Baccano! - Volume 7 - Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

THE LETHAL WEAPONS’ LUNACY IS ELATED

A few days earlier Nighttime Chicago

A warehouse district on the shore of Lake Michigan

The moon was beautiful this evening.

It was the day the deal was scheduled to take place.

The Russo Family, which was being strangled by the surrounding big mafia syndicates, was on the verge of suffocation.

In an attempt to pull themselves back from the brink of disaster, they’d chosen to trade in drugs with the Asian mafia from another district.

The Russo Family had been cornered so badly that they had no choice but to upset the order in the back alleys.

Tonight, they were going to conduct their biggest transaction yet. However…

“Ah… Flowers sure are pretty…”

Soft moonlight illuminated the warehouse district. In a gap between the many warehouses built on the shore of Lake Michigan, a little dirt showed through the cracks in the concrete—and a flower was blooming in it.

Just one flower.

A solitary, blossoming fragment of the natural world, hemmed in by gray on all sides.

A young man was crouched in front of that tiny, tiny flower, and he was muttering.

“Ah… The color is pretty… The shape is pretty… My, my, despite its birth in a place like this, it didn’t give up on life, and it even put out a flower, so its very existence is really, truly beautiful…”

The moonlight shone on his gentle expression, creating a cool harmony with the flower blooming in front of him.

Just one thing.

If there was just one thing that felt off, it was—

“Hey… I told you—you’re in the way.”

“Are you nuts or something?”

—the crowd of stern men that stood behind him.

There were about a dozen of them, and they were all glaring at the young guy with open hostility.

However, their imminent victim wasn’t letting it get to him. He continued to gaze at the flower with the same mild expression.

“So pretty…”

“Are you listening t’ me? Hunh?”

One of the men stood behind the guy, grabbed the back of his collar, and hauled him up.

The young man was wearing clothes that made him look like a medieval aristocrat, and they couldn’t have clashed more badly with the surrounding atmosphere. Their one saving grace was that, being mostly black and red, they harmonized nicely with the darkness.

The guy, who’d been dragged to his feet, turned his head to look behind him. He was still wearing that gentle smile.

“It hasn’t lost to the strong winds that blow from the lake. It just keeps blooming here, bravely. Tell me that isn’t deeply moving.”

“Say what?”

Ignoring the man, who sounded irritated, the youth kept talking.

“I wonder if there’s anything I can do for this beautiful flower…”

“Die and fertilize it.”

The man’s gaze was fixed, and he grabbed the young guy’s shoulders roughly. He was about to launch a combo attack, starting with a head-butt and shifting into a knee kick, but—

“That’s it!”

—just then, the young man yelled.

The abrupt shout made the aggressor delay his attack for a moment.

But then, when he heard the next words out of the vic’s mouth, his hands stopped completely.

“For the sake of this beautiful flower, first, I’ll kill you people.”

“…?”

The man noticed.

The young guy was grinning, and there was something strange about his mouth…

Like a vampire, his teeth were sharpened into fangs.

Then the young man’s eyes met his.

The scleras of his eyes were a deep, dark red, and his irises were pure white.

In the center of those inversely colored eyeballs, jet-black pupils looked ready to swallow everything.

Seeing that uncanny face reminded the man of something that had been etched into his memory when he was small.

It might have been an old tale his grandmother had told him, or an innocent rumor that had traveled from child to child.

“You look like a vamp—”

Shink.

It was a simple noise.

In the manner of carving an apple pie, a gleaming silver blade plunged into the man’s throat.

“ ”

The man’s mouth flapped a few times, but the sharp tip reached his neck vertebrae almost immediately, and after a few seconds, he blacked out completely.

“…?”

“What’s up?”

The men behind the dead thug didn’t register the tragedy that had struck their companion.

In the moonlight, his hands still clutched the weird young guy’s collar. From the rear, that was all it looked like, but the fact that he’d abruptly stopped moving was starting to make everyone suspicious.

Then the youth responded for him in mild, indifferent tones. “Well, you know, it’s not really about what the matter is—”

With his blade still in the throat of the man pressed close to him, the young guy ran his eyes over the people gathered around them.

“…Yes, you’re all truly and beautifully worthless; terribly useless creatures.”

“Wha—?”

At this, the mafiosi gradually began to realize something was wrong.

Fearing the worst about their immobile companion, they began to close in, their faces tense.

“That’s right! And by the way, the people you’re planning to deal with won’t be showing up!”

The words had been sudden.

This young guy, who’d had absolutely no connection to them up until this moment, had abruptly mentioned the deal, their job.

This guy, who had tromped right through the “barrier” the mafiosi had assumed they and the other party had created, now kept on talking, smiling that kind smile…

“You’ve been kicked to the curb in grand style! Not only did your business associates refuse to let you who were about to die come with them—of course they would—they won’t even be offering flowers to your spirits! When you think about that, you’re really, truly ridiculous, too. I actually feel bad for you. Even so, in the presence of this flower’s beauty, it’s all equally—worthless!”

As he wrapped up his speech, the young man put a little more strength into the hand that gripped the knife.

Bang Bang Bang

The sounds were thoroughly dry and very sharp.

The mafioso’s corpse had been pressed close to the youth, hiding him. As the shots rang out, its neck burst, and several bullets flew out of it.

“Gahk!”

“Ungh…”

Red holes opened up in the faces and chests of a few of the closest men, and they began dropping to their knees on the pavement like marionettes with cut strings.

“?!”

“Why you—”

In response to the “death” that had abruptly materialized in front of them, the remaining ten or so men all reached into their jackets.

However, the young guy made no attempt to move. Using the corpse as a shield, he kept dispassionately squeezing the trigger of the blade he held.

Several blasts echoed across the nighttime lakeshore, but they all came from the youth’s weapon.

He sent bullets into the men who had reached into their jackets for guns, in order. And when about half of the men were down, he pulled his piece out of the neck of the body he’d been using as cover.

The corpse’s heart had stopped beating, but a weak fountain still rose from its neck.

Although they didn’t pause as they reached for their weapons, the surrounding men saw the shape of the guy’s own in the moonlight.

A gun and—a knife?

It did look like a handgun.

What struck the mafiosi as odd was that the barrel seemed abnormally long for its overall size.

They noticed the abnormality almost immediately. Because the shadow that had looked like a gun barrel was bathed in moonlight and had retaken its innate, sharp gleam.

“A knife…gun?”

As he muttered, one of the mafiosi fired his heater.

Their adversary had let his arm dangle limply, and it looked as if this would finally be the end of the lunatic.

However, a shape that refused to let that happen jumped out in front of him.

In nearly the same moment as the gunshot, a sharp metallic sound rang out—

A lean shadow stood in front of the young man.

The figure had crossed its arms in front of its face, and pale sparks flew from them.

On seeing that, for a moment, the mafiosi froze.

“Wha…?”

“Who’s this punk?! Where’d he come from?!”

The figure wore oddly shaped wrist guards on both arms, and they were apparently what had deflected the bullets.

“…Don’t test me.” As the figure spoke, it sent a cold glare back at the man it was protecting. “…This is no time for games, Christopher.”

The words sounded like an accusation, and the young guy shook his head as if wounded.

“How rude. I am always serious, Chi. Besides, I wasn’t testing you just now! I trusted you. You could even say I loved you! Although I’m not interested in men that way, so don’t get your hopes up or feel let down, please.”

The man he’d called Chi shook his head wordlessly, then began to walk toward the remaining crooks. The men hastily started shooting again, but all the bullets they sent Chi’s way turned into sparks and ricocheted.

Chi closed the distance with the speed of a wild animal, using circular arm movements to shield his whole body.

Since he’d charged in at a low crouch, his entire body fit inside that “circle,” and the bullets that went his way were rendered completely powerless.

That’s not poss—

The mafioso who was closest to him wasn’t even allowed to finish the thought.

The circle formed by Chi’s arms turned into a sphere, and at the moment it seemed about to touch his body, Chi widened the sweep of his arms, instantly expanding the range of that sphere.

The things that had looked like steel wrist guards abruptly sprang up, using his wrists as support points, to form four steel blades that shifted to align with his fingers.

The instant the mafioso heard something click into place, the wrist guards morphed into iron claws and skimmed past his face.

Four red lines ran across his face and throat. The wounds were deep enough to be fatal.

Confirming this through the sensation alone, Chi continued his advance.

Without slowing down or looking back at his falling enemies, the shadow ran soundlessly through the midst of the mafiosi.

That alone halved the number of survivors.

“That’s not even…”

“You…monster!”

The men who’d been lucky enough not to be on Chi’s killing route hastily turned their guns on the racing shadow’s back.

However—just before they squeezed the triggers, a voice spoke from behind them.

“Hmm… You boys really are weak, aren’t you?”

The smell of blood and powder smoke drifted in the dark warehouse district, and the sound was completely unsuited to the place: It was a woman’s sultry voice.

“?!”

For a moment, the men hesitated, not sure whether they should turn around or go ahead and fire.

A few of them had let their instincts take over and fired, but the bullets didn’t even fall within the range of Chi’s arms.

Seeing this, the woman behind them gave a musical laugh.

“The Russo Family… Last year—or, no, was it the year before?—several of you were killed by a gang of neighborhood children, weren’t you? Hee-hee, hee-hee-hee.”

The chuckle was pointed, but a question welled up inside the men faster than anger did.

Who is this woman—? No, who are all these people?

“Pitiful. And you call yourselves the Russo Family, former rulers of a corner of Chicago? If several dozen of those kids ganged up on you and killed a few mafiosi…then we’ll do the opposite: A few of us will force several dozen of you to your knees— Now, isn’t that humiliating?”

From the circumstances and the things she was saying, the woman was definitely with the other two monsters.

That made her an enemy.

It was a simple conclusion. If she was an enemy, they could just turn around and fill her full of lead.

But what if she was holding a gun on them?

Like we care.

The men had stopped being able to make calm decisions, and they turned, thrusting their guns out behind them.

If their opponent was holding a weapon at the ready, they’d just nail her right between the eyes. If she was unarmed, they’d use her against the other two, as a hostage.

Relying on these simple calculations alone, one of them turned around swiftly.

