1
I instinctively lifted my eyelids. Bright sunlight immediately blocked my vision.
It took a little while before the light finally receded from my eyes.
After it did, I blinked a few times and, wondering if what had happened last time had all been a dream, looked down at both of my arms.
"...I’m missing an arm."
It was all real.
I lowered my head for a moment, then reached for my face with my remaining arm.
One side felt like flesh. The other side felt like bandages.
...Yep, definitely real.
"....."
I leaned against the edge of the bed and stared at the ceiling with my one remaining eye.
The ceiling wasn’t the kind of thing novels usually described as "pure white" or "snow-white." It was stained with grime.
More precisely, the wallpaper looked yellowed... but whatever. Why did that matter?
"Pfft..."
A dry laugh escaped me. I only had one eye, and yet I could still see the ceiling clearly. That was kind of funny.
"Pathetic. Acting all big with garbage skills and losing an arm for it."
Because I was pathetic.
I laughed like a lunatic for a while. Then, with no strength left to keep laughing, I turned my gaze and looked for a cigarette.
A drawer came into view. If my collection was in there, then the cigarettes had to be there too.
I reached for the drawer.
My hand swished past it and missed. I was sure I’d touched it... ah, right. I only had one eye.
I’d forgotten for a moment that having one eye meant my depth perception was screwed.
Haa— I sighed and moved my body. But no matter how I reached, my hand never touched the drawer.
While I was busy making a fool of myself, someone held out a cigarette to me.
"Special Division 1 was merged into Divisions 2, 3, and 4. The manpower losses from the shooting were too severe."
It was Kishibe.
He skipped all the preamble and started explaining.
To summarize his explanation: the merged Special Division 1 would now be under Makima’s command, and the only survivor from Division 1 besides him was me. There were only five survivors from Division 4.
When he finished, he fell silent and stared at me intently. ...Was he waiting for questions?
"What happened to Aki? He must have lost a lot of lifespan."
I asked just in case.
As if confirming my guess, Kishibe kindly explained.
"Aki decided to stay in Special Division 1. He doesn’t have much time left, but since he’s got so little time anyway, he figured he might as well kill his enemy before he dies."
"He must have gotten on the bad side of the Fox Devil a lot. Did he make a contract with another devil?"
"Yeah."
So even with Himeno alive, he wasn’t going to stop.
I blanked out for a moment, then asked the thing I was most curious about.
"What happens to me now that I’m in this state?"
"You’ve been told to stay in Public Safety if you want, or leave if you don’t."
"What?"
I asked back, genuinely confused. They were offering freedom to someone who might be a devil or a fiend? That made no sense.
I asked him more than once, probably two, three, or even four times.
"Public Safety has no reason to keep carrying around a cripple."
Kishibe answered with the same words every time.
And since it was Kishibe repeating the same thing over and over, I couldn’t help but believe it.
Once I did, two paths appeared in front of me.
One was a stable road, lacking in a lot of things but still enough to keep me alive.
The other was a thorny road where I’d have to bet my life and fight while carrying a huge risk.
Standing at the fork, I thought about it.
What should I do? What was the right choice?
The 고민 didn’t last long.
"Then I’ll stay in Public Safety. ...There are people I want to protect, and I don’t have much time left anyway. I used the Curse Devil a little too hard."
"...I see."
After answering that, Kishibe stood up and headed straight for the door.
Then he left me with one last remark.
"Your lifespan is long. Korean Public Safety has been looking for you recently, so if you’d left Japanese Public Safety, they would’ve caught you."
"What?"
"Japanese Public Safety poking around over there to find your information was what caused the problem."
"..."
Damn it.
"Rest."
With that, Kishibe left the hospital room.
This sucks.
2
It was true that Japanese Public Safety had stirred things up in Korea, leaked Gongja’s information, and caused them to identify him.
But from Korea’s perspective, there was no need to drag Gongja back if he was going to be troublesome.
So while Korea could keep him under surveillance, they had no reason at all to lay a hand on him.
In other words, even if Gongja left Japanese Public Safety, he wouldn’t be threatened by Korean Public Safety.
Then why had Japanese Public Safety been planning to let Gongja go? Simple. Because they’d stirred up Korean Public Safety, which meant Korea now knew Gongja existed, and as a butterfly effect, they might end up putting him under surveillance.
Of course, even if surveillance was attached, there was always someone like Makima, so it wouldn’t be a huge problem. Still, these people had been grinding their teeth ever since the country was unified after the Korean War, so it would be better not to poke them if possible.
After sorting through all that and what he still had to do later, Kishibe brought a liquor bottle to his mouth and muttered,
"About a year, was it...? I’ll be drinking more."
Then he capped the bottle, tucked it into his jacket, and lifted his head. At the end of the hallway, a woman was walking toward him.
It was Makima.
Makima bowed to Kishibe in greeting, then continued on to where she’d originally been headed.
