Chapter 19: Volume 1 - CH 4.2

“Yahoo, Mister! Everything alright with you? Things are awesome on my end!”

At the counter of the Hornsby Cigar store, Seymour encountered a brand new Fran, one that was in an unprecedentedly good mood.

Unintentionally his real thoughts slipped out, “Uwahh, how disgusting!”

“Meanie! And here I am, having gone out of my way to prepare wonderful cigarettes for you, Mister!” As she delivered her retort, Fran grabbed a pencil and repeatedly ran it across a paper.

She didn’t write in any recognizable alphabet but rather in symbols, like squares and triangles. Apparently, that’s how she managed her information as an information broker. They looked like nothing more than the scribblings of a child to an outsider, though.

“Rather, umm…ah! Why?”

“Why what?”

“Bomb.” Seymour bluntly said.

She had been implicitly against him buying a bomb. Despite that, Seymour had taken the memo for buying a bomb from her.

“Aaahh, that. So you were talking about that, huh?” Fran giggled, “Mister, you didn’t buy the bomb, right?”

“……”

Just as he was about to ask her, “How did you know?”, he realized something.

Now that he thought about it, Seymour hadn’t done anything to the can with the bomb, he had simply grabbed the neighbouring can and left. Since he had left it back there just like that, anyone who knew of the bomb’s existence would immediately know that Seymour hadn’t bought it.

“The bomb you didn’t buy, you see, remained in the store. Moreover, no one knew it was still there. I mean, everyone believed that you had bought it.”

“I guess I should apologize for the trouble then.”

“No, no, not at all. You got it backwards. That bomb, you know, had a very interesting fate────”

“Oh, I understand. I fully understand. And I don’t want to know the details.”

Seymour now understood why Fran was in such a good mood. He was sure that someone unexpected had bought the bomb, resulting in the bomb exploding in an unexpected place.

The girl sitting in front of him loved such stories. She got a kick out of writing information on her memos that only she knew about. Being a compulsive note-taker of the worst kind in this world, her principles were founded on chaos and mayhem. Thus it was only natural that such a story put her in a great mood.

Seymour wondered just how much of an uproar that bomb had caused within the city. Then again, at least he was quite certain now, that she had forgotten any bad feelings she had had over Seymour disregarding her warnings three times over.

“Aww, and here I was, ready to tell you all about what happened to it…”

“No, thanks. Seriously. I don’t want to know anything about things like that.”

‘Well, anyway, I’m glad. It’d be a major pain in the ass to find a new tobacconist.

Seymour leaned against the counter, and ordered in his usual tone ” Please give me new cigarettes. The cheapest ones────the ones right above that.”

“Sure. I expected you to show up sometime soon, so I prepared something special for today.”

“……I’m not a fan of such things, you know?”

“Don’t worry, it’s alright. I’m not trying to take advantage of you. It just so happens that I’m all out of several brands of cheap cigarettes right now. So I thought that I’d really love to see you smoke some delicious cigarettes, Mister.”

“Hey! That’s nothing but a price hike! It just means I’ve lost my source of cheap cigarettes, doesn’t it!?” While loudly bickering about this, Seymour smiled wryly in his mind.

For a moment there, he had been worried about how things would turn out, but he was able to find common ground with Fran unexpectedly easily. It was somewhat scary to think about what had happened with the bomb, but Seymour was sure that it’d be set off in a place completely unrelated to him.

“Oh yeah, while we’re at it, can I place a request with you, Mister?” Fran added right before Seymour took his leave.

❖ ── ✦ ──『✙』── ✦ ── ❖

The next day Seymour arrived at the southern side of the city in accordance with Fran’s request. The city jutted out into the ocean on a small peninsula here. It was in this district where the rich people of this city lived.

Seymour drove the newly repaired Essex. On his right side he could see the ocean across the width of a single block. The sun dazzled his eyes as it slowly sank into the western sea. The spot where the underground train emerged into the upper world was just around the corner. Even with the windows closed, the salty air filled the car. Seymour felt like it corroded even the bottom of his lungs.

Gazing at estates big enough to play tennis in, Seymour drove until he eventually arrived at a cemetery. The cargo Fran had entrusted him with was a single bouquet.

“……Now then.”

He grabbed the flowers and got out of the car. Normally he wouldn’t care, but for once Seymour was dressed for the part he would play today – a plain, black sweater.

Giving the gatekeeper a perfunctory greeting as he passed by, he went into the cemetery. A neatly maintained path, and a frequently trimmed lawn. It was such an orderly scene; it was as if any signs of death had been zealously kept away, despite the fact that this was a plot of land filled with corpses.

He kept to the edge of the wide pathway out of a sort of discomfort. After asking other grave visitors for directions, and taking many a break to squat down and let his nausea settle, he somehow managed to find his destination.

A single gravestone that stood neatly in a line of other identical gravestones. Though the gravestone itself wasn’t particularly special, the inscription on it was rather special indeed.

『Isaac Nigel』

That was the name written there.

