Baccano! - Volume 5 - Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

JOY ANGER SORROW FUN

Maiza Avaro

2001 December In a certain forest, in a certain country in Northern Europe

“Listen, are you sure this is the right road?”

A car with four-wheel drive was traveling through the woods. The speaker was a small boy riding in the front passenger seat.

There was no pavement. The car was running at full speed down a rough, narrow lane covered in gravel, sending up gouts of the snow that had accumulated on the road’s surface.

But it wasn’t snowing at the moment, and beyond the car windows, sunlight filtered down through the evergreens. However, as the car advanced, the amount of light was steadily decreasing, and as it did so…

“It looks like we’re just heading deeper and deeper into the woods, not toward any village! And besides…there are barely any signs that other cars have ever gone this way before.”

“We should be headed in the right direction… That said, it does look as though the road may disappear on us soon.”

From the driver’s seat, a bespectacled man responded to the boy’s uneasy question.

The man, whose glasses had clunky black frames, was gripping the steering wheel and smiling mildly.

“…Well, if you say so, Maiza. It’s probably all right, but…I’ve got a really bad feeling about this forest, although I can’t put it into words.”

“Ha-ha. You always were a worrywart, Czes.”

“That’s not true. You’re just too easygoing.”

The boy—Czeslaw Meyer—spoke sharply, sulking pointedly in the direction of the driver, one Maiza Avaro.

Glancing at Czes out of the corner of his eye, Maiza kept right on smiling cheerfully.

“When you’ve lived a long time, it makes you patient.”

Though Maiza didn’t even look thirty, the boy spoke, undaunted:

“I’ll be three hundred soon, too. There’s not much difference between us in age or experience anymore.”

Put briefly, the two were what one would call immortals.

They weren’t vampires or a type of evil spirit; they had completely undying bodies, and aside from attacks from their own kind, they had no weaknesses whatsoever.

This was a blessing for them, now that they had reached this state, but at the same time, it was a curse. There was one way these immortals could die: by devouring one another. All they had to do to ingest another was to set their right hand upon the head of the target and clearly think:

I will absorb all this person has.

Simply by willing it, they could take everything about the other person and make it their own: memories, knowledge, even their ingrained experiences.

The alchemists had killed one another as if it were a game, as if they were being made to dance on the palm of the demon who’d given them immortality. That said, most of the violence had been committed by one old man.

Two centuries and several decades later, the group of more than thirty alchemists had been reduced to a number that could be counted on one’s fingers. However, with the death of Szilard Quates—the man who had originally begun the slaughter and had been at the heart of the disaster—the terror had gradually faded away.

Maiza and Czes had been journeying around the world to meet with the companions who didn’t yet know about Szilard’s death. In order to escape Szilard’s clutches, the immortals had hidden themselves thoroughly.

Now that they had learned the whereabouts of one companion, Elmer C. Albatross, they were traveling through the woods of a distant country…

In the midst of the vibrations from the rough road, their conversation died away.

Silence filled the car for a short while, until a woman’s voice broke it from the backseat.

“So what sort of place is this village we’re going to? Do you think they’ll at least have showers?”

It was a pure, transparent voice.

On the right side of the rear seat, a woman stretched, lacing her fingers together.

The wrists that peeked from the sleeves of her coat formed slim, smooth contours that hinted at her beauty. Soft, silken bangs swayed gently over a symmetrical face reminiscent of pumas or leopards. Her short silver hair wasn’t evenly trimmed, but this only accentuated her features.

By general standards, she fit into the “beautiful” category quite easily. However, her loveliness wasn’t the natural sort used to depict goddesses in pictures. It brimmed over with a succubine allure that seemed to have been specifically tailored to human desires.

“Nn…”

The woman—Sylvie Lumiere—stretched her upper body as far as she could, then sighed. She still looked rather sleepy. Anyone would have found the gesture seductive, regardless of gender, but possibly because Maiza was used to her, his expression hardly changed when he glanced at her in the rearview mirror.

“Well, we won’t know about that until we get there,” he said.

“Hmm… Still, do you think he’s really there? Elmer, I mean.”

“He should be. My local information broker doesn’t spread disinformation.”

He sounded convinced, and Sylvie didn’t press the issue. However, as if to call attention to his unease, Czes added, “But, Maiza, it’s getting darker and darker out here—and it’s not even noon yet.”

Czes was looking downward, as if worried about what lay ahead. From behind his seat, Sylvie wrapped her arms around his neck.

