Baccano! - Volume 22 - Chapter 24

Chapter 24 Quiet Mornings Don’t Suit Us

A shadow.

An enormous shadow covered in gray fur was barreling through the dark streets of New York City.

He’d heard an explosion, and his bed had tipped over sideways. Confused, the shadow had bolted.

Sometimes he swam through rivers and roamed aimlessly through the night in search of someone he knew.

Sometimes he heard screams go up around him, but the shadow took no interest in them.

After all, their voices sounded nothing like the “small people” he knew.

The little one called him Charlie and fed him every day.

The one who called him Cookie was a person with red hair who’d been showered with cheers and applause along with him.

Then there were the darker ones who followed the smaller figure around, calling him “young master.”

He couldn’t find them anywhere.

Strange territory, unknown landscapes.

The foreign shapes of skyscrapers surrounded the shadow. They frightened him, and he kept lumbering along, searching for somewhere peaceful.

Every so often, he caught the scent of food, but the small people nearby screamed and scrambled to get away.

Over the past few years, the shadow had learned that screams were bad, so he left those places and kept traveling through town, avoiding the sound.

Shortly before dawn, he saw a small person wrapped in gray fur leave a building.

The shadow started to follow the gray figure, but then he caught the scent of dried meat drifting from the building. This was one of his favorite foods, and he stopped.

As the shadow slowly started toward the smell, he saw the door open and shut.

“Goddammit, Ladd… You and Graham keep slamming the doors, and now they’re all out of whack. At least they’re double doors, so I guess we only really need one of them to work…”

The voice belonged to a man dressed in white. The shadow didn’t understand what he was saying.

For his part, the man was focused on the doors, and he hadn’t noticed the shadow. He was about to lock up, but just then there was a heavy thump, and he saw a gray figure through the glass.

“Huh? Doc? Did you forget something?” the man said. His hand was on the doorknob, but he promptly realized that something wasn’t right.

The gray shape was much bigger than the doctor he knew.

“Wha—?”

He froze. In that instant, the thing pushed the door open—

—and when the man in white registered the enormous shadow, he passed out before he even had time to scream.

On the morning of the second day of the Ra’s Lance casino party, there was an odd uproar in New York.

Just the other day, the city had been subjected to an attack by strange airplanes. Now, before it had had a chance to recover, there had been a string of sightings of a monster.

A traffic accident had happened near the casino venue the previous night, and odd things had begun to occur immediately afterward.

Some said that when they woke that morning and went outside, they’d noticed a weird, wild smell hanging over the street.

Others said that a man with nowhere to go who’d bunked down on the side of the road had seen an enormous shape barreling down the street.

Still others said a black mass had been spotted swimming in the middle of the East River in the light of the morning sun.

That there were footprints on the riverbank that belonged to something far bigger than a human.

That they’d heard a monstrous roaring in the night.

Various rumors flew every whichway, but the updates stopped coming before the sun had fully risen, at which time the confusion died down. There hadn’t been many witnesses to begin with, and nobody had the spare time to entertain themselves with theorizing when the Depression was making life miserable.

Some of them might have been suffering enough to think, If there’s a monster out there, I hope it destroys the world. However, people like that definitely didn’t have the time, money, or emotional energy to swap rumors.

On a street somewhere in Manhattan, though, there was a group of people who had little cash but plenty of emotional energy.

“Say, Miria. I just thought of something pretty amazing.”

“Ooh, Isaac, that’s amaaazing!”

“You think? It’s all thanks to you, Miria!”

“Yay, I’m so glad! Thank you, Isaac!”

The couple’s conversation seemed to be meshing, but it wasn’t going anywhere. In fact, it hadn’t even begun.

At first glance, Isaac and Miria appeared to be wandering through town without a plan, but they were currently working two jobs. Although the locals who often saw them around probably wouldn’t have believed it, the pair was helping out at a clinic run by a doctor named Fred, and they were also helping the Martillo Family during the casino party at Ra’s Lance.

It was an odd position to be in, working a public job during the day and an under-the-table gig by night, but nothing about their complicated situation showed in Miria’s innocent voice. “Well, what is it? What amazing thing did you think up, Isaac?”

