Track 3 - On Hold
A trap?
Before I could question it, the man who’d received the info from the target came rushing into the restroom.
“Woah! You alright?”
I deliberately bumped into him, then slipped past.
The man dashed into a stall, as if he didn’t have the time to deal with me.
And just like that, the memory chip was in my hand.
Well, for now, I’d recovered the confidential information passed on by the target.
The guy was probably going to be holed up in the stall for a while, so I figured I'd just grab him later. I headed for the exit, when a massive shadow suddenly blocked my path.
A fierce looking man with an ox-like build stood in my way, giving off an odd air, and that’s when I understood.
Oh, so this is the trap.
As I dodged the hand reaching towards me, I started making calculations in my head.
Should I knock him out?
No, the guy looked trained. He wouldn’t go down easily.
And in that time the man in the stall would come out.
In that case—
Should I just kill him?
If I killed him, I’d have to take out the one in the stall too.
It was crowded outside, and I already knew where the security cameras were.
Escaping would’ve been easy for me.
As I weighed my options, the man in front of me suddenly tilted forward unnaturally, and behind him, I saw my partner...“The Seventh.”
Seriously? She’s helping?
The moment I noticed the hidden needle glinting under her fingernail—
“Fft.”
The Seventh pursed her lips and spat something out of her mouth.
“...!”
I watched the shape of the poison needle as it flew towards me before dodging at the last second.
It went straight past me and into the crown of the nondescript man’s head just as he poked his face out of the stall.
He slumped to the ground without even a groan.
“Hang on~, weren’t you totally aiming for me just now?”
“If that was enough to kill you, then that’s all you were worth.“
I knew it. She was definitely aiming for me.
“As long as we can claim at least one of their heads, those Oshikari bastards should behave themselves for a while.” The Seventh said as she yanked off the headband and began unzipping the minidress.
“Oh, so these guys really were Oshikari goons.”
“Right after I hit that guy with the laxative needle, I noticed some strange activity in the park, so I intercepted their comms and found they were contacting an Oshikari commander.”
“So, they wanted to use the target to smoke us out.”
There had been more and more cases of the Oshikari capturing personnel from Ninokuruwa recently. Which meant both the nondescript man and the ox-looking guy were probably their henchmen.
Well, they didn’t manage to capture us though.
And when I checked the contents of the chip, I didn’t find any important info.
So the target was in on it too, huh?
The Seventh, now naked, no longer bothered with changing his voice. He tossed his pink wig into a backpack he’d had folded up.
It was a man’s body, with a flat chest and lithe, supple muscles.
“Hurry up and change.”
He said as much, tossing me a T-shirt he’d apparently bought at a souvenir shop.
I gave a noncommittal response and changed my clothes, pulling on a cap.
“That dress really suited you though.”
“You’re playing the girl next time. You were built to be proficient in Shichihoude1 too, weren't you, Tenth?”
"Nah, I’m no match for you, Seventh-san. With my bone structure, I’m a guy no matter how I dress.”
We both finished our disguises.
It had been four minutes since I first entered the restroom.
The staff would be noticing something was wrong with the security camera soon.
Aiming for the blind spots of the outdoor cameras, we headed back into the park.
“Hand the chip over to me.”
“It was pretty much empty anyway. I'll just give it to Sensei myself.”
“The Second isn’t trustworthy. I outrank you, so do as you're told.”
He was totally planning on pinning all the screw-ups on me.
Like the guys on the floor of the restroom, for example.
I thought about it for a while, staying quiet, but eventually, it just became too much of a drag.
This guy lived the kind of life where he’d probably die sooner than me anyway, so I figured I could let it slide this time.
“Fine, fine. I’ll leave the report to you then, Seventh-san.”
When I handed over the chip, the Seventh narrowed his eyes in satisfaction.
By the time we left the theme park, it was lightly raining.
When I checked my watch to track the target’s location, I saw her coordinates were still blinking nearby.
“Should we go after the main event? She’s pretty close by.”
“No, I’m going to bag the lover who caused the betrayal and head back. We’re parting ways here. As for the main event, you’re to stand by for further instructions.”
It sounds like the higher-ups' plan had changed while I was in the restroom. The chip was gone anyway, so I figured I’d just do as I was told.
Splitting up worked out better for me too.
“...So you're disposing of them both?”
When I asked that casually, the Seventh laughed with genuine delight.