“Aww, Czes. You’re as cute as ever.”

“Agh! Sylvie, don’t! I’m not a kid anymore!”

“It’s fine, it’s fine! You look like a kid, and if you’re cute, you’re cute!”

Sylvie leaned farther forward, putting her face up close to Czes’s head. Flustered, Czes blushed furiously and turned to Maiza, ignoring Sylvie.

“I mean it, though. These woods really are creepy… With this atmosphere, you’d think there were monsters here.”

On hearing that, Sylvie giggled and began to pet Czes’s head.

“What are you talking about? Monsters…? Now that sounds like a little kid, if you ask me.”

Shaking off the smooth-skinned arms that clung to him, Czes murmured darkly, “You’ve never seen a monster, Sylvie. That’s why you can say that.”

What’s that supposed to mean?

But before she could ask, Maiza spoke quietly, his lips drawn into a line. “It really is a bit odd, isn’t it?”

“What’s the matter?” Sylvie asked.

“The woods around us. They’re just… For a coniferous forest, it’s too dense. It’s as though the trees are being forced to grow, even in places that clearly don’t get much sunlight.”

As Maiza said this, Sylvie returned to the rear seat and looked around. The trees were so dense, they seemed to be leaning into each other. It almost felt as if they were blocking the gaps in the forest to keep people from entering.

“…True, it is a little eerie. I wonder why it’s like that.”

“That’s a good question… If we keep going, we may learn something.”

“Well, I guess it might be the perfect place for Elmer.” All Sylvie could do was trust the driver’s suggestion, and she slumped back in her seat as she spoke. “If the worst villain of the alchemists on that ship was Szilard, Huey was the scariest. The weirdest one, though… That was Elmer, hands down. He startled me all over the place back then… Although he was the most fun, too.”

“Was Huey that scary?” Maiza asked lightly. “Granted, it was hard to tell what he was thinking, but…”

“Yes, terrifying. I think Elmer was about the only one who was really close to him.”

“Well, Elmer did have a fearless side… He said all sorts of dubious things, such as how he’d successfully swindled Louis the Fourteenth, or how he wore a cursed diamond without losing his luck, but he was the type of fellow who might actually have done them.”

As he spoke, Maiza stopped the car and looked ahead.

It was something rather too perilous to be called a “small hill.”

The slope itself was gentle, but it was a rough pile of stones, dirt, and sand. The idea of traversing it on foot was daunting enough, never mind driving over it in an ordinary car. And even if they tried to detour around it, the abnormally dense forest around them continued up the hill on both sides with the gravel road in between.

“From what I hear, a tunnel went through the hill at this point, long ago, but… It appears there was a landslide, doesn’t it?” Maiza said. “It must have collapsed quite some time ago, but no trees have taken root in the space. That’s a great help.”

“What do you mean, ‘a great help’? We can’t get through if it’s like this. I wonder why they don’t repair the tunnel.”

In answer to Sylvie’s question, Maiza shrugged. “They say no one used it to begin with, since this was simply the entrance to private property up ahead. The person who owned the land may have decided not to use the tunnel at all.”

“Hmm… Wha—? Maiza, wait just a minute!” Czes, who’d been on the verge of agreeing, spoke in mild panic from the passenger seat. “What do you mean, ‘private land’? You said Elmer was in a small village…”

“That’s right. Apparently the village is up ahead, on that private land.” Maiza was indifferent, but Czes and Sylvie exchanged looks in the rearview mirror.

“Ha-ha-ha. You know,” the man continued good-naturedly, “I tried to get in touch with the owner using various excuses—vegetation surveys and the like—but nothing worked. From what I hear, he’s a wealthy individual, but I have absolutely no connections in this country, so…”

Maiza was an executive in a certain illegal organization in America, but in areas where he had no personal connections, things didn’t go as smoothly as they did at home. At that point, for the first time, Sylvie frowned, murmuring:

“A village…on private land?”

“That’s right.”

“Are you sure you can trust this information broker of yours?”

“Of course.”

Maiza spoke with great confidence, and Sylvie looked at him, seeming rather appalled.

“All right, here we go. Hold on tight.”

Before Czes and Sylvie could ask, Go where? Maiza abruptly revved the engine.

“Wait— Mai—”

Czes’s yell was drowned out as the whole car shook violently.

Grunch-grunch-grunch-grunch! Grunch-grunch-grunch! Grunch! Grunch! Grunch-grunch-grunch-grunch! Grunch-grunch! Grunch-grunch-grunch-grunch-grunch-grunch.

