Ch.214A Story That Won’t Evaporate – The Hour of the Dog and Wolf (4)

I got off at New York Central Station along with many others, but I was the only one with a sword wound on my shoulder. And I was also the only one without any luggage.

I couldn’t possibly meet Sarah with such an obvious injury on my shoulder. Since it had barely been a day since I killed a god and recovered from being a walking corpse, I decided to rest for tonight.

I bought a pack of cigarettes from a kiosk at the station. I had been desperately craving one during the entire journey from Lancaster to New York. I took a leisurely drag and exhaled. Now I finally felt a bit like I was coming home.

I hailed one of the taxis gathered in front of the station. I wondered if I’d meet Cain again and if he would tell me I smelled like murder, but unfortunately this time it was just an ordinary taxi driver.

I arrived at my apartment, which I hadn’t seen for quite some time after being cooped up in the hospital for a month. With the box containing Sol Invictus’s gladius tucked under my arm, I headed for the elevator, where I found the landlord’s granddaughter already inside.

She gladly waited for me. As I entered the elevator and leaned against the wall, she moved her lips this way and that as if trying to say something, then finally spoke.

“Um, well, can I thank you now…?”

Only after pressing the button for the seventh floor did I turn my gaze to her. She definitely looked better than last time. She didn’t look like a drug addict anymore. The last time I saw her, she had been cleaning.

In the brief silence that passed between us, the old elevator reached the seventh floor. I didn’t have much to say to her, but I remembered who was responsible for her being able to stay here.

“If you want to thank someone, why not thank the landlady instead of me? Despite being somewhat blind to reality, she was the only one who was on your side from beginning to end.”

At least this time I didn’t tell her not to thank me. If she had somehow managed to hang on here and live like a proper person, then she had earned the right to express gratitude.

All my belongings were scorched, but they weren’t completely ruined. I opened the door with my key, which still had unwiped ash on its side, and entered my home.

Only after entering did I take Sol Invictus’s gladius out of the box. While everything else was charred, this one gladius still gleamed with a cold, sharp light.

I ignored it, pulled back the curtains, then went to the kitchen and carelessly shoved it into an empty slot in the knife block. If it was a sword used by a god himself, it wouldn’t make excuses about the blade getting warped because I didn’t insert it properly.

I didn’t have any pills left from The Morrígan, so instead of throwing myself on the bed with the foolish expectation that sleep would come, I sat down in my office chair.

I removed the gauze from my shoulder wound. I didn’t move my arm. Although a scab was already forming over the wound, it hadn’t healed completely inside yet.

I picked up the phone. Sitting back in my office chair, I called Two Face. Two Face would be open for business at this hour. The call connected shortly.

I heard the familiar animal sound. It was a growling noise, but with traces of the daytime human voice still remaining, and even as a wolf, that distinctive way of speaking hadn’t disappeared at all.

“Two Face speaking. Who is this?”

It was somewhat reassuring. I guess I wasn’t in a position to call Sarah a puppy when she always buried her nose in my neck and wagged her tail.

“It’s me. I thought you might be worried since I was stuck in the hospital and then disappeared for a few days.”

Naturally, a voice that sounded like it wanted to devour me came from the other end of the line. If it had been daytime, it might have sounded more affectionate, but the beast’s voice made it sound like a howl.

“Of course I was worried! What happened that you couldn’t even contact me for days? I asked Yehoel, but he said he couldn’t reach you either… Anyway, are you alright?”

There was no need to tell Sarah that I had nearly died. She would think that anyway, no matter what I said. It was better to make excuses and explain slowly.

“Almost.”

“If you could have come to Two Face, you would have come right away instead of calling… Are you sure you’re okay?”

I knew she would say that. I deliberately let out a leisurely yawn to reassure her before speaking. It was true that I hadn’t slept at all since killing the god, jumping from the third floor of a building, and during my return journey.

“I’ve seen plenty of people get scolded for going to a bar instead of going home, but this is the first time I’ve been scolded for going home instead of to a bar. I’m really fine. I’ll come by tomorrow to show my face at least.”

Words like these rarely miraculously improved Sarah’s mood. At best, her worry and anger would be put on hold. It had always been that way. This time was no different.

