Ch.10Ch.1 – Outro (Video Not Opening)

# Assistant

The Assistant. You are a professional translator who is well-versed in various subcultural genres such as comics, animation, and games.

“Well, you really have no shame. Not only did you dump the task of explaining to the police on me, but now you’re asking ‘So what happened next?’

I simply told them the truth. I said that Mr. Paul Eastman wanted to tour the island, so we did. Then we all climbed up the lighthouse, but when it started to collapse, the last thing I remember is running back down.

The police didn’t ask any further questions. After all, both of us had our heads cracked open. If they interrogate you too, just give the same answer. The police are searching for traces of Eastman, but… how will they find anything? They’ve searched all the way down the cliff and found nothing.

By the way, did you know? Those whale carcasses that were piled up at the cliff are all gone now. And dead whales no longer wash up on the beach.

And everyone is keeping quiet about the disappearance of that problematic two-story house.

The police handled the matter quite wisely. They passed the investigation to the fire department, with the simple excuse that a suddenly vanishing house wasn’t their jurisdiction. The fire department passed it to the city hall, which is now reassigning it back to the police.

That’s how urban legends are born. They get dressed up in bureaucratic paperwork and emerge next week as ghost stories. It’s as absurd as trying to imagine what a tree looked like from just a piece of its root.

But what does it matter? There’s a certain romance to it, don’t you think?

Speaking of which, that yellow box you found—I smuggled it into the back seat of my Ford. Tracking down the documents inside yielded some fascinating results.

Those papers weren’t just a crew manifest with shipowner Isaiah Black’s name on it.

They were a kind of addendum—the type attached to maritime insurance policies.

Can you smell it? I checked with my contacts in insurance investigation.

Sure enough, the Unicorn had taken out substantial maritime insurance before setting sail. Not just one policy, but several.

After the Titanic sank, sensible insurance companies became quite picky about maritime policies, but they all approved the Unicorn’s applications, perhaps because of its symbolic status as the last whaling ship.

To cut to the chase, the insurance payout was enormous.

After compensating the bereaved families, they received enough money to buy five Unicorns. Most of it went to the aristocratic families, including Isaiah Black. Lawrence Lehman got his share too. Officers like navigators and boatswains received shares of the ship, similar to stock options when cash is tight.

But Lehman married Elizabeth Black, they had no children, and Lehman’s relatives are completely unreachable.

In such a case, Lehman and Black’s money would go to Isaiah Black, who’s still bedridden.

The interesting thing is that when you look at all those complicated insurance policies together, they have something in common. They could only be paid out for unavoidable natural disasters.

Steering errors, mutiny, pirates, ship collisions, even running aground—none of these qualified.

So while the premiums were low, the potential payout was huge.

Of course, the Cape of Good Hope where the Unicorn sank is no easy sea. But for the last whaling ship from Pollard Island to set sail, wouldn’t they have sent the best of the best?

Would someone as experienced as Lawrence Lehman have underestimated the Cape of Good Hope?

The ordinary sailors and third mate Allen Chase might be one thing, but the captain and other officers were all elite.

Even more curious is this: Lawrence Lehman was an outsider. How did this outsider know the incantation to summon Mother Hydra?

Lehman knew something that even Elizabeth, Isaiah’s daughter, didn’t properly know?

Would Isaiah have told Lehman something he didn’t even tell his own daughter? I doubt it.

‘So what’s your conclusion?’

The sinking of the Unicorn was Isaiah Black’s scheme. That’s my conclusion.

Lawrence Lehman was merely a piece in Isaiah’s picture. With the first mate’s testimony, they could easily claim they faced an unavoidable storm.

Or perhaps there was an implicit agreement between Lawrence and Isaiah.

Isaiah might have revealed the minimal prayer, and in return, gave him his daughter and a fortune.

As evidence, though Lawrence lived his life arrogantly, Isaiah and his son Arthur never talked back to him.

Isn’t that indirect evidence that he had some leverage over them?

If so, three questions remain:

First, why did Isaiah do it? It wasn’t for money. That would be too complicated and cumbersome for a money motive. There’s something more that I can’t figure out.

Second, why did Police Chief Mike Chase, Allen Chase’s nephew, smuggle out the documents?

Third, where on earth did our Paul Eastman get that half-baked information that ‘Lawrence Lehman was found hanging upside down’?

That information itself is strange. Someone who could tell him that Lehman was hanging upside down could have also told him beforehand that he ‘died horribly.’