The impacts formed a chain.

Czes’s light body was jostled up, down, and side to side in the cramped car, the vibrations traveling through his hips and back until he could feel them in his stomach and lungs.

“Waaaaaaaaaaugh!”

“Ooh !”

Czes screamed along with the vibrations, and Sylvie huddled down in the backseat to ride them out.

This went on for a few minutes, until finally a particularly big jolt hit them.

The hill had been sloping slightly downward, but partway, it dropped off entirely.

At the bottom of the cliff was the ordinary, snow-covered gravel road. The drop was about ten feet.

The three of them rose out of their seats slightly, and after a moment’s pause, the impact ran through them all the way up to the tops of their skulls.

<Gwaugh!>

In that instant, from behind the rear seat—a space between the backrest and the rear panel—they heard a man scream, but the three were catching their breath and paid it no particular attention.

“…Sometimes you get insanely reckless, Maiza,” Czes commented.

“Well, in my line of work…”

“Every so often, I really resent the way you do things at your own speed,” Sylvie followed.

“No, no, I’m terribly sorry about that.”

The pair turned aggrieved eyes on Maiza, who was nowhere near breaking out in a cold sweat.

Deflecting their ire with a smile, Maiza turned his attention to the car’s surroundings.

The trees were as dense as ever, and the snow covering the ground seemed significantly thinner than it had been in the open fields.

“All right, if we go on this way, we should reach it in about three miles.”

<Maiza, you reprobate! Do you intend to kill me?!>

Suddenly, an angry bellow echoed from the trunk space behind the rear seat, a place intended for luggage. However, Maiza stepped on the gas as though nothing had happened. Once he was sure there was nothing wrong with the engine, he threw in the clutch and shifted into low gear.

<Are you listening to me, you scoundrel?!>

“Yes, Nile, I’m listening.”

Answering calmly, Maiza floored the accelerator.

“The road’s going to stay rough for a while, so be careful not to bite your tongue.”

Even as he spoke, the spinning tires were sending plumes of snow high into the air.

<Don’t brush me off. Let me say this: That propensity of yours is the reason your lover ran out on— Blugh!>

Some sort of dull sound came from the direction of the trunk. For just a moment, Maiza turned around with concern, but he faced forward again almost immediately and concentrated on driving.

The man’s voice had fallen silent.

Seen from the sidelines, the situation was far from normal, but none of the car’s passengers seemed the least bit worried. They simply pressed on through the shadows of the forest.

Toward a village that would never appear on any map, in search of their old friend…

People have come to the village.

They’re riding in something strange.

A huge metal box. It looks like a carriage, but it isn’t quite that tall.

It actually looks like the big cart that the traders sometimes arrive in.

The way it runs all by itself, without using horses, is like the traders, too.

They don’t seem to be traders, though. It really doesn’t look as if they’ve brought any goods.

The metal box stops at the entrance to the village. I am the first to notice it.

However, the first to approach are the villagers.

They all have weapons in hand. One by one, they surround the cart.

Someone is going to be hurt again.

Someone is going to be hurt, again.

I’m sure of it. This is just like before.

Just like five years ago, the first time Master Elmer was killed.

I only watch. Now, as before, I do nothing but observe the villagers filled with unease and hostility.

Afterward, I will only send word about it.

Because that is my duty now.

“There it is.”

Finally leaving the forest, the car carrying Maiza and the others advanced down a road that was a little clearer.

Abruptly, the view opened up, and a blanket of snow spread all around them. At first they thought it was just a plain, but the road seemed to have been built deliberately straight, so they decided that it was probably fields or some sort of farmland.

“Wheat fields, perhaps?” Maiza wondered.

At this, Czes and Sylvie looked around. The farmland was surrounded by the forest, and it seemed to cover quite a lot of area. The snow wasn’t very deep, and the ground showed through in places.

And, at the end of the road, in the direction the car was traveling, they could see several buildings.

“There actually…is a village,” Czes stated.

“Is this really private land?” Sylvie wondered.

With their dumbfounded voices in his ears, Maiza stopped the car near what seemed to be the entrance to the settlement.

The buildings were made of stone. From a distance, he’d thought they were farm sheds, but apparently they functioned as proper houses. He’d made the mistake because they seemed disparate from the townscapes of the rest of the country.

