Exhausted, Timo realizes he won't be able to visit the clinic today, but the timeline is lax. All men are beholden to the forces of nature and the unpredictability of life.

Mr. Scorpion has stopped leaking out of every orifice, his lighter clothes completely soaked in scarlet. Caked mud cracks off his nose, and a smushed rice cake landed at his armpit. Skinny flies flitted around them, landing on nearby boughs, rubbing their spiky hands together like a villainous schemer. Timo knew it would end up like this. If he hadn’t sent out clues, the confrontation would not have come to fruition. If the circumstances were different, maybe they could’ve had a good relationship.

He couldn’t help it. He likes games, see? He's a curious young boy; he wanted to see if another man could accomplish what his father could not. The witchhunter assaulted him first, so he became really mad, see? Though he seeks to control other people’s hearts, he hates when he can’t control his own.

He had sworn he’d never cry again, but the wetness of his face comes from more than the steam of his breath. In his vision, splotches of color expand into a gray blur. What is this pain? Will no one be able to understand him, not the butchers, not even other murderers?

Arrows, accidents, poison, disease. None of these have the same allure as getting up close and personal. In close quarters, the weak and the strong push the very limits of their being, revealing secrets that would otherwise never surface. Watching this display of life, a spring that blasts into a roaring geyser, was most breathtaking. It was a show that played exclusively for him. He feels, with unshakable conviction, that he knew his victims better than anyone else. To him who craves the ultimate connection, Timo does not have an inkling of regret. If there was, no one would've been able to tell him that regret was supposed to constitute something more severe than breaking one of his own toys.

For a while, Timo thought he was attuned to death. He was doomed to destructive tantrums, exerting power and control.

After the second murder, it became clear. It wasn’t death that he loves, but life. The relationship between killer and victim was intimate, with a gravity that eclipses any other type of social bond, the inverse of what ties mother to child. In those final seconds, he glimpsed the universe of a man’s soul.

Can he make Mr. Scorpion come back to life? The witchhunter said some nasty things at the end, but there are still many unanswered questions to ask. He climbs over the dead man’s chest, untangling the shirt buttons, and tugs on the warmly broken flesh. Gathering the energy of the marsh, spinning the silk of the soil, he coaxes the earth. By his feet, verdant sprouts quiver and bend. A few beetles and shrimp-like scuds overturn from their burrows, then flee back underground. Bubbling and churning, the mana crackles to a boil, growing, rising, pop!

Nothing happens.

He detaches from the corpse and sprawls on his back, supporting his head on a dry reeds, staring through tears at the canopy pieces of the sky, letting himself be swallowed by the grandness of his revelation. A breeze picks up, the steely comb of autumn smoothing down his bangs.

"I'm so glad to be alive," he whispers.