Baccano! - Volume 9 - Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

A MISAIMED SQUARE HIT

Somewhere in Chicago

In front of a bookstore on a wide avenue that ran beside the Chicago River…

Ricardo finished his shopping quickly and climbed into the Ford with Christopher in the driver’s seat.

“Thanks for waiting.”

“I sure did. I wanted to go in with you. Plus, I’m your bodyguard, so wouldn’t going along be the normal thing to do?”

“I don’t intend to obstruct business at that bookstore,” Ricardo said from the back seat.

It was the sort of joke you’d say to someone you were friendly with, but the boy’s sullen expression kept the remark from coming across that way.

Christopher shook his head with an exaggerated “You wound me!” but a natural smile stole onto his face. “You’re so mean, Ricardo. Is that the sort of thing you’d say to a friend?”

“Don’t trust anyone who makes a big deal about being friends. You were the one who told me that, remember, Chris?”

“Yes! In other words, you need to doubt what I tell you! And since I said, ‘Don’t trust a guy who says he’s your friend,’ that means you should doubt it and form your own conclusions!”

Christopher laughed, setting the car in motion, and Ricardo put in a retort without missing a beat.

“I did think it over, and I’ve decided that you really can’t trust anyone who wants to be friends with someone he just met. There’s no doubt about it.”

“Be a little unsure, all right? Working through uncertainty makes you stronger.”

For a little while, Ricardo’s only response to Christopher was silence. Then, when the car had begun to pick up speed, he abruptly raised his head and spoke with an expression that was more serious than usual.

“Say, Chris. Would you just drive around at random for a little while?”

“? Sure. What’s this? We’re going for a drive? In that case, want to go to Lincoln Park, or maybe Grant Park? Being among Nature really is best. I think driving a product like this car, a symbol of the power of human industry, through an abundant natural environment strikes a good balance. Driving something artificial in the midst of other man-made things harmonizes much too well, and it’s just silly.”

“Like you, Chris?”

“…You’re awfully sharp sometimes, Ricardo.”

During the course of their year together, Christopher had never revealed the secret about his body, but Ricardo seemed to have sensed something peculiar in the way he spoke and moved.

Sometimes he made probing comments like this one, and when he did, Christopher always responded in the same way.

“If you’ll tell me what’s on your mind, I’ll tell you my secret. Gladly.”

Ricardo always backed down with an easy “I don’t trust you that much,” but—

Today, for some reason, he gave a different answer.

“Fine.”

“Huh?”

The reply was unexpected, and Christopher examined the boy’s face in the rearview mirror.

He looked as expressionless as always, but on closer inspection, his eyes were more downcast than usual, and he seemed somehow tense.

“When I saved you…I told you that I wanted you to break everything around me, didn’t I?”

“Huh? Oh, uh-huh.”

“Back then…a lot of things had happened. My dad and mom had just died…and being the child of a mafia family brought me nothing but pain. Back then, so many people had betrayed me, and yet they still pushed their expectations onto me…”

Ricardo launched into his story with a serious expression, and the driver shot him a questioning look in the mirror.

He’d gathered, both from Ricardo’s environment and from his words and actions, that there was probably something painful in the boy’s past.

However, Ricardo’s abrupt soliloquy actually knocked Christopher for a loop.

No, wait. Wait just a minute.

This… This isn’t quite…right. Is it?

“Hold on, time out. Cease, desist, shut your mouth, three-two-one-stop.”

“…What?”

Ricardo stopped talking, although his expression didn’t change, and Christopher smiled wryly and continued.

“What’s this? What is it? This is strange, Ricardo. Abnormal. What on earth are you planning to do to me? Are you going to tell me a souvenir for the afterlife, pack me into an oil drum and dump me into the Chicago River? If the answer’s yes, I’ll put up a fight, but oh, what to do… I don’t think I can kill you, Ricardo.”

“Even though you killed my grandpa’s men?”

Ricardo’s bland reply carried a hint of sarcasm, but it was also a dangerous bombshell.

The interior of the moving car was a perfect closed room, and there was no danger of anyone overhearing them. That was probably why the conversation was able to continue.

Christopher also replied easily, without looking particularly annoyed.

“That was a job, so…hmm, no, I really can’t kill a friend. When I think back and visualize that one time, I couldn’t kill Chi or Leeza or Sickle or the Poet or Rail or Frank or Adele or Firo… Hmm. I wonder if that’s okay.”

“…Did you just name all of them? Your friends?”

“Do you think that’s not many? Or is it a lot?”

“For ‘good friends,’ I think it’s quite a lot, but… If they’re just people you talk to or work with, it’s not many at all,” Ricardo murmured, as though making sure of the fact himself, then shook his head and went on with a sigh.

“That said, you’re the only one I’ve got, Chris. As far as people I’m close to, I mean.”

At the abrupt admission, Christopher cackled.

“Huh? What’s this? Are you after my virginity?”

“Mind if I punch you?”

Picking up on a very real intent to kill behind him, Christopher hastily retracted his words.

“Kidding, I’m kidding.” After his teasing was done, Christopher drummed lightly on the steering wheel with his fingers, looked Ricardo in the eye in the rearview mirror, and asked him a question. “I’m beginning to see where this is going… Is that why you went out shopping with me today? Because you wanted to have a secret conversation nobody could overhear in the car?”

“I guess you could say that, yeah,” Ricardo answered with a sigh, then began to explain in his detached way. “Lately, our syndicate’s been…strange.”

He looked down, and his voice began trembling ever so slightly.

“You’ve picked up on it too, right, Chris?”

“Mm-hmm, vaguely.”

It was noticeable even to a newcomer without any connections to the business, like Christopher.

If his memories were accurate, starting about two weeks ago, the Russo mansion had gotten very busy, and the mood among the syndicate men had turned tense.

A few days later, a man in strange blue coveralls had turned up. He hadn’t really interacted with Christopher or Ricardo, so Christopher hadn’t paid him much mind, but…

At about the same time, a woman named Lua had been brought to the mansion and confined there, and when he’d learned that Ricardo had been chosen to take care of her, he’d been sure something was rotten.

Come to think of it, that was right about when Placido had gotten very confident. He’d been living his life defensively, almost on the run, but suddenly, everything had changed.

“Grandpa and the others changed completely. Before, I wanted you to break the world around me…but… These days, it looks like it’s breaking all on its own.”

“That doesn’t make you happy? If the world you hated is coming apart, isn’t that cause for a couple million cheers?”

Christopher could imagine what Ricardo was feeling, but his response was mean anyway.

Ricardo sighed—“Was that payback for earlier?”—then continued to speak. Unusually, his eyes seemed sad.