Not only were the buildings themselves old, but the atmosphere of the entire village—what he could see of it—seemed somehow old-fashioned. It made him feel as if he’d wandered onto some sort of film set. He looked around, but he saw nothing more modern, and it really did seem as if he’d found his way into a movie.

The only reason he didn’t mistake the situation for a slip through time was that…the village didn’t look like the past he and the others actually knew. There was something odd about it; it was as if, instead of occurring naturally, it had been built according to someone’s calculations…

“It’s a larger settlement than I expected.”

The road continued into the village, and several houses stood alongside it—apparently, it was the main street. In addition to the stone homes, wooden buildings and structures that resembled log cabins gave the street a rather patchwork atmosphere.

“It looks like they threw this place together in a hurry. Although, it seems too outdated for that…”

“I think it’s splendid. What a primitive atmosphere.”

Behind Czes and Maiza, who were exchanging brief opinions, Sylvie gloomily muttered to herself:

“That’s a pity. It doesn’t look as if they’ll have showers… I doubt they even have running water.”

Shoulders slumping, eyes downcast, she gave a gratuitously sensual sigh.

When Maiza replied, his tone had changed very slightly. “Sylvie, I’m afraid that may be the least of our worries.”

“What’s the matter?”

At his words, Sylvie looked out the window again. It was then that she noticed it: In the center of the road stood a girl in shabby clothes. She seemed nervous for some reason, and she was staring at them fixedly.

“That girl? What about her?”

“Around her.”

This time Czes had spoken, but his voice held a trace of tension as well.

Sensing something unusual in his expression, Sylvie held her breath and strained her eyes. Then she realized that although she’d assumed the girl was alone on the road, many other eyes shone there.

As if they’d materialized from the shadows of buildings and the edges of window frames, a host of human figures were glaring at Maiza’s car from all sorts of places.

“Hmm. I suspected that might be the case.”

“What?”

In response to Czes’s nervous question, Maiza adjusted his grip on the steering wheel. He seemed troubled.

“The thing is, there are other examples of villages on private land. They often appear in connection with certain religions or illegal organizations, for example.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning there’s no telling what they’ll do to outsiders. It’s possible that they’ll simply turn us over to the police for trespassing, but if we’re unlucky—”

Narrowing his already threadlike eyes, Maiza bluntly delivered the bottom line.

“We’ll get an ending I’d rather not think about.”

“Let’s run. I don’t want trouble.”

“Wait, Czes. If Elmer is here, we’ll need to ask those people about it either way. If he’s become a member of this village and we explain the situation to them, they’ll give us a warm welcome, too.”

Czes’s response to Maiza’s wishful thinking was stubbornly pessimistic. “And if they didn’t accept him? Or if he was never here in the first place?”

“Someone’s coming over here.”

“Maiza? Hey, answer my question. Look at me! Maiza!”

Ignoring the fact that Czes was shaking him violently, their driver got out of the car alone.

“Well, if that happens, we’ll deal with it then. We’ll run away at top speed.”

A man was walking toward them from farther down the road, followed by several young villagers.

He was middle-aged, with a mustache and a sharp gleam in his eyes, and he seemed rather nasty. His lean body was wrapped in thick winter gear, but the garments seemed to be composed mostly of furs with no man-made fibers in them. The young people behind him were dressed in a similar fashion, and they carried hunting rifles and metal clubs.

The rifles were very old models. Working from his memories, Maiza determined that they were from about a century ago.

The girl standing in the road was in their way, and the village men roughly pushed her aside as they made straight for Maiza’s car. They strode across flagstones where the snow had melted, their eyes sharp with anxiety.

With each building the group of men passed, the owners of the eyes watching from inside emerged, and little by little the crowd approaching Maiza and the others grew.

Some of the new figures were women, and for some reason, many held farming hoes or kitchen knives. Even at a glance, it was obvious that the group was brimming over with hostility.

In response, without any particular sign of fear, Maiza shut the car door. He stretched, but he kept one hand behind his back, curled around the handle, so that if it came down to it, he could jump into the car at any time.

First things first: I hope we can find a language we both speak…

“…Who are you? You’re not a trader. How did you get here?”

Ignoring Maiza’s worry, the whiskered man spoke. Maiza had meant to speak to him first, but the man had stopped farther away than expected.

For the moment, Maiza was relieved that the other man was using a language he himself knew—the official language of the country—and his expression softened slightly.

“My apologies. We’re travelers, you see.”

If he named the person they were looking for right away, he might only make them warier. For now, Maiza decided to say they were traveling and watch how the group reacted.

