Ch.152Two Faced Guests – Rose Clichy

I somehow managed to finish the article with decent content, but something was missing. It felt like my insides were burning. This unpleasant feeling followed the betrayal of someone I knew.

Mr. Willem patted my back, but the feeling wouldn’t easily go away. I was worried I might develop an obsession with betrayal like Uncle Leonard.

I’m someone who takes on traits of everyone I meet. So inevitably… No, I shouldn’t make excuses. If I act like bad people to deal with them, I’ll only end up becoming like them.

Where was the me who learned to see the world as a palette rather than in black and white after meeting the detective? I had strengthened my resolve while fighting with my father, but perhaps my will had gone astray. Blood doesn’t lie.

Maybe it’s still right for me to use the Clichy name. I was acting like a Clichy by anyone’s standards. The detective who witnessed the filth of our family firsthand would think so too.

It might be stress. So… I should take a day off. I was surprised by what the detective said, but it was something I should have expected.

After stroking the typewriter once, I got up from my chair. I needed to tell Mr. Willem what I’d heard on the phone.

“Uncle Leonard has been caught. And… ugh, we forgot about those kids from the brothel, but it seems Mr. Michael handled it somehow. And…”

I briefly wondered if Mr. Willem was a thin person or not. I didn’t know when I’d started having such thoughts about someone standing right in front of me. I decided to act like my usual self again.

“I feel like having a drink for the first time because I’m feeling stuffy inside. I’m going to a bar. Would you like to come along?”

Asking Mr. Willem such a thing seemed amusing. He smiled awkwardly, but also as if he was relieved.

“I thought the reporter lady was the thin one. Well, Europeans can be foolish in their judgments. Where are we going? I have an invitation to the Last Plank. Oh, and one for the Sailor’s Opera too. But I don’t think that detective would take you to such places.”

“To Two Face! It’s a place that operates as a café during the day, so the atmosphere is quite nice and the owner is quite friendly. It’ll be my first time going there during bar hours, but it shouldn’t be bad!”

The reporter knew her face had two sides. Rose Clichy and reporter Rose Leafman were different people. Though they were becoming one person now, her face was still split in two.

Would Mr. Willem be a good match for Two Face? Since I only knew him as someone who helped with this case, I decided not to judge.

In the end, there was no need to use Mr. Willem’s revolver this time. That was fortunate. The fact that he didn’t have to shoot meant he didn’t have to get shot either.

The thought of getting shot made me hug the Cowboy’s hat to my chest before leaving. If I had met the detective before meeting the Cowboy, would things have been different?

He was someone who made me daydream. He seemed like someone who could handle any problem I faced, making me think… if only he had been there then…

He would have stepped out of his car, smirked saying “That guy would have already come out of the house,” then gone around the side of the house and shot the fugitive dead before the Cowboy could even make eye contact with him.

But that might not have made everything better. Thanks to you, I’ve come this far, Cowboy. My nameless mentor. Only after calming my heart while hugging the hat did I get up.

There’s nothing more ridiculous than trembling with recurring trauma at every word. After hanging the hat back up, I followed Mr. Willem who had gone ahead. We took his car to Two Face.

Two Face, which had its curtains open for good lighting during the day, now had thick curtains drawn to hide the bustle inside. Like any bar, there was a doorman.

The human doorman approached us and held out his hand as if asking for an invitation. I didn’t have an invitation, but today I had a guarantor.

“I know Mr. Michael Husband. Could you go in and check for me?”

Without even telling us to wait, the doorman went into the bar. Soon he opened the door again, not just peeking out but properly opening it for us to enter.

The bar had quite a cozy atmosphere. In one corner, dragons wearing sunglasses to hide their eyes were gathered, each engaged in their own conversations, and there were vampires drinking with their sharp fangs resting on their glasses.

And there was the detective, sitting at the bar downing drinks with an angel. Standing in front of the bar was… wait. Wasn’t the owner human? Now there was a giant werewolf in a suit.

The werewolf greeted us very warmly. Though the beast’s voice made me shrink back, the tone itself was friendly.

“Well, look who it is! It’s common for nighttime customers to come during the day, but it’s rare for daytime customers to come at night.”

“Oh, um, you remember me?”

