Ch.291The Ninth Entanglement – A Carol for the Ancient God (1)

The detective was enjoying a rare week with no cases. It seemed people were either dealing with issues too trivial to bring to a detective, or problems too personal for outside involvement.

Not that he minded. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d taken time purely for himself. Probably when he was slaughtering those dwarf nationalists.

That had indeed been time taken for himself. The last time he’d made time for himself was returning to terrible memories, preparing weapons, and killing people just as he had on the battlefield.

Even now, it wasn’t exactly a happy time. He had put down the stationery he’d bought to write a letter to Bunyan’s mother, foolishly hoping that perhaps his attached soul might write the letter for him while he slept.

Of course, such foolish hopes didn’t materialize. The detective had to write the letter himself, suppressing the sensation of coughing blood. It looked as if he’d coughed blood onto the stationery. He shook his head. It was a well-written letter.

Since mailing that letter, nothing had been quite so painful. Sol Invictus was dead. The Industrial Spirit King remained silent. Perhaps he was preparing for Christmas with his spirits of lubricating oil and steel.

He’d already bought a gift for Rose. The detective fiddled with a long box placed on his office desk. Having prepared gifts for Sarah and that woman, his Christmas preparations were complete.

With barely two days left, Two Face would likely be busy with preparations too. That girl Corin didn’t seem like someone who would go home for Christmas… but the detective just felt restless.

He left home. The gifts were inside the house. It wasn’t snowing. The detective briefly thought about when he’d last seen snow at Christmas. It seemed to have snowed on Christmas in 1914.

Ten years ago was the last time. It might have snowed since then, but the detective decided to think of 1914 as the last time. That way, snow might feel somewhat special.

He got in his car. After glancing at people bundled against the cold, he drove through streets decorated for Christmas. Christmas decorations hung from the flagged lines stretched across the theater district.

Christmas trees everywhere. It was as if they were trying to create a forest in New York. After briefly glancing at the decorative gift boxes beneath the trees, he headed for 14th Street.

This area, lined with upscale residences, had a more comfortable Christmas atmosphere. Families gathering together to prepare for everyone’s holiday once a year seemed quite… surreally unreal.

It was the kind of unreality he always felt at the Dunham house, so he didn’t mind. As he tried to enter Two Face, he found several visitors already blocking the door. Not just one. At least three or four.

I should get in the habit of checking glass doors before entering. As the detective smirked, the man blocking the door turned around and looked at him. He shouted brazenly.

“We’re having an important conversation, so come back later! Where the hell do they get off taking someone else’s daughter…”

Ah, it seems the family holiday is approaching. The detective recalled the name of the employee the bartender had hired. He pulled open the door and said in a deliberately polite tone:

“Are you Mr. Rockwood by any chance?”

The detective knew there was only one reason why someone not yet of legal age would leave home to find a job with room and board.

Hearing his surname called, Corin Rockwood’s father turned around. He tried to look at the detective, but felt something against his chin. He could feel its sharpness even as it jabbed upward into his chin flesh.

Seeing the blood drain from his face, the detective began to smirk. Unlike moments before, he wasn’t even pretending to be polite.

“You know, there are several common ironies in the world. Why doesn’t my salary ever increase? Why don’t I win the lottery despite buying ten tickets a day? And…”

Having no intention of splattering blood at Two Face’s entrance, the detective withdrew his knife and struck the man’s chin with the side of his fist. He barely used any recoil, but it had twice the force.

The detective grabbed the collar of the man whose posture had collapsed though his eyes remained wide open, and threw him outside Two Face. Though he was quite large, he was thrown out easily and rolled on the ground.

“Why do parents whose children run away blame the child? Things like that. Are all four of you the Rockwood family?”

Only then did Mrs. Rockwood, who had been standing in front of her husband, approach the detective. The detective decided to change how he addressed her. The word “Mrs.” didn’t suit this kind of conversation.

“Who are you to—”

The detective stepped forward and lightly struck the woman’s face with his leather-gloved hand. Without bothering to stop the two who looked like son and daughter from grabbing his arms, he raised his fist, tapped it once on the ground, and brought it down.

“I’m a regular customer who finds it painful to see strangers come to my favorite establishment trying to take away an employee. I can at least throw them out.”