“…Travelers?”

The mustachioed man regarded him with distrust. He glanced to the car, glaring at Maiza. His eyes held a dark light, and Maiza detected an emotion that was closer to loathing than anger.

After giving Maiza a once-over and taking in the car behind him, the man spoke, his expression still hard.

“Get all the passengers out here.”

“Why?”

“Confirmation. We’re making sure you don’t have anyone suspicious in there.”

What standard were they planning to base their investigation on? He was concerned, but it wouldn’t be wise to argue needlessly. With that thought, Maiza gave a small sigh and signaled to Czes and Sylvie in the car.

The moment Czes, who looked like a young boy, got out of the car, the group’s hostility eased, just a little.

Then, when Sylvie emerged from the backseat… The eyes of the crowd around them widened slightly.

She stepped out of the car, pulling on her coat as she went, and directed a silent challenge at the people around her. Then, half closing her androgynous eyes, she leaned against the car door in a gentle motion.

Sylvie’s actions softened the group’s hostility even further. Several of the men were gazing at her with very different emotions from a moment before.

“…Is that everybody?” Only one, the man with whiskers, maintained unwavering hostility. He shot a stern look at Maiza.

“You’re very cautious.”

Instead of answering the question, Maiza responded ironically.

Without letting it rile or mollify him, the mustachioed man indifferently replied, “I’m Dez Nibiru, village headman.”

“Well, it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I’m—”

Without listening to Maiza’s self-introduction, the whiskered man—Dez—looked away and continued, “We aren’t interested in outsiders, and you can’t stay here. Leave. Now.”

“That’s rather unfriendly. We won’t ask you to put us up for the night. Can’t we simply camp somewhere?”

“The village doesn’t have the leeway to deal with outsiders right now. We don’t want trouble. If you do something uncalled for, that demon will—”

When he’d spoken that far, Dez faltered slightly.

“Demon?”

A face appeared in Maiza’s mind. It belonged to the man they’d called “the demon,” the one who’d given them immortality—a companion who should have been in distant New York now. However, even as he thought it couldn’t possibly be him, he’d asked the village headman just to make sure.

“Nothing. Never mind, just hurry and get out of this village…no, out of this forest.”

“What did you mean, ‘demon’?”

Clicking his tongue irritably at Maiza’s curiosity, the man grudgingly added, “…There’s a monster here.”

An isolated region in the middle of the forest. A monster that menaced the village.

The occult story—or rather, a sort of folk tale or legend—had come up abruptly. However, Maiza didn’t snort at it. Instead, he listened quietly to Dez.

“You could never know how we suffer at his hands. And even if I told you, you wouldn’t believe it.”

“What kind of monster is it?”

“I’ve got nothing more to say to you! Get out!” the man named Dez spat with fogged breath. His face was flushed.

After a short silence, Maiza murmured, as if confirming something:

“Elmer…Elmer C. Albatross.”

Rustle.

The air writhed.

The moment the name left Maiza’s lips, the attitude of the people around him changed dramatically. The hostility, which had nearly faded, rebounded as if by magic. The men bewitched by Sylvie turned back to Maiza so quickly that they might have been spring-loaded dolls.

Even the village head, whose face had rarely even twitched, opened both eyes wide and looked Maiza and the others over again.

“Why, you…”

“We’re looking for that man. If he isn’t in this village, we’ll leave immedia—”

“Get them!”

The headman’s roar echoed over the village’s main road, cutting Maiza’s words short.

The villagers, faces and bodies tense, burst into action. They moved with the force of wild animals mobbing their prey, but it seemed as though there was another emotion mixed with the hostility in their eyes.

Fear?

Maiza realized the true shape of the feeling that lurked behind their expressions, but the men’s arms closed in on him before he had time to confirm it.

However, he was as calm as if he’d expected all this. Repeatedly sidestepping without shifting his gaze, Maiza kept evading the men’s arms at the last second.

“Wait, please, we aren’t really—”

When he looked at the village headman, the young man beside him was pointing a long gun his way.

“I take it there’s no use in arguing?”

A gunshot echoed through the quiet village, and Maiza’s body rocked with the impact.

“Maiza!”

In spite of herself, Sylvie screamed at the sight. Unlike Maiza, she didn’t seem to really understand what was happening; she had her back to the car and hadn’t moved a step. Czes had gotten a handle on the situation a bit more quickly and slipped under the car early on.

