Ch.58Request Log #007 – The Weight of Life (8)

The War Spirit rises after finishing its words. Just like in many European battlefields, it stands at attention with its massive body, motionless. This War Spirit seems to have chosen this place as its deathbed.

So all four of them died in the end. Two died by their own choice, and two died by my hand. I put a cigarette in my mouth as I re-entered the apartment hallway where there was no one left to complain anyway. I light it again.

Rather than taking the stairs filled with dwarf corpses, I decide to take the elevator again, soaked with the War Spirit’s blood. The Morrígan is enough when it comes to getting familiar with death.

I walk back to the apartment entrance and watch the angel officer, who has recovered himself, conversing with the Archangel. The petrified angels will come back to life.

I lift the orc corpse from the floor like a bundle and throw it in front of them, clearing a path for my car. His face was intact since I had only shot him in the chest.

“Is this one worth anything? This one seemed particularly useless among the smugglers.”

The Archangel begins to speak directly in language this time. Even while speaking, glowing letters float around his body.

“You ask about worth? It will be worth less than the ringleader, but it will have some value. However high one might price its life, it cannot compensate for all these people’s deaths. You may go if you have nothing more to say.”

What I threw down was an object that could be exchanged for money, and those who died here were people. The corner of my mouth rises in a sneer at the Archangel’s choice of words.

After thinking about the question of whether I had anything more to say, I tell him what comes to mind. Funeral expenses would be about 300 dollars. That includes making the coffin, preparing the body, and even the price of a tear the funeral director will shed during the ceremony.

“I’d like 300 dollars taken from the bounty on that human next to the half-blood witch. You can burn the rest or stuff it and display it in the square, but I want that one human to have a proper funeral.”

Heat rises from the eyes of the Archangel and the large eye in the middle of the ring covered with wings. A white light shimmers faintly.

“So it shall be. Truly, truly, so it shall be. Wait for contact. Keep your window open. A white glowing dove may visit you.”

I don’t bother to answer and get in my car to leave the street. It would be more ridiculous if someone as busy as the one sitting in the White House would get off his ass to meet someone like me.

The God-President says he made people in his image. And I was the kind of person who would trust a dog before a person. The kind who would trust the tool in my hand before trusting a dog.

If that’s how I treat people, then I should treat the God-President the same way. I return straight home and fall asleep after taking only the pill The Morrígan gave me, not even thinking that someone might come looking for me.

When she handed me the pill, did she say something about death taking the form of sleep because she’s the goddess of death? It might put me in a catatonic state, but I don’t care as long as I can sleep for eight hours.

After all, I nearly died twice just yesterday, so what’s a brief fake death? Once again, I sleep dreamlessly for eight hours and wake up almost at noon.

The effect is certainly powerful. I truly couldn’t remember anything while sleeping and could only stagger up when it was almost noon. I feel like I could get addicted to this fresh morning sensation that comes with taking this pill.

Is it addictive? It wouldn’t matter anyway. My body with twice the vitality resisted drugs twice as much and metabolized them twice as fast, so I was about four times stronger.

After washing myself with cold water, I leave home to head to Valhalla as planned yesterday. The smell of gunpowder never leaves my clothes.

As soon as I exit the apartment, I see a goblin kid selling newspapers standing in front of my apartment, waving a thin two-page newspaper.

“Extra! Extra! Extra is free, take one! Crazy Germans from Germany killed five hundred people, and the God-President is furious! Take an extra if you want to know more!”

I flick a 10-cent coin to the kid and snatch the newspaper he was holding up high. He immediately pockets the coin and pretends to be an innocent child.

“Hey, the extra is free! But I can’t ignore kindness from the street!”

“I just want to see a goblin profit from news about a woman who shouts that all goblins should be killed.”

The goblin bursts into laughter at my words. The high-pitched childish laughter continues briefly before he extends his hand to me again. Sharp fangs gleam beneath his grinning expression.

“If I make 15 cents instead of 10, don’t you think that woman in the newspaper would be even more angry?”

“Don’t be greedy, kid.”

I place my hand on top of his head, pressing down his newsboy cap to cover his eyes, and head to the parking lot with the extra newspaper in hand.

Extra newspapers typically featured huge photos as a matter of course, but this one had no photo. Well, there probably wasn’t anything left to photograph.

