『Makdi Makdi – wall inside the shop – third from below – fourth from the left – red paint can』

This was all that was written on the memo.

Is that going to be enough? In other words, if I go to this place, and buy this, I’ll have a bomb. Though I don’t know whether the bomb has been put into the paint can in advance or if I’ll need to exchange the can for it at the register.

There was a slight problem since Seymour didn’t know where the Makdi Makdi store was, but that wouldn’t be too hard to fix.

If I enter some random shops and ask the employees over there, as long as it’s not a completely unknown store, someone will know. The fact that Fran hasn’t told me how to find it must mean that this method should work.

Fortunately Seymour’s plan bore fruit at the third shop he entered to ask. Lightly waving a hand at the female clerk who had told him what he wanted to know, he walked over to the Essex he had parked in front of the shop.

I think it’s going to take me around 15 minutes by car. Looks like I’ll be able to find this place while the sun’s still up.

Just when he was about to open the car door, someone called out to him from behind.

“────Oh? Ain’t that Seymour!?”

Seymour couldn’t immediately identify the speaker from just the voice, but he naturally turned around without putting up his guard. It didn’t occur to him in the slightest that he ought to be wary either. Basically, he was pretty sure that it was someone who had been close to him in the past but had now grown estranged.

He turned towards the voice with that thought, and his eyes widened when he spotted someone he hadn’t expected at all.

“……Michael?”

For just a fleeting moment, his days as a student flashed through his mind. A young man in a well tailored suit stepped up to him. Although there was an unfamiliar mustache on his face, Seymour remembered those finely chiseled facial features very well.

Michael Touring – an senior who had looked after Seymour when he still was a student.

“Oh, oh, I wasn’t expecting to meet you here. So, what have you been up to?” Michael powerfully slapped Seymour’s shoulder once he was close enough.

Seymour frowned even as his lips stretched into an involuntary smile upon Michael’s nostalgic pushiness.

“I could ask you the same. Since you’re in a suit, I’m guessing work? Sure doesn’t suit you, though.”

“You got it. You still doing the same old thing? You haven’t changed a bit, man.”

“So────”

The carefree smile on Seymour’s lips froze immediately. Because he had heard footsteps, followed by a woman who came and snuggled against Michael’s side. Gorgeous blond hair, and a voluptuous body. She put an arm around Michael’s waist.

A woman unknown to Seymour. One he didn’t recall having ever seen.

The woman spoke up with a sweet tone that seemed to bewitch anyone listening, “Michael, is he someone you know?”

“Yeah, Rosalia. Come to think of it, this is the first time you’re meeting, isn’t it? Let me introduce you two. This guy is Seymour. He was a junior of mine at school, and works in the transport industry right now. Seymour, this is Rosalia. My wife.”

If he was frank about it, Seymour didn’t remember a single word she said – probably some sort of greeting following Michael’s introduction – nor did he know what he had answered. But, he apparently managed to give a proper response. By the time he came to his senses, it had been decided that Seymour would drive Michael and his wife to the neighborhood of their home, and he was already sitting in the driver’s seat of his Essex as usual.

What kept playing in his head like a refrain all this time was a scene from the past.

A head that was politely lowered. A pretty whorl of hair on the head. A dearly missed life inside his car. Seymour’s first job.

He didn’t recall much about the woman back then, but at the very least he knew she didn’t have a flashy name like Rosalia. Moreover, Michael had said it was their first meeting when he had introduced Rosalia to Seymour.

Despite the fact that his brain had completely stalled, Seymour’s mouth seemed to have a mind of its own, yapping on without a care. Noticing that, he almost laughed at himself. Letting his mouth run off with random stuff all the time was quite handy at times like these.

“Still, I gotta say, Seymour, you really haven’t changed at all. You’re still doing an unreliable job like this?”

“By the time I realized, I had missed the timing to call it quits.”

“That’s no good, man. We’re already adults. We have to contribute to society and properly provide for our families. You gotta fulfill your responsibilities as a man.”

“Haha, it looks like I suck at these kinds of things. My true character is being blithe and irresponsible, I’m sure.”

“Give it a rest, Michael. It’s a bad habit of yours to push your own values on others like that. Despite being so young, he’s so hard-working. Right, Mr. Seymour?”

“Hey, hey, wait a minute. You’re calling this guy hard-working? Want me to tell you how much of an idiot this guy was during his student days? Let me warn you though, it’s going to take all night.”

