PandoraHearts ~Caucus Race~, Vol. 3

by Shinobu Wakamiya

“Bark like a dog. Do it.”

  The gun muzzle dug into his back sharply, as if the man had twisted it.

  “Why do you want that?”

  He asked because he really didn’t understand, but the muzzle only dug into his back, spurring him on.

  He didn’t get it. He didn’t, but he decided that, for now, he needed to follow the order, and that he could figure out later what his opponent was trying to do. The presence behind his back was overwhelming, and he couldn’t even turn around.

  “Wuh, woof…”

  Internally disgusted—First a cat, now a dog?—he barked, his cheeks burning with shame.

  The muzzle pressed to his back trembled slightly.

  “Are you happy now…?!”

  “……………………………”

  Why isn’t he talking?! Gilbert thought. It didn’t seem fair. At that, the voice spoke from behind him:

  “Next, ‘shake.’ Pretend your master is in front of you.”

  “—Huh?”

  “Go on, hurry up. Put your soul into it!”

  “………………………………………………Hey, wait a second.”

  Something inside his mind was cooling down rapidly. Gilbert’s expression grew savage.

  The voice behind his back continued; it was impossible to tell whether or not it had noticed.

  “Once you’ve done that, then roll over. Lie on your back and pant with your tongue hanging out…”

  “You little—!”

  His face flushed bright red, and he whirled around violently. The person standing behind him, with the tip of his swordstick pressed against Gilbert’s back, covering his mouth with his cloak, was—

  “Break!!”

  Without thinking, Gilbert hauled the other man up by his shirtfront.

  Beaming, Break spoke: “My, you’re so very violent all of a sudden, Gilbert-kun.”

  “Shove it. What were you trying to make me do?!”

  When he’d gotten that far, something struck Gilbert as odd. “Hang on,” he said, checking.

  “Break, you said, ‘You really did a number on our organization’…”

  He couldn’t have said that if he hadn’t known Gilbert had stormed the Gray Snake’s stronghold. As he spoke, Break wore a smug smile:

  “The Gray Snake was rather luckless, wasn’t it? Who’d have thought they’d be annihilated by someone venting his frustration on them for no good reason?”

  Dramatically, Gilbert understood.

  Between the anger and the shame, he ended up raising his voice to a yell:

  “Were you following me?!”

  Poking the end of the swordstick right at Gilbert’s nose, Break said, “Certainly not.”

  He continued:

  “You may be a wimp, but you know this neighborhood. I wouldn’t follow you when you were coming here. Besides, you knew exactly what sort of place the Bottom was. Who’d ever have thought you’d leap into ‘absolutely unnecessary trouble!’ of your own accord…”

  Break heaved an affected-sounding sigh.

  Gilbert felt as if he’d been made fun of in a big way, but he asked a question that concerned him even more:

  “Then you were trailing Oz, too?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why?! How long were you watching? Or, no… How much do you know?!”

  As Gilbert interrogated him, incensed, Break said, “I wonder,” and gave a significant smile.

  “Well, I knew you were shadowing Oz-kun to keep an eye on him, and because you are, in fact, a good-for-nothing, I’d made allowances for the fact that you’d lose him. Even if Alice-kun was with him, when a son of the House of Vessalius goes to a neighborhood like this one without even his valet, he can’t be left alone. I circled around ahead of them and cleared the way a bit.”

  “Cleared the way?”

  “To the rougher set, Oz-kun wandering around this area without his valet might as well be ambulatory bait-on-legs. I ran off small-time thugs who tried to bother him.”

  Then he added, “Well, and I’m not entirely uninvolved in this affair, either.” What’s that supposed to mean? Gilbert was about to grill him, but before he could, Break continued:

  “However, I was occupied with you and took my eyes off him for a moment, and I’m afraid the results were unfortunate.”

  As he spoke, he lightly tapped Gilbert’s hand—the one that was holding the leather glove—with his swordstick.