“It’s the world I’m seeing, after all. I’m picky about how I want it to break. That’s all it is.”

“Ha-ha! I’ve got a pretty self-centered friend, don’t I?!”

Christopher bared his teeth in delight, and his appraisal put a wry smile on Ricardo’s face.

“It feels as though, if this keeps up, there’s going to be a real mess left over after it all goes to pieces. It’s just…awfully creepy, somehow.”

“Well, if you’ll let me speak objectively, your grandpa’s finished as a mafioso. I felt that before—more like I just knew. Granted, I’m speaking as one of the factors that cornered him. Still…they really have been strange lately. What’s the best way to put it…? They’ve started to remind me of a dangerous religious group I saw a long time ago that believed in the imminent extinction of the human race, or a band of terrorists that seriously believes it can take over the world.”

Christopher’s comment was probably accurate. Ricardo looked down again, then began speaking in a gloomy voice.

“The truth is, I’d gotten my hopes up a little. I’d thought maybe my grandpa wouldn’t be able to keep up this mafia business any longer, the syndicate would be disbanded, and I’d be able to live a normal life.”

“And then you’d have no more use for me? I mean, if you’ve got normal friends…”

“If I make some normal friends, I’ll brag about you. ‘I’ve got a friend who’s a vampire.’”

“You’d put me on display?!” he protested, but Ricardo quietly shook his head.

His expression said he’d given up on making normal friends as a possibility anyway. Without letting Christopher’s ribbing distract him, Ricardo calmly went on.

“Honestly, it’s… It’s all started to go off the rails.”

As if he’d remembered something, he lightly clenched his fists.

“…After those people in lab coats came and left that liquor, everything went crazy.”

Liquor? People in lab coats?

He didn’t remember those rather important words.

Just when doubt was starting to creep up on Christopher—

Ricardo abruptly looked up, then put his face right up close to the car window.

“What is it?” Christopher asked casually, but when Ricardo responded, his voice was tense.

“Stop for a second, please.”

“? Yessir.”

Thinking this was odd, Christopher stopped the car on the side of the road, then looked outside.

However, nothing about the town seemed different, and the people on the street looked perfectly normal.

Christopher had just assumed that there was a parade or something, and as he gazed outside, he checked with Ricardo.

“What is it? Did you see something?”

In response, Ricardo strained his ears rather than his eyes to take in the situation outside. Christopher had never seen him so tense when he finally answered.

“Just now…I heard an explosion.”

Chicago In a certain back alley

An explosion.

If what had happened in that moment was expressed in the simplest possible terms, that word would probably cover it all.

The roar and flames of the discharge ballooned outward, and the air instantly smelled scorched.

The raging fire and wind would ordinarily have been impossible for the amount of explosives packed into the egg-sized case.

However, both forces died as quickly as they came, and then the area was filled with the screams and clamor of people running around to escape the blast.

The alley had been nearly deserted earlier, but when they heard the noise, people began to look in from the street, one after another. Rail thought the two journalists from earlier might turn up as well, but… Even though he was the one responsible for this, his eyes were filled with a questioning light that he couldn’t dispel.

“What…? Why?”

With the echoes of the explosion still in his ears, Rail murmured about what he’d just seen.

“Say, Frank? Why did my bomb explode…way over there?”

In front of them, the men who’d been sent flying by the blast’s wind lay on the ground, groaning.

That said, none of them seemed to be lethally wounded. They’d been knocked into the air and come down—that was all.

Even though I’d set it to kill half of them…

There hadn’t been five yards between them and the bomb. But…

“I mean, if it had exploded where I put it, the blast could have ripped off a few limbs.”

As the hypothetical phrasing indicated, the bomb had actually burst more than ten yards away from them, near the opposite side of the alley.

Just before the blast, Rail had seen something closing in on the bomb.

Since he’d set it in a hurry, the watch-type timer had started with a timid one minute.

In order to cover for that, Rail hurled taunt after taunt at the men, but…

Just as the second hand had shown that it was time, he’d seen something like a silver disc bearing down on the device.

Before he could tell what it was, the disc had connected with the egg-sized bomb.

As if to drown out the sound of the activating percussion cap, a sharp metallic clang had rung out, and the bomb had been knocked more than ten yards from its original location.

As a result, the men had been left nearly unscathed.

“O-over there, Rail. There…”

Frank was pointing at the wall. When Rail glanced that way, he saw a small, silver, stick-shaped object protruding from it.

It looked as if someone had pounded a nail into the concrete wall with an enormous hammer.

Upon closer inspection, he saw that it was a wrench, about the size of a cucumber.

The moment he saw it, Rail whipped around to look at the opposite wall, in the direction the tool had come from.

And he spotted an enormous, spinning wrench.

Graham had gotten to his feet, and he was slowly advancing toward Rail and Frank, twirling the huge tool in his hands.

Certain now that this guy had thrown the smaller one to knock the bomb away, Rail narrowed his eyes slightly, applauding as if he were impressed.

“Huh…! Well done, wow, that was really something, Mr. Thug. I had no idea you’d knock it away like that.”

At the half-ironic, half-surprised compliment, Graham lowered his head and made a noise that was almost a groan.

“Kuh…”

At first, Rail thought he was moaning from the pain of Frank’s kick.

However, almost immediately, he realized he was wrong.

“Kuh-keh… Keh-keh-keh-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Man, is this fun! Is life allowed to be this fun?! God must be playing favorites with me, if I’m the only one who gets such an entertaining life… Or maybe there is no God! Not if I’ve been given such an unequal helping of fun! In that case… What? Did I earn this thrill without relying on God, through nothing but my own luck and skill?! Daaamn… Man, oh man, do I rule or what?!”

“Th-this guy’s not okay.”

Graham had a lunatic’s smile plastered across his face, and Frank tried to shrink down in fright before it.

Meanwhile, Graham’s confidence only seemed to needle Rail…

The boy took several egg-shaped “somethings” from inside his jacket.

They appeared similar to the earlier bomb, but instead of a pocket watch, they had circular pins that resembled key rings sticking out of them.

“You look like you’re enjoying yourself, mister.”

His lips were smiling the way they always did, but there was no light in his eyes now as he glared at Graham.

For his part, with an expression that seemed almost rapturous, Graham kept spinning the enormous wrench in his hands with delight.

The thugs had managed to get to their feet after the shock of the blast, and when they saw Graham, they desperately put more distance between them. They probably wanted very badly not to get pulled into the fight between the three.

Once Graham was up, they understood they’d be nothing but a burden for him— And even though they were almost fleeing, Graham didn’t criticize them for it.

Although it was possible that his mind simply wasn’t registering them anymore.

