Baccano! - Volume 6 - Chapter 2

CHAPTER 1

FLOWERS AND DOMINOS

“All right, Maria… If you have an excuse, let’s hear it.”

Luck spoke quietly. He was tapping his fingers on the edge of the table.

The young man’s lips were smiling gently, but his eyes were very, very steady.

The offices of the Gandor Family, the syndicate that controlled the area, were in the basement of a small jazz hall in a corner of Little Italy.

Music from the jazz hall upstairs filtered through the ceiling, and the mood in the room was relaxed. Several round tables were lined up in the spacious hall, and there was even a billiards table in one corner.

All the people in this underground space were obviously far from decent citizens, and the resulting atmosphere marked the place as one that ordinary people should not enter lightly.

However, one person in the office seemed different.

It was a woman dressed as a dancing girl. She was sitting at the round table in the center of the room, across from Luck. The young woman’s brown skin was exquisitely smooth, and it radiated healthy sex appeal to anyone who looked at her.

The woman, Maria Barcelito, muttered her response to Luck’s words, sounding unhappy.

“Well…”

“No ‘wells’!”

Luck smacked the table with the palm of his hand, as if he were lecturing a child. On seeing that, several of the gangsters in the office chuckled.

“Listen to me, Maria. Your job is to act as a dancing girl and bouncer at the casino. Do you understand that?”

“I understand, amigo! That’s why I dealt with that rough customer fast.”

“Dealing with him was fine. What I am asking you is why three slot machines, a baccarat table, the casino doors, and a chandelier were destroyed in the process.”

Faced with this incontrovertible fact, Maria uncomfortably averted her eyes.

“…Sort of by accident…”

“Don’t give me ‘by accident.’ No ‘by accidents’!”

Smacking the table again, Luck heaved a deep, deep sigh.

In contrast to Luck, whose smile had completely disappeared, Maria grinned artlessly, trying to comfort him.

“Don’t look so glum, amigo! You look much better when you smile, you know?”

“Whose fault do you think this is?”

“…Lo siento, amigo.”

Maria shrank down, as if her fire had gone out. On the outside, she looked like a mature beauty, but from her gestures alone, she seemed like she was still a little kid.

She was freeloading off the Gandor Family, and she was a former contract killer.

That said, since she’d never said she was quitting, it was safe to say she was still a killer for hire.

She’d gotten involved with the Gandor Family during an incident that had occurred over New Year’s last year, had been smitten by their boss Keith Gandor’s manliness, and had joined their outfit—or that was what she said. For all practical purposes, she was a freeloader.

On top of the fact that the office hadn’t had any women around before, she was also its first Mexican visitor, so in the beginning, there’d been some trouble…although most of the trouble had been brought on by her far-too-innocent personality and had had nothing to do with her sex or nationality.

However, each side seemed to have figured the other out, and almost no serious problems cropped up between the woman and the syndicate men anymore.

In exchange, though, there was more of the sort of trouble that was currently giving Luck grief.

“True, it’s good that you neutralized an unruly customer. You carried out your duties magnificently. However, couldn’t you apprehend him more efficiently?”

At that, Maria smiled bashfully and smacked the two katanas she wore at her waist. The Japanese swords seemed too long for her slim arms, and their glossy black sheaths looked out of place against her gaudy clothes.

“It’s Murasámia and Kochite. Once I draw them, they just slash away like there’s no tomorrow, all on their own!”

“Don’t blame this on your swords.”

“But—”

“No ‘buts’!”

He smacked the table a third time. The repeated exchange was beginning to look like a comedy skit, and several of the mafiosi were laughing out loud.

When Luck glared at them, they hastily averted their faces, but from the way their backs shook, it was patently obvious that they were choking back laughter. Ordinarily, Luck was far more coolheaded than this, but he seemed to have a particularly hard time dealing with Maria, and he always ended up lecturing her like a new teacher chastising a child.

There were probably more forceful methods available, but although Maria might not look it, she was currently the family’s strongest fighter. If you included nonmembers, they had a hired killer named Vino as well, but he was a mercurial guy, and he wasn’t reliable enough to be counted on as one of the family’s permanent soldiers. That was how Luck saw it, at any rate.

In short, even if he’d wanted to force her to obey, nobody in the office was stronger than she was. The only person she’d listen to obediently was Luck’s older brother Keith, but Keith was the type who only spoke a couple of times a month, so he wasn’t actively trying to reform Maria.

Berga, his other older brother, seemed to really like Maria’s dynamic, generous personality, and all he’d say was, “Why not just let her do what she wants?”

As a result, Luck ended up having to scowl and lecture her all by himself.

“I hadn’t gotten to move around in forever, and I sort of got all fired up… I mean, no enemies ever attack that casino, you know?”

“That is how it should be! We work very hard not to make enemies! Ideally, your job should consist merely of dancing on the casino stage, and enemies should never make an appearance.”

That opinion seemed extreme, and naturally, Maria pounced on it.

“Boring! Boring, boring, boring, amigo! I’m a hired killer, you know? Remember? Don’t you have any slashier, splashier, flashier jobs? Just dancing every single crummy day is boring! If this keeps up, when I see customers with nasty faces, I might slash ’em right across the eyes!”

“Please refrain from making such ominous remarks.”

Realizing that saying any more would be useless, Luck quickly changed the subject.

“All right, Maria. If you insist, I’ll put you on a different job.”

“Huh?! Really?! Thanks, amigo! So which outfit’s boss should I go behead?!”

