CHAPTER 3

BUMPING HEADS ON WEDNESDAY, MISSING EACH OTHER ON THURSDAY

“Beatrice.”

Whenever someone called her that, she would either correct them immediately or, when she was in a bad mood, ignore them. Well, “Beatrice” was better than the alternative; she had one old acquaintance that called her by the insanely abbreviated nickname “Bea,” but she had given up on that man long ago.

Anyway, she wasn’t in a bad mood today, so she corrected, “Beatrix.”

“Oh, right, right. You’re just as pretty as ever today, Beatrice.”

As she wasn’t tolerant enough to correct him a second time, she ignored him, but maybe the man didn’t realize he was being ignored. He laughed a hiccup of a laugh and cheerfully gulped down his glass of diluted whiskey. Destroy your liver and retire already, you drunk, she cursed inwardly, but she would lose everything if he retired today. For the time being, she kept her abusive comments to herself.

Beatrix listened with half an ear as he kept talking about a vicious criminal who had holed himself up with a stolen carbonization gun, and how he caught the felon after a shoot-out, garnering a public acknowledgment from the Church. She paid no attention and brought the cigarette she had been toying with to her lips. It was a slender, scented cigarette. When lit, it gave off a sharp, spicy fragrance. Beatrix didn’t smoke these cigarettes because she liked the scent. In fact, she more or less hated it. The stuffy air in the hall was bad enough to make her sick, though, and they helped her distract herself just a tiny bit, so she always smoked this brand at work.

Through the scented tobacco smoke, she surveyed the hall, clouded with purple smoke and the stench of alcohol. One or two female employees sat at each table under the dim lights, serving alcohol to customers, and not hesitating to drink from their own glasses as well. Well, that was the point of this place. Most of the customers were from the Watch, and it had the feel of an establishment that catered to the Watch.

“The Watch” referred to organizations of citizens that existed only in the towns of South-hairo parish. This continent had managed to avoid a fair amount of the ravages of the great War in the past, so the Church didn’t intervene in the name of reconstruction, and even now, the garrisons of Church Soldiers were stationed only at the main ports. Instead, they built up city organizations for public order—but either way, the leaders of those organizations were connected to the Church.

And Beatrix believed that the Watch was the most good-for-nothing group in town. It was a gathering of bums who hated the steady work of mining and had dropped out.

The second-in-command sitting next to her was in the bums’ middle management, and putting it that way made him seem much more like a bum. Still, he was useful in his own way. Today in particular, she needed him to act as the middleman between herself and her goal.

Now then, it should almost be time.…

The shop door opened, and new customers appeared, just as her advance information had said they would. The dry night wind blew in, lightly stirring the stagnant air of the hall.

The cigarette still in the corner of her mouth, Beatrix threw a casual glance their way and watched. They were a large man and a slender fellow in black robes. The big one was the chief of the Watch, and she had seen him a few times before. This was the first time she had seen the one in the robes, but he was the one she urgently wanted to talk to.

“Say, do you know him?” she asked the man beside her, watching as the newcomers were greeted politely and escorted to a table inside. The man, who had switched topics to something like the hardships of middle management, broke off in disappointment.

“Oh, it’s the chief! I need to go see if he’s in a good mood…I mean, go say hello!”

“Not him, the other one. In the robes.” Her companion had scuttled up from his seat, and she held him back for a moment.

Half standing, he tilted his head and followed her gaze. “Oh, I know him. He’s the adviser to the parish’s chief priest. I hear he used to be the close aide to the chief priest in Westerbury.”

“Huh,” she murmured casually, pressed her still-long cigarette into the ashtray, and stood up from her chair. The man sent a curious glance her way, so she said, “You’re going to say hello, aren’t you? Will you introduce me?”

She said it with a bright smile, but actually, she felt a little panic on the inside. A priest’s aide from Westerbury—she had a bit of a history with Westerbury. It might be dangerous to talk to him. But that was a long time ago, and she didn’t think they had her face on record.

This was a request from an old friend she hadn’t seen in a while, and while she had happily agreed to do it, things seemed to be getting dicey.

Well, there’s no helping it; I can go out of my way to help him. I do owe him.…

She braced herself, plastered on a flawless professional smile, and approached the two men’s table. The second-in-command spoke quickly, flattering the chief and the priest, then urged her forward.

“This is Beatrice—”

“Beatrix. It’s an honor to meet you.” She curtsied elegantly and took the opportunity to stomp on the second-in-command’s foot.

“He has red hair, he’s about college age, he’s tall and thin, his right arm is prosthetic, and he kinda seems like he’s unsteady on his feet, but he walks fast.…Have you seen someone like that?” Kieli rattled, doing her best to list all the features that came to mind and thinking that with such a jumbled explanation they probably wouldn’t know it even if they had seen him. But surprisingly, the message seemed to get through, and the person said, “Oh, I saw him,” and told her about a shop at the end of the alley. Harvey probably didn’t like it, but whatever he might say, he stood out a great deal, looking the way he did.

“Thank you very much,” she told the friendly person, then twisted the accelerator of the three-wheeled bike and drove slowly down the alley.

“I feel like we’ve done this before.”

“Yeah, me too…,” Kieli agreed with the radio’s voice and added to herself, But it was the Corporal’s idea to follow him both times. It wasn’t me.

The curtain of night was beginning to fall over the narrow line of sky she saw through a gap in the buildings of the alley. The gray smoke that spewed from the exhaust pipes protruding from the buildings’ roofs reflected the last rays of sunlight as they melted into the sky.

It was Wednesday, the middle of the week, and the business district downtown had begun to bustle with miners on their way home from work. Kieli had been on her way back after delivering something for Suzie when she caught sight of a copper-colored head at the district’s entrance, and immediately the radio had said, “All right, let’s follow him!”

“Um, hey, well, I am curious about what he’s doing, but I trust Harvey and don’t want to push too hard trying to find out.”

“I don’t doubt him either. It’s not like he’s doing anything he should feel guilty about. He doesn’t have those kinds of lusts.” He added that that wasn’t a compliment. Kieli was just a little puzzled at what he meant by “those kinds of lusts.”

“Then why are we following him?”

“…Why indeed?”

“……” Kieli felt like throwing the radio.