The ringleader had ended up that way, and the streets were full of dead people, so if the newspaper company was in their right mind, they wouldn’t have thought of using those photos. If they had, someone would have called me.

I drive straight to Valhalla. I can borrow a driver from Valhalla to return tonight, so I took my car today. Madam Brünhild would lend me a driver.

After driving for quite a while, I arrive at Valhalla. Surprisingly, Valhalla was already crowded at this hour. Right, the people who were killed were dwarves, but more than half of the victims were dwarves too. They’d be drinking mead as a memorial drink.

I show my invitation as a formality to the doorman whose face I still recognize, bow my head briefly in a moment of silence, and enter. As expected, the place was full of dwarves.

Fortunately, the atmosphere wasn’t so somber that it was difficult to drink. Having heard the news, the people at Valhalla were only expressing their regret. They weren’t saying things like “traitor to their own kind.”

Thankfully, they weren’t Germans mourning the death of German people, but people mourning the death of their acquaintances. I walk straight to sit on the stool in front of Madam Brünhild again.

“Michael, son of William. Did you know someone who died too? If so, I can give you one drink on the house.”

The madam was quite kind. I sigh deeply and, after confirming that no one is sitting around me, tell her in a whisper:

“It was my job to chase that half-blood woman, and it looks like I’ll be collecting her bounty. Do I need to say more? Give me mead and that pork dish—Zerim, Zrin… whatever it’s called—until I pass out drunk.”

I slide two 10-dollar bills across the bar. Then I take out another 5-dollar bill and place it on top.

“This is for a driver to take me home if I pass out at the bar. You can arrange that, right?”

She leaned toward me, forgetting even to take the money. I thought there was something familiar about The Morrígan… Yes, The Morrígan and Madam Brünhild gave off similar vibes.

The Morrígan was probably a goddess of war, and Valkyries were also beings related to war. Still, Brünhild was kinder. She didn’t have that unpleasant presence unique to gods.

Madam Brünhild whispered softly. Her expression was solemn, so I sit up straighter to listen properly.

“Did you kill her? It would be good if you could tell me how she died. Did she die fighting like a warrior?”

I don’t hold back the sneer that escapes and answer Brünhild.

“No, when she saw me coming with a submachine gun, she fell on her knees like a dog in front of me and died denying all the nonsense she had been spouting.”

Madam Brünhild clapped her hands once in satisfaction, then brought a glass, placed it in front of me, and poured a well-aged mead with a subtle reddish tint.

I can’t refuse a bartender’s kindness. I take the glass, down it in one go, and only then could I see Madam Brünhild’s satisfied smile.

Unlike the pale yellow mead I usually drink like water, this one had a rich aroma and high alcohol content. The honey wine mixed with a couple of flower scents tasted similar to absinthe, but it was incomparably cleaner.

“Then she’ll go to Nastrand. The place the God-President calls Hell. If you’ve sent that girl to Nastrand, I should show you some kindness.”

She took only the 5 dollars I had given for calling a driver and pushed the 20 dollars back to me. It meant she wouldn’t charge for the drinks, but I push the bills back to her.

“I’m not going to make just a few pennies from the bounty, so I should at least pay properly here. I’m going to empty quite a few barrels today… How are you supposed to do business if you don’t take money?”

After a brief exchange of courteous disagreement, she takes the money. All the bars I frequent have pretty decent bartenders. Ah, though I never properly drank at The Morrígan’s bar.

“Business has its slow days. As for the barrels, I can just think a young Valkyrie accidentally broke a couple. Even so, you insist on paying. You really are…”

“A contract worker like me would starve to death if there were too many days without work, so I’m a bit sensitive about that.”

Of course, there were never days without work. Even when I had just returned from the Great War, there were many people who wanted to hire a detective who was a veteran, young, and inexperienced in society outside the battlefield.

After showing those people several times just how smart and tough this nineteen-year-old veteran was, work never stopped coming.

Now it had been 5 more years since then. People didn’t doubt a detective with 5 years of experience at the prime age of twenty-four. And I didn’t betray their trust.

As her friendly attitude continues, I down another glass of mead that she poured in one go, enjoying the aroma, and then smirk.

“And I don’t want to be the kind of person who comes to my regular bar and just wastes money without buying anything. I rather enjoy earning goodwill from bartenders.”