“I have no jobs that preposterous.”

“What? It’s not preposterous. Look, that little group nearby, the Martillos or something. Want me to go get their boss’s head?”

Maria had said something that might have sent them to the mattresses if an outsider had overheard it, and Luck folded his hands and hid his face, as if he were praying to God.

Sighing for the umpteenth time that day, he began speaking again, admonishing Maria.

“Maria, listen. We do everything we can to avoid conflicts like that… Just try starting a dispute in this day and age. We’d catch the eye of Lucky Luciano’s Cosa Nostra and be crushed in a heartbeat.”

At the time, the mafia was undergoing abrupt modernization at the hands of a man named Lucky Luciano. An enormous mafia organization known as Cosa Nostra ran the underworld, and in order to kill traitors or start a fight with another outfit, syndicates that were affiliated with it had to get permission through the Commission.

The Gandor Family wasn’t part of that system, but for that very reason, if they did anything too big, they’d probably get blown away before they could blink.

Luck, who held a position of responsibility in the organization, wanted to avoid that situation at all costs.

And as a trick to ensure that outcome, he’d decided to assign a certain job to this girl.

“Maria. If you want to cut loose that badly, let me give you a job where there’s a possibility of trouble. You’ll be rampaging at a location that isn’t one of our facilities, with town thugs who aren’t affiliated with any organization… Or you may be, at any rate. It depends on how the negotiations play out.”

“What do you mean, amigo?”

A faint glow of interest had appeared in Maria’s eyes.

Luck didn’t let that chance escape him; he continued rapidly, without giving her time to respond.

“Since last year or so, a group of young thugs has been doing various ‘jobs’ in the area without our permission. It was rather cute, as if they were imitating us, but— As you know, Prohibition is being repealed this year.”

“Huh? It is?”

“Yes!”

Prohibition: It was a law that had propelled various aspects of history in America ever since it came into effect in 1920, and it was said to have had an extraordinarily great influence on the growth of gangs.

…Not that it had curbed them. On the contrary, it had made the underworld expand rapidly.

The Prohibition Act had been established through the influence of politicians and the ideals of a few citizen organizations, and even after its implementation, the demand for liquor in America hadn’t decreased. As a result, speakeasies and bootleg liquor were rampant, and they became the largest source of revenue for the gangs that dealt in them.

Because of these trends, the opposition had gradually grown louder, and finally, in February 1933, a constitutional amendment made it through Congress. Afterward, Prohibition had been lifted in state after state, and once the state congress of Utah passed its amendment, the Prohibition Act would be completely abolished.

That moment hadn’t yet arrived, but the fact that Prohibition was ending was already common knowledge, and taverns in New York could be seen openly ordering liquor from official brewers.

This meant the gangs that had been earning money with bootleg liquor would need to find new sources of funding. The Gandor Family had relied on income from its speakeasies and bootleg liquor as well, and Luck had been worrying about how to make that shift…

“Listen, Maria. The young hoodlums are engaging in various ‘work’ in this neighborhood without our permission. They’re making bootleg liquor without asking, running underground horse races, buying up discounted goods… All sorts of things. Ordinarily, we’d simply need to threaten them a little, but their organization seems to be larger than we assumed… They’re a rather troublesome opponent.”

“Gotcha, amigo! I just have to go slash all of them, right?!”

“…I am extremely concerned about the sort of work you’ve been doing as a hired killer up till now. In any case, I’d rather not make the matter that big. If possible, I would prefer that you merely threaten the thugs’ leader. Just enough to keep the option of defying us from seeming attractive, you see. Of course, if they’re receptive to begin with, there’s no need for that.”

On hearing Luck’s explanation, the girl thought hard for a minute, and then—

“Okay, amigo! I’ll slash one of them for starters, and if they strike back, I’ll assume they’re hostile, and—”

“Maria.”

“…Sorry. I got a little carried away, amigo.”

Luck was smiling, but his eyes were completely devoid of emotion, and Maria apologized meekly. Possibly because she’d spent a long time in underworld society, she was very good at sensing the location of the “line” that, once crossed, would make the man in front of her angry in earnest.

“The problem is that, while they are doing these ‘jobs’ on our territory, their base is on another syndicate’s turf. We have a mutual noninterference agreement with that other syndicate. Be very careful not to do anything overly flashy.”

Maria lowered her head. Satisfied, with an expression that was somewhat more relaxed than it had been a moment ago, Luck continued describing the job.

“Your work will consist of guard duty. We’re having Tick handle the discussion and the threat making, and we want you to protect him while he does it.”

As Luck spoke, his gaze shifted to a corner of the office. As if pulled along, Maria followed his eyes.

He was looking at a small table. A young man was seated at it, making snipping noises with his scissors as he cut the flowers on the table to pieces.

The Gandor Family’s best torture expert—Tick Jefferson.

That was the young man’s name.

Although he’d been cheerfully cutting the flowers in the vase, he seemed to have felt their eyes on him, because he looked their way and raised his hand in a laid-back wave.

He held a pair of gleaming silver scissors in that hand, and as the blades waggled left and right, they reflected the lights, sketching a shining arc for Luck and Maria.

“Hiya, Luck and Mariaaa. What’s the matter?”

From his voice and gestures alone, he seemed like an agreeable, slightly childlike young man. However, the scissors ruined that image.

Luck gave Tick a little smile, then promptly returned his gaze to Maria.

Wearing a smile that was as innocent as Tick’s, she’d raised one hand and was fluttering her fingers at him.

