When he opened the Holiday’s door after his delivery, he was greeted by music for once. A gramophone had been placed on the stool in front of the piano, playing a record.

“Madela! How’s business going today?”

“So-so, I’d say.”

“I see! Thank you!” Seymour turned to look at the gramophone even as he answered as usual.

“Is Sasha in?”

Seymour asked this of the clerk after planting himself in his usual seat because he had seen the collage of small bears surrounding the rotating gramophone. The paper bears danced to the music with hands entwined.

“Too bad, you just missed her.”

“Okay, please lend me your phone for a minute then.”

“You have to order first.”

“Owen…and Gordon have their own telephones, don’t they? Also, Rose, if I remember correctly?”

“You have to order first.”

“……Coffee. As hot as possible.”

“Gotcha.”

After handing him a cup of disgusting brown brew, the clerk furrowed her eyebrows, obviously curious.

“Why’ve you suddenly got it into your head to contact your business rivals Owen Stanley and Gordon Banister? Though I don’t get how Rose comes into play here.”

“Won’t I be able to figure out James’ whereabouts if I call Rose?”

“Oh, so that’s what the deal is. Are you guys finally in the mood to set up a courier union?”

Owen, Gordon, and James, the husband of Mrs. Rose, were all couriers like Seymour. Of course there were a lot more couriers working in this city, and Seymour knew quite a few of them, but the number of people who possessed a phone, had a varied circle of acquaintances, and who Seymour could get in touch with was quite small.

“Something like that. So could you please lend me the phone?”

“Lending is out of the question, but I can call them for you. Since there’s no guarantee that I’ll be able to reach them right away, prepare yourself for a long wait, okay?”

In other words, she’s telling me to order more since I’m going to be here for a while anyway, huh?

Seymour leaned on the counter, and began to drink his coffee as slowly as humanly possible.

“What should I tell them if they ask me what you want?”

“Something along the lines of me wanting to have a little chat.”

In reality, that was a lie. Seymour didn’t have it in him to actively try to get along with other couriers. After all, most of the people who end up doing mafia work like being a courier are brawny and intimidating.

That said, assuming Seymour’s speculations proved to be correct, Lumi Spike ─ or the organization standing behind her ─ should have gathered information on a far bigger scale. In other words, something should have happened to the other couriers, too.

Seymour didn’t know whether it would be something obvious like Lumi Spike visiting them or something completely different. Besides, it would be foolish to assume that they took place at the very same time as Seymour’s case. However, it was unlikely that a hitman had investigated Isaac Nigel, immediately hit upon Seymour and determined him to be the right man.

“If I ask those guys, someone will probably have noticed something…”

“Pardon?”

“Ah, I was just getting all excited over the possibility that I might meet a new, cute girl.”

“You’re not happy with Lumi? What a greedy bastard.”

Seymour exchanged some casual banter with the regular customers and clerk of the Holiday, interrupted Madela at her crossword puzzle, and upset his stomach by drinking too much of the nasty coffee. By the end of the night, between his various activities he had managed to contact several couriers and set up meetings with them.

“You were a big help. Next time I’ll order something expensive as thanks.”

“It’s just going to be more coffee anyway, right?”

“Please get an expensive coffee ready for me then.”

“That would be a waste of beans, wouldn’t it?”

Is she aware of how terrible she is at brewing coffee?

Seymour stood up with a bitter smile, stretching to get rid of the stiffness that had built up over the last few hours. The first on his list was Gordon. He’d meet him tomorrow ─ or rather today, seeing as the sun had risen already. He figured that he had enough time to go back home and catch a short nap.

“……”

Remembering the monster in the shape of a girl who was likely waiting for him back home, Seymour’s face cramped up into a grim expression. While lamenting over this, he left the Holiday, opened his Essex’s door, and flopped down onto the driver’s seat.

“────Yo, would it be alright for me to ask you to do a job?”

Seymour got goosebumps from hearing a voice right behind him.

“──────W…haa!?”

His Essex was locked, yet the voice came from the back seat, right behind the driver’s seat. Some stranger had sat down without him realizing.

Looking back, he hit his back against the steering wheel when he instinctively tried to put some distance between them. The honk of car horn loudly replaced Seymour’s scream. Instead, he managed to sound calm even though his throat felt like sandpaper.

“Who…are you?”

The one sitting behind him was a woman.

“Oh my, wa-hahaha. What’s wrong? According to the rumors, you only ask your clients, 『How far』 and 『How fast』, don’t you?”