The bullet grazed Maiza, gouging his thigh. His thick trousers ripped, and a spray of blood misted the air.

Sensing an opportunity, the villagers surrounded him. Only the village headman was looking at something else: the drops of blood from Maiza’s leg.

Dez stared at the red spots that had spread across the stone flags, a fierce uneasiness filling his heart.

His anxiety was right on the mark.

The blood that should have stuck to the pavement suddenly began to slide over the ground.

As if they had a will of their own, the red spots gathered, making for Maiza’s feet.

Like dancing shadows, they collided with one another, mingled…and finally climbed up Maiza’s leg to disappear through the rip in his trousers, into the wound.

The villagers who’d been attempting to immobilize Maiza registered the abnormal sight while it was happening. First they stopped dead, and then, turning pale, they gradually retreated.

“The same…”

“Demon.”

“He’s like that guy…!”

“He’ll kill us.”

“Defile us.”

“Don’t meet his eyes…”

The villagers muttered in low voices to one another.

“Hmm?”

Seeing this, Maiza felt a slight uncertainty.

He’d regenerated in front of people who didn’t know the circumstances before. Quite naturally, those who saw it were terrified, and most of them distanced themselves from him immediately. One of the few exceptions was an individual who ran a small crime syndicate in New York: his one and only boss.

However, the villagers’ response had been a little different from what he’d seen before. Ordinarily, when Maiza’s body healed, people feared him as something unknowable… But this group seemed to be frightened because they recognized this distressing phenomenon. This wasn’t fear of the unknown. They already held a concept of beings that regenerated, and that concept held some sort of terror for them.

I see. For the most part, I understand.

Nodding to himself, Maiza took another look at the situation around him.

When he did, he saw that several of the people who’d distanced themselves from him were edging toward Sylvie. From the way they kept stealing glances at him as they closed in on her, they were probably planning to use her as a hostage.

“Hey, don’t you dare!”

With her back against the car door, Sylvie tried to slap away the hand of the first man who reached for her.

However, the villager moved just a little bit faster, and he trapped Sylvie’s slim wrist easily.

Maiza turned, preparing to go rescue her, but then he saw something and stopped in his tracks. Behind Sylvie, with the faint hum of a motor, the window in the car’s rear door had begun to roll down.

The villager who had hold of Sylvie’s arm was desperate to subdue her, and he didn’t seem to have noticed.

Through the window, a brown palm reached for him—

Clamp.

The hand at the end of the long arm stretching from the window wrapped around the villager’s wrist as he tried to immobilize Sylvie.

“Yeek?!”

The young villager screamed, involuntarily distancing himself from his prey.

As if in response, the arm hanging from the window zipped back into the car.

The villager’s trapped wrist was hauled along with it by force.

“Waaaaaaaaaugh!”

Before he had time to struggle, the villager’s arm was halfway into the car, and the motor noise echoed again. Someone inside was shutting the window, with the man’s arm in it.

“Aaaaaaaaaah!”

Pressure assailed the young man’s arm. It wasn’t severed, of course—the glass stopped closing once his arm was firmly pinched—and yet the window didn’t open either. It compressed the man’s flesh and bone with an unsettling creaking noise.

At this sudden, unfathomable development, the villagers near Sylvie froze. Meanwhile, Sylvie peeked into the car through the window—only to hastily leap away from the door.

Just as Sylvie made it to the front of the vehicle, there was a click. The car’s rear door was kicked open, hard—with the poor villager’s arm still stuck in the window.

“Waaaugh!”

The force lifted the villager’s body into the air and very nearly sent him flying, but his trapped arm wouldn’t allow it. Something gave an even bigger creak, but the people nearby weren’t able to tell whether the noise had come from the window or the bone.

What emerged from the door, which had been flung open as the man screamed, was…

“A mon…ster?”

Unlike their reaction to Maiza a few moments ago, the villagers’ voices held a fear of something they didn’t understand. The figure of the man exiting the car was just that peculiar.

He was clothed in white fabric from head to toe, and the sleeves that ended halfway down his arms revealed brown skin. His outfit certainly wasn’t lightweight, but considering the surrounding temperature, the lack of cloth was enough to make people feel cold just by looking at it.

If that had been all, it wouldn’t have qualified as “peculiar.” The problem was what was above his neck.

The first thing to catch the eye was the strange mask fixed to his face. It was the sort worn at festivals in Southeast Asia or Hong Kong, with a complicated shape and a light background decorated with garish primary colors.