Now the detective grabbed the necks of the two young people holding his arms. Standing in front of the back room door, he nodded to Sarah, who was shielding the new employee named Corin or whatever.

Corin, hiding behind her, wore quite a satisfied expression. The detective tightened his grip on their necks. He threw them one by one onto the December New York street where their father was. Good families only existed in radio shows.

He threw Mrs. Rockwood with her smashed nose to those three people. No blood stained the floor. No matter how satisfying it might be to see her parents beaten, Corin wouldn’t want to clean up her parents’ blood.

Looking at Corin, the detective again felt like he was looking in a mirror. The Dunham house certainly had something mysterious about it. In short, it seemed to attract people with terribly bad luck in family selection.

The detective approached Corin Rockwood’s father, who was trying to get up after being pinned down by his family, and kicked his head with his metal-reinforced heel against the streetlamp he was leaning on.

Only then did he take out his pistol from inside his coat and aim it with his finger on the trigger guard. He watched as the son and daughter, whose bodies were fine except for their grabbed necks, supported their parents and fled.

Only then did the detective holster his gun and enter the establishment. He nodded a greeting to Sarah, who had now emerged from the back room door. He smirked.

“Two Face has quite the Christmas atmosphere.”

She crossed the bar and approached me, lightly embracing my neck. She must have been quite shocked seeing the Rockwood family suddenly appear trying to take away Corin, who was living and working here.

After burying her face in my neck for quite some time, she murmured while swaying her hair tied back in place of her now-absent tail. The sound came from the base of her throat.

“Why are the Dunham house and Two Face always like this, Mickey?”

Seeing this, Corin also cautiously walked out while watching the window warily. She probably thought her family might return with bricks, but with fearless Sarah there, there would be no problem.

Sarah had too many fears and worries. She was the type who couldn’t step forward because she worried about problems that might arise if she did. Stroking Sarah while looking squarely at the dark side of Christmas, the detective said:

“If it weren’t for the Dunham house and Two Face, people like me and Corin would be wandering the streets. This is much better, isn’t it?”

She buried herself in my arms once more, then patted my back with her palm as if treating a younger sibling and pulled away. She let out a long sigh.

“That’s true, but… Anyway, they started acting like this when Corin stopped sending money home. They were like this for almost an hour and a half today, and with no customers expected at this hour before Christmas, there was no one to stop them…”

At those words, I left Sarah and approached Corin. They couldn’t have fled far in this cold weather with two unconscious people. I took off my gloves, hiding the bloodstains, and took Corin’s hand.

“You must be sick of them? For $20, I can make sure they never come back, while ensuring they don’t die. Do you have $20?”

Though it was nearly a week’s wages for this girl, she willingly pulled out two neatly folded $10 bills from her pocket and handed them to me. I took them. I patted her head and went outside.

The detective, gloves back on, pursued the four people fleeing in the distance. They didn’t know how to resist. When hit with a fist, they fell without even thinking of blocking. The same happened when kicked.

This was all that could be given to someone so powerless and helpless they tried to live by sucking the life out of their eighteen-year-old daughter. This was all there was for those who couldn’t even take responsibility for their own lives.

I hope someone finds them and reports it. If they freeze to death, I’d be breaking my promise to my client. Nevertheless, the detective returned to Two Face without even reporting them.

There were pedestrians around anyway. Even if police came, Corin would testify for me, and angel police wouldn’t believe that someone would abandon their family to cover for someone who wasn’t family.

Despite my quicker-than-expected return, Corin didn’t look particularly frightened except for nervously fidgeting with her clasped hands. The detective clicked his tongue.

I could somewhat understand how Sarah’s parents must have felt when they found a trembling kid outside at least ten years ago. A child who doesn’t act like a child makes adults sad.

The client’s request was to handle it, but more fundamentally, it was to escape. Corin was so tired of them that she didn’t even feel guilty seeing them get beaten.

“I took care of it cleanly, so don’t worry, Corin. I think I came to Two Face around this time too, didn’t I, Sarah? Wasn’t it like that?”

