Ch.306Epilogue – And Everyone Lived Moderately Ever After (2)

“First of all, I think you need to change your clothes more than anything else, Michael! Oh, I wonder if your place is still intact? Our building shook terribly…”

Michael shook his head. His home was located a bit closer to the Spirit King than this place. While the Spirit King was rampaging and walking around, his place would have been damaged enough to need repairs at the very least.

The one fortunate thing was that he had somewhere else to go instead of his home. It was farther from the Spirit King than this place, so it would be relatively safe from the Industrial Spirit King’s forces. As a bonus, he had clothes there too.

“I only have one place to go. I need to head to Two Face. Sarah’s place should be fine… There’s a bathroom to wash up and I have clothes there. Though she’ll probably try to kill me if I show up looking like this.”

Only then did Michael wipe his face, smeared with blood and oil, with his palm. Sarah was now the closest thing he had to family. She worried a lot.

Though surely not her intention, she would cry out asking why he had rushed to handle such a situation, and then regret saying it. Rather than face that, it would be better to clean his face before going.

Rose also felt comfortable at Two Face. It was a place with a bartender who was a bit pretentious but not unpleasantly so, and an employee named Corinne who worked hard despite struggling with an unpleasant family.

Rose giggled as she looked at Michael’s face, which had somewhat regained its original color. By now, she too had shared many life experiences with Michael. She could tell whether Sarah would be upset or not.

“Still, if you go looking too clean, she’s the type who would figure out where you washed up! I think it’s better if you just wipe your face! Oh, wait for me a moment, I’ll come with you!”

A terminal walked into Rose’s apartment. It had a massive metal cutting saw attached to its forearm, but people weren’t afraid. It was an Idealist.

The Idealist terminal awkwardly extended its left hand after realizing that instead of a hand, it had a cutting tool attached to its right arm. It was common for Idealists to be unconcerned about their bodies.

“I don’t know why they attached this instead of a hand. Did the Industrial Spirit King believe one could type on a typewriter with a saw blade?”

“Hands are multipurpose, but cutting tools serve only one function. People can be repurposed for many things, but machines don’t have that many purposes. Isn’t it obvious? Anyway, check if Two Face on 14th Avenue is still intact.”

Michael grabbed his left hand and gave it a firm handshake. They were people worth sharing such a handshake. They had succeeded—one according to plan, the other differently than planned.

The Idealist Hive Mind seemed to disconnect briefly from the terminal before reconnecting. When they connected to terminals, there was often a slight twitch—this time, the saw blade briefly rotated before stopping.

“It’s intact. Though one terminal did break a window…”

“The sun rises late in winter.”

Sarah would have still been a wolf during the height of the incident. She was someone who would willingly lend her body to werewolf savagery to protect someone like Corinne.

Though she was strongly opposed to directly harming people… that terminal had resembled a machine more than a person. Its contents were mostly metal, so the only damage would have been her teeth aching after tearing through its neck.

If not that, Sarah would only have needed to howl long and loud. Werewolves were a species with as strong a sense of community as wolves. Gathering would be safer for protecting each other, so they would have all assembled in an instant.

Michael could finally feel truly at ease. The Idealist nodded in agreement, though tilting its head in confusion, not understanding what the late-rising sun had to do with anything.

“I don’t see the connection. But safety is confirmed. If you’re going there, we could…”

“It’s as hard to drive with a rotary saw as it is to type with one. We’ll walk, so don’t worry. Since the Industrial Spirit King is dead, all those factories standing over there are completely useless now. Wouldn’t it be better to think about what to do next? Use that tool on your hand for something useful. Okay?”

“Yes, that should be sufficient. Probably.”

After seeing the dragon debris cleanup work completed, Michael set out toward Manhattan, where walls had disappeared, accompanied by Rose who had quickly changed clothes.

The sky was hazy with heating smoke, and though the sunlight was bright, it wasn’t particularly hopeful. It was just the sun rising as usual. In truth, not many people attached significance to the sun on December 31st.

It wasn’t a long drive, but walking took a bit more time. The roads were cluttered with the remains of Industrial Spirits and terminals that had rampaged before stopping, so this was probably the only way.

Near where the Industrial Spirit King had been, even the pipes were broken, so there would be no water. The same went for electricity. Pitch-black darkness wasn’t created simply by putting up walls.

