Baccano! - Volume 5 - Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5

(SMILE)

Elmer C. Albatross

In the graveyard, which was some distance from the castle, Sylvie was tied to one of the trees that grew around the perimeter. She was bound not with cord but with something hard as concrete that cast a strange shadow. She could make out that much, but the moonlight wasn’t enough to let her discern its color.

“What are you planning to do with me, exactly?”

Sylvie’s question sounded rather troubled, but she didn’t seem very tense.

The figure she’d spoken to sat on a tombstone, muttering as if he was bored.

“I just want knowledge, that’s all. Knowledge from you ‘immortals.’ I thought I’d torture that Czes brat and take him over when I’d weakened his spirit… I never dreamed things would turn out like this. Frankly, I’m not sure what to do now.”

The shadow in front of her tilted his head, looking thoroughly perplexed.

“If possible, I’d rather not ‘steal’ you. You helped me quite a bit, and it would be weird for me to acquire a female body this late in the game.”

“You don’t think my mind might win?”

“I’d win. You’ve already achieved your goal, right? You got eternal beauty. I still have a big goal. You won’t beat me.”

“Want to try me?”

At Sylvie’s taunt, the figure thought for a while, then murmured, “I’ll pass.”

The shadow had fallen silent. She spoke to him again.

“You know what I think?” Sylvie went on, talking to the expressionless figure. “A witch who wanted to be the fairest in the world may do all sorts of awful things to make that happen. Still, once she’s gotten her wish, she thinks, ‘All my wishes have come true, so from now on, I’ll live to grant other people’s wishes.’ It does depend on how bad the awful things were, but don’t you think that’s a good plan? Couldn’t that be a goal?”

In response to that suggestion, the shadow thought for a little while…then murmured in a vaguely resigned voice:

“I’m sure I wouldn’t have that kind of leeway.”

“I brought a light from the car.”

“You’re late. What are you loitering for…? You stink of oil.”

“Well, I didn’t know where in the car it was.”

When they reached the library that held the entrance to the castle’s secret passage, Elmer and Nile were immediately startled to find the room in a shambles.

Almost all the bookshelves had toppled, as if a tornado had blown through.

“Fil!”

One of the Fils lay in the corner of the room. She seemed to be merely unconscious, and her life was in no danger. When they shook her, her eyes opened almost immediately, and she began to tell them about the devastation in detail.

“A strange monster suddenly appeared—it grabbed Mistress Sylvie—it threw me, along with the bookshelves…”

As Elmer and Nile gulped at the sight of the wreckage, they switched the light on, then stepped onto the staircase that led underground. They’d said they’d leave Fil behind, but in the end, because it was what she wanted and because it was probably dangerous for her to be alone, they took her with them.

Then, as they made their way through the tunnel to the graveyard…Nile muttered, sounding mystified, “…This passage used to have dirt walls partway through…”

In the light of the lamp, the tunnel walls were stone from start to finish. There wasn’t a trace of the red clay Nile and Maiza had seen earlier.

When Nile pushed the gravestone up, he was confronted by the sight of Sylvie bound to a tree.

“Oh, it’s you. So the tiresome one showed up.”

From behind him, he heard a young man’s voice.

Nile turned, his body language tense. The individual who stood there was a perfect stranger to him.

Next, Elmer poked his head out and saw the figure’s face.

“Huh…? Aren’t you—?”

Behind the puzzled Elmer, Fil appeared and screamed the man’s name.

“Master Feldt!”

She cried out, startled, and at the sight of the boy’s face under the moonlight, her eyes swam distractedly. She couldn’t get her head around the circumstances, and she seemed to have been thrown into mild shock.

“Good day. Mr. Nile, wasn’t it? …This is the first time I’ve met you as Feldt Nibiru.”

He greeted him, playing the courteous boy—then, still in the boy’s voice, he shifted into a disagreeably arrogant tone and continued his self-introduction.

“And, as Dez Nibiru, it’s been a while, masked demon!”