“Don’t worry about it; it’s just a habit. We’ll just check on him and leave.”

When she got out of the alley, she stopped the bike and looked up at the entrance to the place she had been directed to. A rusty, but thick and heavy, iron door blended into the night street. A man who appeared to be a miner came from across the road and stopped right in front of the door, opening it and gazing at her somewhat questioningly. She took advantage and peered inside.

“Erk…”

Kieli faltered for a second at the chokingly stagnant air.

At the end of her field of vision, fully obscured by billows of yellow smoke, she could see a dimly lit hall down half a flight of stairs. Round tables of varying sizes stood at narrow intervals, and customers sat around them, amusing themselves with card games.

“A gambling house…,” she found herself muttering in disappointment.

In a similar voice, the radio said, “Aww, he’s just doing the same stuff as always!” Kieli was thinking something along those same lines, though she wouldn’t say it so bluntly. Well, the one time she’d asked him where he was going, he had answered with, “Cards,” so it was completely selfish of them to feel deflated just because he hadn’t been lying.

“Let’s go home.…”

She was backing away, still peering into the hall, when she bumped into a customer who came in after her and lurched forward. Almost falling, she ran down a few steps, then clung to the wall and stopped. “Oops, sorry,” the customer behind her apologized casually, then gave her a dubious glance and descended into the hall.

A fifteen-year-old girl who worked part-time at a café must have seemed out of place here. Although it would be a little better if she was with Harvey.

She started to feel very uncomfortable. She plastered herself to the stairway wall, still hiding, and found herself peering into the hall to see if she could find a copper-colored head somewhere.

“Huh…?”

She couldn’t find a copper one, but instead she found a gold-colored head—a woman with gentle waves of long blond hair, alone at a small table by the wall. She sat so that the beauty of her legs showed through the deep slit in her long skirt, resting her chin on her hand and taking a drink. “Corporal, that woman. Look, over there,” Kieli whispered a bit excitedly.

Immediately after, she instinctively held her breath and froze.

A tall silhouette approached the woman’s table—a young man with copper hair. He placed the ashtray he was carrying on the table, sat across from the woman, and pulled a cigarette out of his pack with the corner of his mouth. When he set the pack on the table, the woman helped herself to one, and the man looked annoyed but didn’t say anything as they put their faces together and lit their cigarettes with one lighter. They started to talk, their faces still close enough to touch.

Kieli still clung to the wall and stared at the table, temporarily paralyzed. She came to her senses when she heard the sound of the bike’s key that she had been holding fall to the ground, and a meaningless little sound escaped her throat. Her voice was low enough to blend in with the clamor inside, but just then the woman happened to look her way, and her blue eyes met Kieli’s.

The woman opened her mouth in surprise, and the young man noticed and turned to look—then made a face that clearly showed he knew he was in trouble. After a pause, he jumped out of his chair. Instinctively, Kieli turned and tried to run, but when she picked up the key, dropped it, and picked it up again, he caught her arm from behind.

She gulped and went rigid for a second, then turned her head jerkily back, lifting her gaze up along her captured arm.

“You…!” Harvey started to say, then closed his mouth for a moment, opening it again a second later. “What are you doing here?” He said it in his normal tone, but Kieli could sense some panic mixed in.

“N-nothing. I saw you and wondered where you were going, so…”

“…You followed me.”

“…Yeah.” She dropped her head, peering up at him through her eyelashes.

“Oh, man…,” Harvey breathed with a sigh.

“Don’t you ‘oh, man’ me! What the hell are you—” the radio started to interject, but immediately went quiet, leaving behind some grumpy static. A clear woman’s voice came from over Harvey’s shoulder.

“This is a surprise. So this girl is an acquaintance of yours?”

“Acquaintance? Something like that…,” Harvey answered vaguely, looking back at the woman, then questioned her instead: “Hey, how do you know her?” Although Kieli did get the feeling he may also have been dodging the question.

“I’d better go back. I have to get back to the diner,” Kieli said quickly, shaking her arm free.

“Oh, I’ll go with you—” Harvey started, turning back to Kieli, but then he broke off and seemed to think for a bit. He looked back again at the woman.

“I’m going to take her back to work. Wait here an hour.”

“An hour? Honestly…any girl would just go home.”

“Then I’ll go to your house later. Where do you live again?”

“Um, I can get back on my own,” Kieli interrupted, her head spinning in confusion at their strangely friendly exchange. “I came on the bike, and you’d fall off, Harvey, so I should just go by myself.”

She insisted, leaving no room for argument, and turned around. She ran up the steps, left the hall, straddled her bike, and ran away as fast as she could, without looking back.

Ran away.

When the words floated into her head, she wondered why she had run. She didn’t really have any reason to.

“You’re not very smart, are you?” After she pressed him about Kieli, he had no choice but to tell her the whole story—no, he left out quite a lot, but he told her—to an extent—the whole story, and that was the first thing she said.

“Things might be fine now, but what are you going to do later? She’s not like you; time passes normally for her. She’ll catch up to your age and pass it before long. Are you going to abandon her when that happens? Or can you seriously mean to take care of her for her whole life? Are you prepared to be responsible for that girl’s life? Are you sure you can? Even if you do take her everywhere with you until she dies, what’ll you do after that?”

“Oh, shut up. It’s too late to tell me all that now. I’m thinking about it,” Harvey retorted, fed up with her tirade.

The woman before him pulled out what seemed like her umpteenth cigarette from Harvey’s pack with her lips (She keeps helping herself. These are mine. Why doesn’t she ever smoke her own cigarettes when I see her?) and answered, “So you are thinking about it, but you’re putting off coming to any conclusion.”

“……”

She made the statement so definitively that Harvey couldn’t argue, and he fell silent. He pulled out a new cigarette of his own to hide his discomfort. When he picked up his lighter, the woman took advantage and brought the tip of her cigarette close. (Use your own, damn it!)

Apparently someone was winning big at a table somewhere, as muffled applause rose through the hall from the other side of the purple smoke, but neither of them showed any particular interest. They continued their whispered conversation, bringing their faces close above the small, round table, so that their very existences blended into the tumult around them.

“Why did you hide that girl from me until now? She has something to do with the man you’re looking for, doesn’t she?”

“Because I knew you would be annoying about her.” She had just said exactly what he’d known she would.