As Michael walked, a bald-headed Idealist terminal quietly approached him. It carefully asked questions it couldn’t ask in front of others.

“That wasn’t a dynamite explosion. We know how dynamite explodes. The dynamite explosion happened slightly before that larger explosion. What did you detonate, detective?”

“Seems like a miracle happened. All I did was blow something up.”

Michael told the truth without a single lie. It was a miracle caused by God, and all Michael had done was release and detonate divine power strong enough to melt even the Industrial Spirit King.

The Idealists once again failed to find an answer. Still, at the very least, they could tell through the inductive knowledge of hundreds or thousands of minds that the being before them wasn’t lying.

They walked for quite some time before arriving at Two Face. Their strides naturally matched—Rose walked with slightly wider steps when with Michael, and he did the opposite.

Two Face had a broken window, as the Idealists had reported. Seeing Sarah cleaning up broken glass pieces with dragons flying in the sky as a backdrop was another sight that drew a wry smile. Not mockery.

“Surreal scene, Sarah. I’m guessing the water supply hasn’t been cut off here?”

Sarah, seeing Michael looking somewhat intact, could take the joke as a joke. He wasn’t in good shape. His clothes were torn as if caught in an explosion, but his body was fine.

After a brief laugh, Sarah looked Michael over with a somewhat suspicious expression, then sighed and opened the door. Secrets wouldn’t leak beyond the two of them.

“You look suspiciously both fine and not fine, but seeing you walk here normally with Rose, I guess you’re okay. The back room is untouched by the terminals. Where have you been?”

“Rose’s place.”

“And before that?”

“Inside the Industrial Spirit King’s stomach? Or maybe it’s better to say inside its chest.”

“I see you’re making excuses, which means you were doing something dangerous again, Mickey? Still, it would take quite a while to walk here from Rose’s place, so seeing you arrive now… I’m guessing it was dangerous but good?”

It was the truth, but it was also an excuse. Rose grabbed and shook Michael’s hand when he tried to avoid taking credit again. Only then did the detective tell Sarah the truth, or most of it.

“We lured the Industrial Spirits to the front of the hall with my comrades, had the Idealists handle the terminals, and then went with the angels and a box of dynamite to throw at the Industrial Spirit King. We didn’t succeed. Or rather, something else exploded when we detonated it, and the Industrial Spirit King’s head was completely blown off. I really was inside it.”

There was no need to refuse recognition from his closest person, nor was there any need to talk about divine power. Michael headed to the back room of Bar Two Face, leaving Sarah with a surprised expression.

Only cold water came out—the hot water pipes must have been broken—but washing with cold water was now a familiar experience. The scars on his body remained, but his left wrist was properly attached, and there were no wounds on his legs.

He stopped himself from burning the shirt that had become rags, now washed of blood and oil—a habit of Sol Invictus—and instead crumpled it up and threw it in the trash as per his own habit. He changed into somewhat cleaner clothes and walked out.

Sarah, who had cleaned up all the broken glass pieces, leaned against the bar as usual and looked at Michael. He looked much better than when she had cleaned his room on the second floor of Two Face.

So Sarah asked. Her voice wasn’t worried. It was a pleasant voice, somewhat of an after-story.

“So, how did it feel to go save Manhattan? Saving two million lives seems like it would feel special.”

“If the box of dynamite in my hand malfunctioned and exploded early, I’d be fucked. If the Industrial Spirit King had ever assembled an anti-aircraft gun, I’d be fucked. No, if that thing just moved its body wrong once, I’d be fucked. I’m anxious because the plan went too well. I’m anxious because the plan didn’t go as expected. What other words are there to describe negative emotions?”

One of these things had actually happened. No, it could be said that two had happened. After the God-President reassembled Yehoel, he would owe him drinks for at least a month.

“Skip to the end. You know what I want to hear, Mickey.”

Michael shrugged.

“It probably won’t be what you want to hear.”

Sarah nodded as if it didn’t matter. Rose, who had been watching with a cup of elf coffee in her hand, also stared at Michael. He finally sighed.

“I want to tell everyone to go to hell and just go to Two Face to talk nonsense while waiting for the new year. Happy now?”

The detective candidly admitted to Sarah that he had come to look forward to tomorrow. He calmly confessed that at the very end, he had developed something like hope. He could share this with just these two people.

