself. It was fear that was turning his veins cold, but unease.
That had been Hugo—his precision, quips and swagger. But something in the way he fought... It wasn’t quite right. If he had to compare him and Lycaon, the wolf butler often fought with elegance and grace while swiftly dealing with his enemies.
Hugo’s way of holding his scythe had often compared himself to an executioner to deliver the judgment the sinners deserved in his eyes, fiercer and cunning. But the way he killed those Ethereals and relishing in their death, it was like a killer who enjoyed ending life itself than to bring justice.
Wise’s unease deepened as he watched Hugo sheathe the scythe back into his briefcase, the usual gleam in his two-colored eyes now tinged with something colder—more distant, as if a mask had slipped just briefly to reveal a shadow beneath.
“Are you all right?” The silver-haired man asked cautiously, stepping closer but maintaining a safe distance, still wary.
Hugo’s grin returned quickly, but it was sharper, less warm. He ran a hand through his tousled blond hair. “Perfectly fine. It feels a bit too easy, if anything. These Ethereals are nothing compared to the real challenge waiting for us.”
Wise frowned. “You say that like you know something I don’t.”
“I do.” Hugo’s eyes locked onto Wise’s with that unsettling intensity. “This fissure… It’s not natural. Something’s been growing in the void—feeding on chaos and pain. And it’s waiting for us.”
Before Wise could respond, a sudden tremor shook the fractured ground beneath their feet. The air thickened, charged with oppressive Ether energy that seemed to warp the very space around them. And another fissure appeared in front of them as though awaiting for them.
“Shall we?” The phantom thief offered his hand out to the younger man again with a loving smile. This time instead of the flutter that Wise felt from his stomach, it was chilling and frightening than before.
The silver-haired Proxy stared at the outstretched hand—so familiar, so practiced in its charm—and yet every instinct inside him screamed don’t.
His green eyes flicked up to Hugo’s face. The smile was there, pristine and perfect, but something behind it twitched. The older man’s pupils didn’t dilate the same way. His shoulders were just a little too still. The mask was there—but so was the crack in it.
Still, Wise forced himself to steady. He was the legendary Proxy Phaethon. He couldn’t let emotion cloud his judgment, even if the tremble in his limbs whispered otherwise.
“…We’ll go together,” Wise said at last, ignoring the offered hand and stepping past Hugo to face the portal. “But I’m logging every abnormality once we return. Something’s wrong with this place.”
Hugo let his hand fall with a shrug and a soft hum of amusement. “As clinical as ever. But I suppose I’ve always loved that about you.”
Wise didn’t respond and then entered into the fissure together with the phantom thief behind. The sooner he could find Lycaon, the truth would be known behind this strange Hollow activity.
-x-
Unlike the last two areas, the oppressive air of Ether was weaker when Wise spotted the familiar deserted street view of the Hollow.
He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was still off.
The visual distortions had faded, and the pressure on his implants eased the moment they stepped through the fissure. For a second, Wise allowed himself a breath of relief. The faint buzz in his head quieted. He could hear the distant hum of the Hollow stabilizing, as if the area was closer to the natural void cycles he’d went through with his other fellow Agents.
But the calm didn’t settle his nerves. Lycaon and Eous were nowhere in sight. There were no combat traces, no messages from the wolf Thiren or his sister through the Knock-Knock app. The streets were haunting still, bathed in that muted violet light with no clear direction.
Hugo’s voice broke the silence again, soft and slow this time. “You’re hesitating.”
Wise’s gaze flicked to him. The thief stood only a few feet behind, still calm, still composed—but that same wrongness lingered in the way he moved. Not sluggish… No, controlled, like he was watching every breath he took. Too perfect. Too measured. It wasn’t Hugo—or rather, not the version of Hugo Wise had come to know so intimately, with all his cracks and chaos and heart.