“Heh-heh-heh! Just wait till you hear this, Miria. I’ve thought up a no-fail way to win at gambling. A surefire method!”

“Woooow!” Miria’s eyes shone.

Isaac went on, sounding proud of himself. “Here’s how it goes: First, let’s say I bet a dollar, and I lose.”

“You lost? I thought it was a surefire method to win.”

“…You’re right. It’s a surefire method, but I lost. Miria, what’s going on here?”

“Yes, it’s a mystery! It’s horror! It’s suspense!”

Isaac muttered and mumbled for a little while. Then he clapped his hands together melodramatically. “I get it! I’ll bet someone cheated! I must be gambling against a flimflammer!”

“Eeek! He’ll trick you!”

“Hey, it’s all right, Miria. With my foolproof strategy, no matter how much I lose to a flimflam man, I’ll have more lettuce than I know what to do with! I’ll be able to buy back the Eiffel Tower, and we’ll have a safe full of insurance money!”

“How keen! You’re Victor Lustig! Thérèse Daurignac!”

Miria had given the names of a con man who’d sold the Eiffel Tower and a woman who’d launched a pension plan as part of an audacious fraud, but for some reason, Isaac blushed rather happily. Then he went on explaining his stratagem.

“Anyhow, after I lose that dollar, I’ll bet two dollars. If I lose those, I’ll bet four. If I do that ten times in a row, I’ve gotta win once, see? And if I do it a hundred times, what do you suppose my bet will be like?”

“Ummm… One, two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four, one twenty-eight, two fifty-six, five twelve, ten twenty-four, twenty forty-eight, forty ninety-six… Oh no, Isaac! I lost track of what round I was on.”

“Don’t worry, Miria! So did I! Either way, I’ll pull out a win at some point! If I win on a thousand twenty-four, I’m scared to see just how far my winnings would outstrip my losses!”

“Hooray! Isaac, you’re riiich!”

The two were elated for a purely imaginary reason.

Unfortunately, today there was a man behind them ready to dash cold water on their fun.

“If the odds on that bet always double your money, you’ll only make a buck no matter what round you win on.”

“Huh?!”

Isaac and Miria turned around. Firo Prochainezo stood there, looking exhausted with them.

Having heard a rumor that the pair had been attacked by mystery thugs, Firo had met up with them, pretending it was coincidence, but he was hanging out with them to make sure nothing happened.

These two weren’t the only ones. Ever since Ennis had been snatched, the Martillo Family had been guarding their various connections, particularly Firo’s friends.

Since Isaac and Miria had already been attacked once, and it was also completely impossible to predict anything they did, Firo was guarding them personally.

He would really rather have been pounding the pavement looking for Ennis. Still, these two were his good friends, and he’d decided that clumsily searching for Ennis would be playing right into Melvi Dormentaire’s hands. As a result, he was guarding the pair in person until the casino party.

“And by the tenth round or so, you’d already have to bet 1,024 or 4,096 dollars. Do you have that kind of dough?” Firo asked.

Isaac hadn’t been completely off base. What he’d described was the martingale system, a supposedly foolproof strategy that was about as old as gambling itself.

However, it had a lot of flaws. One was that, even though you kept doubling your bet, winning would only net you the small amount you’d bet first. Another was that you couldn’t use the method when gambling with fluctuating odds. A third was that, if you bet your whole wallet and then lost, you’d lose everything without a chance to make it up again. Finally, if the casino had a set upper limit for bets at each table, you couldn’t use it in the first place.

This surefire method wasn’t viable unless conditions were perfect and you had the resources to place unlimited bets. On top of that, you couldn’t win much with it. It was less a recipe for success and more a way for the wealthy to pressure an opponent with fewer resources, continuously doubling their bets as a type of psychological warfare.

Firo was well aware that Isaac and Miria were not equipped for psychological warfare, so he tried to nip this in the bud. However—

“We’ll cover for that by, um, working and earning money! It’ll be fine in the end!”