“……” Seymour stayed silent for several seconds, merely glaring at the tomb. Then he shook his head. “For the time being I have to at least finish my business here.”

Seymour threw the bouquet in front of the quadratic, white stone. The funeral had been quite a long time ago, so there was obviously no other bouquets, but despite the recent rain, not a single blemish was visible on the stone’s surface.

Seymour was pretty sure that meant someone was regularly cleaning it. Before his mind could wander and begin thinking about who that might be, Seymour shook his head.

“『To the wonderful you who disturbed this city so wonderfully for me』. So she says. Laughable, isn’t it? For an information broker like her to do a thing like this…”

Seymour doubted that Fran and Isaac Nigel had ever met in person. Both were rather notorious shut-ins.

And yet, the act of offering a bouquet of flowers to a dead mafia member might point to the fact that said information breaker may still have a tiny amount of humanity left in her.

This was all she had asked of Seymour. Merely to place flowers at his grave. And yet, even though he had no other business here, Seymour continued to stand in front of the grave, pulling out a box of cigarettes as he stood. It was one of the boxes he had bought from Fran yesterday.

He opened the new pack of significantly higher quality cigarettes. He wasn’t picky about his smokes, but the sudden jump in quality made him truly appreciate how good these smokes were.

“Hey, it looks like the disputes stopped when you died. How do you feel about that? As a member of the dead, who are supposed to be more at peace than the living.”

Seymour remembered his sunglass-covered face and the scent of the tea he gave him.

“You didn’t seem like that kind of person at all, though.”

However, no matter how Seymour felt about him, reality was unchangeable. This city had obtained temporary peace through the death of Isaac Nigel. It was a worthless peace that was already on the verge of being lost again, but it was still a fact that you could see if you just flipped through a newspaper.

Besides, the accuracy of Seymour’s judgment was still a matter to be settled.

After all, he had known Fran for quite a while now, and yet he had learned that she had a hobby of offering flowers to the dead just yesterday.

“……You didn’t seem like that kind of person at all, though.” He smiled bitterly while repeating his words.

I’m sure everyone is like that for someone. Another person’s image is no more than a patchwork of their actions, and the implications that can be drawn from them ─ the will of the person forming that image is nothing but imagination. No justice or value can be found within, and I’m certain that not a single living people can laugh at the mafia that created an illusion like the Murder Inc.

Seymour remained there until he finished his cigarette. Then he tossed the remaining cigarettes and their box in front of the grave.

“I didn’t thank you for the tea yet, did I?”

He sighed, and walked off without looking back again.

Now I have to go to Fran to claim my reward, and then I’ve got a plethora of other jobs to finish today as well.

Money was always a necessity, even in a worthless world.

❖ ──『✙』── ❖

It was dawn by the time Seymour came back home. The first few rays of morning sun were already creeping steadily towards the ground at his feet.

Because of this, he moved the shutter as carefully as possible, and quickly parked his Essex inside the garage. As he got out of the car and shook out a smoke, he scanned the interior of the garage.

“I’m home~”

No reply.

Seymour didn’t think much of it. Today he had returned fairly late, and Lumi lived a nocturnal life. She often waited for Seymour to come back, fighting off her own sleepiness, but it wasn’t strange for her to be asleep either.

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He climbed the ladder thinking that he might as well sneak a peek at her cute sleeping face. Only, when he reached the top, he inadvertently dropped his cigarette.

The loft held only an empty bed.

“……!”

Seymour had a terribly bad feeling about this.

She hasn’t come back. Lumi Spike hasn’t come back.

She had gone off somewhere on her own again today, probably to kill someone. And yet, even though dawn had already broken, she wasn’t here. Seymour couldn’t help but recall the first time they had met, and the image of her lying there with a hole in her head. Even though he now knew that the entire incident had been staged, the impression remained deeply rooted in Seymour’s mind.

She might be in the very same state right now.

『So, what about it?』

A voice whispered somewhere in his head, but that voice was left behind in the loft as Seymour leapt down. Hoisting the shutter open, he sped out the garage.

But then he suddenly came to a grinding halt, wondering where he was supposed to go. In the first place, Seymour didn’t even know where Lumi had gone today, and even if he found someone, like Fran for example, to tell him where she was and what kind of predicament she was in, what would Seymour be able to do about it?

As if he had just woken from a dream, Seymour was left standing stock still in front of his home all by himself.

“………Aahh.”

Just as suddenly as he had realized that he didn’t have any information, he suddenly felt a flash of insight. He let his eyes wander towards the river. He had no proof, yet Seymour was inexplicably sure that he’d find her over there. A single place came to mind.

❖ ──『✙』── ❖

Sliding down the riverbank, he entered the abandoned sewer pipe, spotting Lumi just inside.

“Yo.”

Rays of morning sun shone diagonally into the pipe. Lumi was leaning against the wall, tracing the boundary between light and shadow with her fingertips. No, her fingertips had already passed the threshold.

