Ch.189The Fifth Entanglement – Vampire Waltz (9)

The silence stretched on for a long time. There had been no intention to kill, yet killing had occurred. The intent to kill had actually belonged to the deceased. And that intent was partly the fault of this old vampire.

Responsibility and conflict had become so entangled that it was impossible to find where one began and the other ended. All that remained was a tangled skein of scarlet thread. There was no way to untangle it. It would have to be cut. Or perhaps not.

Mircalla tried repeatedly to speak but no words came out. She simply hung her head. All she had to say to the father whose identity she hadn’t even known were complaints.

“Then, you could have just not told us it was impossible from the beginning. If you hadn’t, Laura wouldn’t have shot at you…”

Laura wasn’t used as a man’s name. Rose thought she understood why Cain had opposed it so strongly. He was someone who had received that stigma because he feared people’s contempt.

It was almost instinctive for him to stop a child who was trying to pursue a love that would be despised as much as he had feared. It was such small anecdotes and character flaws that twisted the entire story.

“I was afraid. I know what kind of looks you would receive. If it were only in Enoch, I wouldn’t have cared… but it wasn’t just there.”

It was a difference that couldn’t be bridged. Someone who had lived for an unimaginable amount of time couldn’t easily change their opinion. The reporter hoped Mircalla wouldn’t bare her fangs and shout again.

Fortunately, Mircalla didn’t seem angry at those words. She possessed determination and perseverance, but she hadn’t embraced madness. She had reached for blindness, but fortunately, she had been able to let go before it was too late.

She was only troubled by the fact that the person she loved had died with the intention of killing someone. If responsibility couldn’t be assigned and the severity of the crime couldn’t be determined, she had to consider what she held in her hands.

Mircalla said something the detective had never even considered. She said what the reporter had hoped for.

“I… I don’t know. You know I’m not the type of person who can make such decisions. So, um… please forgive Laura. For trying to kill my father. The dead can’t speak. So this is my wish and what I want… but still, I just think it’s necessary.”

No matter how tangled the ball of thread might be, these two people held both ends. If they each pulled the thread with their own hands, it would eventually unravel. Not immediately, but someday.

The taxi driver nodded. No, the wanderer did so. More than the wanderer, the murderer did. Cain, not any other name, nodded.

It was like doing something he couldn’t do in the past. He was retracing and reversing his past when, before being called the God-President, he had looked for the reason his offering wasn’t accepted not in himself but in his brother.

Despite having built numerous Enochs, this was something he was experiencing for the first time in this Enoch. It was something he was experiencing for the first time in an era where humility had been forgotten and forgiveness had been reduced to an act of revealing one’s weakness.

He was no longer that naive farmer from the past. Not all time makes people grow, but living longer does provide more paths forward than not. He had progressed, if only a little.

“I didn’t expect to forgive when forgiveness wasn’t even sought. Very well, Mircalla. I willingly forgive.”

However, he didn’t say he sought forgiveness. Quite selfishly, he could speak of forgiveness without hesitation because his body was intact, and that child was already dead.

The living couldn’t borrow the mouths of the dead to forgive. The dead directly forgiving was only possible in the era when the God-President displayed miracles.

But there was one thing the living could do. There was one thing that could be done without borrowing the name of the dead. Mircalla gladly responded.

“Then… I’ll stop seeking revenge too. There’s nothing I can do anyway, and holding onto this situation would only eat away at me. I didn’t want to live like that. I had hoped to avenge my grudge and return to my original life… but there wasn’t really a grudge to begin with. If I let go here, I can return to my original life without needing to hold onto revenge.”

Rose turned her head briefly to look at the detective. She wanted to see the detective’s face as he watched forgiveness and letting go. He still wore only a dry expression. He was a person whose thoughts couldn’t be read.

These two people were talking to each other, but the detective would have to talk to himself. He would certainly do so. As long as people strive, they wander, and he was wandering.

So Rose hoped that someday the detective would recall this incident and become someone who could forgive others. While ruthlessness might be a good trait for an operator, it wasn’t so for a person.

The matter seemed to have been resolved somehow. They had caught the spark that was burning toward the powder keg, even at the cost of burning their fingers, so they could have been praised if someone wanted to. But no one particularly did.

