1931 The Grand Punk Railroad: Express

by Ryohgo Narita

  His scream was technically a sound argument, but Claire didn’t even blink.

  “Yeah, I’d save them. What about it?”

  “Huh?”

  “Well, it would also depend on whether the kids ticked me off or not, but still.”

  With an expression that seemed to say, Why would you ask me something so obvious? Claire proceeded to relate an idea that would normally be unthinkable to Ladd in a matter-of-fact voice.

  “I think ‘feeling bad for people’ is one of those things you can do because you’ve got the leeway to do it. I’m good there. I mean, say that Chané girl took a slash at me from behind: I could block it without breaking a sweat. If those kids cut loose with their machine guns while I was feeling sorry for them, I could dodge, no problem. Sure, they might get mad and tell me not to feel sorry for them, but what do I care?”

  He faced Ladd, spreading his arms wide, and made an extremely self-centered declaration:

  “‘Kill or be killed.’ That’s a phrase I’ve got no use for. Because, see, I’ll never be killed. Remember this—”

  After a moment’s pause, his lips warped ominously, and he went on:

  “Being a cream puff and feeling sorry for people are privileges only the strong get. And…I’m strong.”

  It was greater than he’d imagined. This guy made Ladd’s intent to kill far stronger than he’d ever dreamed.

  His tension had already dropped a level, down to its lowest line. In a voice as if he were squeezing out his hatred, Ladd spoke to the red shadow in front of him.

  “Are you…one of those guys? Do you think you really aren’t gonna die…?”

  The answer he got back was just what he’d expected.

  “Of course. After all, the world is mine.”

  The statement was so over the top that Ladd and Chané were speechless. Claire kept talking, indifferent.

  “This world is mine. I think it might even be something in a long, long dream I’m seeing. I mean, think about it. You could be illusions; I can’t prove you actually exist. So I figured this world revolves around me. If I believe I can do something, I’m always able to do it, and when it gets close to my time to go, I bet somebody comes up with some kind of immortality elixir. Or maybe I’ll wake up from the dream I’m having now and go to some other dream. In other words, I’ll last forever.”

  “…How? How can you think crap that’s that damn self-centered?!”

  “I don’t have much of an imagination. I can’t begin to imagine what things will be like after I’m dead. I really can’t think it. I can’t imagine ‘nothing.’ People say that once you’re dead, it’s dark for eternity. ‘Nothing’ means you wouldn’t even be able to sense that darkness, see? That’s what I can’t imagine. I can’t visualize myself disappearing. So it’s, you know… In other words, in this world, there’s no such thing as perfect nothingness. When guys who aren’t me die, though, they disappear. I worked backward from that conclusion and came to this one. In short, I’m the only thing in this world that doesn’t go away. That means the world is mine. The other guys are just dreams I’m seeing.”

  Ladd didn’t even feel like arguing anymore. He’d concluded that this punk was completely off his rocker.

  “If I had to sum it up briefly, it’s this: As long as I believe I can do it, nothing is impossible for me.”

  At those words, Ladd’s tension started to climb again, and he burst out laughing:

  “I see. So that’s why you’re going to help the broad? Getting help from a fella like you is more of a pain than anything. Ain’t that right?”

  He looked to Chané for agreement, but she was silent, gazing at Claire.

  On seeing this, Claire gave a little sigh and responded:

  “There’s one other reason I’m taking her side. If she says she’ll leave the passengers alone, I won’t have a reason to kill her anymore, but…you white suits are different. You’re going to pay for the crime of killing Tony.”

  “Tony…?”

  For a moment, Ladd didn’t know who that was, but after he gave it a little thought, it hit him. That had been the name of the conductor Dune had dusted in order to get his uniform. He remembered seeing it on the outfit’s name tag.

  “…That’s a contradiction, monster. Other people are just dreams, yeah? In that case, it shouldn’t bother you all that much.”