“If you can come up with four thousand bucks by working, you should just stick to the straight and narrow. Besides, even if you won that way, you’d only win a dollar, remember?”

“Meaning if we did that a thousand times, we’d walk off with a thousand dollars! What a haul!”

“Yes, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single inch! Rome wasn’t built in a day!”

The pair were unrelentingly optimistic. Firo shrugged, unsure what to do with them anymore. “Well, that’s really something. Fine, go on and build yourselves a magnificent Rome.”

Christ’s sake… If the customers at my casino were fat cats this careless, I’d have it made.

Even though Isaac and Miria had been attacked just recently, they hadn’t changed a bit. Firo found this rather heartening, but he still kept a cautious eye on their surroundings.

On the first day, neither Melvi Dormentaire nor the Runorata Family had tried to mess with him in any significant way.

Melvi had told him that their showdown would take place on the third day, but he couldn’t afford to let his guard down.

Don’t trust a word that guy says.

He said he’d let Ennis go if you won, but you really can’t trust that one.

Firo scanned the road again, more cautiously this time. Flames were burning in his heart.

That said, they weren’t the black flames of hatred.

The Martillo Family were his candles in the dark, blazing bright to show him the way.

He’d save Ennis and become his family’s shield and sword as a camorrista.

He didn’t yet know what the future would bring, but he knew the first road he needed to walk down, at least. That was why Firo was managing to respond to Isaac and Miria’s conversation the way he usually did.

At this point, nobody knew how his composure would affect the big gamble.

However, his presence of mind wound up changing their immediate fate.

Fred’s clinic

“Okay, I should be heading to work myse—”

Just as Firo safely dropped Isaac and Miria off at clinic, he sensed that something wasn’t right. “…Hey, Isaac.”

“What is it, Firo?”

“What’s the matter?”

The couple looked perplexed. They didn’t seem to have noticed anything strange about the clinic.

Wondering if his imagination was playing tricks on him, Firo frowned. “Who’s usually in charge of locking up here?”

“The doc’s assistant, Mr. Who. Dr. Fred goes to lots of different hospitals in the morning, giving exams. He doesn’t show up until past ten, and since Who lives here, he’s the one who takes care of the patients until then. There aren’t any patients staying here now, though.”

“Yes, health is number one! Boil to sterilize!”

Fred, the doctor who ran the clinic, usually dressed from head to toe in gray. He looked like a suspicious character, but his skills were solid, and hospitals often asked him to help out with surgeries and the like. Firo had heard the same thing from Molsa Martillo, so although he hadn’t seen much of the doctor personally, he trusted him.

Apparently, the man was often away at other hospitals until his consultations began at ten; the clinic wasn’t open for business, yet the door was ajar. That was concerning.

“Look, the door’s half-open. Are they airing the place out or something?”

“Huh? Come to think of it, that’s odd. Who’s a pretty conscientious fella, and he gets mad at us if we leave the door open.”

“Oh, but he did say it hadn’t been closing too well since the fight, remember?”

“…I see.”

Maybe somebody had been bringing things inside, and they hadn’t closed the door.

Still, he couldn’t shake the sense that something was off.

Assuming something was wrong—had Melvi’s henchmen hit again? Were they lying in wait for Isaac and Miria?

No… If so, why leave the door like that? That makes no sense.

Was it a regular robber, drawn by the rations that were sent to relief facilities?

No.

Firo’s instincts nixed that theory, too.

A smell was tickling his nostrils.

The smell of an animal.

It was similar to what his nose picked up when he passed one of the city’s mounted police officers on the horses they rode, but there was a slight difference. It was more like the smell of a dog. Something carnivorous.

Firo stepped past Isaac and Miria, heading into the clinic.

“What’s the matter, Firo?”

“Are you sick or hurt or something? The doctor’s not here yet.”

“No, just a worrier.” Slowly, Firo peeked through the door, just to spot a man lying on the floor in front of the reception desk. With a start, Firo warily stepped inside, then ran to the man and checked his pulse.

Apparently, he’d just passed out. Both his breathing and his pulse were normal.

As Firo exhaled in relief, Isaac and Miria came in.