A strong smell of medicine, mud, and death wafted by Seymour’s nose. It gave him a terribly ominous feeling, reminding him of a hospital right next to a cemetery. Seymour couldn’t tell the woman’s age at a glance. Her long, unkempt hair and the baggy, unfashionable dress that resembled a hospital gown made her feel simultaneously like a child in her teens and like a 30-years old adult. Her eyes, which were big and bulging in contrast to her thin and emaciated body, gleamed dangerously.

And on top of all that, the woman had neither a left arm nor a left leg.

“……Who are you?” Seymour searched his memory while he repeated his question to regain his composure.

However, naturally he possessed no memory of ever meeting her. While he was at it, he also wondered vaguely if he had a gun stashed somewhere he could protect himself with, but that was naturally a bust too.

Because it was covered by her dress, he couldn’t clearly tell how much she had left of her leg. From the way the sleeve fell in, he guessed she had lost everything below the shoulder. And he hadn’t noticed earlier because of the poor lighting and the way her hair was draped around her like animal fur, but she was also heavily scarred. Awful burn marks pointed to the cause of her missing limbs.

A keloid scar wound its way out from under her collar, cradling her cheek and ending at her temple. Seymour was more than certain that there were even more scars under her clothes.

“Wa-haha, that’s the second time. It looks like you’re allowing me to witness something rare.”

Probably because of her scars, the woman’s voice sounded awfully listless. Like a monotone, emotionless monologue. The flat laughter, that she insisted on repeating, made anyone listening feel insecure.

Nonetheless, Seymour managed to recover some of his composure after seeing the woman for himself. At the very least, she didn’t appear to be some kind of burglar. She didn’t have a single item about her person, let alone any weapons. As such, Seymour suspected that the odds of her trying to kill him were rather low, even though she clearly had some kind of agenda.

Comforted by that thought for an instant, he immediately realized his blunder.

The woman was clearly in no state to walk around by herself, and he couldn’t see a cane anywhere. And yet she was sitting in his car by herself.

“Yo, yo, hello. I’m the president of Murder Incorporated, Claudia Horrocks. Nice to meet you.” The woman lifted the right corner of her mouth, the only one she could move freely, forming a crooked smile. “Ah, I guess it’s going to be easier for you to understand if I introduce myself as Lumi Spike’s employer. A dealer in murder. The ringleader behind Isaac Nigel’s murder.”

❖ ──『✙』── ❖

The woman requested that Seymour transport her, and he didn’t decline. Or rather, he wasn’t in a position to decline. The other side had completely taken the initiative. At a glance she might be no more than a one-armed, one-legged woman, but he had no idea what she might be hiding. Even if they were inside a moving, closed room right now.

The woman ── Claudia grinned at Seymour as he silently and gloomily kept his eyes on the road.

“Hmm, you’re more taciturn than I’d heard. Your driving skills seem to be superb, though.”

“……The car is already running, but let me ask, how far do you want to be transported, and how fast?”

“Let’s go with your home then. As for the time…let’s see…how about when we finish our lil’ talk?”

“Talk? Are you asking me to provide you with a funny story?”

“Oh, you do sound confident there, don’t you? In that case, you must tell me by all means.”

“I’ve actually become rather confident in my skills recently. But setting that aside, why my place?”

Seymour collected his thoughts. It’d been mere hours ago since he had contacted his acquaintances to investigate the organization ─ he had just learned that the people behind Lumi Spike appeared to be called Murder Inc. 1 In other words, almost no one could have grasped his actions yet. No matter how quickly Claudia might have reacted, there were very few people who could have informed her of Seymour’s movements.

Just as he seriously began to think about who it might be, Claudia’s hollow laughter interrupted him.

“Wa-haha, it’s meaningless for you to try to figure this out. My Murder Inc. has penetrated this city on a fairly wide scale, but the number of people who actually belong to us is low.”

“In short, you like peeping, huh? Not very praiseworthy behavior, I gotta say.”

“You’re not praising it, but you’re also not criticizing it either. You’re quite the modern guy in that sense.” She rebutted, and shook her head awkwardly.

Her hair swayed with a rustle, causing the muddy stench to spread. Seymour wrinkled his nose.

“Actually I hadn’t planned to appear in front of you. Lumi had accepted the job alongside the responsibility of preventing you from investigating the death of Isaac Nigel if we left it to her.”

“……”

As a matter of fact, Lumi did succeed at that to some degree. It was undoubtedly a fact that Seymour was nearly swept away by the pleasures of a relaxed daily life, willingly averting his eyes from the death and crime right in front of him.

“Where did she slip up? Well, I’m not really surprised though since that girl can be rather careless.”

“You came here after I started to investigate you people ─ the Murder Inc. In other words, you’re going to seal my mouth?” Despite his question, he didn’t really believe this to be the case.