As if drawn by that first man, the other “survivors” also looked behind them, one after another—

“Huh…?”

Their minds went blank.

No one was there.

In the spot where they were sure the voice had been speaking up until a moment ago, there was nothing but the blank red-brown wall of a warehouse.

Their confusion gradually changed to terror, and they hastily scanned their surroundings.

“…Wha…agh!”

As they tried to speak, a sharp coldness intruded on their brains.

It soon turned into the warmth of blood, but they weren’t able to feel it.

“What is it?!”

A man whose attention had been monopolized by Chi yelled, registering the crisis behind him.

When he looked, he saw black “rings” protruding from the heads of his companions.

Part of the rings had made it completely through their skulls, and they were very obviously no longer among the living.

But the voice…

“I’m sorry about this.”

From the shadows of the warehouse, only the woman’s voice echoed, quietly and clearly.

It was as if she were speaking directly into his brain.

“We weren’t actually planning to kill you. It was one of Chris’s whims. I’m sorry.”

“Yeek…”

At that point, the men’s emotional vectors narrowed to focus on terror.

But the moment they attempted to surrender to their instincts and scream—

“I hate noisemakers.”

—Chi ran between the men like the wind, and the only sound that left their throats was the whistle of escaping air.

Only one, a guy who’d escaped a slash to the throat, spat the vengeful words of a sore loser at the killers as his consciousness drained away, along with his blood.

“…Dammit… If Ladd were… If only Ladd were here, you two-bit hoods wouldn’t…”

“I don’t know who your Ladd is, but he’s not here now.”

The throat that spouted resentment was run through by Chi’s indifferent blade.

“Ghk…! … ”

“That’s all that matters.”

In less than a minute, the suffocating smell of blood had enveloped the area.

In the midst of a scene that would have driven a normal person mad, Chi stood among the corpses, not seeming to feel anything in particular. His steel claws had already returned to their wrist guard configuration, and each of the blades lay on its side, covering his arms.

As before, the woman was nowhere to be seen, and the noise of the wind from the lake blew past them.

“Ah… It really is pretty… This flower…”

Partway through the fight, Christopher, the young guy, hadn’t even watched events play out. He’d just kept gazing at the flower by the roadside in fascination.

“Haah…hff…hff…”

There was a man standing behind him.

He was one of the mafiosi who’d been surrounding Christopher a short while ago, but for some reason, he’d escaped Chi’s attacks and the mysterious rings without a scratch.

Another difference between him and the other men was that he hadn’t taken a gun from his jacket, and he hadn’t turned any murderous intent on these pre-deal intruders.

Or at least he hadn’t until just now.

At this point, stark anger suffused his expression, and he spoke to Christopher grimly.

“…What was that?”

“‘Flowers are pretty.’ What else would it be?”

“Don’t screw with me! The job I asked you to do, when the other group got here, was to cause a disturbance and kill this one guy!”

As he screamed the words, the man kicked one of the corpses that lay at his feet. It belonged to the first man Christopher had killed.

“And you—you killed all of ’em! You shot the whole thing straight to hell!”

As the man attempted to lay into him with complaints, Christopher turned around, looking like a little kid.

“Aw, c’mon, you know it was shot to hell before it even started.”

As if responding to his words, Chi spoke from behind the man. “Undercover agent, you successfully infiltrated the Russo Family, but over the past few years, you’ve become a complete drug addict. You went for wool and came home not just shorn, but a maggot.”

“Wha…?!” The man attempted to defend himself, but from the darkness nearby, a woman spoke.

“And so? What is this? The Russos seemed to be going under, and you thought that if nothing changed, word of your flaw would find its way back to your headquarters. Worse, you’d become a criminal. That’s why you came to us, isn’t it? You wanted us to kill the one person who had proof you’d been sent drugs, making it look as if it were due to trouble during the deal, the work of another mafia syndicate. Correct?”

On hearing facts bluntly repeated back to him even though he hadn’t mentioned them when ordering the hit, the man felt a tension different from the earlier kind run through him from head to toe.

“…If you know that much, this’ll go faster. In that case—! Why’d you do that?! If I’m the only one in this situation without a scratch, then…”

“Don’t yell.”

The next thing the man knew, Christopher’s face was right in front of him.

His expression was mild, and his sharp fangs showed.

“You’ll scatter the flower petals.”

As he whispered, he put his index finger to his lips in a graceful motion.

“If you’re going to shout, let’s sing instead! A song of admiration for flowers, a paean to Nature! When extolling all of creation, there’s no need for lyrics. ‘La-la-la’ is enough. Come on: La la-la-la, la.  ”

In a clear voice, Christopher sang a song without words.

“La la du-la dou-ra-ra la-la.  ”

Joining that light voice, Chi also sang along casually, smiling for the first time.

“Lu-lu la lu-lu la-la-la.  ”

From the shadows of the warehouse, a woman began singing as well, and the stool pigeon found himself surrounded by a gentle ensemble.

Yet, he didn’t have the emotional capacity to accept it.

“Answer my question!”

As the man yelled, blood vessels standing out, the leader of the trio sighed and shook his head.

“I’ve been telling you already, over and over and over again, for the past few minutes.” Speaking like a petulant child, Christopher told his client the plain facts. “It was because this flower was pretty. That’s all.”

“…Hunh?”

For a moment, the agent failed to grasp what the other man’s words meant, and he repeated them in his head, again and again.

“That’s… Like it could actually be for a stupid reason like that?! You massacred everybody because a flower was pretty?! You think that’s even believable?!”

“It’s only unbelievable from your personal perspective.”

“Don’t give me that! This isn’t just my perspective! It’s universal common sense!”

As if matching the mood of the stoolie, who was breathing roughly, Christopher gradually grew more and more animated. He started shaking his head faster and faster.

“Nonononononono, you’re wrong about absolutely every little thing, starting from way back there.”

At that point, his shaking head stopped dead, and he poked the tip of the agent’s nose as if the man were a pet dog.

“Listen, according to universal common sense, you mustn’t kill people. However, since we’re here, you’re already permitting killing, which means common sense is lacking from the very beginning. That’s important.”

“That’s not an answer! Why do you have to kill because a flower’s pretty—?”

“Even if I explained it, you wouldn’t understand. After all, this is an issue of my own ‘personal perspective.’ I just wanted to see beautiful life, blooming vigorously, in a place filled with corpses. That’s all it was. Okay?”

“Nobody cares about that! You little… You think it’s okay for two-bit hired killers to pull a stunt like that?!” the undercover agent yelled, although his face seemed desperate. “Isn’t that going to turn into a trust issue on your next job? Hunh?!”

He was the client here, but he looked like a rat who’d been run down by a cat. He bared his fangs with all his might, intending to bite the cat, but Christopher shrugged off his shout easily, beaming benevolently. The mismatch between his innocent, childlike smile and the sharp teeth that lined his mouth made him seem even creepier.

“There won’t be any trust issues. After all—”

The next instant, the blade of his knife-gun was against the base of the agent’s throat.

“Wha…?”

“—if the person who knows all the details of the job dies, there’s no way for rumors to spread.”

“Wh… Wh-whuh-wh… Why, you…!”

“Gun-swords are great, aren’t they? After you kill with the knife, you can finish ’em off with a bullet. It’s twice as nice. Although this one’s too small to be either a real sword or a proper gun. Thus, I just call it a knife-gun.”

Describing a method of use clearly different from what the designer had intended, he softly set his finger on the trigger.

There was no hesitation in the movement, and the agent’s terror peaked instantly.

“…!”

The man was no longer able to speak. Christopher’s gaze shifted to the moon in the sky.

“Ah… What a pretty moon… That’s right. In the presence of this beautiful moon and flower, contracts and trust issues and justice and evil and the fact that I massacred everybody… They’re all truly trivial, don’t you think?”

Smiling brightly, Christopher let up on the trigger.

“I’m joking. Did I startle you? Were you scared? If you were scared, you should sing! Go on, set your joy at being alive to a rhythm and sing it! ‘La-la, la-la-la!’ Like that! Sing what you feel, sing what you feel!”

“…”

The agent’s fear had locked his mouth up, and Christopher kept on talking to him.

“Lu-lu, la-la-la.   …Come on, sing. I’m all lonely over here.”

There was genuine warmth in the young guy’s smile. It only frightened the agent more.

“Lu la-lu lu.   La-la-la?”

Still wearing that smile, he set his finger on the trigger again.

The man’s nerves were already fragile from drug use, and the countdowns to death that were being continuously inflicted on him had nearly shattered them.

“Agh…ah…”

“…”

Just when the blade that was fused with the gun barrel was about to slowly sink into the man’s throat…

“Chris.”

…the woman’s voice echoed from the darkness, and Christopher instantly stopped moving.

“Listen, ‘the twins’—Sham and Hilton—just made contact.”

“Really, Leeza?”

Quietly lowering the gun, Christopher pivoted on his heel.

Are they going to spare me?

“Oh, by the way, I did lie to them back there. Just once.”

As if he’d read the agent’s mind, Christopher abruptly stopped in his tracks.

“…?”

“When I said the group they were dealing with wasn’t coming. That was a lie.”

“…Huh?”

“What happened here?”

A low, sharp voice spoke behind the undercover agent.

When he hastily turned around, Chi—who had been there a moment ago—was gone. In his place was a group of about a dozen Asian people.

“Did you do this? Answer us.”

They were all being careful to avoid the blood that flowed from the corpses, and the quiet feeling of pressure became a wind that buffeted the agent.

“No, this was…”

He turned to look back again, but no one was there.

Christopher, Chi, and the presence of the woman who’d been in the darkness, the one they’d called Leeza—they’d all vanished like mist.

“Ah…”

Despair.

The drug-addicted mole understood the situation perfectly. The emotion that rose in his mind was completely different from the terror he’d felt a moment ago.

Utter despair.

If he told them exactly what had happened here, would they believe him?

If they did believe him, in order to make them understand why he alone had survived, he’d have to tell them about the hired killers—and that he was the one who’d hired them.

If he did that, he was sure to lose his life.

He’d have to pretend he’d survived by sheer coincidence. He couldn’t let them pick up on the relationship between the hitmen and himself.