So their mental ages are about the same, apparently.

Without voicing that thought, Luck wrapped up the discussion for Maria.

“I’ve already told Tick everything about the job. Thank you in advance for your efforts… One last thing! The Martillo Family have also had their territorial rights violated by this group, and they are also participating in this matter. From what I hear, they’ll be sending someone over today as well, so whatever you do, do not—I repeat, do not—start any trouble with their people!”

“…Okaaay.”

“Hi!”

When Luck had said everything he had to say, Maria immediately walked over to the table where Tick was sitting and, wearing a soft expression, sat down across from him.

“What are you doing, amigo?”

Maria sounded intensely interested; she was watching Tick work. He was sticking his scissors into the pretty bouquet of flowers in the vase, then casually closing the blades every now and then.

With a pleasant little snick, a flower was bisected halfway down its stem and fluttered soundlessly to the tabletop.

“Cutting them. The flowers.”

Speaking indifferently, Tick picked up the fallen flower and stuck its stem back into the vase.

“Edith gave me these. She said she thought I’d look good as a florist.”

Edith was a waitress at a tavern directly managed by the Gandor Family. She and Tick seemed to have become personally acquainted through a certain incident, and now she’d given him flowers.

“Flowers are really neeeat, aren’t they?”

Snick.

With the sound of scraping metal, another flower fell.

When Edith had given him the bouquet, Tick had said only, “I’ll cut them very carefully,” and he’d spent the last several days cutting flowers.

“Even if you cut the stem in two, if you stick it back in the water, it stays just fine.”

The flowers had already been cut when Edith had given them to him, but although their stems had been severed in different places, not a single flower had completely withered yet.

The bouquet had shrunk to about half its initial length, and although the flowers’ petals had all been on the same level to begin with, they now stood at different heights.

He’d been handed the bouquet with the comment that being a florist would suit him, but this certainly didn’t look as if it would sell.

“Mm. Sure, they’re neat, but I want to cut something that’s sturdier than flowers, amigo.”

Maria’s answer was a total non sequitur. The members of the family had been spooked by Tick’s actions and were just watching him from a ways away, but the young guy’s abnormal behavior didn’t seem to faze her at all.

“So, about this job: When are we going, amigo?! ‘Now,’ of course, right? Right now, right?!”

Maria leaned closer, eyes sparkling, and the beautiful line of her jaw brushed the tips of the flowers.

If you just extracted that moment, the scene would have been as pretty as a picture, but it was the polar opposite of what they were actually talking about. The men who were watching from a distance heaved disappointed sighs—“Now, if only she had a decent personality, too…”—but Tick gave a genuine smile…

“Ooh, Maria. Those flowers look good on you. You’re really cute.”

…and expressed sentiments that were completely out of place.

“Really? You really think so? Gee, thanks!”

Maria seemed rather pleased, and for the first time, she took a good look at the flowers in the vase. The bouquet was a mixed assortment of different blooms, but it didn’t come off as gaudy, and the flowers’ colors were soothing.

“Hmm…”

Maria gazed down at the vase for a little while, but before long, as if she’d just remembered something, she took Tick’s arm.

“Well, I’ll take a good long look at the flowers after the job! Never mind that, let’s hurry and get to work! Okay?”

Maria pulled on Tick’s arm energetically, looking like a little kid who was about to go to some kind of festival.

Tick made no attempt to refuse her forceful invitation. He cut one last flower, then got up, murmuring quietly.

“…I wonder if these flowers have families, too…”

“Mm? Did you say something?”

“No. It’s nothing.”

Smiling even more softly than before, Tick let Maria begin to pull him up the stairs to the ground floor.

Whether or not they understood the substance of the job they were on their way to do, as the two of them climbed the stairs, there wasn’t a hint of fear or hesitation on their faces.

Even though if things went wrong, that job might deteriorate into a bloody tragedy…

In the office, after the pair had left, several of the mafiosi were shooting the breeze.

“Hey, is it really gonna be okay to send those two by themselves?”

“Yeah, they’re both pretty much kids. Well, they say the other guys are all kids, too, so I bet it’ll be fine. Besides, Tick may talk like that, but the guy ain’t dumb.”

“If Maria’s there, at least he won’t get clipped.”

“Those samurai swords are scarier than a lousy machine gun…”

All the syndicate members seemed to trust Maria’s skills to a certain extent, and not one of them was seriously worried about the pair’s lives.

However, Luck dashed cold water onto the cheerful mood in the office.

“Gentlemen… Aren’t you relying on her strength a bit too much?”

If the whole outfit depended entirely on one person, it would weaken their individual strength and their unity. That was a situation Luck wanted to avoid, no matter what. When Vino had come, he’d been worried that that sort of thing might happen, but Vino had immediately gone off somewhere, so the worry had evaporated.

However, there would be no point if they started to lean on Maria instead. They really couldn’t afford to have people starting ugly rumors about the Gandors’ fighting strength depending on one little girl.

“Yeah, but, Luck, she probably could get the Martillo capo all by her—”

“Do not make dangerous remarks. If you’d rather not live a long life, I suppose it doesn’t matter, but…”

In contrast to the way he’d spoken to Maria a moment ago, his words were hard-boiled, without the slightest trace of emotion. Pinned by their coldness, one of the syndicate men felt something frigid race down his spine.

“Besides, I wouldn’t underestimate the Martillos. After all, they have Ronny Schiatto, a man who rivals Vino, and Yaguruma and Maiza can’t be dealt with by ordinary methods, either.”