So it was the café owner from daytime. The werewolf bartender wagged her tail as she spoke. She even had a cloth cover on her tail made of the same material as her suit pants to prevent fur from flying around, making her look quite professional.

She went to the back room of the bar for a moment and brought back two invitations like the one the detective had, placing them on the bar and sliding them over to us. It seemed that if the detective was our guarantor, she could easily give us invitations.

As I approached the bar to receive the invitation, the bartender, who had her burly wolf upper body draped over the bar, tapped her head with the tip of her long, sharp claw.

“It’s a bartender’s virtue. You can just call me bartender. I don’t want to take up more space in your life than that. A bartender is enough as a bartender.”

The detective, who had only glanced at me when I entered, finally turned his head toward me. After looking at the somewhat smug-looking bartender, he smirked.

“That’s what she practices saying to become a bartender that customers admire, so give her a proper response.”

The detective held up a cocktail that looked like blood spreading in water and downed it. What looked like strong alcohol went down like water.

“She’s actually quite sensitive, so if you pretend not to hear such things, her tail will droop and she’ll tuck it between her legs. She’s not as cool a bartender as she thinks.”

Hearing the detective’s words, the bartender flailed her sharp hooked claws with beast-like forepaws in obvious embarrassment. She complained to the detective.

“Hey, hey! What are you saying! Miki, this is disrupting business!”

Miki? This was the first time I’d heard someone use a nickname for Michael. Forgetting all my worries from before coming here, I tried to hold back a giggle as I spoke.

“Heh, even if you’re not a cool bartender, I know you’re a good bartender, so it’s okay. By any chance, are you two…”

“If you ask what kind of relationship we have, all three of us will feel awkward, and you’ll have to sit on the bar stool with an embarrassed smile. Yes, the bartender is the only person who calls me by a nickname. That’s the truth. Satisfied?”

I nodded briefly. When I went to the bar in Old Empire last time, I met someone who knew the detective, but at Bar Two Face, I seemed to have met someone who was more than that. I nodded awkwardly.

Meanwhile, the bartender, having composed herself, leaned halfway over the bar again and made a growling wolf sound. It sent shivers down my spine, but it was pleasant to hear.

“Whew, it’s the first time someone who knows Miki other than Yehoel has come to the bar… What would you like to drink? I can make most things.”

Of course, I didn’t know many drinks. Being at a bar was awkward. It was also my first time facing a bartender one-on-one.

“Well… As an elf, whiskey is too strong-smelling for me. The orc drink I had at an orc pub last time was quite to my taste.”

Just hearing that, the bartender naturally went to the back of the bar and brought out a bottle. It was the exact same bottle I had at Old Empire last time.

“It’s always difficult to serve something to elf customers. You did well to get a drink at Old Empire. Even as an elf, do you drink milk?”

When I nodded, a sophisticated white drink with freshly made cream on top and ice was pushed toward me. It was a drink with just the right amount of pleasant cream scent.

“It’s usually a drink our kin enjoy, but I hope you like it. It’s called Silver Bullet. Just drink it, don’t shoot it. Got it?”

I giggled back at the chuckling bartender and picked up the glass. Unlike me with my hesitant words, Mr. Willem ordered very naturally.

It seemed I was the only one in this city not used to bars. I took a sip of the white—or now that I heard the name, somewhat silver-looking—drink the bartender had offered.

The taste was quite good. The cream taste was a bit heavy for an elf’s palate, but even that heaviness gave me the feeling of entering a world I hadn’t sought out before because of unfamiliarity. And it was refreshing.

The drink made me want to pour out my complaints. I tried to keep my mouth shut this time too, but the bartender stopped in front of me again and leaned on the bar. She stared at me with smiling eyes.

“Customer, your name?”

Since it was a question I still hadn’t answered, I tried to put up some kind of wall. It might be useless with this bartender, but still.

“Rose… Clichy. Yes, Clichy.”

After saying that, I took another sip. Words that sounded more elegant than when I tried to say something fancy rang out naturally. The wolf muzzle approached my ear as if to say this wasn’t something I wanted to tell others.

“You don’t like that name, do you, Rose? No, no. You seem to not dislike the Rose part… Clichy is the problem. Rose Clichy, Rose Clichy… Golden Age Press, right? I think I understand why.”

