Baccano! - Volume 11 - Chapter Ep

EPILOGUE

THE TALE’S BEGINNING

Dawn broke the same as any other day.

Except for the buildings around the still-smoking port, morning sunlight shone over the town as it always did.

The people of the town—aristocrats, commoners, and alchemists alike—were no doubt out of sorts for their own, separate reasons, but the top of the hill was too far away to see any of that from there.

Up on that hill, somewhere in the aristocrats’ residential district, two figures were looking down over the town.

“Aaaaaaaaaah, apparently something pretty spectacular happened last night. An acquaintance of mine told me a low-quality version of that drug I made was on the market, so I came by to see for myself, and what do I find? I swear, there’s just no hope for some people; not only did they take my unfinished results and degrade it, they actually went and sold it all over the place without so much as a by-your-leave! Good God, that’s a nuisance and a half, don’t you think?”

A man dressed like a peddler rambled on and on without pause while Aile, the leader of the Rotten Eggs, stood beside him. His face twisting in disgust, Aile glared at the man.

“…Begg Garrott. Listen, you… Do you understand what you’ve done?”

Begg, whose long, unkempt hair had been tied back loosely, stroked his stubbly chin and shook his head, looking wounded—then launched into another long speech.

“Don’t be absurd; I merely ordered that a drug be compounded, as your father requested, and it was also your father who first had the town’s doctors produce it in bulk, although, well, he didn’t seem to expect that the results would be of inferior quality, or that the townsfolk would mass-produce the stuff. I don’t really know, but it looks like whatever’s burning down there was their workshop. Aaaah, I can tell how wretched the quality was just from the color of that smoke. What a disaster.”

“…Inferior quality? I’ve never seen anyone enjoy anything more; just looking at them gave me the creeps.”

“It may have been intensely pleasant, but that stuff eats away at you to an unacceptable degree, and when you do too much of it, your head goes funny and you start to destroy yourself and whatever’s around you. I’m not sure how to put it, but you know what I mean; if it were a drug with far, far more pleasant results, then I wouldn’t mind dying in exchange, but that dreck just breaks you and everything in your vicinity, and that’s really not what I set out to make.”

With that, Begg whirled around, raising a hand to Aile.

“Well, I’m off. My teacher’s family died in an accident the other day; his grandson Czeslaw was the sole survivor, and he’s only five, or maybe not even five, so I hear the new fellow, Fermet, is taking care of him, but I think he’s too kind for child-rearing, so I have to hurry back and look after them.”

By the time Begg finished the remark, he was already starting around the corner.

As he watched Begg’s back disappear in the distance, Aile sighed quietly.

“…Are all alchemists like that?”

With utter contempt for alchemists in his heart, he kept gazing out over the town, and then—

—unexpectedly, a young voice called to him from behind.

“Big brother Maiza!”

“…Listen up, kid.”

Turning around, Aile glared at the boy who’d run up behind him. He yelled, grinding his teeth angrily.

“I told you not to call me that! What were they thinking, giving me such a stupid name…! Avaro means ‘stingy bastard’ to begin with; that’s not enough for you?! It has to sound like miser in English, too? Huh?!”

“Now’s not the time for that, brother! They say there was almost a riot last night, and Lord Boroñal sent out his private army, and the town’s in chaos…”

“ ! …Oho. So that rake finally got to work, did he?”

Narrowing his sharp eyes at his little brother’s report, Aile looked down at the smoking town again.

“Well, it would be great if that improved the town a little, but…”

He couldn’t predict what would happen after that, but the noble youth put his hopes into words anyway.

As he spoke, he was mentally groping around, searching for something he could do…

…but aloud, he repeated only what he hoped for.

“I don’t care if it’s the aristocrats or the commoners or the slaves… I just hope this town becomes a better place.”

Several days later The Third Library Private collection 

Second floor

“—And so, um, afterward, Mr. Arnaud’s method of distilling blood traveled through a variety of academic disciplines, and now Maestro Dalton is one of the pioneers in blood distillation research. Incredible, isn’t it?”

Paying no attention to Renee’s lecture, Huey gave a quiet sigh and kept turning the pages of the book in his hands.

In the end, the students had been released as if nothing had happened.

Apparently, Esperanza had done something rather reckless behind the scenes, and thanks to the letters Dalton had sent by carrier pigeon, the surrounding cities had exerted pressure of their own.

The drug aside, Huey had been prepared to have his hidden wealth confiscated, but for some reason, no one pursued the issue of the false gold, and only the drug was thoroughly eradicated.

