Ch.179012 Investigation Record – Tail Chasing (5)

“It seems you’re planning to accompany me to the bar.”

Willem said with a clear smile visible even beneath his beard. His knowing gaze swept over us once, and he approached the detective to pat his shoulder.

“Feed him moderately and send him back. The first time falling into alcohol is the most dangerous, you know. Having a drink or two is fine, but drinking until one becomes completely drunk is not acceptable. I trust you understand.”

The detective was usually quite unresponsive. He seemed like someone who wouldn’t react whether you placed a hand on his shoulder, grabbed his collar, swung a fist, or threw a stone at him.

That wouldn’t be a good idea. He would catch a stone flying from behind, and then… I didn’t want to imagine what would follow.

Such a person let out a hollow laugh at the hand patting his shoulder and those words. He spoke mockingly.

“Weren’t you planning to come along, Detective Sir?”

They called each other “Detective Sir.” It was a mocking title since nothing about them matched—not their methods, not their eras—but it carried its own kind of intimacy. It was a curious term.

And Willem stroked his beard with his fingertips and smiled back. Hadn’t he asked me to buy drinks in exchange for driving us here?

“I must go to the sea people’s opera. Places run by young people like Two Face, where either very young people or very old species gather, aren’t really my cup of tea. Besides, would it be appropriate for someone my age to try to mingle with young people? People should go where they belong. Especially on days like this.”

The detective, who had been listening silently, spoke as if in disbelief. Whatever he heard must have sounded so absurd that it didn’t even come across as sarcastic.

“Acting like a father trying to marry off his daughter already doesn’t seem age-appropriate either, Detective Sir.”

Still, he was as caustic as ever. Hearing this, Willem smiled again. He was such a warm person.

“Still, as I age, my heart flutters at the sight of youthful things. Don’t you need some heart-fluttering to enjoy life?”

“I’ve seen more heart-fluttering from killing people, so I can’t agree. And it’s pathetic. This elf came because he thinks I’m a murderer… and Detective Sir, judging by the holster at your waist and the bulge in your inner pocket, you’ve brought at least one speed loader. Didn’t you agree with that opinion?”

He was disturbingly perceptive. Usually, he didn’t bother mentioning such things, but when he started talking, an ominous and unpleasant feeling filled the air.

Willem responded with his usual slickness. They were talking as if they’d forgotten I was watching.

“That may be so… but isn’t it better to watch an old man playing matchmaker than to be treated as a murderer?”

The detective again spoke as if in disbelief. I began to seriously worry they had forgotten I was there, so I walked between them.

“At least I’m used to the former.”

I intervened between the two, but their conversation didn’t stop, so I raised my voice. The tips of my pointed ears already felt hot.

“What are you two discussing with the subject right in front of you?! Willem, you usually seem like such a gentleman, but now…”

At my words, he spoke with an awkward American accent. It was an exaggerated voice, as if trying to sound amusing. The accent was thick but completely different from his usual dignified tone.

“This is America. A place too busy mocking the word ‘gentleman.’ Having immigrated here, I must occasionally act like an American, mustn’t I?”

It was funny hearing such formal speech and words the detective would never use in that tone, but I didn’t laugh. I kept my ears perked up and said:

“And! I came here because of the old feast, not to decide which bar to go to tonight! I was worried that Michael might have killed those cannibals out of anger…”

I no longer called them ogres. They weren’t ogres. The New York Ogre Association would soon say something similar, so it was better to get used to it now.

I was trying to organize my thoughts when Willem spoke as if stating the obvious.

“Originally, you asked whether the bodyguard who died with those ogres was as heroic as publicly known, didn’t you? Since he was wearing a suit soaked in ogre blood.”

That was the moment I learned what had happened there. Michael had told me as if it were nothing. The mystery was solved so anticlimactically.

It seemed that dealing with the cannibals had nothing to do with his work. If it had been even slightly related to his work or his client, he wouldn’t have spoken about it.

“That guy was also a cannibal. Seeing how loyally he continued working after eating, he must have been one of the cannibals. So I dealt with him. And, handling ogres in that cramped space with just a dinner knife, I felt I’d be reported if I took two steps outside the building in my clothes, so I swapped clothes with him. Satisfied now?”

Even with him saying this, there was no evidence. Given that my elven senses couldn’t detect even a hint of blood smell in the house, he must have already disposed of all evidence. That’s when he easily opened up.

No, thinking about it now, he seemed to open up too easily. It felt like all my worrying had been reduced to waste.

“Was my concern worth so little?”

And once again, he saw right through me. I deeply felt why Carmen had said I was transparent to him.

“You had a reasonable suspicion but no evidence, so you must have heard a tip from someone, sensed a scoop, hired this detective, and came looking. This European was a police investigation advisor, so he probably showed you police files. You just received too much help for a single tip. Am I wrong?”

Now the heat at the tips of my pointed ears was very clearly felt. I rarely noticed my ear tips except in the dead of winter, but today happened to be one of those days.

“Am I that obvious?”

Willem would surely have soothed me with a denial, but the detective wasn’t that kind of person. As if lacking the courtesy needed when courtesy was required, he boldly said:

“Generally, yes. Even though you’re no longer an incompetent elf with just flowers in your head, your core hasn’t changed.”

I certainly prided myself on becoming a better journalist and a better person, but at times like this, I felt I hadn’t changed that much after all.

That wasn’t a bad thing. As my father thought, people don’t completely change in an instant. I hadn’t taken on his color, nor had I become something I wasn’t… it meant I had grown while remaining myself.

Now I couldn’t tell if I was making excuses or truly looking at myself. A sigh escaped me.

“I wish Bar Two Face was open at this hour…”

“If you go there now and complain to the bartender that I verbally harassed you, she’ll probably give you a drink or two.”

