His tongue!
In my mouth!
I find myself taking the coward's way out, and I hastily shake my head. "I don't want to talk about it."
The professor frowns. "Why not?"
"Because there's no point," I growl. "It's just a stupid kiss, and..." I see the professor arch a brow, and my voice trails off.
Shit.
I think I've misunderstood him.
"Stupid, is it?"
The silkiness of his tone makes me cringe. I definitely misunderstood him, and I quickly bow my head low in apology. "Sas zitó tapiná signómi ya to láthos mu." The formal apology translates to 'I humbly apologize for my mistake', and I mean every word as well.
Pre-3rd folks used to believe Charles Perrault wrote a PC version of Sleeping Beauty because of moral considerations. It's only when we started studying magic that divine Post-3rd educators revealed one little-known truth: kisses, when "performed" with the appropriate ritual, can make the most effective conduit for magic.
As for the French author, Charles' writing was inspired by his own experience: he himself had actually fallen victim to a curse, but a kind-hearted goddess (who he mistook for a fairy, by the by) had saved him with a kiss.
It's kinda like how the professor saved me, only instead of honoring him with a fairy tale, I kinda acted like I'm about to file a police report on him?
The thought is enough to make me squirm in my seat, and when I take a peek at the professor, it's as if he was waiting for our gazes to meet just so he can see me wilt in embarrassment as he says ever so gently, "May we move on to the more serious topic at hand, Ms. Mariposa?"
Heat floods my cheeks at the way he makes it sound like I'm so hung up by our kiss, but I just nod and determinedly remind myself it's my penance to bear, after virtually accusing him of sexual harassment.
"Tell me everything you can remember and leave nothing out." The professor's tone is brisk, and I straighten up as the mood in the room abruptly changes.
"He was hopping." I don't bother with the physical details of my captor-slash-attacker. Since Henry and Alice are his contacts, I won't be surprised if the professor got his copy of the killer's composite sketch way before I did.
"You also mentioned about him molting."
I close my eyes in an effort to remember everything as vividly and accurately as I can. "There were patches on his right arm and neck."
"What do the patches look like?"
"Like excess skin you can peel off," I say after a moment. "And..." My brows furrow, and I find myself squeezing my eyes shut once more. There's something else, something that has to do with him chewing and chewing...oh!
"He had it all around his mouth," I gasp out.
"It?"
"Excess skin," I clarify in a rush. "At first, I thought it was some kind of allergy. Or just something stupid like he might've forgotten to wipe his mouth after eating. But the more I think about it now—-" I feel my body tensing up as I allow myself to voice my thoughts out loud. "He was chewing all the time, professor, and there were dried flakes of skin all around his mouth. Doesn't that make him—-"
"You're thinking he's a cannibal."
"Is he?"
The professor shakes his head, his mouth tight. "While it's safe to conclude at this point the killer has enough divine blood to shapeshift, the evidence doesn't point to cannibalism."
"But I know what I saw! He was chewing—-"
"Amphibians are known to eat their own skin after molting."
Bile rises to my throat when I realize what the professor is saying, and I have to fight against the urge to throw up.
All that time I saw him chewing—-
It was the killer chewing and eating his own skin...just like the red-eyed frog he can shapeshift into.
THE PROFESSOR TELLS me he's been asked by my god to walk me back, and because he's actually dared to use the G-word, I find myself unable to do anything but say yes.
For a long time, both of us are quiet, but the silence is far from unwelcomed. There's just so much death for me to process that terror has resumed eating me up from the inside. I can't believe Myrrha's dead, and I don't even know what to feel or how I should feel about it.
And all those other people he killed. Who were they? Why did he kill them? And why, for fuck's sake - why did he have to torture them?
I'm so tired and frightened I can't even summon the anger I felt when I was in the memory world. Right now I just wish it to be all over. Right now, I just want to do what it takes to find him before he finds my parents.
Rain starts to drizzle all of a sudden, and I'm about to tell the professor we should make a run for it when I see him pull something out from his pocket.