In other words: The reputation of Christopher’s group wouldn’t suffer a single scratch. On top of that, they now had ideal blackmail material on him.

He couldn’t do a thing. There was nothing for him to do.

The stool pigeon, who had plunged into the despair known as “reality,” fell to his knees in the sea of blood, muttering in shock.

“…Monsters…”

“Ahhhhh… That’s excellent… Absolutely fantastic! A single flower, blooming at the feet of a man in despair… That’s going to be big—I just know it! It’ll be a hit right through the next seven generations!”

Christopher shouted from the boat, looking ecstatic.

On a boat floating on Lake Michigan, two men were in high spirits, a pair of binoculars in hand.

More accurately, Christopher was in high spirits.

“Oh, but this is awful. That flower may not bloom until the end of those seven generations. That’s not good.”

“The man will be gone before that.”

Ignoring Chi, who was looking jaded, Christopher opened his red eyes wide and bared his fangs in delight.

“That would be its own kind of good. Isn’t there an Asian proverb that says ‘All worldly things are transitory’?”

“…Not that I care, Christopher, but if you keep doing things like this, we really will lose trust.”

“Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha! It doesn’t matter what happens to trust in our side business. We just need to maintain constant trust from one person. That’s our main business. Isn’t that right?”

He sounded unconcerned, and Chi sighed quietly.

“We’ve made a decent name for ourselves as hitmen. We’re not up there with Vino or the Handyman, but we’re fairly well-known in this industry. Control yourself.”

“Fame I don’t care about doesn’t move me. What sort of value could that name and reputation have? …Hey, did I just say something cool? Write it down.”

“Quit messing around.”

“Either way. If we wanted to become top dog in our side business, we’d have to do something about that Vino fella, right? Tracking him down would be a pain.”

Christopher kept gazing at the lakeshore for a while longer. However, once the boat moved and the flower and the man were hidden in the shadows of the buildings, his expression immediately cooled, and he spoke to his friend.

“Well? What did Sham and company say?”

“Don’t ask me.”

As Chi retorted indifferently, a third voice echoed across the boat, as if it had been waiting for that. “Gladly. After all, it involves what you termed our ‘main business,’ Chris.”

Christopher and Chi turned to look in the direction of the voice, but all they saw was the darkness over the lake.

“Leeza? Huh? We’re on a boat… Where are you talking from?!”

“Creepy.”

On the boat, the two men looked at each other, but Leeza’s voice continued, not seeming particularly bothered. “There’s a message from Huey. He says to take the train to New York tomorrow and help Tim out with his job there.”

“Wow.”

Acting startled in a patently artificial way, Christopher cheerfully opened his mouth wide.

“Well, well! It’s been ages! Us, getting back to our main business—how many years has it been, or rather, how many decades?”

“Three months.”

Ignoring Chi, who had blandly stated the facts, Christopher showed his fangs, and his eyes sparkled brightly.

“Oh, it’s been donkey’s years since we saw Adele, too. She’s working under ‘play-it-safe’ Tim, so she probably hasn’t gotten to rampage at all. I bet she’s frustrated. Poor thing, poor thing.”

Shaking his head in pity, he leaned far back, looking up at the beautiful sphere that illuminated the lake.

“Well, that’s fine. The moon seems to be wishing us well, and there’s not a single cloud over our path! Yes! After all, wherever we go, all that’s ever there are the blessings of the sun—and a rain of blood…”

Several days later New York Pennsylvania Station

“What was that about ‘the blessings of the sun,’ hmm? Your rain of blood would get washed away fast.”

In the station entrance, where wind and rain blustered, Chi muttered a taunt. Both his arms were wrapped in cloth.

“Nature is capricious. That’s why I love her.”

Giving a chagrined smile, Christopher set his hand on a bright-red umbrella.

“Let’s sing in the rain. A tune that sings optimistically of our soaking-wet selves. If possible, the sort of song that would let us keep our umbrellas shut and smile as the rain drenches us… And so, Chi: Think up some splendid lyrics.”

“I refuse.”

The driving rain slipped under their umbrellas and began to get the pair wet.

In the midst of a torrential rainstorm that seemed to slash everything apart, they had most definitely arrived in this town.

Arrived, in order to color the rain that poured down into the streets a dark, hot red…

At the same time Near Grand Central Station An abandoned building

As he listened to the sound of the rain growing louder, Tick murmured quietly:

“It doesn’t look like it’s going to stop, does it?”

“…No.”

From the corner of a room heaped with rubble and dust, Maria responded softly.

There wasn’t a trace of the usual, glorious animation in her voice, and a pathetic atmosphere hung around her.

A single fight had dashed her to the very bottom of her “conviction.”

The blades of her Japanese swords would cut anything. That had been all she had believed in; her very life itself.

More accurately, the act of believing this had been the reason for existing that she’d set for herself.

She’d had complete faith in the sharpness of her swords. She’d believed that the Japanese sword was the very best blade there was and had worked to prove it with her own hands. That had been Maria Barcelito’s life.

However, just a few hours ago, a large crack had opened in that conviction.

The words of the woman with the spear rose vividly in Maria’s mind.

“But…um, believing is, erm… You’re just deluding yourself, you know.”

No.

“As proof: You’re already beginning to doubt.”

No!

She repeated her denial over and over, but the vision that had risen in her heart didn’t dissolve, and the spear in the hostile woman’s hands rushed at her neck—

“You believe that, with those blades, you’ll never defeat this spear.”

The phantom spearhead plunged right through her throat.

“AAaaaaaaaaaAAAAaaaaaaah!”

“?! Maria?!”

Maria had been curled up, hugging her knees, but abruptly, she’d clutched at her head and begun to scream.

When Tick saw her, the smile he usually wore disappeared.

“What’s wrong, Maria? Does something hurt?”

Running over to the girl, who was trembling hard, the torture expert peeked into her face, looking worried.

“Aaaah… AAAaaaaAAaaaah… Ah…”

At that point, finally seeming to come to her senses, Maria looked back at Tick with eyes like a frightened dog’s. Breathing deeply, shoulders heaving, she gradually calmed her thoughts.

“Ah… AaAah… I’m sorry, amigo.”

“Are you really okay?”

Tick was watching her with an expression like a child’s, and Maria gave him a smile filled with false cheer.

“It’s fine, amigo! I was just having a nasty dream, that’s all…”

“You didn’t lose.”

“Huh…?”

At those abrupt words, Maria’s eyes went round, but Tick didn’t pay any attention to that. He went on, speaking as if he knew exactly what kind of vision she’d been seeing.

“I’ve been thinking this whole time, and, Maria, yooou didn’t lose to that woman.”

“…Ah-ha-ha. You don’t need to try to make me feel better.”

“Uh-uh, what I mean is, in the end, Ronny broke in and spoiled the match, riiight? Thaaat means you haven’t actually settled it.”

At this ingenious remark, Maria was forced to recall the end of the recent battle.

Ronny.

She didn’t know that name, but she knew immediately whom Tick was talking about.

Right as things were about to be settled, that mysterious man had abruptly broken into their time—and had instantaneously confiscated both their weapons.

She definitely wanted to know how he’d taken their weapons away when they were in the middle of a fight to the death, but at this point, to Maria, that was only a trivial issue.

“No… That’s no good, Tick. I’d already lost by then. I don’t mean my strength was gone. Even if it was just a little bit, I doubted Murasámia. I lost…”

“Buuut…”

Tick was trying to say something else, and Maria yelled at him in irritation.

“I lost! I did! …You can’t know how I feel right now, Tick!”

The only ones who could decide the outcome of a match were the people who’d fought it. Precisely because she felt this was true, when Tick talked about the results of the match in an attempt to console her, it felt weird to her.

The various emotions that churned inside her rushed toward that sense of wrongness.

As if her dejection up until then had been a lie, she slammed her exploding emotions into the person in front of her.

“What do you know? You weren’t in that match; don’t you talk about wins or losses! You’ve never even fought! You only ever cut up people who don’t fight back! You never put your life on the line, Tick, so there’s no way you could know how I feel!”

“…”

“All you do is smile, all the time! You can’t…understand…”

After she’d screamed until she was out of breath, Maria felt terrible about it.

Could she be a more pitiful loser right now? She’d taken the anger and sadness that should have been turned on herself, and she slammed them against—of all people—the man who was trying to help her.

Tick had been constantly trying to cheer her up, ever since they’d entered this abandoned building. Some of her current irritation was indignation at herself, for not being able to respond to his encouragement.

Yet she’d taken that indignation and lashed out at him with it.

“Oh…”

She knew she had to apologize to him. For a moment, though, she wasn’t sure what to say, and she hesitated.

Slipping into that slight gap, Tick opened his mouth and spoke simply, in the voice of a child who’d broken his best friend’s toy.

“I’m sorry.”

“Huh?!”

“I’m dumb, and I bet that’s why I don’t understand your feelings, Maria.”

No.

Hastily, Maria tried to deny that, but Tick’s words were firmer than she’d expected them to be, and confused as she was, they didn’t give her time to interrupt.

“Like I said earlier, I don’t understand the ‘belief’ you keep talking abouuut. I can’t see it. That means I can’t believe in it. If I were smarter, I know I’d understand what you’re feeling, and I wouldn’t make you sad, but I…”

“…”

“—I’m sorry. I really don’t understand your feeling that you lost.”

Every time Tick apologized, Maria’s heart squeezed tighter.

It felt as if his apologies were exposing her weaknesses, one after another.

She couldn’t stop him, though. At this point, she didn’t think she was qualified to. Right now, failure as she was, she thought all she could do was stab herself with Tick’s words.

But Tick’s next words were clearly different from the conversation’s earlier trend.

“So—win.”

“…Huh?”

“If you won for sure next time, that would be great.”

Maria couldn’t understand what Tick was saying. She just waited, dazedly, for him to continue.

“I’ll work hard to understand how you feel when you lose. But I’m dumb, sooo…I think it’s probably going to take an awfully long time.”

“…”

“Listen, though, I’ll know how you feel when you win. I’m sure I will.”

Tick’s decisive promise could have sounded like a careless statement.

