“Get going.”
Spurred on by the man’s snarl, Seymour started the Essex.
The wolfish man took up the entirety of the back seat, stretching his legs out one over the other. Mud dripped down the treads of his shoes.
“I’m going to kill Lumi Spike. And you will carry the luggage.” The man repeated once more.
Before he even processed the meaning of those words, Seymour automatically asked his usual questions, “How far does it need to be transported, and how fast?”
The man let out a sigh, obviously annoyed.
“That woman is a vampire. Killing her requires preparation. Bring the necessary items to the necessary place.” And then the man cocked his head to the side, asking, “You ARE going to accept this request, right?”
Seymour only considered the question for a beat.
There’s no trace of a lie in his words. I’ve got no doubt that he truly intends to kill her for some reason.
He didn’t know what the circumstances around this were. But, Seymour Road was a courier. And as such, he didn’t ask about things unrelated to the job. As long as a request wasn’t too ridiculous, he wouldn’t turn it down, and once he accepted a job he’d strive to complete it at all costs.
His life with Lumi might have been happy and peaceful, but no value lay in that life. The reason that Seymour was able to keep living with that monster was simply because he didn’t see any value in anything. If he ever faced reality, there was nothing but unendurable pain and burden waiting for him. It was precisely because she, his sister, his friends, the dead, and even he himself were worth exactly the same to him, that he’d been able to live with her in that bright red room.
He had to see it through, or it would all fall apart. He couldn’t afford not to be consistent. As such, given the persona of Seymour, refusal was not an option.
Seymour answered, “Of course I will. But, would it be alright for me to ask just one question?” with the same mouth that he had told Lumi to take care with earlier.
The man raised an eyebrow. Seymour took that as confirmation.
“Why come to me with this?”
Seeing how there were plenty of other couriers besides Seymour that were available in this city, he couldn’t understand why they’d go out of their way to choose the one human who had been living with her.
The man growled, “That woman is a monster, through and through. If I had asked someone completely unrelated, they might get some ridiculous misguided notion of protecting an innocent girl into their heads, but someone like you won’t do anything like that since you’ve already spent time with her.”
It was a very reasonable assertion. Seymour limited his response to a nod, and didn’t ask or answer anything further.
The man pulled a memo out of the inner pocket in his jacket in one smooth motion.
“Read this to learn about the details of the request.”
“Very well.”
“Then drive me to the building specified in it.”
“As you wish.”
❖ ── ✦ ──『✙』── ✦ ── ❖
“A dispute’s goin’ on.”
Several hours later, Seymour arrived at the harbor in accordance with the wolfish man’s instructions. There he picked up a man supposedly called Rotton Lombard. His tall body was hidden in a cassock and a cigarette glowed between his lips. Military boots covered his feet, which he had stretched out without a care, and he played around incessantly with his bangs, which were cut diagonally across his forehead, as he spoke. He had introduced himself as a clergyman when they met, though he didn’t give off that impression at all.
“…… I’m sticking to the motto of not questioning anything about my clients.”
“Whoa, how stuffy. If you don’t relax a bit, you ain’t goin’ to survive this era, man. Besides,” Rotton revealed a cramped smile, “Since you’ve been told that we’re gonna kill a woman, you’d want to at least know the reason, right?”
“……”
“The silent treatment, huh? Well, I’m goin’ to talk either way. People tend to make up their own justifications if they don’t know the reasons. When that happens, it’s easy for things like betrayal to happen. ……Anyway, you know that we’re basically an organization that mediates disputes, don’t you?”
Rotton’s attitude, which was disgustingly cheerful for no apparent reason, grated terribly on Seymour’s nerves. In contrast to his usual professionalism, Seymour unconsciously roughed up his driving, causing the car’s interior to shake intensely. However, despite Seymour’s body grandly lurching around as the one responsible for the shaking, Rotton didn’t even tremble, as if he were glued to his seat.
“Meanin’ the killin’ we do gotta be managed. Whatever shape it might take, it’s gotta be murder fer stoppin’ disputes an’ nothin’ more’n that. But that woman’s gon’ too far with the killin’.”
Seymour suddenly recalled that Lumi had gone on her nightly escapades more frequently recently. And that disputes had recently started to plague the city again.
He didn’t know the precise rate of assassinations the Murder Inc. performed. However, as far as he was aware, Lumi had gone out to kill quite frequently. Moreover, she had done so in a city where the disputes had actually died down.
She had gone too far with the killing. She had killed more than were necessary to keep the order in the city. It had all developed into a situation where her existence had very likely become the cause of disputes. Thus, she had to be killed.
“That’s a logical development which is easy to understand.”
