——————— End of Part 4 ———————

“I had lots of fun!” Lumi happily exclaimed as she walked next to Seymour along the dark street at night. “At first, I didn’t think I would be able to keep up with something like boxing just by listening to it on the radio. But once I actually heard it, I was unexpectedly hooked.”

They were on their way back home from the Holiday.

Tonight there had been a title match between the long-reigning lightweight champion and his young challenger. Many homes had radios nowadays, but even though they could have listened to it at home, there were people who didn’t think it was the same as getting together and getting hyped together. Contrary to what you might expect, Seymour’s stance was that one needed to show up to these events, and thus he’d come in to excitedly listen to the fight in the Holiday with Lumi.

For a while now, Lumi had been loosely swinging her right arm, obviously picturing the instant the champion’s powerful right hook shattered the challenger’s titleship dreams. Her shapely legs being covered by trousers was a fresh change, too.

With the sandwich he had bought at the Holiday in hand, Seymour loped along a little slower behind Lumi. He had a gentle smile on his face as he followed her.

“I’m happy to hear that you enjoyed it.”

A faint tang of alcohol lingered on his breath. That didn’t mean he had chosen to drink. But, with the Holiday being in a more chaotic state than usual, there was no way he’d have been able to calmly enjoy a coffee. It wasn’t unusual for alcohol to have been added to the various drinks at hand, which was why Seymour was now walking through the night.

Multi-storey buildings lined the street, connected occasionally with junction bridges. The girl, the moon, and the night. Framed by the buildings and bridges, these three formed a beautiful scene right out of a painting.

The champion’s clever match pacing, and the challenger’s bold way of attacking. Carrying a lively conversation like close friends would do, speculating on what and how the champion might have been defeated, their shadows melted into the night.

There were many cars out on the road. Their occupants might have enjoyed the boxing match at the actual venue or simply listened to it live at some bar or restaurant just like Seymour. Traffic as you wouldn’t expect at night slowed everything down on the road.

Trucks whizzed past the sidewalk, inches away from impact and blowing Lumi’s hair around with them. Seymour narrowed his eyes, as if each and every strand held secrets.

The junction bridges cast big shadows that formed even darker spots on the dark nighttime pavement. Stopping just one step short of such a shadow, Seymour tried to call out and say to Lumi『Let’s cross the road around here』.

However, the words he had on the tip of his tongue and the words he actually said were completely different.

“────Even when you heard about the state of the war through the radio, you laughed. Didn’t you?”

Lumi stopped. The wind, the cars, the hustle and bustle; all of it sounded awfully loud to him. Lumi blended into the shadows, making it impossible for him to see her expression even though he could make out the fact that she had turned to look back over her shoulder.

“Maybe I did. A war happens, it’s broadcast, and everyone enjoys it; I don’t see what else I could do but laugh about it, now that the world has come to this.”

Seymour hadn’t meant it like that. Even without having it spelt out for her, Lumi probably knew as much.

She took an audible step towards him.

“So, what about you, Mr. Seymour?”

Dread welled up in his heart. I have to start walking again, he believed. I must cut this conversation off and keep walking home.

However, there were countless cars on the road, making a crossing next to impossible.

“What do you mean?”

“What would you do if you heard such a thing on the radio?”

I…

No answer to that question came to his mind. Lumi wrapped her arm around Seymour’s, grasping his hand in hers. He could sense her comfortable softness and her gentle pulse.

“It doesn’t look like we’ll be able to cross the road, does it?”

Lumi began to walk, and Seymour was forcibly dragged along since she was still holding his arm. They headed not towards the road, but into the shadows of one of the array of buildings.

Seymour suddenly had a feeling that his life was in danger, even though he was still confused as to what she was planning.

“Hey────”

“In the first place, why is it wrong for me to laugh? At people and the death of people.”

Lumi kept walking. Her toes met the outer wall of the building.

“As I said────”

“Don’t you think that it’s like it gives being alive some meaning?”

Lumi kept walking. Vertically, the soles of her feet sticking to the wall.

“Wha────!?”

“Don’t you think that being alive is something wonderful?”

Seymour tried to pull away from Lumi in panic. But to no avail.

Lumi’s hand, which had him in a vise-grip, didn’t budge at all. Lumi’s slender fingers, which were entwined around Seymour’s wrist, had him trapped far better than any handcuffs could manage. Paying no heed to Seymour’s fervent struggle, Lumi walked up the wall.

Seymour’s right hand was pulled up.

“Even though no one can ever guarantee something like that?”

Lumi trudged on. Inevitably, Seymour was forced upwards as well. His toes left the ground. His wrist and elbow screamed at him in pain as his full weight hung from his right hand. The ground was rapidly getting further away. Even though Lumi’s pace felt relaxed, the width of her strides and the distance they were actually traveling didn’t match.

