Baccano! - Volume 22 - Chapter 26

Chapter 26 Of Course They’re Not Behaving

The Runorata villa

Melvi had stopped by the Runorata villa in the suburbs of New York when Carlotta, the family’s former main dealer, called to him. “You’ll be attending to the party tonight, won’t you? I’m told you left things to random dealers and wandered off yesterday.”

“Yes, because that was just the day when everyone was sizing up the situation. I didn’t want to tip my hand if I didn’t have to.”

“Tip it to whom?”

“Anyone. Everyone. Including you. Unless Mr. Bartolo ordered it,” Melvi said casually, attempting to throw her off-balance.

Carlotta fixed him with a cold gaze. “I don’t know what you’re really after, and I don’t care, but if you plan to use the Runoratas, I wish you’d compensate us. I don’t have the authority to force you, so it’s just a request.”

“Don’t worry; I’ll be there in person tonight. I have to prepare for tomorrow anyway… I do intend to turn a profit for the family.”

“…I see.”

Carlotta gazed at Melvi Dormentaire through narrowed eyes for a few seconds. Then she exhaled heavily. “I can’t imagine the boss selected you because he wanted the casino to be profitable, so I have no expectations to speak of there.”

“My, my. Are you implying that you could have generated greater profit?”

“Yes, there’s no question about that.”

“…All I’m hearing is sour grapes, Carlotta.” Melvi smirked, and Carlotta’s face went blank.

“Let me repeat my warning, just one more time.”

“……”

“Own your own greed. An arbitrator who has none isn’t fit to be either a dealer or a made man.”

The former head dealer left without another word. Once he’d watched her go, Melvi gave a scornful snort. “What greed? Ridiculous.”

Well… It’s true that I’m not suited to be an arbitrator or a mafioso.

I’m destined for the heights of Szilard Quates himself.

Yes, in that sense, I do have desires.

What I want is to take the people who block my path—to take Firo Prochainezo—and make him taste despair.

Melvi reaffirmed the dark, stagnant hatred in his depths.

He seemed to be telling himself that the hatred was his desire.

Ennis—who had been kidnapped by Melvi Dormentaire’s henchmen and was currently being held prisoner—had decided to review her situation as closely as possible.

She’d been blindfolded while they transported her from the warehouse in New York, but she understood her situation to some extent. Although the room seemed like a hotel guest room, the slow rocking motion she felt every so often told her that she was probably out on the ocean, on a midsize vessel.

During his one-sided chat with her, Melvi had said he was going to end everything at the casino party. If he was going to settle things with Firo, he wouldn’t be anywhere near here when he did it.

He’d told her the person who’d been kidnapped with her would die if she tried to run, but was that true? If so, wouldn’t it have been better to keep her on land, where he’d hear right away if she did escape?

She was suspicious, but she couldn’t do anything risky without being sure.

But…, Ennis thought.

Was it all right to just stay here?

Could she let herself be a captive doll?

Was it okay to keep causing trouble for Firo, Czes, and the Martillos?

Back when she’d worked for Szilard, that thought probably wouldn’t even have occurred to her. She would have just considered herself useless. She would have known Szilard would abandon her.

Things were different now, though.

Firo Prochainezo belonged to a criminal organization, and yet…he was a very kind person.

Ennis hadn’t noticed that that kindness was focused on her with particular intensity. What she did know was that Firo had given her a place to belong when she’d had nowhere to go. That gesture had touched her heart and been a support to her.

Why was Firo so kind? Because he was strong.

He wasn’t the only one. The Martillos, and Isaac and Miria, had all accepted a being like her. That tolerance was strength, plain and simple. To Ennis, this was clear.

The people around her were magnanimous. They didn’t just accept the other by yielding to it. They made sure their own selfish requests were heard—and even then drew the other into their circle. They had that sort of strength.

She couldn’t tarnish that strength with her own spinelessness. She couldn’t let their smiles be clouded.

That was why Ennis made up her mind. Her resolution was extremely simple: She would do everything she could. She’d mobilize all the “knowledge” she’d been avoiding.