“Because, I mean, when you win a fight, you alllways smile. I know what sort of times people smiiile at. I bet it’s the same. So, if you win next time, I’m sure I’ll know how you feel. Besides…while you’re being my bodyguard, wins and losses don’t really count. See?”

Closing the blades of his scissors with a snick, Tick once more said something unsettling with an innocent smile.

“Because, Maria, you’re not a bodyguard—you’re a hired killer.”

The Hudson River Near the riverside construction site

An abandoned factory, filled with the scent of rusting iron.

This vast space, which had probably been used to manufacture components of some sort, was littered with big rusted-out machines, lots of pipes through which nothing flowed anymore, and electric bulbs that gave off a sorry excuse for light.

“So…what do we do now?”

In a room saturated with the smell of ruin, a small voice echoed.

The young guy who’d spoken had a tattoo that covered half his face and eyes that seemed to be on the verge of tears.

A crowd of young people stood around him. Even at a low estimate, there seemed to be more than twenty of them.

They were a band of kids who hung out in New York. Their group had no name in particular; they were just a bunch of punks who’d hit it off with one another and formed a community.

As he spoke, the tattooed youth who stood at the center of the group wore an incredibly pathetic expression.

“There’s really nothing to do… What do we do, Nice?”

“Hmm… For the moment, there shouldn’t be anyone left at the Genoard house…”

When Nice, a girl with glasses and an eye patch, spoke, Jacuzzi Splot, the tattooed guy, heaved a great big sigh.

“How did things end up like this…?”

As he murmured, he was remembering what had happened that afternoon.

Uneventful days.

Today had been a perfectly normal, peaceful day, just like the others—right up until the first visitors had arrived.

When Isaac and Miria had dropped by for the first time in a long while, “the extraordinary” had clearly begun to close in on them.

Shortly after Isaac and Miria, a peculiar group had come to call.

With the question “Do you want to become immortal?” they’d abruptly killed one of their companions right in front of Jacuzzi.

At that point, Jacuzzi had passed out for a bit, but then his friend Chané had suddenly attacked the group, which had introduced itself as “Larva.” On top of that, a girl with Japanese swords and a guy with scissors, both of whom seemed to be members of the Gandor Family, had appeared.

Even that hadn’t been all. As if striking an additional blow, a man who was apparently a Martillo Family executive had arrived, and the confusion in the mansion’s entryway had peaked.

To Jacuzzi’s group, the Martillo and Gandor syndicates were nothing but bad news.

Jacuzzi and his friends had been doing a variety of business on their turf without permission. Even if they called it “business,” all the things they’d done had been trivial, and since nothing had happened for the past two years or so, most of Jacuzzi’s group had just assumed, naturally, that that situation would continue.

But that had been naïve.

A situation that only the worrywart Jacuzzi had been afraid of had become reality and landed squarely on their heads. What sort of negotiations would the mafiosi try to conduct with a group of small-time city punks? Jacuzzi’s group hadn’t been able to imagine quite that much, but no matter what the content proved to be, it was clear these talks would be life-or-death.

“…Anyway, we can’t just run around forever. We’ll only make them mad… I’d like to steer the discussion away from bloodshed as much as possible.”

As Jacuzzi briefly summarized the situation, his expression was tense. Despite that, upon hearing his explanation, one of his friends spoke up confidently.

“No need to worry about that, Jacuzzi!”

“?”

“There won’t be any bloodshed on our side, at least!”

“What do you mean, Nick?”

At Jacuzzi’s uneasy question, his friend gave a self-important chuckle, then filled him in on a certain fact.

“Because Vino’s on his way over.”

Buzzzzz.

At that casual statement, the air in the abandoned building roiled.

“…You called Felix?”

“Yeah, Jack’s gone to get him now.”

Jacuzzi visualized the face of the man he’d called Felix. The thugs around him looked at each other, wearing odd expressions.

Their eyes held a complex mixture of clear relief and bewilderment. Before long, all those gazes came to rest on one of their friends.

She was a girl with black hair and even features, in a black dress. Chané Laforet.

At the name “Vino,” the girl’s eyes had widened slightly, but after that, she just continued to stand in a corner of the factory, her face blank.

However, if you looked closely, you could tell that her lack of expression was a bit softer than usual, and Nice spoke up, teasing her.

“Does that make you happy? Knowing your fiancé is coming to save you.”

In response, Chané only averted her eyes slightly—but everyone around her saw her pale skin flush faintly.

Felix Walken. His other name was Claire Stanfield (although the only one allowed to call him Claire was Chané).

About a year ago, after they’d established their base in New York, he’d turned up out of nowhere and had played a big part in resolving some trouble that had centered on Chané.

He was apparently famous, a guy who’d been dubbed “the Handyman” and “Vino” by underground society, and he was also a shameless individual who’d appeared out of the blue and introduced himself as Chané’s fiancé.

Various things had kept Chané on her toes during that incident, but by now, she seemed to have accepted the engagement.

However—

“Is that going to be okay? If he gets involved, things are bound to get really complicated…”

Jacuzzi murmured uneasily, making no attempt to hide his feelings.

Apparently, the guy had a few kinks in his personality, and the others present nodded, agreeing with Jacuzzi.

“Yeah, but there ain’t nothing we can do about that Ronny fella on our own.”

“B-but…”

Jacuzzi still sounded worried, but just then one of his friends who’d been patrolling outside ran into the factory, cutting him off.

“Hey! Those guys… One of the guys from earlier is here! By himself!”

“?!”

At the man’s yell, a sudden tension swirled inside the factory.

Up until then, Jacuzzi had looked like he was about to cry, but he pulled his expression together and prompted his friend to report the details.

“‘Those guys from earlier’… Which group, and what sort of person?”

At that, the kid who’d been patrolling faltered for a second. Then, desperately organizing the situation in his head as he went, he gave only the facts he could remember.

“Um… You know: that one guy! The weird group who showed up first—the guy who got skewered by that spear and then kept getting killed by the doll with the samurai swords!”

Dallas Genoard had been consumed.

Dominated by a single emotion that welled up inside him.

Murderous intent.

A pure, murky blackness made up of anger, desire, resentment, and hostility boiled down until it scorched and stuck to the inside of his heart.

The fierce rain pelted him, soaking him from head to toe, but his feelings didn’t cool.

He wasn’t focused on killing just one person. He had many different kinds, for a wide range of people.

That didn’t matter at this point, though.

The varied murderous aims melted together inside him, and if he happened to find a target, Dallas would probably hit them with all that intent to kill, including his pent-up resentment toward others.

Still, if he was actually going to do that, he was lacking something—and he knew better than anyone what it was.

Power. I want power.

Just enough to kill people. That’s enough for me.

Why aren’t I strong enough to kill the guys who make me sick? How can I not have the power to kill guys I have to kill? That’s weird no matter how you think about it.

Inwardly spitting out these incredibly self-centered thoughts, Dallas walked through the pouring rain without an umbrella.

It wasn’t that he didn’t have the guts to kill somebody.

Assuming you could call being able to kill a person with no hesitation “courage,” he was definitely mentally prepared for it.

It was simply that all the people he wanted to kill had power that made them too much for him to handle.

Dallas had just one power: a superhuman “incomplete immortality.”

However, most of the guys he was trying to kill had “complete immortality,” and his remaining enemies all possessed strength that far surpassed his own.

“If it was that goofy-looking couple, then maybe…”

Dallas didn’t know Isaac and Miria were immortals, and while that thought had crossed his mind, it didn’t take him long to mentally strike it out.

“I don’t care about those losers now. That Tim bastard… I’ve got to slaughter all those Larva maggots… Right now, right this minute!”

He gritted his teeth, and the next thing he knew, he was standing in the riverside construction site.

The river he’d spent several years drowning in. A riverbed that held nothing but memories of pain.

Dallas had intentionally returned to a place like that because he’d had an idea.

When they’d dropped him in, he was pretty sure his buddies had been with him.

At this point, he didn’t even remember their names, but he’d had two more pals who were incomplete immortals, like him.

He didn’t remember the circumstances that had led to his being dredged up, but he’d thought there might be some sort of hint here. That was what had brought him back.

Internally, he’d used the word pals, but there hadn’t been anything like friendship in the term. It was just that, since they had undying bodies like his, he was hoping he’d be able to use them as “disposable pawns that would last forever.”

In the end, though, all he found was a construction site where the work had been left half-finished and no clues about where to find pawns.

“Dammit… A trip for biscuits, huh?”

Cursing in the downpour, he glared at the Hudson River, which had started to grow choppy.

The watery jail he’d been buried in up until a few short days ago.

In the midst of time that seemed like eternity, during which the only thing he’d been allowed to do was drown perpetually—it was probably fortunate that Dallas had blacked out almost immediately.

If he’d stayed conscious through all that pain, by now, he probably wouldn’t have had much of a mind left. On that thought, he spat at the heaving surface of the water in loathing.

Thinking that he had no more business here, Dallas turned on his heel with no hesitation—and stopped dead.

Several kids were standing there, under shabby umbrellas, surrounding him in a half circle.

The sound of the pouring rain had hidden the group’s presence, and Dallas had completely failed to notice their approach.

“What are you losers…?”

There was an overwhelming difference in numbers, but Dallas wasn’t the least bit daunted. If experiencing the agony of dying had changed one thing about him, it had been that his sense of fear had very nearly evaporated.

“You got business with me or something? If not, get lost, or actually, get lost even if you do… I’ll massacre you.”

“U-um…”

In contrast to Dallas, who seemed completely at ease, the guy who was acting as the group’s leader lost his nerve.

In a voice that nearly disappeared into the sound of the rain, Jacuzzi spoke timidly.

“Excuse me, mister. Are you a friend of…of the Larva group?”

Dallas looked at the tattooed young guy, who’d asked his question as if he wasn’t very confident about it, and then remembered who he was looking upon:

These are the guys Tim said he was gonna use as throwaway pawns…

They were the thugs who’d moved into the house on Millionaires’ Row, the one Dallas’s family, the Genoards, used as their second residence.

Come to think of it, why were these pills at my summerhouse? That Tim bastard didn’t tell me anything about that… Well, my old man or my brother probably loaned it to them for one of their underworld jobs.

Dallas knew that his father and older brother refined drugs. He’d been excluded from the rights and benefits of that business simply because he was young, and his misguided resentment over that was why he’d left home.

