Ch.290Request Log #023 – Waiting for the Holy Night (5)

I didn’t feel like my choices had been taken away. When working, situations where I actually had choices were rare to begin with… and even in circumstances like these, there were always options.

If I really disliked the plan, I could simply shake my head without offering alternatives. No, I don’t like that. No, I won’t do what you suggest. There were plenty of things I could say. That would be a valid approach too.

This wasn’t something I learned from meeting the reporter. It was something I’d always known. Something we learned when we lived with the curse we erased and the curse we shouldered. We had to live to erase the curse. It seemed like we had no choice.

A lack of choices brings a lack of meaning. That terrible feeling that no matter what choice you make, the same result awaits—it washes away life’s meaning and will to live like a wave sweeping across sand. It happens in an instant.

Some of us refused that meaningless life. They shook their heads, put guns in their mouths, or hung themselves from beams. I didn’t blame them. They were simply acknowledging the truth.

They were just acknowledging that life wasn’t worth living at such a cost. In six years, the only progress had been the poet’s liberation. Beyond that, despite many futile attempts, nothing had changed—so they were right.

Those of us who remained didn’t know why we clung so desperately to lives not worth living. It seemed we loved life now just as we had during the Great War. That was reason enough.

Life had no reason, and though old memories were crumbling, we decided not to shake our heads at life. Even if the reporter’s date plan wasn’t ideal, I decided not to refuse her plan.

It carried a similar weight, at least for me. I’ve learned a trivial truth in a terribly painful way. I extended my leather-gloved hand toward the reporter. The café was across the street.

She stared blankly at my outstretched hand. Her ear tips perked up again as she hesitated, then like a cat pouncing on prey, she quickly reached out and grabbed my hand. Her ear tips were red. Not from the cold.

It seemed even something like holding hands was new to her. The feeling of being held by an elf’s small hand wasn’t particularly unpleasant. She looked at our joined hands. She squeezed my hand slightly, kneading it.

Only after fiddling with my hand for quite some time, as if analyzing it, did she look up and smile brightly in her characteristic way. Rose Clichy’s smile didn’t bring the colors back to our surroundings.

Though it should have been obvious, I must have harbored some foolish expectation that when she smiled, the colors might return. After a wry smile, I began walking at a leisurely pace.

The silence didn’t last long. She wasn’t the type to keep her mouth shut for long.

“Today… I’ll literally be spending the whole day with you, Michael. You came when I had just woken up, right? And after having a drink, I’ll go home and fall right asleep!”

“When you put it that way, I’m starting to want that twenty dollars.”

Though I’d just tossed out the comment, Rose Clichy burst into quite a loud laugh. After briefly stopping, she held the giggles in her cheeks before letting them escape with a chuckling smile.

“You can’t charge extra for security! If you do, I’ll have to live at Paulina’s place for a week after just one date! And Paulina wouldn’t let me survive on canned food.”

Our strides were different. At first, she had to scurry every few steps to catch up with me, but after a while, that became unnecessary. It seemed we would arrive at the café a bit later than planned.

This Paulina woman was Rose Clichy’s Sarah. We had been in love, and they had sisterhood. Nothing particularly unusual about that. I shrugged and said:

“There’s a reason I don’t tell Sarah how I eat at home.”

She pulled on my hand, drawing closer to me, and looked up at me intently. She was grinning quite happily. The scenery around us still had that washed-out color. Not that there was anything to regret.

“I feel like I’ve discovered another weakness of Michael’s that I could tattle to Sarah… So, let’s forget about the twenty dollars! Hmm, hmm. Wasn’t that neat?”

“Not at all.”

After saying that, we continued walking to the café, making more trivial conversation. I looked at the menu with a notice attached: “Customers with allergies, please inform the staff when ordering.”

I ordered a sandwich with large whole shrimp again. The elf-sized sandwich was almost half the size of a human one. Though it seemed too small, she appeared satisfied.

While waiting for the sandwiches to arrive, she sat at an indoor table, her face looking somewhat melted from the warmth, and pointed to one of the outdoor seats.