After admonishing everyone in the office, Luck added a few final words, as if talking to himself.

“The same is true of their youngest executive…Firo Prochainezo…”

At the same time The restaurant Alveare

“That was mean, Firo!”

“Way too mean!”

“The worst!”

“Yes, it doesn’t get worse than that!”

The restaurant was located in the back of a honey shop on the corner of the broad street that ran between Little Italy and Chinatown.

A cast metal sign in the shape of a beehive hung at its entrance. The name written on that sign was ALVEARE, which meant “beehive” in Italian.

The Camorra was an Italian crime group. Its structure and customs were different from those of the mafia, and along with the Sicilian mafia and the ’Ndrangheta, it was one of Italy’s three big criminal organizations.

The Martillo Family was one of its branch syndicates, an extremely minor group that had a small territory in Little Italy and Chinatown. Its main base was here, in this restaurant that was filled with the aroma of honey.

The establishment had originally been the territory’s largest speakeasy, but with the move to abolish Prohibition, it had reinvented itself as a legitimate watering hole. The interior was extravagantly splendid, with chandeliers that glittered like jewels, a bar and its tables adorned with stately carvings, oil lamps on the walls—and it was filled with the sweet smell of dishes prepared with honey.

It was noon, and ordinarily, the place would have been overflowing with people whose appetites had been whetted by the aromas… But today, things were just a little different.

“Look, like I keep saying, I’m sorry.”

Leaning against the bar, a man apologized, sounding tired.

He was about eighteen or nineteen, but there was still something very boyish about his face, and if you only looked at that, he seemed two or three years younger.

The young guy was surrounded by several men and women, and the couple in front of him had their voices and their hands raised in protest.

“You can’t clear this up with an apology!”

“Yes, it’s out of the question!”

The man of the couple was dressed in a tuxedo, like a stage magician. As if she’d coordinated her outfit to match the man’s, the woman wore a dress that made her look as if she might be going to a ball.

Their outfits clearly didn’t match the time or the location, but nobody questioned the pair’s garment choices.

Seeing the young guy sigh, the man—Isaac Dian—shook his raised fists.

“Just how long do you think we spent setting up all those dominos?!”

Following his lead, the woman—Miria Harvent—also waved her fists around and shouted:

“Yes, those were the product of our blood, sweat, and tears!”

The angry words they lobbed his way made the young guy—Firo Prochainezo—sigh even more deeply.

“You didn’t shed any blood or tears over those.”

“You can’t deceive the hot blood that flows in my veins with words like that!”

“Yes, and when those dominos fell, Isaac cried a little!”

The pair’s words were rather dumb, but as if they sympathized, the people around them also began denouncing the young man.

“Firo, that was your fault.”

“Yeesh, you’re such a klutz.”

“You lack concentration. You’re neglecting your training; that’s why these things happen.”

“Say, Firo? Big brother? I think you should apologize better than that.”

“Firo…”

“Aww… The cleanup’s going to be awful, and it’s all because of you, Firo.”

“Go home.”

“Get out.”

“Scram.”

“Fade.”

Firo had listened silently at first, but as his friends picked him to pieces, he grew unable to take it. He’d been wearing an uncomfortable expression, but it gradually shifted into something angrier.

I’m a Martillo Family executive, right?

So why did he have to get bawled out, not just by Pezzo and Randy, who were fellow executives, but by Czes (a freeloader) and the family’s young guys (who weren’t even executives), and on top of it, Lia the waitress too?

True, he’d been in the wrong, but still. Did they really have to give him this much grief for it?

These gloomy thoughts built up inside Firo—

“Pay us back for those dominos!”

“Yes, we’re suing for damages!”

—and finally collapsed.

“Shaddup!”

“Eep!”

“Yeek!”

“All I did was knock over some dominos you were setting up; why are we talking compensation?! Did I shatter them? Did they break? Did the tiles I knocked over get pulverized into dust?! Did they?!”

At his sudden yell, Isaac and Miria flinched, freezing up.

Seeing this, Firo bore down harder.

“And anyway, this is a place for eating, not for messing around with dominos! We’re letting you borrow space on our turf, so if we knock a few of ’em down, overlook it, wouldja?!”

After he’d said all that, Firo glared at Isaac and Miria, breathing hard.

Watching the furious boy, Randy and Pezzo whispered to each other.

“Now there’s a classic case of the perp blowing up at the victims.”

“Yeah, and he was having fun setting those things up, too…”

Firo’s ears picked up their conversation, but he ignored them, and his expression stayed angry.

Isaac and Miria stood frozen for a little while, but then they both began trembling, and—

“W-waaaaaaaaaah! Stupid Firo!”

“Waaaaah! Firo, you touhenboku! Heathen! Abysmal plebeian ignoramus!”

Firing off every parting shot they could think of, they ran for the door, looking ready to burst into tears.

“Tou, touhen… What?”

Firo didn’t understand what Miria’s words had meant, and he got confused before he could get mad. Beside him, Yaguruma, who’d emigrated from Japan, muttered:

“That Miria girl really knows her way around Japanese.”

As Isaac and Miria opened the door, they almost collided with a man who was on his way in. The man, who was holding a paper bag, dodged nimbly and slipped past the pair.

“What’s going on? …Whoops.”

Just when the two of them seemed to have passed the man completely, Miria poked her head back in from behind him, stuck her tongue out at Firo, and hit him with another parting shot:

“Bleeeeeh! Go get yourself kicked by Yagyo-san’s headless horse, Firo!”

