EP.155 Ta-da! I’m back.
All roads come to an end.
Even if it’s the meta conveyor belt endlessly circling the Gunguk, the moment to disembark eventually comes. Aimless wandering has no destination. Perhaps a road is something you walk only to finally face a moment when you can’t go any further.
This is the Amiten Grad staging post. A city where the most people in Gunguk live—and an insult to the old kingdom's capital.
When I raised my head, the city I saw looked like a massive bomb frozen at the moment of explosion. Gray and black concrete is growing haphazardly, enormously. All around, just to fill the empty space. The concrete clings here and there, gradually swelling in size.
Amid it all, things that couldn’t keep up with the Gunguk sink and are pushed aside. Buildings, people, equipment, trash, and the rest pile up on the outskirts, taking on the appearance of bomb debris.
Actually, they are debris. Because they are parts broken and cast aside by the explosion called Gunguk.
Ah, Gunguk. This damnable country.
The Magician has returned.
I was just indulging in a moment of newfound sentiment.
The Captain, who had finished the procedures, followed me. The drivers emerging from the row of auto-carriages glanced at us as we got off at the staging post. A few enthusiastic ones even approached us directly.
“Captain, welcome! It’s quite a distance from here to Amiten Grad—would you happen to need a carriage?”
Before the Captain could say a word, I raised my fingers and said,
“Four people. Can we ride?”
“Of course! Shall I get it ready?”
“Quickly.”
The driver cheerfully guided us to his auto-carriage. The other drivers made disappointed faces and waited for other passengers, or a few went off to load cargo instead of people.
The Captain looked at the mother and son who had gotten off with us and asked,
“Four? Are you taking them as well?”
“Yes. Since it’s fate, shall we give them a ride along the way?”
I offered that suggestion to the mother and child. The mother was a little wary, but seeing the child exhausted from the long journey, she gratefully accepted.
We boarded the auto-carriage brought by the excited driver. Through the carriage window, massive cranes and the dragged-in laborers could be seen busily moving. Some had been caught by Gunguk and were working, the rest had joined the hard labor to scrape out a day’s living. Because the staging post is always short on hands.
The moment we got into the smooth, quiet auto-carriage, the son collapsed into sleep as if felled. The mother rested his head on her lap and stroked his hair. A benevolent smile rose to her lips, as if she had set aside all her worries and anxieties for a moment.
With the child falling asleep, the Captain and I ended up sitting side by side.
The auto-carriage swayed gently. It advanced along the well-paved road. As the distant cityscape gradually came into full view, the Captain glanced sideways at me.
Just then, when the auto-carriage reached its destination:
“Ah! Please let me off here!”
I raised my hand and called the driver. The auto-carriage stopped, and the driver, who would be letting me off too soon, just poked his head out from the driver’s seat with a slightly sulky face.
“Are you sure? This is District 15, quite far from the center.”
“No problem. I have business here.”
“Then the fare…”
“Ah, not me, the others will keep going. Captain Pi, please take care of it!”
Originally, the fare is paid by the last person getting off. So you need the sense to gauge the moment and get off early.
It was the moment I was about to turn away after cheerfully leaving the responsibility for payment to the next person.
“Wait!”
As I was about to wave goodbye, the Captain suddenly grabbed my sleeve. I played dumb and asked back,
“What? What’s the matter, Captain Pi?”
The Captain hesitated a moment and said,
“…Well. You are still under suspicion.”
“That doesn’t mean I can just walk myself into the military police, right? You didn’t expect that, did you?”
“Urgh.”
“Didn’t we only agree to go as far as Amiten Grad together? You or Gunguk may not acknowledge it, but I have diligently fulfilled my forced labor duty. If you want to detain me further, bring a warrant.”
“That, but—!”
“Why? Or is there another reason?”
*‘I must deal with you. Or rather, be dealt with. I cannot let someone who knows my identity walk around freely. But…’*
“…It is confidential.”
“Huh? What? Do you actually want to be with me or something?”
“…Denial! Why would I! I say again, if I could, I would erase all memory of meeting you!”
“Then isn’t it better to part here?”
“Urrgh…!”
*‘But I don’t want to die. I don’t want to kill. I just want to live normally, pretending not to know. Rather, like in that prison… if we only occasionally met as golems. That would have been good.’*
“…It is confidential!”
What to do with this diligent model student.
Hmm. It can’t be helped.
There is an old saying.
He who stays near ink gets stained black. If you play with bad friends, you take on bad habits. So you should make good friends.
Therefore, resent that you befriended a bad friend like me, Captain. I’ll corrupt you.
To both stay alive, we have no choice but to become delinquent enough to lie with a straight face.
“It can’t be helped. I’m a man with a restless rear, so I can’t just ignore such temptation.”
“When did I ever tempt you!”
“If that attitude of not wanting to part isn’t temptation, what is? Anyway, we have a week’s grace period, right? Enjoy a short vacation in the meantime. Come on, over here.”
I pulled the Captain’s arm and led her toward the exit. The only ones left were the child and mother.
No matter how deeply thrifty I am, I can’t make a penniless person foot the bill. That would be a scam.
I took an alchemy coin from my pocket and held it out to the driver.
“Mister! I’ll pay in advance, so take these people where they want to go!”
“Oh my. Understood. Leave it to me.”