“Huh?! Mr. Who’s dead?!”

“He’s fine. He’s breathing.”

“Oh. Well, good… Is he asleep?”

“Is it because it’s been busy lately?”

“Maybe lugging in all that stuff wore him out.”

Isaac and Miria seemed to have decided that the man was sleeping, not unconscious, and they looked simultaneously relieved and confused.

Firo turned to them. “Is work at the lodging house that rough?”

“I dunno. Is it a rough job? Is it hard on you, Miria?”

“Anything’s fun if I’m with you, Isaac, so it’s not a problem!”

“Yeah! It’s a piece of cake if I’m with you, Miria!”

“Hooray! Thank you, Isaac!”

The pair were as noisy and boisterous as a couple of kids. Ignoring them, Firo crouched, intending to wake the young man up.

That was when he noticed something—the man’s cheek and collar were wet. Not only that, but hairs of a brownish-gray sort of color were scattered over his clothes.

“Still, Who must’ve been really bushed to conk out on the floor like that.”

“Yes, ‘Sleeping Beauty’! ‘Young Slept-for-Three-Years’!” Miria said, giving the names of a famous fairy tale and a folktale she’d heard from Yaguruma. Suddenly, she spotted a mound of blankets in a corner of the clinic.

“Oh, say, Isaac! Do you think we’re supposed to take those blankets over today?”

“Huh? Wow, that many?!” Isaac followed her gaze to a messy pile of blankets that was taller than either of them. “It’s like a mini-mountain… If he got all this ready, no wonder Who’s so tired.”

He leaned back against the blankets, enjoying the fluffiness.

“Ooh! Isaac, that looks like fun! Let me do that, too!” Miria joined him, collapsing back into the pile with enough force that they bounced her right back up.

Isaac and Miria leaned back by turns, as if they were marking time.

Firo sighed. “C’mon, don’t mess around with the charity blankets. Help me get this guy to a bed, and—”

He broke off.

Something’s…

As Isaac and Miria bounced off it, the mountain of blankets was also rocking rhythmically.

That description sounded natural enough.

But it’s kinda shaking more than it’s supposed to.

The mountain was shifting slowly, and the movement was too significant to be caused by the couple’s motion. The blankets fell away one by one, revealing another huge blanket that was a color somewhere between gray and brown.

No, wait…

A…blanket…?

Firo felt apprehensive. As if responding to his misgivings, the mountain of blankets moved even more dramatically, knocking Isaac and Miria forward.

“Whoaaaagh?!”

“Eeeek?!”

Isaac and Miria tumbled over the floor, then looked at the blankets, wondering what was up.

They saw a mass of fur.

Unlike the blankets, the fur was covering a whole lot of fat and muscle. It also had four limbs and a face.

Firo, Isaac, and Miria all stared at it. Little round eyes shining, the enormous thing bolted to its feet, scraping its head on the ceiling—which was easily over nine feet high—and grunted.

“Gwuff?”

The giant grizzly’s quiet growl was summarily drowned out by screams from Isaac and Miria, and from Who, who’d just come to.

That was how the morning of the casino party’s second day began.

Melvi Dormentaire and Huey Laforet gave the impression they had their eyes fixed on the whole town, but easily surpassing their expectations, the day started with an encounter between an innocent beast and a camorrista.

The top floor of Ra’s Lance

Ra’s Lance was a combined commercial building, and its upper floors were a hotel that catered to the wealthy. The grand suite room was as spacious as a modest party venue, and you needed more than just money to stay there. Only the chosen were granted access to it.

The very first “chosen one” to stay in that room, a young boy named Carzelio Runorata, was gazing uneasily out the window. “I wonder if Charlie’s okay… Do you think he’s hungry?” he murmured.

Two voices responded from behind him.

“Don’t worry, young Master Carzelio. Charlie’s fine. He simply doesn’t know the city, so he was startled. He’s gotten rather lost.”

“That’s right. And we told the cops to handle it peacefully, so he’s not gonna get hurt or anything.”

“Not by the police anyway.”

