Ch.23003 Investigation Record – Justice of a Bygone Era (5)

I felt a little more at ease. Or rather, my heart didn’t grow any more uncomfortable. It still throbbed like a burn from hot water, but at least it wasn’t getting worse.

The next morning, the article appeared in the newspaper alongside the obituary of the nameless Cowboy. The obituary mentioned that he died fighting a wanted criminal, so he would be remembered.

And on the day the obituary was published, the angels who had come yesterday to clean up the scene now visited my apartment. They brought some of his personal effects—his hat, gun, and tobacco pouch.

Unlike typical angels, this one could smile and show expressions of regret. The angel handed me the box of belongings and quietly bowed his head.

“I saw in the morning paper that you’re the reporter who was covering the Cowboy? We had no way of knowing who he was. He had no connections in New York, and we couldn’t ask around near his long-gone ranch… I thought it would be better to bring these to someone who knew him. Would that be alright?”

His voice was kind, suggesting I could refuse if it was too painful. Though he didn’t seem like an ordinary angel, he appeared to be a good person, so I forced a smile.

“It’s fine! Thank you for bringing them. Oh, and about the funeral…”

“If no one pays for the funeral, they’ll cremate him at the morgue. They have a crematorium for unclaimed bodies.”

They’re just going to burn him? I couldn’t let that happen. I didn’t want to see someone who had a place to be buried simply turned to ashes.

“How much is the funeral? I mean, I think I could pay for it… Could you tell me where the morgue is? If I can visit, that is.”

The angel’s eyebrow twitched slightly. Did it seem strange that I would pay funeral expenses for someone I’d only met while reporting? It shouldn’t. I don’t care either way.

“About 300 dollars should do it. I’ll tell the morgue that a relative has come forward… Do you have paper?”

I pulled out my notebook from my pocket and handed it to him. The marks where I had torn out pages about the Cowboy looked painfully sharp.

The angel, unaware of this fact, wrote the address on the thin paper with his finger glowing red-hot. I should have given him a pen.

Angels’ handwriting was neat and tidy but completely without character. If two angels wrote the same content, it would be impossible to tell which one wrote what.

“Well, I’ll go inform the morgue right away. You should visit as soon as possible. They’ll have preservation magic on him, but the morgue staff don’t have unlimited mana.”

“I’ll visit as soon as I have the money ready, so don’t worry. Thank you, Officer…”

I wondered if I should ask his name but ultimately didn’t. The curly-haired angel in a tight police uniform waved his hand in refusal before leaving.

I could faintly hear the sound of angel wings. Golden wings flapped heavily, carrying the angel skyward. I’m glad I met a good angel.

Now it was time for the truly difficult task. After taking a deep breath, I carried the box to the Cowboy’s room. Paulina tried to stop me.

“Rose, I can take care of that. You don’t have to.”

If you’re afraid of the sting, not applying disinfectant to a wound will only make it fester and rot. Believing I could face it, I shook my head and entered the room.

I was finally going to hold the gun I had wanted to touch. Though unloaded now, it was quite heavy, and the lingering smell of gunpowder brought back those unpleasant memories. I endured it.

I picked up the gun and carefully wrapped it in the cloth he had used. I set down his well-maintained hat as if he might return for it, and I laid out the cowboy clothes from the box. They would be needed for the funeral.

It was a strange feeling. The clothes, possessions, gloves, gun… even the six bullets that had been in his gun and one spent shell casing were all here, but the Cowboy was gone.

I felt depressed again. No matter how I tried to steel myself, the melancholy came and went like waves eroding concrete. The house felt lonely again.

I had been using my mother’s maiden name for my journalism work so it wouldn’t look like just a hobby for someone with family wealth, but now I missed my family. I wanted to pour my heart out. I endured again.

I took out the checkbook my family had given me for emergencies. I would use this instead of running to my family for comfort. I wrote out $300 and signed it.

Even taking out this much wouldn’t make a dent in the family account, but I had nowhere else to turn for help right now. Paulina quietly watched from behind.

“Wouldn’t it be better to call them, Rose? Your father has the New York papers delivered to your family home, so he’ll know by tomorrow.”

My father was the kind of person who had our Golden Age Press newspaper and several New York papers delivered to our home every day so he could see how his daughter was making her way in life.

Would he ask tomorrow why I hadn’t called about what happened? No, knowing my father, he’d probably scold me for not showing proper respect to the deceased before calling to cry about it.

I pushed down the confusion rising again and shook my head. Right now, the priority was going to the morgue to ensure the Cowboy’s body wasn’t reduced to ashes.

“Let’s go to the morgue first. The angel probably passed along the message, but we don’t have time to dawdle. And… sitting around doing nothing is harder.”