For a moment, the three of them froze. Before long, though, Elmer seemed to realize something and muttered:

“Headman… Don’t tell me… You gave that ‘water’ to your own son—?”

In a way, what Elmer had said would have been the worst possible outcome, but the boy quietly shook his head.

“Unfortunately, you’re wrong… My son died fifteen years ago. Soon after he was born, just as if he’d gone to sleep.”

Seating himself on one of the tombstones, Feldt began to talk, as if giving them a souvenir from the afterlife.

“I didn’t know what illness it was, but he really did look like he was only sleeping. I’d married the daughter of the village headman, and it happened just when I thought I was set for life.”

He’d nearly risen to the top of his world—this village—and right after he’d been promised the position of future headman, he’d lost his child. In order to hide the fact from his wife, he’d infiltrated the laboratory. He’d lied to his wife, telling her he was going to have the traders take a look at their sick child, and had injected the ‘water’ into a tank used to cultivate his own body. The fetus had grown up well… And from that point on, until his wife died of an illness, and even afterward, he’d used one mind to act separate roles for “Dez” and “Feldt,” deceiving everyone around him.

In order to make Feldt, who acted the part of the son, appear especially capable, he’d made the father, Dez, come off as selfish and demanding. Even when Elmer had come to the village, this hadn’t changed…but something in his heart had begun to waver.

Outside. Now that his wife was gone and he had no one to tie him to this place, would it be possible for him to get into the outside world from that laboratory? Although the thought was faint, deep in his heart, he’d begun to think it.

Then, the other day, he’d heard about “outside” from Sylvie, and the idea had become his reason for living.

“Listening to those stories about the outside was like hearing about a dream, and it made me think.”

Sitting on the tombstone, the boy looked up at the night sky rather sadly, and the hatred in his voice grew.

“…If this village hadn’t been so isolated—if I’d taken them to a proper doctor in the outside world, my son, and my wife… Maybe they wouldn’t have had to die!”

At that point, seemingly overcome with emotion, he got up from the gravestone and spread his arms wide in an exaggerated gesture.

“I’ve always hated it! This village, created just for an experiment, and those girls, and myself! So I made up my mind, long ago! When I left this village…”

Reflecting the faint moonlight, the boy’s golden eyes glittered madly.

Fixing that gaze on the girl beside Elmer, he wrapped up his tale.

“…I would destroy the entire thing.”

In response, Elmer seemed to brood over something for a little while, while Fil was petrified with shock. Sylvie was silent, clearly thinking. Only one of them—Nile—spoke, radiating dignity.

“Hmm. I understand your story very well. In that case, I may slaughter you now, correct?”

“Good grief. You’re an impatient one, aren’t you?”

“Let me just say this: Shut up. The outside world holds ten billion people less fortunate than you. I have no sympathy whatsoever for those who use their unhappiness to fuel unjustified resentment.”

Tossing those words off bluntly, Nile took a step forward, ready to break the kid’s neck, but—

“Ah, Nile, hang on a minute.”

Elmer raised his voice in an attempt to stop him, but—

Before he could, something coiled around Nile’s feet.

“Nn?”

In the next instant, his body was hanging upside down, high in the air. Then it was slammed to the ground.

“Gwah!”

Nile had hit his back hard and was looking up at the sky. Something huge loomed over him.

“Remember what I told you? I dumped the ‘water’ into the tank! Even the lump of meat that was slated to turn into me reacted to it! That’s what it looks like now! In this state, life span and growth don’t mean a thing! I may actually be an immortal!”

The thing was an enormous, dark red clump of meat. It was what might have resulted if rotten meat had been forced through a grinder, and it squirmed like a slime monster from a video game, radiating an unpleasant humidity. There was no telling what its actual volume was, but it seemed big enough for two whole cows.

“Go on, take a good, long look! Then pity it, laugh at it, fear it—this is the me that failed to become me! Ha-ha! Ha! Ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha—”

The homunculus in the shape of a boy.

Feldt’s laugh was filled with insanity, and as he listened to it, Elmer murmured.