Instead, the detective leaned back in the plush chair at Bar Enoch. He talked about money. When an operator talked about money, it was a certification that the job was done.

“It’s fortunate I don’t need to retrieve the gun I put in the ventilation duct. You only need to pay for dealing with that dwarf informant. I’ll send you a bill including the cost of bullets and the life premium… Should I send it to the address on your card?”

Rose couldn’t help but chuckle. For someone who claimed that only money had value, he was quite human, but she still couldn’t get used to him bringing up money in this kind of situation and atmosphere.

Mircalla didn’t snap at him for talking about money in this situation. She just smiled with a somewhat unburdened expression.

She definitely resembled the Golden Age. Only her outer shell shone with gold, hiding something less brilliant inside, but it was still enough to live by. The detective thought quietly.

“Is it common for someone who’s done work requiring a life premium to appear in the evening so neatly dressed in a suit, Michael?”

“The only ones who don’t are the dead ones, and dead ones can’t receive life premiums.”

It was closer to a joke than a sarcastic remark. The detective’s job was done here. The detective clicked his tongue a couple of times, looking down at the reporter who had been watching with somehow sparkling eyes. An operator shouldn’t get involved in personal matters.

Rose, who had looked up at the sound that caught her attention, suddenly remembered that she was just someone who had gotten involved, or rather… someone who had somehow gotten caught up in this matter, and stood up.

“Ah, my job was to help with the meeting, right? Then… I’ll leave the rest to you two. Let’s go, Mr. New York! Today, I’ll buy you a drink at Two Face.”

Mircalla waved her hand at Rose. Until this morning, she had been burning with revenge, and it was this reporter who had persuaded her, so she could gladly do that much.

“Michael should have my card, so if you need an interview source who can read the minds of your subjects, call me. I can help you that much.”

Mircalla thought the reporter would be pleased, but instead, Rose, who had been about to leave immediately, stopped and began to ponder. After a short while, she asked with a rather serious face.

“Ah, that’s a nice offer, but… wouldn’t that violate journalistic ethics? I mean, I can’t exactly ask the Journalists’ Association, ‘Is it okay if my source can use magic to read thoughts?'”

The detective chuckled. She was a woman whose habit of worrying ahead of time hardly ever changed. After that, the soundproof magic curtain was drawn again. The two left Enoch and headed to Two Face.

The night was peaceful. The bartender made a mischievous joke asking if elves were her type, and while Rose was blushing to the tips of her long ears, the detective skillfully took revenge by scratching under the bartender’s chin, making him produce a comfortable sound like a puppy. It was an incredibly weak sound for someone who aspired to be a cool person.

Not everyone’s night was peaceful. Martin, who had lost his colleagues, friends, seniors, and even his boss who had been like a father to him all in one morning, couldn’t enjoy his drinks. The beer just kept going down endlessly.

The police ultimately didn’t believe him. No police officer would believe that a single human had shot and killed fourteen dwarves on the spot and escaped without leaving any trace.

“Bartender, just one more beer… That fucking human bastard, he probably came with that purpose from the beginning…”

Since no one believed him, alcohol was his only solution. But then, someone sat down next to him. A fellow dwarf. Not a very old dwarf. His beard was short.

The dwarf spoke. It was a very light remark. A voice full of confidence.

“I’ll have a beer too. Put his drinks on my tab as well.”

It was something Martin hadn’t expected. Looking to the side with blurry vision from the alcohol, he saw a dwarf in a suit sitting next to him, puffing on a cigar a couple of times to make sure it was properly lit.

Though he had no intention of picking a fight, the words naturally came out. Martin shook his square fist at him.

“Who do you think I am, a vagrant? Fuck, I had a job until lunch today! You fucking gentleman bastard…”

The dwarf who had naturally sat down next to him had a smiling face despite the vulgar curses. After stroking his beard, he said:

“You were learning the trade under the informant. Isn’t that right? If so, calm down, friend.”

Was he someone who knew the boss? Still, there was an unpleasant word mixed in, so Martin grumbled. He had no intention of getting close to someone who easily attached the word “friend” to people.

“Yeah, that’s right. But don’t call me friend! I’m sitting here after getting a solid backstab from someone who called me that…”

The dwarf asked in an almost whisper. It was a quite gentle voice. He had a face that suggested he didn’t mind the level of cursing as long as it came from a fellow dwarf.