  Gilbert let his eyes fall to the glove again.

  Then he looked up, startled, and glared at Break.

  “Do you know? What this is about, I mean?”

  “Yes, well. More or less.”

  His expression asked, Would you like to hear?

  When Gilbert said, “Tell me,” with zero hesitation, Break seemed to think just a little. Then he began to speak:

  “Since things did end this way, it’s probably best if you know, too. Only… You didn’t hear it from me, you understand.”

  Gilbert nodded.

  “I expect it won’t stay a secret, in any case.” Break smiled, and then he spoke:

  “That was a present for you from Oz-kun. …Or it was intended to be, at any rate.”

  10

  When you turn the last page, the story ends.

  However, that isn’t to say that the lives of the characters in the book are over. Even after their tale ends, the characters continue to live through days the reader knows nothing about.

  Oz thought of the ending of Fruit of Uncertainty.

  The story had ended with Ivel, the detective, hugging his friend’s corpse to his chest and howling.

  On his friend’s hands were the black leather gloves Ivel had given him when they were young.

  I wonder what Ivel did with the black gloves after that…

  It was the morning of the day after he’d gone to Old Town.

  In his room at Pandora Headquarters, Oz sat in a chair by the table in the center of the room. It was still early morning. Ordinarily, he’d be sleeping peacefully right about now.

  He’d had trouble getting to sleep the previous night, and even so, his eyes had opened very early.

  Oz’s vague, faintly melancholy gaze was turned toward the ceiling.

  Fruit of Uncertainty, which he hadn’t yet returned to Elliot, lay on the table.

  After he’d finished reading it the first time, he’d read it through again several more times.

  However, no matter how many times he reread it, there was no way for him to know what happened after the last page. To find that out, he’d have to ask the author. However, the book had been written roughly a century ago. The author was long dead.

  The fate of the black gloves.

  “…Haaah.”

  No matter what he did, it reminded him of the day before, and Oz couldn’t keep from sighing.

  The little box and the black glove. He’d thrown them away at the rubbish dump.

  …Well…

  There was no help for it. That was all I could do.

  But.

  After I’d bought them and everything… After I even had Break help…

  The events of the previous day rose vividly in his mind’s eye.

  They’d searched Hodgepodge Street for the black leather gloves, but hadn’t found them.

  When, following the advice they’d been given, Oz and Alice left the street and walked west, they reached an alley where several stalls rubbed elbows with one another. Confused jumbles of articles were laid out on cloths spread right on the pavement. As they walked over, bold, steady stares followed them.

  Most of the shops on Hodgepodge Street had welcomed them, but the atmosphere here was very different. It might have been because this was close to “the Bottom.”

  Alice seemed to have picked up on the danger in the air; she gave a belligerent snort.

  He couldn’t imagine finding anything here good enough to give to Gilbert. Still, he couldn’t just give up without looking, and Oz made up his mind to check e
ach of the stalls. For starters, he crouched down in front of the nearest stall.

  Ill-mannered eyes turned on him, staring openly, as if probing his intentions.

  Pretending not to notice, Oz spoke cheerfully:

  “Mister, there’s something I’m trying to find.”

  “…Find it yourself.”

  It was an answer you’d never expect to hear in customer service. “What’s with you, you jerk?! Are you even trying?!” Alice fumed, but Oz calmed her down. “All right,” he told the stall owner, and he began examining the haphazard array of items.

  Ninety percent of it was junk that seemed to be little more than garbage. After he’d looked things over, Oz said, “Thank you,” stood up, and left the stall. Tch! The clear sound of someone clicking his tongue followed him. Oz just smiled wryly.

  He moved on to the next stall. That stallkeeper’s service was about the same. As before, Oz checked through the articles on his own, but as expected, he found nothing.

  The next stall, and the next one, and the stall after that were all the same. He felt a growing sense of futility. Time passed in vain.