But that part was conspicuously omitted. Why? Wouldn’t it have been better to show the sensational parts to attract a journalist?

Yes, I agree. My head is starting to hurt again.

Rest a bit more. When you get out of the hospital, come back to 22nd Street. Our landlord has prepared some excellent painkillers. It’s therapeutic medicine containing 100% of the finest wine used for mass in Italian cathedrals.

Oh my! Wine? Don’t use such irreverent words in the age of Prohibition. ‘Painkiller.’ Understand? It’s a ‘painkiller.’

And watch out for those nails.

Rest well.

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March 28, 1929. 11:57 PM

Downtown. The Black family mansion.

It would be nice if it rained or thundered.

Arthur Black muttered in the dark corridor.

Inside the room, creaking sounds filled the air. Death had already placed its hand on Isaiah Black’s forehead, but the old man was still resisting with all his might.

Even if he died, no one would mourn him, yet only the tactless bed sobbed.

The one who opened the door and came out was his father’s personal physician. Arthur didn’t like him much. He wore truly bizarre glasses, as if he had attached auxiliary eyeballs to his thick lenses.

“I heard his condition has worsened significantly.”

Arthur nodded at the physician’s question. Since Lawrence Lehman’s death, he hadn’t been able to sleep properly.

He kept seeing hallucinations, suffering seizures that prevented him from working, and having nightmares of a giant eye looking down at him.

“And your father?”

“He’s deteriorating.”

Yet his father seemed to be in better condition. Even a gasping fish, when placed on a cutting board, somehow finds strength to flop around—that was exactly Isaiah Black.

Arthur had disliked his father since childhood. Every night, muffled crying and unsatisfied moans came from Elizabeth’s room, and young Arthur had to cover his ears.

But he could do nothing about the thudding sound of the bed hitting the wall.

Because that wasn’t something to hear, but to feel.

Arthur opened the door and entered. His father was lying in bed, gasping for breath. The room was empty, seemingly vacated to give father and son some time alone.

“……”

Isaiah’s lips moved. Though his body was emaciated, his eyes remained deep and dark. After hesitating, Arthur approached.

“……”

His father seemed to be trying to say something, but Arthur couldn’t understand at all.

Was his mouth too dry? Arthur noticed clean gauze and a water jug on the shelf.

Thinking he should still help his father, Arthur moistened the gauze with water and dampened Isaiah’s lips.

Isaiah blinked. Though only his lips were moistened, it was tears that fell.

A quiet word escaped Isaiah’s mouth.

“I’m sorry, my son.”

Arthur froze. It was something he never thought he’d hear from his father. The color rapidly drained from Mayor Arthur Black’s face.

“Father.”

Arthur’s expression was impossible to read—whether he was smiling or crying. His eyes were crying, but his mouth was drooling. Isaiah sighed.

“I’ll make good use of your body.”

A stream of blood flowed from Arthur’s mouth. But it was quickly sucked back in, down his throat.

Blood moves through vessels, and vessels pass through the heart. And in Arthur Black’s heart was an obsidian dagger.

Isaiah Black gripped the dagger more firmly. A quiet incantation flowed from his mouth.

“Mother. Mother. My Mother. Here I offer the final sacrifice of our covenant. I offer an old body and a young soul, so leave me a young body and an old soul.

Remember the covenant of the Cape of Good Hope from 30 years ago. A human’s eternity is but a gust of wind to you.”

Isaiah Black’s physical body met its death.

Arthur Black stood up. The dagger in his heart had long disappeared. The father, now wearing his son’s body, stood before the mirror.

“Not as fresh as I expected.”

He had much to do. The whaling industry had already met its end. But Mother Hydra still demanded more tribute.

As Lawrence Lehman had claimed, offering schools of fish was far from enough.

Humans. What Mother loves most is humans. And if tourism is promoted, humans will flock in. The newly invigorated Arthur Black smiled.

After all, there was no need to rush.

<End Video #1 End>

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March 17, 1929. 10:24 AM

Massachusetts State Police Headquarters

Boston

“Wow.”

The plump female receptionist could say nothing else, still holding the receiver in one hand.

“Why is this real?”

“Do you believe me now?”

Pollard City Police Traffic Division’s youngest officer, Constable Brian Thompson, grumbled. He was irritated in many ways. Seeing the receptionist’s hearty laugh made him even more so.

“Sorry. I’m sorry. Have I been in Boston too long? I thought I’d seen and heard everything, but this is truly a first.

You’re telling me they had documents delivered by courier in this day and age? Your chief is really something. What’s his name?”

