Ch.244Request Log #020 – Murder Machine (1)

Fortunately, Armistice Day passed without incident. I did spend a few more days meeting the families of my fallen comrades, but thankfully I didn’t suffocate to death from the experience.

Nothing much happened in New York afterward. One of the few notable events was that the Hive Mind admitted it had too many terminals to manage on its own and handed over the factory labor terminals to the Industrial Spirit King.

The city seemed to have found its normal rhythm again. And I too had returned to my usual flow. I was living a life where I could lounge around like an idle man until the next job came in after finishing one.

I normally don’t enjoy rest this much, but after Armistice Day, I desperately needed this break. I spent several days basking in the pyrite-colored light emitted by this era of painless chronic illness.

Though “basking” might be an overstatement—during the day I pretended to be a well-adjusted veteran, and in the evenings I drank hard liquor to swallow down the blood that had accumulated inside me during the day. But it was basking in my own way.

It didn’t make me feel better or refreshed. I didn’t feel healed either. There’s no one in the world who can share wounds that haven’t evaporated. If someone tries to suck the poison from a wound, they’ll only end up poisoned themselves.

I didn’t ask myself why I was doing this. It was because I was living a life both cursed and beloved. The dead can’t do anything, so if something needs to be done, the living must do it.

It’s blind devotion. Obsession. Is it about salvation? No, it’s about life. I just want to live somewhat like a human being. As if answering my declaration, there was a knock at the door. I crushed out my cigarette in the ashtray.

I opened the door to my office-cum-home. A familiar perfume wafted in. Carmen stood there wearing a fur coat with spotted patterns. Judging by how she had completely unbuttoned the front, she wasn’t wearing it because of the cold.

Once again, she smiled and waved her hand. Her white fingers had a slightly reddish tinge at the tips from the cold. That hand approached and grabbed mine. I could have avoided it, but I deliberately chose not to.

“I picked only pretty ones, but this coat doesn’t even have a single pocket. I don’t buy clothes like this when there’s no one to hold my hand, but today I came to make a friend. Your fee hasn’t gone up since last time, has it? Carmen only brought twenty dollars.”

She was impossible to dislike, but I stopped her when she tried to pull my hand to her cheek. True to her character, she acted as if it didn’t matter and eventually managed to nuzzle her face against me anyway.

It was obvious she’d brought enough to pay the fee per case rather than per day. Though she was grinning, her eyes were sharp as always. She looked like a cat that had found something interesting.

Without waiting for my answer, she lifted her high-heeled foot and closed the door behind us. She didn’t lock it. As if unconcerned with such details, she continued speaking.

“Warmth and the smell of cigarettes—all the things Carmen likes are here. Plus, Carmen needs someone in the business. Wow, how did you prepare all this?”

Her manner of speaking was theatrical. Carmen was always like this. She seemed to live in a fantasy, but if you followed her gaze down to her legs, both feet were firmly planted on the ground. After confirming the door was properly closed, I said:

“Why, did one of your ex-boyfriends hire someone? You don’t seem to live like someone worried about such things.”

Carmen was still smiling. She lowered her gaze to the floor as if bored, then looked back up as if nothing had happened.

“I have so many ex-boyfriends that if they all wanted to hire someone together, about a hundred of them would need to hold a meeting. Besides, my exes are quite transparent. They don’t realize that an infidelity investigator with an unkempt beard and a cigarette-stained shirt is more charming than they are, yet they try to set one on me. Unlike them, Carmen has good eyes.”

She approached like a child seeking acknowledgment or praise, then turned away on her own. When I grabbed her fur coat, she slipped out of it like shedding her skin.

“Those guys probably wouldn’t have minded either. They’re the type who live for brief one-way romances with women who are sick and tired of jealous men. So, did you really come because you needed someone to hang out with?”

“Are you going to pretend this is really work? If so, I’d like the villain to be a man wearing a white porcelain mask with blue patterns. I was at a rich ex-boyfriend’s house once, and I was curious about the sound it would make if it broke, so I pushed it and shattered it. The sound was really pretty. I can also imagine Michael smashing it with his fist.”

She possessed innocence, but the way she used that innocence was quite cunning. No matter how expensive the item she broke, that rich man probably wouldn’t have gotten angry at Carmen.