  The next stall was the last one. If he didn’t find it here, he’d just have to give up for the day.

  However, the stall seemed far too dreary a place to pin his last hopes on. The other stalls had had lots of articles set out, even if most of them had been junk. In contrast, the items lined up at this stall could have been counted on one hand.

  The stallkeeper was a timid-looking young man. Oz could tell at a glance that he wouldn’t find what he wanted here, but the young man watched him with imploring eyes, and he decided to at least take a look.

  “Please buy something. Anything! If you don’t, I won’t get any supper tonight.” The young man urged him on, pleading.

  Maybe not, but… Inwardly, Oz was troubled. Everything here was rubbish. Even if he bought something and took it home, he’d just have to throw it away.

  Then, next to him, Alice presumptuously put out a hand. The item she’d picked up from the stall was a small, worn-out wooden box.

  It was very plain, and small enough to fit on the palm of her hand.

  The young man must have seen a sales opportunity. He spoke desperately:

  “I think it’s a box for accessories or something, but it might be broken; it won’t open. Oh, but it’s a valuable masterpiece that a certain aristocrat had a famous artist make for him, and it’s rare to see gems like this, and I highly recommend it. Even though it’s broken.”

  When someone recommended a shabby item like that to you, there was really nothing to say.

  Alice had picked it up on a whim, without much interest, but being told it wouldn’t open seemed to make her want to open it: She began wrestling with the box. She planted her fingers on its edges, and she even began cursing at it, trying to pry it open one way or another.

  “Alice, don’t. If it breaks, we’ll have to buy—”

  Just as Oz cautioned her, beside himself with anxiety…

  There was a crack, and the lid of the wooden box opened… Or rather, “split.” In the instant it happened, Oz clearly heard the young stallkeeper give an ecstatic “Yesss!” Oz’s shoulders slumped. Alice spoke to him, sounding satisfied:

  “Did you see that, Oz? I got it open.”

  “…People don’t call that ‘opened,’ Alice.”

  His wallet held his precious “own money,” but there was really nothing to be done about it. Oz began to get his wallet out.

  He’d pay for it, but there was no point in taking it home, so he thought he’d have the stallkeeper get rid of it for him. I wonder how much it’s going to cost. What if he takes advantage of the fact that we didn’t ask the price first, to gouge us? As he was thinking these things, Alice spoke again:

  “Hmm? There’s something in here.”

  “……………………Huh?”

  Oz’s head came up. He looked at the small box.

  It might really have been a gift from heaven.

  Oz leapt at Alice, catching the hand that held the box.

  “Alice, the box! Let me see it!”

  What Alice was about to take out of the little wooden box with the broken lid was…

  A pair of black leather gloves.

  Looking back now, Oz thought he’d been almost drunk on happiness then.

  He’d been persistent in his search, and as a result, at the very, very end, he’d found what he’d been looking for. Not only that, but the line written on the message card that had been in the box was ideal for the sort of present Oz had been thinking of. He’d thought he’d finally found the perfect gift.

  He’d been deliriously happy.

  But.

  He didn’t want to remember what had come after that.

  “Ahhh…”

  Curled up on a chair in his room, hugging his knees, Oz gave a dismal groan.

  Even though he didn’t want to remember, what had happened afterward was burned into his memory, and it replayed in his mind whether he wanted it to or not.

  Over and over.

  I wonder what Gil’s face will look like when he gets these.

  Back then, luckily, they’d escaped without being charged an exorbitant price, and he’d managed to pay with the remaining money in his wallet.

  He’d put the box in his pocket, carrying the black leather gloves in his hand as if he was showing them off to everyone, and they’d returned to Hodgepodge Street. At that point, all they had to do was go home, but he’d wanted to thank the young man at the sweets shop who’d told them about that place.

  Yes, Oz thought. Back then, he’d been in terribly high spirits.

  So much so that he hadn’t seen his surroundings.