The knowledge she’d been given by Szilard Quates, accumulated at the expense of others’ lives.

Somewhere in New YorkThe Runorata villa

Huey Laforet, who’d broken out of jail, was currently a guest at the Runorata Family’s villa.

Since his escape hadn’t been publicly disclosed, Victor’s men couldn’t charge in to get him. The only interference from the machinery of the state came in the form of observers stationed around the villa at a distance.

In Huey’s guest room, Salomé Carpenter—the leader of Rhythm, a group in charge of developing technology—was speaking enthusiastically.

“That’s right! Knowledge certainly is important. However, I am against complete dependence on the knowledge the immortals possess—your own first and foremost, Master Huey.”

“And why is that?” Huey asked mildly.

Flushing, Salomé went on. “Knowledge is necessary for progress, but the older the knowledge, the more mistakes it has. Even if it is accurate, it is more likely to include inefficient methods. From time to time, it may become a shackle that hinders new discoveries.”

“Just the answer I’d expect from someone who prefers experiments over theory.”

“What are you saying? Master Huey, it is you who places so much stock in experiments, isn’t it? That’s precisely why I’m curious about the outcome of your current plan! In its service, I’ll freely exhaust those dear, precious children Rhythm developed for Larva!”

“If you treat your guinea pigs as personal property, they’ll betray you one of these days.” Chuckling, Huey raised a cup of tea to his lips.

“Ha-ha-ha! Now there’s something I never thought I’d hear from you. You treat the entire world as a subject for your experiments.”

“In my case, it happened in reverse.”

“?”

“…Once, I was betrayed by the world I saw and my clumsy ideals. That may be why I treat my own life as a grand laboratory and put everything I see into it.”

Huey was gazing into the distance. He was still smiling, but Salomé couldn’t fathom what sort of emotions lay behind that expression. Still, he decided that probing any further would be going too far and turned the conversation away from Huey’s past. “By the way, I hear you met with that Firo Prochainezo fellow yesterday. What did you discuss?”

“We simply made small talk… Although we did reminisce about Alcatraz as well.”

“They told me he was the one who gouged out your eye. I’m impressed your talk ended peacefully.”

“Well, I don’t hold it against him.”

Salomé sighed a little. “I meant Miss Leeza. I thought she might fly into a rage and force a flock of birds to assist in her revenge.”

“There’s no need to worry about that. Leeza isn’t angry, either.”

“What?”

“It seems she’s fallen in love for the first time. It happened much earlier than it did for her sister.” Huey began murmuring to himself. “Is it the result of so many other minds fusing with her consciousness? Or perhaps…”

Salomé’s eyes widened in astonishment. “No… Wait just a minute! Miss Leeza, in love?! With Firo Prochainezo, of all people?!”

“Ha-ha. If someone hears you yelling about it, Salomé, that will make Leeza angry.”

“Oh, erm, excuse me. I thought her only desire was to be acknowledged by you, and now… I was startled by the news that Miss Chané had found a lover as well, but in her case, seeing the man in question left me more convinced than I expected.”

As they were chatting, there was a knock at the door, and the man they’d just been gossiping about appeared.

Claire Stanfield was a hitman who’d inherited the name of “Handyman” Felix Walken, a moniker that many others had owned before him.

“Hello and good morning, Dad.”

“Ha-ha. Isn’t it a little soon for you to be calling me that? Melvi should make his move in earnest tomorrow night; I’m counting on you to keep him safe.”

“Yes, of course. He’s not here yet, though. Mind if I go out for a bit?”

“Do you have something to take care of elsewhere?”

For someone who’d been hired as a bodyguard, Claire was pushing it with his request, but Huey didn’t reproach him. He was asking out of genuine interest.

“Well, Cookie… Uh, Charkie the bear’s run away, so I’m gonna help look for him.”

Salomé, not Huey, was the one who reacted to that. “Oho… Do you mean that enormous bear?”

“Hmm? Yeah, but he’s not even twelve feet tall. I dunno if you’d call that ‘enormous.’”