As a result, Huey’s routine had gone back to what it had always been—and this didn’t sit well with him.

Does this mean that Dalton and the rest knew about the false gold from the beginning and just turned a blind eye?

Harboring the unpleasant suspicion that he’d been manipulated, he continued his usual litany of curses toward the world.

This world is worthless. It should just fall to pieces… People should all—

Elmer, sitting next to him, interrupted his thoughts with a nudge from his elbow.

Huey turned, exasperated, and saw that familiar smile.

Elmer gestured with his chin. Monica wasn’t stealing glances anymore—she was ignoring Renee’s lecture and staring at him openly with no regard for anything else.

The moment their eyes met, she turned as red as a boiled shrimp and silently buried her face in her book.

…This girl and the Mask Maker are the same person? Really?

In the end, he hadn’t learned a thing about her past, except for the fact that she was apparently a relative of Esperanza’s. Elmer seemed to know something, but when Huey had inquired, just to see, the response he’d gotten had been “If you learn to love Monica from the bottom of your heart, I’m sure she’ll tell you.”

This is just ridiculous. What was I going on about, using her? I was just tilting at windmills, wasn’t I…?

Elmer whispered, “It’s almost Monica’s birthday, so let’s celebrate it,” and began drawing up a party plan in ink on a piece of paper instead of paying attention to the lecture.

At first, Huey ignored him with his usual weary disgust—but then he spotted the item Huey in a ribbon in the list of potential presents for Monica and tried to stomp on the other boy’s foot as hard as he could.

Elmer evaded the attack beautifully, then paid for it by falling over backward with a crash.

Seeing Renee’s shock and the laughter of the other students, Huey quietly closed his eyes.

How much did Elmer already know when he was doing all that?

He said it was a coincidence that he rescued Niki—but was it really? If he knew everything from the start… When he called to me, had he already heard something from Dalton?

Several things struck him as questionable. However, he decided he wouldn’t find an answer just by thinking about them and turned his attention to something else.

In his heart was a book, and in that book the boy who hated the world flagged the pages of Elmer and Monica.

This mental book held descriptions of all the people he knew. Every single one was labeled as an enemy—but those two were now marked deferred.

…Hmph.

Quiet ripples were disturbing his concept of the world.

Slowly, but steadily.

Huey could sense a change bearing down on him, but he didn’t feel like rejecting it.

He thought it wouldn’t be too late if he waited to see what lay beyond that change first.

Huey sighed, and then, without letting anyone see it, he broke into a small smile.

As for whether that smile was real or a fake, the answer was locked away inside himself.

Hoping that someday, he’d know the meaning of that last smile his mother had given him…

…the boy gave a smile of his own, purely for himself.

Turn back the clock a few days again.

“All right, giddyap, wagon; let’s go.”

Muttering to himself, Begg drove a cart loaded with a mountain of cargo through the outskirts of town.

However, the two horses that were yoked to the wagon wouldn’t run the way he wanted them to. In contrast to his rapid-fire speech, they ambled along the road.

Up ahead, he saw a girl standing with her hand raised.

Wondering what was up, Begg pulled on the reins to stop the cart right beside her.

“Um… Excuse me. If you wouldn’t mind, could you give me a ride to the next town?”

“A girl traveling alone? Daring, aren’t you? I’ll do anything I can, but where exactly are you planning to go?”

“I’m going to spend the rest of my life…looking for my place to die.”

The girl in rags smiled gently, but there was an oddly dangerous air to what she said.

Begg sensed there was more to her story—but without asking any questions, he pointed to the bed of the wagon behind him.

In the back of the swaying cart, the brown-haired girl leaned against the crate behind her, looking up absently.

She gazed at the endless expanse of sky, just as Esperanza had. Before long, she began to sing quietly to the rhythm of the horses’ hoofbeats.

The devil’s coming, lantern lit. The devil’s coming, mask in place.

Here to put a mask on you. Here with masks for every face.

The girl smiled as she sang. She was unmistakably a devil, and a sinner as well, but—

—at the very least, just for now, she was happy.

Her ironic song bounced around the back of the cart, then quietly faded into the sky.

And with her song as its beginning, the light orchestra began its performance of irony.

In order to create music that would echo several years from now, and several centuries beyond that—

—the sound began to seep steadily into the world.

Deep, deep, deep…

…so that one voice filled with both irony and hope could ring out into the world beyond.