Wise shifted his stance cautiously with a blank expression. “I’m scanning against the carrot data to get latest update into my phone. Lycaon’s ID should’ve pinged by now. There’s no signal—not even interference. That’s not normal.”
“Neither is this Hollow,” The phantom thief hummed thoughtfully, stepping beside him in a relaxed posture. “You saw it too, didn’t you? How the streets leaned inward. How the shadows moved. This place has been... repurposed. Someone’s been shaping it.”
The Proxy’s green eyes narrowed. “Shaping it?”
“To pull you in. To isolate you. Like a spider weaving a web for its favorite prey.”
Wise didn’t like the implications. “You’re saying this Hollow is sentient?”
“No.” Hugo chuckled. “I’m saying it’s being guided by something—or someone—who knows you.”
The Proxy’s hand drifted instinctively to his phone, pressing a few buttons and praying to himself. It would be a while for his comrades to get his message of his whereabouts, and hoping the phone signal do get better to reach either one.
But… Right now with no other better timing to affirm the suspicion, Wise simply smiled at Hugo. “Hey, Hugo.”
“What is it, manager?” Hugo answered him.
The silver-haired man’s lips quirked up slightly and he said. “Steal! The light! Of the moon!”
The phrase rang through the Hollow like a bell—clear, defiant, familiar. Hugo’s expression shifted in an instant. The composed smile faltered just barely at the edges, flickering like faulty code. His mismatched eyes widened—not in confusion, but in recognition.
It was a code that Wise played with Hugo on a whim when he messaged the older man.
But now, this man before him didn’t respond. Not with the matching code. Not with the instinctual flash of rebellion in his grin, or the shared theater that had always existed between them.
Instead, ‘Hugo’ blinked slowly, like he was processing something he didn’t expect. His head tilted, too smooth and echoed amusedly. “Steal the light of the moon…? That’s quite a poetic thing to say, manager.”
Not the response the older Phaethon expected just like he predicted, and his stomach dropped in horror.
This wasn’t Hugo. He didn’t need any further proof.
The real Hugo would’ve smirked, whispered back ‘To illuminate! Cramped! Dark Alley!’ from his message. Then, he would tease Wise to join the syndicate like he always did whenever they hung out. But this… Person... standing before him wore his face like a mask.
It mimicked his posture, voice, charm—but not the soul. Not the cracks and chaos he loved, the history and everything of the man himself. Wise’s hand holding his phone tightened. “You’re not Hugo. Who are you?”
The not-Hugo didn’t flinch. In fact, he smiled. Wider. Almost relieved with a now delighted, feral smirk.
“Well,” The mimic sighed, the charade sloughing off like a skin. “You always were quicker than most.”
The voice changed slightly—just a degree more distorted, like another layer underneath the mask began to bleed through. The tone remained pleasant, even theatrical, but now there was something else in it. A flicker of static at the edges.
The not-Hugo’s mismatched eyes now both transformed glowing red with black sclera of its eyes, raising both of its hand to applaud for uncovering the truth. “You’ve been wandering so long, Wise. I thought it’d take longer for you to notice. But then, maybe deep down… You didn’t want to see it. You still wanted him to be here when the same person is standing before you.”
Wise’s jaw clenched. “An ionized doppelganger. But you’re too intelligent to just be an average doppelganger too. How—?”
“You will have to pass your gratitude to the other me instead.” The doppelganger-Hugo’s right hand formed a finger gun shaped to press onto the side of his head, while his toothy grin grew maliciously wider. “He had drugged himself multiple of medications to find out what his own dear uncle messed with his drink. But I’m sure he doesn’t notice those drugs together with Hartman had only given me a living form to roam in the Hollows.”
The older Phaethon's blood turned ice cold.
“You’re a projection,” Wise breathed, the pieces clicking into place like falling glass. “No… Worse. You’re a sentient byproduct from those Exaltists. Born from Hugo’s own ego and amplified by the ether energy. But that shouldn’t be possible, you shouldn’t be able to exist.”