I didn’t typically heat my home, so except for the absence of wind, the temperature inside wasn’t much different from outside. Despite this, Carmen, who had even taken off her coat, leaned against me.

Only a contextless, senseless stream of consciousness continued. It seemed more like a drift of consciousness than a flow. She had a habit of mixing in her own stories related to the topic during conversations.

“Go find a journalist, borrow a typewriter, and write that story from beginning to end. Then send it to some radio station. Don’t tell me these things.”

“But this is a one-person play for Michael! Can’t you see how much effort Carmen is putting into this? Michael has good eyes like Carmen.”

When she shows her tail, you have to grab it. Communication with Carmen was always like this. She slipped out of my arms, climbed onto the office desk, then crossed over it and sat in my chair.

Sitting in the chair, she naturally felt under the desk, somehow finding the location of the secret drawer, and pulled out a whiskey bottle with a logo of two crossed oak axes.

“For someone putting in effort, all I see is you coveting my whiskey in someone else’s home and office… Tell me what’s going on that requires such effort. Don’t drag this out.”

I brought glasses from behind the curtain and pushed two of them toward her. She poured the whiskey I had hidden into both glasses as if it were her own and pushed one toward me.

She raised her glass and tilted it toward mine. She seemed to want to make a toast. I kept my mouth shut until she was about to speak, then pulled my hand away just before our glasses touched.

“I thought I should date a more modest man this time, so I dated a respectable office worker. He was quite cute with his chubby body and round face, but he became possessive. He probably had an inferiority complex. He said he’d find me and shoot me if I went to another man, so I was curious if he’d really shoot! After hearing that, I thought I should tell Michael and get some concern! That’s what I thought.”

“If he were really going to shoot you, he would have been at your front door last night. You know it too. If we cut out all the unnecessary talk…”

Carmen interrupted me. She seemed to be reacting to the word “unnecessary” rather than fighting for control of the conversation.

“Would you cut Carmen out? Carmen is quite an unnecessary woman. But I still have value! Like a luxury item! That’s why I suit rich men, but even the middle class dreams of me.”

After pouring out words to her heart’s content, Carmen offered her glass again. After clinking glasses, I took a sip of the not-so-strong whiskey. The whiskey tasted like Carmen’s perfume. Her scent was overpowering.

“Yes, yes. If we cut out all the unnecessary talk, you’re just asking me to hang out with you. Do you realize how many minutes you’ve been dragging this out just to say that one thing?”

Carmen pouted but didn’t seem angry. She seemed to enjoy the difference between herself—academic and unnecessarily verbose—and me.

“That’s right. But I’m a little genuinely worried. What if that man is really waiting with a gun at the bar where he first met Carmen! That kind of mindset.”

“That means if I hang out with you, you want to take me to the bar where you met your ex.”

Carmen burst out laughing. When her eyes were narrowed, she had quite sharp features, but when she laughed properly, she had a rather gentle impression. It never lasted long.

“That’s right! I’m so happy you understood exactly what I meant. Besides, I know that pleasure comes from taking risks. Would you like to take a risk with me? It’ll be fun!”

It’s enjoyable to see someone more messed up than Yehoel. I never thought there could be a more unpleasant breed in this world than an angel who indulges in alcohol and women, but I decided to change my mind.

She was at least a person with vivid colors. Much more so than the city with its heavy gray tones mixed into every color, or the past that remains in sepia tones. I sighed but didn’t refuse.

“Fine, if you were to die from being shot by some obsessive guy, I’d lose the person who comes in the morning to spout nonsense at length. I wouldn’t like that.”

“Right? Carmen is a puzzle piece too precious to miss. Even just saying that makes Carmen happy. I like it.”

Love-starved, I see. It’s like planting corn that drinks hundreds of gallons of water a day on soil that’s a dry, barren wasteland incapable of absorbing water.

If the soil doesn’t change, no matter how much water you pour on it, the crop will die. Carmen’s love life was probably a repetition of such landscapes. So now she’s looking for someone who doesn’t care about either the crop or the soil.

Carmen seemed to be getting sleepy. It wasn’t that the conversation was boring. Her expression remained unchanged as she smiled at me while holding the empty whiskey glass. It seemed to be her bedtime.

