Ch.220Request Log #017 – Enemy, Slanderer, and Adversary (5)

Dr. Albert’s funeral was quite grand. There was no reason why someone who could show me a respectable image couldn’t show the same to others.

Honestly, if it weren’t for my dress uniform with three different medals pinned in triplicate, I wouldn’t have stood out much. That’s how large the crowd was. Most were people who had learned about divinity from him.

Dr. Albert’s wife, whom I’d only glimpsed once through a car window, seemed uncomfortable when a man in uniform approached, but she recognized me when I mentioned I was one of the good people he had spoken of.

To be honest, she could have thrown stones at me and I would have understood. People generally viewed lone survivors as having lived instead of the people they knew and loved.

She didn’t. Though there seemed to have been several people in the car, she thanked the God-President that at least I had returned alive.

She’s a good person. I no longer felt such revulsion or rejection. It had all been due to my own feelings of inadequacy, not because I thought poorly of good people. I simply expressed my gratitude.

The decision to wear my uniform turned out to be as good as I’d expected. Though I’d heard the word “hero” until my ears were calloused, Dr. Albert was someone even an Argonne Invincible would come to mourn.

The same was true for Willis. I had the opportunity to kneel before his children and tell them their father was a great man—a man worthy of someone with at least ten gleaming medals.

After the two funerals, I received proper compensation from the Divine Security Service. After seeing the driver’s family receive their money, I bought a gun. It was an automatic rifle that used 20-round magazines. Newer than what I’d used in the trenches.

With the magazine inserted, it weighed nearly 16 pounds—something an ordinary person would need to mount on a bipod, but for an Argonne Invincible, standing and controlling the recoil was no problem.

I wouldn’t need it in the city. Unless I planned to wage war in the streets, there was rarely a need for firepower beyond a pistol.

Still, it was an attractive option to be able to casually draw it and make those who forced an Argonne Invincible to carry a .30 caliber rifle regret their choices.

The rifle was quite good, but the Model 11 pistol—whose original owner I couldn’t even remember—was in terrible condition. Since I needed something to use for a while, I completely disassembled it and was cleaning it when the reporter called.

She must have had a drink. Though she was someone who got lonely, she wasn’t bold enough to suddenly visit. She must have gotten drunk somewhere and called. She was always that kind of woman.

Even so, I didn’t want her to die because a gun misfired. When I told her to come over when I wasn’t busy, she let out a pleased laugh.

“Great! Oh, can I come first thing tomorrow morning? Even though you often work on Saturdays… there won’t be any clients asking you to work from dawn tomorrow, right?”

“What, did you fight with that half-ogre?”

I reminded her that she was only calling because she was lonely, but this time she didn’t suddenly blush like before.

“No! There are some things I can’t tell Paulina about. I might need to hire you officially, but for now I just want to discuss it. I’ll tell you tomorrow!”

I hung up without bothering to say I’d see her tomorrow. If it was something the reporter was concerned about… a few possibilities came to mind.

The Forest’s Firstborn was dead, but the Clichy family remained intact. And if the Clichy president’s family—who had nearly gone insane after almost killing his daughter—weren’t obsessed with family love, that would be strange in its own way.

So they would try to take his daughter back, and while Clichy Corporation had taken a beating in reputation, their money hadn’t disappeared. They had enough to send people after the reporter, and she was an easy fish to catch.

She might be asking for help, knowing she couldn’t rely on luck forever. Or maybe she just wanted to create a new name but couldn’t think of one.

If it was the former… the best way to make them give up on retrieving one child would be to instill the fear that they might lose another child if they continued.

Though I had betrayed President Clichy and lived faithfully to that choice of betrayal, I hadn’t discarded the records of my investigation into him or the organizational chart of the Followers of the Forest’s Firstborn.

Could they have completely reorganized? President Clichy’s second son didn’t have that much charisma. He might have been good at serving the Forest’s Firstborn, but he was insufficient to become the Forest’s Firstborn himself.

He was in New York from the time the Forest’s Firstborn was arrested until his death. The original New York branch head had fled because the Forest’s Firstborn tried to kill him, so now he would be both the Forest’s Firstborn and the New York branch head.

