Chapter 6
“Come in the daytime. Come in the daytime, have lunch, take a walk…” There was no answer. Rafael turned his back and walked away. Gerald called after his back, “Come in the daytime,” once more.
“Coming in the daytime will be better for you than coming in the evening, you prim little Rapi!” Rafael’s back seemed to stagger, too. But there was no answer.
“You’re on hiatus, I hear?”
Rafael had already heard this from three people. He gave the face of the general store owner, a regular of his, a brief glance, then returned his gaze to the goods and answered in an indifferent voice,
“Yeah.”
“Is something wrong?”
“No.”
“Then why are you on hiatus? The weapons dealer Rosen said, if any swords come in for a while, don’t show them to you, just sell them.”
General store owner John asked seriously if he was sick somewhere. Rafael, without giving John, who was always obsequious to his customers, whether they were a killing machine or whatever, so much as a glance, muttered as he checked the blanket,
“Just.”
“Just?”
“Just, somehow it feels like things won’t go the way I want.” While Rafael turned the blanket over and checked it, Rosen watched Rafael. This killing machine was popular among merchants. He did not throw tantrums, and he almost never bought on credit. And he had a lot of money, too. Actually, to a merchant, whether the other party was a killing machine or a saint, if they spent money well and had good manners, that was enough.
Remembering that weapons dealer Rosen had said with a gloomy face, “One big spender’s gone,” John subtly laid out his new products.
“John!”
As if he had noticed that sly trick, Rafael called John at just the right moment.
“Huh?!”
“This blanket… I heard there are good ones too.” At Rafael’s words, John frowned.
“At best it’s a moisture-proof blanket. For putting a corpse in, they’re all the same anyway.”
“Still.”
“Really, all they did was dye it red. As much of a merchant as I am, I don’t want to recommend that kind of thing to a longtime customer like you, hey.”
At John’s words, Rafael lowered his eyes. What rose in his mind was the noble girl. His double, who had come running barefoot in such haste, the warm breath that still had body heat. He could not imagine her corpse, continuing to rot. The most noble woman in the world had become vermin in an instant. But he did not want to treat her like that. She is a corpse, and whatever blanket she is wrapped in, she will not know. Rafael knew better than anyone in the world that this was useless sentiment and extravagance.
But he also could not think of a corpse as completely useless trash. He was one of the people who had seen the most corpses. He knew all too well how fiercely those people fought until the very moment they died. Rafael wanted to comfort the soul’s other self, who had fought fiercely against life until the very moment she chose suicide. Or perhaps he wanted to comfort himself, grown lonely at learning of her death.
“Give me red.”
“Red costs more, that’s the thing. This country loves red so much, you know.” The red cloth of fate. Yulez had handed it to the four children who ruled the earth, and Tioan had wrapped Portamis’s corpse in that red cloth. Because people longed to wrap the person dearest to them in red cloth, red was always more expensive than anything else. And this red waterproof blanket, wrapped around a loved one for the last time before they were sent away, cost three times as much as any other color, but Rafael bought it anyway and left the general store.
A red sunset was pouring over the stone road. Rafael stood before the general store’s wooden door, staring blankly at the sunset. There are times when you get a premonition before doing something. He had one now. A feeling that things would not go smoothly.
You are the only one I have.
But he could not turn his back. That tearful plea still rang in his ears, and while he might have turned away once, he could not turn away twice.
As dusk began to fall, Rafael walked the street, glancing up at the sky. The presence he felt behind him was unmistakably a tail. Where would be a good place to shake him off. Normally he might have dragged him into a back alley and disposed of him without anyone knowing, but he was not on a job right now, and Rafael had no desire to go to unnecessary trouble.
Just then he stopped a passing carriage, climbed into a seat, and held out a banknote to the driver.
“Are you busy?”
The driver grinned without turning around.
“Not busy. Busy, indeed!”
“Just drive for now.”
No sooner had Rafael spoken than the carriage set off. Looking through the rear window, he saw the tail staring blankly after the carriage, his face crestfallen. He was fairly big, but his face was young. He had probably taken money from a stranger hoping to earn a little pocket money and stuck to Rafael’s trail. In the slums there were often pitiful young people who lost their lives that way. Turning his gaze away from the lucky moth among those poor moths who lost their one life in exchange for the base money of despicable people, Rafael fiddled with the blanket within reach. It had a texture so soft it made him sigh, and yet it was an item for a dead person, not a living one. The irony of it.