The mimic tilted its head again, lips peeling back into a grin too wide for Hugo’s face.
“And yet, here I am,” It purred, voice glitching just enough to crawl under Wise’s skin. “Born from fragments—his regrets, his deepest desire that he bottled it up all inside him. Hartman gave the Ether a door… And poor Hugo cracked it wide open for all his plans to outwit his own uncle.”
“Stop saying his name,” Wise snapped, his voice sharp with fury. “If you think coming after me for revenge to your other self under Hartman’s order is going to work… Then I hate to break it to you that you aren’t going to get anything out from my dead body.”
For the first time, something flickered in the doppelganger’s expression. Not anger. Amusement. The doppelganger-Hugo threw his head to laugh wildly and loudly before he purred in a sickeningly sweet tone. “Revenge? Oh… No~ You’re wrong, how very wrong you are. I don’t care about Hartman’s pathetic vengeance on his nephew. You, however, are my target in this whole hunt I’ve planned.”
The older Phaethon glanced to the side and his back. The next fissure would come in a few minutes and then he could—
“Where do you think you’re going, my dear~?” The doppelganger’s voice whispered tenderly into his ear. Before Wise could shove him away to run, his arms were grabbed and twisted behind his back with inhuman strength. A shock of Ether ice energy surged through the mimic’s hands, sending jolts of cold static through Wise’s body and rendering his limbs numb.
“Ah, ah, ah,” The doppelganger cooed, tilting Wise’s chin up with a mock-gentle touch. “No running now. Don’t you want to know the truth? To know what Hugo was hiding from you, what he was too afraid to say. After all, he is me and I am him.”
Wise spat back at him fiercely, trying to lean away from the doppelganger. “No, you’re not! Even if you’re born from his mind, you are only a part of what Hugo is!”
The doppelganger's smile twisted into something far crueler at Wise's outburst. “Ah… But sometimes a part is all that matters, Proxy. The part that hurts, lingers and the things he never let you see because it was too monstrous, too pathetic, too ‘weak.’ That’s what I am. Everything he caged inside himself just to keep you looking at him the way you used to.”
Wise struggled against the binding grip, but his limbs remained heavy and half-numb. The Ether energy coiled through his nerves like poison. He gritted his teeth, sweat forming at his brow as he strained against the paralysis, forcing himself to stay focused.
“You don’t get to rewrite him,” The silver-haired man growled. “Hugo may be reckless, selfish, even manipulative—but he chose to change. He fought against whatever you are. He wanted to become the person he wants to be!”
The doppelganger-Hugo leaned close, and its voice dropped to a whisper that sent chills crawling up Wise’s spine. “Are you so sure he didn’t want this? Do you know? The number of times he wants to lock you up in his own gallery for his private view. The times he wants to carve out those eyes from your so-called friends who were getting too close to his liking. And how much he want to fuck you raw until your broken mind could only want for him?”
Its eyes gleamed with that eerie, distorted red glow. “He was the one who fed me every time he denied his own desire—each secret fear, every whispered regret, every fragment of his fractured soul. I am the shadow he cast aside, the truth he dared not face, and now, I am here to claim what he buried deep inside.”
Its grip tightened, and the air around them pulsed with dark Ether. The Hollow itself began to shift—the area rippled like liquid glass, the buildings groaning with invisible pressure. A distortion bloomed in the sky, forming a spiral above them like an unblinking eye.
“Now, I get to finish what he never had the courage to,” The mimic said with almost reverent delight. “He couldn’t hurt you. He loved you too much. But me…? Oh, I can ‘love’ you the way he never could—!”
A blast of cold energy beam fired towards the doppelganger-Hugo. It noticed and quickly jumped backwards, causing Wise to fall forward once he was released from the grip. Only then to fall into a familiar warmth that secured his body in a warm embrace.
“How amusing, I don’t recall that I would shared my prized treasure with others. Even if it is to my own self.” The familiar flamboyant voice hummed coldly at his own dark reflection standing in front of him.