“Aah… This is fun. Is it even possible for something to be this entertaining? Anyway, I hear you loud and clear: Negotiations have broken down. Well, that’s a problem, for sure. I’ve got orders to bring you in alive, but as for you…Rail, wasn’t it? You’re real eager to kill me, aren’t you?”

“Well, I guess you could say that. Ha-ha…”

Graham kept talking, as excited as he could get, and Rail narrowed his eyes even farther—then nimbly took three egg-shaped bombs between his fingers, yanking the pins out with his free hand.

“Frank… Let’s go.”

“O-okay.”

Even before his partner responded, Rail threw the three eggs into the space between the two of them and Graham.

As the oval objects struck the ground, they instantly swelled up, turning blackish-red, and—

By the time the noise of the explosion reached the ears of the others nearby, the flames were already high, and a scorching blast wind had swept away the surrounding air.

At the same time, Frank had become a massive cannonball plunging through the flames. He didn’t even feel the force of the wind or the heat that burned his skin; the giant child was like a fireman running to save a kid from a blaze.

Once he’d charged through the wall of heat, flames, and smoke, he’d launch a powerful attack on his enemy, who would be busy shielding himself from the blast.

This was the method he and Rail always used in this sort of situation.

As Frank’s enormous body barreled through the flames, a hole opened for a moment.

Before it closed, Rail strained to see Graham’s terror-stricken face if he could, but—

He suddenly noticed that beside the opening Frank had made in the fire, there was another, smaller hole that had nearly closed.

Huh?

A moment before he realized what that meant, a man’s cheerful voice reached his eardrums.

“Hey there.”

“Ah…”

When he hastily turned around, a man brimming with relaxed confidence shoved his face right in front of Rail’s nose, smiling like a monster who’d found its prey.

“Why…?!”

“Did you think that big lug was the only one who could charge into a fire? The flames aren’t your personal property, see? …Then whose are they? …Crap. What if they aren’t mine, either? How am I going to make amends? Should I kill you, then die?”

As Graham muttered, his coveralls were smoldering here and there, and he smelled generally charred.

True, if he’d seen Frank charging through the flames, he might have been able to brace himself to do the same.

But how could they have predicted he would dive into the fire at the same time as Frank, not to mention right after he’d witnessed the inferno from that previous explosion?

On that thought, Rail smiled wryly and shook his head at the man who stood beside him.

“Mister… Is your head screwy?”

The man seemed to take this as a compliment.

“Ah, yeah, mm-hmm, that does seem to be the case. That must be why this is so much fun, right? Sure, if I’m funny in the head, I can probably enjoy completely crazy situations like normal. Depending on how I’m busted, I bet I can have fun with all the sad stuff, too. There’s no limit to the ways I can enjoy this world.”

Chuckling, Graham murmured to himself quietly:

“So ain’t it actually a stroke of luck?”

“H-huh?”

Meanwhile, after charging into the depths of the flames, Frank had realized that Graham wasn’t there.

When he hastily turned around, he saw dying flames and smoke, and beyond them, Graham’s figure closing in on Rail.

“R-Rail!”

Flustered, Frank whipped around and ran toward Graham even faster than before.

Every thud of his feet against the ground echoed through the area, and small gusts from each impact created even more furious eddies in the dust hanging in the air after the explosion.

Frank charged at Graham, raising his log-like left arm and preparing to slam it into his opponent, but he stopped himself just before it happened.

“Ah…!”

Rail gave a small groan.

One side of the wrench Graham held, the adjustable end, had been opened as wide as it would go—and Rail’s neck was right in the gap.

As if he were swinging around a butterfly net, Graham hefted Rail’s body up, executed a half turn, and put the boy between Frank and himself.

“R-Raaaail…”

Frank had frozen involuntarily. He made a panicked grab for Rail, but Graham lightly drew his arm in, and Frank’s hand missed.

“Ugh…khak…ah…”

Rail moaned as if he was in pain, and Graham jumped back a step, muttering.

“I’m glad you fellas were buddies. Friendship is magnificent! Friendship is good… It’s good for the heart to have friends you can talk about anything with!”

Graham was loudly shouting something that didn’t quite seem relevant to the circumstances, but unexpectedly, he lowered his arm, set Rail on the ground, and released his throat from the wrench.

“Koff! …Ghk…?”

Bewildered at suddenly being freed from hostage duty, Rail looked at the man.

Despite the boy’s nakedly hostile gaze, Graham ignored the atmosphere and spun the wrench he was holding.

“I figured you might yell ‘Don’t worry about me, just hit him,’ so I shut your throat down. Let’s say my gambit won— Want to say I’m the winner and end the fight here?”

“…What?”

“Well, see, they did tell me not to kill you. Call it the first step to ridding the world of conflict. We may end up making the initial strides toward world peace. If so, that step will go down in history. Or even if it doesn’t! We alone will know about our great achievement. That’ll be enough to let us smile at each other with pride when we meet, all by itself. Why don’t we both be satisfied with that?”

“…That’s BS in all sorts of ways.”

There was a strained smile on Rail’s lips, but his eyes blazed with anger.

Deep in his heart, the boy probably felt he was being mocked. He took several egg-shaped bombs from inside his coat.

Graham didn’t stop him. His lips curved again, and he shook his head.

“I don’t mind making myself plain here—”

Before he’d finished speaking, Graham’s arm disappeared.

?!

Just as Rail realized he’d lost sight of it, something chilly touched his cheek.

Before he even noticed, the end of a wrench had materialized beside his face, and the metal was lightly smacking his cheek.

He’s so fast—?!

The boy gulped involuntarily, and Frank, who’d been watching from a step behind him, only looked around helplessly.

Once Graham was sure of the fear in the boy’s eyes, he gave a theatrical “Tsk, tsk, tsk,” then finished his sentence.

“You people can’t win against me.”

Can’t win…?

Defeat.

The moment he visualized that word, cold sweat ran down Rail’s back.

Should they stop resisting and go with him to his hideout?

If they did, how would they get out of the enemy’s stronghold? What if there were other people like this guy? Plus, would they even be able to escape from the inside or do any maneuvering with him there?

Was pretending to be obedient and watching for an opening the best move? …Really?

Every new idea that rose in his mind was shrouded in doubt.

That first plan should technically have worked.

However, Rail hadn’t taken the most important thing into account; he had almost entirely failed to consider the possibility that this guy would be too much for them.

Grinding his teeth, Rail even began to think about making a break for it.

Just then—

“My, my… You—must feel so humiliated, Rail.”

At the sound of the woman’s sultry voice, Graham immediately stopped spinning his wrench, while Rail and Frank scanned the area, their eyes wide.