Carzelio—or “Cazze” for short—was an ordinary child in terms of looks and innocence, but his mind worked more quickly than those of others his age. And given the fact that he’d picked up a huge grizzly on a whim and kept him as a pet, he also seemed to have a screw or two loose.

“If he gets into a fight with some mafia people, they might shoot him or cut him open, right? What if he…dies…?”

Before that happened, the mafia would probably take a whole lot more damage. That was what Cazze’s twin guards—Gabriel and Juliano—were thinking, but they didn’t say it. Instead, they tried to reassure their master, Bartolo Runorata’s grandson.

“It’s all right. We’ll go look for him. Won’t we, I?”

“Yeah, Me, that’s right. If anyone tries to hurt Charlie, we’ll do everything we can to stop them.”

Stop their hearts, he meant, but he didn’t actually say it.

Cazze was innocent and a little crazy, but he wasn’t the type of person who enjoyed cruelty.

That was true now, of course. The twins were aware that his future environment could change his simple, ingenuous personality in any number of ways.

But they would not be the ones to change him.

They were quite particular about this, and they didn’t speak with Carzelio any more than necessary. They left the room, preparing to get to work.

When they saw the dozen or so brawny men standing in a row out in the hall, the twins refocused on the situation.

“Do you think they’ll come, I?” Gabriel asked his brother, eyeing the heavy security.

“I dunno. If somebody did show, who would it be, Me?”

On paper, Carzelio was the guest of honor at this casino party, but he didn’t have any direct authority. That said, he was Bartolo’s biological grandson, and he had very few relations his age. On top of that, he was relatively popular with the family men. He’d have more than enough value as a hostage.

Even so, they couldn’t begin to guess which syndicate might go after him. There were too many possibilities. There were rival mafia families, of course, and an odd Camorra syndicate known as the Martillo Family was also involved. From what they heard, the group didn’t have any ties to the original Neapolitan Camorra, but they certainly weren’t an organization to take lightly. Despite being a small outfit, the twins couldn’t slack off on their job as bodyguards.

On top of that, there was Melvi Dormentaire, who’d been hired to help out. The man was ostensibly a collaborator who’d been sent by Huey Laforet’s organization. However, while the Runoratas had joined forces with Huey, they didn’t trust him enough to show him their backs.

In addition, the twins and other members with sharp instincts had picked up on the fact that Melvi had no significant loyalty to Huey. It would probably be better to focus on his connection to the Dormentaires, whose family name he shared. The House of Dormentaire had no official agreement with the Runorata family, and it was plenty likely that they’d try to use Carzelio.

A single glance was enough to show them they were surrounded by enemies.

They didn’t have time to worry about it, though. Not that there was any real reason to be worried anyway.

They were the Runorata Family.

Even if the whole world turned against them, they always had to go for their enemy’s throat first. They had to be the fangs sharp enough to tear open a jugular. The faithful dogs of the Runorata Family’s security team were filled with that sort of insanity and camaraderie.

It wasn’t just the twins, Gabriel and Juliano. All the members had that same grit.

Carzelio Runorata was innocently attended by these mad dogs.

He wouldn’t show his true brilliance until quite a while later—but the boy’s current growth hardly mattered. The men had compensated for his inexperience by building a solid fortress around him.

Those who really knew the Runoratas’ strength understood the opposite as well: Any fighters who took a shot at them while knowing all this would have to be truly crazy themselves.

Even as their throats were ripped out, those guys would be on the alert for a chance to snap their enemies’ necks.

Morning that same dayLittle Italy

In the basement of Coraggioso, the jazz hall that served as the Gandor Family’s headquarters, Ladd Russo was in the middle of talking.

“And? Last night was boring as hell. When does the ‘flash-bang-pow’ stuff start?”

He wasn’t being sarcastic; his expression was genuinely regretful of the lack of trouble.

Ladd had been hired as the Gandors’ temporary bodyguard. He’d expected Thompsons to start squirting metal on the first day and was terribly unhappy that nothing exciting had happened.