In addition, all that was visible under that mask was not skin but the pure white of bandages. In other words, this man had bandaged his head and face, and was wearing a mask on top of that. Through the holes where the mask’s eyes should have been, they could see glowering eyes that gleamed sharply.

At the incredibly incongruous appearance of this man, the villagers glanced at one another, and a small murmur rippled through them.

Paying no particular attention to them, the masked man spoke dispassionately, watching Maiza.

“Your driving is too rough. I’ll say it again. In fact, allow me to say it one more time: Do you intend to kill me?”

The man’s expression was invisible behind the mask, but from his tone, it was clear that he was considerably annoyed.

“Ordinarily, I would either punch or kick you, but considering the situation, I will overlook it. I venture to overlook it.”

“That’s terribly generous of you, Nile.”

Maiza responded to the grandiose speech with a light shrug. Then he turned and addressed the wide-eyed villagers.

“Ah, this man was less a passenger than he was being transported in the backseat, so I didn’t make him get out earlier… In any case, we had no intention of hiding him, so please don’t get the wrong idea.”

However, the village headman and the others weren’t listening. They were looking at the man who’d appeared before them with the expression of a person trapped in a nightmare.

Possibly because he’d noticed the gazes, Nile, the masked man, folded his arms and said to Maiza, “I do not fully understand the situation, but for the moment, things seem to have calmed down. However, permit me to ask: What should I do, Maiza?”

“Erm, I’d like to settle this as peaceably as possible, so no violence, please.”

When Maiza told him this, surveying the villagers as if he was concerned for their safety, Nile nodded with a grunt, then circled around behind the car.

Setting a foot on the spare tire fixed to the back of the car, the masked man began climbing up to the roof with admirable agility. When he’d reached his destination, he folded his arms and looked down on the villagers imposingly.

As the locals stared at him, wondering what on earth was about to happen, Nile slowly opened his mouth:

“Very well. First, you kneel. Then we talk.”

His voice was quiet, but it carried well. What he was saying was absurd, but perhaps Maiza and Sylvie were used to him, because neither of them called him on it. However…

“Nile. These people don’t speak English.”

…It was probably fortunate that they hadn’t understood.

When Maiza mentioned this, silence ran through the area for a moment, and then—

“What?!”

A slightly flustered voice issued from beneath the mask.

“You tricked me, you scoundrel!”

“Nobody’s tricked you. Neither I nor these people have used English this entire time. Weren’t you listening?”

“…Rrgh. Then it was my mistake, hmm? Yes, I will acknowledge that. I acknowledge it without covering my own embarrassment! However, in addition to Berber, I speak only English, Chinese, and Indonesian. What would you have me do?”

“Please don’t do anything. Or, actually, you’ll scratch up the roof of the car, so I’d rather you got down at once,” Maiza said tiredly, and Sylvie finally opened her mouth.

“The villagers are terribly frightened. You’ve been screaming words they don’t understand at them.”

“Oho.”

Without diminishing his arrogant attitude, Nile examined the villagers again through his mask. Every villager had widened the ring that encircled them, deliberately trying to put some distance between themselves and the newcomers. The guy whose arm had been trapped in the window seemed to have managed to wrench it out on his own and, slightly teary-eyed, retreated to the very back of the group.

If they’d understood the conversation, its sheer ridiculousness might have lessened their hostility, but apparently Nile’s words reached them only as incomprehensible alien sounds.

“I see… Maiza. Let me just say this.”

“What is it?”

“It will not be possible to settle this peacefully.”

“So it would seem.”

Maiza looked around, too, and replied to Nile immediately.

In the midst of the frightened villagers, the only calm ones were the young people standing around the headman. At some point, the number of individuals with rifles at the ready had grown, and all the barrels were pointed at Maiza, Sylvie, and Nile.

“Aim for their heads.”

Following the chief’s instructions, the men, who seemed as if they might be hunters, took aim with no hesitation.

“If they’re like him, they should stop moving for a while when their heads are blown off. If we manage to catch even one of them, we can use them to bargain with him.”

By normal logic, the villagers had the advantage in this situation, but not a single person in the group thought their victory was assured. Even the ones calmly leveling their guns had palms damp with sweat.

As if sneering at the tension, the man on top of the car snorted.

“Go ahead and shoot. The instant you pull the trigger, I will consider you my enemies. Let me just say this: There will be a massacre!”

“Look, I told you, they don’t understand English.”

