“Gah, I’m totally bored. Mister, please tell me an interesting story.”

“What’s it all of a sudden with you?”

“Look, I’ve got no work if the night is peaceful. So I’m bored.”

Fran swung her feet to reinforce how bored she was. Seymour noticed a trace of alcohol on her breath, concluding that it wasn’t just nicotine that was currently swirling within her body.

Having decided to take a day off today, Seymour had come here to buy cigarettes. He didn’t even try to hide his bewilderment, shaking his head as he repeated the same words he always said in situations like this.

“The mafia disputes have reached a stalemate, huh? An information broker having nothing to do is proof that the city is peaceful. Please stay like this for the rest of your life, ok?”

“If I just keep sitting around without using my head, I’ll just become fat. Got it, mister? I’ll blow up like a balloon.”

“Just give me the cigarettes…please.”

“Which ones tickle your fancy, dear gentleman?”

“The cheapest ones────the ones right above that.”

“Mister, you truly are unchanging, aren’t you? Well, seems like you might be quite a bit of fun, though. Your current girl seems to have lasted a fairly long time so far.”

“Don’t talk about things beyond your age. Cigarettes.”

“Booo,” Fran puffed up her cheeks. She spun around on the chair to search for the cigarettes in question.

Seymour looked back over his shoulder while bouncing the cigarette in his mouth. Lumi was inside the Essex parked on the road. Noticing him looking, she looked up from her book, and waved at him with a smile. Because her expression was just like it had been before, as if nothing had ever happened, Seymour’s became stilted instead.

It was virtually impossible for her not to have realized the suspicions Seymour harbored about her.

Or rather, Seymour thinking further, assuming that Lumi’s objective was to murder Isaac Nigel, why is she still staying at my garage? Since she’s already accomplished her objective, it would be much smarter to leave as soon as possible and silence me while she was at it.

“…… All things considered, the nights have been truly peaceful.”

For a while, gunshots had echoed throughout the city every night, though no corpses were ever found the next morning. But, now that he thought about it, Seymour didn’t recall hearing any gunpowder explosions over the last few days either.

The dispute between mafia familia, which had been going on for a long time, might have come to a temporary conclusion, Seymour reckoned.

“Mister, something on your mind?”

“Nah, it’s just that things I don’t want to think about keep cropping up in my head.”

Nothing good ever comes from poking your head into mafia matters.

Seymour extended a hand, trying to pick up the cigarette packs Fran had laid out. But, that hand was suddenly accosted by Fran’s.

“……What’s up?”

“I’ve decided to charge a 『somewhat interesting story』 instead of money for today’s cigarettes.”

“I’m sure I asked for the second-cheapest cigarettes, though.”

“Yes. That’s why I’ll give you the cigarettes for a 『somewhat interesting story』. By the way, the cheapest cigarettes would cost you a 『dull story』.”

Seymour’s eyebrows wrinkled in irritation. For just an instant, he seriously considered forcefully shaking off her small hand. But, he didn’t plan on buying cigarettes from any other store but this one, and Fran was a girl.

Seymour leaned forward, transferring his weight to the counter.

“An interesting story, huh?”

“I have high expectations of your taste, mister.”

“Let me see. Did you know?” Seymour started off with a solemn expression. “You are also acquainted with Lumi. That girl is actually a vampire, and a hitman who’s been hired by some organization. So, she hasn’t been staying at my place for a romantic reason, but to extract information from me to kill someone.”

“Ahahahahahahahahaha! That one’s terrible…even for a made-up story.”

It was a big hit. Fran loudly slammed her hand on the counter several times, laughing so hard that the cigar fell out of her mouth.

“Mister, I didn’t expect to find a comedian in you! That wasn’t a 『somewhat interesting story』just now, but a 『very interesting story』. Want me to up the grade of your cigarettes?”

“Nah, I’m cool with these.”

“Really? Okay, then let’s say I owe you one. You can make me a request sometime in the future.”

To hide the fact that he was more embarrassed than he had expected, Seymour chewed on the filter of his cigarette. Taking the packs from her, he tried to walk away, but Fran called after him.

“So, mister, did you cheer up a bit?”

“Hmm?”

“Aren’t you smoking a cigarette today?”