Luck, the youngest of the three Gandor brothers, had grasped the man’s character in the few days they’d known each other, and he responded in a matter-of-fact way. “I expect all the syndicates are still sizing one another up. They’re gauging who their enemies are and who might be an ally. Plus, the Runoratas may be hosting the event, but there are feuds between organizations that have nothing to do with them.”

“Well, yeah, I bet there are. Maybe they’ve got treaties, but that don’t mean they’re gonna get along.”

“Still, they’d prefer not to start a conflict and make trouble for themselves… Specifically, they don’t want an enormous syndicate like the Runorata Family to realize there are rights and interests they want badly enough to start trouble over. No doubt that’s why they stuck to watching and waiting, at least on the first day.”

“There’s an easy way to tell your friends from your enemies, y’know. Slug somebody with ties to the Runoratas. The fellas who cover your back are your friends, and the ones who try to shoot ya are your enemies.”

The man seemed to be joking, but if Luck told him to do a crazy thing like that, he definitely would. He probably wouldn’t even hesitate.

And if he did, Ladd could still very well be the last guy on his feet, smiling in the middle of a sea of corpses. In any case, Luck had no intention of giving that order. Frankly, in his position, he’d have to order him not to do it under any circumstances.

Granted, he was already prepared to turn his family’s guns on the Runoratas if need be.

“Several organizations proposed alliances to us. Their reasons varied—some hoped to use us as sacrificial pawns to put a check on the Runoratas, while others flattered us, saying we should demolish the Martillos and run their territory ourselves.”

“How about that! So who did you decide to team up with, amigo?” Maria Barcelito asked excitedly. She was a bodyguard who dual-wielded Japanese katana, and like Ladd, she was spoiling for a fight.

However, Luck shook his head, putting a damper on her enthusiasm. His eyes were cold. “I turned them all down. If we joined forces with them or gave them a hand, anything we gained as a result would become a liability. If this were business, I might consider it, but I won’t accept any offers like that during a power struggle this uncertain.”

“Ha! For a guy who hired me, you’re pretty cautious.” Ladd shrugged. Apparently, he thought rather highly of Luck, though, and he backed down without arguing. “That Melvi gink and the ginger bastard never showed, though.”

“Even if you see them during the party, don’t throw the first punch, all right?” Luck put extra stress on those last words. Essentially, if the other party made the first move, there was no problem with striking back.

“Huh… Well, that’s a relief. Glad you didn’t tell me to suck it up and take whatever they dished out.”

“If I were going to be that careful, I wouldn’t have hired any of you to begin with. And we’ve fought the Runoratas before. I don’t know exactly how much clout Melvi has, but his position within the organization can’t be higher than Gustavo’s.”

“Hmm? Gustavo?”

Ladd’s eyebrows drew together, and Luck explained. “Ah, my apologies. Gustavo was a Runorata executive who once fought with us. I believe he’s still in prison.”

“Gustavo… Gustavo, huh?”

The name seemed to ring a bell for Ladd. He thought about it for a little while, but he couldn’t remember where he’d heard it. Well, even if I did meet him, I guess he wasn’t anything to write home about, he thought and decided not to worry about it.

As a matter of fact, Gustavo had declared himself the boss of the prisoners when Ladd was first incarcerated, and Ladd had absently punched him across the room. Since that was the extent of their relationship, it was one he could afford to forget.

“Well, I dunno about Gusty or whoever he was, but it’s good to know you’ve got the balls to pick fights with the Runoratas.”

Grinning, Ladd rubbed his prosthetic hand lightly.

I’m never gonna die, that redheaded monster had said. To him, of all people. Right to his face.

As Ladd fantasized about slamming his metal hand into him, he wore the sort of hope-filled smile that young guys wore when they daydreamed about hitting the jackpot at poker.

Ladd wasn’t the only one who was feeling this way, though.

Maria and many of the other killers the Gandors had hired had a bone to pick with a certain redheaded hitman who called himself Claire Stanfield, or Felix Walken, or Vino. They had gone to the casino ready to wager their own lives, harboring twisted ambitions of being superior to the legendary hired killer.

Luck—who was Claire’s childhood friend and thought of him as a brother—understood this.