As he said those words, Two Face once again became a somewhat cozy space. In the space that had been cleared of past remnants and become empty, Michael’s place was recreated. Michael had found his family again.

Though his emotions may have burned in the flames of the Great War, he calmly acknowledged the fact that his childhood memories and the history of being accepted as a drifter hadn’t disappeared.

That day, dragons flew around all day and complex stories were exchanged, but Two Face remained peaceful.

Rose naturally leaned against Michael, and Sarah, pulling Corinne close and embracing her, told a bit more about Michael from before the Great War.

Perhaps this fact was more unusual than all others. Not a single word of criticism during a love story told by an ex-lover—it was more miraculous than the detective gaining divine power.

December 31, 1924 passed with the sounds of voices and the flapping of vinyl temporarily placed instead of windows. Though it was the new year, Rose had to go to work. She was a witness.

She had witnessed the Industrial Spirit, witnessed its history… and witnessed how people fought—she was a more valuable witness than anyone. A witness had a witness’s duty.

She had to inform. She had to write about how people who woke up at dawn, not yet fully conscious, had resisted and overcome the Industrial Spirit Kings who had tried to block the future.

The city, which had barely managed to recover for one day, had to face reality from the second day. The red explosion said to have been caused by angels to bring down the Industrial Spirit King had targeted its heart.

But that heart of the Industrial Spirit King was, in other words, at the center of the city’s factory district. Most of the factories in New York becoming unusable needed no further explanation.

The Economic Spirit King was not bound by emotions, and the New York stock market crashed. But it wasn’t enough to call it a Great Depression. Since it was a localized issue in New York, the impact wasn’t that great.

Some said this incident was preventive. It was simple consolation. It was saying to be satisfied with the fact that they had saved the lives of millions, or perhaps the entire country’s population if the Industrial Spirit King had succeeded in Manhattan.

The fallen factory district was restored to its place by the God-President’s power, but parts lost in the explosion caused by Michael were not insignificant, and the factories on that body were all damaged to the point of needing to be demolished and rebuilt.

Still, people had hope. They had the satisfaction and hope of having cleaned up the disaster caused by the Industrial Spirit King who had even gained divine power with their own hands.

It was a very small and modest thing compared to the harsh yet fragrant golden glow of the Golden Age that had washed away even the aftereffects of the Great War. Perhaps that golden light had been excessive.

Still, what had darkened had darkened. People who lost their jobs due to the Industrial Spirit King’s rampage began to shout that if they had known this would happen, they would have listened to the Industrial Spirit King.

Conflicts continued as buildings rose in the barely restored factory district. Factory workers began to fight over newly created positions. For now, it was a wave that Mr. Lanshore could calm.

But it didn’t take long for a once-respectable family man to become unemployed for no reason and fall into a pseudo-religion claiming the Industrial Spirit King was right.

Annabel Carter, who was worried about her husband associating with strange people and came looking for a detective, headed into an apartment under renovation, following a detective agency advertisement she had seen in the newspaper.

Since the elevator was broken, she had to climb the stairs to the seventh floor. She wasn’t in good physical shape, but not so bad that she couldn’t climb stairs. The stairs were broken in places.

After reaching the seventh floor, she knocked on the door of the apartment in the corner. Footsteps could be heard from inside. Soon the door opened. A neat young man walked out.

Seems like it’s time to work again, Michael thought to himself. He looked over the client before him. A woman in her early thirties. Probably a case about the Industrial Spirit King fanatics that had recently begun to flourish.

As Michael was making his deductions, she barely managed to speak from deep in her chest. She could have gone straight to the point, but she wanted to confirm once more.

“Is this the Husband Detective Agency?”

Ah, finally back to normal. While thinking this to himself, a now quite natural smile appeared on Michael’s face. He opened the door and led the client inside.

“You’ve found the right place. I’m Michael Husband. Please come in. It’s cold outside—would you like a cup of coffee?”

As soon as she entered the detective agency and saw the door close, her eyes reddened. Dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief to wipe away tears, she began to whisper her story and request to Michael.

Someone’s most personal and volatile stories, told in the hope that someone would solve them; people who had lost their way forward; the screams in alleyways that didn’t change no matter how diligently angels flew around… It was a common New York scene.