It’d be pointless for someone ─ and moreover a woman like her ─ to make an effort to meet him if they wanted to silence him. Besides, this woman didn’t have the look of someone who would kill others. He couldn’t believe that a twisted woman like her could exercise such crude and plain malice as to commit murder.

“Wa-haha, quite the dangerous words for the likes of a courier. As if.”

Seymour tried to determine how credible her words were, but reading Claudia’s expression and tone was as difficult as trying to tell the difference between snow that fell today and snow that fell yesterday.

“I said it a little while ago, but it’s because you’re a very modern man.”

“Am I? Even though I may look like this, I was raised in a traditional family.”

“I mean, you’re attempting to oppose Lumi, but you haven’t challenged her for the murder itself, have you?”

This was one of those times where he truly regretted not smoking a cigarette. He couldn’t dodge troublesome questions by simply blowing out some smoke.

But, Claudia didn’t even wait for an answer from him, snarling with a raspy voice, “Then again I can understand. Confronting the truth of a murder in this city, where business doesn’t shy away from anything, is tough. Very tough. You’re not so much of a child that you wouldn’t be able to believe that, but neither are you enough of an adult to accept it.”

“No matter how skilled a driver I might be, there are limits on how long I can prolong this drive.”

“Sorry. One of my many faults is my tendency to digress. Anyway, to summarize, I came here to explain what we are.”

Explain ─ Seymour’s finger reflexively drummed on the wheel in response to that idyllic term.

“Eh? I seriously thought that you’d come to silence me or something.”

“I already told you that you were wrong about that, didn’t I? You’re the kind of guy that needs a reason, be it for lacing up your shoes, deciding on your breakfast menu, or even accusing someone of murder. You’re aware of it yourself, aren’t you?”

Seymour recalled the smile of the girl who only looked like a monster to him now. Given that his emotional state had deteriorated to the point that it was plainly visible to anyone who looked at him, Claudia’s diagnosis pretty much hit the nail on the head.

“It’s a rare chance, so I thought that I might provide you with a reason that might give you some more food for thought.”

A corporation of murderers. He savored the name he had been given slowly on the tip of his tongue. As a term he never heard before, it carried a rather unfamiliar sort of timbre; one that his mouth wasn’t used to.

“Murder Inc. I’m the second president of the company so far. No wait, I think first would be more correct. I mean, being the second without a predecessor doesn’t make much sense, does it? Oh well, the finer details don’t really matter. Anyway, Murder Inc. is the name of an organization that earns its money from the mafia by killing the mafia.”

“That’s not something so unusual that you’d need to go out of your way to introduce yourself. Even I have several hitmen, who get rid of nuisances for money, amongst my acquaintances, you know?”

“You’re misunderstanding. It’s the opposite. We kill the mafia first. We decide on a target by ourselves. We don’t take requests. Then we get money for it from the mafia.” Probably aware that her explanation was somewhat lacking, Claudia scratched her head with her right hand, and added, “Seymour, who suffers the biggest loss if there’s a dispute between mafia familia?”

“I can at least tell that the undertaker is the one making the biggest profit.”

“Wahaha, your joke sure is lackluster. I’ll give you the answer. Nowadays the ones who suffer the biggest loss in a dispute between mafia familia are the mafia familia involved.”

I’m sure it’s not the first time Claudia has explained this.

Seymour could clearly imagine it, given how smoothly she was talking, as if she was reciting a book she had memorized.

“It’s all about business. The days when hitmen raked in the big bucks are long over since paying reparations has become way too expensive. And yet, I can only laugh at the foolishness of the mafia which cannot completely stop with its disputes.”

“But, you people kill people, don’t you?”

“Sure. The roots of a conflict go pretty deep, but are surprisingly simple to unravel. If you kill the ones causing the conflict, most disputes stop.”

“……Isaac Nigel.”

Seymour recalled Fran’s overly bored look on the night so calm that it’d depress any information broker.

Sure, ever since his death, you’ve stopped hearing any gunshots in the city.

Seymour couldn’t confirm anything since he wasn’t in a position to know what was happening behind the scenes, but Claudia had just implied that Isaac Nigel’s death had been the very reason for the end of the disputes.

“We kill the mafia. We kill anyone who triggers disputes, and anyone who jeopardizes the peace of this city. And then we bring up the bill with those who benefit from the targets’ death. In other words, to the mafia familia in question. Just recently, we received money from the Blood Familia.”

They earned money from the Blood Familia for killing Isaac Nigel, a high-ranked member of the Blood Familia. Reality truly was terribly twisted and perverted, but business and benefits had shaped it into what it was today.