“Yep, that’s how it is. From where I been watchin’, s’not really all that unexpected either though. Rather, I find it weird as fuck that we’d been able to talk to that thing at all up until now.”
“……”
“I mean, monsters are just that, monsters.”
Funnily, Rotton only seemed to perfectly fit his introduction as a clergyman when he was saying those words.
“Havin’ said that, things’ve become quite hairy when it comes to killin’ that woman.”
“She definitely didn’t seem killable.”
“Nothin’ in this world is indestructible though. Not to mention that the weaknesses of vampires are well-known all over, right?”
Seymour looked out the window. The moon wasn’t visible on this particular night. Thin clouds hung in the sky, and a somewhat isolating silence dominated the night, like the entire city was locked away under a giant bell.
The biggest weakness…the one that’s easiest to understand – namely, the sun – currently isn’t out. In that case…
Waiting until Seymour turned his eyes on him to continue, Rotton laughed cheerfully, “Then it’s goin’ to be my turn. Aahh, how wonderful. Devotin’ yourself to your duty is always such bliss.” Seymour looked at how Rotton’s hands were trembling at his chest. “Well, nevertheless vampires are monsters you can’t deal with by ordinary means. And yet we don’ have much of a choice but to begin our plan before our trump card arrives. Just spottin’ an opening fer us to seize her is goin’ to be a major pain in the ass,” Rotton shook his head.
While ignoring his words, Seymour turned his eyes forward.
Quite some time had passed since Lumi left his home and he had met the wolfish man. Seymour didn’t know how the wolfish man planned to kill Lumi, but he was sure that Lumi had already finished today’s murder and might be discovering that the organization she belonged to had turned against her about now.
And then he reflected on the fact that he was currently actively helping someone who was on their way to kill her. However, no matter how hard he looked within himself, he couldn’t find a single reason to protect her. No matter how heartwarming the days with her might have been, she was undoubtedly a monster, and it was indisputable that both the world and Seymour would be better off when she was gone.
The Essex wound its way through the city, eventually arriving in front of a multi-storey building. The building had apparently been abandoned in the middle of construction, and had nothing but its framework and bare walls. Originally it might have been a lot taller, but the walls were gone by the fourth floor, leaving behind nothing but exposed iron poles towering into the night sky like the bones of a rotting carcass.
The door-less entrance yawned wide, and there were no people visible in the vicinity. Seymour drove his Essex inside and was faced with the strange sight of the unlit, battered floor being filled with a dozen men. A transparent liquid had been poured directly onto the concrete, in a circle with a diameter of three meters in the middle of the floor.
In it lay the corpse of a single girl. Her limbs had turned into minced meat, and Seymour could only wonder how many bullets had been spent to do such a thing. It was hard to tell whether her body was faintly twitching because she was still alive or already dead.
No, that was wrong. The one laying there wasn’t some random girl, but Lumi Spike. And that meant that the body wasn’t a corpse, even though it was in such a state.
“Perfectly on time. Excellent.” The wolfish man approached, calling out to Seymour.
Seymour had stopped the car, and silently nodded at him.
In that instant, a scream reverberated through the abandoned building. The source was one of the dozen men, who shared no unity in attire or age.
The reason immediately became clear. Lumi’s limbs were regenerating. Nerves twined themselves around the shapeless bones, blood vessels extended from the body, followed by flesh, before it was all covered by skin. Seymour was now certain that Lumi had held back quite a bit on the regeneration he had witnessed on their first meeting in order to garner his pity. Her regeneration was beyond rewinding a video, it was so fast that it was practically like it was respawning. Those new limbs contained immeasurable power, and her body accelerated at an inhuman speed as the floor cratered with the impact of her lunging at the nearest man.
“──────gh!”
She was repelled.
It was something he witnessed several times before. A numbness like an electric shock and a colorless power.
The instant she was about to cross the circle demarcated by the liquid, Lumi’s body was struck back into the center of the circle.
“Don’t panic. She can’t get out of there anyway.” The wolfish man pulled out his guns while admonishing the man.
The pistols he held in each hand fired, hitting Lumi’s body in two places at the same time. With each bullet he drilled a hole into her limbs, and he continued to empty his magazines into her as if he hadn’t even noticed.
And then he jerked his chin, urging the men to follow his example.
The men noisily readied their guns, and after they took aim, they began to pour lead into the girl one after the other. Each time she got hit by a bullet, Lumi’s body jolted with the force. Mysterious body fluids splashed into the vicinity, but turned into ash without mixing with the transparent liquid around her.
“Once she stops moving, cease firing for the time being. But, don’t let her do as she likes. If she regenerates, shoot her. We still haven’t worked out how strong the effects of the holy water are.”