“So, friend. Can Carmen borrow your bed? I’ll get scolded if I sleep at home at this hour. And this morning’s temperature is 19 degrees. It’s cold enough for water to freeze, and you wouldn’t cruelly drive away Carmen who came all the way to a friend’s house because she doesn’t want to be scolded, would you? Oh, but Michael’s charm is in appearing heartless. What to do…”

As her usual nonsense was becoming even more nonsensical, I told her to wait a moment and got up. I pulled back the curtain and entered the inner room, feeling Carmen’s gaze trying to peek behind the curtain.

I drew the Gladius of Sol Invictus and put it in the kitchen drawer. After roughly clearing away the whetstone and tools for importing firearms that I had left on the desk, I returned to find Carmen already lying face down on the desk.

She wasn’t sleeping. She had just laid down to see my reaction. She’s more annoying than a journalist. I stood beside her and looked down.

“Don’t think I’ll do anything foolish without downing several glasses of alcohol, Carmen.”

“I thought you would since one glass went down. Michael only knows how to smile a little after drinking. Does the world look clearer to you when you drink? I don’t think so, it only gets blurrier.”

Her voice sounded sleepy at the beginning, but by the end, it was obvious she was sober. Still, she got up and walked on her own. She approached the curtain, clasped her hands together, then pulled it aside and went in.

The scene inside probably wasn’t as glamorous as she had imagined. The interior was neither more nor less than a cheap apartment where an ordinary detective would live.

There were guns, a fireproof safe, and military uniforms in the closet, but Carmen didn’t even look at the closet with curiosity. She knew that if I didn’t open it for her, it meant I didn’t want to show it.

While acting as if she had no boundaries, she clearly respected certain lines, which is why I let her into my room. The bedding… had been washed to remove any animal smell after I had called a woman from Iris last week.

The bed wasn’t too hard, so Carmen, who threw herself onto it, lay down comfortably. She was someone used to sleeping in other people’s beds. Now she spoke in a voice that truly sounded sleepy.

“When Carmen wakes up, we’ll go to Little Eire. Even if not Little Eire, New York nights are as bright as the days… but Little Eire nights are brighter than Little Eire days. Carmen says she has work today.”

I had heard that she worked at a bar in The Morrígan’s territory. Only after she fell asleep with those parting words did I feel like a storm had passed. This is going to be tiring.

A bodyguard request? I thought about what word to write in the request log—bodyguard, disguise, or something else—but in the end, I just wrote “Carmen.” That name suited her category best.

I hung an “Out of Office” sign on the door and spent time until evening. Since I couldn’t sleep more than four hours a day even if I tried, I didn’t waste that precious sleep here.

Though Carmen’s excuse was probably just a pretext to take me out, I checked my gun once more. I’ve never believed in the word “surely.” Whenever someone believed in “surely,” I’d get one more job to do.

If he was the type who thought Carmen had shown her true self only to him, or believed she had shown her true self to everyone except him, there was a real possibility he might come with a gun.

If he had the courage to shoot, he would have shot her the moment she casually said she wanted to break up. It felt silly to make such preparations.

Carmen woke up at 6 PM as if she were someone who always woke up at 6 AM. She pulled back the curtain, came out smiling, checked the appearance of her dress, and waved her hand.

“It seems you have no instincts while on detective duty.”

“I just have an excellent instinct that warns me not to get involved with women named Carmen. It’s been screaming quite loudly.”

“I should change my name then. Monica, or something that sounds more intellectual. Oh, can you show me your holster? I want to see the contrast. Not for safety, but for interest.”

I hadn’t planned to bring extra magazines, but at her words, I took out two well-filled gun magazines from the desk drawer and pushed them into the opposite side of where the gun was holstered. I showed her.

“I’m glad I became a client. Let’s go then! Carmen will show you how to enjoy Little Eire. Carmen resembles Little Eire, don’t you think?”

Carmen was certainly more sane than fairies going mad with obsession. I didn’t take her outstretched hand and instead went out and put her in the car. We headed to Little Eire.

A massive, illuminated casino building, bars decorated with wood and green or orange colors—The Morrígan’s territory was, as always, a splendid sight. The air smelled of moisture and earth.

It was too cold for rain but too warm for snow. It seemed like a lot of sleet—colder than rain and more unpleasant than snow—was about to fall.