Wise’s green eyes grew big at the recognition, tilting his head upwards to see the blond-haired man with grey-blue and red eyes turned his gaze towards him fondly that matched his smile. “Hu… Hugo, is that really you…?”
“My, my~” Hugo crooned, his lips curling into that unmistakable, maddening smile that always danced on the line between mischief and sincerity. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost, my dear manager.”
Wise could hardly breathe. It was him.
The real Hugo—long hair slightly tousled from exertion, coat billowing as if in defiance of the Hollow’s shifting gravity, and eyes brimming not with the static malice of the doppelganger, but with something far more human.
Pain, relief, and an ironclad fury that simmered beneath the charm.
The phantom thief stood protectively behind Wise, one arm still holding him steady against his chest, the other raised and charged with residual etherlight from the shot he’d fired from his scythe. The Hollow seemed to pulse in confusion, as if the presence of the real one had disrupted its mimicry.
“Oh, you’re angry,” The doppelganger laughed, still crouched from its evasive jump. “How delicious. I wasn’t sure if you’d find him in time, but here you are. You came running like a good little knight. I wonder—what gave me away this time? Was it the eyes? The teeth? The honesty?”
Hugo’s expression remained unreadable as he slowly let go of Wise and stepped forward to let out a frosty snort. "What gave you away? Do I truly have to answer my own questions? I knew my own plans and schemes if I want to take Wise with me whenever I could."
The grin thinned, the chill in the thief's voice cutting sharper than any blade. “But you tried to play a part without knowing the full script. That was your first mistake. You forgot the most important rule of the stage…”
He raised one gloved hand and swung down his briefcase to transform into a scythe. “I never improvise my heart.”
The doppelganger's smile twitched, lips twitching just enough to hint at a deeper fury lurking beneath its amusement.
“Touching,” It said, standing to full height again and its briefcase also shifted into a scythe, preparing to engage with its counterpart in a fight.
Just as Wise was to warn Hugo, another familiar of a young woman cried out. "They are over there, Lycaon! Wise!!"
Wise turned around to see Lycaon and Eous rushing towards them. The Bangboo leaped up and jumped into the silver-haired man’s arms and cried. “Thank goodness, you’re okay! What happened back there—?!”
“The thing is—!”
“There are now two Hugo…?” Lycaon’s deep voice grunted in disbelief at the sight in front of him.
When both Phaethon siblings turned to where the wolf Thiren was looking at, Hugo was staring off with his doppelganger clone. Except instead of the black sclera and red eyes that the older Phaethon saw earlier, it returned to the two-colored eyes that matched exactly the same as its mirror half.
Eous’s mechanical pupils dilated, scanning both figures rapidly as Belle’s voice nervously announced. “Visual readings are identical. Ether signatures—now synchronizing. I-I can’t tell who’s the original anymore…!”
“That’s impossible,” Wise muttered, voice barely above a whisper, still breathless from the previous attack. “I saw it. I know who’s real—”
But even his certainty faltered now. Because the mimic had shifted again.
Gone was the sneering, theatrical malice. It now stood with a flawless mask of calm, both eyes matching Hugo’s heterochromatic pair to the hue, depth, and light reflection. It adjusted its coat exactly as Hugo often did before battle, and its stance mimicked his perfectly. The only thing that remained was that faint echo in its aura—an almost imperceptible ripple in the ether around it, like a skipped heartbeat in a song.
“You’re not the only one who can play a role, dear me,” It said smoothly, the voice now flawless. It glanced at Hugo with a grin—no longer malicious, but familiar. “After all, I am you.”
Hugo merely scoffed indifferently with a sneer. “You may be me. However the one who knows me the best is ‘I’ alone.”
“Aargh!!” The younger Phaethon’s voice screamed in annoyance from bother her analysis and the exchange. “Could you two knock it off with the bad puns?! That’s the worst thing in common you have for us to tell apart!”