“For the most part, that applies to you as well, Michael, are you sure you want to do that?”

“Oh my, I’d love to hear the full details. Could you elaborate?”

“That’s really bad. Stop, stop! We’re newly-weds, okay? What are you going to do if she suddenly files for divorce?”

A red light. The car came to a halt with a screech. A vibration. Maybe because he had pitched forward with the sudden stop, but the words that had been swirling around inside his head suddenly spilled out of Seymour’s mouth.

“Which reminds me, Michael, did you split up with the previous person?”

“Huh? Previous person?”

“Look, I mean, umm, the person I drove around.”

“……Aaahh!” After tilting his head in confusion for a bit, Michael suddenly laughed out loud. “Dude, what kind of old story are you digging up there!? That’s from back when I was still a brat, isn’t it?”

“……You have a point there.”

He started the car again, leaving the words that had spilled out behind.

That was probably all it meant to Michael. Even after bringing up his former girlfriend, Michael didn’t look perturbed in the least, and Rosalia didn’t seem to mind either. In short, their relationship was strong and bolstered by mutual feelings. They had built a bond that wouldn’t be shaken by something of that level. Michael had discarded this past.

Eventually they arrived in the street that Michael had requested to be the destination, and Seymour stopped his car once more. Michael opened the door with a trustworthy grin.

“Man, don’t mess around for the rest of your life, okay? If you need me to, I can at least introduce you to some open jobs.”

“Okay, I’ll rely on you when it comes to that.”

Rosalia stepped out of the car, showing off her long legs and never even glancing back at Seymour. Of course Seymour noticed that she had dusted off her butt with one hand after it had come in contact with the seat of his Essex. He watched them walk away together while recalling a certain whorl of hair.

He sighed.

It was a story of that extent. A situation limited to nothing more than that.

Leaning back, he looked up at the car’s ceiling, and let out yet another sigh. He exhaled all the air in his body just like that, and felt like turning into a thin piece of paper and flying off somewhere. He continued to breathe out stubbornly until he completely ran out of air. But, in the end it didn’t change anything, and since he was still alive, he had to breathe. After taking a rather involuntary breath in, Seymour got out of the car.

Makdi Makdi was right around the corner. On autopilot, his body passed through the entranceway of a very unassuming general store. An elderly person, who seemed to be half asleep, stood at the register. Weaving his way down the gaps between the stuffed shelves in the cramped store, Seymour headed deeper inside.

He came to a stop in front of a shelf that hosted a wide array of paint cans. Seymour absentmindedly wondered how many people in this city were aware that one of the cans here contained a bomb.

“Third from below……fourth from the left……” He mumbled the instructions on the memo under his breath, but didn’t lift his arm.

If he took the bomb home, he might be able to kill Lumi. No matter how powerful a vampire she might be, there was no way she’d be able to cope with the garage blowing up around her in the daytime while she was asleep. Even, or maybe especially if she was that legendary being, that dream of the era, she shouldn’t be capable of fending off sunlight, her greatest and most obvious weak point.

But, what about it?

Seymour suddenly questioned why he had decided to fight her. He slowly lifted his index finger to trace the paint can in question. However, that can was heavy and didn’t seem like it could be moved, like it was rooted to the shelf.

“Ah……”

Seymour had left home in search for something definite that ought to exist in the world, and began to work in an attempt to cling to something definite. Being a courier was a tiny, weak light in the darkness he was navigating, Seymour discovered. He moved things from one place to another, creating value by ensuring everything went smoothly. It was an action with clear significance that was difficult to deny.

Even though that was meant to be true, Seymour was left with nothing once he had learned that all that had been meaningless. All reason and sentiment had been pulverized by the cold impartiality of worthlessness. Even his past sins ── the fact that he was who he was right now because he had sacrificed a single girl, his little sister, didn’t feel like as much of a driving force as it had been before.

Unable to endure the weight of the bomb, his finger veered off to a simple, unrelated can next to the can with the bomb. That can, full of red paint, made him feel like he was grabbing someone’s freshly severed head.

Seymour slowly made his way to the register, and placed the can on the counter with a clang. Even the weight of a single paint can was too much to bear for his hand that had never held anything to begin with.

“Welcome.”

As the old man talked, the beard around his mouth shifted around. Feeling like he was older than the clerk, Seymour mumbled while bowing towards the counter, “I’m sure. Value is just a hallucination. You won’t find value anywhere. Not in me, not in you, and not in this world.”