Unaware his father and brother had been rubbed out by the Runorata Family, Dallas privately determined that Jacuzzi’s group must have something to do with the drugs.

Once he’d figured out the identity of the others, he responded promptly.

“Umbrella.”

“Huh?”

“I said gimme a damn umbrella. I’ll kill you.”

“Eep…! S-s-s…sorry, I’m sorry.”

At Dallas’s words, Jacuzzi’s face crumpled, and he involuntarily handed him his own umbrella.

“Jacuzzi!”

Nice and the others sounded reproachful, but Jacuzzi winked lightly and raised both hands, quelling the people around him with a gesture: It’s fine, it’s fine.

Several of them glared at Dallas, but he wasn’t the least bit bothered by it. He walked over to stand beside Jacuzzi and spoke to him arrogantly.

“What’s the matter? You’ve got questions for me, right? Well, get the lead out and take me to your hideout, or wherever you want… Rocks-for-brains.”

“…Huh? Oh, uh, right!”

Looking at the tattooed fellow, who was nodding and getting soaked by the rain, Dallas remembered what Tim had said that afternoon.

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

Sacrificial pawns.

“That’s got a nice ring to it.”

“Huh?”

Ignoring the perplexed youth, Dallas turned aside and snickered.

An idea involving Jacuzzi’s group had already surfaced in his mind.

If I manage to get these guys on board…I might be able to kill those Larva goons.

A concrete way to convert his murderous intent into reality.

Dallas had already decided to rope them in and make them his friends.

“This could turn into a long relationship.”

The word friend was, to Dallas, a synonym for tool.

Keeping the arrogance in his attitude, he welcomed his “friends” curtly.

“Well, I’m looking forward to it.”

Then, looking up as if he’d thought of something, he stuck the hand with the umbrella out toward Jacuzzi.

“…You’re getting wet. Get under here.”

“Huh? Oh, s-sure.”

“Better be grateful. That’s two favors you people owe me for now… Actually, since I’m gonna tell you all sorts of stuff in a minute or so, I guess you owe me three.”

Jacuzzi got under the umbrella as he’d been told, but he still looked bewildered. He didn’t know what kind of person this guy was.

The one thing he did know was that—

—the man next to him under this umbrella was most likely not human, but an immortal monster.

Even so, he asked just one question that had been bothering him.

“U-um… By favors, you mean…the umbrella and…telling us things and… What’s the last one?”

“Hunh? That one’s obvious.”

Jacuzzi had question marks all over his face, so Dallas muttered, self-centered and matter-of-fact:

“You people are freeloading in my second residence.”

“…Huh?”

Ignoring Jacuzzi, whose question marks had multiplied, Dallas set off confidently across the rough ground by the river.

Inwardly, he was as gleeful as a little kid about having acquired tools to satisfy his intent to kill.

The rain grew even fiercer—and the sky was still dark and gloomy.

Fifth Avenue Empire State Building

When New York City’s large, prosperous Waldorf Hotel relocated, the Empire State Building was built on the land it vacated.

In sharp contrast to its elegant art deco exterior, its interior was very simple and filled with office tenants.

It had been completed in 1931, and at the time, it was the tallest building in the world. Behind the scenes, the owners having taken various steps to ensure it was “the world’s tallest”—during construction, it had vied with the Chrysler Building for the title and had added a tower to its top in order to surpass it, calling it a “dirigible mooring mast”—it was also a structure with a slightly checkered history.

Upon entering, you were met by a bank of several dozen elevators. They made the structure seem like a lofty fortress of offices that stretched up and up and up.

In an office partway up the building, a couple who seemed, at first glance, to have nothing to do with business were looking out the window and chatting cheerfully.

“Wow! Look, Miria! The people are like ants!”

“Yes, I bet we could step on them and squish them now!”

Gazing at the black shapes walking around under umbrellas, they said childlike things with innocent faces.

“No, Miria, wait. They say ants can crumble castles with their minds.”

“Eeeeeek! Heeeeelp!”

From behind the couple, whose conversation was just as far removed from business as their demeanor was, a voice spoke, sighing.

“You’ve warped it so far it’s impossible to tell what the original proverb was.”

The individual who’d spoken was a sharp-eyed man in a suit, and the atmosphere he exuded was a complete mismatch with the couple, who were dressed as if they were going to a party.

Behind him, a woman in a black suit—Ennis—was gazing at him, looking mystified.

When she was sure the sharp-eyed man was finished speaking, Ennis timidly voiced her own question.

“Um…Ronny? What in the world is this place…?”

As she murmured, she looked around. Several men were bustling around the spacious room, moving various goods and opening packages or packing them up.

“They deal in jewels, watches, and works of art—put briefly, it’s an import agency that specializes in small articles.”

“No, that’s not what I meant…”

“I’m the director, and the caposocietà is the owner. That said, I’m only lending them my name; in practical terms, I do almost nothing.”

Ronny spoke indifferently, and all Ennis could do was look puzzled.

“It just means we need to use this sort of thing as a front as well. I don’t particularly intend to brag about it, but…it’s a decent place to get out of the rain, isn’t it?”

He shrugged lightly. Seeing this, Ennis exhaled in relief.

Just thirty minutes ago, in a certain residence on Millionaires’ Row, she’d seen him exude a “pressure” that was clearly out of the ordinary.

His overwhelming presence had made it seem as if simply touching him would be enough to break you. The look in his eyes made it take all the courage in your body to even think about defying him.

The man who’d radiated such fearsome pressure had now returned to being a Camorra executive whose seriousness and kindness didn’t suit those sharp eyes.

I wonder who this man really is.

The past half day had left Ennis’s heart littered with questions.

Isaac and Miria had fought with Firo and dashed out. In order to bring them back, she’d left the restaurant with Ronny, who’d been headed out on different business, but…

How had he known where Isaac and Miria were so easily?

Why had that confusion broken out at the mansion?

How had Ronny taken the weapons from the two women who’d been slashing at each other?

And…

…why had the woman with the spear known her?

The spear user had cut Isaac. When Ennis had seen it, anger had spiked, and she’d stopped the other woman’s arm without thinking—but then Isaac and Miria had called Ennis’s name, and the woman with the spear had heard them. She’d murmured:

“Um, could you possibly be…Szilard Quates’s—?”

Szilard Quates.

It was the name of Ennis’s creator and the name she detested most.

In New York—no, even in the whole world—the number of people who knew of her ties to Szilard had to be very limited.

With that thought in mind, she recalled the mysterious group that had been in the walk-up. The group’s demeanor had clearly set them apart from the band of thugs who apparently lived at the mansion (although they didn’t seem suited to such a fine residence). In the first place, the mere act of brandishing a spear like that one in the entrance hall had marked them as abnormal.

She could remember the spear woman’s face clearly, but she just couldn’t seem to recall running into her in the past.

If, hypothetically, the woman had gone on to say “Szilard Quates’s secretary,” she could have thought of her as someone who’d been involved with an organization that Szilard had once created.

But if the rest of the phrase had been “Szilard Quates’s creation, the homunculus”—that would mean she was far more familiar with the relationship between her and Szilard.

In addition, the woman with the spear had reacted to the name “Ennis” itself, not to her face. That meant she hadn’t known what Ennis looked like.

If I see her again…I’ll ask her.

She’d met the spear user’s group completely by chance, and her current goal had nothing to do with them. It did bother her, but in the end, Ennis decided to just keep it in mind, at the level of “if we meet.”

Then she turned her gaze to the pair who were her actual goal.

“Oh, that’s right. Ronny, did you leave that letter for us?”

“You mustn’t eat it without reading it, you know?”

Isaac and Miria had been there for the chaos, too, but she couldn’t see any doubt or bewilderment in their eyes as they spoke.

Ronny responded with a wry smile. “Yes. I left your ‘threatening letter’ on the shop counter, just as you said.”

“You did, huh?! Say, thanks! We swore an oath to ourselves, see.”

“Yes: Until Firo apologizes, we’re not setting foot in that place!”

As she watched the three—who were talking about something weird—out of the corner of her eye, Ennis was puzzled; she didn’t know what was going on. She’d been standing transfixed in the smoke-filled room when Isaac and Miria had grabbed her hands and taken her outside, and the next thing she knew, on Ronny’s suggestion, they’d come to this office.

In the interval, Isaac and Miria had said only one thing to her:

“Sorry, Ennis, but let us steal you for a bit!”

“Yes, we’re sorry! We apologize!”

Far too easily, without knowing what was happening—she’d been kidnapped by Isaac and Miria.

“Heh-heh-heh! That Firo! I bet he’s having a tough time right now.”

“Yes, now that he’s lost his special people, he’ll be at his wit’s end!”

Seeing that the pair were wearing, unusually for them, diabolical smiles, Ennis asked in confusion, “Um… What do you mean, ‘Firo’s special people’?”

She’d meant it seriously, yet as they answered her, the kidnappers danced by the window, twirling around and around. Outside the glass, the rain reflected the light, and it looked as if the pair were dancing on the silver screen.

“You and Ronny, obviously.”

“Yes, his sweetheart and his great teacher!”

The answer had been far too direct. Ronny gave a smirk, and Ennis stared at the couple with round eyes.

“His teacher, hmm? I think old Yaguruma fits the bill better than I do.”

“His sweetheart…?”

For a moment, Ennis didn’t understand what the word meant. She blinked a few times, then spoke simply.

“That can’t be right. I’m just a freeloader, and…”

“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! You’re dense, Ennis.”

“That means you’re Firo’s unrequited crush, then!”

The two stopped dancing to laugh, and Ennis tilted her head, still bewildered.

“Being called ‘dense’ by those two is really something… Well, never mind.”

Ronny shook his head, looking rather entertained, then left for the recesses of the office to see how the work was going.

Ennis quietly mulled over what the pair had said, turning her awareness on herself for the first time.

“Firo and I…sweethearts?”

She’d never even considered it.

She was alive because Firo was sharing his life with her. If he decided to kill her, he could do it just by thinking.

That was their current relationship, or it should have been.

However, she couldn’t think of a word that accurately described that relationship.