However, they didn’t see any women nearby. The rubberneckers who’d come to check out the explosion were only watching them from a distance, back at the mouth of the alley.

That clinched it: Rail was sure who the owner of the voice was, and he shouted her name.

“Leeza!”

“You certainly talked big enough, but in the end, the two of you couldn’t do a thing on your own, could you?!”

“…Shut up.”

“Oh? Where has your usual banter gone? You always disguised your abnormal face with false laughter. Are you sure about this? When your lips are smiling but your eyes are glaring, it’s frightfully creepy. Or are you a masochist? Do you want me to run several more tracks across your face?”

As Leeza giggled, Rail ground his teeth and stayed silent.

“I dunno who you are, but”—Graham said instead of Rail, his eyes still searching for the woman—“frankly, I don’t think you should be talking about the scars on folks’ faces like that. It’s not great to walk on eggshells, either, but everything about that comment sounded malicious. Y-you’re not going to tell me I’m insensitive for only being able to hear malice, are you? Still, since that’s all I wanted to hear in what you said, is that the right answer?! Damn, I got the right answer… Where’s my prize? Is the burning heart that dwells within me my prize? Well, is it? My heart is priceless! Yeah, priceless! Learn from me, wouldja?!”

Ordinarily, Shaft would have offered a comeback right about then, but he was watching the situation from a distance and couldn’t even hear Leeza’s voice, so instead he lamented to the friend next to him: “He’s finally started talking to invisible people…”

In the midst of a situation that seemed to be developing at random, Leeza spoke to him, sounding mildly disgusted.

“My, my. I don’t really understand, but… Are you taking that boy’s side? If I translated that simian screeching of yours into human speech, would it say you’re playing at virtue out of a misguided sense of justice?”

There was clear condescension in her voice, and Graham tapped the wrench against his own shoulder, giving vent to a long speech in time with the rhythm.

“Nah, I’m not pretending I’m good. I’m a full-on bad guy. Back when I was at the auto factory, they split us into teams of white fellas and black fellas. The boss told us there was plenty of black fellas to take our place. Later on, I happened to get friendly with one of the black fellas, and he said the bosses had told his team the same thing about us to stir ’em up. Well, I’m bad enough to think that kinda move is a fair one. But ya see… Didn’t you notice? Just now, in a roundabout way, you called yourself a loser.”

“…?”

“You told me, ‘The only way I can win against Rail is by bringing up the scars on his face and running him down. And so aaaaall I can do is mention those and bask in my teeny-weeny sense of superiority. That’s the only victory open to this here loser-underdog, so please pity me and don’t say anything, my owner and master.’ Brazen! Shameless! What is this? Masochism? Are you a masochist?”

“Wha…?!”

Unusually for her, Leeza’s voice trembled in response to Graham’s arbitrary remarks.

“Did I nail it, Doll-who’s-just-a-voice? The thing is, though, I hate dogs. I think they should die in a ditch. Death or die. Death and peace, if you wanna sound a little nicer about it… Yeah, death and peace!”

“…You’re quite the joker, aren’t you? Girls will hate you, you know.”

The pitch of the voice dropped slightly. At the same time, Frank was looking up, and he spotted a silver ring flying toward Graham’s back.

“Aaaaah…”

Registering Frank’s gaze and the change in his expression, Graham spun around.

The spinning silver ring closed in on him, and—

With a pleasant, metallic clang, the enormous disc formed by Graham’s spinning wrench knocked the incoming ring away effortlessly.

“Fun… Man, this is fun! What a fun chick! To think you’d go out of your way to add another reason to call yourself a loser! ‘Unless I use surprise attacks, I can’t beat youuuu’! And then your surprise attack failed?! What’s up with that?! Damn, this is—this is in the top seven hundred and ninety-eight in my ‘fun’ ranking for the year… Hmm? Which means it’s not all that fun, I guess. Okay, well, you’re boring, so get outta here.”

The silver ring had been knocked straight up into the air, and Graham caught it on the end of his wrench as it fell.

The ring looked like an angel halo, and its outer edge was a sharp blade. If the attack had landed a moment ago, there was a good possibility that he would have been fatally wounded.

Even so, Graham’s long-winded speech wasn’t knocked off course at all, and as Leeza quietly asked him a question, her voice turned serious.

“…How did you notice that?”

“There’s nothing I can’t see. I’ve got a bit of a special ability.”

This was a lie, of course.

The change in Frank’s expression had clued him in to the surprise attack. Since he had succeeded, though, Graham had come up with an impromptu bluff, and in the space of a few seconds, he’d managed to convince himself it was true.

Still keeping tabs on Rail and Frank behind him, he turned his attention to the blind spots nearby. The next time a silver ring came flying his way, he’d use its direction to locate the enemy.

Despite his building focus, Graham kept nettling her.

“So, what are you gonna do? Are you going to come along quietly, too? Or are you gonna abandon these guys and lam off by yourself?”

“…”

Leeza thought hard for a little while, then promptly spit her answer back at him.

“That’s my line, you foolish boy.”

“…?”

Leeza had abruptly regained her composure, and in spite of himself, Graham frowned.

Did something change?

Though he was broadcasting high energy to the others, on the inside, Graham was extremely calm. Quietly, he turned his eyes to his surroundings…

…and spotted two newcomers.

A plainly suspicious-looking Asian and a woman in a classy dress had pushed their way through the crowd.

At the sight of these people, who obviously didn’t look like they belonged here, a few of the rubberneckers began to think this ruckus might be an advertisement for a circus or something.

As they watched the pair in the incongruous outfits approach, Graham—who looked out of place himself—gave an entertained whistle, while Rail and Frank’s faces shone at the sight of the interlopers.

“Chi! Sickle!” Rail shouted.

Graham gave a brief laugh, then took the wanted poster out of his jacket and checked the names he’d just heard.

“Chi… Hong Chi-Mei and Sickle… The sister who uses capoeira? Huh. So those journalists really were something else. Well, I’m glad I got that cleared up. That’s good.”

While he was muttering, the pair passed through Graham’s group of underlings and came to stand beside Rail and Frank. At this point, Graham’s hoodlums weren’t even attempting to interfere; they just watched their boss from a distance.

Ignoring Graham and his mumbling, Rail spoke. His color had improved a little.

“How did you know where we…?”

“When you set off a string of tacky explosions, anybody could figure it out. The police will be here soon, too, so we’ll finish this up before then,” Sickle responded gruffly.

Then her eyes went to Graham.

“So you’re the enemy, huh?”

Her extremely surly words were in stark contrast to her outfit.

However, one look at the dark edge in her eyes, as though shadows had been honed into blades, and you’d think her manner of speech might have created the most beautiful combination of all.