There was no record of a twelve-foot bear on Earth in modern times, but Cookie was the only grizzly Claire knew. Although the bear was nearly ten feet tall, one of the largest specimens around, the redhead assumed he was average.

Without correcting this assumption, Salomé turned back to Huey. “Master Huey. Allow me to take part in the bear hunt as well.”

“It’s not a hunt. It’s a rescue,” Claire corrected.

“Ah, I beg your pardon.”

Giving the bodyguard a light apology, Salomé repeated his request.

“May I? We’ll be able to put the Runoratas in our debt, and besides…there’s a little something I’d like to test.”

Half an hour laterSomewhere in New York A broad avenue

“Hey. I heard all about it, Nader. They tell me you were at Ra’s Lance yesterday, too,” Ladd called in a friendly way.

“Yeah… I was doing a little proxy gambling for one of the rich guests,” Nader responded with a polite smile.

Shaft had taken Nader down a big street near Little Italy to his parked car, where they’d found Ladd, Graham, and several of their thuggish underlings loitering around it.

Nader hadn’t been able to get his shock and worry over Sonia out of his head, though, and even that smile didn’t have much strength behind it.

“You look pretty wrung out. Did you lose your shirt or something?”

“Yesterday was just for sizing up the competition. Nobody was winning or losing.”

“Ha! Playin’ it safe, eh? All we did was hang around the building, pretending like we were guards. I barely even stuck my head into the casino rooms. I didn’t see anybody I was after. It was boring as hell.” Ladd shrugged.

Graham had clambered up to sit on the roof of Shaft’s car. “Ladd, my brother…,” he began. “Let me tell you a sad, sad story.”

“What’s up, Kid Graham?”

“Somebody once said that life should be lived on the straight and narrow. But even once you pour out all that blood, sweat, and tears, the odds of being rewarded are low. And where there’s odds, there’s a gamble. No! What the hell is a straight and narrow gamble?! The chips are always all over the place, and the odds are anybody’s guess. In the East, y’know, I hear there’s a crackerjack gambler who won himself a big old mansion and a wife with nothing but a straw for a chip!”

Graham had abruptly launched into one of his usual long-winded spiels.

Nader wasn’t used to this, and his expression was clouding with consternation, but Shaft responded calmly. “Oh, you can just ignore him.”

It wasn’t clear whether Graham had heard, as he went on, rolling around on top of the car.

“What the hell is the ‘straight and narrow’ even supposed to be, huh?! Why play it safe? America’s a nation of pioneers! What happened to the frontier spirit?! …Actually, I said that in front of a guy once, and he got mad and told me that’s the opinion of a bunch of outsiders who barged in, and some other guy told the first guy he was wrong, and then they got into a great big argument about colonization and race politics, so I stopped thinking, and I was the only one who couldn’t get in on that debate. So it’s sad.”

Graham plummeted to the depths of despair. He sprawled limply over the roof of the car, but his barely audible voice kept right on going.

“It’s no good… I bet this world is one big gamble, and Earth’s the banker, and it’s taking the human race to the cleaners. It’s a dark world out there… Of course it is; it’s always night over half of it! Even if humans cut down the forests and mine the land and control the skies, we won’t have won for long. You just know someday we’re gonna lose big, and the world will start exploiting us. Maybe I’m actually the very first exploited human?”

“Don’t sweat it. Just deck the banker and take back what you lost.”

“What?! Ladd, you mean I should punch Earth?!”

“Should be easy enough, yeah? The ground don’t move. Make a mountain in a sandbox, straddle it, and whale away on it.”

Graham had sent himself into a depression with his crazy ramblings, and then Ladd came up with something even crazier.

Wondering what he was being forced to watch, Nader glanced over at Shaft. The man responded with the same old expressionless “Just ignore them.”

