Baccano! - Volume 9 - Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

MISTIMED PROLOGUES

Prologue V—Miscreant Formation

They were…a peculiar group.

1934 A certain day of a certain month

Chicago Illinois

“It is…an azure wail. Thus responded the sound of the rain.”

“A blue lament… That—is the hue of the soul that calls down the wind.”

A man who wore a homburg low on his head muttered at the vast expanse of water in front of him.

“The blustering wind from Michigan…claims Chicago will be revived, time and time again. By whom? I cannot say.”

The man’s odd murmur was carried off by the wind that blew from the lake.

As he’d said, one could call Chicago a city that had risen again.

The two great cities of New York and Los Angeles were separated, one in the east and one in the west, and Chicago, which lay on the route that joined them, had developed into a strategic point in the circulation of industry, people, and culture. In the few decades since it began growing in earnest, railway and shipping canal facilities had been completed one after another, and as it became an important traffic hub for the American continent, its population grew.

Farming and ranching industries also developed on the surrounding land, and it continued to steadily expand as part of America’s breadbasket.

However, in 1871—an inferno to end all others swept over Chicago.

The cause has never been determined, but the fire started from something too small to identify, then mercilessly burned the city to the ground.

Later known as the Great Chicago Fire, the conflagration raged for several days straight, raising disaster prevention awareness all across America—and in those few days, up to three hundred lives, and housing for one hundred thousand people, burned to ashes.

However, some say the recovery that began afterward is the real symbol of the city of Chicago.

No use crying over spilled milk. So…let’s build our houses out of something that won’t burn, the people thought, and structures of stone and iron began to sprout from the ashes of trees and wheat.

The hardier materials sent their shoots up and up into the sky, more zealous than any plant, and finally formed an enormous building.

The Home Insurance Building.

Although it was demolished in 1931, this was the world’s first “skyscraper.” After that, the buildings went up with such vigor that they practically did scrape the sky.

Today, the city of Chicago was a great metropolis with a multitude of fire stations—a lesson learned from the inferno—and rows of tall buildings that had developed under the protection of their ranks.

With the prominent Tribune Tower—the headquarters of the Chicago Tribune, one of the nation’s leading newspapers—it became a city of jostling skyscrapers to rival, or maybe even surpass, New York.

A genuinely great city, and truly one of the symbols of the history of America’s development.

Somewhere between that vast city and a lake, the symbol of nature…

Standing on the shore, amid the fierce gusts of wind off the water, the man in the homburg spread his arms wide. Shaking his head slowly, he delivered a soliloquy as overstated as a musical, yet far more contrived than any musical or poetic drama.

“That which is borne by the wind—

It is desiccated algae

It is sand, touched with lukewarm damp

It is valiant light

It is chill air that slashes at the body

In all these things we descry hope and despair, both at once

The difference in temperature will likely give birth to strength erelong.”

After his loud mutterings, the man put a hand to his chin and hemmed.

“‘Difference in temperature’ seems a little cheap… Hmm. What’s a better word?”

The brim of his hat blocked the light, and his eyes were completely hidden. However, judging by the lack of visible wrinkles around his jaw, he apparently wasn’t that old.

“My comrades. Would you inform this soul, who seeks an answer which lies beyond his station, how time flows?”

The man called behind him, and in response—

—his surroundings offered him perfect silence.

“…Why does silence yet continue despite my query? The stillness at my back becomes a darkness that devours my feet. Clap! Clap! Ohhh, ohhh, hear me, O great king. The silence screams as to annihilate itself, devours my bod— Gwaghf!”

Something struck the side of his head.

The silence, or whatever it was that the man had been declaiming about, had asserted itself by nailing him with a spinning high kick.

“You wanna know what’s cheap? It’s not just the words, Poet. Everything about you is shockingly cheap.”

The attack, which could easily have come from a martial artist, had come courtesy of a woman with a distinctive, husky voice.

She wasn’t even trying to hide her irritation. She glared contemptuously at the man, who was huddled up, both hands pressed to his wounded temple.

The woman had dull eyes, the sort that made her sullen glowering more charming than her smiles. She was probably about twenty. Her face was well proportioned, but the odd dullness in her eyes created an obvious divide between herself and the people around her.

On top of that, although her harsh reply wasn’t vulgar, there was nothing feminine about it. The man she’d just called Poet had once commented on the way she spoke: “Should a goddess come to dwell in a murderer’s well-tended musket, no doubt ’twould be thee.”