Maybe her fingers had been hit by the sunlight because she hadn’t moved in a while, or maybe she had willingly placed her fingers where the sun would hit them. The tip of her left pinky, which was just past the boundary, was disappearing. As the fingertip crumbled, small traces of ash fell in its place.

Seymour stood with the sun at his back, repeating his greeting once more, “Yo.”

Lumi lifted her eyes, but didn’t say anything. All she did was to stare at Seymour with vacant eyes. He couldn’t be sure whether she had noticed that her own finger was being turned into ash by the sunlight.

Having said that, she didn’t look like she was sick or injured either. Seymour suspected that she was likely only aware of wanting to be here. At least that was the impression she gave him. Moreover, if he left her alone like that, she might continue standing around even if her entire body was eventually engulfed in sunlight.

“What are you doing here?”

“……”

“Sunbathing does seem to be good for the health, but are you sure you want to?”

“……”

“Is it okay for me to move closer, for starters?”

“……?”

“I mean, look, it’s cold.”

Seymour crowded against her, bumping his shoulder against hers. As he did, he pushed her slender body deeper inside the sewer, away from the sunlight.

Lumi’s eyes were pinned on Seymour, but in the end she didn’t say anything.

“Sure is unexpected for you to be all taciturn all of a sudden.”

“……”

“Brr, it’s freezing out here. It’d’ve been nice to have a blanket.”

“……”

Seymour shook his head, and wondered why Lumi was standing here. It was obvious why she had come here before. She had been clearly crying, and those tears were an act. Performing a dramatic scene of a girl crying all by herself in the darkness when her loneliness overwhelmed her, she induced Seymour’s pity – she had come here so that she could stay in the garage as long as she needed.

But, that couldn’t be true today.

Unlike back then, she wasn’t deliberately sobbing loud enough for him to hear it, and it wasn’t as though she had loudly opened the garage shutter. She had no reason to do so now to begin with.

Nowadays she could stay in Seymour’s garage even without putting on an act like that, and the prime reason for her even being at his place ─ Isaac Nigel ─ was already dead. By now there was very little reason for her to stay at his garage.

And yet, here she was.

Seymour racked his brains for a reason she was here. He racked his brains since he was leaning against the wall and didn’t have anything else to do anyway.

Suddenly a hand closed over his. A hand, which had lost most of its heat and parts of its pinky, grasped Seymour’s hand.

Lumi muttered in a voice as husky as the winter’s gales outside, “Cold.”

That was all.

That’s why I’m sure it must be like that. She’s a girl and a monster, but that’s not all.

The story that Seymour’s imagination had arbitrarily pieced together from the facts couldn’t possibly be her whole story. Therefore the reason for her being here was beyond his comprehension. An insurmountable loneliness, and a gentle heat that bloomed between their connected hands.

Sensing both of these, Seymour murmured, “No kidding.”

❖ ── ✦ ──『✙』── ✦ ── ❖

Getting out of bed in the evening, he picked up the newspaper that had been thrown in front of his garage. Still half-asleep, Seymour’s eyes were naturally drawn towards the river. The sewer pipe was over there. The place where Lumi had only muttered the word『Cold』 yesterday.

Lumi Spike. A girl and yet not just a girl. A hitman and yet not just a hitman. A vampire and yet not just a vampire.

Seymour asked himself whether he wanted to know more about her, and could only smile bitterly. He felt as if there was a maelstrom in his stomach.

No matter how he thought about it, there was no value in learning more about Lumi, and even if he did, there would be no value to the information that he learned. However, a question crossed his mind.

Lumi Spike frequently mentioned her 『Mother』. Knowledge imparted to her by her mother. A dearly missed life with her mother. A tiny dream of the beginning of love between her mother and father.

“……Why the ocean though?”

A story of a sandy beach and her parents who met there.

Winning over Seymour with the word mother was an easily understood plan. Seymour could definitely see why she had used that word so frequently, given this.

But, how did she decide on the details? What kind of feelings did she have when she talked about that dream?

There were all kinds of possible dreams and memories she could have mentioned. No matter the contents, Seymour would likely have appreciated the details and shown her sympathy regardless.

Seymour believed that there was some truth hidden in what she had chosen as a backstory exactly because she could have chosen whatever she wanted to…but that was probably also an illusion created by Seymour’s pathetic sentimentality.

His eyes naturally followed the river, and he imagined how they’d eventually reach the sea. The grave of Isaac Nigel could be found over there. And also the seaside road that lead to that grave. Seymour’s eyes gazed at the road.

Evening sun. Road. Asphalt. And a bit more in addition.

“Haaah………….”

Seymour sighed very deeply. Then he shook his head and went back inside the garage.

Given the silence within, Lumi was still sleeping. He gently started the car’s engine so as to not wake her from her slumber. Stopping the car outside the garage, he lit up a smoke.

Then he got back into the driver’s seat and put on his gloves.

“Come to think of it, my selling point as a courier is my request completion rate, wasn’t it?”

I’ve got to finish the request I’ve been putting off all this time.

“I suppose it’s time to practice a bit for that.”

——————– End of Part 2 ——————–

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