Silence reigned.

If she idles around in a place like this, the sun will come out sooner or later and returning to the garage will be impossible.

Seymour analyzed the situation thusly, but none of that mattered right now. He grabbed her hand to reassure her that he would stay with her and she didn’t need to worry. He squeezed her fingers to stop her trembling.

He might have squeezed a little too hard, since Lumi jolted at the force, but she didn’t try to shake his hand off.

Her breath left her in puffs of white.

“I feel loneliest when sleeping. Even dreams don’t visit me at night anymore.”

“You don’t feel lonely because you see dreams of what you’ve lost?”

“No, I’m lonely because I can’t even see what I’ve lost in dreams anymore.”

Forgetting and moving on; those two are indispensable if you want to keep living. At least that was Seymour’s idea of a consolation while at the same time laughing at himself for being such a huge hypocrite.

He focused on her slow, gentle pulse as it thumped through their entwined fingers.

“Umm, Mr. Seymour.” Lifting up the blanket with a rustle, Lumi hid most of her face. “……Could you sleep with me?”

Seymour reflexively interpreted the deeper meaning behind her words. And just as he was trying to figure out how to decipher her motives before agreeing to anything, Seymour became aware of the fact that he was actually giving the idea serious thought ── surprisingly so.

“I’d really prefer if you didn’t test the limits of my self-control too much. You might just be asking for a teddy bear to guard you against loneliness, but I’ll become a live bear if pushed, you know?”

The tips of Lumi’s ears peeking out of the blanket became bright red. Apparently she could imagine what that entailed very vividly.

Of course, she probably hadn’t thought of that when she invited him. Or rather, his words tended to be a little bit too direct for an innocent girl like her. Just as he was about to take them back before things became too awkward between them, Lumi beat him to the punch.

“…….I-If it’s j-just a bit, I’m f-fine with it, okay?”

How far does just a bit mean?

Seymour did his best to swallow down those words that he had barely stopped from leaving his mouth. It seemed to him that he’d hurt their relationship for real if he had voiced that thought. He somehow resisted tracing the line of Lumi’s body with his eyes.

Seymour shook his head.

“It’s better to stop with this a bit business.”

“Y-You’re right…I guess. Y-You wouldn’t w-want to do s-something like that with something like me, would you?”

“That’s not the issue here.”

He looked at the outside world, demarcated by the circle of the sewer pipe. Even though this place couldn’t be described as sanitary by any stretch, the scenery outside with one multi-floor building placed right against the next felt much dirtier to him.

“How should I describe it? I can make a move on anyone, but for me you’re the only person that has inherent value.”

“Inherent value?”

Having become terribly embarrassed, Seymour added quickly, “It just means that I want to act cool every once in a while as well.”

He bent forward and kicked off the wall. Since their hands were still connected, Lumi followed as well when he pulled. They started to walk awkwardly, trying not to fall since both were still wrapped up in the blanket.

“If you feel lonely, I’ll hold your hand until you fall asleep. I can compromise that much at least.”

Lumi looked skeptical for a short while, but eventually managed a smile. It was far meaner than usual, but still very charming.

“I guess I have no choice. In exchange, please hold my hand tightly, okay?”

❖ ── ✦ ──『✙』── ✦ ── ❖

“I think I’ve mostly solved it.” Seymour muttered as he stared at the memos strewn before his eyes.

They contained the information he had gathered over several days. It included the current owners of his business cards, and the people who the card holder’s had given Seymour’s telephone number to.

Of course it wasn’t as though he knew the whereabouts of all his business cards, even if there were only a hundred of them around. And seeing how his telephone number was also being passed around by word of mouth, there was no way he could figure out all the people who knew about Courier Seymour Road.

However, he already had plenty to work with here. Seymour extended his hand while sorting the information in his head. He grabbed a cup filled with rippling hot chocolate that was still faintly steaming.

Ever since he was young, he liked drinking hot chocolate. The only thing that could possibly be construed as cooking in his everyday life was how he carefully made hot chocolate and added crushed cardamom to it.

“Mmh, great.”

He fell deeper into his thoughts as the sweetness spread on his tongue.

The five big mafia familia all had their daggers drawn. Of course, whether they were on good terms in the eyes of the public was a valid question, but in reality, they were all in conflict.

Thus Seymour’s information contained nothing but hearsay. It was easy forSeymour to be recommended within a single mafia familia, but it was naturally difficult for his information to spread to different familia.

In other words, having a few samples was enough.

Since he roughly remembered the amount of work he had done for each familia so far, he could also imagine how the information about him had spread. The number of mafia familia that had offered Seymour jobs was one or two, but definitely not more than three.

When he traced the business cards’ whereabouts, only some were connected to the mafia. If he knew which familia his clients belonged to, he could eliminate some familia from the list of people who might be chasing Lumi.

“I have connections with the Blood Famila and the Mollini Famila.”

For the first time, he had a grasp of who had been the source of his jobs. He also supposed that the wolf-like man would inevitably belong to either of those two familia.

Seymour pictured the map of this country in his mind, forcing himself to not remember it so that he’d be able to forget it right away. Of course he didn’t know the layout of the country in as much detail as he did the city, but he was vaguely aware of which cities were outside the sphere of those two familia’s influences while also being close to the ocean.

“Hmm.”