After screaming those words, she trotted away lightly in pursuit of Isaac, who’d already gone outside.

As Miria ran away, dress streaming behind her, she looked like a fairy-tale Cinderella. While he watched her go, Firo held his head and sighed for the third time.

“Who’s Yagyo-san? Dammit… First they tick me off, then they confuse me on their way out…”

Grumbling, he turned around and saw that everyone in the restaurant was watching him coldly. Nobody said anything aloud, but their gazes were filled with obvious reproach.

“…Argh, fine. I was acting like a kid! I admit it, okay?!”

As Firo shook his head in irritation, the man with the paper bag who’d just come in spoke to him. He looked as if he didn’t understand the situation.

“Did something happen?”

“Oh, Ronny. No, it’s nothing. I knocked down Isaac and Miria’s dominos before they got them completely set up, that’s all.”

Firo, who’d been acting annoyed just a moment ago, changed his tone, abruptly becoming respectful.

The man he’d called Ronny held the position of chiamatore for the Martillo Family and was the outfit’s de facto Number Two.

“Hmm. I see… They may have run off, but where have they run to?”

“Oh, that’s nothing to worry about. They’ve got nowhere else to go. I bet they’ll come back when they get hungry.”

“…Well, never mind. I was just about to head out myself. If I see them, I’ll talk them down and bring them back.”

Coming from an upper-level executive, those were unexpected words, and Firo’s eyes went round in surprise.

“No, but…! Ronny, you don’t have to do all th—”

“It’s on my way. Don’t worry about it. If I don’t see them, then that’s that.”

Speaking indifferently, Ronny took a large quantity of pepper bottles out of the paper bag and lined them up neatly on top of the bar.

“Besides, I heard that a strange group attacked a crew of workmen at a riverside construction site yesterday. I won’t say things have gotten dangerous, but it’s best to be careful.”

After he’d emptied the paper bag of its contents, he immediately turned on his heel again.

As he headed out the door, a slender figure got to its feet, as if it meant to follow him.

“I’ll go look for them, too.”

“Ennis.”

Startled, Firo called to the girl in the black suit who’d stood up.

“It’s fine. Even if we leave ’em alone, they’ll come back.”

“But…there’s the matter Ronny just mentioned, too.”

The girl, Ennis, quietly broke into a run. She paused for a moment beside Firo and softly put her lips close to his ear.

“…In the meantime, think of a proper apology to give Isaac and Miria, all right?”

She’d spoken as if she were gently admonishing a child, and Firo didn’t get mad or argue. He just turned bright red and gave a small nod.

“Fine…”

Clicking his tongue, he turned his face away like a little kid. Watching the gesture with a kind smile, the girl in black slipped through the door, heading into the crowd on the street.

Firo watched her until she was out of sight, then turned around slowly, as if to check something.

But no one was looking at him coldly anymore. Everyone had begun to spend their time in their own ways, eating lunch or reading the newspaper.

Seeming vaguely relieved, Firo took a seat at the counter, intending to have some coffee.

However—as if he’d been waiting for this—a man sat down beside him.

“Hello.”

“Maiza…”

The tall, bespectacled man was Maiza Avaro, Firo’s superior and the organization’s contaiuolo.

Earlier, when Firo was being taken to task, Maiza had been the only one who hadn’t said anything. Was he planning to deliver his lecture now? Firo glanced at the man out of the corner of his eye, trying to guess his intentions.

After a beat, Maiza spoke. His expression was mild.

“Firo, back then—that was intentional, wasn’t it?”

“…What was?”

“When you knocked down the dominos they’d almost finished setting up.”

Silence.

His voice had been quiet, but it was clear. Firo glanced around to see if anyone else was listening to their conversation, but apparently, no one except the two of them was paying attention.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Firo.”

The man’s tone was kind, but it brooked no argument.

Although Firo was silent for a while, finally, as if he’d given up, he started to speak.

“……Yeah.”

“Why did you do it?”

For a little while, the youth thought hard, as if he was searching for the answer inside himself. Then, bit by bit, he began to answer.

“Because I’m scared.”

“Scared?”

“The memories inside me, the ones from that old guy, Szilard. They’re way beyond anything I can understand.”

Szilard.

At the abrupt mention of that name, it was Maiza’s turn to fall silent.

“I wonder…if this is a sort of karma laid down for us immortals.”

“Seriously… We had to pay that information broker absolute stacks of lettuce to get them to cough up information on you. When it comes to intel about ‘immortals,’ they get as closemouthed as fossilized clams. We gave them ridiculous amounts of dough and info to find out where you’d been put under. Show a little gratitude, would you?”

“…Not my problem.”

“Ha-ha, true. Well then, why don’t I ask about something that does affect you? Dallas. How much do you know about those…‘immortals’?”

A group in eccentric clothes was walking along the broad avenue that led to Little Italy.

It was Tim and the members of Larva.

At first glance, they seemed like a band of town thugs, but several of them were dressed like bank clerks, so it was hard to describe them in a few words.

“When you became immortal, how much did Szilard Quates tell you?”

In the middle of a group of about ten people, Tim spoke to Dallas, who was right behind him.

“Hell if I know.”

Muttering shortly, Dallas kept walking, glaring at the back of Tim’s head.

“In that case, I’ll give you a quick rundown. The first important thing is that you’re not completely immortal. It’s not that you don’t age; you just don’t die. Once you get up there in years, you’ll die of old age. It’s sort of a half-assed immortality… In other words, you’re a failure.”