Even as he sighed, Maiza never let his attention stray from the weapons.

All right: What should we do? We could technically let ourselves be caught on purpose, but…

As he considered, hostility was beginning to build among his adversaries again.

A sky so blue it seemed to mock them spread over their heads, and, as he quietly looked up at it, Maiza made a resolution.

A plan had occurred to him: For now, he would go with the villagers on his own and have the other three run, at least temporarily. They could all run away in the end, but before that, no matter what, he wanted to find some sort of clue regarding Elmer.

The Martillo Family was a New York crime group that was affiliated with the Camorra, an underworld organization. Maiza, who had spent his days as an executive of that group, had left it temporarily to travel around the world.

He wasn’t doing it simply to have fun playing tourist. He was searching for the immortals scattered across the globe.

Together, he and Czes had spent thirty years searching for these alchemists, their old companions. It had taken considerable time and effort just to find Sylvie and Nile, but they had all of eternity, and it hadn’t seemed very long to them. But even so, just when they’d thought they’d never find the remaining two and nearly given up…Maiza had received information on one of them: Elmer C. Albatross.

The news about his companion had come from an information broker he frequented. The perfectly unambiguous report clearly indicated this village as the place. However, aside from its existence and location, there had been nothing specific about the village, and the source of the information had disappeared behind the phrase company secret. Still, Maiza had been grasping at straws, and to him, it had seemed like more than enough.

He couldn’t let this chance escape him. He had eight months until he had to return to New York. If he missed this chance, in terms of time, he’d miss his window to find Elmer.

He felt slightly anxious and impatient. That was why he’d said the name, even though he’d picked up on the possibility that the villagers’ “demon” might in fact be Elmer himself from their conversation.

However, Maiza had clearly set himself in opposition to the villagers, and (although Nile would only have brought it on himself) he couldn’t pull Czes and Sylvie in. They might be immortal, but they weren’t immune to pain or suffering.

Just as he turned back to Sylvie and the others, signaling his intent to become a decoy with his eyes—he saw something in his periphery.

The something was on the road, outside the village, far beyond the car from Maiza’s perspective. Three horses were approaching them from opposite the forest they’d just left. A small figure sat atop each one, and all of them seemed to be dressed in red.

Still facing back, Maiza stopped moving. The villagers trying to restrain him also noticed the three horses and their riders, and they gulped.

“Hey… The messengers are here.”

“Lower your weapons!”

“Dammit, they weren’t supposed to come today…”

“These people must really be the demon’s…”

As they muttered, some lowered their guns, while others rushed into their houses in a panic and slammed the doors. The many presences that had been watching from the corners of the road vanished as if by magic. In the midst of the clamor that had descended over the area, only the village leader and his henchmen stood their ground, glaring at the figures in red.

“What? What happened?”

“Hmm?”

Sylvie and Nile didn’t seem to understand what was going on, but at the sound of hooves behind them, they turned around as well.

The three horses came to a halt at the same time, about ten yards beyond the car on which Nile was standing. The horses’ riders were women; from their appearance, they were still of an age where they could be called young girls. Their faces were similar, and Maiza’s group decided that they must be sisters or something similar.

All three of them wore clothes made from bright red fabric with accents of pure white cloth around the sleeve cuffs. The outfits looked almost as if they’d been based on Santa Claus’s costume, clashing terribly with the villagers’ old-fashioned clothes.

“Master Dez.”

One of the riders dismounted, gazing back rather uneasily at the village headman glaring at her.

“These individuals are Master Elmer’s honored guests. We’ll escort them to the castle.”

“You little…”

In response, the headman watched the three girls resentfully.

It wasn’t the terror he’d shown toward Maiza and Nile. The expression on his face was simple annoyance.

“Please withdraw. These instructions come from Master Elmer.”

“……”

For a short while, the village headman kept glaring at the girl. Then he clicked his tongue in such a way that she was sure to hear it and signaled to those around him with his chin.

Obediently, the young people—who’d stayed until the very end—also turned and started down the road.

The appearance of the three girls had abruptly plunged the entrance of the village and its series of disturbances into silence.

The atmosphere was indescribably odd. Maiza and the others weren’t sure what to say to the sudden interlopers either, and silence continued to circulate between them.

The girl who’d spoken first was the one to break it. Setting her foot in her horse’s stirrup, she turned to Maiza’s group and addressed them timidly:

“Um…if you’d come with us, we, erm… We would really appreciate it. This place—isn’t safe.”