Paulina’s hand reached out and stroked my head. Her large, soft hands were warm.

“You’re right. It’s better to keep busy. I hope my license wasn’t revoked after yesterday… We didn’t get caught, did we?”

“I think so…? I was so focused on the article that I didn’t notice. But if the angel came and went without saying anything, it must be fine, right?”

Trying to say at least one more word, I went down to the parking lot and got in the car. We headed to the morgue using the address the angel had written.

It was a gloomy place. I felt like I was entering a grave to rob it, and knowing that each of the stacked metal drawers contained bodies with their own stories made me feel like the terrible gunpowder smell from the Cowboy’s death was tickling my nose again.

No, there’s no gunpowder smell here. I tried to compose myself but decided to let Paulina do the talking. If I opened my mouth, I felt like unnecessary words would spill out.

“We’re here about an unclaimed body that came in yesterday morning. A human male in his 50s or 60s, cause of death would be a gunshot to the head… Is he on your list of unclaimed bodies?”

The morgue attendant looked through his list and nodded. Does working closely with death make people resemble it? His skin was as pale as a corpse.

“Ah, yes. We have one. A skinny but sturdy man, like the aging protagonist of a Western. If you pay us the funeral expenses, we can connect you with a funeral home. We’ll charge for body storage until then, but it’s not much. Let me calculate…”

I took out my checkbook from my pocket and handed him a check for $300 before he needed to calculate anything.

I had signed it as Rose Clichy, the businessman’s daughter, rather than Rose Leafman the reporter, so it would be a trustworthy check.

The attendant took the check and nodded neatly.

An inexplicable anxiety rose up, making me feel like I was wearing a tight sweater around my neck. What if this employee spoke disrespectfully about the Cowboy? Perhaps it was a rude concern, but I couldn’t stop it from surfacing.

“The funeral home might charge extra, but you can pay them directly. He must have been a good person. Even a nameless drifter has someone willing to pay for his funeral.”

That’s a relief. Unfounded worries disappear without reason. And then, the words I had been waiting for came out.

“I saw in the morning paper that some reporter wrote a tribute for him. Oh, I think the reporter’s name was Rose too… Could it be…? No, probably not.”

“My real name is Rose Clichy, but I use my mother’s surname for my journalism work! I’m glad someone read it… Whew, now I feel like I’ve done my part for the Cowboy!”

I felt a little better. Not because someone had read my article, but because thanks to my article, at least one person thought of the Cowboy as a good person.

Wondering if any other reporters had commented on the nameless Cowboy in today’s evening papers, I bought an armful of newspapers from various companies, including the major ones.

I’ll never forget the expression on the newsboy’s face when I asked for one copy of each paper. To look so happy over just ten cents!

Hoping that today’s luck, or whatever this feeling was, would continue, I searched for content about the Cowboy.

Unfortunately, there was a lot of news in New York, and it seemed all my article had accomplished was making one morgue employee remember what kind of person the Cowboy was. No, there was one more thing.

But from the headline, it seemed… a little, no, quite a lot… different in tone from mine. No, that’s not it. There are many journalists with different tones, and many articles where the headline doesn’t match the content.

“The Death of an Unremarkable Southern Homeless Man and the Decline of Journalistic Quality.”

I decided to read it first. I wasn’t someone who judged articles without reading them. No, I tried not to be.

“What words come to mind when you think of the South, dear readers? Setting aside their barbarism and backwardness that caused the Civil War, what I feel from the word ‘South’ is underdevelopment.

Yesterday, a shabby homeless man from the South died. They say he shot and killed a friend of mine who was also from the South. Yes, this is exactly the South I know. A place where elves all look the same due to inbreeding, and uneducated outlaws who try to solve everything with guns still remain.

Let’s be honest. Was the Southern man who died by gunshot really a wanted criminal? What I mean is, would a Southerner use a ‘rational’ method to determine if he was a criminal or not? It would be easier for them to blame someone who happened to be near the scene, and would they even know a more difficult approach?

If there’s something a journalist should do, it’s to expose that backwardness and uneducated nature to the world, leading those unenlightened people into the age of reason. A journalist’s weapon is reason. Only reason.

According to a certain university in Washington, those with less education tend to rely more on emotion. This must be why their lives are so fundamentally different from rational people like us.

A cowboy seeking justice? I can confidently say that whoever wrote such a thing must be one of the Lost Generation who lived like European aristocrats after the Great War, boasting about being a writer or whatnot. This decline in journalistic quality is leading us toward emotion. Dirty, backward emotion.