However, her appearance was extremely feminine, and if you only went by looks, she could have passed for a young society belle or, in a different era, an aristocrat’s daughter.

The words from this elegantly dressed young woman were incredibly glum and cold.

“Listen up, Poet. Master Huey told us to lie low until we start this thing. Did you forget about that?”

Looking up at the woman with dark blond hair, who was glaring down at him with cold eyes, the Poet nodded quietly.

“There’s no need to remind me. I did think the tap dance you executed on the side of my skull, defying both gravity and male dignity, might encourage my memories to take flight, but apparently my heart is exceptionally delicious. Master Huey’s words have transformed into the migratory birds of my memories, and they have taken a marked liking to me.”

The man’s words did a poor job of getting his meaning across, and the woman answered him with an irritated question.

“Then here’s a question for you: What am I thinking about your loony claptrap right now?”

“Oh! Ohhh! God! God! Two devils have appeared before my eyes, gnashing their teeth on the ground and speaking to me thusly: ‘Dance thou the dance of pouring tears of blood.’ In the face of your transitory anger, no answer holds meaning. The tragedy, the tragedy.”

“Yeah, I’m mad. But no cigar, pal. The answer is ‘Die.’ Or, to put it your way, ‘Burn thou in the flames of hell.’ Is that about right?”

“Such straightforward speech defiles the souls of the words! Acting without speech is even further beyond the bounds of decorum!”

“You’re an atheist, and now you’re screaming about God? That means you’re not just beyond the bounds of decorum, you’re beyond all common sense.”

In response to these insults, the man stood up and began to argue.

“You have that the wrong way ’round. Thus spoke the headless doll, twining its pinions together. My lack of divine faith is the very reason God descends into my body and is tamed; thus, for the first time, I am able to shout his holy name!”

“Sorry, but at this point, I don’t understand one hundred and thirty percent of what you’re saying.”

“Hrrrm… Do you intend to pose philosophical questions to me? Going beyond one hundred percent is an absolute yet dubious contradiction. From what world does that remaining thirty percent hail?”

“Ten percent is your head, ten percent is your reason for being, and the last ten percent is some number juggling to make the total a multiple of thirteen and trash your luck.”

The Poet nodded quietly to acknowledge the deadpan insults.

“Hmm… I understand.”

A gentle smile appeared on his face, as though he was meditating on the idea—

And in the next moment, in his most theatrical gesture yet, he flung his arms wide, face to the sky; bent backward so far his spine seemed liable to snap; and bellowed his displeasure.

“O God… God. God! I beg of you, bestow sin upon them. A transgression such that I may be the executor of their punishment. For such a cause, I shall shatter them with a super blackjack formed of roadside rocks packed in a casing of fire, then drink in the overflowing dregs of their sin to quench my thirst!”

“You’re nuts.”

Looking fed up, the woman flung an accurate descriptor at the Poet, but—

—behind her, a new voice joined the conversation.

“What’s this, hmm? All that screaming isn’t exactly subtle.”

“We were watching. Sickle, that was an attention-grabbing spin kick you did, too. If a woman does something like that, I think it really, really stands out. Uh-huh.”

There were two voices—one high, one low—and Sickle turned and responded to the two figures.

“Rail. Frank. Took you long enough.”

“We couldn’t help it. We stick out, whether we want to or not. I can keep my face hidden with a muffler and hat, but Frank’s got no way to hide.”

“I-I’m really sorry about that.”

Finding themselves on the receiving end of an ill-tempered glare, one of the figures shrugged and gave a thin smile, while the other looked frightened and shrank a little.

However, the latter—Frank—was still several times bulkier than Rail next to him.

Rail was a slight boy. As far as appearances went, Frank seemed to be the younger, but he was built on a far larger scale.

He was easily over six feet tall, and he wasn’t proportionate: His head was extraordinarily big, as though someone had taken a young child and enlarged him with no further adjustments.

On top of that, he had an extremely thick waist, although it wasn’t clear whether the thickness was due to fat or muscle. Overall, he bore a strong resemblance to a huge beer-barrel doll that had sprouted arms and legs.

Meanwhile, the other boy—Rail—was dressed like any average street kid you could find anywhere, at least at first glance. His body build and facial features were reminiscent of a ball-jointed doll, and he struck others as vaguely cold.

However—despite his normal size, there was something about him that made him just as distinctive as Frank. Countless conspicuous suture scars ran over Rail’s skin, and his exposed flesh resembled a map or a route plan.