“Chase. Chief Mike Chase.”

“Did you do something to upset him?”

Thompson couldn’t understand at all. The more he thought about it, the angrier he got. On that day, he had been patrolling while enduring the stench of rotting whales.

The smell was particularly awful, and as he was considering taking a short break somewhere suitable, his eyes fell on the closed whale processing facility.

‘Why is the door open?’

Since it was an important patrol area, the officer went inside and encountered Lawrence Lehman, who had died horribly while hanging upside down.

“The chief must have been quite displeased that a traffic officer wrote the initial report.”

“I doubt that.”

The receptionist smiled kindly.

“Being assigned such a task directly means your superiors think highly of you.

Those look like really important documents, and the fact that they entrusted them to Officer Thompson suggests they believe you’ll do a good job.”

The young officer smiled slightly.

“Do you really think so?”

“Of course. I know civil servants well. Anyway, good work. Sign here before you go.

Oh, and before you leave Boston, make sure to visit the Parker House Hotel.”

“A hotel?”

Officer Thompson scratched the back of his neck.

“I don’t have that much money.”

“No, I mean visit their restaurant. Since you’ve come all the way to Boston, wouldn’t it be a shame not to try Boston cream pie?

It’s a cold dessert with vanilla custard or pastry cream between sponge cake layers, topped with melted chocolate. Once you taste it, you’ll never forget it till the day you die.”

“It sounds incredibly sweet.”

Though he said that, Thompson was already calculating expenses in his head.

Since he was on an official business trip, wouldn’t the chief overlook a day of luxury? With that thought, Thompson left the administrative office, licking his lips.

As the plump woman was humming and about to file away the documents, a man wearing a fedora entered the administrative office.

“Lots of visitors today. Where are you from? Pollard Island?”

The woman responded kindly, but the stranger did not.

“Washington.”

What’s with this guy’s curt answers? Annoyed, the woman sharply inquired.

“Where did you say? What’s your affiliation?”

“Bureau of Investigation.”

The woman stared blankly at the strange man. The man pulled out a badge from inside his coat.

“Special Agent Henry Payne, Bureau of Investigation. Badge number 25112.

There should be mail sent by courier from Pollard City Police Chief Chase. Is that correct?”

In the receptionist’s mind, all she could think about was Boston cream pie.

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<End Video #2 End>

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<End Video #3 Playing>

March 30, 1929. 12:21 AM

(Sound Only)

(Call Recording)

Beep.

“Welcome to Amaranth Flower Delivery, always bringing you kindness and happiness. Would you like to place a delivery order?”

– “……”

“Hello? Please speak.”

– “……”

“Did you dial the wrong number? Hello.”

– “Charlie. Sam. I repeat, Charlie. Sam.”

Silence

“The person in charge is here. Please speak.”

– “Why on earth are you handling things so poorly?”

“Cassie? Cassie Slade?”

– “Who else would it be at this hour? I’m absolutely furious. And if you’re going to use real names, why bother with contact codes…”

“Cassie. Things are taking a strange turn. I understand your frustration, but…”

– “I risked my life to steal and read that report, and this is how you handle it? Which idiot decided to anonymously give information to some amateur journalist? It was an opportunity to dismantle Pollard’s leadership. And yet…”

“I told you to calm down.”

Silence

“We highly value your courage.”

– “What good is courage if I end up dead, Oberon?”

“Don’t worry. Scarface knows too. Have you heard the news from Chicago? We can also come into the light. Your hardship won’t last much longer.”

– “How much more do I have to squeeze out of that fool Josh and that premature detective Crayfield?”

“You do your job. Keep providing information.”

Sigh

– “What did you mean by ‘things taking a strange turn’?”

“It’s clear that Chief Chase and Mayor Black are at odds. Chase sent some kind of information to Washington. He was clever enough to send it by courier, though I don’t know what it is.

The stupid officer went all the way to Boston wearing his Pollard Island police badge. Our people followed him from Arkham to Boston. And guess who they saw in Boston?”

– “How would I know?”

“Henry Payne.”

Soft cursing

“Yes, ‘that’ Henry Payne. The Bureau of Investigation is on the move. Chief Chase called in the Bureau. Do you understand what I’m saying? A storm is gathering over Pollard Island. Standing against it would be foolish, but the one who will step onto the swept-clean land will be our ‘Red-headed O’Malley.’ So please be patient a little longer. Understand?”

– “Fine. And please change this stupid contact method!”

Call disconnected

<End Video #3 End>

– Ch. 1 Execution End –