“It’s more comfortable physically and mentally to have candy. When someone deliberately comes targeting the candy, the older brothers sometimes block them.”
“I see.”
Chris felt the Guiding Delight that the drug dealer had stuffed into his pocket rustling. He also saw the boy’s ears perk up.
He clearly felt that what the drug dealer was trying to lure with this ‘service’ wasn’t the customer’s footsteps but that boy serving as a guide. On the November Continent where the mafia blocked drug distribution, using such a young child as a guide was striking in many ways. The bastard had trained the child in a very simple way to prevent him from turning his eyes toward a sound direction other than this work.
If you guide a customer without a marker, you get punished. Even with a marker, you mustn’t guide customers without money. You must endure even if customers act violently. However, if you work hard at guiding, you can escape violence with the ‘candy’ they give.
People’s thinking becomes simple when faced with situations they can’t handle.
Before he knew it, the alley was showing its end. The boy’s expectant gaze kept glancing at Chris.
Chris’s fingertips caught on a bag as he fumbled in his inner pocket. It was the cookies given to him by the woman who had pitied Chris when he first came to the 13th Ward. He’d kept it since he had no occasion to eat it and had completely forgotten about it.
It had already been several days and had become quite hard, but Chris took it out.
“Sorry, but I don’t have candy. Will you eat cookies instead?”
“…Cookies.”
The boy looked at Chris with a complicated face, as if unsure whether to be angry or dumbfounded.
However, Chris would rather crush the Guiding Delight in his pocket than hand it to the child.
“It’s a bit hard, but it should be edible. A very kind person baked them.”
Chris knew too. That these petty sentiments of his couldn’t change the boy’s present or be responsible for his future.
Nevertheless, his hand chose cookies, not candy.
“Bad luck.”
The boy spat on the ground at Chris’s feet, snatched the cookie bag as if stealing it, then ran off into the darkness of the alley.
Chris stood there watching the darkness for quite a while until the boy’s scent scattered in the wind.
He was aware he’d done something foolish. But he knew that even if he rewound time, he wouldn’t be able to hand over the Guiding Delight in his pocket.
***
Returning to the apartment, Chris checked for the listening device’s presence, then looked for surveillance cameras but couldn’t find any. It seemed they hadn’t installed them because of the lens’s reflected light, so as long as he was careful about sound, whatever he did at home would be fine.
Chris first unfolded the slip of paper the drug dealer had given him.
On the paper inside was scribbled writing along with a syringe shape.
And next to it was doodling that was hard to make out. It seemed like a kind of code. The kind that changed markings at regular intervals so those with previous codes wouldn’t be guided.
He thought the syringe probably indicated the type of drug Chris had purchased. Meaning to guide him to the drug dealer selling that drug…
If drugs were gathered in one place, when caught in a crackdown they’d all be confiscated at once, so it seemed to be a system designed to guide people to whichever side had remaining drug stock at the time. It made sense that they drew a syringe picture since a child raised in back alleys wouldn’t have learned to read. The code beside it also looked more like a picture than writing.
Chris, who carefully kept the slip, now took out the box. When he entered the password, the lock released with a click. Opening the lid, inside was a brown glass bottle along with a syringe that looked new.
When he lifted the bottle and held it up to the light, he could faintly see letters.
<G.Poison>
Gentle Poison?
He remembered one of the Guiding drugs Andrea had mentioned.
Seeing the enclosed syringe, it appeared to be the type of drug injected into veins. Though he had no intention of actually using this, Chris, who opened the cap to check, stiffened at the scent transmitted from Gentle Poison.
‘Ah, this is.’
A scent as concentrated and bewitching as a more potent version of Guiding Delight. Something that breaks people down and makes them submit helplessly.
Chris panted with his mouth covered. He barely managed to place the medicine bottle on the table, but he was slowly collapsing while leaning on the chair.
His ability was running wild. Since this was the first time he’d lost control like this since awakening at Northern Light, Chris looked down at his hands with a flustered expression.
He could see fur growing and claws becoming pointed. Even when he told himself to return to normal, it wouldn’t listen.
The transformation was more painful than ever before. As if cramming his feet into someone else’s shoes, what was inside seethed and made a fuss trying to escape outside.