“Even though there’s absolutely no meaning in me being born?”

Lumi’s feet didn’t stop. They continued on interminably. Until they finally reached the junction bridge halfway up the building. There, her feet stepped onto the underside of the bridge, where she finally stopped, upside down. They were several dozen meters above the ground. In a place impossible for a human to have reached by themselves, she calmly showed him an upside down smile.

Lumi treated the underside of the bridge like the ground, switching heaven and earth. Beneath her hung Seymour. The sandwich had earlier slipped out of Seymour’s hand and was now a messy splat on the ground many meters below him. If Lumi were to let go of his hand, it’d be Seymour’s turn.

“Guuh!”

“Besides, Mr. Seymour.”

Only Lumi’s hair hung down towards him in the darkness. Gravity pulled it down to twine like spider’s silk around Seymour’s face.

“Besides, hehe, something like war on the radio…if being alive is so wonderful, you shouldn’t have said something like that.”

Seymour could see the blazing glow of her eyes through the strands of her hair.

“If being alive is so wonderful, you must first and foremost protect your own life, Mr. Seymour. If you don’t treat it with respect, then your priorities are all backwards.”

He was swaying irregularly. Entirely suspended by just his right arm, he was swaying.

This is a threat.

An eerily calm demeanor and countering that, a violent threat. Even though cold sweat ran down his spine from how he was being toyed with, Seymour still spoke up.

“That’s────”

Pain.

His right arm hurt. Tied down by gravity, his body was hurting itself. However, at the same time Seymour recalled his sister. The little sister he had hurt and broken.

That illusion made it so that he couldn’t help but say, “That’s the reasoning of a monster, and not that of a human.”

Lumi started to laugh in a high-pitched tone, so pleasantly and sweetly that it was actually surprising.

“You make it sound as though humans aren’t monsters of sorts.”

In the next instant, a strong gust hit Seymour in the face without any warning. He closed his eyes instinctively, and realized that it hadn’t been wind, it had been the sensation of being carried off somewhere.

“────gh.”

Stillness.

Hurriedly forcing his eyes open after feeling that they had come to a halt, he found himself on the opposite sidewalk to where he had been a little while ago. In the few seconds he had closed his eyes, he had crossed the road that shouldn’t have been possible to cross.

Both his feet were planted on the ground, and no hand was grasping him. Lumi was several steps away from him and was looking his way with a gentle smile on her lips.

Shaking out her hand like she had exerted herself with some minor physical work, Lumi said, “Pheew, it’s a little easier to get home now, right Mr. Seymour?”, as if she had done all that with this in mind.

His thoughts and tongue were still paralysed with the fear that had coursed through him moments ago. Averting his eyes from Lumi, Seymour didn’t make any mistakes in replying this time, “Quite so.”

❖ ──『✙』── ❖

Seymour spent the day after the incident with Lumi feeling unsteady, like he was still reeling. The illusion that he was dangling and could fall at any moment loomed over him.

For this reason, Seymour sought a distinct change. The power to change the situation. It was so obvious where he needed to go to cope with the threat called Lumi Spike that it was laughable.

Seymour leaned against the counter of Hornsby Cigar Store.

“Won’t you sell me a bomb?”

The cigar fell out of Fran’s mouth after hearing this sudden question.

“What’s wrong? Have you finally despaired of the world and decided to kill yourself?”

“Tell me, why is that the very first thought you have?”

“Mister, people like you give off a restrained and mild-mannered impression all their life, but when you decide to die you really throw off all those restraints and go all out, don’t you think?” Fran repeatedly nodded at her own words.

Her statement seemed to be based on some kind of conclusion she had formed, but Seymour was smart enough to not probe further. He had decided that poking his nose into what she, an information broker, might or might not know probably wasn’t a wise choice.

It was mid-afternoon; the sun had not yet begun to set. Daytime was meaningless to Seymour, and he’d be asleep around this time usually, but he was here today for a reason.

Fran placed her chin on the counter and curiously asked Seymour as he failed to suppress a tired yawn, “Or rather, why would you need a bomb if you don’t want to kill yourself?”

“Normally you’d need a bomb to blow something up, wouldn’t you?”

“Blow up who?”

“Something.”

“I see. So you’re going to blow someone up, huh?”

“Listen to me.”

Fran pursed her lips, booing at him.

“But, I don’t really like bombs, you see?”

“It sure is unusual for you to dislike something that isn’t a cigar brand.”

“Bombs leave nothing behind, so they suck.”

“I told you, listen to me. Also, give me nice strong cigarettes later, too.”

Since he had visited Fran today to buy information, Seymour still had cigarettes from the last time. But, despite that, Seymour still put in an order for new ones.

Fran picked up the cigar she had dropped moments ago, wiped the dirt off it, and put it back into her mouth. She took a few pulls, rekindling the dying embers before she cocked her head to the side in confusion.

