Ch.212A Story That Won’t Evaporate – The Hour of the Dog and Wolf (2)

“Wake up, sleepyhead.”

Through the ringing in my ears that made my head feel like it was splitting, I heard a familiar voice. Did I have the strength to open my eyes? Strangely, I could move my body without much difficulty.

The smell of dust and sunlight surrounded me. Werewolves had a dog-like quality about them, drying their bed sheets in the sunlight twice a week. As I sensed the smell of sunlight, strength instinctively filled my entire body.

I had cut off his head, but thinking that Sol Invictus might still be alive, I hurriedly got up. When I collapsed earlier, I had been too exhausted to even make a sound, but somehow now I could raise my body.

Blood from the wound on my shoulder soaked the bed all the way to the mattress. There was still ringing in one ear, and my skinned knuckles throbbed painfully.

My body creaked after facing the War Spirit head-on and colliding countless times with its inhuman strength. Sol Invictus might find the term “inhuman strength” a bit unfair, but dead men tell no tales.

Yes, this definitely wasn’t reality. If they had returned a patient in this condition to Sarah, I would have grabbed a gun and gone to meet those doctors immediately.

Even though this wasn’t reality, everything around me felt sweeter than reality. The air smelled like 1914. The bed I was lying on was in my room on the second floor of Two Face. Sarah was beside me. Was I seeing my life flash before my eyes?

Despite my sudden movement, no, despite my body being covered in wounds and bleeding, Sarah smiled as usual. Her intoxicating voice continued.

“Did you have a bad dream, Mickey? Why are you jumping up like that? It’s not like you.”

I had already fallen after killing Sol Invictus. I had finished what I needed to do. I just… wanted to rest. I wanted to rest until I was captured and thrown back into my broken body.

I looked at Sarah from my memories. Her face was the same as when I saw her in the hospital, but everything around had the colors of the pre-Great War era.

It had the hues of a time when people could hope for something and move forward. It preserved the colors from when the Industrial Spirit King created something other than smoke. Sarah always reminded me of these colors.

She was… not so much a loved one as she was my life before I was completely cut off in the Argonne Forest. Even affection fades with time and violence. But memories remain memories, even when stained with blood.

I finally decided to contemplate in my own words why I couldn’t return to my original relationship with Sarah. I couldn’t go back because what I wanted from her wasn’t love but those feelings and colors of the past.

Until now, we had both turned our eyes away from this fact. Regardless of the reason, we had only accumulated delusions and lingering attachments by ruminating on the impossibility of return.

After killing Sol Invictus, all I could do was reflect on my relationship with an old lover? I buried my face in the pillow that smelled of that dust from my memories, then raised myself up again.

Everything was exactly as it had been then. The view outside the window was just a white brightness because I couldn’t remember the scenery in detail, but that was trivial. The Sarah from my memories approached me.

Sarah was three years older than me. When I was young, I thought it was a big difference, but as I got older, I realized she was just someone who liked taking care of others.

She buried her face in the nape of my neck again. She embraced my bruised and bleeding shoulder as usual and buried her face in it. I twitched my nose, looking for a reassuring scent as Sarah would do.

Sarah’s voice was still sweet, but the content of her words was something she would never say. She was never one to hold someone back.

“Let’s stay here, Mickey. Okay?”

I decided to convince her, or perhaps myself. Even if she was just a memory taking Sarah’s form, I spoke while looking at her.

“Why?”

“This is your home. Home is where you should be… where you want to be. Is there somewhere else you’d rather go?”

I let out a hollow laugh at those words. The real Sarah would never have said that. Taking her with me, wetting the floorboards with my dripping blood, I headed toward the mirror.

My face in the mirror was still not clearly visible. I spoke to the face of my comrade that painfully clung to me. There was no reason for him to be reflected since this wasn’t reality, but all mirrors in my memories look like this.

“See? This might be where I belong, but it’s not where Bunyan belongs. In fact, it’s not where I belong either. I’ll take responsibility and resolve this. It’s not because of me. It’s not because of us either. It’s for our comrades who sacrificed themselves and hang like corpses, unable to say anything because they’re dead. So…”

I raised my hands to show her. I showed her my bloodied hands and bruised forearms. With those hands, I took hold of memory-Sarah’s hands.