Lycaon’s left eye squinted with a stoic look and turned to Wise slightly. “Master Wise, I could sense a difference between Hugo and… His clone. However, I would also require your assistance to crack the clone’s façade for an opening.”
“An opening…,” Wise narrowed his eyes at the word.
Belle’s voice hummed thoughtfully from the Bangboo and then perked up. “I know! Hey you two!"
Both Hugo and his clone turned towards where the three, or the synced Bangboo was. The younger Phaethon's chirped out. "Answer this, what is the one you thing you know about my brother?"
"Belle!" Wise hissed angrily with utter disbelief at his sister's outrageous idea but the Bangboo waved its tiny arms dismissively.
"Relax! It's a trick question!" Belle said with a wink from the LCD green circular eyes. “C’mon, Hugo always said—‘what’s the point of secrets if you can’t show off a little?’ Right?”
The real Hugo’s expression twitched and chuckled fondly. “I’m afraid your sister has a point, my dear.”
While the doppelganger Hugo hummed amusedly with a smirk, it tilted its head in faux contemplation. “A trick question, is it? How quaint.”
It stepped forward, confidently poised. “Very well then, I’ll play along.”
Wise’s eyes flickered nervously. “This could backfire, Belle…”
“Nope,” Belle replied smugly from voice through the speaker from Eous’s body, “Because the real Hugo would never resist a stage.”
Both Hugos began to speak at once—but just before they could, the real one raised a finger in mock-politeness, interrupting his clone.
“Ah-ah, not at the same time. That’s just sloppy presentation,” Hugo tutted, gesturing with theatrical grace. “After all, if you are me, then surely you know how I love my spotlight.”
“Oh? You sound confident of yourself,” The clone quipped back.
The real blond-haired man smirked to counter his mirror self. “I doubt there is anything you know about the Proxy.”
The clone’s smirk didn’t falter, but its silence cracked for the briefest second and it spoke. “He does love getting all adorably flushed when you hold him close.”
“Wise!” Belle’s voice squeed with excitement, the sharp piercing voice from the speaker made her older brother winced in pain. “Is that true?”
“It’s not.” Wise grunted as he raised his hand to rub one of his ears to soothe it.
“But your face is red.”
The older Phaethon hissed at the synced Bangboo. “Belle!”
He didn’t want to look at Lycaon’s expression, which he was certain that the wolf butler was completely frozen stiff at the revelation. The doppelganger tilted its head, watching Wise’s reaction with amusement—as if it had scored a point. Hugo’s lips frowned slightly
“Oh, my dearest self,” Hugo sighed dramatically, his free hand rising to his forehead in mock despair, “You’ve just revealed my greatest secret. That I do find it irresistible when the Proxy blushes. But alas—! We’re not here for flirting.”
He turned his gaze toward his doppelganger again, and this time, his smile had sharpened—less amused, more cutting. “As for you, I’m afraid you’ve failed the audition.”
The mimic’s smirk twitched, faltered just slightly. “Oh? And what makes you so sure?”
“Because,” Hugo said coolly, stepping forward. “While dearest Wise does get flustered so easily if anyone holds him. However, that is because he enjoys being carried up like a princess he truly is. Isn’t that right, my dear?”
From the phantom thief’s sexy wink to him, the older Phaethon’s face combusted red as if someone had a lit a match beneath his skin.
“Hugo!” Wise barked, his voice rising an octave in sheer mortification, fists clenched tight at his sides. “This is not the time for your romantic theatrics!"
Behind him, Belle’s whistled mischieviously. “Ooooh, Princess Proxy~”
But Hugo was remorseless in his confession, and he simply added from his charming smile. “Ah, but I was not wrong, was I? When I picked you up to enjoy my ‘flying’ service last evening at Port Elpis. You were clinging so tightly that I was certain you didn’t want to let go at all~”
“That’s because you did it so suddenly—” Wise realized it in a snap of clarity—the shift in tone had exposed the slightest crack.