I can’t see Claire losing to them—but never say never. No matter how bad the odds are, a bet is a bet. In that case, who’s the banker in this ridiculous fight?

As a rule, bets among multiple people were made possible by a banker, who always profited. That was what let him keep his position.

No gambling den could ever—or should ever—be created by a banker who ran everything for free. His profits became a guarantee that ensured bets were truly fair.

That was how Luck saw it anyway.

Granted, Claire himself had once expressed a differing opinion. “Really? I bet there are a few guys who’d do it for nothing. Maybe if they feel their mission in life is to weigh others’ fates on the scales, or if they just like watching people gamble right up close. I guess you could say that emotional fulfillment is what they’re getting out of it.”

If the profit weren’t clearly visible, I don’t think it would ultimately be worth trusting, Luck thought. Well, I suppose Claire does have a point.

In any case, Claire and the hitmen were betting their lives on this, and a banker-like figure who would ultimately profit might materialize.

His job was to circle around behind that banker, kick their throne over, and steal it.

On that thought, Luck began consciously breathing more slowly.

It was a quiet morning.

At the very least, he didn’t sense any trouble in his immediate vicinity.

But with all these elements in place, there was no way nothing was happening.

Glancing over his shoulder at his brothers, Luck made himself focus.

No matter what happened, in the end, the three of them would have to get through it using their own strength and the strength of their family.

That meant they had to be on the alert for possibilities that hadn’t even appeared yet. He scanned the group of hitmen, who were basically a mass of trouble, and visualized all the unpleasantness they could get pulled into. Even that wouldn’t be nearly enough. He took a deep breath.

Somewhere in the city, something that would beggar his imagination was bound to be happening.

And indeed, Luck had never considered the situation that was currently unfolding.

It was directly connected not to him, though, but to his childhood friend Firo.

“H-hey, what are you doing? …Isaac? Miria?”

The peculiar encounter that had occurred at the clinic was one that couldn’t have happened under ordinary circumstances.

When the grizzly bear appeared out of nowhere, even Firo could hardly breathe, but he didn’t panic or scream.

Well, worst-case scenario, Isaac, Miria, and I are all immortal, so a bear attack won’t kill us. I need to hide this guy somewhere, though.

Firo pulled Who’s limp frame over his shoulder and tried to get out of there, but Isaac and Miria were lying on the floor in front of him, hands clasped over their chests.

At the sight of the couple, the bear dropped back down to all fours, cocked its head, and started to sniff loudly.

“What do you mean, ‘what,’ Firo? We’re dead! We’re playing dead!”

“Yes, Mr. Yaguruma told us if we ran into a bear, we should either play dead or sneak into its den and jam a hand down its throat and suffocate it!”

Isaac and Miria were quite loud despite pretending to be corpses.

Play dead when you meet a bear.

Although this advice would later be called superstition, there was a reason it had spread the way it did. Several people across different countries reported to have survived bear attacks by being asleep or completely still.

However, those people had survived only because the bear had already killed prey and wasn’t interested, or because, once it had killed its first prey, the bear had decided that whatever wasn’t moving wasn’t a threat. “Not riling up the bear” was the actually useful advice, and ultimately, the consensus was that it came down to luck.

Isaac and Miria didn’t even know that, and they kept on giving the bear something new to be interested in.

“Uh, Miria? How can we pretend to be deader than this? How should we move?!”

“We’re corpses, but we’re moving? We’ll basically be vampires, Isaac!”

“That’s it! We’re vampires! If we’re moving corpses, it’ll be easy to tell.”

“Yes, Bram Stoker! Sheridan Le Fanu!”

Naming the authors of vampire novels, Miria slowly got to her feet, pulled a blanket around her shoulders like a cape, and carefully sized up her opponent.

“B-but, Isaac, how should we pretend to be vampires?”

“Well, we could turn into bats…or, uh, drink blood…”

Isaac got to his feet, putting on a blanket cloak of his own, and timidly flapped its tails like bat wings.

When the bear saw that, it stopped moving again and snuffled more curiously.

