Ch.289Request Log #023 – Waiting for the Holy Night (4)

I seemed to have fallen asleep around midnight, but when I woke up it was just past 4:40. Had I slept more than four hours? I couldn’t be sure. I might have fallen asleep after 12:40.

Still, I felt more refreshed than usual. It couldn’t compare to sleeping after taking The Morrígan’s pills, but it was also nothing like the terrible feeling I usually had after just four hours of sleep.

I got up feeling refreshed and showered with freezing cold water. I’d probably dress like I did when dating Rebecca. She’d worry that I looked cold, so I’d throw on a decent coat before heading out.

I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. Without using hot water, the mirror didn’t fog up. I reached out my hand. Over it, I could see the overlapping hand of my comrade, twisted in agony as it clung to me.

Yeah, Bunyan. I’m trying to meet a woman. Got a problem with that? I approached the mirror, mentally chewing out the words as if speaking to him. The vision was so thick I could barely see my own face.

No, it wasn’t a vision. He was actually clinging to me. He always had been. When I lived without looking in mirrors, I could forget him, but since I stopped covering mirrors, I frequently saw him before my eyes.

I stared directly at his form, which had lost its human shape and remained only as a vision of clinging flesh. Sometimes the fact that others couldn’t see him could drive a person mad, but not now.

This vision’s name is guilt. It had simply become visible. His face was unrecognizable because his form was so distorted. I couldn’t tell if his expression was sad or happy.

Even when I opened my mouth, his never opened. The dead don’t speak. No, that’s not Bunyan. Since it’s not Bunyan, it wouldn’t say what Bunyan would say.

Looking at that vision, I uttered a single sentence. I couldn’t tell if I was making excuses for my selfishness or if I was actually thinking about him.

“At least you don’t have a gun barrel in your mouth anymore. Be satisfied with that.”

The Bunyan in the mirror—no, the me in the mirror—wouldn’t answer. I didn’t say it for the me in the mirror to hear anyway. There’s no such thing as me in the mirror. There’s only me. Just me and the superimposed Bunyan.

I live today and wait for tomorrow. I don’t know how long I’ve been waiting. Tomorrow might be just a concept. It’s been quite a while since I stopped believing in the fairy tale that tomorrow comes when today ends.

After drying off and tossing the towel into the laundry basket, I went to the living room. I put on a relatively clean shirt and wore my holster suspenders without a tie.

It was something I always said, but while a man could go out without a suit, he couldn’t walk around without a gun. I pushed my M1911 pistol deep into my breast pocket and put on my leather jacket again.

Connoisseurs say they soak their clothes in perfume to make them smell good, but there was something better than perfume for clothes. Stories. The lingering scent of stories after they’ve evaporated makes clothes truly clothes.

They become clothes worth wearing, not just leaves worn to cover the body. In that sense, I hoped this jacket—the same one I wore when assassinating the Noll boss—would absorb and evaporate a slightly better story.

I was wearing gloves, but not the tight black leather ones I usually wore for work. Instead, they were comfortable brown leather gloves that didn’t fit perfectly.

Rather, it was those black leather gloves that were fitted to my hands. I had even ordered them to be made without shine, and to use double-treated leather to prevent wear… those gloves were truly custom-made.

Sometimes you want to wear something other than custom gloves. It would be more accurate to say I was tired of them. Deciding my outfit was sufficient, I tossed the gloves aside and threw myself into the office chair.

I needed to think about what would make a good gift before meeting her. Consumable items like flowers were the worst. Most flowers sold in midwinter would be magically preserved, and elves had sensitive noses.

I had no ability to choose elf perfume. Comparing scents and dealing with the subtleties of a few drops of fragrance mixed in water was beyond me. It had to be something I could choose.

I knew Sarah too well, which made choosing gifts difficult, but I didn’t know the reporter well enough, which also made gift selection challenging.

Couldn’t I just give her anything? But we’d become quite close, and she was a useful informant. People should be treated according to their value.

After narrowing down a few candidates and deciding twice that they were all useless, it was 6:30. Preparing for a date was starting to take more time than assassinating a Noll boss.

What did I usually give Rebecca as gifts? Mostly clothes. Rebecca enjoyed receiving summer dresses. She was a woman who loved sunshine so much she’d wander the beach until her skin was thoroughly tanned.

No answer there. In the end, I got up empty-handed, put on my leather gloves, and left home. I left a sign saying “Closed until New Year’s” and took the elevator down to the parking lot.

I got in the car, opened the glove compartment, took out the spare gun and magazine, and put them under the driver’s seat. Now only strong peppermint candies and a pack of cigarettes remained inside.