This gink keeps phrasing things so they’ll rub me the wrong way.

Dallas glared even harder, but naturally, the back of Tim’s head didn’t flinch.

“Real immortals were given a cup of liquor a group of alchemists asked a demon for, a little over two hundred years back.”

“Alchemists?”

“Whoa, I have to explain that, too? Adele, this is a pain in the neck. You go over that bit for him.”

“Oh, y-yessir!” Adele responded as she walked beside Dallas.

She was wearing an outfit that was mostly white and looked easy to move in, and she had an odd, stick-shaped thing bound to her back. It seemed to be some kind of weapon, but Dallas wasn’t able to visualize what it was, specifically. He didn’t intend to try, either.

The girl seemed constantly nervous, and Dallas really didn’t like her. For starters, if something happened, this girl was apparently going to kill his little sister. He didn’t just not like her; he felt like murdering her.

Although I doubt a frail like her could kill anybody…

When he’d thought that far, Dallas shook his head vigorously.

Three years ago, he’d been knocked out by a similar girl. Ennis. Dallas remembered her face vividly, and he spat, hating the memory.

“—So you see, by alchemists, we mean that type of… Um, a-are you listening?”

“Like I’d actually listen, you bim.”

“Th-that’s so mean…”

Letting the rest of the explanation go in one ear and out the other, Dallas sent an irritated question at Tim:

“So what about these immortals?”

In response, Tim smirked.

“Long story short, there’s a rumor that there are several immortals here, in this town. That’s something Mr. Huey got out of the information broker. Apparently, Szilard, the old guy who made you immortal, already got eaten by one of ’em.”

Got eaten. It was a weird expression, but Dallas was able to picture it easily.

He had a clear memory of it. When Dallas had been turned into a failed immortal, one of the guys who’d been working with him had gotten sucked into Szilard’s right hand.

“Immortals are able to eat other immortals—including the failed type—with their right hands. However, failed immortals can’t do that. You exist just to get exploited.”

“Explanations like that are just gonna tick me off. Skip ’em.”

“All right, okay. Don’t blow your wig… Well, to put it briefly, our boss, Huey Laforet, is one of those full immortals.”

Tim went on calmly revealing inside information on his organization to Dallas, who was technically an outsider.

Dallas didn’t seem interested, though. He spat, as if telling the man to hurry up and get on with it.

“You’re not curious? Don’t you want to know who ate Szilard the alchemist?”

“I don’t give a rip.”

Dallas snapped the words out as if he really didn’t care, but Tim ignored his reaction and told him, anyway.

“Firo Prochainezo.”

Dallas stopped in his tracks.

There, right in the middle of the road, he processed what those words meant.

One: That damn punk is still alive.

Two: That damn punk is a full immortal.

Three: That damn punk can kill me, but I can’t kill him.

“What…did you just…?”

Desperately trying to deny the conclusion he’d reached, Dallas quietly broke out in a cold sweat.

He was assailed by the illusion that he’d become the weakest thing on the planet.

Immortal.

Firo Prochainezo was an immortal.

Three years ago, he’d gotten dragged into a struggle between alchemists and had gained immortality by accident.

He wasn’t the only one. All the Martillo Family executives, and the three brothers who ran the Gandor Family. The robber couple, Isaac and Miria. Several of the executives’ family members, who’d just happened to be at the party where the liquor of immortality had been consumed, and two Alveare employees. All these people had been pulled into the incident.

That crowd of people had been turned into immortals in a single night.

Szilard was one of the alchemists who’d been involved in that incident, and he’d been absorbed into Firo, memories, experiences, and all.

That’s right: memories, experiences, and even his past—everything. Everything.

“That old guy’s memories came flooding into me, and they’re still there… He really was a scumbag, wasn’t he? I’ve got memories of the stuff he enjoyed, and…to be honest, I can’t understand any of ’em.”

Quietly stirring the coffee that had been set down in front of him, Firo confessed his thoughts to Maiza, little by little.

“That geezer… He stole everything other people had built up for themselves, and doing it made him happier than anything else ever did. Whether it was time or effort, the more of it they’d accumulated, the bigger the joy, the thrill, the sense that life was worth it. What he felt was lots of times greater than all the joy I’ve felt in my entire life! Frankly, it was a shock. That old fart was happier when he ate somebody than I was in the moment I made executive… That’s what it’s like in my memories.”

As the boy spoke, Maiza listened quietly, neither agreeing nor denying anything.

“Still, even those memories I can’t understand—they’re part of me now.”

At that point, for the first time, color came into Firo’s expression. His face held nothing but pure terror, as if he were a frightened little kid.

“It’s scary.”

“……”

“Maiza, I’m scared! As long as those memories are inside me, someday, will I…will I do what he did, and—?”

Firo spoke as if begging him to see the terror that was bearing down on him, but Maiza softly held up a hand.

The palm that appeared in front of his eyes brought Firo back to himself. He looked down at his coffee again, extremely conscious of his surroundings.

“I-I’m sorry.”

“No… It’s fine.”

Before long, coffee was set down in front of Maiza, too. As he dissolved two sugar cubes into it, he murmured quietly, keeping his eyes on his coffee cup:

“And so you began to want to make sure.”

“……”

“You wanted to know whether, just maybe, you would find joy in stealing and destroying what others had built up, like Szilard.”

Maiza gave his interpretation calmly, and Firo didn’t try to argue any of it.