It was likely that the skin under his clothes was the same way, all over. A single scar tore right across his face in a straight line, and another ran down from his temple.

There was a thin smile on his lips, as though the scars pulled them up. It was as if they were scornful of the contrast between his own pale, translucent skin and the graphic scars.

The impression the boy gave those around him was that a child had grown jealous of a nearby doll and carved it up with a knife from head to toe.

The ball-jointed-doll boy smiled at the huge beer-barrel-doll child.

“We sure had a rough time getting to this town, didn’t we? After all, if they’d noticed Frank was there, we would’ve been done for. With that build of his, he can’t even get through the doors on a regular train, so we hopped a buncha freight trains and walked God knows how many miles.”

“I-I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for, Frank! It’s that Huey jerk’s fault! He shouldn’t have called us to a huge city like this! And what’s with the orders not to draw attention? That twisted bastard is just having a laugh at our expense, for sure!”

Even though he was smiling, he candidly insulted someone everyone else referred to as “Master.”

Frank watched Rail, his eyes swimming with confusion, and the Poet spread his arms happily, offering unstinting thanks to the god he didn’t believe in.

“Oh, God has promptly bestowed sin! We belong to Lamia, a suborganization of Larva, and one of our number has extended the apple of Lilith to Master Huey, our creator, our absolute law, our destiny, and our symbol of order and camaraderie! Profanity, sacrilege, foolishness, divinity! In short, we bear collective responsibility, so die and carve a grave marker from your soul, Sickle— Bwaaaaaaah!”

Yelling, the Poet had put a hand into his jacket, but a fluid strike from a foot hit him right in the throat.

Ignoring her companion—who had fainted from the agony, still clutching his hat and his throat—Sickle retracted her leg and turned around, still cross.

“Lucky you. The Poet took on your sin or whatever it was for you.” Sickle heaved a weary sigh over the boy in front of her. “Not that I’m agreeing with the idiot behind me, but you really have no loyalty to Master Huey, do you?”

“So what if I don’t? You gonna report me? They might make me disappear, huh! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

“Master Huey doesn’t have enough time on his hands to make you disappear over something like that. Besides, he’s probably well aware of your rebellious thoughts already.”

“Yeah, he probably is… And that’s aggravating, too! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

Even as Rail laughed, for just a moment, a dark shadow flickered through his eyes. Apparently, he was serious about hating Huey, and he made no particular attempt to hide it. Collecting himself, he went on.

“So who else is coming today? Is all of Lamia going to be together, for the first time in forever?”

“Leeza and Chi. Adele’s being Tim’s bodyguard, as usual. Christopher’s missing.”

“Huh? They still haven’t found Chris?”

The boy sounded surprised, and Sickle answered quietly.

“Even the twins’ information network hasn’t picked up anything, and it’s been a year. We should probably assume the worst.”

“…I see…”

Rail’s face clouded, just a little, at the indifferent reply. Since his lips were still smiling like before, it implied the sutures really did pull on them.

That was when the uneasy mood was interrupted by a tactless stream of noise.

“Within the dusk, dawn gleams. Night’s darkness stops all time, and we live through the days in order to overcome that time. It is an astonishing thing. Nevertheless, ah, nevertheless! Though time wearies me not, the onslaught of unfairness has exhausted me. Just how often must we advance down time’s river in order to meet those for whom we wait? How much further must we dam its flow in order to build a canal?”

“Shut the hell up, Poet. I’ve said it before: You need to hurry up and realize that your meaningless strings of words are an insult to poetry.”

The Poet had finally recovered, and Sickle responded by spitting at him, both literally and figuratively.

Meanwhile, Rail hadn’t managed to catch the gist of what the Poet had said, and he turned to Sickle, laughing.

“Ah-ha-ha. What do you suppose he was trying to say just now?”

“He says he’s sick of waiting.”

“Wow. If he can take a handful of words and make them that hard to understand without any help, in a way, he’s a genius. Although he’s a pervert in every sense of the word.”

Rail cackled with laughter. Quietly, the Poet shook his head.

With perfect composure, he walked up to the suture-scarred boy, then gently set his hands on his shoulders.

“What? What’s the matter, Mr. Poet?”

“Rail…listen carefully. Words are great things. Whether through written letters or sign language, it is marvelous to have a way to communicate something, and to convey yourself accurately to another person.”