I drove through New York. The factory district, which usually spewed black smoke, seemed to have adapted to the damp winter colors and wasn’t emitting smoke. That was actually a good thing.

I wasn’t romantic enough to wish for snow on Christmas, but I wasn’t pessimistic enough to want ash to fall instead. I was positioned exactly between those extremes.

Perhaps I had found a good position. I hadn’t gone mad yet. I hadn’t given up yet. I hadn’t given up, so I hadn’t gone mad; I hadn’t gone mad, so I hadn’t given up. That was enough. I headed to the lawyer’s house.

It was just past 7:00. Normally, if I had visited at this time, I would have only encountered the reporter’s sleeping face, but not today. There were quite bustling sounds coming from inside the house.

When I rang the doorbell, instead of the ogre’s footsteps, I heard the hurried footsteps of an elf running to the door. The steps were narrow and frequent.

The door opened. The reporter, still obviously in her pajamas, stood at the door. With her face flushed to the tips of her ears, she fluttered those ear tips and spoke incoherently.

“Ah, no! You see, I overslept, which is unlike me! By this time I would normally have everything ready… Please come in and wait! It’s cold outside!”

“I don’t know when you started calling it oversleeping when you wake up at 7:00… It’s fine. You know I don’t sleep well anyway. I just got up early and came over, so take your time.”

She hadn’t prepared anything at all. She grabbed my hand, forgetting even that I don’t feel the cold, and I was dragged inside. I nodded a greeting to the ogre lawyer who had finished preparing for work.

She was boiling water for coffee and handed me a cup as well. It definitely tasted different from the commercial coffee I usually drank. The bean had such strong sweetness and bitterness that it didn’t even taste like coffee.

Ogres. I sighed once. Only Nolls and ogres were the races that cared about coffee beans. She looked toward the reporter who had hurriedly gone into the bedroom, then smiled with just the corners of her mouth.

“I think anything I say will embarrass Rose.”

“Including that. If you’re going to work, go ahead. That woman should at least know how to lock up.”

The ogre lawyer lightly kicked the edge of the shield lying on the floor with her shoe, making it bounce up, then casually caught it and strapped it to her wrist. She grinned even as she looked at me.

“That’s not why I was waiting. I was hoping to see her acting unlike herself… but Rose overslept.”

“So, as I was asking, since when is not waking up at 6:00 considered oversleeping for that woman?”

At those words, the lawyer also made an expression of slight nostalgia. It was a nostalgia she didn’t want to return to. After briefly looking at the bedroom where clattering sounds were coming from, she checked her appearance. Her clothes made a jingling sound with every movement.

“Exactly. I don’t know since when either. Anyway, I’m heading to work. Rose will know where to put the key.”

With just a nod as a farewell, I drank the coffee and waited for Rose Clichy to come out. There was no sugar on the table either. Fortunately, the coffee was drinkable even without loads of sugar and milk.

I arrived at 7:00, but Rose Leafman didn’t finish getting ready until almost 8:00. The first coat she put on was so bulky that she looked like a cylindrical mass, and when I couldn’t hold back my laughter, she ran back into the bedroom.

Afterward, she came out wearing a coat that was less thick than the previous one. Now she looked somewhat decent. With blood rushing to her ear tips, she fluttered them.

“This one doesn’t look as funny as before, right?”

“The previous one probably would have been warmer. Well, you did look like the Cowardly Lion before.”

It was puffy and had fur along the shoulder line, which made her look that way. She glared at me for a moment. Not with eyes like Charles Clichy’s. Just the eyes of a fragile twenty-year-old elf.

“Yes, yes, Mr. Tin Woodman. Shall we go?”

“The lawyer said you could lock up on your own. Is that a credible statement?”

She was indeed a woman with expressive facial expressions. I had spoken somewhat mockingly, but she laughed as if my words were completely absurd. She fired back fiercely.

“At least it’s not so unexpected that it warrants an extra edition! Let’s go!”

Only then did I reluctantly get up, put down my coffee cup, and leave the house. After locking the door and putting the key in the mailbox, we got in the car. We hadn’t specifically decided where to go.

I thought something would happen if we went to Fifth Avenue, so I started driving with her in the car. It seemed like it had been quite a while since just the two of us went out. Perhaps it was the first time I had taken Rose Clichy out in my car.

That woman talked too much to be alone with. Maybe I’m the one who usually keeps my mouth shut too much. She boldly asked what I had been pondering.

“Oh right, what kind of gifts do you like, Michael? You seem like the type of person who can buy whatever you need on your own and already has backups for your backups.”