Putting her middle and index finger together, Fran tapped them on the side of her mouth not already occupied by her cigar.

“A slovenly guy like you usually only comes to buy new cigarettes when you run out. Did something happen?”

A smile reflexively formed on Seymour’s lips, “Who knows?”

“Mister, you’re one of our cherished, regular customers. We’ll go the extra mile for you.”

“……” Without answering, Seymour waved a hand.

Her gentle words just now were obviously calculated. As information broker, Fran was intentionally trying to maintain her connection with Seymour Road. She cajoled him for that very reason. And yet, he was touched by such a ruse, showing Seymour exactly how tired he was.

I’m pretty sure that this is from me continuously putting off dealing with Lumi.

He was living with a killer: it was impossible for that not to weigh on his mind.

“……I really gotta do something about this, don’t I?”

Even as this thought filled his mind, he was mesmerized by the beauty of Lumi’s profile as she sat with her eyes lowered.

My resolve will likely fall apart like a house of cards today as well, and I’ll end up spending an ordinary, everyday life with her while ignoring the matters at hand. From the outset, the man known as Seymour Road is not associated with such attributes as resolve or determination.

That was his belief.

He walked up to the Essex. While he opened the door and got into the car, Lumi stifled a laugh with a hand placed on her mouth. Apparently she had returned to reading her book again. However, Seymour couldn’t catch a glimpse of the book spine in her lap from the driver’s seat.

“You like it?”

“Yes, it is funny.”

Lumi revealed a smile with all the innocence of a girl who had just had her first bite of cake in her life. But, since Seymour had returned, she closed the book with a thump.

At that moment, Seymour managed to see the front cover. It had 『The Four Riders of the Apocalypse』 written on it.

“────”

Seymour knew the contents of that book. But that was only natural, seeing how that book had come from his room back home. For this reason, Seymour was aware that the story mostly revolved around wars – a heartrending tragedy where most of the cast died and the plot was pretty depressing the whole way through. And he also knew that it didn’t contain a single sentence you could call funny.

“────About that.” His throat got drier by the second. Seymour had to exert all his willpower to prevent his voice trembling. “Is it really funny?”

Lumi apparently didn’t understand the meaning behind his question since she tilted her head in confusion.

But, she nodded a moment later. With the same tone she used when she had laughed after reading a comedy the other day and a guileless expression , she answered, “Yes, humans doing things is funny to read.”

An ice-cold shudder traveled down Seymour’s spine. It would have been much better if this had been Lumi’s way of intimidating him or elevating herself. It’d have been better if Lumi, who had revealed her brutal nature, had said so with the intent of frightening Seymour.

But, neither of those applied here.

She had simply said what she actually felt. With no intentions of starting a power play, Lumi had merely spoken the truth as it was for her.

“──────I see. I’m glad to hear that.”

Seymour somehow managed to force his trembling hand, which had almost grabbed the door handle so he could escape, back onto the steering wheel. The premonition that it’d be a bad idea to do anything so careless and thus draw the attention of the ’thing’ in his back seat onto himself stopped him from simply running away.

His mind suddenly flashed back to the image of the mother cat suckling her kittens. Back then he thought it was cute.

People could passively look on as the kittens struggled for survival because that battle was unrelated to them.

And the same theory applied here.

Lumi Spike read stories depicting human wars, and laughed at them as though she were actually reading a comedy. Or rather, she could laugh at it. Since humans were unrelated to her, she found amusement in whatever the humans were doing.

She’s not human. Definitely a vampire and not a human.

That realization only fully hit him now after all this time. It hadn’t been the fact that she was able to suck blood, turn into bats, or that she hated the sun, but the fact that she simply wasn’t human.

A monster and abomination. The natural enemy of the human race. I’m 100% certain. She’s definitely a hitman.

He was long past the information gathering stage. He had no doubt that she had killed people, bloodying her own hands. It was unthinkable for her to have any aversion to murder with an indifferent disposition like hers.

“……I’m going to…start the car.” Seymour desperately tried to push down his dread, plastering a smile on his face.

A physical feeling of disgust assailed him. A fear that screamed at him to get away from here at all costs. At this point, he had lost sight of just what was sitting in the back seat of his car.

He had felt like he had built some kind of relationship with Lumi. He had felt like there had been some value to his days with Lumi ── even if she was a hitman ── something that was a little more than his daily struggle against fate.