“Okay, okay! Just…don’t annoy the bear, you two!” Firo warned. He shoved the unconscious Who into a neighboring room and closed the door. Then he drew his knife and started shouting, hoping to distract the gigantic animal. “Hey! Over here! Come and get me, bear!”

Okay, but what now?

If I let this thing outside, it’ll cause a panic. Definitely can’t kill it with a knife, though.

I’ll just have to ask those two to call the cops…

Ah, dammit. What even happens to immortals who regenerate inside something’s stomach?

Bracing for some uncomfortable time inside a bear, he yelled louder in an effort to get its attention, but—

“Huh…?”

—when he looked over, the bear had scooped up Isaac and Miria by the legs and tossed them onto its back.

“Whoa?!”

“Eeeeek?!”

The pair landed on the dense fur, but they couldn’t get their balance and tumbled to the floor again.

The grizzly cocked its head. Then it turned its back to Isaac and Miria, crouching as low as its joints would allow.

It almost seemed to be telling them to climb on.

“Was this bear somebody’s pet…?”

A few minutes later, Isaac and Miria were shrieking and laughing up on the bear’s back. Firo exhaled heavily with relief.

Groceries for the soup kitchen had been set in a corner of the room beside the blankets, and a few of the boxes that had held dried meat had been opened and ransacked.

“Did it run away? And then maybe the smell of all that jerky drew it here?”

He couldn’t imagine what it had run away from, though. The circus or something?

Come to think of it, he remembered seeing a tent in the plaza in front of Ra’s Lance.

“What should we do with it, though…? The police? Are we just gonna have to call the cops?”

Fortunately, this bear was friendly, not a man-eater. Unfortunately, that didn’t mean it wasn’t dangerous.

“If it’s from the circus… No, he’s not an option right now.”

He’d thought of a certain redheaded former circus performer, but they were technically enemies at the moment.

And just having circus experience didn’t make him an animal tamer. Even if he’d asked, the guy might not have been able to help.

While Firo was trying to figure out what to do next, Isaac and Miria were having a great time up on the bear’s back.

“This is incredible, Miria! We’re actually riding a bear!”

“Hooray! Isaac, you’re so cool!”

“I’ve heard of this… There’s this place called Ashigara Mountain, and they say your skill in riding a bear on the mountain determines whether you’ll make a success of yourself. If you make it big, you’re a feudal lord. That means you can do all the sumo wrestling you want, you get to practice with bears, and you can even become a yokozuna!”

“Yes, a god incarnate! A thunderbolt!”

Yaguruma again, huh?

Firo had no idea what the two of them were saying, but if they were using words like yokozuna, he assumed one of his family’s top executives, an Asian man by the name of Yaguruma, had taught Isaac and Miria this stuff for fun.

I’m pretty sure they have the wrong idea about a lot of it, but…I think Yaguruma probably enjoys that part, too.

Firo smiled sheepishly; the old man could be a real kid sometimes. As he watched them, Isaac and Miria went on with their conversation.

“Let’s see. I think there was a Kintarou song, too. ‘High and low, low, high, low, low’… Isn’t that how it went?”

“Yes, it’s hi-lo gambling!”

“This means we’ll be able to win our bets today!”

“Yaaaay! It’s all thanks to Mr. Bear!”

Isaac and Miria had been screaming a minute ago, but as soon as they realized the bear was friendly, their terror had vanished as if someone had flipped a switch.

That’s definitely one of their talents, huh?

Come to think of it, they were always at home around us Camorra, too.

While Isaac and Miria squealed and cheered, the bear somehow seemed to be in high spirits, too. Or was it his imagination?

That said, we got lucky in several ways here.

He and the other two were only calm because they were immortals. If an ordinary person stopped by, they’d have a huge panic on their hands whether the bear looked happy or not. Even so, Firo was grateful their good luck had gotten them through this accidental bear encounter.

Oh, what was that Japanese word? That one Yaguruma likes to use.

After giving it a little thought, he remembered, and he gave a wry smile.

“For now…maybe this’ll turn out to be one of those things. Genkatsugi. Hope it brings us luck.”