I should start getting back into work mode. I searched through records until dawn, then fell asleep and barely managed three and a half hours before getting up at six.

The hot water was particularly absent this morning. After showering in the cold water, I got dressed. I put on my newly purchased holster harness and adjusted the length. I checked the pistol magazines and inserted three.

I thought the reporter would come around 10 at the earliest, but someone knocked on my home/office door at 7:30.

I didn’t think for a moment it would be her and looked outside, but through the small lens, I saw the reporter. This wasn’t usual.

As soon as I opened the door, I heard a cheerful morning greeting that didn’t match my morning hours. My mornings are generally quiet.

“Good morning, Michael! I hope I didn’t surprise you by coming so early?”

“I did think you came unusually early.”

The reporter, perking up her ears as if to hear sounds from inside, entered. She naturally sat across from my office desk and placed her bag on the table.

She looked around as if it had been a very long time since she’d been here, but she couldn’t see the Sol Invictus gladius hidden behind the curtain. There was no reason to give her evidence.

When I sat at my desk, she took out an elven pistol that the Followers of the Forest’s Firstborn had used and pushed it toward me. There were no bullets in the chamber, but the magazine was still inserted.

Being elven-made, it was quite small to hold, but there was no problem checking its condition. Since she probably had never fired it, apart from some dust inside, there wasn’t any particular issue.

“A gun that’s never been fired wouldn’t deteriorate on its own unless you were living in an environment that would damage your body first. Just clean it properly after firing… do you think you’ll need to fire it?”

I asked casually. Though she was about to answer no as if it were obvious, she nodded awkwardly.

“Ah, that’s what I wanted to discuss today… Yes, it’s because of my family. They keep sending letters, and last time, people even came to my house. I’m worried something serious might happen if this continues.”

Fortunately, my prediction was correct. Since I had already prepared an answer yesterday, I replied without much thought.

“It’s simple. Just let them know that in trying to recover one child, they might lose two. Your family is quite blindly devoted to family love, but they’re not that stupid under normal circumstances.”

She tilted her head as if she didn’t understand. The tips of her ears twitched intermittently.

“I wouldn’t mind threatening them… but are you planning to go all the way to Texas? If you mean family, they’ll all be at the main house. Clichy Corporation operates mainly in the South, so even if there are siblings not at the main house, it won’t be easy for you to find them. It would take quite some time.”

“One of them should be in New York. After Charles Clichy died, the second-in-command of the followers would stay here to try to rally the collapsing Followers of the Forest’s Firstborn. I mean the Forest’s Firstborn’s second son.”

The reporter, who seemed to be recalling her memories, nodded. It was he who had led the followers marching in the streets to save the Forest’s Firstborn.

“Ah, if you mean Scott… he could certainly be in New York. He was in New York then too. But, after his father… passed away.”

Even without paying attention, I could tell there was a gap in her speech. Her father hadn’t died in some accident—she had killed him. There was no need to point that out now.

“If Scott is really in New York and has taken on the role of the Forest’s Firstborn, finding him, threatening him, and quietly slipping away isn’t such a simple task. Besides, while I want to cut ties with my family, I don’t hate them enough to kill them… and you know what conditions I’d set.”

Don’t kill them. Hurting them would be fine, but she would dislike it if it went too far. Fortunately, the Followers of the Forest’s Firstborn were at their weakest since their inception.

“Last time, when we caught that vigilante group, I went in, handled it, and came out without any problems. This will be similar. Without someone like Charles Clichy pouring in Clichy Corporation’s manpower and money, it wasn’t an organization that would grow this large or last this long.”

His child-rearing hadn’t failed that badly, but he had hidden his identity for too long from the only child who might have been able to follow in his footsteps. A man who lived for today saw tomorrow in the reporter.

It seems Rose Clichy didn’t realize that what she needed to properly bear fruit for tomorrow was her own life. By the time he realized, it was already too late.

This would be just right for warming up when I start working again after completing this task. While I needed Dr. Albert’s help to catch Sol Invictus, I didn’t need help to catch people.

So I decided to discuss something more important than the difficulty of the job. This would take quite some time. First, I needed to find out if Scott Clichy was really in New York.

If I found him, I would need to spend time figuring out the best time to infiltrate, and if the Clichy family didn’t completely give up after one threat, I would need to devise more methods.