“When you talk like that, I… Never mind. See you tomorrow. I’m glad if I was worried for nothing. Yeah.”

She seemed to want to stay angry somehow, but after putting her anger on hold, her final words came out softly. People don’t change easily.

The call ended without any particular goodbye. Now it was time to try to get some sleep. I threw myself on the bed, but sleep wouldn’t come. It was always like that. We only needed four hours of sleep.

Just as people who should sleep eight hours often sleep six or seven, we often slept three hours or a little more. The body adapts to that time, but the mind doesn’t.

We always remembered when we were ordinary people. That memory helped us endure, but it also drove us like this.

I hated nights because they brought too many random thoughts, especially on evenings like tonight, before a day when I would have even more to think about. I got up from the bed and grabbed the bottle of sleeping pills I had bought when stocking the apartment.

I poured almost a handful into my mouth and chewed them down. The bitter taste didn’t bother me. I didn’t read the side effects of overdose. More precisely, I didn’t need to read them.

After that, I was barely able to fall asleep. Of course, I had to wake up at dawn after barely sleeping for three and a half hours. There was too much time left until morning. I got up, clutching my throbbing head.

If I had decided to do some vigilante nonsense, I might have considered it a blessing to be able to function on just three hours of sleep per day. Fortunately, I had no intention of acting like those deranged masked freaks.

I was sick and tired of war and uniforms, but I took my dress uniform out of the closet and hung it outside. I would need to wear it to the funeral of the doctor and the driver.

If a member of the Argonne Invincibles, a damn hero of the Great War with shining medals dangling all over, came and said a few words to the bereaved families, they could at least receive the treatment they deserved for what they had done.

Praise that isn’t mine is something I can only gladly accept at times like these. To keep the smell of cigarettes from permeating my uniform, I went down to the parking lot with a pack of cigarettes and smoked there.

The smoke smell was thick. Was it always this acrid? Perhaps it was because I had smelled the air of 1914 in my memory. Or maybe someone was trying to create dreams or hopes or possibilities, but only producing smoke. It was more like smog than smoke. Smoke is white, but smog is black. Both white and black were bad, but black was a bit worse.

I went back up to my apartment, prepared my uniform in advance, and grabbed another 1911 pistol from my office drawer, one whose original owner I couldn’t even remember anymore. I needed at least a gun to go out tomorrow.

By the time I had taken care of several days’ worth of unfinished business and replaced the things I had lost in this affair with cruder substitutes, the sun had risen. The sun, not Sol Invictus, had risen.

It wasn’t time for Two Face to open yet, but the bartender would be up. For energetic werewolves, being able to wake up in the morning after selling alcohol until dawn wasn’t even something to brag about.

Actually, I don’t know many werewolves besides Sarah. Everything I know about werewolves was told to me by her. I hadn’t heard much from her parents who had left the bar to her and departed.

I heard it was something like a family tradition. Sarah’s grandparents had also told Sarah’s father, “Now that you’re twenty, the bar is yours. Write us a letter occasionally,” and then retired and left.

It might not be a pleasant family tradition for those involved, but from a third party’s perspective, it was amusing. That third-party position was certainly more comfortable than being William Husband’s son.

Not wanting to drop cigarette ash in the apartment hallway, I lit a cigarette after leaving the building. I got into my car, which had gathered some dust while I was away, but since it was black, it didn’t make much difference.

I could drive to 14th Street where Two Face was located with my eyes closed. I parked in Two Face’s parking lot, which was in the middle of an upscale residential area where no cars were driving at this early hour. I approached the back door and knocked.

I had a key, but I knew well enough that using a key to secretly enter when visiting someone at this hour would be the stupidest choice.

As expected, Sarah was awake. I could hear footsteps from inside, and since the sun had already risen, she had returned to human form and opened the door for me. She smiled bitterly.

“Looks like you’ve completely said goodbye to sleeping in, Mickey. You didn’t need to come this early in the morning just to keep me from worrying. Oh, unless you’re here for a free breakfast?”

“These days I earn enough to live on even without counting bar tabs. The work just never seems to end. Anyway, how about giving me a cup of coffee? I came because I have something to talk about.”