Like his body had become hollow inside, his own words echoed within. Nothing was written in stone about the world. Absolute value didn’t exist anywhere. Even the rule that you mustn’t kill others wasn’t actually set in stone.

“That’s why stuff like sins and punishments don’t exist either.”

The old man grabbed the red paint can, and cocked his head to the side in puzzlement.

“I don’t quite get what you’re saying, but this can costs 2.42 Dollars.”

The old man implicitly told Seymour that he wouldn’t hand over the can until he paid for it.

❖ ──『✙』── ❖

Lumi Spike was already awake by the time he came back to the garage.

After she had started to live with him, Seymour had mostly stopped being active during the day. Not to mention something so out of character as coming home with an unfamiliar can in hand and lowering the shutter without even driving his Essex into the garage.

It was only natural that the vampire girl would have suspicion in her eyes as she stood dumbfoundedly still inside their home. Seymour tossed the can at her.

“……Whaa!? What is this?”

Lumi caught the can with both her hands, and seemed confused as she looked at its red exterior.

“Didn’t I tell you? Every once in a while, I paint my walls. As a change of pace.”

“You never mentioned anything, but……well, it’s obvious if you look at this wall.”

It was a wall that had been painted over many times with layers of designs that had been carved into it over and over again. Looking at that, Lumi smiled wryly.

Seymour grinned at her, “So, let’s catch a break together.”

Once you gave up on everything, it became easy to do anything. Even as he stood here with a monster that had caused him to tremble so much before he didn’t feel any fear and was able to simply smile like before.

“Recently, there’s really only been stuff that brought down the mood. Let’s change that mood by changing the wall’s color.”

“That sounds great. It’s a lovely idea! Let me get ready to paint then. I’ll search for a paint brush, and then we’ll────”

“────No.” Seymour shook his head distinctly.

He stopped Lumi from opening the can. He took a breath, and made sure there was a smile on his face. While imagining that his head would be blown off the second he said his next words, despite everything and anything in him being paralyzed, he spoke up.

“You’ll be the one to splash the paint, Lumi Spike.”

“……”

“You can do that, can’t you? If it’s you, you can splash the paint across the entire garage without any preparations, right?”

“……”

“Let’s do it like that. That’ll be fine. Let’s paint over everything like that.”

“……”

A long silence. Seymour had no doubt that Lumi was picturing killing him and leaving the garage. Her good-looking face had frozen, looking like a death mask, and it seemed as though even her breathing and heart rate had come to a grinding halt.

Then she sighed.

When Lumi’s shoulders twitched, he thought that he’d definitely be killed for real and not just in Lumi’s imagination, but Lumi just placed the fingertips of her right hand on the paint can.

“Very well. Let’s do it like that.”

Her slender white fingertips swayed. Just this small movement caused the can to dance through the air. The can spun before gravity caught up to it, and Lumi’s fingertips blurred in the instant it stopped moving. They turned into fog.

The thin mist that Lumi’s fingers had become pierced the can with a sword-like sharpness, contrary to their appearance. Seymour was certain that she had used the same trick during the second attack when the water tank crashed down. That clear cross-section, that had clearly been cut by something beyond sharp, crossed Seymour’s mind.

“──────Aha.”

Immediately following this, the paint can burst open from within.

“Aha, ahahahahahahaha! Hahahahahaha!” Lumi laughed happily within the crimson rain. Her extended arms, her hair as it fanned out as she spun, and everything else was painted over red. The bloody color was hurled in all directions like it had exploded and splattered across the ceiling, the walls, the floor, the furniture, Seymour, Lumi and everything else equally.

“Kuh, haha, hahahahahaha!” Without realizing it, Seymour was laughing as well.

He couldn’t resist the overwhelming feeling of happiness. The moment the can burst open, it felt as if his former self had burst open too. The trivial past created by the courier Seymour Road, and all the sins he couldn’t atone for completely evaporated.

In the end, it was just a can’s worth of red paint. Even though it didn’t take very long for all the paint to land on some sort of surface, the two were out of breath when they came to themselves, broadly grinning as they faced each other.

“What should we do? It’s splashed all over the entire garage.”

“Isn’t that just fine? The ugliness kinda suits us.”

“Idiooot. You’re the only one who’s ugly here.”

A blob of paint thrown by Lumi hit Seymour’s face.