The soft whisper didn’t reach anyone’s ears and vainly disappeared into the cold air.

“Stop it… Don’t fake laughter…”

When Maiza and the others heard the story from Fil and came running, they saw a sight that could only be described as bizarre. An enormous red mass of meat scraps had enfolded Elmer and Nile and was slamming them both against the ground by turns.

“Well, well. Has the cavalry arrived?”

At Feldt’s remark, Maiza cursed under his breath.

“All right,” Feldt continued. “Should I take this opportunity to negotiate with you?”

Expression brimming with sarcasm, the boy made Maiza an offer.

“Negotiate?” Maiza wondered just what sort of negotiations he meant, but the next words explained that quite succinctly.

“I think I’m going to have somebody drink my ‘water’ and attempt to take over their mind. Why don’t I let you choose who it will be?”

“How long?”

When he’d been slammed down about twenty times, Nile muttered:

“Huh?”

“A moment ago, you said, ‘Hang on a minute.’ How long must I wait?”

At that, Elmer remembered what he’d said to Nile a short while ago.

“Let me just say this: I will wait one minute more. If you fail to do something—then I will counterattack in earnest. I will kill this meat, and that idiot, and everyone in the village. If you do not want that, then do something about this.”

After he’d thought about Nile’s proposal for about three seconds, Elmer muttered back, “You sounded pretty cool there, but… Don’t tell me you don’t have any ideas, and you’re trying to cover up the fact that you’re counting on me?”

“That ill-advised remark of yours just decreased the time to thirty seconds.”

“W-wait, wait! …All right.”

With an expression that seemed to say there was no help for it, still hanging upside down…Elmer brought up the contents of his stomach. The liquid that spurted from his mouth splashed all over the meat fragments Feldt was controlling.

Simultaneously, a pungent, acrid odor spread through the area. The smell that had been hanging around Elmer for the past few minutes was now several times stronger, and it enveloped their surroundings.

Oil?! No, that’s not it—what is this stuff?!

Noticing the sudden stench, Feldt hastily turned around, flustered.

“Fil, run! Maiza— Don’t let him get away!”

Maiza, who’d realized what the smell was immediately, had begun to move even before the words reached him.

Seizing his chance when Feldt was distracted, he put him in a headlock. The boy wasn’t strong enough to shake Maiza off, and Maiza turned him to face the clump of meat.

“It sounds as though you heard about all sorts of ‘outside’ things from Sylvie, but… You don’t yet know how dangerous gasoline is, do you?”

Then, in the next instant—he took the flashlight he was holding and dashed it, still lit, against a tombstone.

Something like sparks scattered from the broken lightbulb, and—

A red flash enveloped a portion of the night’s darkness.

“Well, there was a monster on the loose, and I couldn’t go in completely unprepared, so…”

“…Still. To think you’d drink gasoline…”

Nile spoke as if he was disgusted, but Elmer only cackled away with his usual smile. “Startled you, didn’t I? Smile… Yech, I still feel nasty. Gasoline really isn’t meant to be drunk. If I weren’t immortal, I’d be dead.”

The scale of the explosion hadn’t been big. After all, the capacity of human stomachs wasn’t much. However, the sudden blast had scattered Feldt’s meat fragments. When they caught fire, they writhed in pain, and then nature took its course and they burned away. Of course Nile and Elmer hadn’t escaped unscathed either, but the supernatural had also taken its course, and they’d regenerated.

A smell like barbecued meat mingled with the odor of gasoline to create a nauseating stench.

As for the key figure, Feldt—

“Ahh…ah… AaAAaaaAAh…”

“Hmm. Well, that is only natural.”

The boy lay faceup, hollow-eyed. His entire body was twitching.

“He felt himself burn, after all. Not only that, but over a much wider area than any human.”

“Immolation is rough, you know, even if it isn’t your first time.”

As Maiza spoke of experiences only an immortal could have, Elmer took the fallen Feldt in his arms and tried to help him sit up.

“Hey.”

Even though he knew it was no good, Nile tried to stop him, but Elmer answered with his usual smile.