I quietly closed the door. The fireplace prepared inside Two Face was radiating warm heat. Sarah, standing with her back to a box of decorative strings she had planned to put up today, briefly met the detective’s gaze and said:

“Oh, that’s right? I think so. It was winter, and I think it was around Christmas! Mickey and Corin look quite alike. Mickey also had that same expression for days…”

The detective decided not to think of this as digging up his own shameful past. Remembering that everyone has a childhood didn’t feel like recalling something shameful.

Only then did Corin raise her head. Though she had completely fallen out of love with her family, she knew what kind of fate they had met at the detective’s hands, and she turned her eyes away from what little guilt remained.

“Seeing the prepared food on Christmas Day, he forgot his gloomy expression because he was hungry and ate so much. He must have eaten almost half a turkey? And then, once his stomach was full, he laughed again. I was so dumbfounded.”

He decided not to dwell on the fact that he had become a completely different person since then. The detective chuckled. Corin’s mouth corners also twitched as if about to rise. Sarah approached and lightly hugged Corin.

“That’s what Two Face has always been. A place where broken people gather and end up laughing. Right, Corin?”

Only then did Corin raise the corners of her mouth into a smile. Thinking it would be better to throw in a word to break the mood, the detective skillfully interjected:

“So, pull yourself together enough to make a Christmas turkey. Sarah’s turkey is… as dry inside as the state of Utah, making it a chore even to eat as a sandwich.”

Sarah, who had seemed somewhat taken with her image as a dependable older sister, quickly snapped out of it at those words. She made a deep growling sound while looking at him, causing him to avert his gaze slightly. Corin burst out laughing now.

She took a deep breath. Perhaps what had helped the detective himself recover was these silly, childish jokes that Sarah and her parents had made in this way. He thought about giving a little back.

“Then I guess I’ll have to make it. Before working here, I did various other jobs, so I’m definitely good at cooking. I can make turkey too. I’ll give it a try.”

Still, the fact that Christmas decorations hadn’t been put up at all because those people had come meant the detective had to do it. It was overtime without extra pay, but it was something worth doing willingly.

Two Face’s decorative strings were tangled again this year, and some of the decorative flags were faded as usual. Sarah decided to hang them in front of the fire again this year to hide their faded colors.

The detective grabbed the tree he had cut for Christmas with double strength and double vigor, carried it in, and set it up in the center of Two Face after clearing the tables. This establishment also didn’t receive customers during Christmas.

Sarah, placing a crudely made star decoration on top of the tree, looked at the detective and said. She had somewhat of a parental expression.

“Do you have some schedule you’re not telling me about this Christmas, or do you have some real schedule? Oh, except going to the veterans’ hall!”

Rather than hoping he had no schedule, she was hoping he did have one. Fortunately, this year he didn’t need to lie to her and spend most of the day embracing Iris’s woman.

And, judging by how she specifically mentioned a schedule he wasn’t telling her about, Sarah obviously knew the detective was the type to shut himself away at Christmas. There had only been an implicit agreement.

“The reporter asked me to go to a Christmas dinner she was invited to. So I’ll come to Two Face only at night. I usually come after all the regulars have dropped by. There’s an extra bed upstairs, right?”

“Reporter? Oh, Rose asked you to go? Of course there’s a bed! You’ll sleep in the back room again, and Rose can sleep upstairs with me and Corin, which will be perfect. Christmas morning will be busier than usual… at least better than just the two of us spending it exchanging meaningless talk. Right?”

The detective shrugged as if it were obvious. Whenever the two of them spent a long time together, they always ended up talking about the Great War. Sarah longed for the detective’s past just as much as the detective longed for Sarah’s.

It was all in the past tense. Since they were two people who had cleared away the past while cleaning the second floor room of Two Face, there was no need to mention it anymore.

“Just 30 minutes with that woman is enough to make your ears hurt.”

“If she were just a noisy person, she couldn’t be a regular at Two Face. Bright yellow hair, tiny… but with good abilities that match exactly. Like the fairy in Peter Pan.”

“Yeah, yeah. You must have been so lucky to have someone read you fairy tales when you were little, Sarah.”

It was his usual sarcasm. Sarah, not at all flustered by the detective’s words, lightly patted her thigh and said heartily:

“I could read to you now if you lie down, Mickey. Want to lie down together, Corin?”

That’s how he spent the day before Christmas Eve with Sarah. Holidays spent with family had such clear light and shadow. Perhaps that’s just what family is from the beginning.