My eyes widened involuntarily. The detective, who was using the passed-out angel as a backrest for his stool that didn’t have one, looked quite amused as he watched us.

“How do you know all that?”

The bartender briefly looked at the detective and growled, then raised a finger with the tip of her muzzle. Only then did she turn back to me with a friendly smile and speak.

“That’s also a bartender’s virtue. You need to know at least a little about whatever the customer talks about. Listening to complaints is part of our job too. It might even be more important than selling drinks.”

The detective, who seemed about to add a comment again, turned away. Now that it really felt like just the bartender and me, I complained a little as she suggested.

Since these were words I had only known how to keep bottled up until now, my speech was all over the place.

“Well, I want to change my name, but nothing comes to mind. I’ve wanted to change it ever since I found out what kind of person my father is, and someone told me if I don’t like that name, I should use a good one… but nothing comes to mind. I wonder if I’ve always been this uncreative… Because of that incident, I’ve cut ties with my family too, you know. So it’s more urgent, but I can’t think of anything.”

The bartender clicked her tongue a couple of times. My head had been lowering with each word I uttered, but she used the rounded outside of her hooked claw to tap my chin up, making me look her in the eyes.

“It hasn’t even been two months, has it? Looking at your face, you seem to be just about twenty, and a twenty-year-old rookie reporter cut ties with her family because of what she investigated. It would be stranger if that issue was resolved in just two months. No one would think it strange even if it took years.”

No one had ever said that to me. Half of it was probably my fault. Still, it was sweet to hear. I understood why people come to bars when they could drink alone in their rooms.

So I decided to share a bit more. Like a reporter, I poured out words I couldn’t say while trying to be objective.

“And this time I was covering a crime, but the culprit turned out to be someone I knew. I don’t understand why these things keep happening around me. I wonder if I’m doing something wrong…”

This time, perhaps thinking it was better not to let me continue, the bartender interrupted me. She diverted my attention with a growling sound and then spoke.

“It’s just bad luck. Misfortune doesn’t discriminate. There might be a better reason than just bad luck, but knowing the reason won’t change how depressed you feel. How many questions do you have that start with ‘why,’ Rose?”

Misfortune and bad luck are no one’s fault. Dismissing everything that’s happened as misfortune and bad luck would certainly help, but it was also an irresponsible thing to say.

Irresponsible? Why is it irresponsible? Was I just trying to take responsibility for things that weren’t my responsibility? No, no. In my father’s case, there was clearly my responsibility too… But I didn’t know. There were just too many worries.

I answered in a somewhat self-deprecating tone. Since I wanted the bartender to understand, it might have been a bit childish.

“About a hundred. Maybe twice that many.”

The bartender skillfully changed my expression. Bar Two Face was as cozy as hugging the big dog at my family home.

“By the time you’ve said it all, you’ll be a regular. You clearly won’t spend as much as Miki, but that doesn’t mean I can neglect a regular. Come every day and talk as much as you want.”

“You’re good at making regulars. Really.”

“It’s just that there are too many people in this neighborhood who can’t talk about themselves. So when a bartender encourages them just a little, they spill everything and become regulars.”

Her tone suggested she was executing some evil plan, which made me stare blankly at the bartender, forgetting my self-deprecating tone from just before. She was chuckling too.

“Why do you talk like you’re executing some evil plan when you’re doing something good?”

The bartender naturally joked around.

“Well, it is illegal. Selling contraband, getting people drunk on that contraband, and making money to live a happy life. Isn’t that evil enough?”

I felt like I should say something in this situation, but it was a bit far from my beliefs. Still, it seemed like something I should say to the bartender who had been so kind to me. I slowly cleared my throat.

“Um, I’m not usually someone who says this… but rather than saying this establishment is wrong, I’d say Prohibition is wrong.”

As the conversation seemed to be turning serious, the bartender joked again. She approached the angel who had collapsed drunk next to the detective and tapped his curly golden hair.

“There’s an angel from the Prohibition enforcement unit right here, so you can tell him directly. Want another drink?”

The Silver Bullet glass was already empty. I emptied another glass while talking with the bartender, and… well, it felt like it had been a long time since I’d spent a night that was neither lonely nor quiet.