“Ghk… You would say that, Ladd. People say life is full of ups and downs, and everything comes down to luck in this world, but, Ladd, you’re always thinking about how to hit straight and true without leaning on luck! You taught me! Yeah, that’s right! Life is fun! It’s fun because we walk along the straight and narrow, taking one step at a time toward tomorrow’s dream! This is a revolution, Shaft! If we can beat Earth, we can lick the Runorata Family without even trying! Ain’t that right?!”

“That goes without sayin’. Everybody knew that but you, Kid Graham.”

“Is that right! The world’s left me behind… If life’s a gamble, I wasn’t even at the table yet. That means none of my previous losses count! I haven’t won yet, but I haven’t lost, either! A brand-new land is rolling out before me! So this—this is the frontier spirit, isn’t it?!”

“Yeah, and you better keep it burnin’. Pioneer the hell out of it!”

Graham was bellowing so loud his voice echoed down the street now. Ladd shrugged it off lightly, mostly ignoring him. Lua only smiled faintly in the back seat of the car; there was no way to tell what she was thinking.

At any rate, Nader thought, if they kept this up, any curious onlookers nearby might fall on him, too. Keeping a wary eye out for strange birds or women, he called to Ladd. “And…? What did you need me for?”

“Oh yeah. You’re headed to the casino to do more proxy gambling today, right? If so, I’ve got a li’l favor to ask.”

“What favor?”

“It’s the same thing we did the other day.”

“?”

Nader felt the weight of a heavy bag come to rest in his hands.

Apprehension spread across his chest as he carefully opened the bag and peeked inside.

At the sight of a whole pile of bills, Nader’s spine froze, his bad feeling turning to certainty.

“That’s your war fund. I don’t care if you win or lose. Raise Cain at the Runorata Family’s table with that.”

“Wait… Raise Cain? You don’t mean start a fight, right?”

“Course not. You’re doing it so I can start the fight.”

“I don’t get it.” Nader tensed, pulling his cheeks taut.

Ladd went on, his eyes sparkling with glee. “It’s real simple. Just blow that dough, make people think you’re a high roller, and get the Runoratas’ attention. You can be a genius who wins big or an idiot who loses a jaw-dropping wad in a day. Either’s fine.”

“So, uh…what do you get out of that?”

“Hey, I’ve got no plans to make trouble for the fat cat you’re gambling for. Once you’re standing out and people start asking you questions, just make sure you slip a little white lie into your story.

“…Say ‘I got a windfall on the Flying Pussyfoot.’”

“…Huh?”

For a second, his mind went completely blank.

Hey, wait, why is the train coming up now? Did I tell this guy about that? Actually, Shaft seems to know all sorts of stuff. Did he tell him? What windfall is he talking about? I wasn’t even on that train…

“The Flying Pussyfoot. Sounds like a ship name, but it’s not. It was the name of a transcontinental express train. If you can’t remember that, write it down.”

“Y-yeah.”

What, so he wasn’t saying that because he knew I was involved?

Come to think of it, I told Ladd that Placido Russo was after me, but I don’t think I gave him any details about that…or maybe I did… Dammit, too much has happened over the past few days; I’m already fuzzy on who I’ve told about me and how much.

The one thing he was sure of was that he’d just told Pamela all about how he was Sonia’s childhood friend. Czes and Rail, the kids who’d been there with them, would have heard all of that, too. Nader didn’t know how they figured into any of this.

It was possible that rumors about him would be all over New York by the following day. However, Hilton and Chané had already drawn a bead on him, so the spread of those rumors wouldn’t change his situation much.

Actually, I don’t really get this. They said that flock of birds was Hilton. Or Leeza. Whatever her real name is; it doesn’t matter. But they were…part of that woman?

Well, I mean, the women who kept finding me were all different ages and had different faces. At this point, if somebody told me the birds were in on this, too, I guess I’d have to believe them…

As he stood there in the middle of town, watching the traffic go by, he realized he wasn’t dreaming. The insane absurdity of the story Czes and Rail had told him was finally sinking in.

Compared with that, Ladd and Graham struck Nader as far more realistic. Dangerous, yes, but down to earth. Remembering what they could do, though, he decided to quit thinking about it.

“…And?”