They weren’t “master and servant,” and although they were sharing the same life, they weren’t siblings or parent-and-child, either.

Now that she thought about it, she realized the people around them probably did assume they were lovers, since they were living together.

Ennis tried to think of it that way, but she couldn’t convince herself completely.

Just a few years had passed since she’d been created as a homunculus that was related to Szilard by blood, and because Szilard had given her only the minimum necessary knowledge, she was incredibly unfamiliar with the emotion known as “love.”

She understood the feeling of liking someone and regarding them as special. Yet, at this point, she wasn’t truly able to understand the difference between what she felt for Firo and what she felt for Isaac and Miria.

In any case, even if they seemed to be sweethearts as far as other people were concerned—how did Firo actually feel about her?

And how do I feel about Firo?

If Firo liked her, but she wasn’t able to think of him as a lover, she would have betrayed him terribly, wouldn’t she?

She couldn’t understand what the emotions she was feeling actually were, and Isaac’s and Miria’s words only tossed her around.

I wonder what Firo’s doing now.

I wonder how he’d react if he knew someone had kidnapped me.

Inwardly, she was thinking of Firo.

Wondering where the boy who was the source of her life was now, and what he was thinking…

Dammit, dammit, dammit.

So this, this is what it’s like to be helpless, huh?!

I can’t do a thing. There isn’t one blasted thing I can do, dammit to hell.

What knowledge?! That cruddy old fart.

It doesn’t matter how much of this junk I have; I can’t do anything—nothing, not one thing.

I just talked about this with Maiza! About how there’s no point if you can’t get over the past and your memories under your own steam!

Look at me now, though: Forget the past—I can’t even get over this moment. I’m totally hopeless.

No, that doesn’t matter.

Whether I’m hopeless or not, it’s got nothing to do with this.

Ennis— Is Ennis okay?

That’s the only subject I want on the table right now.

If she’s safe— If she’s safe, I don’t care if those past memories crush me.

Even I was startled.

To think I’d invested this much emotion—no, this much of my life—in that Ennis doll.

Did I just get really attached to her, since I’ve lived with her for so long?

No, no.

Absolutely no way.

It’s not that.

It’s nothing like that.

I fell for her at first sight. I took a spectacular critical hit, the sort I couldn’t even begin to make excuses for, from her gestures and face and words and heart.

That’s enough all by itself. I don’t have a reason for liking Ennis.

And so, and so, dammit. Tell me what’s going on here.

Why did that…that Dallas bastard—?

I can’t believe he kidnapped Ennis and Ronny all by himself!

Does this have something to do with that thing Ronny mentioned, the attack on the construction site?

Or was it the punks with Chicago accents that he went to see for that job?

I don’t know! Dammit, I didn’t think not knowing stuff could make you this helpless.

Is running it? Is running all I can do?

No, there’s gotta be a way.

I can’t stop, though.

My cells are telling me not to stop. My brain’s almost given up hope, so they’re doing the thinking instead, telling me to look for Ennis, and so, and so, I can’t stop—

No… It looks like I’ve hit my limit.

Even if I’ve got an immortal body, I’ve been running as fast as I can, and the speed of my muscle fatigue beat the power of immortality and my own natural repair.

My legs started to shake like an engine that’s run out of gas…

The strength went out of me as though someone had cut my strings, and I lost my balance and dropped in my tracks.

The water streaming over the road got me muddy from head to toe, but the heavy rain promptly started washing the mud away.

“Dammit…”

What do I do?

What am I supposed to do, damn you?!

As I looked up, planning on venting my unbearable anger by screaming at the rain…

…I realized the raindrops weren’t hitting my face.

I saw a black shadow above my head. Apparently, somebody was holding an umbrella over me.

Who in the heck?

I looked at the owner of the arm that held that umbrella, and what I saw was—

Grand Central Station East side

An enormous building stood beside the station. Nicknamed “Mist Wall,” it was the New York branch of the huge Nebula conglomerate.

As its name indicated, the building was a nearly transparent white, like faint mist. Its art deco design gave those who saw it the illusion that a cloud had descended from the sky to the ground.

There were terraces near the very top that formed a pyramid shape, making it look like some sort of monument.

As you’d expect, its height fell far short of the Empire State Building, which stood a little ways away. That said, people’s opinions of it certainly weren’t low, and its dignified, quietly towering presence charmed the hearts of the locals.

Unlike the Empire State Building, this structure wasn’t a collective that had a variety of companies as tenants. It was entirely monopolized, from the ground floor all the way to the top, by the offices and stores of the Nebula Corporation.

In front of this building, which seemed to reach into the heavens as if symbolizing Nebula’s corporate power, a group of about ten men and women stood quietly.

The young man at the center of the group held his umbrella tipped back slightly, not caring about the water that soaked into him because of it.

Even as he looked up at the tower of mist that stretched into the sky, his heart was completely focused on his own past.

The guy was remembering a rat.

A pure-white rat, which he’d had when he was a kid.

The very first small animal he’d ever had.

The boy had been lonely, and that rat had been his only friend.

He’d had no human friends at all. But it wasn’t because other people had disliked him.

He just hadn’t accepted them.

At the time, the boy had been a little brighter than the people around him.

The others had struck him as endlessly ignorant and thickheaded, and even talking to them hadn’t seemed worth it.

It wasn’t just friends. It was his father, too, and his older brother, and even his departed mother.

In a way, the boy might have been dumb.

In looking down on others, in the end, he’d forced solitude on himself.

Even so, after he’d driven himself into isolation, he’d started to envy his brother’s cheerfulness.

Even though he himself was lonely, his dumb brother smiled as if he was enjoying life to the fullest.

This didn’t seem fair to the boy, and he withdrew further and further into his shell.

Those gloomy thoughts of his had been alleviated by a white rat, which he’d adopted on a whim.

When he talked to that little animal, it only responded with faint cries, but he began telling it his own thoughts and complaints, things he couldn’t tell anybody else.

Like the man who’d spoken the secret of the king’s ears into a hole, the boy shared his secrets with the rat, knowing all the time that it wouldn’t respond.

I know: I’ll use this rat to protect myself. I’ll build my world inside it—inside Jimmy.

The boy, who wasn’t yet fifteen, had thought this quite calmly.

The rat wasn’t a pet. It was no more than a tool to calm his own spirit, to create a place he could return to and find peace. He’d been very clear on that point.

At least, he’d thought that was the case.

However… One day, the boy’s thoughts and the “world” he’d stored up inside the rat had crumbled away in the blink of an eye.

When he’d returned to his room, he’d seen the rat with a pair of scissors several times bigger than the animal itself sticking out of its back.

The innocent, cruel, vivid sight of his brother stabbing those scissors into the rat’s back.

He killed him. He got killed. Jimmy did. My brother did it.

What startled the boy was the fact that the emotion that welled up inside him was sadness. The feeling of loss, the sense that he’d lost someone precious, was far stronger than his anger at having a convenient tool broken.

His sorrow at the murder of his special friend was promptly transformed into pain and violent feelings.

The boy screamed.

Give back Jimmy. Just that one thing, over and over again.

However, the boy never once yelled, “Why did you kill him?”

Why had his brother killed Jimmy?

In the moment, the thought hadn’t crossed his mind, and as time passed, he began to feel as if it didn’t even matter.

Whatever the reason was, it wouldn’t change the fact that his brother had stuck a blade into his best friend’s back.

After the boy had screamed himself hoarse, he realized something.

His brother hadn’t said a single word in protest or apology.

He also realized that, for the first time, the other boy had looked sad in front of him, his own little brother.

I’ve never been able to understand what my brother was thinking, but—at the very least, he probably didn’t care about me.

In the end, he and his brother had parted without ever speaking again, and he’d kept growing.

The man who’d aided that growth, who’d helped him to erase his past and acquire a new self, was Huey Laforet, his current master.

The man who’d come to pick the boy up when he’d run away from home had known everything there was to know about his heart.

It was probably safe to say Huey had a perfect understanding of this boy’s ideas, his past, and even what he was thinking now.

The world that the boy had assumed to be sealed inside the rat had appeared before him with the capacity for speech.

The incarnation of the white rat, which had presented itself so abruptly, had expanded beyond the little world the boy had breathed into his pet. Expanded many, many times over and been tossed back to him.

Everything about that man, Huey Laforet, was shrouded in mystery.

The boy had been frightened of him, and at the same time, he’d also been drawn to his vaguely mystical charm.

He’d caught the “world” Huey had thrown back to him, and he had decided to dye his current world that same color.

Over the course of many years, the boy had changed everything about himself.

His name, his hair, his clothes, his voice, his build, his thoughts, his personality: Except for his memories, he’d discarded every sort of “self” he had—in other words, his life as Tock Jefferson—and had gained his present life as “Tim.”

However, the one thing he hadn’t thrown away, his memories, stood in his path as his largest obstacle.

…Because he’d run into Tick Jefferson, the older brother he’d thought he’d never see again.

Why now, at a time like this…? At such an important time?!

Not only that, but they hadn’t merely run into each other by accident in town—they’d met in the presence of the group led by Jacuzzi Splot, whom he’d contacted for this job.

On top of that, apparently his brother was on hostile terms with Jacuzzi’s organization.

Still, I guess it’s not enough to be concerned about. As long as I ignore it, nothing’s going to change. We’ve just picked up one more obstacle, that’s all. My past won’t get in the way of the job. There’s nothing to worry about. Nothing…

The young guy silently repeated the words in his head, gradually calming his heart.

In the moment he’d come face-to-face with his brother, Tick, he remembered being clearly unsettled. However, just as Tick hadn’t seemed to recognize him at all, Tim had acted as if they were complete strangers and had stayed in character as “Tim.”

Well, I shaved my head on purpose, and I’m wearing glasses, so it’s understandable, but— Man, that’s ironic. I wanted to forget so badly, but I knew my brother the moment I saw his face…and apparently, he didn’t recognize me at all.

“…m.”

In the end, from brothers come strangers. I’m sure of it now. At this point, that faint hope I still had when I left home is completely—

“Tim!”

Finally registering the voice that was speaking behind him, the man—Tim—quietly turned around.

“What is it?”