On closer inspection, Seymour could see that the center of the floor had collapsed, like it had been the site of an explosion. It seemed to tell the tale of just how many bullets they had fired so far. Lumi’s flesh had been violated and torn apart, regenerating over and over, only to get turned into goo each time.
And yet, Seymour felt no pity with her. After all, Lumi was the predator here.
“…………………..rh!!”
Her eyeballs, which had been crushed and split open before recovering their shape again, had been glinting fiercely the entire time. Even under these circumstances, there was no doubt that the one with the upper hand here was that monster of a girl. Without letting even a single cry of pain escape her lips, she remained conscious, no matter how much they cornered her. The more bullets were fired into her, the deeper the fear burrowed itself into the hearts and minds of the men.
Maybe I should feel some kind of emotion watching this scene unfold. But, I don’t feel anything. Just as I don’t feel the need to avenge Lumi, I don’t care about reproaching the cruelty of Murder Inc. That, which has repeated itself in this city over and over again and which will continue to repeat over and over again, doesn’t seem to mean anything to me.
However, he reflexively muttered, “This really doesn’t look like a scene from the twentieth century.”
“Seriously, I don’t wanna talk about things like holy water or barriers either. Take it out.”
Giving the command while looking as though he hated it from the bottom of his heart, the wolfish man laughed lightly. Rotton got out of the car and greeted him. He took some kind of case out of his pocket and passed it to the wolfish man.
It was a black case small enough to fit in the man’s palm, but Seymour was sure that it was the trump card to kill Lumi.
Rotton looked back at Seymour, and laughed, “You sure are a cold-hearted chap. You wanted to always stay together with that cute girly over there, didn’t you? Don’t you feel anythin’?”
Once more, Seymour directed his gaze to the center of the floor. Having instantly regenerated her right arm, Lumi tried to brandish some rubble, but the wolfish man shot her arm before that could happen. He barked instructions at the other men, and the many guns pointed at Lumi lit up in response, turning her entire body into paste.
“……No, not really.”
It was unthinkable that Lumi hadn’t noticed him there. It was impossible for her not to have seen him boldly drive his Essex in here with the final piece to kill her.
However, even under these circumstances, Lumi didn’t spare a single glance for Seymour. In other words, that was all Seymour meant to her. Just like Seymour had found no value in that daily life with her, she continued to be nothing more than a simple monster in the end. Without any begging or complaining, she had readily forgotten about Seymour’s existence now that things had developed like this.
“Nothin’, you say? Ahaha, I really wonder which of you is really the monster here.”
Seymour was terribly sick and tired of Rotton’s banter. He shook his head with a sigh.
Either way, I don’t need to overstay my welcome. I should hurry up and go back to get some sleep.
Just as Seymour tried to back his Essex out of the building…
“──────”
…several things happened simultaneously.
“Uh-oh.” Saying that, Rotton held up a gun.
He had pulled out a pistol from his cassock, and aimed it at Seymour. Seymour peered down into the darkness of the barrel.
“Don’t shoot.”
It was the wolfish man with the gun who defended him. Even though he was responding to Rotton pulling out his pistol, he was faster than Rotton. He grabbed the barrel of Rotton’s pistol with his right hand, and thrust the point of his gun under Rotton’s jaw with his left.
“──────”
Seymour didn’t react to either of these movements. The gun pointed at him strongly reverberated in his heart, but his head didn’t work at all.
“If you wanna hide today’s operation, we gotta kill him, I’m pretty sure.”
“If you do that, I’m going to toss you inside that barrier, scum.”
Rotton laughed foolishly while the wolfish man made his anger clear without a single change of his expression. The man jerked his chin, telling Seymour to quickly get lost.
Seymour backed his car out with his eyes locked onto Rotton’s scorn through the windscreen. His expression made it clear that he was looking down on him for being at a loss when a gun was pointed at him. However, even that expression didn’t register in Seymour’s head.
A muzzle.
A black muzzle.
This was what had seared itself into Seymour’s mind. But, what had shocked Seymour wasn’t the pistol Rotton still had aimed at him. He didn’t care about that at all.
What had shocked him was a muzzle from his memory.
“………”
He backed the car out of the building onto the street.
Triggered by the image of a pistol aimed right at him, a memory surfaced in Seymour’s mind. It was a memory from the day Seymour had met Lumi for the first time.
On that day Seymour had been asked to drive her to a certain house. He actually managed to do that, only for the house to blow up on him. And then, a hit man ─ thinking back on it now, it had to be someone from Murder Inc. ─ showed up, killed the house owner, and────
────pointed his gun at Seymour.
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