That was true. Even on the way here, I had hidden spare magazines and a gun in the car, and I didn’t lack anything at home. I had never experienced any shortage when living alone.

But Sarah had told me something. Sarah always knew good things to say. She said it was mostly something a French person had told her. Since she didn’t know any French people, it was probably something she read in a book.

“Someone once told me that a gift isn’t about buying what someone else needs. And that’s true. You know I’m not the type to rely on others for what I need.”

“That’s the problem—you’re too self-sufficient! Oh, Michael’s place is somehow… ah, um, well, I’ve only seen the inside of your office, but it seems like a rather austere place. I was thinking maybe some home decoration might be nice!”

She seemed to be casually throwing out ideas, so I answered lightly without overthinking. The car had already driven quite far, but somehow I felt we might just sit in the car even after arriving.

“I don’t like plants. I’m not good at keeping things alive.”

Rose Clichy very boldly pointed at her own face. She stared at me intensely, as if to say, “Aren’t I alive?” I turned away from the uncomfortable gaze.

“I tried to kill you but gave up. That has nothing to do with keeping things alive.”

“You didn’t fail—you decided not to kill me! We always make decisions.”

“Right now, it seems like neither of us can make a decision.”

Rose Clichy puffed her cheeks slightly, as if leaving the decision to her was too much. After all, a woman whose father was Charles Clichy probably hadn’t had many opportunities to date.

If ordinary fathers point shotguns at men dating their daughters, Charles Clichy was the type who would welcome them to their face but strike them with lightning behind their backs.

“Expecting me to make decisions is too much! I mean, this is my first time going out with someone other than Paulina. I did think about walking through a park full of bare trees…”

“Well, let’s start with a simple decision. Park or theater—which is better?”

After briefly considering, Rose Clichy shook her head as if she still couldn’t decide. We ended up heading to the park. It was less green than in midsummer, but at least that meant it was less crowded.

The winter trees were bare, but the sky was blue, and the sunlight was relatively warm. The bitter wind that had blown at dawn had subsided considerably.

Rose Clichy didn’t stop chattering. She definitely talked more than I was quiet.

“You said you don’t like plants because you have to take care of them, and you really do work for days without taking care of yourself or going home! Then… oh, how about a snow globe?”

Snow… globe. Snow is obviously snow, and globe is something round. Those two words didn’t bring anything to mind. When I made a completely clueless expression, she confidently continued.

“It’s, um…”

She paused for about three seconds. Another thing Charles Clichy had shown her. That man had left too big a footprint in the reporter’s life as a good father. He left only that footprint before departing to become the Forest’s Firstborn.

Still, the reporter had decided to accept both aspects as she moved past her childhood. Charles Clichy was a good father. At the same time, Charles Clichy was the Forest’s Firstborn. It must have been hard to swallow, but she seemed to have managed it.

“My father bought me one when I was little. It’s a glass ball filled with viscous liquid, and inside there are small pieces like snow… when you shake it, it looks like it’s snowing! I loved it as a child, and since you have that childhood deficiency, I wanted to give you one!”

“That’s quite a biting comment for something you’re presenting as a nice idea.”

Rose Clichy smiled playfully. It was quite a stimulating sight to see while walking through the quiet park. The sky was too blue, the sunlight too strong… and the trees were too much the color of winter.

It was momentary, like a sparkle. The world returned to looking like washed-out laundry with all the color drained. I shook my head, but that brief sparkle didn’t return. The reporter spoke proudly.

“Making you hear such comments is part of a reporter’s job! Oh, what’s my gift? Is it okay to know in advance? I don’t have any particular expectations, so feel free to choose anything!”

So I decided to be a bit honest too. Including the fact that I hadn’t planned anything for today’s date.

“I haven’t decided yet. Same goes for where we’re going after this. You’d probably suggest we just dive in headfirst.”

“Then… oh, since we left without breakfast, let’s start with a hearty meal! I know a place that makes great shrimp sandwiches! And after that… ah, since I’ve been working until last week and haven’t felt the Christmas spirit, let’s see if we can buy tickets for a Christmas special movie or play! Then we’ll wander around, have a light lunch, and for dinner, I want to go to a seafood restaurant! Lobster! After that, let’s go to a bar. Hmm! I know a bar that only I know about!”

So many decisions came pouring out at once that I could only stare blankly, but Rose Clichy smiled brightly.

“I just thought anything we do would be fine. Just now, for a very brief moment… you looked like you weren’t a shadow of the past. I didn’t want to miss that moment, so I said everything that came to mind!”