“What’s the big idea, asking people for favors but not giving them all the information?” Her blue eyes narrowed, a dangerous light inside them. She lowered her voice a notch and Harvey, actually sensing murderous intent in it, pulled back a little.

“…Look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. And? You found something, right?”

“Yeah, well. I got to talk to someone who has connections to the capital last night, and I made a little progress. It’s true that they caught an Undying twelve years ago and brought him to the capital.”

“Caught him? So he’s still alive!?”

In his excitement, he started out of his chair and almost bumped noses with the woman. She calmly returned his gaze at point-blank range and, after a pause, went on.

“He was alive when they caught him, but it’s very possible that he died after that. And that woman who was with him— from what you just told me, she’s that girl’s mother? I still don’t know who she is. I’ll look into it more closely.”

“…Okay. Thanks.”

He sat back down in his chair, inwardly a little disappointed.

“Oh, I don’t mind. But it’s not every day you act with some definite goal in mind. Here you come to visit when I’ve forgotten all about you, and then you want me to help you investigate something. What kind of a whim brought this about?”

“It’s not a whim. That’s rude. I owe Jude.”

One of the reasons Harvey had come to this city was to get information on Jude. He’d thought about passing right through South-hairo and going all the way up near the capital, but then he remembered knowing someone he wished he could forget from this area and decided to stop here first. He kept moving, checking in small towns along the way, then judged this city as most likely, and sure enough, he found her—it was easier to blend in with people in large cities, and thus easier to stay in them longer.

“And I wanted to find out about Kieli’s parents for her.” That was his other reason.

“…Hey, Ephraim.”

The woman’s attitude suddenly changed. A slender line of smoke mixed with her sigh, then she went on in a warning tone.

“I’m serious. You should leave that girl with someone before you get too attached. Either way, she’s still a normal human being. Someday this situation will go beyond what you can fix. You may look indifferent, but you get emotional about weird things. You can’t take a hit, and you take forever to recover.”

“Hey, watch it. What’s your problem?” Damn woman, listing off point by point everything he himself was already pretty much aware of.

“I’m worried. Frankly, I don’t care about that girl. I’m worried about you.”

“I don’t need you to worry about me, thanks.”

“Sometimes you get attached to the dullest things. But you know you’re just going to lose them someday, so you make it a point not to think ahead.”

“Shut up. Like you have a right to talk, Bea.”

“It’s Beatrix. Call me that one more time, and I’m done with you forever.”

“If you never want to see me again, fine.”

“Oh, I get it. I’m helping you this time because I owe you from before, but don’t ever come to me with your problems again.”

“Same to you.”

They both fell into a bad mood, and the conversation stopped short. They smoked in silence for a while.

Not listening to the tumult from the tables around them, Harvey rolled his lighter around in his hands, lighting it and putting it out. “You never fixed that habit. You always do that when something makes you nervous,” the woman murmured.

He didn’t answer, only looked down and stared at the flame. Maybe the lighter had run out of oil. The flame gradually grew smaller and paler, and eventually went out.

“I-I’m sorry.”

It was Thursday evening, and Kieli had just messed up for the third time that day. Counting all the minor mistakes, there were far more than three, but as for the big ones, she’d overturned bowls of stew twice that afternoon, and just now, she’d hit the cup of coffee she was trying to carry with her fingers and knocked it over.

As she hurriedly wiped up the counter, Buzz called out from the kitchen with a sullen look on his face, “You can just go home.”

“…All right. I’m sorry.”

She felt dejected and thought, as she got ready to leave, that he might not just mean she could go home for the day, but that she should never come again. She had only one bag to pack. It wasn’t just work that had gone wrong: she’d spaced out as she left that morning and forgotten to bring the radio—a big mistake she would normally never have thought possible. The Corporal was probably sulking in the apartment right now.

Even she couldn’t figure out why she was in such a quagmire. She might just be hanging on to a weird misunderstanding, and if she asked about it, it might be nothing at all, but, well, Harvey hadn’t come home last night. This was a bigger problem than just asking about the circumstances.

She felt strangely relaxed as she thought hopeless things like, “If Harvey never comes back, and I lose my job, I’ll end up wandering the streets. How will the Corporal and I make a living together?”

“Kieli.”

“Yes, ma’am. Am I fired?” she answered automatically, continuing along her line of thinking, and turned around.

Suzie blinked. “What are you talking about? You don’t seem to be feeling well, so when you get home, I want you to stay warm and go to bed. You don’t have a fever, do you?”

Kieli gaped for a minute. She didn’t expect such consideration.

“…Oh. I’m fine. Thank you.”

She bowed politely, a little at a loss.

She went outside through the door on the side of the kitchen. She looked up at the sky through the gap in the alley. It was the orange color of twilight, and the smoke spewing from the diner’s exhaust pipe turned the same color and melted into the sky.

When she turned out of the alley and onto the surface street, someone suddenly called out to her. “Yoo-hoo! Hello!” She stopped and looked around, then caught sight of a three-wheeled bike parked across from the diner.

Its driver was resting her arms on the handlebars and grinning in Kieli’s direction with her chin in her hands. Her tidy appearance was different than it had been the night before, and her long blond hair, fluttering in the wind, was all tied back. Nevertheless, she was very attractive, whether she dressed up or not.

“Hello…” Kieli answered halfheartedly, then pulled herself together and went toward the woman. “Are you sure you were okay the other day? I think I might have really hit you.” She chose to talk about when they first met rather than the previous night.

“Yes. Actually, you did hit me,” came the ready answer. Kieli just stood there at a loss for words. The woman indicated her arm and thigh and said, very calmly given the subject, “I had cracks here and here, and there was an incredible bruise. It wasn’t funny.

“You see, I’m just like Ephraim.”

“…Huh?”

Kieli couldn’t quite grasp the meaning of those words right away. The woman’s blue eyes, so much like Becca’s eyes, smiled mischievously, so much like Becca’s smile.

“We can keep walking, but can I talk to you for a bit? I need to see Ephraim, so I was heading to your place anyway.”

To kill time, Harvey went all the way to the Church’s branch office and took a look at the face of this “adviser to the parish’s chief priest.” He was a slim man wearing black robes—he resembled Joachim, which repulsed Harvey immensely. It was probably the fact that he was somewhat like Joachim that remembering that idiot’s face repulsed him so much.