So, if anyone was impressed by that morning paper’s amateurish prose and wants to keep that article, I advise you to tear it up immediately before finding yourself in an embarrassing situation as a well-educated adult. That’s the only advice I can offer.”

The article continued with more clumsy praise of reason. Your so-called rationality is nothing but cheap superiority. I felt completely insulted.

What I saw, what I felt, what I wanted to convey, the person I wanted to be remembered through my writing… everything felt mocked. The Cowboy was not a shabby Southern drifter.

My hometown was not backward. Inbreeding? Would you run away from an ogre claiming they eat people? I was furious. I tried to hold back, but I couldn’t. I ended up tearing out the page with that article.

My mind, too tired to be angry anymore, shed tears. If my article could move one person, this person’s article could also change someone’s thinking, and that fact was unbearably disgusting.

And I was scared. The thought that if I wrote a rebuttal, there might be people who would laugh at me as he suggested… it made my hands tremble.

I could endure unavoidable misfortune by finding something I could do, but I didn’t know how to deal with this inexplicable malice that was choking me.

The thought arose that in this situation, only family could be relied upon. Just that one article seemed to revive all the feelings I had been trying to forget by thinking positively.

Paulina, who had been preparing dinner, came into the living room and approached me, startled by my face. Seeing the article on the floor, she quietly patted my back and whispered.

“Rose, if you want… I could go there. When the Clichy family hired me, this kind of thing was part of my job…”

But I had my limits. I shook my head at her suggestion.

“No, no. That would be crossing a line. I’ll properly protest. Until I get an apology. That’s enough. If he’s as rational as he claims, he’ll apologize. If not…”

The pressure and unpleasant feelings mixed together, making my temples throb as if in pain. As I gritted my teeth waiting for the headache to pass, Paulina properly grabbed my shoulders and lifted me up. Huh? My body was rising.

It wouldn’t be strange for Paulina, who could throw a dwarf, to lift me. She raised me to eye level and shook her head.

Though I still couldn’t see her eyes because of her bangs, I could tell we were making eye contact.

“Do everything tomorrow, Rose. It’s only been half a day since it happened. You’ve been moving constantly when you should have been crying. I didn’t stop you because it seemed to help, but… not anymore. Today is for rest, period.”

Her voice was fierce, but her words were warm at their core. Yes, whether writing a letter of protest or anything else, it could wait until tomorrow. But I still wanted to call my father. I needed some comfort.

Paulina didn’t object to making a phone call. Long-distance calls were expensive, and calling home from here would be even more expensive… but surely I could spend that much to indulge myself just once.

The connection sound repeated several times. I wondered if the telephone company was curious about why someone would call from New York to Houston with such urgency, as the connection tone continued for so long.

But eventually, the call connected. Since it was a number my father had set up specifically for when I needed to call him in New York, he would know who was calling.

“Rose, is something wrong? Calling at this hour…”

My father’s voice was as usual. Fighting back tears at the sound of his youthful elven voice that never aged despite his years, I poured out everything that had happened over the past two days.

From meeting the Cowboy to his death, and how I had written a tribute article to pull myself together, only to have another journalist mock everything about me, even my hometown where my father and family lived. My father wasn’t one who liked violence, so this would be okay. The father I knew was a rational man.

After listening for a while, my father’s voice came through. It was still a warm voice, still calm. My father was someone good to lean on.

“That must have been hard, Rose. If my daughter went through something like that, I should write a letter of protest too. What’s that journalist’s name?”

“It’s Walter Moss… and the newspaper is The Reasonable Insight…”

“That’s enough, my dear. I’ll find the rest myself. It wouldn’t be good for you to keep talking about it when you’re already exhausted. I feel like I’ve only listened without offering any comfort…”

Still, I felt like I had emptied all my pent-up emotions by venting. I couldn’t go back to how I felt after writing the tribute article, but with a little more time, I thought I could return to normal.

“No! Just listening was enough!”

My father’s voice became even gentler, as if he knew I was deliberately trying to sound cheerful. Even the static couldn’t interfere with the warmth in his words.

“Then after you’ve rested well, can we expect to see more humane articles by journalist Rose Leafman? Don’t worry about that reporter. He’ll definitely send you an apology letter.”

“Of course! Just one day…”

Paulina standing in front of me seemed to be glaring at me. I couldn’t see her eyes, but I could tell her expression. I quickly changed my words.

“Wait a few more days! I got paid leave for a few days because of what happened!”

Paulina smiled at me, raising just the corners of her mouth as if I were hopeless. After exchanging a few more words of encouragement, I hung up. I felt like I needed one sentence to steady my mind.

Fortunately, we elves have words for any situation. For times like these, “This too shall pass” would be fitting.