“Or rather, this place sells information, not bombs, you know?”

“But, you can sell them. Bombs, that is. Right?”

“Well, that’s……we can at least act as an intermediary and point you to the right place.”

With a sigh, Fran spun in her chair and turned her back to Seymour. There were a lot of shelves installed within arm’s reach for her, despite how short she was. She was apparently looking for information stored on those shelves.

“I’d prefer it to be a bomb with a timer, also as small as possible.”

“Which reminds me, Mister, do you know of the Murder Inc.?”

Seymour’s heart jumped when she abruptly brought up the name. However, Fran had merely mentioned the name as part of her idle chatter and hadn’t noticed his agitation. After prudently seeing through that fact, Seymour nodded.

“I’ve heard about them, at least.”

“Well, considering the job you’re doing, I guess it’s not weird for you to have heard of them. Ah, but how truly regrettable. One of my favorite pastimes is explaining all kinds of things to you to earn your admiration.” Fran chuckled without a hint of actual regret. “Anyway, about that Murder Inc., it’s funny that the current company president claims to be the second generation. I mean, in the beginning it was a company in name only that didn’t even have any employees, let alone a president.”

“……What’s up with that? Oh, please make sure that the bomb is strong enough to blow up a garage.” As he said it, Seymour’s nose registered a faint smell of mud hanging in the air.

“The trigger appears to have been five unrelated murders that all seemed to have occured all of a sudden. By mere coincidence and chance, five people were murdered at the same time, and they all happened to be members of the mafia.”

────As a result, it ended an ongoing dispute.

Fran cracked her neck as if she wished that she had been able to see the murder scenes.

“The mafia, who were forced to abruptly end the dispute, must have had some suspicions deep down: 『Something like this is impossible. Someone must have perpetrated this whole show』. Their attention was drawn with those five murders, and before long, the name Murder Inc. cropped up.”

A series of mysterious crimes that were never committed and an organization responsible for them despite not actually existing. A company called Murder Inc. had settled the dispute, something that shouldn’t be possible under normal circumstances.

“So, what you’re saying is that the current Murder Inc. is just a copycat of the urban legend that is Murder Inc., something that was supposedly created before all of this but never actually existed?” Even as the words left his mouth, he realized how strange it all was.

A vampire that shouldn’t exist was hired by a company that shouldn’t exist. And at this very moment Seymour the individual was about to be crushed by these two supposedly non-existent things.

“You got it. The power of people’s imagination is terrifying. The minds of the people, who refused to believe in coincidence, created an unreal shadow with the name Murder Inc.”

Fran whirled around in her chair once more. Her eyes homed in on Seymour. When he saw a sort of murkiness in them, Seymour was shaken for an instant. But then she blinked and that vague feeling disappeared, just leaving behind Fran’s usual eyes, dulled by smoke.

“Do you understand, Mister? Whenever people reminisce about the past, they’ll imagine things they couldn’t have experienced. They’ll manufacture a selfish story that does nothing but chain facts together. But, sometimes those fictions will betray reality. And likewise, there are times when that betrayed reality will turn into fact.”

“Is it okay if I just sum it up as mafia folks being foolish?”

“I’d say you could take it like that, too. Here you go. Are you really going to buy that, even after all that?”

Fran had placed a pack of cigarettes and a piece of paper on the counter. Seymour suspected that the memo had where he could buy a bomb written on it.

He carefully and slowly analyzed what she had told him.

‘Maybe she’s warning me. Detonating a bomb isn’t just a matter of the physical realm. The fact that I’ve bought a bomb will naturally spread throughout the city. It’s also possible that Fran is going to sell that information. And that very fact is a kind of a bomb in and of itself.

No one would know why Seymour bought the bomb. Just the fact that he had done so would spread, allowing people to speculate to their wildest imaginations. That alone was more than enough to blow up the existence that was Seymour…probably.

“……”

Realizing that fact, Seymour grabbed the cigarette package, and with it, the piece of paper, fully aware of what that meant.

“……I see, I see.” Fran shook her head while looking down.

He opened the package, took out a cigarette, and lit it up before paying. Seymour filled his lungs to the brim with smoke that seemed to sting more than usual.

Although it contradicted the boundaries that he had defined himself as, he abandoned everything. He filled himself with the shortsighted sense of self-worth that came from deciding that punishing a murderer was all that mattered and decided that it didn’t matter what others might think.

“Thanks. How much do I owe you?”

“Let’s call it even with the debt from the other day.” Fran shrugged her shoulders. “Mister, since you like bombs so much, how about you go Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to your hearts’ content in a place of your choice?”

“Thanks. I’ll be back.”

“Bye bye.”

❖ ──『✙』── ❖

——————— End of Part 5 ———————