Now I’m even more depressed.…

He had been having the worst time, in several ways, since the night before. Even he couldn’t figure out why he was in such an emotional swamp.

He had meant to kill time until morning, but he killed too much of it. By the time he got home, the afternoon had passed, and it was evening. He was understandably tired, and he practically leaned on the door as he opened it and went inside. He would just lie around on the sofa until Kieli got back (though that’s what he always did). And then he would probably have to tell her about last night.

“Wah!”

As Harvey walked through the dining room door, he felt a murderous aura and instinctively twisted around. A mass of air, like a sharp blade, flew by, grazing his side, and crashed into the front door. It didn’t break through, but a part of the iron door caved in with a spectacular bang.

“Wha…!?” he started to say, but the word died in his mouth. He just stared in shock at the mangled door with his jaw hanging open.

Finally, he found his voice again. “What are you thinking!? We’re renting this place!” he yelled, turning back toward the room. He couldn’t believe what had just happened—of course there was the door, but if he hadn’t dodged, he wouldn’t have gotten out of it unharmed, either.

“You don’t just stay out until morning—you’re out all day, too. Aren’t you all high and mighty.…” he heard a low, strangled voice rasp from the sofa under the window. The last rays of the setting sun created a dull spot of light, and the rusty radio sat alone in the middle of the sofa underneath it. Black static drifted around it, like a shapeless mass of microbes.

“What are you gonna do about the door, damn it?”

“What have you been doing?” came back the question, completely ignoring Harvey’s.

“…Nothing worth talking about. I played some cards, then I wandered around thinking about stuff,” he paraphrased, leaning his shoulder lightly on the door frame. To be honest, it was partially that he didn’t want to see Kieli’s face too soon. He got the feeling that he would have to come to some kind of conclusion about that problem when he did.

“Did it even occur to you that Kieli would stay up all night waiting for you to come back?”

“……” Ah, come to think of it, that hadn’t occurred to him.

“Do you remember what I told you before? I thought I told you to think more like Kieli. You’re not sorry at all that you forgot about her birthday, are you?”

“Why are you bringing that up again now? That was days ago. Let it go,” Harvey spat out recklessly. He really didn’t know what it was, but he was tired today. It was too much trouble to even talk anymore, but it didn’t look as though the radio was going to let him go.

“Of course I’m bringing that up now! That’s where you’re lacking in sincerity!” it shouted angrily.

“Sincerity?” What the hell? He was sick of having such abstract things demanded of him as if they were so obviously simple, and at the same time, it made him strangely angry, so an argument rose from him unbidden: “What, you want me to apologize?”

“That’s not the prob—”

“If being sincere will turn back time to her birthday, then I’ll apologize as much as you want. If it could turn back time to the War, I would get on my hands and knees and beg forgiveness. I would do it as many times as I have to if it would make it so I never killed you. If sincerity would cancel out all the murders I’ve committed—”

“That’s not what I’m talking about!” Harvey felt as if he would have gone on forever if no one stopped him, but the radio’s angry shout interrupted him. “I’m just telling you not to betray Kieli’s trust!”

“And that’s a pain in the ass! There’s no guarantee I won’t betray her, so it’s easier on me if she doesn’t trust me! It’s just a burden, to be honest!”

Harvey shouted more loudly than he had planned, and he regretted it immediately afterward as a blast of air flew at him.

He brought his arms up out of reflex and blocked the shock wave, but it sent him flying backward, and he crashed into the door. A thud rang out, duller than before, but heavier. Or maybe he had heard it inside his body.

“Hey! I told you, we’re renting.…” He coughed, peeling his back from the dent it made in the door and somehow managing to stand up. That was an effective hit. If he hadn’t blocked off the pain at the last minute, he would have been in serious trouble. He staggered to the wall and looked at the left arm he was leaning against. Half of the flesh had been sliced off from the back of his hand to the elbow, and he could see a little bone. The metal frame of his right arm was warped slightly as well.

“Damn it, just because I can take it doesn’t mean you should dish out as much as you want.…”

He thought he heard something snap inside his head.

In the dining room, growing dark in the setting sun, greenish black static swirled in the air above the radio. The static gathered, gradually forming a blurry, human silhouette: a one-legged soldier, wearing a brimmed hat low over his eyes. “Oho…? You haven’t made an appearance in a while.…” A smirk rose unconsciously to Harvey’s lips.

“Why you…” When the static soldier opened his mouth, a low, groaning voice sounded from the radio’s speaker. The ceiling light that hadn’t even been on crackled and flickered, and the chair and sofa in the dining area started to shake, making noise against the floor.

“Try saying that to Kieli. I’ll kill you.”

“Go ahead and try.”

They exchanged fighting words—the next instant, the static soldier’s mouth burst open, and the speaker howled, releasing a wave of high, earsplitting noise.

Harvey twisted out of the way and barely managed to dodge; the shock wave grazed his cheek and flew behind him, this time destroying the door. He confirmed that fact just from the crashing sound behind him as he raced down the hall and dove into the inner room. Just then, a dining chair danced into the air and charged at him, as if an invisible hand had thrown it. He didn’t have time to dodge, so he blocked it with his right arm. In that second, the next shock wave attacked him, and he couldn’t defend himself. It landed directly in his side.

But by that time, he was sliding baseball-style into the sofa and giving the radio’s speaker a sharp jab with the elbow of his prosthetic right arm. The round speaker caved in with a crack.

“Da—!” Looking as if it was about to shout one last thing, the image of the soldier wavered and flickered out. The dispersed black static melted into the air a little later.

Harvey figured that it all took about three, four seconds at most.

After that, he lay still with his upper body facedown on the sofa for about ten times that long.

“…Serves—” he finally rasped, with a sigh. “Serves you right. You won’t get me every time,” was all he muttered, then he lay there limp for an even longer time, lacking the will or the energy to get up. In a corner of his eye, he noticed the blood dripping from his side and forming a black pool under the sofa, and his anger flared up again.

Who’s Ephraim?

Kieli muttered the phrase over and over in her mind as she walked beside the woman, hanging her head.