However, those feelings only applied to Seymour.

No matter what Seymour did or encountered, he believed that Lumi Spike would enjoy it with a smile. Because she was a demon, and not a human.

He stepped on the accelerator, letting the car roll forward. As if she was discomforted by Seymour’s silence, Lumi tilted her head in confusion once more. Even though her smile remained unchanged, Seymour couldn’t find a trace of loveliness in it anymore.

“Mr. Seymour, is something wrong?”

“No, nothing.” He took a hand off the wheel, opening the window. “It’s all good as long as you enjoy it.”

If only that were true, Seymour mumbled under his breath as he tossed his cigarette out the window.

Caught in the wind, the cigarette lit up brightly for an instant, before vanishing completely.

❖ ── ✦ ──『✙』── ✦ ── ❖

The next day.

The crux of the matter is why Lumi Spike came to live with me, Seymour assessed.

“How far does it need to be transported, and how fast?”

Currently Seymour was in the middle of receiving a package from a client, a man with a short boxed beard. He somehow managed to wedge the long, crooked package, which had the contours of a boat’s oar, diagonally into the back seat of his Essex.

Hearing the client’s reply, he confirmed the delivery.

Since they had agreed on payment in advance, Seymour started his car after receiving his money. Fortunately there was still a good while left before the time appointed in the request. As he gazed out the window, he allowed himself to give voice to his thoughts. Thoughts that swirled inside the car before vanishing into thin air.

“If she had a flawless grasp of my requests, there wouldn’t have been a need to come to my place.”

He assumed that there existed someone who had wanted to kill Isaac Nigel, whose whereabouts had been unknown at the time. If they had already known all of Seymour’s requests back then, it would have been redundant for Lumi to infiltrate his home or accompany him on his jobs. They could have simply gone straight to Isaac Nigel to kill him.

“In other words, Lumi didn’t know how exactly she would come to know Isaac Nigel’s location.”

He guessed that she or the organization she belonged to had only concluded that 『It might be possible to find out Isaac Nigel’s location by accompanying Seymour Road on his job』.

It was likely that they had zeroed in on Seymour, or rather, monitored him for a good while beforehand. Couriers like Seymour could be valuable information sources for hitmen. Because of that they had tried to obtain a clue on how to kill Isaac Nigel from Seymour.

“────No, isn’t that actually backwards?”

It was absurd to approach Seymour for the sake of finding Isaac Nigel. Leaving aside the fact that the surveillance would need to be perfect, it made no sense for her to come to live at Seymour’s place if their information was at the level of not even knowing the extent of Seymour’s jobs.

That’s why it should be the opposite. They must have had a lead on Isaac Nigel’s whereabouts to begin with.

Seymour also had an idea on what kind of lead it might have been.

──『Toi Mo』 ─ the rare cigars in the blue box.

The killers knew that Isaac Nigel smoked those cigars. If you considered how a man in hiding could get his hands on those cigars, the options would be limited. Isaac Nigel had probably hired private couriers like Seymour to bring the cigars to him without leaving a trail that would lead back to him. For this reason, the killers had decided to spy on Seymour Road, no, perhaps not just him, discreet couriers────

“……”

For an instant, his hand on the wheel trembled violently with the chill that shot through Seymour.

Logically, there was no other explanation besides that one. When one thought of reasons why Lumi Spike would be in Seymour Road’s home, the only one that made sense was this one. However, at the same time it also hinted at something else.

It was clear that Lumi Spike was a hitman, that she belonged to some kind of organization, and that this organization probably provided back up for her.

However, Seymour was unable to get a read on the scale of that hitman organization. If his current train of thought was correct, they ought to be much bigger and have much more power than he had originally suspected.

After all, that organization had obviously investigated couriers other than Seymour. The organization only knew that someone was transporting the cigars, but not who. They knew that the mafia guy was buying 『Toi Mo』, so they simply checked the distribution of cigars in this city to find out which courier was doing the deliveries. They had thought up such a search to find a needle in a haystack, executed it, and succeeded in their objective.

That was the power held by the organization standing behind Lumi Spike.

“…Well, whatever. For the time being, I’ve found out how I should figure out the organization looming in Lumi’s shadow.”