“You asked about Sol Invictus before, right? I interviewed that god at that very table in this café. Isn’t that fascinating? How a mundane place… isn’t really that mundane.”

She was saying she had brought the man who killed Sol Invictus to the same place where she had brought the god himself for a date. It seemed rather provocative, and I suppressed a laugh as I spoke.

“That fellow is being insulted even after death.”

“Isn’t that the greatest revenge? He was a god who wanted everyone’s worship. After death, all he got was disparagement and insult, and people remember him as a villain.”

“Ah.” After briefly choosing her words, she pulled out a magazine advertisement clipping from her bag. It was an advertisement drawn by a proper illustrator.

A middle-aged man wearing a bowler hat and thick hunting coat, with neatly trimmed mustache, held an distinctly Oriental-looking sword in one hand and a gun in the other. The content was obvious.

The only interesting thing was that the author’s name was listed as Walter Moss. After being practically addicted to detective radio dramas, he’d now started writing his own.

Rose burst into laughter when she saw my expression gradually hardening. It was painfully obvious that she had cut out the advertisement just to see this reaction from me. I turned my gaze to her and said:

“The content seems predictable.”

“Completely predictable! It’s about a man who gains special powers from some mysterious Eastern temple and defeats villains and heretical gods with his sword and gun. Isn’t it worse than the Blingkerton Detective drama?”

Hearing that, I looked over the advertisement again and noticed a picture of a sun god with disheveled hair behind the man. While it was pleasing that Sol Invictus was being insulted, the drama’s content wasn’t particularly enjoyable.

I sighed. Even though Blingkerton’s drama had been popular, it hadn’t improved the treatment of working detectives. I just occasionally got asked if I was imitating Eric Blingkerton.

If this becomes popular, I’ll just look like a mentally disturbed person imitating a radio drama. If there was any consolation, it was that the outfit was at least classical. Feeling a headache coming on, I covered the advertisement.

“It’s much, much worse. But… looking at it as positively as possible, it’s a convenient shadow to hide in. People don’t expect someone performing with an exaggerated voice in a radio drama to exist in reality.”

No matter how personally annoying it was, I didn’t mind as long as it could provide cover for my comrades. The world would distinguish between the Argonne Invincibles and heroes mixed with fantasies brought from the East.

Rose Clichy looked up at me. She slowly looked me over, then her eyes narrowed as she laughed. Uncharacteristically, she made quite a Carmen-like expression.

“I think this one is much better anyway. The other one is too… European detective.”

I let out a wry laugh at that. It was obvious who she was thinking of, but it still made me want to tease her a bit.

“I’m starting to wonder what expression that detective lord Willem or Plum or whatever would make if he heard that.”

“No, I, I wasn’t talking about Willem!”

While her comments about Sarah weren’t particularly useful, her comments about that detective lord seemed quite useful. After teasing the thoroughly flustered Rose Clichy for a while, we finished breakfast and left.

Despite being winter, the city was quite lively. Somehow, the air seemed clearer today. I glanced toward the factory area again, but couldn’t see any smoke billowing out.

Perhaps the Industrial Spirit King was on vacation. Or maybe he no longer needed to create more industrial spirits with the terminals he had acquired. Most of the terminals seen in New York these days belonged to the Spirit King.

It would be better if he realized that hope produces smoke, not tomorrow. Then I might be able to look at Rose Clichy more favorably.

On the way to the theater district, Rose Clichy didn’t stop chattering. It was appreciated, so I made an effort to respond.

“By the way, I’ve been wondering every time I see you… are you not mixed-race? Something seems strange. There’s clearly no visible mixed heritage, but sometimes you’re as sensitive as an elf.”

It wasn’t that I had no mixed heritage, but rather that it wasn’t visible. My strong human bloodline had almost completely masked traces of other races. When an elf and human marry, the child is basically human with slightly pointed ears.

“William was part elf. That man had somewhat pointed ears and was quite sensitive. My mother was mixed with three races. When two mixed humans have a child, the result looks like an ordinary human.”

“William?”

Too much hatred indeed ruins things. I shook my head a couple of times before explaining again. He wasn’t someone I liked, but that was no reason to ruin the date atmosphere.