“I did something about it in a minute, as promised. I’ll be taking this guy.”

“Elmer, you say ‘taking,’ but—”

In the instant Maiza spoke with some dismay—

Feldt’s stomach split, and meat fragments burst out from inside.

“Wha…?!”

“Elmer!”

By the time they’d noticed, it was already too late. The meat fragments, holding something that looked like a small bottle, had leaped into Elmer’s mouth.

“Muh-gwuh-gah-gah!”

Defying the will of his esophagus, the little bottle and the meat fragments descended into Elmer’s stomach. At the same time, the boy, who was bleeding heavily from his abdomen, laughed as if victory was his.

“Ha-ha…ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. You fell for it, monster… Did you seriously think I’d keep all the meat fragments in one place? …What you just swallowed is the bottle with the ‘water.’”

“You wretch…!”

When Nile grabbed the scruff of his neck and hauled him up, Feldt spat out blood with a wet, choking sound. “When I break—that bottle—you and I will start trying to take over each other’s will… I—bet my life on it. If I—fail here—I’ll die. I’ll disappear from the face of the Earth—I can’t die. I’m going to see the outside world! As far as strength of will is concerned, we’re equal now, or rather, I’m stronger!”

The spiritual theory he’d set forth was ludicrous, but as Feldt lay dying, his gaze held a firmer resolve than it ever had before.

In spite of themselves, Maiza and the others were terrified. Only Elmer was still smiling, just like always.

Apparently Feldt really didn’t like that; he glared at Elmer with hate-filled eyes.

“Why…are you smiling…? Aren’t you…afraid to die…?”

“Yep. But I’m the one who’s going to win this match. Count on it.”

At those abrupt words, which had been delivered without a shred of apprehension, Feldt’s gaze clouded.

“What…kind of…nonsense…”

“Before you break it, let me give you one warning. Your actions will be absolutely pointless.”

What Elmer did next really made Maiza’s blood run cold.

Everyone in the area gulped. If Czes had been there, he probably would have been the only one to stay calm as events unfolded.

Elmer took Maiza’s right hand and placed it on his own forehead.

That was all he’d done.

“If I lose, Maiza will eat me on the spot. —You can’t survive this.”

Elmer was smiling brightly. In response, greasy sweat from something other than pain began to trickle down Feldt’s face.

“No… You wouldn’t…”

For a moment, despair came into his face, but soon he regained his composure, and the light returned to his eyes.

“You…fool. You…think…that…would…be…”

“You just thought of using my memories and pretending to be me, didn’t you.”

“!”

“Okay, then let’s do this. Maiza, if that bottle breaks, eat me right then.”

“Understood.”

 ! Impossible! He’s lying! He could never do it!

Feldt’s mind had begun to cloud over; he twisted to face Maiza.

However…although the man’s eyes had been smiling a moment ago, they were now ice-cold, as if he could kill a baby without the slightest compunction.

“This guy’s with the mafia, see. He can make himself do what has to be done in situations like this right away.”

“It isn’t the mafia. It’s the Camorra.”

Maiza dispassionately pointed out the mistake. There was no uncertainty in his eyes.

Which is it? Which?! Is it an act, or is it—?

At that point, Feldt hesitated for a few seconds.

—Not realizing that as far as he was concerned, the pause would be fatal.

“It’s done.”

Abruptly, the tension in Maiza’s face dissolved—and Feldt sensed that something was wrong with his meat fragments.

It felt as if they were being compressed from all sides… The moment he thought that, Maiza thrust his left hand out at the boy on the ground.

At that point, finally, Feldt realized that he’d lost. This time, despair shrouded his heart.

After all, Maiza’s left hand gripped the clump of meat that should have been in Elmer’s stomach…and the bottle of “water” was in Elmer’s right hand.

“Surprised?”

Ignoring Elmer, who was grinning with great amusement, Maiza heaved a massive sigh, breaking out in a cold sweat.