As trivial thoughts crossed Graham’s mind thanks to his extremely manic mood, he said something that didn’t betray the slightest hint of intelligence.

“Hey… And you’re the young lady who uses capoeira? I know about you; I sure do, and it only goes one way, me to you. Why do you talk like a guy when you dress like a doll? Damn, I’m getting really psyched for some reason; is this love? If it’s love, what do I do? Should I accept it or not? Is the true form of love the exhilaration I feel because I’m not sure?”

Instead of answering the other party’s question, Graham blabbed away unhindered.

“…In a different way from the Poet, the way you talk is irritating.”

Sickle spoke dispassionately, pulling her already cross-looking eyebrows into an even deeper scowl.

“Let me say this now, just so there are no misunderstandings.”

“What? You’re planning to invite a misunderstanding? Between the two of us? Oh boy. What if it’s a kiss? What should I do? And if it’s just a misunderstanding, that would mean you don’t care about me at all. You’re gonna break my heart. Damn, I think that’s a first for me. I’m getting dumped before I even get the chance to tell her I’m in love… Before I fall in love at all, really, and that doesn’t happen every day. Anyway, what about it?”

“Go to hell… What I meant about ‘no misunderstandings’ is this: You called me a capoeira user. Capoeira is technically a martial art, a dance, and a game that brings a smile to peoples’ faces.”

As she spoke, Sickle took a step forward and put her face right up close to Graham’s.

At that distance, he could feel her breath. The position could easily have been taken as the prelude to a kiss, but Sickle went on, with an irritated expression that made it clear she had no intention of kissing him.

“However, the only purpose behind my capoeira is breaking the other guy.”

Even as she finished speaking, she soundlessly launched an attack on the enemy in front of her.

“In other words, it’s fairly heretical.”

“Uh…?”

Graham mistakenly thought she’d just toppled over.

The beautifully dull eyes right in front of him had suddenly disappeared.

Instead, he sensed wind and a shadow bearing down on the left side of his face.

Uh-oh.

Before his brain could think, his body moved, and he leaned back nearly as far as he could.

The next instant, Sickle’s heel passed right through the spot where his head had just been.

A strong wind blasted Graham’s face, and at the same time, the woman’s voice echoed in his ears from below.

“So don’t look at my moves and assume they’re capoeira.”

Graham had almost closed his eyes in spite of himself, but he had registered that what little he could see of the woman’s body below him was still spinning, and he backed up even farther.

“That would be an insult to capoeira.”

I don’t really get it, but if you’re doing something heretical, aren’t you the one who’s insulting it?

Graham was going to yell the thought aloud, but the edge of a foot passed right in front of his eyes. It really wasn’t the time.

On top of that, there was more than one enemy.

Graham had tried to get a wide distance in order to acquaint himself with the woman’s unfamiliar movements, but in a terribly efficient motion, Chi crept up soundlessly and grabbed his arm.

Chi’s hands were wrapped in thick layers of cloth, like a mummy’s, but he’d deftly trapped Graham’s arm, and it didn’t feel like he’d be able to shake him off just by struggling a bit.

“Whoa…?”

“End of the line.”

Flipping his own body, Chi twisted Graham’s arm up with no mercy whatsoever.

Before he could even think of resisting—a krikk echoed in the alley, and pain washed over Graham. It felt as if his arm had been torn off.

“Ghk…aah…?”

Brandishing the wrench in his right hand, Graham ripped himself away from Chi, then leaped back even farther.

Sickle turned a midair somersault, returning to her original stance, and Chi spoke to Graham, rubbing his cloth-wrapped arms.

“Ordinarily, I would just cut you, but we have some questions to ask you. If you refuse, I’ll dislocate the joints on your remaining limbs.”

It wasn’t clear whether Graham was listening to Chi or not. He was holding his arm and groaning quietly.

Sickle spoke to him, sounding a bit disappointed.

“Is that it? The way he talked was crazy enough to give the Poet a good run for his money, but…”

“Ghk…aah…”

While he listened to the pair murmur self-centered things as they closed in on him—

—Graham was remembering something from a long time ago.

As a kid, he’d loved taking anything and everything to pieces.

His parents had lectured him harshly for it.

“You don’t know what it feels like for the things you break!” they’d said. The idea that everything had a soul had sounded a bit Asian or Native American.

They’re right. It’s just like Mom and Dad say.

I wonder what it feels like to get broken.

I’ll have to find out.

There was no telling how a boy who wasn’t yet ten years old had managed it.

Graham himself didn’t remember what he’d done to make it happen.

What he did remember was pain, despair, and a terrible loneliness.

His mother had heard groaning from her son’s room and come running—and found that most of the joints in the boy’s body had been twisted the wrong way. On his left hand, every joint in each finger had been dislocated, and the muscles had swelled up like a baseball glove.

As he remembered the incident, Graham’s right hand tightened around the wrench.

Back then…I was relieved, wasn’t I?

When I found out I was something that would come apart properly, didn’t I feel a little safer for some reason?

Once I knew how much it hurt to get broken, I thought, “Now it’s fine if I break stuff.”

Why had he thought something like that as a kid, and why had he wanted to break things so badly? For a while, he hadn’t understood. Now, though, he could vaguely understand what had gone through his young mind.

He’d realized that, sooner or later, all things inevitably decayed. As a child, he probably hadn’t been able to handle that fact.

Maybe it was in order to deny it, or possibly because he wanted to at least do the deed personally once he knew the despair of realizing new things would break someday—

There had probably been all sorts of reasons, and they had built up to create his current tendencies.

“I’m an idiot, huh?”

Sensing a certain nostalgia in the pain in his arm, Graham slowly raised his wrench.

He hadn’t been able to sort through his feelings in his adolescence, and at the end of that phase, Graham had met a guy named Ladd. Picking up on something similar in him, he’d followed him as his underling.

Recalling the face of his sworn brother, who was currently in jail, Graham murmured to himself.

“Well, now… That’s a problem.”

“Hmm?”

Graham had abruptly stopped groaning, and Chi eyed him closely with a dubious noise.

“I got a little full of myself. Maybe I thought there was no way I’d ever get rolled. That’s no good, seriously no good. My man Ladd will give me priority on his kill list.”

“What does that mean? Are you begging for your life?”

Without answering Chi, Graham gave his wrench a light twist, nimbly caught his dangling left arm in its tip, and—

“There we…go.”

Krekk.

The sound was slightly lower than when it had been dislocated, and the strength rapidly returned to Graham’s arm.

“Wha—?!”

Occasionally, skilled martial artists are able to pop their own dislocated joints back into place— But the move Graham had just made was completely different from anything they did.