Clean hands. No calluses and no perfume smell, which meant they weren’t the real Sarah’s hands. She had a habit of gripping her pen too tightly, so she had a callus on the side of her middle finger.

Werewolves tend to have strong body odors, so Sarah always wore perfume. Even though I told her she didn’t smell like a wolf, she would blush and insist that I should compliment her perfume smell instead.

“Out there, in that burning, bleeding body, is where I need to be. I need to go home.”

Nevertheless, opportunities to reflect like this were rare. Just for a moment, just a very brief moment, I made excuses that I could rest a little longer and looked at Sarah.

Recalling things with her is like recalling the past. It builds a bridge to the old days that seemed too distant and disconnected to remember clearly. I looked out the window again.

I remembered my life before becoming an Argonne Invincible in the Argonne Forest. Scenery emerged where there had been only blank spaces in my memory. I saw landscapes painted with colors borrowed from a palette once full of vibrant hues.

It’s amazing how different the scenery was just ten years ago. Outside the window was my senior from the Blingkerton Detective Agency asking if little Mike was still not up, a newspaper stand that would have delivered somewhat more hopeful news than nowadays… a very ordinary scene not much different from today’s cities.

I too had a life worth one person. Probably. At the very least, I hadn’t bound my comrade to empty nothingness. I hadn’t bound him as a ghost to a wasteland with nothing to protect.

Sin is still sin. A curse is still a curse. But my anger had subsided somewhat. I felt the flames that the reporter had tried to explain to me several times subsiding a little. I didn’t know what use it would be.

Whatever else happens, I should go see Sarah after this is over. Whatever the outcome, let’s talk about old times a bit more. She had childish tastes and would like it if I told her she appeared in my dream.

The Sarah in my memory also looked out the window. She answers something like, Yes, I’m up, and comes back. A complete past is drawn from the mixture of scenes I’ve seen and things I remember.

“I wish you could have lived here, Mickey.”

The Sarah from my memory said regretfully as she placed a revolver in my hand. I willingly shook off the death that seemed like I could contentedly settle into it, and chose a life that desired nothing but death.

I loaded the bullets she handed me into the revolver. I flicked my wrist to spin the cylinder. With all six chambers filled, there would be no strange luck, or bad luck, of the hammer striking an empty cylinder.

Even though she was just a memory, I turned Sarah around to sit with her back to me before putting the revolver in my mouth. I had done this much often. Since two years ago, I stopped doing this even on Veterans Memorial Day. What comes next is also a first.

I pulled the trigger. The gunshot of the large-caliber revolver sounded like an explosion. The sound continued to echo. It became increasingly regular. Thudding. My heart was beating.

My heartbeat was also only audible in my left ear. My vision was still dark and blurry. Is this life and that death? Does that make any sense?

My body wouldn’t move, but it wasn’t because of my wounds. Something hard was wrapped around my body. Probably a plaster cast. At least I wasn’t on the streets of Centralia.

I could see a light source, but thankfully it wasn’t a fire. Though blurry, it was a lamp. I thought I had been talking with Sarah for about 10 minutes. It didn’t seem like that much time had passed.

Agent Desmond, who had been waiting in the room when I opened my eyes, approached me. My voice was cracked, but I could somehow speak.

“I was… about to… follow right behind you, Agent Desmond… What… happened…?”

“After receiving a call from Mr. Willis, orders came down from our esteemed superiors, and we headed to Centralia. There we secured the body of Sol Invictus, who had been beheaded with a knife through his heart, and brought you, Michael, who was still breathing. There were no other survivors.”

So everyone died in the end. The innocent child, the apostate, the person who just wanted to do their job for pay… the person who gave their life for what they believed in—all dead, and only I survived.

It seems the driver didn’t run away either. He’s as much a benefactor to me as the doctor. The world has always turned on the efforts of ordinary people in places unseen.

While answering, I felt the smell of blood rising from my stomach. I had received treatment, but I wasn’t in good condition.

“At least… I completed… my mission… properly… That’s good.”

Agent Desmond swallowed his words once or twice before speaking.

“Related to that, our esteemed superior has decided to visit you. He said he would come when Michael woke up, so about now…”

Again with the gods’ sense of timing. I was sick of gods by now. Since I couldn’t turn my head, I gestured toward the door with my eyes.