In the process of transforming into a large beast, the clothes Chris was wearing tore. He lay prostrate on the floor, trembling silently. His lower abdomen tingled and his vision shook dizzily. Just from smelling the scent, he felt like he’d go crazy.
‘Why is this happening?’
It was certainly a stronger drug than Guiding Delight. He tried to stand up by stepping on the ground with his front paws, but his legs trembled and he collapsed to the floor again.
He kept wavering between instinct and reason. Chris gritted his teeth and blocked his sense of smell. It didn’t work as easily as he’d like. Because the more he smelled that scent, the more he wanted to breathe it in deeper.
With truly superhuman patience, Chris succeeded in holding his breath and hurriedly returned to human form.
Though he was practically naked, he hurriedly closed the medicine cap. And only after opening the window wide could he finally take a deep breath.
Around the table and on the chair, remnants of clothes reduced to rags were scattered. And he could see the syringe rolling around on the floor carelessly.
Looking at the black bottle containing Gentle Poison, Chris irritably swept back his hair.
A Guide’s scent and Guiding had been nothing but nauseating until now, but even though this wasn’t real, it was irresistibly ecstatic.
When he heard that Guiding drugs existed, he’d felt curious about what they’d feel like. He’d even thought that perhaps if it were Guiding drugs, he could use them without aversion.
But not this.
Chris didn’t want to become a beast. If this was the feeling Espers experience when meeting a Guide, it would have been better never to know for his entire life. It felt like being degraded from a decent human to a hideous beast shoved into mud. Even though his reason hadn’t disappeared, he’d been pushed back one step by instinct and craved that drug. It was an excessive reaction for a drug he’d never even used once.
Wouldn’t you only become addicted to any drug after using it first?
‘Maybe.’
He thought with a gloomy expression.
‘Maybe I lived using such drugs before losing my memory.’
Nowhere in Northern Light’s records did Chris’s record exist. Since there was no way to know when he manifested as an Esper, if he had abilities in the past too, he would have lived the life of an unregistered person. An unregistered person who scraped by lending hands to violent organizations to save money to buy a Guide, or lived day by day relying on drugs with uncertain effects.
Unless he was incredibly lucky to have lost his memory at the same time as awakening as an Esper, but Chris didn’t believe in such fortune.
Chris was dismayed that his sense of smell, which had been most useful for drug investigation, was practically sealed. However, if he became a dog in heat in the middle of enemy territory, not only would the mission fail, but his identity would be exposed and it wouldn’t be strange to be dragged before Yuri Sobolev.
Perhaps he’d end up following in the footsteps of Gillian and Aparna who’d been captured first.
Chris wiped the cold sweat from his temple. Perhaps because he’d suddenly tensed up, his body felt rapidly exhausted.
Putting on new clothes, he threw the ruined clothes in the trash. He reassured himself that except for the sound of things thudding and falling, nothing would have been transmitted to the existence beyond that line, thanks to gritting his teeth and enduring while belatedly recalling that a listening device was attached under the chair.
Chris, who had been fiddling with a book to ease his tense nerves, eventually closed Dracula without even turning a few pages. The letters wouldn’t enter his eyes.
Chris knew what he needed right now. Only a slight hesitation was holding his feet back.
The cold wind of the November Continent entered through the still-open window and struck his cheeks. Nevertheless, he felt as if the nauseating smell of Gentle Poison hadn’t fully dissipated from the room. He felt like he needed to replace the very air he was breathing right now.
Eventually, Chris swallowed a sigh and stood up from his seat.
Passing Don Jon’s grocery store, Chris walked down the street. Feeling tranquility rather than desolation on this street full of nothing but closed shops was because Magnolia Bookshop was at the end of this road.
If his heart weren’t heavy, his steps would have been light as if flying.
Finally reaching the end of the yellow brick road, he could see his Emerald City.
Through the window of Magnolia Bookshop, he could see Yuri.
For the past few days, he’d deliberately not come near the bookshop. He would startle just seeing someone’s shadow that resembled Yuri. Because whenever a situation arose that reminded him of Yuri even slightly, his heart would pound.
Still, it’s better than being addicted to drugs. Isn’t being dragged along by emotions a better look than being swayed by drugs whose raw materials are unknown and whose actual Guiding effect is uncertain?
Chris took a big step forward.
When he pushed the door, the bell made a cheerful sound as always.
“Welcome.”