Using his industrial wrench and treating his own bones as metal components, he’d repaired the dislocated joint with a single, economical twist.

Naturally, the pain from the torn nerves and blood vessels and the overextended tendons probably hadn’t subsided.

However, no such discomfort was visible in his expression.

On the contrary, Graham set his wrench against his shoulder with a rapturous smile, and the light that filled his eyes was even madder than before.

“My head’s clear now. Anyway… The guys who choose not to kill and take ’em alive are the ones who are positive they won’t get offed, right? Right.”

Smack. Smack.

Graham passed the spinning wrench from his left hand to his right hand and back, gradually speeding up.

“But listen: If I’m like that, my brother Ladd will kill me.”

Smack! Smack! Smack! Smack!

“So, see… For now, I’ve decided the two kids, Rail and Frank, are the ones I’ll take in alive, and I won’t give a damn about the rest of you.”

Smack, smack, smack, smack, smack-smack-smack-smack.

“I learned how to fight from my man Ladd. I ain’t got the brains to retreat.”

Smacksmacksmacksmacksmacksmacksmacksmackspakspakspakspak…

“You people… You’re sure you won’t break, yeah?”

“What…are you saying?”

Whf, whf, whf, whf, whf, whf, whf, whf, whf, whf, whf, whf, whf, whf.

Seeing the spin on that wrench, which was gradually working its way up to an incredible speed, Chi and Sickle gulped quietly. Frank and Rail weren’t even trying to participate in the fight anymore; they were watching the situation develop from a distance.

“Your teamwork, your pride, the bones in your necks. It’s all the same to me.”

Wfwfwfwfwfwfwfwfwfwfwfwfwfwfwfwfwfwfwfwfwfwfwfwfwf—

Graham’s excitement had hit its peak, and the emotion swirling inside him wasn’t sadness or pleasure anymore. The only thing there was a hopelessly crazed exhilaration.

The expression he wore couldn’t be interpreted as either sorrow or a smile. Graham shook his head, then muttered one brief phrase to Chi and the others.

“I’ll break ’em all.”

It was an extremely simple phrase, and thus, one with power.

A few minutes later

In terms of time, it was a little later than the audience had expected. In terms of how the situation had developed, it was even later than that.

That was when the cops rushed to the scene en masse after receiving a report.

The only people in the alley were the excited spectators, and not a single participant of the actual incident was still there.

There was damage from multiple explosions, apparently, and gray smoke was still rising from smoldering black pits in the pavement.

When they’d heard this was both a bombing and a fight, the first thing the police had thought of was a murder case from three years ago.

Someone had discovered the charred corpses of a man named Sidaris, believed to have been a Russo Family executive, and his subordinates. A bomb seemed to be the culprit.

The Russos themselves had feigned innocence—A dispute? What dispute would that be? And the mafia is a fictional organization; we ain’t involved in that.—and so, as far as the police were concerned, the incident had led to a disappointing conclusion. They didn’t know who the other party in the conflict had been, and the case had gone cold.

However, now there were plenty of witnesses.

Thinking they might be able to get some solid information this time, they immediately took statements from the people in the area, but…

Strangely, the eyewitness testimonies didn’t mesh at all.

“A huge kid and this other scarred-up kid tore the place apart.”

“It was Martians. Martians attacked.”

“This pink elephant just blew up.”

“A guy in blue coveralls…mowed down this group of weirdos.”

“Let me just say this. It was a rather intriguing spectacle.”

“This giant dame, ’bout ten foot tall, she stripped down to a swimsuit and went nuts.”

“Someone rode in on a weird little mammoth and then ran off somewhere.”

“The eggs exploded! I kid you not! It was freaky! I’ll never eat eggs again!”

“The end of this fork got bigger and bigger the closer it got to the tip. Stabbed me right in eye.”

“After he popped his arm back into place with a wrench, the guy in the coveralls… Man, he was a wonder. Actually, do you know Ladd? He was a famous fighter around here. This guy could give him a run for his money.”

“Ten or so guys in black took out pistols and fired a few shots into the air. They said, ‘We’re going to conduct a test of a new explosive here, starting now!’ and then there was that explosion, y’know? Shook me up.”

“Mr. Policeman, the criminal had white hair, and his ears were half torn off. Hurry and catch him, won’t you?”

“Yellow clothes, yellow clooOOOoothes!”

“It was right before you fellas got here, I think. They all split up and booked every which way.”

The testimonies were completely inconsistent.

Several of them mentioned certain people—“a man in blue coveralls,” “a giant kid over six feet tall,” “an Asian with mummy hands”—but none of the statements were credible.

The police took down all the testimonies, submitted a report, and inspected the scene, but…

…in the end, the event was filed away as an accident involving an industrial fuel transport.

Naturally, several newspapers had their doubts about that announcement. However…

…due to a certain major incident that occurred immediately afterward, in the end, the matter never enlivened the papers.

That was the future that lay in store.

In the alley where the unsuccessful on-site inspection was taking place…

A man who had been watching the policemen from a distance settled his hat down lower over his eyes and looked up at the sky.

“O God, O mankind, tragedy, tragedy falls. We are merely beings who live deep in the midst of our human karma, and erelong, karma will surely settle inside men and devour everything. It is terror for me. The moment the karma ordained for me settles within my being and sets its teeth against me from the inside— What will I see? By then, the world that enfolded me will already be within me, as will human karma. When the membrane around me has been removed, what will I see there? Upon what will I gaze while my heart is devoured…?”

The man leaned against the wall of a building, shouting dramatically—and the man and woman standing just beside him tersely turned around and sighed.

“Would you give it a rest, Poet? You’re the only one who wasn’t spotted, so what are you trying to pull by drawing attention for no reason?”

“I couldn’t agree more. I know you’re no earthly good in a fight, but where were you during that uproar?”

In response to the sudden comments, the Poet shook his head—again in an exaggerated manner—and began to speak calmly, dwelling nostalgically on the distant past.

“…The most noble yet fragile things in the world, and simultaneously the most steadfast, are the bonds between people. Namely, love. Those imbued with the desire to gaze with fascination on the world’s conflict sympathized with their transitory neighbors who harbored the same emotions. Love, it is love. Love is a rein of chartreuse, a formless chain, where each man holds the other bound. A stunted being such as myself lacks the power to sever such bonds. Indeed, I must. After all, I too am one who travels in search of love…”

As the Poet related his flowery nonsense, an exasperated voice replied, “In other words, you couldn’t even push your way through the looky-loos.”

However, the man who made the remark wasn’t the one who’d spoken earlier.

He was a fellow in a suit, ambling down the street like anyone else. The couple from a moment before had casually disappeared onto the broad Chicago avenue.

