Taking the Glock from his breast, Yuri released the safety and shoved the muzzle into the wolf’s mouth. Perhaps because he wore a wolf’s hide, the Esper’s eyes looking up at him seemed utterly innocent.
Without avoiding that gaze, Yuri pulled the trigger.
Bang! With the gunshot, a pool of blood formed beneath the brilliant silver fur. Watching the large, beautiful wolf’s body collapse onto that thick red liquid, Yuri bent down.
He felt no breathing. The pulse had stopped too. The most certain confirmation method was Guiding. Because no matter how much an Esper pretended to be dead, they couldn’t deceive Guiding.
Yuri placed his hand on the wolf’s bridge of nose, but felt no movement of Guiding energy. If it were a fatally wounded Esper, he would have tried to greedily devour every last strand of Guiding energy, so this was certainly dead.
Looking down at the wolf’s—no, the Esper’s—corpse, Yuri put away his gun and turned around.
Since Chris Danil had gone missing, he knew Northern Light would push into this land at some point. However, the speed was faster than expected.
Having put the Glock away in his breast, Yuri hesitated before turning around.
As the Esper’s Beast Transformation was released, the wolf’s body was changing into a human. If it had been just that, he would have turned around without hesitation. However, even in this darkness, platinum hair that couldn’t be mistaken for any other color held Yuri’s gaze captive.
Even without turning to check the face, the physique was familiar. There was no room to doubt it was the regular who had been frequenting the bookshop recently.
That man he’d mistaken for Danil was truly an enhancement-type Esper. An Esper with Beast Transformation ability who could turn into a wolf, at that.
“…So it really was a fake.”
How tiresome.
Northern Light and Rosenhower, and their obsession.
He’d guessed that when those bastards initially decided to ‘dispose’ of Chris Danil, they would have extracted everything they could. Because otherwise, they wouldn’t easily give up on the results of experiments that cost such enormous funds.
But he hadn’t known they’d extracted a new specimen based on the same genetic information.
This one seemed to be a failure, not possessing powerful abilities like his Danil, but merely able to transform into a wolf. So they must have sent him to the November Continent to hover around in front of him.
To confirm whether that hound had truly disappeared, and how Yuri would behave in front of the ‘returned’ Chris.
He recalled the man who’d appeared at the bookshop acting naively and introducing himself as Chris. Thinking it had all been well-constructed fakery made his displeasure considerable.
Perhaps he’d secretly hoped, even knowing it was irreversible. That his dog, whom he’d thought must have died collapsed somewhere unknown, had returned, with that gaze blindly following him.
Yuri knew it was absurd. Yet he’d found himself wanting to be deceived by that familiar gaze he’d always known.
So even knowing rats had crawled into this land, he’d given a brief reprieve. Though he hadn’t expected to be disappointed so soon.
No, could the emotion surging up and rampaging inside him even be expressed as mere disappointment?
With an expressionless face, Yuri looked down at the platinum hair stuck in the pool of blood.
Chris Danil had been a powerhouse beyond existing ranks, but the ability he possessed was only telekinesis. Even with the same face, since he’d undergone Beast Transformation, that had to be a fake.
‘I’ll have to give Rosenhower an appropriate return gift.’
Yuri put away the Glock and turned his body from the pale corpse under the moonlight. Bringing his hand to the earpiece and tapping it lightly to activate it, he ordered his subordinate on the other end of the line.
“There’s one corpse in the District 8 hills, so clean it up.”
He intended to sweep away the Northern Light agents who’d crawled into this remote continent again without tiring.
He’d thought to endure a bit longer, but now his patience was exhausted too.
What pulled Yuri’s trigger was ultimately an emotion resembling disappointment. Realizing he’d truly become alone now was quite a filthy feeling.
He despised all Espers. Even Chris Danil was no exception. They were simply bound by different restraints than others.
On the day Chris Danil disappeared along with Anastasia’s death, Yuri should have acknowledged it. That the man who’d agreed to become his accomplice had disappeared from this world forever.
