Chapter 2
Homecoming
“Your face is cold as ever today.”
A man spoke to him, whistling. The young man, neat but with a somewhat gloomy beauty, turned his gaze briefly toward the man. His eyes were cold. When the black eyes of the killing machine, which seemed never to have held any emotion at all, moved to look at him, the man felt a chill.
The young man, Rafael Evans, was famous. He was famous for his skill, of course, but he was even more famous as a killing machine. The contract killer, said to have not a shred of hesitation when it came to killing people, had been born the child of some noble house and abandoned to a guild. There are many kinds of guilds in the world, but of all things he had been abandoned to “Black Water,” which would do anything for money, and there he was thoroughly trained as an assassin. He committed his first murder at fourteen, and the story was famous that, unlike the other boys who trembled, he broke his opponent’s neck in a single motion. After six years of his “repayment period,” the boy became twenty. There had been about thirty children who received assassin training with him. Of them, seven had died before fourteen, before their first mission, and fourteen had died before twenty. In other words, by the time the repayment period ended and he was freed from the guild, able to take on free contracts, twenty-one of the thirty were dead. He was one of the nine. Of the nine, two had become one-eyed, and one had become one-armed. Of the remaining six, four were cases of coming back to life after grave injuries. Of the last two, one had become a madman who had gone wild for blood after repeated killings. And the last one was Rafael Evans.
Rafael Evans was definitely peculiar. He was a sword collector, but he was not mad for blood, and although he had passed through dangerous crises and been tortured several times during missions, not a single scar remained on his body. He never took revenge on those who had tortured him, either. That is not to say there was anyone in this world who ignored Rafael Evans. Rafael Evans was a terrifying monster. When a client asked him to kill someone painfully, he did so. When he had to extract a confession on a commission, he did that too. He was a craftsman. A master of torture and murder. Rafael did not take personal revenge, but people feared him. They feared him all the more because he did not take personal revenge. He was a cold-hearted killing machine. Once you were in his hands, there were no mistakes.
Rafael Evans turned twenty-three this year. He could still be called a newcomer in this world, and yet Rafael was already a celebrity, a killing machine who had never failed at any commission. The gloomy, beautiful young man, whose heart seemed to beat tick-tock rather than thump-thump, had finished another difficult commission and returned to the guild with a cold face.
“My money?”
“Payment’s in progress. Just wait a little.”
Rafael gave a faint nod and sat on the worn sofa. The man felt a chill at being with the killing machine, but, veteran broker that he was, he did not show it. Instead he smiled brightly and offered Rafael a greeting, asking if he had had a hard time getting through the city gate. When Rafael answered, “Not really,” the man frowned.
“Really, it was nothing at all?”
That can’t be, how strange. Rafael glanced at the man as his head moved from side to side. The man, the broker for Black Water guild’s contract-killing deals, was smooth-tongued. Because he met so many contract killers, he was a strong-hearted man who could deal without batting an eye even with a man called a monster like himself, but for some reason he was uniquely afraid of Rafael. He did not show it, but Rafael could clearly feel it. He dislikes me. Whether he fears me or finds me unpleasant, either way he dislikes me. He disliked Rafael more than the ones said to be mad for blood, more than the ones rumoured to have committed the most atrocious deeds.
But finding it curious that such a man was tilting his head and calling it strange, Rafael asked, “What?”
“Because of Portamis, things are eerie around the city gate right now, aren’t they?”
“Portamis? You mean the goddess of the east continent who killed herself?”
At Rafael’s question, the man turned to look at him. With the dazed attitude of someone looking at a human from the age of dolmens, he asked back, “You don’t know Portamis?”
“The goddess of the east continent who killed herself. The twin of Tioan, the god of learning.”
“You really don’t know… These days, when people say Portamis, they don’t mean that goddess who killed herself, they mean the queen consort who killed herself.”
Rafael Evans and he had known each other for a good ten years at least, but they had never had a conversation this long. Thinking, this is a conversation like ordinary people have, the broker went on chattering with his back turned.