The man had abruptly begun to speak normally. Rail tried to figure out what he was up to, but as usual, he couldn’t see the man’s eyes behind his hat.

“Words can completely express the whole world. A look is better than a hundred words, but a thousand words can accurately describe what is seen. Ten thousand can turn that sight on its head—and a hundred million can recolor the world itself.”

“…”

“Words are power. If I believe words entirely, I can even lust after them! However, I don’t yet have enough to be able to manipulate the physical laws of the world with language alone. And so—if, in my stead, you use your physical power to send Sickle flying for me, as thanks, I will teach you the magic words that make the world an entertaining plaaaaaaaaaa…”

“Don’t actually listen to him. Nothing good comes of that.”

Ignoring the Poet—whose cervical vertebrae were at risk of dislocation now that Sickle had grabbed his neck—Rail spoke, sounding a little disappointed.

“Ah, drat. You don’t often hear Mr. Poet talking seriously. I wanted to listen a little longer.”

“Well, I can’t have you blowing me away, can I?”

With a faint, wry smile on her sullen face, Sickle scanned the area.

“It’s about time Leeza made contact…”

Some men were watching that eccentric group from a distance.

“…Is that…them?”

The three lurked in a forest away from the lakeshore, hiding among the trees, watching the Poet and the others.

“Yeah, that’s them for sure. They’re an exact match with the notes on this wanted poster.”

“Well, there’s no way to mistake that big round lug for anyone else.”

As he watched the huge boy yawn through the pair of binoculars he held, one of the men smirked and turned his attention to his companions.

“Well. Sure enough, the other brat’s got stitches like railroad tracks on his face, too. Bingo. I’m not positive the other two are part of the group on the poster, but…”

“Well, if they’re not, it’s just bad luck… For them.”

“Yeah, that’s right. Ain’t our fault they drew the short straw.”

“You said it.”

The men shared a laugh over their ominous comments.

They wore long coats and fedoras. It was an extremely ordinary look, but it was clear the men underneath were not ordinary people—they were what was commonly known as gangsters.

This was particularly obvious in the case of the man with the binoculars; a vivid scar that seemed to be from an old knife wound ran across his cheek.

“So what do we do? Are we doing this on our own?”

One of the trio abruptly dropped his smile, and the expression that replaced it was startlingly cold.

He glared at the large boy’s distant group with the eyes of a man who could slit somebody’s throat as easily as cleaning a fish.

“No… Better not. From what I hear, they aren’t just sideshow freaks. Word is, they’re the nuttiest of the nutcases in some guy’s private army; I think his name was Huey or something.”

The man peering through the binoculars still wore a faint smile, and he issued orders in a voice that held no real tension yet.

“Let’s get a group together for now. If we can just get rid of these guys…”

“—What happens then, hmm?”

The voice was sudden.

Far too sudden.

The sultry, feminine drawl seemed to have no source. The man with the scarred cheek yanked the binoculars away from his eyes and whipped around to look behind him.

However, he saw no trace of a woman—

And at the same time, his two companions had vanished from where they had just been.

“Huh…?”

His heart thudded violently as anxiety overwhelmed him.

This wasn’t the attitude he’d just shown his friends. This tension was rooted in a sense of imminent danger. Sweat immediately soaked his back, and he forcibly pushed back the fear welling up in his brain, trying to understand what had happened.

And at the same time—his eyes registered something at the lower edge of his field of vision.

Two fallen bodies. They belonged to the men he’d been talking with just a few seconds earlier.

“H-hey…”

Slowly, he lowered his gaze. Even before his eyes had dropped all the way, the man could tell the other two were probably not conscious anymore.

The men were lying facedown, with odd, ring-shaped objects lodged in the backs of their heads.

The silver rings looked a bit like angel halos, and they hadn’t sent up gouts of blood. They just sat there, sunk deeply into his friends’ skulls.

“Who are you?”

When he slowly turned around…

The first thing he saw was several blades.

Then, through the spaces between those blades, he saw a man with a ponytail.

From the man’s black hair, yellow complexion, and clothes, it was immediately obvious he was Asian.

Heaving a sigh of apparent sympathy, the Asian brought the blades closer to the man. There was pity in his eyes.

“You were the ones with bad luck.”

“That’s all that matters.”

“Sorry for the wait.”

Sickle and the Poet answered as if there was nothing at all odd about a disembodied woman’s voice.

“Yeah, you certainly did keep us waiting, Leeza. Do you have any idea how many of this moron’s prose poem atrocities I had to listen to because of you?”