The driver, having even received extra, was delighted. As I led the Captain out of the auto-carriage, the mother and son inside simply bowed their backs in thanks.
“Thank you. How can I ever repay this kindness…”
“Oh, what thanks. It’s fine.”
Facing the mother, who was overjoyed at her luck, I waved my hand and grinned.
“Think of it as the balance payment you were supposed to receive. You couldn’t get all the money from them, so your plan went awry, right?”
The mother, momentarily unable to follow my words, asked back blankly.
“…Excuse me?”
“Oops. Silly me, blocking the way! We’ll get off now! Take care!”
I closed the door of the auto-carriage. The mother, belatedly realizing that a secret to be carried to the grave had been exposed, immediately tried to get off and follow me. But right then, the world’s heaviest paperweight was sleeping soundly on her lap. A weight perhaps heavier than the Jizan River to her.
Unable to do one thing or another, the mother stuck her face out the window and cried,
“Wait…! Please, I’m sorry! Forgive me…!”
Be that as it may. The auto-carriage moved away heartlessly. The mother’s desperate cry grew distant.
The Captain, unable to grasp the situation, was engulfed in confusion.
“Question. What do you mean by balance payment?”
“Nothing much. That person was actually a Resistance collaborator.”
I relayed the fact calmly. The Captain flinched in surprise and stared at the receding auto-carriage.
“Question. How can you prove that is true?”
I can’t. Because I simply read minds.
But I can roughly piece it together. I explained leisurely, acting as if I were a great detective of the century.
“The containers loaded on the meta conveyor belt come in three sizes, but the designs are all identical. So the cranes can lift them.”
“Affirmative. I am well aware of that information.”
“Then how did the Resistance identify the cargo to rob and jump off the cliff, hanging from a rope? What if they land wrong?”
The problem when climbing onto the belt while suspended on a rope from a cliff: if they mess up, it’s all over.
And they can’t exactly run backward along the meta conveyor belt as some newfangled exercise, so the Resistance needed to accurately identify the targeted cargo.
Now, a question arises here. How did they identify the target? Did they use a signal operator? Or did they outrun the meta conveyor belt?
No way.
The Captain, catching my meaning, gaped.
“…Collaborator. Did that mother and son send them a signal from beside the cargo?”
“Precisely, only the mother. The signal was probably a lamp.”
If you make the lamp go berserk in a certain way, it gives off a red light visible from afar. The Resistance likely told the mother that method. To use that light as a signal and stage the attack.
The Captain, learning the truth, said in bewilderment,
“But they said they had lost the lamp…”
“It wasn’t lost; they placed the lamp on the target cargo. Originally they intended to guard it, but the child was too exhausted, so they seemed to have sheltered over by the windbreak.”
They could borrow the lamp’s warmth, but couldn’t find a windbreak, you see.
Even if rotten, a signal operator is still one; the links of information connected neatly in the Captain’s mind. The Captain, who had been silently organizing the information, suddenly found a missing piece and asked.
“…That makes no sense. If so, why did the Resistance attack our side?”
Ahaha, well, you see.
Actually, having read that mind, I made my lamp go berserk. And I placed it slightly away from the windbreak.
So that the Resistance waiting somewhere could see it well.
Though I didn’t know they’d come down from the mountain!
But since explaining was bothersome, I smiled a kindly smile and said,
“It’s a secret.”
“Speak!”
“I don’t want to. I don’t want to gild my own face.”
Ah, Mother. Your heart for your son is truly good, but—
A lamp just set down couldn’t possibly keep standing in that wind and vibration, could it?
If things had gone as they were, she would surely have faced retaliation from the Resistance. Not just ‘eat and run,’ but because it was likely the mother had informed to Gunguk.
All things considered, I’d actually helped her.
Although about ten Resistance members ended up dead, that’s how the situation unfolded. Well, please understand. That was truly your misfortune. Without that sniper, you might have succeeded?
The Captain, realizing she had been sitting with a Resistance collaborator just a moment ago, clenched her fist and glared at me.
“You just mentioned a balance payment. Then does that mean you effectively provided funds to a Resistance collaborator?”
“So what will you do? If you take an auto-carriage now and follow her, you could catch a Resistance collaborator. Will you do it?”
“That is the law and the rules. Rules must be followed. To break the law is to be punished; to break the rules is to face sanctions. That is the promise that sets the nation straight.”
The Captain spoke as rigidly as Gunguk-style typeface in a manual.
“The same applies to you. Providing funds to a collaborator. The moment that willful negligence is recognized, you too will be punished!”
“Then what about the child?”
The Captain paused very briefly. In her mind, the face of the child, sleeping innocently, surfaced. Pain and guilt flickered across her face in an instant.
This is why a windowless room was necessary, I suppose. Because if you face them directly… a nearly pure signal operator might be contaminated.
But the Captain was accustomed to enduring pain. The Captain, enduring even the ache within her own heart, said coldly,
“There is no problem. Gunguk runs an orphanage for children without guardians.”
The orphanage where they make you work from age 6 under the guise of vocational training. I know it well.
And Captain A.B. knows it too. Which is why she can’t say more and just keeps her mouth shut.
Having returned to my hometown, I walked through the streets with familiarity. The Captain, lost in thought, silently followed me.