  He’d had no warning. No, to be fair, Oz should have heard the approaching clatter.

  He’d been giddy and hadn’t noticed it until it was nearly on top of him.

  A horse-drawn carriage barreled out of one of the alleys that opened onto Hodgepodge Street, moving at a ferocious speed.

  He was standing right in its path. If Alice hadn’t yanked him by the arm, right then, Oz would have been pulled under the wheels of the carriage. If that had happened, his body would have been what got torn to shreds.

  …Instead of the left-hand black leather glove.

  When Alice hauled on his arm, and he noticed the looming carriage…

  He’d been startled. His grip had relaxed, and it had been sucked into the spinning wheels, disappearing in an instant in the roiling clouds of dust. The carriage passed them like a fierce gust of wind, without slowing, and careered off down the street. The sudden, unpredictable violence of the act drew screams from the crowd.

  It was sheer good fortune that no one had been seriously injured.

  “You idiot! What were you spacing out for?!”

  Even as Alice yelled at him, Oz stood there, dazed. He didn’t understand what had happened. When his mind caught up with reality, the first thing he did was check on the leather gloves he’d been holding.

  The only glove in his hand was the right-hand one.

  “Where’s the left one?”

  As he murmured, Oz looked around him. His eyes went to the road down which the carriage had bolted. Several tattered fragments that looked like shreds of black cloth were scattered across it. He didn’t understand what they were right away.

  Although it felt as if he was denying what his head knew to be true, finally, Oz understood.

  He was looking at the black leather glove.

  “Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah…”

  Curling up even smaller on his chair, Oz heaved an even longer sigh than before. Whose fault had it been? The reckless carriage’s? No, that wasn’t it. It had clearly been his own fault, for being in such high spirits and not paying attention to his surroundings.

  The tragic scene replayed in his mind. Absentmindedly, in memory, Oz traced that reckless carriage. Something about it tugged at him.

  I wonder what that carriage was, anywa
y…

  It hadn’t been a cart.

  The carriage had been decorated, and it had looked first-rate. It had been the sort of carriage aristocrats rode in. Why had a carriage like that been barreling down Hodgepodge Street? That in itself was strange, and yet…

  No, that doesn’t matter. More important—

  The right-hand glove, the one he’d tossed on the rubbish dump. The one he’d thrown away with his own two hands.

  “Are you sure about this?” Alice had asked.

  “It’s fine,” he’d answered.

  Oz looked up at the ceiling of his room. His expression was dull.

  Ahhh… After I’d bought them and everything… After I even had Break help…

  His face wore the look of someone who was remembering something.

  Wrapped in an endlessly listless aura, Oz murmured, as if he were sinking into the depths:

  “With the money I earned all by myself, at my very first job…”

  The words had come out sounding like a complaint, and they were unexpectedly loud in the quiet room. Startled, Oz fell silent.

  Cautiously, his gaze went to the bed.

  Alice was in it, asleep; she’d pulled the comforter up over her head, so that only the ends of her hair hung outside. She’d come in just as Oz got up and had taken over the bed. This happened frequently, so Oz had let her do as she pleased.

  “She didn’t…hear…about the job, did she…”

  Having Alice find out about it wouldn’t be a problem in itself, but she was straightforward, and if he told her, there was no telling when the news might make its way to Gilbert.

  All he could hear from the Alice-lump under the comforter was soft, sleeping breathing.

  Oz gave a sigh of relief.

  When keeping secrets, it was important to keep the number of people who knew as small as possible.

  “Although I guess there’s no point in keeping it a secret now.”

  After all, it was already dead and gone.

  His present to Gilbert. The one he’d bought with his first, very own money.

  “‘Just one glove.’ Yeah, right…”

  As Oz murmured to himself in self-mockery, there was a light knock at the door, and it opened, revealing Gilbert. Apparently he hadn’t expected Oz to be awake; he spoke softly, sounding startled: “…Oz?”