“But you couldn’t do that. Even so, the temptation remained. You might get pleasure out of it. It might be an incredible relief. In that case, why not try stealing something that wouldn’t affect anyone’s life and find out that way?”

When he’d gone that far, Firo started studying Maiza’s face closely.

“Maiza, are you reading my mind?”

“I only guessed.”

Chuckling, Maiza went on.

“And? How was it? How did it feel to steal what Isaac and Miria worked so hard to create?”

He skipped the conclusion and simply asked about the result.

Firo had seen the question coming, and he answered without hesitation.

“When I saw them looking like they were gonna cry, I wanted to deck myself.”

“Ha-ha, that’s a relief.”

Maiza smiled at Firo’s words without skipping a beat. He’d probably believed in him the whole time. Exchanging smiles, the two of them began drinking their coffee.

“I’ll try to forget everything about that geezer.”

“There’s no need to forget. You just have to accept it, then get past it. The question is whether you can give something up without hesitating if you think it’s holding you back.”

Firo thought about Maiza’s words for a little while before responding.

“I’ll try.”

Draining his coffee, the young guy asked Maiza another question.

“Only… Is it even possible to get over the past or give up emotions by yourself?”

“I think everybody worries about that, not just immortals.”

Adding one more sugar cube, Maiza murmured with an expression that had turned just a little grave:

“However, if it’s a past you’ve actually lived through…it’s probably best to give some thought to whether it’s really something you should discard.”

Sipping his coffee, which was now incredibly sweet, Maiza spoke, gazing into the distance.

“People have the power to get rid of sorrow and pain by themselves.”

The man who’d summoned the demon on the ship and had been the first of his companions to become immortal murmured quietly, but with firm conviction:

“That’s what I believe.”

“Curses!” Isaac shouted. “That rat Firo! How should we make him say gyafun?!”

“Yes, we need to put him through an argle-bargle!” Miria added.

“Gyafun and an argle-bargle, hmm…? Don’t you think that might be a tad too cruel? A simple gyafun is enough! I intend to let him off with that!”

“Ooh, Isaac, you’re so nice!”

Having dashed out of Alveare, Isaac and Miria were aimlessly wandering the streets of Little Italy.

“Let’s see…,” Isaac began. “We could give him a paper with gyafun written on it and ask him to read it. Or we could hunt up a fellow named Leonardo Gyafun and have them make friends.”

“Perfect strategies! By the way, what’s a gyafun?”

In response to Miria’s fundamental question, Isaac puffed out his chest as if he’d been waiting for those words.

“From what I hear, gyafun is a traditional Japanese yell! They say it used to be gyofun up until the Edo period, but it was written as gyafun in a book by a Japanese fellow named Uchida Roan! The book’s title was something-something’s Changing Faces, so… I think it was probably like an Arsène Lupin story!”

“Wow, Isaac, you know everything!”

His partner’s praise seemed to have pleased him; as he continued, Isaac threw his chest out even farther.

“You bet I do! I can’t read Japanese, so I had old Yaguruma read it for me! It was perfect!”

“That’s what they call ‘tactics,’ isn’t it!”

“…Hmm? But you know, I’m not sure there was a gentleman thief in it…”

As Isaac worried, voicing a natural doubt, Miria yelled loudly with eyes that held no doubt at all:

“I bet he was there, but since he’s a phantom thief, he hid himself really well so you couldn’t find him!”

“I see! Damn, I’d expect no less from someone with that many faces!”

“Even a hundred-eyed ogre couldn’t see through him!”

“Argh, no wonder he managed to steal my heart with such panache before I even noticed!”

As they worked their way through this completely screwy conversation, the two of them began discussing their next move.

“That said… Firo didn’t steal my heart. He stole something more important: my dreams and hope and time! He’s an archvillain! At any rate, we’re declaring war on Firo!”

“Eeeek, it’s a war!”

“He’s the enemy of our dominos, and we’ll make him apologize for every single domino he knocked down! Until he does, we’re not going back to where he is. You’re prepared for that, right, Miria?!”

“Right! …Oh!”

As they grew strangely hyper, Miria pointed out something that dashed cold water on their mood.

“But, but, Isaac, where should we sleep tonight? We left all our money and our things at the restaurant, you know?”

“Oh, that’s nothing to worry about, Miria! There’s an Eastern proverb that says, ‘A boat at the crossing’!”

“What does that mean?”

Miria looked puzzled, and Isaac responded with an expression that was brimming over with confidence.

“Apparently, it means that when there’s a big river you have to get across, there’s always going to be a boat there… In other words, it’ll all work out somehow!”

“Wow, Isaac, how reliable!”

His confidence bolstered by knowledge that was completely wrong, in an attempt to look cool in front of Miria, Isaac began to say whatever came into his head, without thinking about it.

“That’s it! …Heh-heh-heh. Miria. We were wandering and lost like Moses, and Noah’s ark has come to us right off the bat!”

“So the Egyptians are getting a great flood!”

“Heh-heh, it’s the Ten Commandments. We’ll hit Firo with ten commands regarding dominos! In the name of the god of dominos!”

“Yes, Dominion, right?! And, and?! Hurry and tell me what God said, Isaac!”

Miria laughed happily, her eyes sparkling at her beau’s bright idea.

“We have other friends we can count on, besides Firo’s gang! We’ll stay at their place tonight!”

“Ooh, brilliant! What a terrific idea!”

Making plans that clearly leaned on other people, the two of them broke into a run with no hesitation whatsoever.