The place she was going was where the man who had made her curious was lying, the place where that curiosity could be answered all at once.
Yes. She was heading to Gongja’s hospital room.
The moment she reached it, she threw the door open and stepped inside.
Gongja was briefly flustered by Makima’s sudden appearance, but he quickly regained his composure. He’d already figured out what she wanted.
He remembered every last thing he’d done to make a scene at the drinking party.
'She’s definitely here to punish me, right?'
Gongja moved fast.
"I’m sorry!! I swear I won’t run my mouth again! You bitch— no, uh... ah, screw it. If you’re gonna kill me, just kill me, you damn bitch. ...Hey, turn the light on for me."
"...."
Makima had, in her own way, already gotten used to Gongja, so she silently walked up to him without reacting.
Then she closed his eyes.
"Kill me quickly."
"...I’m not killing you."
Makima couldn’t hold it in any longer and answered.
Then she began applying her ability.
"There."
After finishing what she came to do, Makima called out to Gongja.
"..."
Gongja couldn’t say anything.
Because his arm and eye had come back.
He stood up and walked toward Makima.
Regardless, Makima began to say what she’d come to say.
"Gongja-kun, would you like to go on a date with me? I’ll forget everything you said. In return, I’d like you to teach me what an equal relationship is."
She was asking him herself. But words alone probably wouldn’t make it clear, so she’d learn by spending a day together.
However, Shin Gongja knew what she really was, and as a result despised her deeply, so he would first need to be paid. That was the conclusion Makima had reached after thinking it through.
Her conclusion was more than enough to seem correct. There was no clearer way than asking the one who’d raised the question for the answer, and the price had already been paid properly.
But if you looked at it from Gongja’s perspective, things changed a little.
Smack!
Gongja’s palm landed on her cheek.
Makima was so stunned she couldn’t even answer properly. She’d restored him from half a wreck into a person, and now he suddenly slapped her... What was the difference between that and a homeless man slapping a volunteer?
At least from Makima’s point of view, it was something she couldn’t understand no matter how she looked at it.
Yes. From Makima’s point of view, or rather from everyone’s point of view except the Violence Fiend and the Future Devil.
In truth, the reason Gongja slapped her cheek wasn’t hard to understand if you knew even a little about his values and Makima’s ability.
"You killed two innocent people for someone who wasn’t even dying by suicide, but just from old age—someone with less than a year left, too? And for no real reason, just because of your own greed?"
'Makima restores herself by sacrificing the life of a Japanese citizen. My arm and eye were probably an application of that.'
"..."
With just one sentence from Gongja, Makima immediately realized what mistake she had made.
She’d thought he was just a crazy bastard. So she figured if she just gave him a replacement arm, he’d go along without complaint. She’d even thought that if she said it was a date, he’d accept no matter what.
Not at all.
He valued other people’s lives more than his own, unexpectedly enough, and unexpectedly enough, he wasn’t interested in women.
Makima gritted her teeth without realizing it.
There was another way to ask someone else, of course, but other people didn’t hate Makima, so they obviously wouldn’t give her the satisfying answer she wanted. And above all, her pride would never allow her to ask such a simple thing of people she considered beneath her.
"Damn it. Just kill me. No, if I die then two people... Haa. This is fucking awful."
That left her with no choice but to rely on the man in front of her.
So what should she do? How could she get that man to accept her date request?
Makima worked her brain quickly.
And at last, an idea came to her.
"I’ll completely lift the control I placed on Aki-kun."
There were many people. It probably wouldn’t work, but the man in front of her was still a person.
So even if she threw away one card named Aki, it probably wouldn’t matter much.
Gongja’s eyes changed in an instant at Makima’s words.
"...When."
"Right now."
Gongja looked up at Makima’s eyes and thought.
'...Damn it. How is this any different from a hypocrite? How am I any different from this bitch I’m always cursing out?'
Gongja lit a cigarette.
His thoughts dragged on, and he waited for them to settle.
Before he knew it, the sunlight was receding.
Red sunset light spilled into the hospital room.
And at last, Gongja opened his mouth.
"...I really am disgustingly pathetic. Fine. I’ll go on that damn date. You just want me to tell you what an equal relationship is, right?"
Makima nodded with a faint smile.
"If you’re done with your business, get out. I need to rest."
"The schedule needs to be within this week."
"You’re awfully fast about this."
Makima smiled again and left the hospital room.
As soon as she was out, she broke the control she had placed on Aki. She knew Gongja well enough to check immediately.
After she left, Gongja sat alone in the room as darkness slowly crept in, smoking cigarette after cigarette for a long time.
3
"This one is the Time Devil. It has only one contractor. The price was one eye."
As Aki wore a bewildered expression, Kurose continued.
"But everyone who tried to make a contract with it besides that one person died."
"..."
"Do you want to make a contract?"
Kurose asked with a snicker.
"Open the door."
Aki’s answer was simple.
Comments (0)
Please log in to leave a comment. Login or Register