He kept the muscles of his face under tight control, so that no one would pick up on the emotional conflict he’d been going through up until just now. The result was a quiet expression that wasn’t easy to read.

“Sorry. The rain is loud; I didn’t hear you.”

True, rain was pouring down around them, and the umbrellas they stood under became speakers that transmitted ferocious static to them, but the subordinate who’d hailed him had apparently done so pretty loudly. As he made his report to his leader, he gave him a funny look.

“Right… We went to pick up Christopher’s group, but…they weren’t at the appointed meeting spot.”

“What?!”

“Instead, we found this letter on the station notice board.”

Holding out a scrap of paper that had been folded up small, the subordinate sighed uncomfortably.

With an unpleasant premonition, Tim took the scrap of paper, unfolded it carefully, and squinted at the words, which were written in bright-red letters.

Dear Boss.

How are you? I’m feeling murderously spiffy myself.

Are you appreciating Nature?

Are you watering the flowers?

I’m not.

If you overwater flowers, they rot.

In other words, the world rots.

So do human hearts.

Right now, there’s a downpour in this town, and it’s putrefying people’s souls.

I rotted first. I have zero desire to do any work.

Fortunately, the day Huey said I’m supposed to start helping you guys out is tomorrow.

As a result, I’m not meeting up with anyone today. I’m going to go goof off instead.

I will go play my brains out.

I intend to use my rotten heart as fertilizer and make the flowers known as memories bloom.

I wonder if I’ll be able to make a hundred friends.

Is one’s number of friends inversely proportionate to one’s number of good friends?

Well, that doesn’t matter at all. Anyhow, I plan to enjoy this rainy New York to the fullest.

Don’t worry. I’ll do my very best not to kill anybody until it’s time for the job.

Oh, right: “The twins” are always watching you, so we’ll figure out a way to meet up with you on our end.

Rain is also part of Nature. But it’s unpleasant.

Someday, I suppose I’ll have to settle things with the great will of Mother Nature.

Ha-ha. From Hell.

The distinctive salutation and closing mimicked the letters sent by the criminal in the “Jack the Ripper” incident that had occurred in London during the previous century. They were a complete mismatch with the content, meaning he’d probably used them only out of some shallow fanaticism.

A smell like rusty iron rose from the red letters, making it very obvious what they’d been written with.

On registering that fact, Tim felt irritated by the lousy taste of the note’s sender, his companion.

“Damn Christopher. He’s messing with us.”

“He mentioned Master Huey’s name…”

Behind him, his subordinate spoke, sounding uneasy. Huey was a terrorist who was currently incarcerated. If the knowledge that they had ties got spread around unnecessarily, it was patently clear their job would become much harder to pull off.

“Yeah, Christopher knows that, and he’s still using it. The bastard’s baiting us! If the station staff saw this dicey letter, or if some stranger took it with them, he’d probably say, ‘Things just got interesting’ and leave it at that.”

With an annoyed mutter, Tim turned his eyes to the building in front of them again.

“Right before a job, yet… I wanted to have them look the place over first, at least.”

The pouring rain made the area near the top of the building seem a little hazy. As water dripped onto his face, Tim murmured self-deprecatingly, “Even if it is only about half as tall as the Empire State, when you think that we’re about to storm it, it really does feel like a lot of pressure, doesn’t it?”

Tim kept gazing up at it for a little while. Then, abruptly cracking his neck, he spoke to the woman beside him.

“Adele.”

“Y-yes?”

It was possible she hadn’t expected anyone to call her name at this point. Adele, a woman who wore a spear in a sack on her back, looked at Tim in surprise.

“Listen, go find Christopher and the rest and tell them to at least come scope out this building. We’ll head back to the hideout for now, then go check the house where that Jacuzzi fella’s group was.”

“Y-yes, sir!”

Giving a quick, energetic response, Adele started off into the rain—until she abruptly stopped.

“What’s wrong?”

“Um…”

Looking timid, Adele gingerly confirmed an item on their agenda.

“If I find them quickly and end up with free time, then, um…as promised, I’ll go kill Eve Genoard, all right?”

“…”

Eve Genoard.

She was the little sister of Dallas Genoard, who’d taken advantage of the confusion to make a break for it. A hostage, to make it possible for them to move Dallas, their sacrificial pawn, any way they wanted.

She might be a hostage, but they didn’t have her in custody. They’d simply told Dallas that if he sold them out, they’d kill her.

“Uh… Well, we don’t know for sure that he’s sold us out yet.”

“Isn’t it all right to just keep him tied up now, though? Um, Jacuzzi and the others already saw him ‘resurrect’…”

“Yeah, well…”

They’d had two reasons for pulling Dallas into their group. The first had been that Dallas was an incomplete immortal, and he interested their boss, Huey Laforet, as a guinea pig.

The second had been to use as bait, in order to get Jacuzzi and his friends to join their group.

They’d meant to pull them in by giving them an actual demonstration of Dallas’s immortality, then telling them, “We’ll give you this power, too.” If all they’d had to do was show them, they could have just kept him bound hand and foot and taken a slash at him—but if Dallas hadn’t been standing beside them as their “companion,” there wouldn’t have been any point.

If it had looked like they were slicing up a lab animal, it was doubtful whether Jacuzzi’s group would have agreed to join up.

To that end, as a simple sort of restraint, Tim had named Eve as a hostage, but…

Ultimately, the attempt had half succeeded, and half failed.

After they’d shown Jacuzzi’s group Dallas’s resurrection, the plan had been to take Dallas back outside before he regained consciousness, but unexpected chaos had erupted, and they hadn’t managed to do so.

In a case of even worse timing, some previous acquaintances of Dallas had been on the scene, and he’d started rampaging. This had been one of the things that had caused the confusion.

When he’d recalled that much, Tim brought up something that had been bothering him.

“By the way, Adele…did you know ‘Ennis,’ that woman in the suit?”

In the midst of the chaos in the mansion, Adele had shown a unique reaction to the woman in the black suit. She’d even intentionally brought out the name Szilard Quates to see what the other woman did.

In the end, the smoke screen ruckus had broken out immediately after that, so she’d missed the woman’s reaction, but—

Who was she? When we asked about Szilard, I don’t remember the information broker mentioning the name of a woman like her.

Not knowing this information annoyed him, and Adele’s response only made those feelings worse.

“Um… I’m sorry. It has nothing to do with anyone except the members of Lamia, so…”

“Lamia is a part of Larva, and I’m at the center of that group. You can’t even tell me?”

“It may be all right for me to tell you, but…it’s something we heard directly from Master Huey, so, um…I would have to ask him…”

Watching Adele, who was speaking without much confidence, Tim heaved a big sigh.

Information straight from the boss, huh?

In Huey’s Larva organization, Lamia, whose members included Adele and Christopher, was a unit made up of dangerous personnel who specialized in rough work. Except for the people themselves, no one knew who they were or how they’d come to follow Huey.

Every one of them had deeper ties to Huey than Tim did, but they all had problematic personalities and weren’t suited to motivating an organization, so in practice, Tim acted as the leader.

Even as he lamented the current state of the organization, which just wasn’t going his way, Tim had stayed loyal to Huey.

He respected the man who had given him a new world, but even so, he showed no mercy to Adele, the man’s direct subordinate.

“All right, getting back to the original subject… Adele. Don’t kill Eve Genoard yet.”

“B-but…”

“You just want to kill people, don’t you?”

The remark was filled with conviction, and for a moment, Adele fell silent. Then she responded with a troubled smile.

“…That isn’t true.”

“What was that pause for, huh? Well, anyway, you know what I mean: We might still be able to use Dallas, so leave as many pawns on the board as possible.

“But even as we speak, Dallas may be headed to where his sister is…”

“If he is, we’re too late either way, right? In that case, don’t do anything pointless. You’ll just wear yourself out.”

Tim spoke indifferently, and Adele hung her head. She didn’t seem convinced. Before long, though, with an expression of reluctant agreement, she wordlessly left to look for Christopher.

As he watched her drooping shoulders recede, Tim shrugged wearily.

“…Good grief. Why is Lamia so full of messed-up characters?”

Then he pulled himself together again, steeling himself for his meeting with the man he’d see tomorrow, at the latest.

“What kind of sightseeing is he planning to do in this rain…?”

“Rain, rain, the sonaaata of raaaain.  ”

“Shut up.”

“You’re so mean. I poured everything I had into writing song lyrics in praise of rain, you know… Moistening the three thousand valleys of the wooorld.  ”

“Quiet.”

As Christopher sang deliriously, spinning his umbrella, Chi continued to broadcast his discomfort without even moving his eyes.

“Why? You like singing, too, don’t you, Chi? You sang along with me earlier, back at those warehouses. Come on—let’s sing together… The stiiill lethaaaal rain puuuunch.  ”

“What I’m trying to say is that I can’t tolerate your deplorable taste in lyrics. Which do you think is lacking, your ability to understand or my ability to express that?”

“How do you expect me to make that call on nothing but ‘shut up’ and ‘quiet’?”

“…Hmm. Good point. I apologize for the insufficiency of my words. Let me add to them: Your puerile lyrics could not possibly be more annoying, so shut up, or I’ll kill you.”

Broadway in the rain. The wide avenue had been teeming with lively energy until just a moment ago, but now it was completely ruled by rain, and people were either scrambling to get into the theaters, or—if they’d left a show that had just finished—standing in doorways, at a loss, unable to move.

Christopher’s umbrella hid his striking eyes and mouth, but Chi was using a red, Asian-style oilpaper umbrella, so they still couldn’t have stood out more.

“Your taste in umbrellas is pretty remarkable, too. This is New York, you know? The far eastern edge of the American dream. The idea of importing a culture from across the Pacific… I think you’ve got too much ‘frontier spirit,’ don’t you?”

“I don’t believe it’s more of a leap than those eyes and teeth of yours.”

“Wow, we’ve got a real jerk here. How could you talk about somebody’s physical features like that?”

“You got that body because you wanted it.”

When they’d run through similar exchanges five times or so, Christopher finally gave up singing.

Then, gazing cheerfully at the black umbrella he was holding, he murmured as if he were talking to himself.

“Umbrellas are amazing, aren’t they? Real worthy of respect.”

“?”