A dispute was disadvantageous for the mafia, but familia couldn’t afford to enforce its laws on its members every time a dispute occurred. Thus the existence of an organization which would kill the mafia members that caused a dispute of their own accord was beneficial for the mafia.

Seymour couldn’t tell whether things really worked like that, but he could see the logic.

“So in short, you’re telling me forgive Lumi since your murders are righteous, correct?”

“No, I won’t go that far. It’s up to you to decide whether you forgive her or not. All I’m here to tell you is that: Just like you’ve found your niche in this city by providing discreet solutions for transport, we’ve established our value in the city by providing discreet solutions to inter-organizational disputes through murder.”

“……What are you telling me to do then?”

“I told you. That’s something you must decide for yourself.”

Irritated by how Claudia seemed to see right through him, Seymour rounded a corner more roughly than he usually would. Claudia couldn’t prop herself up and fell over. Wriggling like a caterpillar on the backseat, her murky eyes stayed pinned on Seymour.

Far from feeling better, Seymour felt disgusted instead.

“Look, you’re a guy who broods over all kinds of things, right?”

Seymour couldn’t find any words to rebuke her mockery.

“Lumi Spike is a convenient tool I’ve obtained for our objectives. She’s an inhuman monster who was raised without any ties to the world, who doesn’t feel any guilt. No, it’d be better to describe her as a natural occurrence. Humans wouldn’t be able to last with no connections.”

Claudia’s words, which completely deprived Lumi of any humanity, didn’t trigger any strong emotions in Seymour whatsoever. He was sure, just like she regarded humans as no different from animals, humans regarded her as more of a tool than an actual living being.

However, unrelated to that, Seymour felt like something else disturbed him about Claudia’s statement just now.

“You say natural occurrence, but that makes it sound like Lumi simply grew in some field somewhere.”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“Don’t tell me,” Claudia’s lips curved upwards, “you thought vampires had existed all along, lurking in the dark edges of unwritten history, or something like that?”

Seymour slightly dropped the car’s speed. The scenery just outside the window seemed to rush past and disappear from memory like a fleeting blur.

“What do you mean?”

“Just as you’ve heard. Vampires are monsters who are stronger than humans, live longer than humans, and eat humans. If such monsters had actually existed throughout history, humans couldn’t possibly be the ones who rule the world, right? That monster suddenly manifested in the modern era.”

“That’s……a little too silly to believe. A vampire suddenly popping out of nowhere is even more ridiculous than vampires existing all along.”

“And yet, as far as my research shows, there is no evidence that vampires have existed at any point in history. Not even a trace.”

Claudia managed to get upright, using her right arm to push herself up. While her posture was still shaky and more than a little unsteady, the same couldn’t be said about her gaze. It pierced through Seymour even when it was reflected in the mirror.

“That thing is something along the lines of an epoch’s dreams.”

“A dream…by the epoch…?”

“Too many people died in the war. Everyone lost sight of what defines the world. Because the entire world is absurd and unrealistic, it seems comparatively normal to pray for nonsensical things if everything’s already a mess anyway. In response to this mindset, the epoch has created an illusion called vampire.” Claudia spat, “What a shitty era to live in, right?”

The words voiced by the president of the Murder Inc. lacked a sense of reality in all respects, and were terribly disconcerting. But, it was also true that he could relate to some parts of her statement.

Lumi Spike possessed all the vampiric traits written in stories. All this time, Seymour had wondered if such a being could really exist. However, now that he had been told that she was actually a vampire born from the legends – in other words, the other way around – he was able to understand it to some degree. A fairytale creature just without the fairytale.

Eventually he could extend their drive no longer. A short while after Claudia stopped talking, seemingly having said everything she wanted to say, the Essex arrived at the garage.

A single man stood in front of Seymour’s home, half melded into the darkness. It was a man who had wolf-like ferocity, Seymour remembered. He had apparently come to pick up Claudia.

Seymour stopped the car, and let out a sigh.

“Is it fine for me to ask just one more thing?”

“Feel free, ask away.”

“Why are you doing this? You don’t look like a person who’d care much about world peace.”

“That’s obvious, isn’t it?” Claudia opened the car’s door, and grabbed the man’s hand. Claudia’s empty left sleeve fluttered as he lifted her up. “To get my revenge.”

Her words brimmed with a nasty undertone, like blood oozing out of a torn wound.

“I want to slaughter as many mafia members for as long as possible, hopefully killing them all in the end.”

Burns. Amputation. Explosion. As the images took hold of him, Seymour shook his head. By the time when he opened his eyes again, the president of the Murder Inc. and her employee had already vanished.

“Ah, fuck! Just what the hell’s going on!?”