“Well, if they hear those rumors, somebody’s bound to get interested in you. Once it’s over, maybe you’ll pick up a tail. They might even pick a fight with you.”

“That’s no good! Nobody gets anything out of that!”

“Oh yeah? If I step in and take the fella who picked a fight and slaughter him or drop-kick him or steamroll him, I’ll feel better. That’s good, right? If we pick up a wire or two while we’re at it, that’s good for my current bosses, the Gandors; plus a few thugs with mafia connections will disappear, which means New York benefits, too. Everybody wins. How ’bout that!” Ladd thumped him on the shoulder.

Timidly, Nader asked, “…What do I get out of it?”

“I’ll give you that cabbage. If you lose it, no skin off your nose; if you win, you win big. If you don’t touch the money you got from your employer, you’ll at least be able to say you broke even, get me? How ’bout that!” Ladd thumped his back even harder.

Nader was trying to think of a way to turn him down, but abruptly, his mind flipped the situation around.

Think about this.

I’m being watched, aren’t I? By several different outfits. The Division of Investigation’s watching me, too. If some big trouble really does start…would Manfred Beriam notice me?

The wish was like a walk across thin ice.

According to Pamela, Senator Beriam was watching the casino party like a hawk.

What chance did a petty thug like him have of attracting the senator’s attention? None… Unless something unforeseen happened, and he was right in the middle of it.

“No… Wait, wait, wait.”

“Hmm? What’s up?”

Nader had accidentally spoken aloud, and Ladd got curious.

Nader gasped, eyes darting around, and then tried to cover for himself. “Oh, no… Just thinking out loud. Sorry, gimme a minute here.”

“Don’t keep me waiting too long, pal. I was thinking I’d go razz ol’ Who and say hello to the doc. I first met him on the Flying Pussyfoot, too…”

After making sure Ladd was talking to Graham and Shaft, as well as to him, Nader pretended to consider whether to take the job. He was actually thinking about what would come after that.

No, hold it, this can’t be right.

What am I thinking? What’s the point of getting the senator to notice me? I’ve got no cards to negotiate with. Up until yesterday, all I was concerned about was running away.

Intense bewilderment swept over him, but his thoughts didn’t switch back.

Nader Schasschule was a small-time crook, and no matter how he’d lectured himself, he’d never been able to take that “first step.”

He’d escaped death by the skin of his teeth, thanks to a few good people who’d chosen to save his life. He was aware he’d managed to avoid becoming totally evil, but that was as far as he could go.

So what if he wasn’t completely evil? What good did it do him? He’d thought about it over and over, but—as if being dragged into the vortex of this incident in New York and almost getting killed by Chané wasn’t enough—he’d kept on looking for a reason. In the end, all he’d been able to think of was running away.

He was aware of that, but even so, he was thinking something stupid right now. Why?

Without understanding his own mind, Nader’s head kept spinning.

I genuinely did sell the Lemures out. I don’t know if that was what saved the senator’s family. If he has the Division of Investigation check into me, though, won’t he find out about it? Won’t he learn that I sold out the Lemures?

If one of Beriam’s men made contact with him, what would he tell them?

How could he get his teeth into Beriam’s organization?

How could he pick up information that would be useful to them?

How could he get a bird’s-eye view of the workings of this screwy casino party?

How, how, how?

The same word came and went in Nader’s mind, again and again.

In the end, though, all of this was no more than a process.

He’d spotted it. Ultimately, he’d seen where that “how” was leading him—what he really wanted.

From the moment he’d met Pamela and realized that she was here in town—he’d probably already been trapped by his mistake.

How can I keep my promise to Sonia?

How…can I meet her with my head held high?

Even as he realized that, it hit him.

He knew why he wanted to meet a girl who wasn’t even his lover, just a friend from a more innocent time.

Oh, I get it.

I’m probably gonna die.

Yeah… They’ll kill me. Of course they will.

He felt as if a weight had settled onto his back, but that weight also helped keep his restless feet firmly on the ground.