She didn’t think she would ever be able to like this woman who called Harvey by a name from a past Kieli didn’t know. She did know that was Harvey’s other name. But to Kieli, Harvey had been Harvey ever since she heard his name for the first time at Easterbury Station, and he was never once somebody called “Ephraim.”

The woman said she was just like Harvey, so Kieli guessed that meant that she had been alive since the War—she had never imagined there were women Undying, but there was no reason to think it strange that there had been.

“So you’re an orphan? The way I heard it, you resisted the Church, got chased out of your orphanage, and now Ephraim’s taking care of you?”

“It wasn’t an orphanage, it was a boarding school,” Kieli corrected her in a stiff tone, fixing her gaze on the asphalt diagonally below her. The other parts seemed kind of wrong, too, but the meaning came across well enough, so she decided not to care.

Kieli didn’t really adjust her pace as she climbed the slope to her apartment, and the woman walked beside her, pushing her three-wheeled bike and wearing a cool expression. But three-wheeled bikes, with their giant fossil fuel tanks, weren’t supposed to be light enough that a woman could push them so easily.

“So how long are you planning to tag along with Ephraim?” she asked frankly, and, in a sense, quite rudely.

“I plan on tagging along as long as Harvey doesn’t tell me not to,” Kieli answered, speaking quickly and still looking down.

The woman closed her mouth for a time, so Kieli shut her lips as well, and they walked side by side up the slope in silence for a while. The last rays of the sun disappeared in the shadows of the buildings’ roofs, and the brief, orange-colored twilight came to an end as the long, blue-gray night fell. As if matching their pace to gradually show them the way, streetlamps lit up, one by one.

“You know that Undying are immortal and don’t age, right?” The woman resumed her questioning. Kieli furrowed her brow a little and looked sideways at her.

Even if she hadn’t met Harvey, everybody knew that. They were “moving corpses,” with eternally operating power sources instead of hearts. Made from the recycled dead bodies of soldiers in the old War, they were said to have gone on killing sprees across the planet.

Why would she ask something so nasty? Kieli had thought she was a nice person when they’d first met, but now she was positive that had been a mistake. In her mind, she resolutely withdrew her first impression that this woman resembled Becca. Becca was mischievous and selfish and spoiled, but she would never be so insinuating and mean.

She didn’t answer out loud, only nodded sulkily in the affirmative. “Oh, good. You do know,” the woman said, smiling with relief. Was she making fun of Kieli just now? “And you’re not like that. You’re a normal girl, you know?”

“…What are you trying to say?” Kieli asked in return, in a low voice clearly revealing her suspicious attitude.

The woman turned her gaze forward again and continued. “I hear it was your birthday the other day. Happy birthday.”

Her congratulations lacked sincerity, and Kieli answered, “Thanks,” with a scowl. So Harvey had told the woman that much. It wasn’t really a problem for her or anything, but she had never even imagined him talking about such everyday things with anyone other than herself.

Still facing front, the woman glanced over at her, then looked ahead again.

“Maybe you were just happy and didn’t mean anything by it. But you probably didn’t consider what he was thinking then. You might grow up, but he won’t get any older. Have you ever thought about how it feels to be left behind?”

Three steps.

Kieli walked on, then stopped.

She turned haltingly back toward the woman. The woman, too, had stopped pushing the bike, and she coldly caught Kieli’s gaze as she looked up at her. Her clear blue eyes seemed to have sunken to a dark color under the night sky.

“You’re the only one who was happy. It’s selfish of you to ask him to celebrate with you, and not only is it annoying to him, you might as well be deliberately tormenting him.”

“That’s…not true…,” she tried to counter, but her voice caught in her throat and the sentence disappeared, unfinished.

Now that it came up, it was true that Kieli had thought only about herself that day. It never occurred to her what a birthday might mean to Harvey, but…but.…She tried to argue in her head as she thought back on it. He did apologize for being late, and he did eat the cake with her, but more than anything, she didn’t want this person she didn’t know suddenly being the one to point this stuff out.

“If you really care about him, I’m saying this for your own good: Just get away from him as fast as you can. That’s what I wanted to tell you. The longer you put it off, the more painful it will be, for you, too.”

“That’s—” Kieli interrupted, suddenly facing forward. “That’s not your place to say.” She said it over her shoulder as she started to walk again, so quickly she was almost sprinting. She passed by the apartment and turned onto the outside stairway beside it.

The woman followed behind her, pushing her bike. “If it’s not my place to say,” she pursued, “then you’ll agree if I get Ephraim to tell you, right?”

“Harvey wouldn’t…” Kieli started to object automatically, then her feet stilled to a halt again.

She glared at the first step on the flight of stairs ahead of her and bit her lower lip. In a corner of her heart, she was always worried that he might say something like that someday. Or that he might disappear one morning without a word.

The woman glanced her way as she stopped her bike beside the stairs and deliberately sighed.

“Well, I don’t think he’ll say it, but that’s just because he’s not thinking too hard about the future. He’s always had an unconscious habit of avoiding thinking about anything that bothers him.”

“Wh-what do you know…?”

“I at least know more than you.”

“Because you’re an Undying, too? I…I wish I was like Harvey, too, you know!” she wailed unthinkingly and glared up; that instant, the woman’s palm flew at her. Kieli gulped, forgetting even to close her eyes. The hand stopped right before slapping her face, and Kieli’s bangs fluttered a little in the wind it had created.

“…You’re the one who doesn’t know anything,” the low, quiet voice came from above her. They were a completely different color, but for some reason, in the blue eyes, purposely devoid of emotion, she saw Harvey’s.

“It’s not your place to yell at me, either!” Kieli managed to squeeze that one line out of her throat, suppressing the trembling in her voice, then spun around and escaped into the stairway.

Her trotting footsteps rang from the galvanized metal stairs as she made excuses in her mind: I didn’t mean to say that. She just provoked me. But she didn’t think it was fair. Kieli was sure that that woman had known him much longer than she had, and her circumstances were more similar to Harvey’s, so of course she would know Harvey better.

I know I can’t be with him forever.

It really stung somehow, and her eyes filled with tears. Was it wrong to want to be with him a little longer despite all that? Why should she have to listen to this woman who appeared out of nowhere and talked as if she was trying to destroy the time they had now?