  “Even if Tony were imaginary, what’s wrong with feeling friendship or obligation toward him? If a nightmare breaks my dream, I’ll erase it with extreme prejudice.”

  “Got a comeback for everything, don’tcha…? Argh, you make me sick as hell! Die! Die and atone! Did you butcher my pal Dune over a loony emotion like that?!”

  Ladd seemed to have lost his cool completely: As he spoke, he charged headlong at the crimson catastrophe. Then he paid out several jabs at a speed no amateur’s eyes would have been able to follow.

  “You people killed Tony first.”

  Giving a perfectly natural retort, Claire warded off that attack…using a method that would ordinarily have been impossible.

  “Say wha—?!”

  Ladd’s eyes opened wide in shock. In response to the machine gun–like exchange of jabs, Claire had flown toward Ladd. He’d literally launched himself off the roof of the train and leaped through space. Then he caught Ladd’s arms with both hands and used his momentum to stop himself in a handstand, right over Ladd.

  It was all Ladd could do not to fall over, and Claire took advantage of that momentary vulnerability to land behind his back.

  “You little shit!”

  Ladd turned around, attempting a punch as he did so, but a dry report rang out, and part of his right ear was blown away.

  “?!”

  He didn’t even have time to groan at that moment’s pain.

  When he looked, Claire was standing right in front of him, holding a pistol. Quietly, with the smoking muzzle pointing at Ladd’s forehead, right between his eyes, he said:

  “Humiliated?”

  Without waiting for an answer, Claire continued stringing words together impassively.

  “I’m not so confident in my hand-to-hand skills that I think nothing beats unarmed combat. I think swords are tougher than fists, and guns are tougher than swords. I mean, it depends on the situation, but still.”

  Claire often used guns in his work as well, and he felt he knew more about their force and handling than the average person. And although he’d had one this entire time, he hadn’t used it.

  “If I’d used a gun, you’d have been dead on the spot. But I didn’t use it. I thought bare hands would be enough against a nobody like you. Humiliated?”

  Although there was no telling what he was thinking, Claire put the gun he’d gone to the trouble of drawing back into his coat.

  “I went out of my way to shoot your ear that time, too. Humiliated?”

  Ladd didn’t understand what his foe was driving at. He just kept feeling humiliated, as he’d said.

  “Die while you feel all the humiliation you’re capable of feeling. That’s how you’ll make amends to Tony…or rather, to my world, for taking Tony out of it.”

  True, it was humiliating. There was no greater humiliation. Right now, on a completely different level from ambition and calculation, Ladd simply wanted to kill this man. He didn’t need any pleasure or profit. As long as he could give the warped despot in front of him “nothing,” that was enough.

  When he thought this, a laugh welled up naturally.

  “Ha-ha… Hee-ha-ha… Well okay then, self-proclaimed ruler of the world… How are you planning to slaughter me now? Yeah, I’m gonna prove the world sure as hell ain’t gonna go the way you want it to. I’ll butcher you and bury you under a ton of ‘nothing’!”

  At those words, Claire brooded a bit. Then, abruptly, he looked in the direction of the coupling. Grinning as if he’d hit on an idea, he spoke to Ladd:

  “Before that, let me ask you something. The lady in the white dress who was with you. Is that y
our gal?”

  Ladd was taken aback by the abrupt question, but even as he scowled, he gave a clear answer:

  “She’s my fiancée. What, you’re planning to nitpick my girl, too?”

  “No… I just thought, ‘Wow, even a scumbag like you has a lady’…”

  “So a homicidal maniac like me can’t enjoy true love?”

  In fact, their warped affection was a far cry from “true love,” but Ladd spoke decisively, without hesitation.

  Even as they kept up this conversation, which didn’t mesh with the situation at all, Ladd’s intent to kill was steadily building. At this rate, it wouldn’t be long before it caught up with the murderous intent Claire was radiating. Even so, the acrobat wasn’t the least bit unsettled. He simply responded to the previous moment’s question.