“See, umbrellas are a product of human intelligence, created in order to fight the rain, to struggle against Nature. They’re probably a clearer rebellion against Nature than any other technology. Clothes, which exist to combat changes in temperature, might be the same way, but they’re already so commonplace that they don’t really feel rebellious. But check out this umbrella! It’s just oozing with the palpable resolution of its developers: ‘Like hell we’re letting the rain get us wet!’”

Christopher showed his sharp teeth in a smile. His red eyes were shining like a child’s.

“Besides, look how efficient it is. The idea of being able to combat the rain, which soaks everything in the whole world, with just a little framework and cloth!”

“In this much rain, I don’t think it’s managing to put up much of a fight.”

Chi’s retort was accurate: In addition to the rain that the wind blew at them, the water splashing up off the ground was getting the pair’s legs very wet.

“As long as our moods don’t get dampened, we win. Well, I’m a Nature lover, and I love myself, too, so I don’t really care which of us wins.”

“…I’m so disgusted I don’t even feel like responding.”

“There, you see? We’ve already got somebody with a dampened mood right here. At times like that, you should sing. Come, come, let’s sing, let’s sing, a song to save your heart, by which I mean, a song to save your world. Ah, the scale’s getting grander… This is fun. Want to kill someone and offer them as a sacrifice?”

“…They said to avoid killing as much as possible except when we’re on the job, remember?”

Christopher’s words seemed to be nothing more than a joke, but Chi immediately hit him with a warning.

Chi had hung out with this guy for many years, and he knew. That hadn’t been a joke, and if he’d agreed, the people around them who were taking shelter from the rain would promptly have been soaked with a rain of blood.

In response to Chi’s words, Christopher shrugged lightly. Then, quietly and far too boldly, he stopped walking and stood still, right in the middle of the rainy avenue.

Fortunately, there weren’t enough cars or people out there in the center of the road for him to be in the way. Nevertheless, he looked as though he fancied himself a star of the silver screen or something.

“Hmm. I’m currently standing right in the center of Broadway, but in this rain, I can’t feel its famous energy. It’s surprisingly blasé this way.”

“If you’re bored, we could just go meet up with Tim’s group.”

“Tim is more boring than this, so no. Yuck.”

Christopher turned his face away as a little kid would. Then he started walking, looking around, searching for something interesting.

He walked that way, swiveling his head like a clockwork doll, for about thirty minutes.

When they’d traveled a good distance from Broadway, Christopher’s eyes came to rest on an odd sight.

“…?”

It was a lone man, running.

A young guy, tearing through this downpour as if possessed. He had no umbrella, and his pale-green fedora was getting drenched by the rain.

From this distance, he couldn’t really tell, but the guy might still be young enough to call a boy.

“What a strange fellow. He’s accepting the rain, just as it is. And here I am, with an umbrella. I feel like I’m losing.”

He puffed out his cheeks crossly, but at the time, he didn’t pay much attention to the guy. However—

Ten minutes later, when Christopher was standing in one of the alleys that were laid out in a grid, looking around, he realized the same boy was running toward him, up the alley that led off to the right.

The kid didn’t seem to have stopped once since the last time he’d seen him, and it was obvious his legs had just about reached their limit.

If he’d kept up that pace this entire time, he was incredibly tough. Even marathon runners probably couldn’t keep sprinting at top speed for more than a few minutes.

Christopher seemed to have taken a new interest in the boy, and as the kid came running toward him on shaking legs, he looked at his face.

“Huh!”

At the sight of the boy’s expression, Chris spoke involuntarily.

The look on his face wasn’t fatigue from sprinting.

It was despair.

Christopher immediately recognized that sharp, dark, murky expression. It was one that he and Chi had seen many times before.

That said, the cause of that despair had always been created entirely by them, in their capacity as hatchet men…

So he wasn’t used to seeing expressions of human despair that had nothing to do with him, and he was also intrigued by the fact that the boy who wore that expression was running so hard.

When the kid had almost come up even with him, his legs gave out. He abruptly pitched forward and crashed to the ground, his feet tangling with each other.

“Oh man.”

For a little while, Christopher stayed where he was, watching. But when he saw the boy start trying to get up, even though he was soaked with muddy water, the man involuntarily started toward him.

Chi had been standing silently beside him, but when he realized what his buddy was up to, he spoke, checking him.

“Don’t. Getting involved with others’ misfortune is never worth it.”

“But they also say others’ misfortune tastes like nectar, don’t they?”

Winking with one red eye, he walked over, splashing through puddles.

Not caring that he’d get wet, he held his umbrella out to the boy in front of him.

…To the boy who ran a portion of the city’s underworld and whose name was Firo Prochainezo.

What’s up with this guy?

That was Firo’s first impression of the man who held the umbrella out to him. He may have been in the depths of despair, but it was patently obvious the man who’d appeared before him was abnormal.

Stiff, formal, aristocratic clothes, the sort Western European nobles had worn a century or two ago.

Red eyeballs with white irises and jet-black pupils.

His grin revealed a mouthful of sharp fangs, like dolphin teeth.

Judging by appearance alone, he was clearly not normal. It wouldn’t have been odd for an individual faint of heart to scream in terror.

However, Firo wasn’t a Camorra executive for nothing. His eyebrows only drew together slightly, and then he waited calmly for the other guy to make his next move.

Internally, Firo still felt a raging despair over Ennis, but his caution regarding this man had temporarily erased it from his face.

At seeing Firo’s expression, the fanged man spoke kindly to the boy, who looked like a drowned rat, smiling all the while.

“Are you okay?”

The words were gentle, and they didn’t seem to go with the man’s fangs. Eyeing him, Firo took another good look at the guy’s face.

If you ignored those eyes and teeth, he was a debonair, agreeable-looking young guy who seemed to be somewhere around twenty.

“…”

“What’s the matter? You’ll catch a cold, running around in a downpour like this.”

The suspicious man’s words were kind through and through, and as Firo responded, he felt perplexed.

“Thanks… It’s nothing to do with you, though.”

With that, Firo checked on his legs.

His tired muscles had already recovered quite a bit, and the cells he’d destroyed by pushing them past their limits had completely regenerated.

“…See you.”

Firo was about to take off running again, but he found his body wouldn’t go anywhere.

The red-eyed man had grabbed his arm and was holding him in place with extraordinary strength.

“Hey…let go,” Firo demanded, irritated.

He was using the voice he used at work, a threatening voice that didn’t go with his face.

Ordinarily, he’d have asked the other guy what was going on, but this really wasn’t the time. He tensed his arm in an effort to shake the man’s hand off, glaring into his red eyes.

However, the red-eyed man didn’t seem the least bit disturbed by Firo’s voice, and when he spoke, his expression was mild.

“Even if I let you go, it’s not as if you have any idea where you’re going. Right?”

“!”

Bull’s-eye.

Sensing something unfathomable in the other’s eyes, Firo instantly focused all his muscles—which had been ready to start sprinting again—on the man in front of him.

“I saw you earlier. You looked like you’d lost something precious and were trying to find it, but you weren’t running like you had a destination in mind. You’re just wandering around without a plan, aren’t you?”

“…”

What are you?!

You’re not involved here; what do you know about it?!

Firo wanted to yell and scream, but the things the man had said had been too accurate, and he couldn’t work up the strength to squeeze the words out of his throat.

“From the way you’re not arguing, I guess I was right.”

The man grinned, showing rows of jagged teeth. The way his teeth overlapped with each other created a neat zigzag line. It seemed as if, instead of being something he’d been born with, they’d been artificially created after the fact.

“If you don’t mind, would you tell us about it? We might be able to help you somehow.”

“…I already told you, it’s none of your business.”

“Is your precious thing so cheap that you can be stubborn about stuff like finding it on your own?”

“…”

That one had hit Firo where it hurt, but even so, he had no intention of asking for help. If it had been Maiza or Randy and Pezzo or his other friends who’d said those words, he probably would have discarded his pride easily.

But why should he have to ask fellas he’d just met?

“Oh, of course: I haven’t introduced us yet.”

Realizing that Firo was eyeing him, Christopher tidied himself up with his left hand—the one that wasn’t holding the umbrella—looking as if he’d caught himself making a careless mistake.

“I’m Christopher Shaldred. I just got to New York, but I have some pretty good connections, so I think I’ll be useful to you. It’s a pleasure.”

He bowed graciously, then gestured to the man who stood beside him.

The other man was holding a red oilpaper umbrella, and at a distance, his Asian appearance stood out more than Christopher’s did.

“He’s Hong Chi-Mei, ‘Chi’ to his friends.”

“…Charmed.”

“And I think Leeza’s probably around here somewhere, but… Well, I’ll introduce her later.”

Firo listened to the man, but his suspicion and wariness hadn’t disappeared completely.

In the first place, why was he trying to get involved in this situation? And who in the world was this odd guy?

Questions welled up one after another, and Firo tried to put them into words. But as if he’d been seen right through, the red-eyed man spoke with a gentle smile.

“There’s no real reason. You see, my employer told me to come to this city to help out on a little job, but inconveniently, there’s nothing for me to do until tomorrow. I wanted to find a new friend in this new town, that’s all.”

Christopher said these childlike sentences matter-of-factly. Firo watched him suspiciously, but he wasn’t able to read where the lies ended and the truth began in the young man’s red eyes.

“…That’s it?”

On seeing that Firo clearly didn’t believe him completely…

“Three things are important to me: the blessings of Nature, the jobs I’m given, and handmade blades. The last one is—”

Grinning cheerfully, Christopher stated his reason for lending Firo a hand quite plainly.

“—killing time.”

Something in the depths of Firo’s heart was nagging at him. He asked Christopher an inconsequential question.

“Didn’t you just say four?”

“Huh?!”

“I mean, there were three things that were important to you, right?”

“…The concept of ‘important things’ is different for everybody. Trying to anchor concepts with numbers may be clever, but I’m not a fan. There’s no romance in it.”

Oh, I get it.

Christopher had smiled wryly as he murmured the words, and as he listened, Firo realized what the nagging feeling was.

They’re similar.

The face of a man who was Firo’s childhood friend surfaced in his mind.

This guy… His personality’s a whole lot like Claire’s. Claire Stanfield’s.