She ran to the third floor in one sprint, stepped out into the hall, and stopped for a minute, panting. She threw her gaze pleadingly at the second door down: their apartment, where Kieli, Harvey, and the Corporal all lived together.

A foolish, confused sound escaped her mouth. It sounded more like an “Uh?” than any real word.

There was no door in the doorway. But there was a spectacularly deformed rectangular iron plank lying outside it.…She heard the click of a door opening and looked up to see the resident of the apartment one door past theirs peek out a little and then immediately rush back inside, afraid.

“Wh-what…?” She gasped and ran through the door—or rather, the empty hole—and through the hall, then stopped in front of the entrance to the dining area.

Faint bluish light from outside illuminated the sofa under the window of the gloomy room. Kieli saw the terrible scene spread out before her and froze in shock. The dining table was lying on its side, and the legs and seats of the two chairs that used to be there lay in pieces across the floor. Small, sparkling bits were scattered everywhere. They were pieces of the light from the ceiling.

“Harvey…! Corporal?”

She peered into the bedroom and naturally saw no sign of Harvey, but there was no hint of the radio, either. She remembered forgetting it and leaving it on the sofa that morning, then hurried back to the dining area and started toward the sofa; but after one step, something caught her eye. She stopped with a gulp.

Under the sofa, which was tilting on its broken leg, there was what appeared to be a pool of black water.

She figured it was blood.

Before she thought about anything, she turned around and dashed out of the room. “What’s going on!?” At the doorway, she crashed into the woman, who had come up the stairs behind her.

“Out of the way; this is serious!” Kieli shoved her away and ran into the hall, trampling on the iron board and tripping over her feet toward the stairs.

“Wah!”

At the corner of the hall, her head rammed into the chest of someone who had just come up the stairs. Without even looking, she knew who it was from the smell of tobacco on his shirt. She grabbed at his chest and clung to him.

“Harvey! I think we’ve been robbed! The Corporal…!” She looked up, pleading desperately, but he didn’t seem particularly surprised as he looked down at her with his usual unemotional copper eyes.

“Robbed?” he muttered, then glanced at the twisted metal plank—the remains of their door—lying in the hall and, with a look of almost admiration, said, “Oh, if there was a thief that’d go that far, I’d actually like to tell him he was kind of refreshing.”

“Harvey…?”

She got a contradictory impression, as if he was the same, but somehow different; and Kieli automatically backed away a little. That’s when she noticed that Harvey’s left arm and left side were covered in blood. She remembered the pool of blood under the sofa.

“What’s wrong? What—”

“It’s nothing. We just had a little fight is all.”

“Little…?” The room was in shambles, the door was gone, Harvey was covered in blood, and he called it “little”? Kieli looked up in mute amazement as Harvey furrowed his brow in annoyance, maybe irritated that he had to explain.

“The Corporal! Where’s the Corporal?”

“I threw him away.” He practically spat the answer.

She couldn’t understand what he meant. She opened her mouth two, three times, then, “Threw him away…?” She was about to question him when Harvey suddenly seemed to notice something and shifted his gaze to the doorway. He made a face of the utmost irritation.

“…Bea.”

“Beatrix.” The blond woman appeared in the doorway, her clear voice ringing out over Harvey’s murmur.

“Don’t come in here. What do you want?”

“What a thing to say. I wish you’d at least thank me for all the trouble you put me through.”

Their threatening glares and conversation collided above Kieli’s head. The atmosphere was tense, very unlike the previous night.

“Looks like you’ve really done a number here. You were never able to live a normal life anyway.”

“I doubt you came here to make sarcastic comments.”

“I don’t have that much free time. Did you think about what I said last night?”

In response to her question, Harvey clicked his tongue and turned on his heels without a word. He was about to go back down the stairs he had just climbed. “Harvey, wait!” Kieli hurried a few steps below him and stood in his way.

“Hey, what do you mean you threw him away? You and the Corporal had a fight? Why?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

“Why can’t you tell me now? Is there something you need to do?”

“I can’t go out without something I need to do?”

“Well, you’re hurt, and you just got back. You didn’t come home last night, either.”

Harvey tried to push her out of the way and get past her, but she clung to his arm.

“Don’t run away. Tell me why, Harvey!”

“No one’s running away. Move.”

He shook her hand off roughly, and it flailed in the air. She stumbled and staggered backward. Her heel missed the step and she dropped down. “Ah…!” someone cried out in shock— she felt as though it wasn’t her voice, but Harvey’s. Or maybe it was both.

The scenery spun before her and she saw the night sky overhead. She didn’t know how far down she fell, but it felt like only a second later that she heard the wham of an impact somewhere in her head just before her vision went completely gray.

A little later, red started seeping in from the edges and colored everything.

He thought the world had gone black and white.

A gray stairway, a black-haired girl fallen on the landing, her white profile and closed eyelids. Gray, black, and white; those were the only colors he saw as he froze, staring at the scene below him. Eventually, a red stain spread from the girl’s temple, invading his monochrome world with the bright color of blood.

The image entered Harvey’s vision, but he couldn’t think about what it meant. Stairs, a landing, a girl, fallen, a pool of blood, stairs, a girl—what was this? It made him sick.

“What are you doing? Out of the way!”

Someone suddenly shoved him aside. He staggered and leaned on the handrail. A woman with long blond hair rushed past him and ran down the stairs. She crouched down in front of the girl, quickly assessed the situation, then shot her gaze up at him.

“Stop standing there and help me, Ephraim!”

Hearing his name freed him from his paralysis.

He practically fell down the stairs and knelt by the girl. “Kieli.…” He touched her temple with his fingers and involuntarily pulled them away at the feel of the lukewarm blood—his left hand was beat up and covered in blood, too. He couldn’t remember why.

He reached out again and timidly touched the girl’s face.

“Kieli, hey…?”

He called her name, but the girl’s eyes stayed firmly shut and she didn’t move. She didn’t move…why not? Because she fell down the stairs. Because someone pushed her. Who…?

Me?

“Oh, I’m so ashamed. One of our lovers’ spats got a little out of hand. I hope you’ll pretend you didn’t see anything.”

As she said it, even Beatrix couldn’t imagine just how epic a lovers’ quarrel would have to be to bend a door and knock it off its hinges. As the doctor cocked his head suspiciously, though, she used her best professional smile to flatter him and drive him off. She thought she would hear someone chime in from behind, asking who was having a lovers’ quarrel with whom. When nothing came, she was a little disappointed.