Wasn’t he getting angry at these absurd emotions because he was soaking in shallow sentimentality?
He strode forward. His black shoes stepped on blood-soaked fallen leaves, but Yuri, who usually obsessively maintained cleanliness, didn’t care.
The next day, he went to work at Magnolia as if nothing had happened. He opened delivered boxes and sorted the books taken from inside according to their use.
While concentrating on his work routine for a while, the telephone bell rang, unusually. Yuri glanced to check the phone, then stood up from his seat and picked up the receiver.
“Yes. This is the Magnolia Antiquarian Bookshop.”
[There’s no corpse.]
He’d thought it was somewhat early for a call to come, but the voice heard from the other end was Logan, one of his executives.
It seemed he’d called the shop directly because the earpiece was removed. Since it was a location where a trap had been set for drug trafficking, a secure line was installed, so Yuri threw out a question without delay.
“The blood?”
[We couldn’t find a single drop. I took the liberty of deploying Fortuna, but even with psychometry, there was nothing to see.]
Yuri’s fingers slowly tapped the table.
“No trace?”
[Yes. Even with psychometry, there was nothing visible. As if a powerful ability had swept through that entire area.]
“Yeah, got it. A customer just came in, so hold on—”
At the clear bell sound, Yuri raised his head. A man stood at the doorway.
The ‘corpse’ that the subordinate on the other end of the line was desperately searching for.
What Yuri felt wasn’t fear or bewilderment.
Though he’d clearly killed him with his own hands and confirmed his death, healthy color remained on Chris’s cheeks, and in the blue-green eyes directed at him, not a trace of hatred or anger showed.
He was simply looking this way as if entranced by something.
“…No. I’ll hang up for now.”
Chris stood before him.
Just like that day when everyone thought he was dead, yet he returned to the Magnolia bookshop as if to prove them wrong.
“Hello.”
Yuri suddenly realized. No matter how many times he abandoned him, no matter how many times he killed him, that man would return.
For the sake of a promise that didn’t even seem to exist in his memory.
Realizing that fact, a deep smile spread across Yuri’s lips.
“A welcome guest indeed.”
Ah, the feeling of watching a dog wagging its tail without even knowing who killed it.
Yuri folded his eyes and asked with a radiant smile.
“How are you feeling?”
His voice couldn’t be more affectionate. Chris, who felt puzzled at Yuri’s unprecedentedly gentle question, belatedly recalled his last visit.
Last time, he’d shown himself staggering because he wasn’t stabilized. Yuri, who’d misunderstood that he had a cold, had taken him to a pharmacy without saying where they were going.
“I’m fine. Thank you for last time.”
“I’m glad you’ve recovered.”
At Yuri’s words, Chris hesitated, then opened his mouth.
“Um.”
“There’s a newly stocked book, would you like to see it?”
His friendly tone really seemed like a bookshop owner serving a regular customer. Thinking this would be their last meeting, Chris couldn’t possibly refuse Yuri’s proposal and inadvertently received a book from Yuri.
The dark green suede cover seemed relatively recently bound.
“It’s a new book.”
“Though it’s an antiquarian bookshop, I sometimes stock interesting books.”
It was lighter than expected.
“Does it not have a title?”
“You’ll find out as you read.”
Chris hesitated at Yuri’s enigmatic words, then turned the first page. The stiff page, as if it had been glued, didn’t turn easily.
His nose tip tickled.
“There’s no title on the inside page either.”
“Is that so?”
Yuri answered brazenly.
“How about continuing to turn the pages?”
Chris tried to turn the page, but the pages didn’t separate well. It seemed a defect from the printing press had come to Yuri’s shop of all places.
“The pages aren’t separating well.”
“Mm. That happens sometimes. Try using this.”
Rummaging inside the counter, Yuri handed Chris a ruler. When he wedged it into the gap between the pages, the next page began to open.
“It seems like the book will tear or crumple at this rate…”