  “I see. Hearing that convinced me. I know what’s going to happen to you next.”

  Claire’s face warped cheerfully. His face was already flooded with a brutality that would have been impossible to imagine from his conductor self, and the best word to describe his smile was vicious.

  “You’re going to jump. Voluntarily. Right off this train.”

  As he spoke, he let his eyes shift slightly to the side. In spite of himself, Ladd followed his gaze.

  When his eyes had completely turned to the side…Ladd realized that a woman’s upper body was protruding from the gap between the cars, and his expression changed, dramatically and openly. The woman was wearing a white dress. It was a woman Ladd knew very well, the woman he loved best, the woman he most wanted to kill.

  In the second-class compartment, the gray magician was treating Jack.

  As the white-suited man helped him work little by little, he asked a question that had been on his mind:

  “Say, what’re those books in that bag? I can’t even read the words on the covers. Are they magic books or something?”

  Apparently, in his mind, the man in front of him still seemed like a magician.

  “They’re medical books…although I suppose they’re not much different from magic books. They’re written in German, so it’s no wonder you can’t read them.”

  The white suit thought—wrongly—that his lack of schooling had been ridiculed, but without caring all that much, he kept asking questions.

  “And then, see… I get that you dress like that to hide all your injuries. But listen, why gray? Don’t doctors usually wear white?”

  “White reflects too much light. It’s not suitable for use during surgeries. That said, I personally like gray, and that may be more to the point. I think gray is the best color for blending in with the world. ‘Hiding’ might be a better way to put it than ‘blending in.’”

  “Come to think of it, Lua said something like that, a long time ago. She’s the doll who just left.”

  On hearing that, the gray magician quietly began to murmur about what he’d sensed in her.

  “That girl resembles me, in a way. Her desire for death. However, something about her is fundamentally different from me. Her eyes are strikingly similar to those of a type of fellow you sometimes see on the battlefield. They’re the eyes of somebody who personally wants to die but who has a precious loved one. Taken the other way around, they’re the eyes of someone who’s needed by someone else. I heal wounds out of sheer obligation, and compared with me, her value to this world is many times greater.”

  The white-suited man didn’t really understand what the magician meant, but he gave him a response, anyway:

  “Hey, c’mon. If a doctor like yourself has no value, then ours is definitely in the negatives… Well, it’s a fact, so there’s no help for it, I guess.”

  As the white suit muttered this, he kept on privately wondering about things it did no good to think about at this point: Agh, why am I doing something this stupid? A train robbery… And that Ladd idiot, too: If he likes Lua, he shouldn’t be pulling her into stuff like this.

  Lua had climbed up to the roof at the coupling and had finally managed to find Ladd. However, Ladd was already squaring off with the red monster.

  I finally found him. I have to hurry, have to tell Ladd, before that monster kills him. We have to run, from this train, from that monster, as far as we possibly can. Ladd and I, or no, at least Ladd…

  As far as Lua was concerned, Ladd was someone necessary. He wasn’t just the person who would kill her. Even without that, at this point, she couldn’t imagine a world without Ladd. Life and death were two sides of the same coin, and by killing her, he would probably find joy in living. It was a one-way cycle of reincarnation that existed only between the two of them. To Lua, who had kept expanding this delusion for herself, Ladd’s death was equivalent to the world itself crumbling and disappearing. In a different way than Claire, she was a fanatic who believed in her own view of the world—a fanatic, and a martyr. The difference between her and Claire was that her world was encased in the great vessel known as Ladd.

  “Lua! You idiot, I told you to go rest!”

  Cold sweat broke out on Ladd’s face.

  Dammit, why is she there, why there, why is the monster the one closest to her?! Dammit to hell!

  Claire understood what Ladd’s expression meant in an instant. He took a certain object out of his coat—I’d been wondering who to use this on—and began examining the surrounding scenery, looking entertained. At first glance, the thing he’d taken from his coat seemed to be a simple rope, but apparently, both ends were tied into loops. The rope was like two lassos, the sort cowboys threw, put together.