“Ohhh… Has the voice which springs from the darkness brought us the nectar of the poison apple? However, the time is already ripe, and it has overflowed into the sea of despair. It has overflowed! The apple is overripe, even its poison rotted, and no doubt our brains will rot as well ere long. Tragedy, tragedy. When one thinks that the full moon, replete with wrath, will not wane…”

“…Can’t you just say ‘You’re late’?”

Leeza’s voice sounded disgusted, but as before, she was nowhere to be seen.

Instead, an Asian man walked up to them and responded to the Poet’s cry with annoyance.

“You. You’re still talking in that obnoxious way? Are your words and your mind even more broken than they were when you started dragging Christopher down with you?”

“Christopher! Oh, come to think of it, he was the only one. The one great and faithful person to let his soul resonate with the souls of my words! He had an unfortunate habit of wanting to turn poems into songs, but yes, I see. So the power in my words entered his heart, did it?”

“…Never mind. I won’t say any more, so you shut up, too.”

“Chi, don’t engage with that idiot. The more you talk to him, the worse he talks,” Sickle remarked.

The Asian she’d called Chi—Hong Chi-Mei—sighed wearily. “Hunh… That doesn’t matter now. This is more important.”

As he spoke, Chi took a piece of paper out of his jacket.

“Ooh, what’s this?”

“I-it looks like there’s stuff about us written on it.”

Rail peeked in at the paper, intrigued. Far above his head, Frank looked in as well.

The paper of interest held notes regarding their physical characteristics. There was even a simple sketch of Frank.

“…Seriously, what is this?”

“There was a group in that forest over there, watching you. They had it.”

Splotches of fresh blood had soaked into the wanted poster. Considering the lack of captives arriving with Chi and Leeza, it hinted graphically at what had happened to the one originally holding it.

Sickle scowled at Chi’s impassive report.

“I assume you found out who they were with before you got rid of them?”

“I threatened one of them a bit, but he impaled his own throat on my blade. He was a surprisingly resolute fellow.”

“They didn’t have anything else that would serve as proof, either. I suppose we should have just kept an eye on them until they called their companions,” the sultry, disembodied voice added.

Having learned the creepy fact that someone had been observing them, the odd group exchanged glances, but—

The only one who looked truly worried was Frank.

“Wh-what should we do? Does this mean we’re being watched?”

“Well, that would be its own kind of interesting, wouldn’t it?” Unlike him, the rail-scarred boy’s face twisted in amusement. “Huey hasn’t said to move right away anyway, has he?”

“Exactly.” Leeza’s merrily laughing voice quietly enveloped the surrounding area. “And besides… He still hasn’t decided where to start something: here or New York. It depends on which bait the Bureau of Investigation takes. It looks as if the BOI has bet solidly on New York, but— The problem is Beriam and Nebula’s protégés.”

“What? Hold it. You mean if we’re not lucky, we won’t have a job?” Rail asked.

“That’s about the size of it. Of course, the BOI doesn’t know your faces, just Tim’s group’s, which means there’s a greater possibility that the main event will happen here. However…”

“However?”

“That makes this wanted poster all the more problematic.”

Lowering her voice for a serious moment, she warned the group to be cautious.

“If it was just Rail and Frank, I’d understand that they were being pursued after their activities somewhere else, but this has Sickle, the Poet, and Chi, and it even hints at Tim and the rest of Larva. And the names of other teams, like Rhythm and Time.”

“…What’s going on? Beriam knows my face, but…all the others, too?” Chi mused.

“If we knew what was going on, things would be easy. Although, if worst comes to worst, all we’ll need to do is make this place the diversion and have Tim and the others do their thing in New York.”

Since Leeza was invisible, they couldn’t see her face, but from her voice, they could guess the situation was dire.

The news made Sickle a bit more sullen, and the Poet fell silent for a little while.

However, Rail kept smiling as if he was enjoying himself. He took a small paper cylinder out of his pocket.

“It doesn’t matter what it is. No matter who we’re up against—all we gotta do is play decoy.”

The cylinder was about the size of an index finger. He crumpled the wanted poster around it, yanked something out of the center, and immediately hurled the whole thing in the direction of the lake.

The ball of paper arced into a headwind and touched down gently on the water’s surface.

“Then, once they’ve all gathered ’round, we’ll just blow ’em up. See? Nothing to it.”

The next instant—a dazzling light spread out across the cloudy surface of the lake.