“Where are you going, sir?” the driver asked through a window no bigger than a palm.
Rafael thought of where the Shore family’s main house was. It was where the mansions of the nobility were gathered, and befitting a prestigious family, the Shore mansion stood in the very middle of them. Looking out at the street, which had not yet grown dark, Rafael named a gambling house two blocks away from that street. The driver, who knew Rafael was no respectable man even if he did not know he was Rafael Evans, named a price with a quiet markup. If he had known it was Rafael Evans, he would probably have shut his mouth, driven him wherever he wanted, and then clung to his trouser leg begging him to spare his life and tell no one.
Rafael accepted the slightly marked-up price without a word of protest.
“Off we go, sir!”
The carriage rattled along the stone road. After they had driven for a while and the wealthy quarter, lined with the mansions of the nobility, came into view, Rafael took his wallet from his pocket, slipped money gently into the driver’s window, and opened the door. Looking around from atop the rattling carriage, he jumped down without hesitation. The moment he crossed the small stone bridge, the carriage was already rattling its door as it vanished far into the distance.
Brushing his hands together, Rafael took the blanket and forced open the sewer door beneath the bridge. The iron-barred door shook a few times, then the lock broke with a violent sound. Opening the door and going in, Rafael took a small portable lantern from his breast and lit it.
The sewer system of the wealthy quarter where the nobility lived was astonishingly well made. Unlike the slums, filth of every kind did not roll about everywhere. The sewer system of nobles who would throw away their lives for their own convenience was clean beyond imagination. How clean, you ask.
“Shore… this way.”
Clean enough that every sewer facility had a signpost attached to it. Night visitors, Rafael included, slipped into the nobles’ mansions through this convenient and clean underground passage. It was no longer a secret. Rafael could not understand why the nobility did not fix this sewer system. But since it was there, there was nothing to do but make good use of it.
Walking toward the Shore house, Rafael listened to the sound of the water. All sorts of things floated on the water. Watching combs and tin cans, jewels that looked like a woman’s brooch, and the corpses of rats and humans drift by indifferently, Rafael took a running start and hung from a pipe on the ceiling when the sound of the water grew ominous.
Suddenly, with a great roar, water came flooding in. It was as if the place had flooded, a tremendous amount of water pouring in, but Rafael moved along the ceiling pipes upside down, little by little, his face expressionless. Watching the places that had been paths just moments before become submerged in water, he moved from pipe to pipe without any particular worry and reached a ladder.
On the ladder, a sign reading “Shore” was proudly attached. Rafael hesitated a little, then tore the sign off, snapped it in half, and threw it onto the water. He had no wish to leave up a sign that was as good as saying, “Assassins welcome.”
Opening the sewer cover and coming out, he found a forest spread before him. Unable to tell whether it was the outer garden or the inner garden, Rafael looked around for a moment, then took the simplest approach. He climbed a tree. Thinking that the blue roof visible in the distance was probably the main building, he still could not judge whether this was the inner garden or the outer garden. The surrounding forest was so enormous. In any other mansion, this would obviously be the outer garden, but somehow it felt like the inner garden. Befitting a family that had prospered ever since the founding of the kingdom, it was a tremendous sight.
Having confirmed his direction, Rafael jumped down to the ground.
“Rapi!”
There was exactly one person in the world who called him that, and he had only discovered that person yesterday. But the voice sounded different from that person’s, so when he turned his head, there was indeed a completely different man sitting on a horse.
He had neither Gerald la Shore’s black hair, nor his purple eyes, nor his muscular body. He was a delicate, handsome man. It was not that he could be called unmuscular, but compared to Gerald la Shore, he was slender rather than muscular. Though perhaps that was simply because Gerald la Shore’s body was too good.
Instead of asking an intruder who he was, the man came straight at him calling him Rapi. While Rafael blinked, the man got down from his horse, came over laughing loudly, put his hands under Rafael’s armpits, and lifted him high into the air.
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