“My father.”

Rose Clichy opened her mouth briefly before quietly closing it. She knew all too well what it meant to call one’s father by his first name. Instead, she asked indirectly:

“When did your childhood end, Michael? Just… hearing you talk about it, I can’t just change the subject… and it feels awkward to just move on. You know? Oh, I shouldn’t have brought this up!”

“Two weeks and three days after my fourteenth birthday. For me, the change wasn’t as dramatic as yours. You know Sarah was there.”

The mood that had just begun to settle now rose back to the surface. We were people with weights tied to our ankles. If we stayed still, we sank; to float, we had to swim.

It didn’t matter much. We both knew how to swim, and even iron isn’t as heavy underwater as one might think… well, we were both used to it by now.

“I used to think you were amazing, but now I’ve decided to think of Sarah as the amazing one! That’s better, right?”

“I suppose admiring a bartender who wants to be impressive to others is much better than admiring a detective who specializes in crushing unions.”

At least Rose Clichy’s intrusion into my life wasn’t unpleasant. Intersecting lines grow further apart the longer they extend, but parallel lines always remain in the same place.

That was the weight of it. It was quite enjoyable to see the lines that had touched me extend and eventually connect with lines on the other side. And so we headed to the theater district.

Since most Christmas specials were about family, we decided to watch any movie that was in its final showings. Neither of us particularly wanted to see stories about family.

After a quick lunch of snacks at the theater, we got in the car and headed to Hell’s Kitchen. The slums were nowhere to be seen, replaced by rows of marble buildings in demonic taste that seemed un-American.

We entered a restaurant specializing in lobster. And within this small street, I could roughly sense the influence held by the half-god leader. We were guided to a private room without having to wait.

When we ordered a simple lobster-focused meal, a bottle of white wine in an ice bucket came with it. This was the first neighborhood I’d seen that just provided Chardonnay. Rose Clichy also looked dumbfounded.

It was a bit absurd to receive such courtesy because I was a friend of an enemy, slanderer, and adversary, but wine was wine. Since I wasn’t working, I leisurely poured it into glasses.

This time she took a sip without diluting it. Again, she made a face of realizing the taste of alcohol and looked at me with sparkling eyes.

“I just had one thought for certain—I need to earn more money… Would Bar Dis shower us with service like this?”

“If a restaurant gives you Chardonnay because you know the half-god leader, I can’t imagine what they’d give at a bar. Maybe they’d engrave your name on an oak barrel and brew special elf alcohol for you.”

Fortunately, we wouldn’t receive such courtesy at Bar Dis. Unless you were a demon with connections to the half-god leader or had some status, they wouldn’t even let you in to Hell’s Kitchen’s Eden.

Rose Clichy entered through her connection to him, and I through my connection to her. From Eden’s tree of life liquor to safe cheap moonshine, it was a bar that had gathered all of America’s alcohol.

It seemed like a better place for drinking than the luxurious Eden. Rose Clichy ordered a Silver Bullet, and I ordered a Dragon Slayer. With one gulp of that spicy taste, I comfortably washed away the day’s schedule.

This time, there was no drunken confession. It would have been funny if a heart unmoved by that story were to be moved by trivial talk. The driver was provided by Bar Dis.

Watching someone else drive my car wasn’t particularly pleasant. It would have been more painful if the driver wasn’t someone who earned his living by driving well enough to be a professional.

After dropping Rose Clichy off at her apartment, I got out briefly to look around. No angels had come to cause trouble, and no Norns had been following us all day.

Only after checking thoroughly enough to be reassured did I get back in the car. I gave the demon driver my address and waved to Rose Clichy.

“I’ll think more about the gift… but don’t expect anything. The most recent relationship I’ve formed was with a café owner who became a regular customer four years ago. It normally takes me some time.”

Of course, I didn’t expect Rose Clichy to take those words at face value. She grinned and called out:

“I’ll be expecting it!”

After hearing that voice, I went home. Though I wasn’t particularly tired, I threw myself onto the bed while the afterglow still lingered. It was midnight. I hoped to see the sunrise when I woke up.