TPCF 65

Here’s your passage translated into English, keeping the tone and flow of the original:

Just then, with a clatter, the front door opened. It was Rutger. In his hand he carried a long bat, who knows where he had been.

“Ru, want some lemon pie?”

“…No.”

Ru. Such a strangely cute nickname for him. Anita thought so as she stared at Rutger, and when he finally seemed to notice her presence, his already sullen face turned even colder.

“Hi…?”

When Anita cautiously waved her hand, Rutger strode straight past her and up the stairs. As soon as he disappeared from sight, Anita awkwardly lowered her hand.

“Does he really hate me that much?”

At Anita’s gloomy face, Mrs. Bailan turned to her with an expression that was hard to tell if it was smiling or crying.

“No, it’s not like that. You didn’t do anything wrong….”

After sighing several times, Mrs. Bailan placed a freshly baked lemon pie slice on Anita’s plate. Anita took a bite with her fork.

Ugh…

Sour. Anita swallowed a bite with a pained expression. Watching her, Mrs. Bailan burst into hearty laughter.

“Unlike your mother, you can’t handle sour things, huh?”

Anita hesitated, unsure whether she should be honest or not. After patting Anita’s head a few times, Mrs. Bailan placed a few more slices of pie on a plate.

“Anita, wait here just a moment.”

“Yes.”

Mrs. Bailan went upstairs with the plate—likely to give it to Rutger. Anita stared at the rest of the pie, debating whether to run away. She knew she couldn’t finish it all. Still, since it was Mrs. Bailan’s cooking, leaving it uneaten seemed rude, so she forced herself to take another bite.

Some time later, Mrs. Bailan came back downstairs, her face somewhat stiff. Without a word, she passed Anita by and went straight outside. Then, a moment later, a loud crash echoed from upstairs.

Crash!

The violent shattering of dishes made Anita flinch. Suddenly, the opening lines of the detective novel she had read the previous night floated into her head.

[Rushing to the sound of the crash, I found the room already drenched in blood. Shattered vase fragments and long, trailing hair. Thick blood oozing from a broken skull. A crime scene!]

Could it be that a burglar had broken in through Rutger’s window? Or an assassin?

Seven-year-old Anita, at the height of curiosity, climbed down from her tall chair. Just in case, she picked up the thick book she’d borrowed from the library—The Truth of the Crimson Foot—and crept step by step toward the stairs.

The truth was, Anita had a source of baseless confidence: her father, Nathan Rodel, was a successful lawyer. To young Anita, a lawyer who dealt with crime seemed invincible. That belief let her act braver than she really was.

Besides, with her parents right next door, all she had to do was scream if things went bad. Like a cat, Anita bounded up the stairs. The soft carpet muffled her footsteps.

At last reaching the second floor, Anita found herself confused.

Which room is it?

Over eight rooms lined the long hallway. Since the noise had stopped, maybe everything was fine now?

She quickly tossed that thought aside. The quietest moments were when one needed to be most alert. If it was this silent, the killer must have already escaped—or was hiding somewhere.

Anita’s thinking had already grown rather extreme. Of course, in an ordinary neighborhood, big crimes rarely happened. But in the novels she read, incidents broke out almost daily.

“Rutger, please listen to me.”

“Get out!”

“I think you’re misunderstanding, so I just—”

“I said, get out of my room!”

A kidnapper?

Nervously gulping, Anita edged closer to the door where the voices came from.

Click.

Just as she was about to press her ear to the door, it opened. Startled, Anita froze, her mouth agape. A tall man looked down at her standing there in the hallway, sighed, and ran a hand through his hair.

“Anita? What are you doing here?”

It wasn’t so much a question as a scolding, like she was being reprimanded for eavesdropping on a father-son conversation. Anita stammered, unable to make up an excuse.

“Uh, um, actually, I came to eat lemon pie, but, uh, Mrs. Sarah sent me—well, not really, I just… sorry. I heard everything.”

Remembering how ridiculous it looked to scold a girl barely up to his waist, the man settled for advising her to make her presence known next time, then went downstairs.

“Goodbye, Uncle Bailan…”

Anita muttered a farewell to the empty hallway.

“You’re not leaving?”

A sharp, annoyed voice made Anita jump. Rutger was leaning against his doorway, arms crossed, staring at her.

“M-me? I was just about to. But… is your hand okay?”

“My hand?”

Only then did Rutger seem to notice he was injured. Looking at his palm, a trickle of blood was running down, yet he hadn’t realized. To Anita, who would cry over the tiniest scratch, his indifference was incomprehensible.

“Tetanus….”

“You kidding? It’s just a scratch.”

“But the blood’s dripping on the floor…”

Anita covered half her eyes with her hand, as if the sight were horrific. Rutger clicked his tongue. How could she talk about treating a wound when she couldn’t even look at it properly?

“Forget it. Just go. I’ll handle it myself.”

“No. Do you want me to treat you, or Uncle Bailan?”

When Anita asked firmly, Rutger’s face hardened. Grimacing as if at a thought he couldn’t bear, he cracked the door open wider for her.

“Do what you want.”

“So, uh… where’s the first aid kit?”

At Anita’s clueless question, Rutger pressed his good hand to his forehead. Why was she so thoughtless?

After some time, there was a loud thumping on the stairs, followed by Anita bursting noisily through the door, panting hard.