“Well, the queen consort must have had a hard time, I suppose. The king is a lover of men, as the whole world knows. In her days as Crown Princess, there’s a rumour that she only shared his bed because she had no choice, what with his tiger of a mother, but anyway, now the king is not the crown prince but the king, so even the Empress Dowager can’t touch him, and these days he’s supposedly seeing someone… Anyway…”
The broker was in the middle of saying that the queen consort had killed herself, and the Shore family seemed to be in a complete mess, and that Queen Consort Marie Trijia must have been quite popular, really, the best apart from the king, when he could not finish his sentence and his eyes went wide. Rafael had grabbed his forearm for the first time and forcibly turned him around. Rafael, short in stature, was glaring up at him from below.
“Who died?”
The killing intent was far from ordinary, and the broker swallowed hard. Rafael Evans was a killing machine, but he was not a man who laid hands on a broker, so for the moment he was only bewildered by the sudden change.
“Th-the queen consort.”
“Are you saying Marie Trijia is dead?”
“Th-that’s Marie Trijia now, but, ah, well. She’s been demoted from queen consort to royal consort, and it looks like she’ll soon be a deposed consort, so yes, Marie Trijia is right, ow! It hurts!”
“Marie Trijia is dead? She’s to be deposed?”
“D-didn’t you know? She killed herself, suicide. It’s the highest of the twelve sins, they say. Higher than murder, higher than rape, suicide is!” Is this bastard really going to kill me!
The broker met Rafael’s black eyes. The killing intent glittering in them made him think he really might kill him. Good grief, I thought the kid was fairly well-behaved for a killing machine, what kind of bolt from the blue is this! When he squeezed his eyes shut, the broker suddenly felt free. Wondering if he had died and become a wandering soul, he could not bring himself to open his eyes, until the sound of a door closing rang dully.
Huh, what?
The broker cautiously opened his eyes. There was no one in the room. Which meant Rafael had just gone out the door, but to walk out without even taking his money was not like Rafael Evans at all. Was he a fan of the queen consort, by any chance? Queen Consort Marie Trijia had quite a few passionate fans, though they could not compare to the fans of the current king, Ignazio XXIII. Was that killing machine one of them?
Thinking, something’s odd, the broker let out a sigh of relief for the time being. If Rafael Evans set his mind to it, he was clearly no more than a mouthful for him.
Has the killing machine finally broken down?
He sank to the floor with a tearful face. It seemed he had wet his underwear a little.
You’re the only one. If it isn’t you, no one can save me.
Some woman says that. No, she is closer to a girl than a woman. With a bright red robe that brings to mind the red cloth of fate pulled over her head, she came running barefoot and spoke. Even in the moment her slender fingers seized his arm, Rafael somehow could only gaze at her quietly. She was not another person. He had no choice but to admit it. She was not another person, she was himself. She was his own double. Otherwise, he could not possibly be so bewitched by her.
So he lifted her into his arms. The startled girl threw her arms around his neck, and Rafael thought he would never forget that sensation for as long as he lived. It was a strange feeling. The woman was soft, and Rafael thought, to the point of thinking she held something he had lost. But he could not grant what she wanted, so he carried her and set her down in the carriage she had come in. The girl, understanding what his refusal meant…
This can’t be. This can’t be.
It seemed he ought to say he was sorry. Objectively, there was nothing to be sorry about, and yet in the moment she cried, Rafael wanted to say he was sorry. In the moment she came to find him, he realized what she was trying to say. It was as if her soul were whispering to him. As if language flowed from her gaze, her heart was conveyed to him.
But no, Rafael shook his head.
You have to save me. That’s how it is, isn’t it?
She cried. Before the girl crying as if she had lost her mind, Rafael no longer knew what to say. The girl who would become the most noble woman in the world clung to him. As he pushed away the girl clinging to him in a trance, Rafael wanted to say something to her. Something to reassure her, something to say it would be all right. But the killing machine’s stiff tongue could say nothing in the end.
‘Sorry!’
Saying the words she would want least, Rafael struck the side of her neck with his hand. The moment her body lost its strength and collapsed, the nurse who had accompanied her quickly supported her. Rafael closed the carriage door.
“Just drive straight ahead, no matter what. Even if you see a building, never stop, just drive until you reach the 2nd Street police station. Understood?”
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