It was at that moment that I decided to accept the failure of this scoop. The fact that it was a member of the Argonne Invincibles who had judged those cannibals—though it was closer to venting anger—would certainly attract a lot of attention… but there was absolutely no evidence for such a claim. A journalist couldn’t lie in print.

I sat back down in the chair where Michael’s clients usually sat. Looking up at him with a feeling of returning to an ordinary day, I asked:

“By the way, why do you always call her ‘bartender’? There’s no way you wouldn’t know her name when she’s told it to me.”

There probably wasn’t even a need to tell him. I’d heard they had known each other since they were quite young.

“I only ever used names to calm people down. The woman who’s thought being called by her profession sounds more professional and cool from her teens until now hasn’t changed.”

I briefly imagined a werewolf unable to control her excitement at the sight of the moon, and Michael calling her name to calm her down.

It wasn’t an easy image to conjure. I truly hoped he couldn’t read minds. Hmm, he wasn’t that kind of gentle person. The only time he had been gentle was… when I shot my father.

Was Michael before the Great War like the person he showed himself to be then? I briefly fantasized about a time I couldn’t know and could never return to, but again, I couldn’t picture it in my mind.

When such thoughts came, his current appearance seemed so lonely. The portrait of a person who had lost his wind and was left only with wishes was so sad.

Willem left when the conversation reached that point. Making the excuse that his job was only to be prepared in case something happened at this apartment, he left Michael’s place.

There was still quite some time before Cafe Two Face would become Bar Two Face. To pass the time, or perhaps because I simply wanted to talk more, I asked:

“Ah, I’m not sure if I need permission for this… but can I ask Sarah about that? I’d like to hear what Michael was like before the Great War.”

“The bartender tends to make memories a bit inconsistent and arbitrary, but if that’s okay with you.”

I swallowed silly questions like “Can you even call that a memory?” and enjoyed the anticipation pulling at the clock hands.

The time when the harsh backlight on his face might be either the midsummer midday sun or his past quickly passed. We left his apartment around the time Cafe Two Face was becoming Bar Two Face.

By the time we arrived, Two Face’s windows were already covered with thick blackout curtains. Since the sun hadn’t set yet, Sarah was still in human form despite Two Face having become a bar.

Seeing us enter together, she growled slightly. It would have been frightening if her mouth corners hadn’t turned up playfully as she made that low rumbling sound.

“What brings our two regulars in together?”

“I had something to investigate. In the end, I didn’t get anything and just took a day off…”

We both sat at the bar. The detective started his night with a red cocktail that dragons apparently enjoyed, while I started with the drink orcs preferred, as usual.

After watching Sarah take orders and serve drinks to customers who had entered as soon as the bar opened, I saw her come around to the opposite side of the bar and start turning on the radio, so I asked:

“Ah, Sarah! This came up during my investigation… what was Michael like before the Great War? I’m not writing an article about it… I’m just curious.”

Her hair, tied back, swayed like a tail. She came over to me and leaned on the bar with her arms crossed. Her eyes began to shine as if she was about to tell a very enjoyable story.

“Mickey before the Great War? Hmm, hmm… Pfft, there’s so much to say that I don’t know where to start. Ah, yes! Above all else, he loved sleeping in. Before the Great War, he lived upstairs here for a while, and he wouldn’t get up until it was time to open the shop, so I had to go wake him up every day.”

It seems those were happy times for her too. Sarah usually had quite a low voice, but when telling this story, it mixed with a high-pitched tone like that of a young girl.

“Fortunately, he would get up well when someone woke him. ‘Get up, sleepyhead.’ Just one word, and he would get up, though staggering.”

Michael before participating in the Great War was quite an ordinary person. Every Sunday, he went to the God-President’s church, and while working as a handyman at Blingkerton, he helped run Cafe Two Face. He was a very ordinary person. If someone said he was the same person as the veteran sitting next to me now, downing his drink, few would believe it.

Somehow, I felt a sense of kinship with him being a heavy sleeper. Paulina always struggled because of me, but Sarah must have struggled for him.

Sarah moved her head a little closer to me and whispered. It was barely audible even to my elven senses.

“Looking at him now, you probably can’t imagine it, but he was also a kid who went to Blingkerton right after graduating from school, saying he wanted to become a detective. Can you imagine what he looked like?”

She seemed to want to speak so Michael couldn’t hear. After all, she was talking about how childlike the beginnings of someone who had become such a professional were.

I giggled a little with Sarah. But although the voice was barely audible even to me, Michael cut in as if he already knew what the bartender was saying.

“I don’t remember being a heavy sleeper, but if I really was, it’s because you howled too much. With you howling in the next room whenever the moon rose, without any consideration for the person living next door, how could I possibly sleep properly? And Blingkerton paid more than the factories. There was hazard pay included even though there was no danger to life.”

Sarah naturally stood between us, facing us, and shook her head. As we talked, it gradually grew dark outside, and thick veins began to rise on the back of Sarah’s hand.

“Then why did you call your senior at Blingkerton ‘master’? If you went there because they paid well, you would have called him something else. Hmm? Are you embarrassed, Mickey? That’s not like you, really not like you.”

“I thought he was my master until then. I was at the Blingkerton office for over two years, and after he didn’t teach me that teleportation magic, I realized. Ah, he’s not a master, just a senior officer.”

Somehow, it felt like I couldn’t interject. Sarah was an incredibly kind person to me, who had become a regular not long ago, but she was a bit different with Michael.

It wasn’t a difference that made me feel discriminated against. It just felt so natural that these two people were looking at each other.

There was something else I wanted to ask about besides the old stories that even he himself couldn’t remember properly, but I didn’t ask about it. I didn’t want this warm atmosphere to freeze awkwardly.