I’m not putting on this ridiculous show because I want to, you know.…

No one was asking, but she made the excuse inwardly anyway as she did what she could to force the mangled door back into place (though it was covered with holes) and went back inside the apartment.

She looked at the dining room, still in shambles, and gave a light sigh, then peered through the bedroom door.

“He says there’s nothing to worry about. The cut wasn’t as deep as we thought, and she’ll be fine as long as she wakes up. Honestly, you people are so much trouble.” Acting like such a nice person gave her the creeps, if she did say so, so she added some criticism at the end.

She waited a little, but there was no response from the bedroom.

In the dim light, a girl slept in the bed inside the room, gauze over the right side of her forehead. A young man with copper-colored hair sat next to her, not in a chair, but on the floor, leaning against the edge of the bed. He didn’t watch over the girl, but rather turned his back on her, and when Beatrix checked what he was doing, it was just a meaningless cycle of rolling his lighter in his hands, then lighting it and staring at it.

She’d forced him to change his blood-covered clothing before the doctor arrived, but she could still see his wound from the sleeve of his left hand, the one holding the lighter.

Beatrix sighed and leaned lightly on the bedroom doorway.

“To be honest, I’m surprised to see that you’re so attached to the girl that you can get that hopeless. What’s so special about her?”

No reaction.

“This turned out not to be serious, so that’s fine. Still, I know that someday, something will happen that you won’t be able to fix. You’re a fugitive yourself. You can’t live a life free of danger.”

No reaction.

“And besides, that girl is too heavy a burden for you. An immature, inconsiderate brat like you who can only move at his own pace—there’s no way you could keep taking care of someone else. That girl’s life won’t last long. If you keep dragging her around with you everywhere, you’ll completely ruin it. Are you prepared for that? Are you confident that you won’t regret it?”

No reaction.

“Hey, there’s still time to turn back. You should leave that girl with someone, do something, anything to give her a normal life back. That would be better for you and for her.”

No reac—

But this time, he did react. Without warning, he got up, shoved his hands—lighter and all—in his pockets, and walked toward her. He was about to keep going and leave without a word, so she asked, “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to get the radio,” he murmured in a whisper, not looking at her as he passed by.

“Look, I’m trying to have a serious conversation here. You could at least listen a little!”

“I was listening.”

“……” His response was so unexpectedly frank that she couldn’t voice her next complaint right away.

After he left the bedroom, he stopped once. “I’ll give it a little thought. Real thought,” he said without turning around, then left the hall without further hesitation.

Beatrix stood gaping, listening to the thud of the door falling into the outside hall. It surprised her. She didn’t think he would actually listen. She may have been the one trying to persuade him, but she actually hadn’t expected much.

“Huh? It’s gone…,” he muttered to himself as he kicked through the mountain of trash.

The corner in the alley behind the apartment building had an area that had become the neighborhood trash heap. It was doubtful that anyone came to collect it, though, and the trash accumulated in large mounds. He searched for a while, relying on the light from the streetlamp some way off, but the piece of junk he was looking for was not where he thought he had left it.

Maybe it walked back on its own?

Harvey realized how stupid it sounded the instant he thought it, but a second later, for some reason he started to seriously think that it might have really happened.

He imagined two feet with shoes sprouting from the radio as it strutted down the street with a strangely bold stride. “Ha-ha…” he laughed out loud in spite of himself, still looking down. As it marched down the road, its speaker kept saying something, speaking quickly. It wasn’t the Corporal’s voice, but several voices blended together, and they became a monotone voice that didn’t belong to anyone: You’re lacking in sincerity trust is annoying there’s no guarantee I won’t betray her if getting on my hands and knees would make it so I never killed you to be honest it’s a burden back to the time of the War murderer don’t run away—

The thought cut off.

Still in the same pose, Harvey gazed at his shoes. The wind blew an empty cigarette box from the mountain of trash. It slid, then rolled down the hill with a dry rustle.

“…I have to find him,” he murmured, looking aimlessly upward. By that time, that was all he thought about. He had to find the radio and bring it home. The impetus took hold of him like an obsession, but he had nowhere to look. His gaze wandered left and right.

He noticed a muffled commotion coming from the other side of the building. He felt as if he was only starting to hear it, but maybe it had been there the whole time without registering—he shuddered to think that that was just how dull his powers of perception had become.

Several voices flew about. Apparently there was a group of people. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, but from their tones, they seemed to be arguing about something.

“……?”

Harvey found himself heading toward them. He walked over the trash littering the ground and out of the alley, then looked across the street from the shadow of the building and saw about ten people together. He noticed that a few of them held long guns in their hands, and he automatically put his guard up and took half a step backward.

In their motley clothing, they looked like no more than ordinary citizens at first glance, but he could tell from the air around them that they must be the Watch, or whatever it was called. The group had surrounded a short man and were demanding something. They seemed to be out for blood.

He recognized the man: an appearance of indeterminate age that looked both old and young, and—what drew the viewer’s attention more than anything—a bizarre monocle eating into his left eye.

The man showed no sign of fear of the thugs surrounding him. “You think you can kill them with those guns? You poor things. You don’t know how terrifying they can be.” Harvey didn’t know what they were talking about, but the man was clearly mocking them. One of the watchmen grew angry and grabbed him by the collar. The small man’s feet floated into the air as the large watchman pulled him up, and the radio he held dangled in his hand.…Huh? Radio?

“Ah!” Harvey accidentally cried out, and the entire group turned his way. He immediately cursed his blunder. He really must have been out of it to make such a rookie mistake. Instinctively he turned to run, then realized that he was just an ordinary bystander, so he could just walk by like normal, but then again, he had to get back the radio that guy was holding—Hey, why can’t I make such a simple decision?

While he struggled to make up his mind, the man with the monocle, still hanging by his collar, suddenly pointed at him.

“Oh, perfect. You can try it out by shooting him,” he said, and there was no doubt that nobody there, especially Harvey himself, could have imagined what would come next. There was no way they could have. Without warning, the little man grabbed the barrel of the watchman’s rifle, pointed it at Harvey’s face, and pulled the trigger.