“Then… get out, Agent… Desmond.”

My physical condition was terrible, but a few months of bed rest would heal me. If the God-President himself was coming all the way here, I had things to say to him. I watched as he turned his back and left the hospital room.

Still, I wouldn’t spew words of hatred if I could help it. Since he was the god that Dr. Albert loved so dearly, I could show that much courtesy. That’s all.

Waiting while unable to move is always difficult. After steeling myself and waiting for several minutes, something like a white dove flew in from outside the window.

It wasn’t a bird. It was pure light, like the official document I had received before. I took a deep breath, suppressing my discomfort.

Even though I hadn’t taken my eyes off it, suddenly there was a human silhouette instead of a spirit. A silhouette made of light, with facial features too bright to make out clearly.

The silhouette resembled a human. Or perhaps humans resemble that silhouette. The silhouette approached me. The surrounding air was visibly displaced and rippled, but there was no wind.

He had the right to exist in that place, but the air that had been in his place did not have such a right. That’s why it was displaced without even becoming wind. It was an absurd level of divinity.

The esteemed superior of the Divine Protection Agency knelt on one knee before my hospital bed. He began speaking while meeting my gaze. I endured the painfully divine light shining on me.

“A god who cannot even kneel before someone who willingly accomplished what no one could even imagine would be better off not existing. Nor would a politician who doesn’t give appropriate rewards to someone who has accomplished such a feat.”

While the official document was written like his own scripture, in person he spoke modern English quite fluently. This contrasted with Sol Invictus, who spoke in an awkward, antiquated manner.

He briefly raised his head to look over my body. Then, he spoke.

“The doctors at this hospital have kept you alive in this condition without me performing a miracle. Stand up and walk. Let us talk face to face.”

His voice was audible in my right ear. No. My vision was no longer blurry either. No, it can’t be. I could feel my fingers moving inside the plaster cast. It was horrifying. Nausea rose up. Was it this simple?

The courtesy I had intended to show for Dr. Albert’s sake instantly hit rock bottom. My body was filled with more vitality than when I was preparing to hunt Sol Invictus. For gods, such things required just a single word.

I smashed the plaster cast on my arm against the wall to break it. With my freed hand, I gripped my opposite wrist and crumbled the plaster cast. I was disgusted by my body that had completely healed with just one word.

I felt greater hatred than what I felt toward the dwarves. I grabbed the flower vase from the storage cabinet next to my hospital bed and threw it at the silhouette. The vase made contact but lost its physical force upon touching him and plummeted to the floor.

“Why didn’t you tell that kid who died in that fire pit to get up and walk? What about Dr. Albert whose head was cut off by Sol Invictus? How did Willis die? No, if you had just gone to that kid stuck in the hospital with tuberculosis and said those words! This whole fucking mess didn’t need to happen. Was any of this necessary?”

The cold-blooded divinity answered. As Dr. Albert had said, he seemed somewhat regretful, but dead people don’t come back with regrets.

“Mr. Willis Greenlow died when the gas station’s fuel tank exploded due to the solar wind that Sol Invictus detonated while he was requesting help on the gas station’s telephone. And… the only better method would have been for me to put this country in a glass bottle, label it ‘America,’ and manage it that way. A god should not do that.”

His tone suggesting there was no other choice was so absurd that I burst into laughter. I threw his words back at him less than ten seconds after he finished speaking.

“If you, who supposedly knows everything, let all those people die, how is that any different from putting them in a glass bottle and managing them?”

The voice that the God-President had healed quickly cracked again. It wasn’t that the healing was imperfect. This inhuman divinity before me was a being that possessed nothing but perfection.

I remembered only one wound. I picked up my charred dagger that the Divine Protection Agency had recovered. With twice the strength, I stabbed it into my own shoulder and then pulled it out. I stared directly at him.

“I don’t need anything, so get out. I won’t make a human sacrifice twice. I won’t buy some damn salvation for my comrades with those people’s lives!”

The only remaining disgust was for sorcery and human sacrifice, but that disgust alone was enough to reject the hand of salvation that the God-President had said he would bestow.

This was the right method. There’s a limit to trading lives for lives. If we continue like that, the corpses of people sacrificed for momentary comfort will eventually surface like bodies floating up in the waters off Long Island.