The doppelganger didn’t laugh or react at the information, a cue it was to notice that it was trying to comb through the fragmented memories when there were none. And that was the difference.
Wise’s eyes narrowed. “There it is! Lycaon, the clone is—!”
Lycaon had walked past the silver-haired man in steady steps to the two Hugos. Instead of approaching the clone whose mask cracked to reveal its true nature, the wolf butler stopped before the real Hugo and punched him hard into the cheek, shocking the pair of siblings and the clone itself.
“W-What the—?! Lycaon, that’s the real Hugo—?!”
“I’m well aware,” Lycaon answered coolly, dusting off his glove as the real Hugo staggered backward from the punch, clutching his cheek with an incredulous gasp.
“Wha—!?” Hugo spluttered, clearly scandalized. “You bastard, Lycaon!!”
The wolf Thiren adjusted his gloves primly and glared at the thief. “Your little confession about carrying Master Wise up as if he was some damsel. I should’ve known something was off that night when I called him, he was too quiet.”
“Well, my brother did came home red-faced and won’t tell me why—”
“My face was ‘not’ red!” Wise’s face turned red as he protested furiously.
Hugo barked out a cold laughter and sneered at the wolf Thiren. “That’s because he was enjoying the way yours truly hold him. Unlike some lapdog whose fur smell like a wet mutt who rolled in the mud for his masters he served.”
Lycaon’s eye twitched. “I do not roll in the mud.”
“At least I’m not a glorified flea-ridden security blanket with a brooding depression,” The blond-haired thief shot back, dramatically flipping his hair over his shoulder despite the bruise blooming on his cheek.
“If I’m a blanket, at least I provide comfort to his needs,” Lycaon growled, stepping closer with barely restrained disdain. “All you provide is theatrical migraines and unsolicited commentary on Master Wise’s legs.”
“They are very nice legs,” Hugo emphasized unapologetically, flashing a grin that was all sharp teeth and mockery. “And they wrapped beautifully around my waist when I caught him mid-air—”
“HUGO!” The older Phaethon shrieked, voice cracking like a kettle about to boil over. His face was now somewhere between crimson and volcanic. “Stop—Talking!”
Hugo huffed, chin up, as if this was a matter of moral principle. “I’m just stating facts. Unlike somebody who keeps glaring at me like a jilted fiancé.”
Lycaon scowled. “You are insufferable.”
“And you are still a piece of rigid ass”
Lycaon had punched Hugo again. Neatly. Precisely. Same spot on a different cheek. The blond-haired man’s eyes twitched, twirling his briefcase into his scythe and declared angrily. “Ow, that’s it! Time for dog to learn his potty training!”
“Consider that a delayed payment for emotional damage,” The wolf butler muttered dryly with his own furious expression, his prosthetic legs charging up to teach the stupid thief a lesson.
Belle, from Eous’s speaker, finally let out a wheezing cackle. “Should we… Do something?”
“No,” Wise sighed, one hand dragging down his face as he sank to sit on a broken pillar, voice utterly flat. “Let them get it out of their system. We’ll be here all night otherwise.”
The doppelganger-Hugo moved to stand beside him as he watched his real self and the wolf Thiren fighting each other. “Does this always happen?”
“Yeah… You get used to it,” Wise deadpanned and winced as another direct hit landed onto the two big children’s bodies. It would take all morning to get them patched up as well.
Meanwhile, the younger Phaethon was now happily recording the whole thing with the Bangboo’s built-in lens. “I’m calling this: Beauty and the Bark: Hollow Edition.”
As Lycaon and Hugo rolled across the cracked floor of the Hollow arguing over who Wise ‘clearly favored more,’ Belle laughed until she hiccuped. Wise stared at the distorted, wondering if anyone would notice if he just let himself be buried in rubble and found peace.