A gunshot thundered through the night street. “Wha…!?” Harvey didn’t have time to completely dodge, but he avoided a direct hit. The bullet shaved off some of his right cheekbone as it passed by and pierced the concrete wall of the building behind him. Cries of shock close to screams rose among the men of the Watch.

Crap.…

He immediately hid his face with his arm and turned around. Right before he escaped into the alley, he saw the monocled man get up with surprising speed after having been flung to the ground, slip through the group of watchmen who were standing ready to flee, and run down a different alley.

“Did you find him!?”

“No, he’s that way!”

They were probably looking for the monocled man. Harvey avoided the watchmen running around town, shouting angrily to each other, and took back alleys, navigating in the direction the man had escaped.

What the hell is with that guy…?

He’d thought the man was weird from the time he met him at the antique shop, but he’d never dreamed the man would do something so crazy. Harvey’s first objective was to recover the radio, but it looked as if he would have to question his assailant about some other things as well.

And then he’d give him a good kick.

This would scar a normal person for life.…

Harvey cursed, wiping the blood from his cheek with the back of his hand as he ran. The left hand he used to wipe the blood still hadn’t healed from when the radio got it. He didn’t know what the deal was, but this was a thoroughly bad day. Maybe it was finally time to pay off the karmic tab he had accumulated with his daily conduct.

He saw a few members of the Watch at the end of the street. They were patrolling the area with flashlights, ready to kill. Right before a light came his way, he turned ninety degrees and went down a side road—he didn’t know why he had to be on the run, too, but he somehow knew intuitively that making contact with those guys would mean trouble.

He stopped midway down the alley and caught his breath.

He was at a clear disadvantage. He had to make sure not to run into the Watch while finding the guy they were looking for before they did. Just as he felt he had reached a bit of an impasse, he heard a whispered “You!” diagonally above him.

Harvey looked up and saw a shadow peering at him from the corner of a building at the exit of a steeply sloping alley. The black luster of the monocle’s outline rose out of the bluish dark of the night. He shuddered for an instant but immediately ran toward it, and the second he got out of the alley, he reached for the man’s collar.

“You’ve sure got guts talking to m—”

The instant Harvey grabbed him, a sudden gust of wind blew from beside him, hitting him with a whap. Harvey cut himself off and looked at his surroundings, still holding the man.

The pavement broke off there, and a rock cliff dropped almost vertically at his feet, as if the darkness was sucking the road down into it.

Apparently he had reached the outskirts of town. The place where he’d come out of the alley was the cliff face that bordered the city. A tiered, sloping path formed a gentle arch leading down to the streetlights of downtown, or stretching up to the fault that towered blackly behind the city.

During the day, he would be able to look out over the South-hairo wilderness below the cliff, but now, all that lay there was a pitch-black darkness that gave no sense of distance. An occasional gust whirled around his feet. Understandably, he shuddered and backed away ever so slightly from the edge, then faced the man again. Suddenly a hand was thrust into his face.

“Ack! Don’t touch me.”

Apparently the blood on his cheek fascinated the man, who tried to touch it. Harvey started and shook him off. As usual, it was impossible to predict this lunatic’s actions.

The man scrutinized the blood on his fingers with his monocle.

“Ah, the blood of an Undying. I knew it.”

“…Who are you?” Harvey tightened his grip on the man’s collar. “Depending on your answer, I might kill you, so if you want to say your final prayers, do that first.” He hadn’t yet decided what type of answer would result in this man’s murder; nevertheless he questioned him menacingly. His captive seemed unperturbed, however, and sniffed at and licked the blood on his fingers. Harvey felt a chill and immediately slapped the man’s hand away as the man answered in a tone that implied the matter was none of his concern:

“I used to work at a lab in the capital. A lab with connections to the Church. I saw your kind there.”

“You want to tell me all about it, don’t you? That’s why you brought it up.”

“I wouldn’t mind. They chased me out. I have no obligation to maintain confidentiality. Will you come to my home?”

The man answered disappointingly readily and turned his monocled gaze up the slope. Harvey followed his gaze up to the top of the tiered path, where the black peak of the fault lay under the night sky. He remembered the antique shop’s keeper telling him that the man was a freak who lived in the ruins. Harvey hadn’t thought much about it at the time, but around here “ruins” meant…

“Hey, there he is!”

Harvey turned toward the interjecting voice and saw a member of the Watch run up from the other side of the alley carrying a rifle. Maybe the Watch member himself was surprised that he’d found his quarry. He stood frozen for a second before turning to call for help. Then he looked back at them and cried, “So you two were in cahoots!?”

“No!” Harvey yelled back immediately. He wasn’t happy with that misunderstanding. The watchman reacted to his voice and directed his attention to Harvey. That instant, an expression of fear shot across his face.

“Ack!”

With a short scream, he pointed his gun in Harvey’s direction. Harvey realized it must have been strange to see someone with half his face covered in blood in the dark of night.

As a shot rang out, the watchman cried out in surprise. (Maybe you didn’t mean to fire, but hey, I’m the surprised one here!) The bullet drilled into the paved stairs at Harvey’s feet, and he instinctively pulled his shoe back. His heel reached the edge of the cliff. He lost his balance and staggered backward.

He simultaneously thought, “I’m falling,” and “Should I push the monocled guy away?” and in that instant, he toppled over the cliff, still holding the man’s collar.

I have to get up, Kieli thought in a panic, but she couldn’t lift her head.

She wanted to stand right up and say something like, “Ah-ha-ha, I missed my step. Sorry for scaring you like that,” but her body was stuck tightly to the ground, as if sewn in place, and she simply couldn’t move.

Her field of vision was pitch-black. She couldn’t see a thing. But she could sense that Harvey was nearby. The instant she thought so, a dull light rose on the other side of her eyelids, and in the hazy space it created, she could see the back of a copper-colored head. He sat on the floor, looking down and playing with his lighter in his left hand. It was a gesture she had seen from time to time. She remembered he had a habit of doing that when he was losing at cards.

I have to get up.

She thought she needed to hurry and get up and put his mind at ease. See, look? I’m fine. I’m fine, so you don’t…

So you don’t have to look like you’re going to cry.

His gaze was as empty as always as he contemplated his lighter, and he didn’t really look at all as if he was going to cry. For some reason, though, the thought came naturally.