To think that while he was on his feet, negotiating with me…he’d cut open his stomach…

By grabbing Maiza’s right hand, Elmer had created a blind spot for Feldt, and in its shadow, Maiza had used his knife to slit Elmer’s belly. From where the boy lay, facing up, he wouldn’t be able to see the blood dripping to the ground behind Maiza’s long coat, and— And they’d pulled all that off without discussing it beforehand.

“I haven’t lived this long for nothing. You give it your best shot, too.”

As Elmer spoke, he examined the wound in Feldt’s own stomach.

The gash he found there was far bigger than what he’d anticipated.

“Uh…Maiza? What do you think?”

Maiza took a close look at the wound. Then he sighed and shook his head.

“Not a chance.”

At that… For the first time, Elmer looked sad.

“I wanted to save you, but…”

“Hunh… So I…guess…things…didn’t go…your, way… Serves…you right…”

Feldt spoke as if he’d summoned up the last of his strength to do it. In response, Elmer made a quiet “pronouncement”:

“Once you’re dead, I’ll smile.”

“…?”

“I don’t let dead people bother me. If someone’s died a meaningful death, I’ll applaud them, and I don’t mind smiling for them, but if you die, that fact will be the only thing left. And so…I won’t give any more thought to you. We’ll all just say, ‘The bad guy’s dead, woohoo!’ and laugh. That’s it.”

“Wha…”

Feldt tried to say something, but Elmer cut him off with a murmur, still smiling.

“Listen. Just now, you said it ‘served me right,’ didn’t you? You wanted to make me sad, and you achieved your goal. Right?”

At that, Feldt realized something. He was forced to realize it.

“In that case, as far as you’re concerned, this is a happy ending. —So smile.”

Evil.

If it was possible to neatly divide the world into “good” and “bad,” then this Elmer fellow was unmistakably evil. —Or rather, he was a being that could truly be called “a demon.”

It was hard to spot only because what he wanted just happened to be happy endings. They were the only thing he saw. For the sake of his own objective, he’d use any means available. His essential nature was pure evil… And even so, no one suffered for it.

A consummate villain who probably wasn’t even aware that he was one—that was Elmer.

As his mind faded, Feldt fiercely regretted his foolishness in having dealt seriously with a person like that.

Whether or not he knew what was in the boy’s heart, Elmer murmured briefly:

“If you don’t like it, then don’t die.”

He looked sad, and Fil, who had been watching from a distance, began to come closer.

“It’s over, isn’t it…?” Maiza sighed.

“No, I don’t want to let it be over. Dammit, if we only had a doctor here—”

Even as she heard those words, a ferocious anger was welling up inside Fil.

I’m mad. That was all it is.

Of course the fact that I’d been deceived had been a shock.

…But what of it?

What I’m mad about now…is the fact that Feldt is taking his own life much too lightly.

Was I like this, too, a few minutes ago? If so, it’s no wonder that Master Nile got angry. Everything, including my own irritation, boils inside me until it’s on the verge of exploding.

Why, oh why must he toy with me any way he pleases?!

I’ve suffered so much because of Feldt’s selfish logic, and now he’s trying to run away without letting me lodge a single complaint?

I can’t forgive him for that.

I will probably be able to forgive everything he’d done before, someday. However—this one thing I can’t forgive.

After all, the person I’d need to forgive would be gone.

The object of my resentment would disappear. In that case, what am I supposed to vent my anger on?

He must not die. He must not escape. No matter what.

An idea strikes me, and I reach out with no hesitation whatsoever.

Toward his origin, the bottle Master Elmer held…

“Master Elmer, it’s all right, so please—smile the way you always do.”

“Huh?”

Just as Elmer made a bewildered sound, Fil took the little bottle from his hand, opened it, and drained it without coming up for air. At the same time, Feldt went completely limp. His body had died.

“Fil!”

“What did you just—?!”

Silence.

With the moon as their only light, Elmer waited for the girl’s next words.

After a moment that felt like eternity…Fil’s body murmured, weakly, “She—she didn’t fight me at all… Why?”

The mind inside the girl was, without a doubt, Feldt.

