“Did you fight that guy?”
“Yeah. He was incredibly rough.”
“When facing the strong, isn’t it only natural to go all out?”
“I was just saying it as a joke.”
“I see. I’m not used to this sort of thing.”
“That’s because all you ever practice is swinging a sword.”
“That again?”
There were empty isolation rooms, but at the swordsman’s own request, he took the one right beside mine.
After all, the setup was that he had been “captured.”
Contrary to what I’d expected, he was spending quite a long time in the isolation room.
He passed the time by reading the daily newspaper, exercising, or maintaining his sword.
It was hard to imagine he was the same guy who’d been sailing all over the place on a ship just recently, with how quickly he was adapting to life here.
Of course, every once in a while he did go outside to stretch himself out.
Somehow, he seemed to be living a much more upright life than I was.
Hugmon, who had been watching him, came over to me.
“Can’t you go outside?”
“Um, if I went out, the sirens would go off and all hell would break loose, you know?”
“But that guy goes out and comes back sometimes.”
“Don’t you think the guy who voluntarily got quarantined would feel a bit wronged if he were treated the same as the guy who got quarantined after causing trouble?”
“Aha!”
If they needed me to deal with another entity, they’d probably let me out for a bit then.
If there was one thing I found strange, it was that the agents didn’t seem as scared as before when they saw me out and about.
I was clearly a monster that had bitten people’s heads off, and when I first came here, they’d freaked out and started shooting at me. But lately, it felt like their perception had changed a bit.
I thought I’d done a decent job sticking to the concept of being aggressive toward humans, so what was the problem?
“Hugmon, there’s something I’m curious about.”
“What is it?”
“Let’s say there was a guy who killed people, but one day he suddenly became docile. He definitely growls at people and tries to scare them, but the people around him aren’t scared at all. What do you think?”
“If a friend who used to kill people suddenly became docile, isn’t that enough?”
“Huh?”
“The killing was the problem, and that got solved, right? No?”
Eh.
Now that I heard it, that did kind of make sense.
As far as I remembered, I hadn’t eaten anyone since coming here.
On top of that, I had killed a few entities that had caused casualties and were hard to put down. Of course, I’d only caught them because I was pushed into it.
Thinking about it again, there really wasn’t much reason to be wary of me anymore.
To begin with, all I’d done was growl. I hadn’t actually attacked any of the agents.
Well damn, I screwed this up.
But going and beating people up now would sit badly with me.
Tsk, the part about me still not understanding human speech should still be valid, right?
“Is that today’s paper, nya?”
“Yeah, I finished reading it. Want to see?”
At Hugmon’s gesture, I handed over the newspaper I’d finished.
Wait a second. I just realized something.
Because there wasn’t enough to do, I’d asked through Hugmon to be allowed to read the newspaper.
But the very act of reading a newspaper meant I understood written language, didn’t it?
Ah.
Was this a mistake born from feeling like I’d die of boredom?
I’d forgotten something so painfully obvious.
I just didn’t speak, but I’d practically been advertising that I understood what people were saying.
How the hell did my intelligence end up this damaged?
If passing through a body once did this much, it was practically regression.
“What’s wrong, nya?”
“No, I just think I was doing something incredibly stupid.”
“That happens.”
Right. That happens.
The problem was that I’d forgotten something way too obvious.
Ugh, I don’t know anymore.
Since things had come to this, was it time to pull out the card of making a reasonable compromise with the director?
At this point, you’d think the other side would come and make an offer first.
Should I wait just a little longer?
+++
“Achoo!”
“Did you kick off your blanket while you were sleeping, sir?”
“Hm. Someone must have been talking about me.”
Chester blew his nose with a tissue and began reviewing the documents again.
As if something had suddenly occurred to him, his adjutant called out to him.
“By the way, sir, about the one in the basement of our facility.”
“What about it?”
“Headquarters told us to hold it here, so we are, but why exactly is it dangerous?”
“You think Headquarters would dump something like Hugmon on us and tell us to keep it?”
“Then that thing also…”
“It doesn’t seem to have been intentional, but it’s true there were casualties.”
“So that was it.”
“I’m worried as hell, looking at the state it’s in.”
“Since when did you become a sweet guy who worries even about Unknowns, sir?”
Chester began staring at his adjutant with his eyes half-closed.
As if he might throw whatever he could grab at him.
“It was a joke, sir, a joke. If I do it one more time, you really will beat me to death, won’t you?”
“Whew. If you weren’t director material, you’d have been smelling incense at your own funeral long ago.”
