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egardless of the fact that it was part of your job as an undercover agent. Additionally, thanks to your mediation, I was able to have this meeting with the Special Division for Unusual Powers. I almost want to embrace you and send you a bouquet of flowers.”
“Then—”
“However, I cannot make a definite promise in regard to your second request. Mimic is a horrifying group, after all. We’re still under a lot of pressure thanks to them. If I could, I’d rather just run away crying. It’s that bad.”
Ougai looked at Taneda with an indiscernible smile. A piercing flash of light illuminated the depths of Taneda’s eyes. He closed them before giving Ango a signal with his gaze.
“Next, the Port Mafia requests that the Special Division for Unusual Powers—”
Chief Taneda let out a short, deep sigh. Then he pulled a black envelope out of his suit.
Meaningless images swirled in my head. I was standing in a white, barren hotel room. Next, I was standing in the planted forest in front of the art museum again. After that, I was on the restaurant’s second floor.
—“Sakunosuke Oda, a peculiar mafioso who believes killing is never the answer.”
I was in the waste-ridden back alley, then the quiet bar in the middle of the night; then I was riding the elevator at the Mafia headquarters. After that, I was sitting in the seat by the window at the café on a rainy day.
—“Writing novels is writing people.”
—“You’re perfectly qualified.”
I wondered if that man with the mustache was serious about what he said. Or was he just trying to make me feel better? Did I really deserve to write about people? Even if what he’d said had been true, it was all in the past. I no longer had that right.
At the site of the explosion, I somehow managed to stagger to my feet and check inside the bus. I shouldn’t have; it would’ve been easy to simply imagine what it was like inside. After that, I decided to leave the scene before it drew too much attention. I went over to the restaurant.
—“They’re an army.”
—“These men don’t know how to live outside of a battlefield. They’re known as grau geists—men with no master.”
The lights were out; it was quiet.
When I went inside, I found the owner, Pops, dead.
He was lying behind the counter on a pot and the shelf for cooking utensils. He’d been shot in the chest three times, and his eyes were still open. His hand was still gripping the curry ladle. He must’ve tried to grab on to whatever was nearby on the spur of the moment. I wondered how he’d planned on fighting against armed Mimic soldiers with only a ladle. Just what you would expect from the owner of a Mafia-affiliated restaurant.
Only when I gently closed Pops’s eyelids did he actually look dead. I could feel my soul being tightly squeezed out of my body. It was the sound the spirit makes when it is irreversibly disfigured.
A military knife was stuck in the counter, and underneath it was a map. After pulling out the knife, I looked at the map. It contained a drawing of some mountainous terrain not too far away. There was a red X on some old private property in the mountains with the words Ghost Graveyard scribbled next to it.
I was sure it was a message from Mimic—from Gide. I folded the map and tucked it away in my pocket. Then I headed up to the second floor and went into the hidden room that Pops had ready for me. An array of weapons for emergency use were stashed away in there.
I took off my clothes and put on a light bulletproof vest. Next, I slipped on a shirt, then slid my arms through the shoulder holster and buttoned it in the back.
I checked both pistols. Once I’d finished looking them over, I wiped off the dust from one gun, oiled it, and assembled everything. I made sure the sight wasn’t off. Then I took out the bullet and pulled the trigger, checking how it felt. After that, I loaded the magazine before inserting it back into the gun. I pulled the slide, sending the first bullet to the chamber. When that was done, I checked the other gun the same way before sticking them in the holsters on each side of my body.
Every precise movement I made was like a prayer. As I got myself ready, my mind separated from my body, and I wandered in my thoughts: who I used to be, what I’d sought, who I’d talked to, what I’d felt, how I’d wanted to live. All I knew in that moment was that everything I sought in the past was already gone—thrown away like a crumpled-up piece of paper.
I wrapped my wrists in bands packed with spare magazines. Then I slid my arms through the sleeves of the Kevlar-woven coat, into which I stuffed grenades and as many spare magazines as I could. I hesitated but decided to not bring any bandages or painkillers along. I wouldn’t need them.
Instead, I found a box of cigarettes from when I’d quit years ago. I headed to the adjacent room with the cigarettes and a match. It was the room the kids used to live in—the same place where we’d roughhoused together just a few days ago. It had hardly changed: the bed railing colored in with crayon, the filthy floor, the stained wallpaper. The only difference was the five shadows that should’ve been there, too.
“Good night, Kousuke,” I said as I lit a cigarette. That was the name of the oldest boy. “Good night, Katsumi. Good night, Yuu. Good night, Shinji. Good night, Sakura.”
I watched as a trail of pale smoke quietly rose from the tip.
“Sleep well. I’ll avenge you.”
Holding the cigarette between my fingers, I gazed into the smoke until the cigarette burned out and the smoke disappeared.