“Obviously. It’s been the law since the Ninth’s Black Case, hasn’t it?”
“I’ve always had a taste for making examples out of people,” he added.
With that, the Seventh seemed to melt into the gaps between the towering buildings in front of the station and vanished.
For a while, I just stood there.
—...A lover, huh.
That Kunoichi was an idiot too.
No matter how much they were controlled and raised to suppress their feelings.
People sometimes just ran headlong into doing stupid things without warning.
What drove people insane was always “attachment.”
Fools too stupid to keep their attachments in check were weeded out.
They were killed to serve as a warning.
A Black Case was a kin-slaying to announce the fate that awaited a fool.
—If there ever comes a time when I don’t come back... I want you to bury the Aglaonema.
It was a spring day back in elementary school.
I was busy writing a reflection on “Gauche the Cellist”.
That was the day he asked that of me.
—If possible, at the place where I die.
It wasn’t like I’d forgotten those words.
They had always been there, clinging to the back of my mind.
But that didn’t mean I was willing to just say “sure” and make that promise.
In fact, back then, I didn’t even nod.
That one-sided, unresolved promise came up every so often.
...Every time it was time to repot “her”.
Finishing homework was always easy.
I’d never struggled with it.
Math gave an answer if you followed the formula, and even reading comprehension had its rules.
The only thing that mattered for free-response was whether the teacher liked it.
But the homework the Ninth left me still wasn’t finished.
It felt like someone was hounding me.
Telling me to hurry up and settle this homework that made me miserable just to remember.
“...What a drag.”
I muttered quietly.
“Ten, over here!”
At our usual izakaya, the stupid dog was waving both his hands excitedly again that day.
Apparently, it was double points day, so the dog had gleefully called me out.
As soon as I sat down, he showed two point cards to the waiter.
One was mine, the other was his.
He had this proud look on his face for some reason, and I was seriously fed up by how stupidly, hopelessly pure he was.
In all likelihood, he was treasuring those two scraps of paper out of some cliché emotion, like being happy to share something with a friend, or seeing them slowly fill up.
It didn’t matter either way.
After we put in a quick order, the dog started digging through the bag beside him.
He said, “Oh, right! There’s something I want to give you,” or something along those lines.
“Wow, what is it? I can’t wait,” I said without a shred of sincerity, and what he handed to me in response was a somewhat large pot.
Huh? was what I thought.
But the dog’s handsome face broke into a look of such genuine, heartfelt joy that the sheer brightness of his smile actually made me feel a little nauseous.
The next day, on the dorm terrace, I started a task I’d done regularly before.
As I was loosening the roots of the Aglaonema I’d pulled out, I felt a familiar presence behind me.
“I see you’re repotting.”
The chief asked if he could watch and sat down in the chair next to me.
This person really has too much free time, I thought, but gave a smile and said, “Go ahead.”
His attempts to close the distance between us were comical, but I figured I’d just let him do what he wanted.
“I’m glad. You looked like you were hesitating about repotting it.”
The chief was usually dense, but every so often he’d say something sharp.
It was probably because he paid close attention to people’s faces.
Well, no matter what he said, he was harmless, so it really didn’t matter.
“Nah, I’m hesitating. Even now.”
When I replied with that, he asked, "Hm? Did you say something?" so I responded, "Repotting is just such a pain."
...I’m hesitating. Even now.
Whether to bury her, or to keep her by my side.
I've always been hesitating.
And this time, in the end, I put it on hold again.
—I mean, well.
If that stupid dog went out of his way to buy this pot for me, bragging about how "The performance is amazing! Sonia told me!", then I didn't really have a reason to refuse, did I?
I wouldn’t say it out loud, but that’s what I thought deep down.
In the back of my mind, I remembered what that person said to me just before he died.
—...Do you have a backbone that supports your life?
With blood-stained lips, he said it in a stern tone, as if it were his final lesson.
He looked straight at me, the one who’d cornered him, from within a pool of blood.
“Don't forget, okay?” he added with a smile.
I could always hear that voice coming from the distant darkness.
...A backbone, huh?
I looked at the Aglaonema’s vigorously growing roots and thought.
There she was, desperately trying to grow, trying to take root inside that cramped pot.
I couldn’t take root anywhere.
So, just enough to avoid it becoming an attachment, I’d “be here", at least until the next repotting.
If that person were to ask me again—that’s all I'd say.