🍁Nine Ancient Obelisks

The young man seemed slightly flustered by the woman's gaze. Under normal circumstances, this meeting wouldn't have been necessary, in either a good or bad sense. But there was nothing to be done; there turned out to be significantly less time to solve the curse than he had optimistically assumed.
—Praise to Anuzish, are you alright? I hope you remember yesterday evening? —the scholar clarified quietly, just in case.

- Yes, of course, Asmidul, I remember everything. But tell me, are you alright? Because today has been a chaotic morning. Members of the Hand came and started asking me all sorts of questions. I told them to take a test so I could determine whether I could share the information I have with them, but they told me to stop talking nonsense and that a serious incident had occurred. Apparently, someone strangled our receptionist. It's very sad; I sometimes saw her in the lobby. She was a very decent woman. There should be more people like her in the world, and then there would definitely be less suffering and more warmth and love all around. It's a pity that this happened. I was even a little confused, but in the end, my answers to the "questioners" didn't satisfy them. They said that, based on the timing, the testimony of other witnesses, and the lack of an alibi, I was the most suspicious. And, as they said, my unwillingness to answer the questions only strengthened these suspicions. Plus, I'm a foreigner. Although there's a good attitude towards us in Asuguh, they still treat us a little more strictly than the locals. That's why I'm here now. But you know, I can't bring myself to complain, even though all of this is completely unfair. At least it's relatively comfortable here. Back home, they would have already locked me in a steel cage, and I would have been lucky if it were in a ventilated room. And I'm glad that you're alright, even though you look a little gloomier than yesterday, but I guess that's not surprising, considering what happened.