“……”

When he saw this, Nile stepped forward to hit her—but the shadow that came running up from behind him caught Elmer and Maiza’s attention.

Nile prepared to throw a lightning-fast punch at Feldt/Fil, who looked dazed, but just before his fist could connect…another Fil appeared and slapped Feldt’s cheek with all her might.

“Don’t you dare run…after all you did to me, to Master Czes, to Mistress Sylvie, to Master Elmer—did you really think we would feel better just because you’d died, because you’d been killed, because you’d suffered?! …Don’t take us for fools!”

The attack had been loaded with genuine anger, but the people around them looked more startled than Feldt, who’d taken the actual blow. Fil had just expressed her own will very clearly, but more than that, her mind was still alive and well in another body.

“I see… He took over her body, after all. Well, if it’s a question of whether it could happen, I guess it could.”

“Let me just say this: I think it could not.”

Feldt, who’d been struck, was stunned for a little while. Then, looking at Fil…

“Is it…all right for me to keep living?” he murmured.

“Well… Since his crimes were attempted murder and assault, according to the laws of this country, I don’t think he’d be given the death penalty,” Maiza muttered to Elmer, smiling in mild amazement.

However, this time, Elmer didn’t crack a joke. He walked over to Feldt and smiled at him. “Lucky you. You’re not dead.”

Smacking Feldt—who was now in a girl’s body—on the head, he said:

“Now you can make amends.”

Elmer seemed thoroughly happy. Twisting Fil’s face, Feldt muttered self-deprecatingly, “Even if—even if I survive and atone for my crimes… What on earth am I supposed to do after that? What am I supposed to atone for, and why?!”

“You just said so yourself. You want to see the outside world, right?”

“ ”

Even then, Feldt tried to say something, but Elmer crouched down in front of him, set a hand lightly against his cheek, and, with ever-so-slightly serious eyes, began to talk. Maybe he felt a bit awkward about it, as he spoke in a small voice unintelligible to the people around him.

“C’mon, let’s go outside. Someday, you can take all the villagers out and show it to them.”

“But—”

Feldt was trying to refuse something, but Elmer gazed into his eyes and spoke, not giving him any other options.

“Being unhappy isn’t a crime, but… Not seeking happiness is.”

As Elmer smiled at him kindly, Feldt looked away, still rejecting him.

“Do you think beings like me and Fil could ever be happy?”

When he heard that, Elmer looked just a little stern and put his other hand on Feldt’s other cheek.

“In this world, see, lots of people die never even knowing the word hope. Maybe their parents are dead the moment they’re born, or they’re starving and there’s not a drop of water in sight, or maybe they were born just to be killed… But you know about hope. Denying that is an insult to your life.”

Elmer’s gaze was intent. Was there anger in it? As if to drive it back, Feldt glared back at him with all the spirit he could muster.

“You—you couldn’t understand how we—”

“I don’t know how you feel. Even if someone took what’s been done to you in the past and did it to me now, I could never know. After all, I already know the outside world. But, listen, you can come over to this side, y’know?”

Startled, Feldt’s eyes went wide, and he took another hard look at Elmer. Elmer kept speaking in that same quiet tone, as if he hadn’t even noticed.

“So, Feldt. Don’t say sad things like that. I’m the one who gets sad, but, anyway. If you’ve got time to say that stuff, you guys should make that hope of yours come true and learn about happiness… I’ll teach you. I’ll show you, all right? I’ll teach you, I swear, no matter how many years it takes…”

When he’d said as much, Elmer gently pinched his cheeks and pulled them to either side.

“So, c’mon, give it up and s-m-i-l-e, all right?”

I haven’t changed my mind. I still think this man is evil.

He was convinced of that, if nothing else, but…

For this one moment, Feldt decided to give in to the demon’s temptation.

He’d realized this man had captured him long ago—from the very moment he had come to the village. He also knew he’d never be able to escape, not for all eternity.

Elmer watched Feldt for a little while longer, and then…

Abruptly, he heaved a great sigh, muttering in disappointment:

“…So why are you crying?”