A small girl who had been walking behind the Poet murmured with a bewitching smile not at all childlike.

“I’m impressed you can interpret the Poet’s drivel, Sham.”

“You should get used to him already, Hilton.”

That response came from a police officer who was there to investigate the scene. After him, an old woman who’d been giving him her statement spoke up.

“Is it even possible to get used to the defective rambling of a deviant like him?”

As soon as they’d finished speaking, every one of the people who’d spoken resumed whatever they’d been doing, as if nothing had happened.

It was as if everyone had been temporarily possessed by ghosts, and in the midst of the peculiar situation…

…the Poet sighed deeply. Then, without a word, he put the alley with the herd of rubberneckers behind him.

Silently—which was unusual for him—he entered a different, deserted alley.

Then, after making sure no one else was around, he adopted a slightly lonely expression and murmured, with no theatrics this time, “Still… To think, he has that many ‘twins’ lurking in Chicago alone. Apparently, Master Huey intends to turn this city and New York into full experiment sites…”

By putting his thoughts into words, he made himself recognize that he was indeed standing in reality.

Reviewing the position in which they had been placed, the Poet spoke ironically.

“The Alice who wandered into a prison may, in fact, be us.”

Chicago In a certain back alley

I miscalculated. I totally miscalculated.

Rail was wearing a hat and muffler he’d taken out of his backpack, walking quickly through the gaps of the city of Chicago.

Although, well, it’s not like I ran proper calculations to begin with.

He was still wearing the silver coat, and he knew he’d probably stick out if he walked down the major streets like that, so he’d elected to stick to the alleys as he quietly hurried along.

It’s impossible… I never dreamed even Sickle and Chi wouldn’t be able to do it!

As the boy shouted internally, he recalled the scene he’d witnessed a moment ago.

The man in the coveralls had shouted something strange and popped in his own arm, and the moment after he’d said “I’ll break ’em,” his movements had clearly changed.

He was faster than Chi. His moves were trickier than Sickle’s. He had raw power on par with Frank’s.

When Sickle unleashed a kick right in front of him again—the guy in the coveralls literally dismantled it.

He ran to get inside the kick’s attack range, and then, as the two passed each other, his spinning wrench connected with Sickle’s leg. Like two swords clashing, he’d stopped Sickle’s attack with an attack of his own.

There was a disturbing noise, and Sickle immediately jumped back. Then, limping on one leg, she swiftly put some distance between herself and her opponent.

Rail didn’t understand what had happened. When he took a closer look at Sickle from a distance, he saw it…

The joints in the foot she was favoring were dislocated and misshapen, and the flesh didn’t look the way it should.

Then Chi and Sickle attacked simultaneously.

The man stopped every one of their serial attacks with his wrench—and at the same time, he destroyed an arm for each of them.

Rail wasn’t even able to see what was going on.

He couldn’t follow the speedy wrench the man in the coveralls wielded. From where he stood on the sidelines, all he could see was that whenever that silver disc touched the other two, they were repulsed with a force that broke bones.

Clicking his tongue, Chi gave his arm a good swing to force his dislocated shoulder joint back into place. It wasn’t the same as using a wrench to fix it, and to Rail, this method seemed more sensible.

Rail had considered using bombs to provide support, but he decided that this wasn’t territory he could risk meddling with…

And at that point, it finally hit him.

This guy… When he fought me, he was going easy.

Now that he thought about it, it wasn’t surprising, but it was incredibly mortifying. He ground his teeth, and the sutures on his face creaked and warped.

Just then, as the feeling of utter uselessness struck— Behind the crowd that had gathered at the mouth of the alley, Rail saw several police cars approaching.

“…! Frank! Carry Sickle and run for it!”

“Huh? Ah, waaaaaah…”

Frank had followed the other boy’s gaze and noticed the cops were coming, too.

Rail took several blue eggs out of his coat and yanked all the pins from their sides at once.

“It’ll be better if we split up to make our getaway. We’ll head for the place where we all met up to begin with!”

“Huh? Oh, uh-huh, okay.”

Before Frank was finished answering, Rail threw the blue eggs.

The next moment, they burst with a light popping sound—

—and a cloud of smoke instantly enveloped one of the great city’s back alleys.

Dammit… What the hell was that guy?

Rail had ended up running away, and he felt a certain sort of fear to accompany his frustration.

Nothing like this had ever happened on the jobs Lamia had done before, not even once.

What on earth should they do now?

The idea of asking Huey for instructions surfaced in his mind, but Rail hastily struck that from the list.

Like I’d seriously be that guy’s puppet! I’m… We’re just taking his jobs because we’ve got no choice! We’re doing the things he can’t do, because he begs us to!

Rail shook his head, rousing his young pride.

Once he met up with the rest, they’d need to decide what to do about that guy in blue.

It was likely that the Poet, Sickle, Chi, and that rotten Leeza would act as the main members and come up with some sort of plan. However, he couldn’t bring himself to be satisfied with simply following it.

He’d come up with the idea of acting as decoys on his own, and he was the one who’d put it into action with Frank.

This humiliating rout had been the result.

Rail’s young heart understood this, and mortification coursed through him.

At the same time, he felt guilt over the fact that Sickle and Chi had gotten hurt because of him.

For now, I’ve got to run…

I’ll give Sickle and Chi a proper apology later. Although I’ll blow that witch Leeza away someday.

As he thought, Rail looked around the alley, searching for a place to change out of his coat, but—

Something suddenly struck him as odd, and his gaze stopped.

There hadn’t been much traffic in the alley to begin with, but it seemed far quieter than it should be.

Then he realized that, at some point, he’d become the only one walking through this area, and there were several figures blocking his path. In spite of himself, he tensed up.

Enemies?!

Were they friends of that Graham guy?

As he reached into his jacket, Rail strained his eyes, examining the shapes that stood in his way.

Researchers?!

The next moment, the boy imagined the ones he’d been personally involved with, and he shuddered.

In front of him was an odd group in white lab coats.

Huey’s underlings?! Don’t tell me— Did they decide I was useless and come to get rid of me?!

A large cargo vehicle was parked behind the figures. It seemed to be hiding the group in white from the street at the other end of the alley.

When he whirled around, there was no truck in that direction— But a group of big men in lab coats was facing him and blocking the way out.

I’m surrounded?!

Cold sweat broke out on Rail’s back as he calculated whether he could break through the situation with the explosives he had on him.

Maybe… I can… I can!

Ordinarily, he would have already yanked the pins out with a cheeky grin, but Graham had planted fear in the boy just a moment ago, and he was on edge.

However, as if to shatter that tension, a woman in a lab coat at the center of the group addressed him in an extremely easygoing voice.