“Yes, yes. Half the bartenders at the bars you frequent must be your ex-lovers. Isn’t that right?”

After a couple of drinks, even mischievous jokes don’t feel unpleasant. I quickly down the third glass and exhale a breath mixed with the scent of aged honey.

“Why, because only six out of the twelve bars I frequent have female bartenders? At least… Madam Brünhild isn’t one of them. So that’s not it.”

Ah, another comment that makes me think of the bartender at Two Face. It’s not right to think of another woman while talking to a woman, but let’s decide it’s okay just this once.

Anyway, Madam Brünhild seemed to be thinking of another man too, so neither of us would mind much. We were always becoming someone’s cheap substitute.

“I’ve sworn never to take a man familiar with swords and adventure as a lover again. It’s an ancient and firm oath.”

“Well, I’m not familiar with swords and I don’t go on adventures—I just run around New York until I’m exhausted. Why? Did something happen?”

Madam Brünhild grinned. She had an expression suggesting I had no idea what story I was about to hear.

“I once had a relationship with such a man… He drank enchanted alcohol and committed bigamy with another woman, then proposed to me for the sake of her brother. The ring I gave him ended up on his new wife’s hand… Long story short, I even committed suicide once at his grave. Now do you understand why I made such an oath? A man like that is just my type for a lover.”

Madam Brünhild turns her gaze and clicks her tongue, gesturing with her eyes to look at the stool beside me. There sat… probably the taxi driver I had seen the last time I visited Valhalla, talking with a Valkyrie.

She was quite tall and stern-looking, but in front of that taxi driver, she kept making flustered expressions… If I weren’t someone who had seen once or twice how such modest men end up, that is. He reminded me of an elf who had been caught embezzling to please his wife and was dragged by me to be thrown before a demon.

Even though she directed my attention that way, Madam Brünhild’s story didn’t seem like something to laugh about… But seeing her alive and well here, it seemed like Wotan had resurrected her or something. Like the angels.

Besides, since she seemed to be telling it as a joke, I laugh it off appropriately. Yes, I could at least remember the fact that Madam Brünhild was incredibly old.

“I get it. I get it. I understand everything except why I’m listening to a bartender’s complaints at my regular bar.”

“What about you, Michael, son of William? I thought you were someone who handled problems well.”

After facing a life-threatening situation, one needs comfort. I received bodily warmth from The Morrígan, but from Madam Brünhild, I decide to take the comfort of this bustling bar.

“I nearly died twice because of the magician that smuggler woman was keeping around. In one day. With just twelve hours between experiences of my heart stopping and my limbs stiffening. And bartenders are the only people I can complain to.”

She was one of the people who vaguely knew about the ritual I possessed. She would also know how I was still alive. This wasn’t a funny story either, but she smiled.

That’s what made Valhalla comfortable. I spent the entire day drinking. I sat at Valhalla all day, stuffing myself with mead and pork from some unnamed pig, and late at night, I had Madam Brünhild’s driver take me to Arachne. Although the mead tasted good, it lacked the kick for extended drinking.

After that… I probably drank all night at Arachne. Somehow I woke up at home the next morning, and judging by the taste of spider venom in my mouth, that seemed to be the case. I get up, clutching my pounding head.

On days like this, I need to check the bed first. Fortunately, I’m alone. There’s no note saying someone left early, and my wallet… though quite depleted from drinking expenses, it’s still intact inside.

My days generally go like this. I work all day, and afterward, I spend a day at a brothel or a bar. Yesterday and the day before weren’t particularly special days.

Nearly dying twice in one day is unusual even for me, but there have been times when I had to take bullets with my body… Compared to those, this was almost endearing, though I’ve had to get familiar with fists, clubs, and blades too.

But doing this work doesn’t mean I can live lavishly like businessmen. The bounty will be different from any amount I’ve received so far, but I’ll squander it before long.

However, when I’m pondering these things, someone always knocks on the door. They ask if this is Husband Private Detective Agency or something similar, and when I let them into my home-cum-office, they’ll hand me another job.

Then I live as a detective for one more day. That’s all there is to it. Today, someone was knocking on the door again. It seems it’s time to work again.

A detective’s rest was shorter than a page from a cheap pulp fiction novel.