“What happened?”

Having someone who would listen to his story was somewhat relieving. Martin took out a crumpled cigarette pack with a red circle drawn on it, crushed by a dwarf’s grip, from his pocket and tossed it down.

Then he explained. He told him about how a human who he had met in the red-light district and called a friend had killed everyone from his boss to his colleagues while he had briefly gone to the cigarette store, and then disappeared.

The dwarf, whose name Martin didn’t even know, listened without showing any sign of doubting Martin’s words. As he listened attentively to each word as if it were sincere, Martin’s speech became faster and more detailed.

When he tried to describe the detective’s face with his alcohol-addled mind but couldn’t remember properly and began to fumble, the dwarf spoke briefly. His tone contained explicit hatred.

“It’s a Doppel. Even with a gun, taking on more than a dozen people alone, and then completely disappearing… It’s those ghosts from the no-man’s-land. I’m certain. Can you get up?”

Martin looked at him as if he didn’t understand what he was saying.

“What? No, no. That bastard had one head and two arms and legs, so what Doppel? From what I saw, that bastard came with helpers trailing behind him. With those guys…”

The dwarf who had approached Martin took out a dagger from inside his coat. It was a ritual dagger with Wotan’s runes engraved in intaglio. After proving his identity with that dagger, he continued speaking.

“Doppels are people, friend. I know because I’ve seen them several times. They’re abominations created by the Americans. They’re only human on the outside. What’s created on the battlefield should be left on the battlefield, but the Americans brought them back to the mainland. That’s why people like us exist. If you’ve bled because of a Doppel, we can help you.”

Martin said with a puzzled expression. The only dwarf he could see was the one in front of him. The dwarf shook his head as if to say don’t be stupid.

“Don’t just believe what you see in front of you like goblins, friend. We dwarves have creativity and inspiration, so why act like goblins who are shamefully classified as the same species as us? We are warlocks. When those who used magic during the Great War either cowardly abandoned magic or used it only for personal advancement… that was frustrating, and we couldn’t abandon our fellow dwarves, so we became warlocks who learned magic.”

The dwarf looked as if he was about to give a speech inspired by patriotism. Martin shook his head in aversion.

“What? No, I’m telling you it couldn’t have been a Doppel. And look, I have nothing to do with magic or anything like that. I came here today partly because I feel wronged, but also because I’m thankful that at least I survived. So why would I need the help of these, what, warlocks or whatever to deal with that fucking bastard?”

He looked at Martin with an expression of frustration. Martin, who was speaking as if even his drunkenness had cleared away from the shock, seemed like a very weak dwarf to him. Dwarves were supposed to be a stronger race than that.

The dwarf’s gentlemanly appearance and speech disappeared somewhere, and he began to speak like a prophet who had received a revelation.

“You have to work for your fellow dwarves, friend. How shameful was it for us? How much did we lament when Wotan ended the war by joining hands with those rebel bastards in the name of revolution? Dealing with Doppels here is about restoring the pride of our fellow dwarves, friend. I’m inviting you to that great task.”

Martin worshipped Wotan. He was a dwarf more than an American. So he shook his head at the dwarf’s attitude that ignored Wotan’s inevitable choice and desperate efforts.

“I… um, don’t think Wotan did anything that wrong, friend. If it’s a great task, let great people do it. Look at me, I’m just a young dwarf who’s fucking failed miserably.”

The dwarf seemed to look at Martin with contempt for a moment, but Martin, thoroughly drunk, didn’t properly notice. He sighed and said:

“Fine, fine. We’ll handle it ourselves. But I’d like you to give us some information about that Doppel. You can do that much, can’t you? Why, are you so afraid of that human?”

“It’s not that human I’m afraid of, it’s that operator. What good would come from being marked by someone so calculating? But it’s nice to be able to get back at the bastard who screwed me over… that much I can do.”

The dwarf put down enough money for both their drinks at the bar and stood up. Though he desperately wanted another drink, Martin didn’t refuse and got up as well. He went with him to meet the warlocks.

The next morning, when angels went to an apartment where many young dwarves lived to find a witness, all they could find were empty homes.