Up until now, he’d denied his fate. He’d wanted to run away from it forever, but in the past half day, some unconscious part of him seemed to have accepted it.

He’d been targeted by Chané and by the Hilton sisters, who’d turned into a flock of birds. He’d painted another target on his back at the gambling den, let violent characters like Ladd and Graham mess with him, and ended up attending a casino party with all the surrounding mafia syndicates.

To make matters worse, as soon as he’d remembered his old promise, his childhood friend had turned up, about to shoot someone on orders from a politician who was doing something shady.

However, to Nader, that last part was the most important one.

Despite his best efforts, the thick mist of death around him wasn’t going to clear.

If he got out of New York, he might survive.

If he made tracks on his own, abandoning that promise—the one thing that made him himself—he’d probably manage to stay alive a little longer.

How many days? Three? Five?

Hilton and Chané…

Can I really get completely away from them, and from that monster Huey Laforet?

“Hey.”

The next thing he knew, Nader had spoken to Ladd.

“What? Didja decide to take the dough?”

“Uh… Just for reference, lemme ask… You said something the first time you saw me. You said I was a coward. Twitchy. Scared of dying.”

“Yeah. And you still are, fella.”

“How does a guy forget about dying? How can I stop being scared of death?”

This guy was one of the toughest men Nader had ever seen.

If it was a one-on-one fight, Ladd Russo might even manage to hold his own against Chané.

As Nader jumped from organization to organization, he had picked up the ability to identify the tough guys. It was one of the few unique traits he’d acquired in life, and he was confident he could size up strong men in a variety of ways.

How could he become like them? It was a question Nader had asked for the first time—but because he’d been too roundabout when he asked it, he ended up getting a blunt answer.

“That’s easy. You just have to die.”

“…”

“See, whenever I see people with no sense of danger, folks who think they’re never gonna die, I like to tell ’em this: ‘A second from now, you might meet with an unfortunate accident and bite the big one. And that accident is me.’ Then I beat ’em to death. If you ever forget how easy it is to die, I’ll remind you with a personal demonstration. So don’t worry about that.”

Even as he thought he’d really picked the wrong guy to ask, Nader took it a step further. “So you hate heroes who aren’t afraid of death?”

Ladd heaved a big sigh, shaking his head. “Nah, you’ve got that all wrong. Listen up: Not being afraid of death is a whole ’nother thing from thinking you’re not gonna die! Most bastards who think they couldn’t die are just running from it. They’re refusing to see the truth. The ones who ain’t scared of dying accept death and keep on fighting anyway. Killing them is boring. It’s pointless.”

Somewhere in there, the focus had shifted to the relative entertainment values of murders, but Ladd kept going.

“The guys who manage to live to the end are the cowards. They’re the type who see me and run like rabbits. You won’t even find ’em in the same room as me.”

“…What if one of those cowards wanted to change something? What should he do? If he told you he wanted to stay a coward but save somebody, that he wanted to be a hero, what advice would you give him?”

“That’s one heck of a question. A guy like you or Who, a hero? That ain’t gonna happen… Well, it would be easy to say that, but I’m kinda curious about it myself. Kid Graham, what do you think?”

Before Nader could stop him, Ladd passed the ball to somebody who was even worse at giving advice.

“Let me tell you a sad, sad story. A coward becoming a hero…? Is that allowed? Say Martians attacked Earth, and all the brave fellas ran in swinging and got themselves killed off, and this one guy was screaming ‘I’m scared, I don’t want to die, please spare me, dear God, help me…’ You think anyone’s ever gonna call that guy a hero?! No way! And mankind can’t beat the Martians… That means the coward’s just going to draw out his own suffering! It’s so sad…! What a sad story! Earth is done for!”

Graham’s advice really was the absolute worst.

Of the people Nader had met so far, Chané and Ladd had a few screws loose, but when it came to utterly unhinged sequences of words, this guy Graham won hands down. Since he swung that enormous wrench around, he probably had loose screws, too, but his rambling speeches made it impossible to tell whether he was smart or stupid.