But he halted that train of thought immediately. Personally, he wouldn’t mind deciding on one place now, but he thought it might be better to do so after talking the options over with Lumi. They might end up coming to the same conclusion anyway, but that was the very reason why going with this method would bear more significance.

At this point, he sensed Lumi stirring in the loft.

“……!”

Seymour stood up in a hurry, downing the hot chocolate in one go, and cramming the cup into the sink in the corner of the garage. At the same time, he used his left hand to toss the cocoa powder and cardamom in a toolbox.

Just as he picked up the coffee powder, Lumi’s face popped out of the loft.

“Good morning.”

“Mornin’. Want a coffee, too?” Seymour greeted her with a winning smile, making sure not to give the slightest hint of enjoying the sweetness of his hot chocolate just seconds ago.

He couldn’t quite explain why, but he felt like a guy who worked as a courier by himself and lived in a place like this would look less cool if he was caught habitually drinking hot chocolate. For this reason, he always ─ even before Lumi started living here ─ drank his hot chocolate somewhat sneakily. In the first place, she didn’t even know that such a sweet drink was hidden in the garage.

“Were you able to have a nice dream today? Also, I will brew it. Otherwise I would feel bad about imposing so much on you.” Lumi easily climbed down the ladder, something she had now grown accustomed to doing.

It was a fact that the coffee she diligently prepared was definitely tasty ─ or rather, Seymour actually didn’t really like coffee all that much ─ so he readily yielded the task to her.

Seymour had nothing left to do, so he headed to the shutter, raising it just enough to duck under and not let any sunlight through to Lumi.

“Oh, there’s a newspaper for me today?”

An orphan called Ben, who lived in the neighborhood, would leave the newspaper at his garage on the days he managed to find one. As thanks, Seymour would toss a few coins into the old cup in front of his garage. Ben would come and pick the cup up sooner or later.

As he scanned through the newspaper while waiting for the coffee, he clumsily stuffed a cigarette between his lips. Holding the newspaper with one hand, he groped for his matches with the other.

“──────────”

At that moment, Seymour saw it. The match fell out of his hand, and the piece of wood that had burned brightly a moment ago became black and dirty the instant it touched the ground.

His heart thumped in a way he didn’t like at all.

“──────────This is…”

The newspaper’s front page reported the death of a single man. A man who, upon being discovered yesterday, murdered, was now nothing more than a string of characters in today’s paper.

Isaac Nigel. The man was apparently a member of the Blood Familia’s upper echelon and was famous for being a hawk in his younger days. These days he had exerted his influence on the city from an undisclosed location.

Seymour learned all this information just now. The man’s name and career was something he got to know for the first time through this article. The news story about his death had obviously been printed in quite a hurry; it didn’t even include a photo of the deceased. Because the newspaper was always filled with the deaths of strangers, the death itself didn’t draw Seymour’s attention. Neither was it the name.

Coincidentally, the front page also had a photo of the murder scene ─ in other words, Isaac Nigel’s home. Of course the corpse had already been carried out, and all you could see on the photo was furniture, blood, and smaller articles scattered about. Among the chaotically scattered accessories was a cigar package.

『Toi Mo』

Seymour had seen the brand name on the cigar package. It was such a vivid blue that it stood out even on the monochrome page. It was a rather characteristic package, and they were also the cigars Seymour had always delivered.

The brand was unusual enough that it wasn’t even recorded on the shop’s list.

“Don’t realize.” Unconsciously, Seymour said this aloud. “Don’t realize, don’t realize.”

Seymour had just recently learned that he often received jobs from the Blood Family. Seymour had gotten the job when he had just started as a courier, and had delivered them for a long time. He remembered quite clearly that those packages were valuable cigars by the name 『Toi Mo』.

And right now the mafia man, who had smoked those cigars, had turned into words on the newspaper in Seymour’s hand.

He broke out in a cold sweat.

“Don’t realize, don’t realize, don’t realize, don’t realize, don’t realize.”

He was a mafiosi who had managed to conceal himself all the time. Yet, he was suddenly dead.

Someone had disclosed his location. 『Toi Mo』 was the cigar brand liked by Isaac Nigel. It was one of the very few points of contact between the world and the man in hiding.

As for those who would know about that fact, Seymour himself would be the very first on the list. The courier who brought the cigars to the man in question.

And the next person would be the girl who had recently started to accompany that courier on his jobs after coming to live with him.

“……gh!”

When he tried to open the shutter, Seymour slipped and bumped his shoulder against it. The rusty metal creaked and cluttered loudly. Ignoring the pain, he stood up on the twisted foot, and opened the shutter.

“Huh? Mr. Seymour?”

Lumi held two cups inside the garage. Her usual, gentle smile on the lips. Standing there with her back straight. Her frail arms and legs would convince anyone that she was completely incapable of violence. The wind that blew through the open shutter into the garage heaved up her white hair.

Lumi narrowed her eyes. Probably because of the sudden gust of wind, or maybe because she saw the newspaper in Seymour’s left hand. She tilted her head in confusion, not giving any indication of knowing what the article on the front page said.

Her translucent nape was seductively exposed. And then her smile deepened. Deepening, deepening, widening, as if tearing her cheeks apart. Slowly but clearly, Lumi’s lips formed words.

“So, were you able to have a nice dream?”