“Do you have enough money? It will take a few days to find Scott Clichy, and almost another week to understand his schedule. If your family doesn’t give up after that, we’ll need more time.”

Originally, $20 per day wouldn’t have felt like such a large sum, but she was now living a life closer to Rose Leafman than Rose Clichy. Even that amount was significant.

With her reporter’s salary, she could hire me for a while, but not for long. The reporter nodded, though she looked a bit anxious.

“Before, I thought $20 was incredibly cheap for what you do… but after I started earning my own living, I realized it’s not. Yes, I have enough money. The only place I spend money is occasionally going to Bar Two Face for a Silver Bullet. Would two weeks be enough?”

“For now. And I’ll charge you for expenses too, so prepare your money well. I don’t plan to make any exceptions in the amount for you.”

She smiled awkwardly. The fact that I treated her exactly the same as everyone else seemed both pleasing and disappointing.

“I might have been a little happy to receive special treatment in that regard… but of course I understand. You’re really only interested in money, so someone whose life you saved shouldn’t complain now, right?”

Now it’s work time. I packed a pack of cigarettes, having not smoked any since dawn. Since the knife I received from the Nolde was warped by fire, I packed a pocket knife with a fairly long blade.

I got up first, watching the reporter who seemed to be calculating how much it would cost to hire me. It was unlike her to worry about money, having never had to worry about it in her life.

“I’ll buy you breakfast at Two Face. All I have at home is canned food, and I don’t serve that to guests.”

The reporter perked up her ears and stood immediately. I pulled back the curtain, put on my holster, and wore an outer garment over it to hide the holster. Sara didn’t like people coming to Two Face with guns.

I took the “Out” sign and placed it under my apartment number, then took the elevator to the ground floor. The reporter, unusually energetic for the morning, asked casually.

“Is Sara a good cook? I often go to Two Face, but always in the evening! Two Face doesn’t sell food, right?”

“I was always in charge of cooking at Two Face. Sara’s not bad either… but it’s more about quantity than taste. She has a generous hand.”

It wouldn’t be that appealing to an elf. They were a race that could be satisfied with half a plate of scrambled eggs.

The elevator reached the first floor, and the reporter, who got out first, turned to look at me. She smiled as if she had discovered something while observing me.

“You’ve really changed, Michael. Before, your voice was thickly coated with cynicism, and even when looking into your eyes like this, I could see something burning fiercely inside… but now it’s less so.”

At least seeing my life flash before my eyes and cleaning out the second-floor room at Two Face seems to have helped. If that atmosphere isn’t felt, it’s not bad for me.

People who instinctively sense danger, like Dr. Albert, would decrease too. Perhaps I could blend into crowds again now. On the surface, I looked quite ordinary.

Still, I headed to Two Face on 14th Street. It had been quite a while since I’d been there, having gone to Dr. Albert and Willis’s funerals, and there was an unfamiliar face in front of the store.

Just as Levi had found a new employee, it seemed Sara had also found one, which was unlike her. She had believed I would return someday, so despite the hard work, she hadn’t hired new staff.

The fact that she had hired someone new wasn’t a bad thing. It felt like it confirmed that we had ended things well.

I parked the car on the street and gave a slight nod to the woman watering the plants in front of Two Face.

Judging by her face, she looked younger than the reporter, but she had almost lost her childish appearance. She would be about eighteen.

Dark brown hair, black eyes, even the parts that didn’t reveal her mixed heritage… she might not look strange if someone said she resembled me a bit. I could somewhat understand why Sara had hired her.

Though the lingering attachment was gone, one can’t erase preferences. With a slight laugh, I entered Two Face and waved to Sara. I quipped:

“How did you manage to hire someone like that in a city of 6 million people? It seems no different from letting me move back into the second floor of Two Face.”

Sara quipped back. There was no one better than Sara for exchanging playful, harmless jabs.

“Don’t start thinking she resembles you already, Mickey. If you see what expression she makes when I act a bit childish, you might suspect she’s your long-lost sister.”

To the Followers of the Forest’s Firstborn, I might be an enemy, a slanderer, and an adversary, but not at Two Face. I felt the stories of gods and humans had completely evaporated.