  “All right, remember what I said? I said you were going to jump off this train on your own.”

  “Lua! C’mon, get down from there and run!”

  “…! ………!”

  Lua was screaming something, desperately, but from where he was, he couldn’t catch it. Ladd clicked his tongue, then ran at the red monster.

  Even though Ladd was closing in at tremendous speed, the scarlet shadow didn’t budge. He just kept unwinding the long rope he held in his hands. This is my chance. I dunno whether this world is yours or what, but if it is, I’ll just end it right along with you.

  One more step and he’d be within striking distance. At that point, finally, he heard what Lua was screaming.

  “—Don’t! You mustn’t fight him! You’ll be killed! Hurry, run”

  It’s way too late, idiot. In that case, quit worrying about me and run for it, you moron.

  Lua’s instincts were usually right on the money. Rather than instincts, it might have been better to say that she had outstanding insight. Her instincts had saved Ladd many, many times, and he trusted her insight far more than his own instincts.

  …But that was irrelevant now.

  He was fully aware that this red man was real bad news. He didn’t need her to tell him that.

  He also knew that if they fought, he’d die.

  So what? I’m gonna slaughter this guy. Even if he kills me, I’ll kill ’im.

  In the instant Ladd’s punch was about to connect, the red shadow grinned and threw the rope. One of the loops went around Lua’s neck. He threw the other toward the side of the train—and it caught on something in the midst of the racing scenery. It was a post with a hook on it, meant for collecting the mail. Claire had kept an eye on his surroundings, timing his move for that exact moment.

  The interval between the two loops was like a writhing snake. The rope should have been a long one, but it was being pulled from either end, and the slack between the two loops was vanishing rapidly.

  “You…unholy, black-gutted bastard!”

  Ladd let the fist that had been about to hit the demon sweep right by him.

  If Ladd landed his punch, he wouldn’t make it in time.

  Unless he jumped immediately, he wouldn’t make it in time.

  Unless he grabbed Lua right away, he wouldn’t make it in time

  Ladd’s right hand grabbed the base of the looped rope, while his left hand held Lua to him tightly.

  I
n the next instant, the rope hit its full length, and Ladd’s and Lua’s bodies were airborne. An incredible shock and intense friction ran through Ladd’s right hand, but he couldn’t let go of the rope. The instant he let go, Lua’s neck would be wrung like a chicken’s. The bones in her neck would probably be gone even before that happened. Even when the heat from the friction burned his hand and the flesh began peeling off, Ladd hung on doggedly.

  As the torrent of force swallowed him up, he saw the ring finger of his left hand fly off. While they fell, he’d been trying to get the rope off Lua’s neck, and apparently, it had gotten tangled in a weird way.

  Ah, that’s one hell of an engagement ring.

  As he was thinking this, his right hand began to slip on the blood. In an instant, the rope tightened, closing on Lua’s neck, trying to strangle her.

  The moment Ladd gave an inarticulate yell, the rope…neatly came undone and fell away.

  Huh?

  The rope around her neck had been tied with a fake knot that came untied when pulled hard. It was a knot even amateurs could tie, the sort used in magic tricks. As that fact hit him, Ladd realized he’d been duped.

  “That bastard AAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

  His eyes flew open with such force his eyeballs seemed about to pop out, but it was much too late. Since his right hand had been clenched around the knot, he and Lua had ended up jumping off the train.

  Their bodies flew through the air, locked in an embrace, and as the rope left them, they began drifting gently toward the ground. Even though they were falling under their own momentum, the pace at which the ground went by was abnormally fast.

  When Ladd looked, Lua was struggling, trying to maneuver her own body under his. She was probably trying to protect him, even a little bit, from their impact with the ground.

  Idiot. Quit doing stuff that makes no sense. Don’t let your eyes come alive like that—it looks lousy on you.

  You’re making me want to kill you right now, mooooron.