Just as Nader was worrying about how to turn the conversation away from the man’s rapid-fire talk, one of the car’s rear windows opened and Ladd’s girl, Lua Klein, poked her head out. With impeccable timing, she slipped a remark of her own into a gap in Graham’s long speech.

“No, Graham, Earth isn’t doomed quite yet.”

“Miz Lua?!”

As far as Graham was concerned, Ladd was his sworn older brother, and Lua was Ladd’s fiancée. Even in simple human terms, he respected her incredible composure.

Lua almost never joined Graham’s conversations, but every so often, she’d make an apt remark and change the flow. In that sense as well, he was no match for her.

“Earth’s still got a chance…?!”

“If he managed to live all the way to the end, enduring the fear and the pain…that coward would be the last member of our race. He’d stay human until the very last moment, continuing his resistance against the Martians just by living. That’s impressive.”

“What?!” Graham was astounded.

With a tranquil smile, Lua continued expanding on her theory. “He’d be utterly alone, suffering in his solitude until the day he died—and all that time, he’d be constant proof that humanity hadn’t yet been destroyed. There wouldn’t be anyone to record his story. No one would praise him, but I…I think that man would be a hero.”

“I tell ya, Lua’s the type who keeps going forward while she’s looking back. Ain’t she sharp?”

Ladd seemed to be bragging about his girl, which meant the only response Nader could give was “Uh…huh… Yes.”

Meanwhile, Graham had begun shouting excitedly again.

“Whoa… Whoooooaaaa! This is fun! Let me tell you a fun story! And so it was that Earth was saved! Everything’s two sides of the same coin, infinitely varied, and to each his own! If you change your perspective, a guy who shoulda been a coward running and running and running from the Martians does a quick-change into a hero! Three cheers for heroes! Now Earth belongs to us! He really is a hero! It’s a happy ending; he saved everybody! Three cheers for mankind!”

“He’s the last man alive. Who’s he gonna save?” Shaft asked, apparently on instinct.

Poking him sharply with his wrench, Graham answered confidently. “The last woman alive, of course! He could even save the Martians! Yesterday’s enemy is today’s friend!”

“…”

Shaft was going to retort, but then he noticed that Nader was being very quiet next to him. “Oh, you can just ignore this,” he hastened to say.

But in fact, ever since Nader had heard Lua and Graham’s exchange, he’d been deep in thought.

Change…your perspective, huh?

Then…do I just have to get the people around me…to change their perspectives?

Was he capable of that?

The doubt did occur to him, but he understood there was no space in this situation for calculations about whether he could do it.

I’m a con man. I can’t change my past.

In that case, I’ll just have…to use it.

Not to help myself survive. As long as I save her, that’s enough.

If I manage to trick her into thinking heroes exist on my way out, then I’m good.

And so Nader’s metamorphosis began.

Yeah, that’s right. That’s good enough.

I’ll trick ’em all. I’ll make them believe I’m somebody incredible.

He wasn’t becoming a butterfly. He was turning into a moth, drawn to the faintest hope.

Could a moth on a dark night fool others into thinking it was a butterfly?

Before he tried to find out, Nader quietly came to a resolution.

He’d been wavering ever since he heard Sonia’s name. He did think it was weird that he’d gotten that last push from the absurd ravings of a guy with a wrench, but in a way, Nader thought it was a good fit: He was about to wade into a crazy situation.

I guess I’ll start by tricking myself.

The small-time crook got his breathing under control.

He remembered his past self, a guy who had very little in common with heroes.

He thought about who he’d been before Huey had gotten his claws in him. About the guy who’d been on his way up the ladder of success.

By the time he’d emptied his lungs, the small-time crook was gone, and a man with the eyes of a con artist was standing there.

“Hmm…?”

For just a moment, Ladd was a little bewildered.

Nader was still scared, but for a second, he’d seemed like a completely different person.

“You’re…Nader, right?”

“…Yeah.”

However, when Ladd heard what he said next, his doubt was blotted out by delight.

“All right… I’m taking this money.

“I’ll see you after the party tonight.”