“Um, ummm… Are you Rail?”

“…?”

The carefree comment felt out of place, and for a moment, Rail’s thoughts shut down.

However, if she knew his name, the scars would give him away even if he denied it, and that would be that.

Having reached that conclusion, he nodded truthfully, hoping to figure out who these people were.

“Yes…?”

At that, the woman clasped her hands happily, and her delighted cry echoed in the alley.

“Oh, goody, we finally found you! You’re almost never alone, so this seemed like our chance; we scrambled to get out here, but the lookouts said they’d lost sight of you somewhere around here. Whew, that gave us a bit of a scare. Still, it’s all right now, isn’t it?! Um, so, we’d love it if you’d come with us.”

“…Why? Who are you, miss?”

The bespectacled woman seemed kind, but Rail’s brain—or rather, everything in him—was sounding a warning.

It was subtle, but he sensed something familiar and loathsome about the individual in front of him.

Then, in the next moment…

“Oh, yes, of course. My name is Renee. I’m the director of Nebula’s sixth pharmaceutical development department.”

When he heard that, Rail realized the source of that feeling.

“We have several things on the agenda, but… Let’s see. Um, first, I’d really like it if you showed us those strange bombs you have. According to the reports, they don’t seem to be ordinary explosives. Is that correct?”

The alarm blared.

“After that, we thought we might be able to use you to lure the others to us…”

And blared.

“Um… Oh, yes! This was the most important thing.”

The alarm was screaming through the boy’s body and memories even louder than when he’d witnessed Graham’s strength a few moments ago.

Oh, oh, this lady…

She’s just like…Huey.

Rail was getting nausea and chills at the same time, but the woman who’d introduced herself as Renee sounded tickled as she explained.

Her voice was innocent, and there was no hint of malice in it.

The cruelty was only in her words.

“We were hoping to dissect your body a little so we could see what bits Huey tinkered with! And so, we’d like you to let us dismember you, just a tad.”

I knew it… She’s just like him, just like Huey…!

She only sees me…as a thing!

“Another one… I heard another explosion.”

“Huh? Really?”

Ricardo had abruptly frozen, and Christopher glanced around.

They’d opened all the windows as wide as they could and driven slowly, but Christopher hadn’t been able to hear any explosions over the noise of the city crowds.

A short while ago, while they were in the car following Ricardo’s ears toward the explosion, they’d come across a cluster of police cars around an alley. They could tell something had happened, but under the circumstances, they couldn’t get close.

They could have gotten out of the car and gone closer to the site, but…

“If they ask you for a statement, Chris, we may have a problem.”

Respecting Ricardo’s words, Christopher had obediently left the scene.

Even so, he was concerned when Ricardo said he’d heard further explosions, so he’d opened the windows and let the ambient noise go right through the car.

As Ricardo’s bodyguard, he probably should have gotten him away from such a dangerous place as quickly as possible. However, the explosions shaking the town had thrilled Christopher, and he’d decided to let himself get caught up in the moment and let Ricardo’s ears guide them.

Not long after that, Ricardo had said he’d heard another explosion.

“I didn’t hear anything… Is this one of those things? Since a bomb killed your folks, are you more sensitive to that now?”

Christopher’s remark couldn’t have been more tactless.

However, Ricardo not only didn’t seem to care, he actually agreed with Christopher.

“That could be. When the bomb blew Mom and Dad away, I heard the roar from inside the house, so…for a while, I heard the sound in my dreams, over and over. Even when I was awake, sometimes I thought I could hear it still.”

“Is it possible that what you heard just now was a hallucination?”

“I think that would be ideal. I get the feeling I heard it from that direction, though…”

Shaking his head and examining their surroundings, Ricardo had him drive in the direction from which he said he’d heard the noise.

“Anyway, if we go to the site of an explosion, what are we going to do? It might just be a car accident. We might get caught up in it and die, you know?”

Christopher’s words were half-teasing, but Ricardo was still looking out the window, and he made no attempt to answer.

Christopher sighed with a weak smile, and secretly hoped something interesting would happen.

“If it’s a mad bomber, it might be fun to catch him ourselves. He might break up that daily routine that’s worrying you, break it up so thoroughly it’ll be gone without a trace. Ha-ha! Want to sing a song to call him to us? It’s called ‘Bombville Bridge is Falling Down.’ I guess I should base the first few lines on the Mother Goose tune…”

Christopher seemed serious about his song, and he began muttering lyrics.

Ricardo had been ignoring him completely, but he suddenly leaned toward the driver’s seat and pointed up ahead, in the direction they were traveling.

“There…!”

Beyond his finger, they saw a column of furious smoke rising from the alley.

“Wow.”

Christopher whistled lightly, then stomped on the accelerator.

Little by little, an audience was starting to form on the street. Considering the amount of smoke, some people had probably reported it to the police and the fire department already.

Deciding that they wouldn’t be able to stick around for long, Christopher brought the car up next to the site, then braked to a crawl.

Wondering what had happened, he shot a sidelong glance at the scene from the driver’s seat. However, the smoke was worse than he’d thought, and he couldn’t see through it.

Just then, another explosion roared, and this time, Christopher’s ears picked it up all too well. At the sound of the blast from the alley’s depths, the crowd at the entrance scattered in all directions.

As the onlookers disbanded, it got easier to see into the alley, but the smoke still hid whatever was happening inside.

“What do you want to do? If you tell me to go look, I will.”

“You say that, but…”

Excited, Christopher was rhythmically drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. Ricardo hesitated, scanning the scene outside the window, and then—

“…?! Chris!”

“? What?”

“Over there! There’s a kid…!”

Ricardo pointed out the window. Near the mouth of the alley, a small figure was crawling as if the smoke was holding them down.

The figure still seemed to be conscious. Little by little, they were attempting to drag themselves out of the alley, but soon they stopped doing even that, and only their silver coat sparkled and shone.

“We’ve got to help…”

No sooner had he muttered the words than Ricardo was out of the car, running toward the boy who’d collapsed in the alley.

“Good gracious. When trauma’s the motivator, people sure do act fast,” Christopher murmured sardonically as he also got out of the car and started toward the fallen child in the alley.

“Hmm?”

Partway there, he noticed the long silver coat the kid was wearing, and his heart jumped.

“Bombs…”

In his head, the word clicked together with everything else, and when he spotted the black suture scars that ran down the fallen child’s neck, Christopher arrived at a single answer.

Involuntarily breaking into a run, he locked all his questions away in the depths of his heart, just for that moment.

Then, scooping up the child’s motionless body, he called the boy’s name with a look of disbelief.

“…Rail?”