Then came the roar.

The flash and the noise created a burst of scattered light on the water, and in another moment, all that remained was a faint smell of smoke and gunpowder.

The wanted poster, which might have been an important clue, had been turned to ash in the blink of an eye by a miniature explosive.

However, nobody reproached him. Several of the group looked mildly exasperated, but they probably knew there was no need to take fingerprints from it or do any of the sort of investigating the police would have done.

Chi shook his head as if to say Good grief, then actually praised the boy.

“Your explosives are so much more powerful than before. I’d expect no less of you.”

Rail laughed, though his eyes looked a little sad.

“Ah-ha-ha-ha. Unfortunately, I’m not the one who made that.”

“Oho?”

“It was making the rounds among Hollywood movie technicians and mining operations; I spotted it and bought it all up. They said it was introduced to the market by a group of delinquents who looked a little older than me, but… Well, it doesn’t matter who made it, does it?”

“…”

Chi had fallen silent. The boy’s smile shifted into self-mockery.

“Besides, not like my name would go down in history anyway.”

At those words, Chi’s silence lengthened, and Rail set off toward civilization as if nothing had happened.

“All right. If they decide to get the show underway here, send me my orders through the twins. Until then, I’ll do whatever I want.”

“Oh, w-wait, Rail. It’s not safe to go around by yourself.” Frank lumbered after him.

Leeza’s bewitching voice called after Rail’s receding back. “You know, there are three corpses lying in the forest over there. If you’re bored, be a dear and dispose of them, would you?”

“…Ha-ha! Making kids get rid of corpses? You’re the worst adults ever. No wonder I turned out so twisted!”

“My, but that twistedness is a virtue. There’s no need to thank us. Just dispose of those corpses, all right?”

“…I hate you, too, Leeza.”

With a short bark of a laugh, Rail raised one hand, signaling that he understood.

As he watched the two of them depart, Chi muttered, as if talking to himself.

“Rail’s gotten to be a lot like Christopher.”

“Yes. He never was shy about his hostility toward Master Huey, but he was quite attached to Chris.”

“That fool… Where is he? What is he doing?”

Chi clicked his tongue in irritation, remembering his friend’s face.

Although Chris was currently missing, the idea that he might be dead hadn’t even occurred to Chi, if his reaction was any indication.

Meanwhile, as if to remind them that Chris was not the topic of interest, Leeza’s voice rose enough to reach all of them, rebounding off the surface of the lake.

“In any case, we’ve confirmed that we are all here in the city. I’ll contact you with the specifics of the job via the twins, so until then—watch out for the people responsible for that wanted poster.”

The remaining members nodded to show they agreed with her authoritative instructions. Only the Poet spread his arms dramatically, muttering loudly with his whole body.

“Very well. From this very moment, I shall wait, wait this evening for Master Huey’s orders like a man possessed. The instant that voice speaks to us, we will repaint the town, replace all its colors with a color of our own. Oh, ohhh, how sacred, how pitiful, these unknowing captives! As they wait inside a jail they cannot comprehend, may the atmosphere of the world be dyed anew before they know it!”

“You foul up the mood so badly it makes me want to murder you.”

“If you repainted things in your colors, sanity and lunacy would be reversed, pal.”

“You should keep your mouth shut for at least…well, forever, all right, Mr. Poet?”

Chi, Sickle, and Leeza offered their chosen retorts. Then, as if saying the Poet didn’t even exist, they each set off, either for some destination of their own or for an aimless stroll.

All alone, left behind in the midst of true silence…

After making sure that Leeza’s presence had vanished from the vicinity as well, the Poet murmured to himself.

“We, whose abnormality is merely superficial, and a world brushed over in Master Huey’s colors, hmm? To others, could it become a Neverland, or will it be an underworld, where the dead roam? Well, maybe it’s beyond the grasp of anyone. In that case, the role of those imprisoned is…”

Imagining what might happen in this town later, the Poet settled his hat even more deeply onto his head.

It was as if he was mourning the city’s future.

“…When all’s said and done, they will be Alice, fallen into Wonderland.”

About the time the Poet was muttering that remark—

“…?”

Accompanied by the giant boy in the forest, Rail murmured to himself, sounding mystified.

“Corpses? …There aren’t any.”

His words carried through the trees in vain. No one responded.

The wind from the lake blew through the woods, but there wasn’t even the faintest scent of blood.

Only tepid air swept around the boys.

Eerie, ghostlike.