Sarah came closer and embraced me. She buried her face in my neck and leisurely enjoyed the reassuring sensation. It was a familiar routine, as this was always the way I had to comfort her.

Neither of us ever wanted to bring it up first, but we both knew what it was about. After taking a sip of the coffee she handed me, full of milk and sugar, I spoke.

I knew what Sarah might think when I said I had something to talk about, and that I had come this early in the morning with such a thing to say… but unfortunately, it wasn’t that.

Or maybe it could have been. Sarah and I didn’t need many words between us. Perhaps she had thought of the same thing I had. I had no evidence, but it seemed like something Sarah would do.

“I’m planning to come by soon to clear out my room on the second floor. Just wanted to check if that’s okay.”

Judging by Sarah’s lack of surprise… my voice must have given it away. Or maybe it was the atmosphere, or if not that, then something we had shared but that had been severed.

Instead of being surprised, she complained. It didn’t sound like she was seriously hoping for anything. Just regret.

“Mickey, I wish you hadn’t gone to the Great War. I know that’s a stupid thing to say. Even if you hadn’t gone, someone would have been in your place, and someone would have… experienced something that would change them like this. I’m just saying I wish someone else had been unfortunate instead of you. Still, I just… wish it had been different.”

Normally I would have said it was all in the past and nothing could change, but today I decided not to. It just didn’t seem necessary to say such things at a time like this. I had my own complaints trying to escape too.

“Yeah. I wish I could have just kept working at the Blingkerton Detective Agency, and on days off from detective work, holed up in the kitchen at Two Face.”

It probably wouldn’t have been that great. The cases at Blingkerton would have left a much worse aftertaste than the private cases I take now, and living with Sarah might have been less than I had expected.

But since it was a life too late to go back and choose again, I longed for it the way a displaced person remembers only the good parts of the homeland they had to leave.

Twenty-four is probably too young an age to spend all day in regret. Then again, war seems to have aged me prematurely.

We didn’t exchange many more words. What we had just said was both an acknowledgment and a declaration that we couldn’t go back now. Sarah held me for a long time.

Breaking the silence was always Sarah’s job. She continued speaking as if she wanted to make something clear.

“I’m still going to call you Mickey, though. I still remember little Mickey. And… since there’s no way you’ll stop drinking, I don’t need to tell you not to stop coming to Two Face. It’s not about clearing out the present, just clearing out yesterday. Just do that, Mickey. Understand?”

She seemed to still see the little Mickey, completely unchanged. Since I was indeed an unreliable person before the Great War, I decided to let this slide.

“I’m just saying I’ll collect my things. The fact that I no longer live here and have acknowledged various things is already making a mountain out of a molehill, so why go that far?”

This is all I gained from killing Sol Invictus. I was able to remove a handful of hatred and dispose of my delusions.

I receive compensation that doesn’t divide evenly into numbers. Still, this time the value wasn’t ambiguous. Saying that I had pulled myself out up to my calves after having been consumed up to my thighs by a past that had only been sinking deeper was as certain as saying I had completed the job and received two thousand dollars as compensation. I had enough money to squander anyway.

The sun had set. The newspapers were talking about who had brought down the sun. Speculators were already suspecting that whoever brought down the sun might be the same person behind many unsolved cases so far, but they would wander without finding an answer.

There’s a French saying that suits times like these. Just as dwarves were originally a diligent race, elves too were a wise race before they became saturated with a chosen people complex, so they had appropriate words.

They called the time when dusk falls “the hour between dog and wolf.” I think I heard while staying in France that it’s because in that darkness, you can’t distinguish what is a dog and what is a wolf.

It’s the same now. Sol Invictus was dead, and everyone was waving their hands in the darkness. I was relatively lucky. At least I knew that what was in front of me was a wolf.

Sarah glanced at me briefly while reading the delivered newspaper, but she didn’t bother to ask verbally. The dead god had already become something not worth worrying about.

That day, Cafe Two Face didn’t open for morning business. That much time was needed to forget the lingering feelings of the old stories we had barely managed to bring up. I left through the back door of Bar Two Face at twelve o’clock.

I still have the key. I can come back anytime, and Sarah will always be there whenever I return, and I won’t feel a pang in the corner of my heart when I see her. I felt a little lighter, if only slightly.