Even though the sky was cloudy, their figures were dazzling—just as if the world revolved around them.

After a little while, another couple appeared where the pair had been a few moments earlier.

A man with sharp eyes who wore a coat, and a slim woman in a suit.

It was Ronny and Ennis, who’d left to go after Isaac and Miria.

It was hard to decide whether they were mismatched as a couple or well-suited to each other. They stopped in the middle of the street.

They looked around, eyes intent, but the other pair was already nowhere to be seen.

“Hmm. So we were too late… Well, never mind.”

“Should we split up to search for them? …Ronny?”

When Ennis turned around, Ronny was standing right in the middle of traffic with his eyes closed. He had his fingers pressed to his forehead, and he seemed to be thinking hard.

“Ronny? Um, is something the matter?”

At Ennis’s concern, Ronny muttered, slowly opening his eyes.

“…They seem to be headed toward my destination… Well, never mind. They’re this way.”

“Huh? What?”

With no idea what was going on, Ennis followed her companion.

“Ronny, wait a minute! Ronny!”

Seeming perfectly sure of himself, Ronny set off, heading for the site of his “job.”

As if he could see Isaac and Miria’s movements clearly with his own eyes—as if he had eyes that could see through everything.

Giving up on asking further questions, Ennis walked behind Ronny wordlessly.

What could it be? Ronny does this sort of thing sometimes. Whenever he’s looking for something, he finds it right away, as if he can see things in distant places.

For quite a while now, Ennis had thought there was something strange about this executive, Ronny. She sensed a curious aura about him, as if he was something unlike ordinary humans, something closer to Maiza, Firo, and her former master, Szilard.

The strangest thing of all was that she seemed to remember meeting him somewhere before.

It wasn’t a clear memory. It might have belonged to the other immortal Ennis had absorbed earlier.

On that thought, she tried to follow her own memories even deeper, but she just couldn’t seem to remember Ronny Schiatto’s past.

It was as if that past were territory she must not touch casually.

“So? Where the hell are we going?”

Tim answered Dallas’s question easily, without obfuscation.

“Hmm? Millionaires’ Row. What about it?”

“Millionaires’ Row…?”

The name belonged to the classiest residential district in Manhattan, and Dallas was confused, unable to figure out the other guy’s intentions. It was an area where the sort of people informally known as fat cats gathered. No matter how you looked at it, people like Tim couldn’t possibly have much of a connection to the place.

However, this wasn’t true for Dallas. He came from a wealthy family in New Jersey, and he knew that his grandfather had built a mansion to use as a second residence in that district.

Under normal circumstances, Dallas would have been a rich man’s heir, but the only family member that he got along with was his little sister, and he’d left home.

Then he’d gotten dragged into the Szilard incident, and here he was.

“That’s no place for paupers like you.”

“…I’ve got serious respect for that arrogance of yours. I mean it.”

Smiling wryly, Tim eyed Dallas as if he were looking at a mysterious life-form.

“I see. No wonder Mr. Huey chose you.”

“Hunh…?”

“Whoops, you don’t need to know about that. That’s right… You’ve probably been to the place we’re going a couple of times already.”

Those words threw Dallas for a moment. Then, hitting on a likely possibility, he started yelling.

“You sonuva—! Don’t tell me you’re headed for my summer place! Why…? There’s nobody there… Is somebody there?! Hey! You better not tell me Eve’s there! You lousy pieces of…”

“You nailed the location. I applaud your brilliant reasoning. But…you were wrong about the last half.”

Tim spoke as if to check Dallas, who was on the verge of screaming something. His expression grew serious.

“Relax. Your sister’s not there now.”

Tim smiled quietly, then muttered something that made no sense to Dallas.

“Instead, there’s a crowd of nasty thugs—”

“Long story short… They’re our sacrificial pawns.”

“By the way, amigo. Where are these targets of ours, anyway?”

As they walked down Broadway, Maria sent a bored-sounding question at her partner.

Flyers blew around the street like flower petals, and signs of all colors were visible through the gaps between them. Many of the signs were so gaudy that it seemed as if neon lights were shining, even though it was broad daylight. Though some of them actually did have neon lights on them.

The beautiful embellishments drawn on the flyers appeared again as signs so huge you had to crane your neck to look up at them. Taken together, those signs formed a single advertisement for this place, this Broadway.

Even on that flashy street, Maria’s appearance seemed to attract particular attention, and the men who walked past her looked back and whistled. They probably thought she was a stage actress.

Maria seemed completely oblivious to the situation. The only thoughts in her head were dangerous ones about how efficiently she’d need to wield her katanas in order to completely destroy the avenue.

After running through a full mental slashing simulation, she’d finally asked about the day’s destination to stave off boredom.

“Is it an abandoned factory? A basement room? Where are we headed, amigo?”

It seemed much too late to be asking that question, but Tick answered it without looking annoyed.

“Wellllll, let’s see. It’s in a place called Millionaires’ Rooow, and it’s a second home that belongs to somebody named Genoard.”

“Is that Genoard person our target? Can I cut them?”

As she asked the question, Maria was obviously excited, but Tick quietly shook his head.

“Nooo, no. Um, see, the name of the person who’s there now iiiis…”

Tick fished a memo out of his pocket and read off the name that was written there.

“Um, he has a tattoo on his face…”

Reading all the way to the end of the memo, Tick finally found the noun he was looking for.

“That’s right: Jacuzzi! This says it’s a person named Mr. Jacuzzi Splot!”