“What exactly are you worried about, sir?”
Chester lit his pipe and began to smoke.
“I don’t know what was written in the report, but he wasn’t a bad one. To the point where I wondered if he’d really just had the misfortune of being born an Unknown.”
“Did you talk with it?”
“You know our facility’s tradition. When a new entity comes in, we make a show of talking to it.”
“Wow, there are only a handful of entities that actually respond to conversation. What did it say?”
“Fuck. Now that I think about it again, it really hits me that Headquarters is the biggest son of a bitch among sons of bitches.”
+++
Inside the dark, gloomy isolation room.
The sound of footsteps broke the silence.
Perhaps having heard it, something stirred inside the isolation room.
Chester dragged a chair in front of the isolation room, flopped down onto it, lit his pipe, and held it in his mouth as he looked around, trying to meet the eyes of the being inside.
“You conscious? I heard you understand human language, so I was curious if it was true.”
“You must be the type who can’t stand being curious. Normally, people don’t try to ask something like that directly. Or am I wrong?”
“They say curiosity killed the cat and all that. But if you’ve got the ability to find out, there’s no need to hold back.”
A hearty laugh came from inside the isolation room.
As if curious about who was saying such things, the being came closer to the iron bars.
Both of its arms were bound in chains, leaving it restrained.
But the rattling of the chains was unusually loud.
“Just how many arms do you have? I’m curious what it feels like to have eight arms.”
“You adapt to what you’re born with and live that way. Though I am a little curious what it feels like to have two arms.”
“You’re surprisingly positive. Maybe it feels refreshing because I’ve seen so many negative bastards.”
“Even if we branched out from the root called Unknown, are our personalities really that different? Well, isn’t that what makes us individual and interesting?”
Chester seemed to be enjoying this conversation.
At the same time, he felt regret.
To think such an interesting fellow was an Unknown. If he had been human, perhaps Chester could have kept him by his side, taught him, and lived a more exciting life.
As if something were uncomfortable, the chains shook, producing an unpleasant sound.
The entity currently speaking with Chester was holding up an iron ball of tremendous weight.
If he let his guard down, he would be crushed to death on the spot. It was a countermeasure handed down by Headquarters.
“It’s an order from Headquarters, so there’s nothing we can do about it either. I’m sorry.”
“You must be in a position where you have no choice either. Well, if you had a habit of taking comfort in watching others suffer like this, that would be one thing. A shame.”
“No matter how hard things are or how fucked the circumstances get, I have no interest in that kind of vile hobby.”
“That’s a relief.”
Chester began reading the report he had brought.
[Entity Name: Bacchus.]
[Possesses the ability to show illusions to humans.]
[A minimum of two arms are required to use its ability.]
[For safety and containment, all arms must be restrained, and it must be made to hold a heavy object.]
[Here, a heavy object is defined as one that would result in the entity’s immediate death if it were crushed beneath it.]
[It has not been confirmed whether Bacchus’s illusions can kill humans.]
[It knows human language and is capable of fluent speech.]
[Until new directives are issued by Headquarters, all conversations and experiments related to Bacchus are prohibited. No escape attempts have been observed to date.]
[Once it escapes, recontainment is expected to be extremely difficult. It is to be transferred to and managed at Area 469 for containment. Responsible party: Director Chester.]
Headquarters had certainly been the one to capture him, but the report stated that Chester would bear responsibility for everything that might happen if Bacchus escaped.
As written in the report, by principle, even conversation with Bacchus was not allowed.
Headquarters reduced his authority however it pleased and shifted all responsibility onto Chester.
He didn’t like it, but he had decided to satisfy himself with occasional deviations like this.
It was a bold action possible only because he knew who held the highest authority here, and whose side all the agents would take.
“That’s enough for today’s interview.”
“You’re in a position where you get squeezed from every side, unfortunately.”
Chester wore an expression as if he had no idea what that meant and hastened his steps.
Only after walking for quite a while did he glance back once and let out a sigh.
“Fuck. Has it come to the point where I’m being comforted by an Unknown now? How the hell did my life end up this fucked?”
Chester suspected for a moment that Bacchus might have read the report, but he decided to let it go.
Having experienced both Headquarters’ treatment and the treatment here, Bacchus would know.
How vicious an existence Headquarters was, and what kind of position Chester was now in as someone harried by that same Headquarters.
“I’m sorry, but please don’t think that I have no resentment toward humans, either. If I end up escaping, things will get noisy, though not by my own choice.”