Rhapsody

Chapter XVIII | Clue.

The start of summer signalled the beginning of summer reading for a particular now-19 year old composer. The fast pace of school now gone, Markel found himself with nothing much to do except maybe wander the halls of the small apartment. Xavier had gone out; went to visit family in Massachusetts, he said, which meant that Markel need not worry about accidental information leakage to the 20 year old who was more than willing to manipulate his cause.

One overly-sunny day in June, Markel sat down on his bed, flipping through the pages of the notebook that had cost Sicily her life, thumbing through the well-worn sheets in no particular order when his phone vibrated. Glancing in disinterest at the number on its screen, Markel knew that it was just another of the many junk calls that he got, and was about to set it down when the sudden rush of remembrance hit him.

Quickly dialling his grandfather's mobile number in, he pressed the phone to his ear to hear... nothing. His beloved grandfather had not picked up. So he tried again.

Still nothing.

Markel tried for a whole thirty minutes before someone answered the line. But it wasn't who he'd been looking for.

'Markel, hey, sweetie. Your grandfather's not available right now.' His mother's voice came over from the other side of the call, static-y and unstable.

Markel, at once, felt the hot heat of his anger rising, yet he managed to keep calm and maintain his composure.

'How is he? How's he doing?' After a moment of awkward silence, he added, 'How're both of you doing?'

'Markel. There was only enough money to do chemotherapy for one of us. He left the money for me.'

Markel had always hated emotions. He hated how he didn't understand them, he hated how he had no control over them, and he hated whatever triggered them. At the moment, he was split between hate, confusion, and outright rage.

'What do you mean, he left the money for you? Last I checked, we had enough money for three cancer patients!'

'When's the last time you checked?'

'.....'

'Your heroin rehabilitation took away one, as you say, cancer patient. Your hacking took away another half. The remaining 1.5 patients were left for one patient and buying your grandfather some time.'

'Right. Never mind that.' Markel shook his head in an attempt to clear it, to no avail.

'What's the doctor saying about him right now?'

'Two to four months. Five, if he's resilient. His small cell lung cancer's been changed from limited to extensive Stage 3.'

Ignoring the sudden rush of chemical hormones to his brain, Markel started muttering to himself darkly.

'Right, two to four months. Should be enough time to find the Rhapsody and get the money from Yang Guang-'

'Mark, sweetie. One other thing I haven't told you.'

'Whatever you're going to tell me now isn't going to be worse than what you've already told me.'

'In those months, if the cancer spreads to his brain... consider him a stranger.'

'GodDAMNIT!'

The sudden existence of the time crunch bit down hard on Markel's former air of uncaring, instead turning the young man into a sleep deprived maniac. There were other ways to go about solving a puzzle, of course, and he knew that. However, he chose to do it the way he always wanted to do it- in a whirlwind of words, chaos, and understanding.

Ever since he was young, he knew he had the special ability to memorise everything he read and comprehend it all fully. He never used the ability to the maximum, instead opting for just enough to get perfect scores.

Now, he'd never been more thankful. Markel set himself the goal of four chapters of Johnathan Baroque's notebook each day, but after the first day he quickly abandoned any thoughts of a plan. Instead, he was gulping the book like holy water, cutting down on the number of chapters he had left until there were only two remaining. However, alongside his reading speed and fascination with Baroque's life, his despair grew too. As days passed without any leads on the possible whereabouts of the next clue, Markel was close to trying out Caesar cipher on the entire journal.

Until he got to the last two chapters. The second-to-last chapter yielded some information on the Rhapsodies Johnathan was closest to (Cloud and Rain; the trio were known as the Revolutionaries), yet it was the very last chapter that had what Markel was looking for.

In fact, he was quite unsurprised by where the next clue was located. He'd always had a hunch, but never the chance to prove that his hunch was correct.

Now that he knew, he was going to take advantage of it.

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A/N: Sorry about this. Mistake on my part. I actually thought I'd already posted this chapter, but apparently not since I do recall thinking that I should hold off on a bit while getting my- excuse my language- shit together. Whoops. Sorry.