“They won’t know me. Why are you nervous?”
“…Ah, n-no. I’m not… nerv-ous… I just haven’t been working here very long, and…”
“What the hell, did someone declare a state of emergency like I’m going to blow this place up or something.”
The employee’s face went chalk white at Rodeo’s words.
“…Bingo? Good grief.”
“Ah, n-no. No. Really, it’s not—”
“That’s enough, just show me the way. This is what happens when you don’t put them through combat training — they don’t know what to do with themselves.”
Rodeo clicked his tongue, and the employee flinched before stepping out from behind the desk to guide him down the corridor. After winding through what felt like a maze of hallways for a while, a room appeared with Carousel’s name on the nameplate, and the employee opened the door himself.
“…Going this far. You’ve done enough, you can go.”
Rodeo gestured, and the employee bowed and hurried away. Rodeo turned his head with an expression of disbelief — and there was Carousel, sitting at his desk with a serious look on his face.
“I’d want to smash something, but somehow the deference makes it impossible.”
“That was exactly the point of sending out the warning notice.”
“Still, the fact that you know me that well is the real problem.”
Carousel fired back without missing a beat at Rodeo’s sarcasm. Rodeo smiled, checked both sides of the corridor, then closed the door — and locked it. When he turned back around, the smile was gone from his face.
“So. The documents.”
“Here, the application form.”
“…Not that one.”
“What documents besides the name search?”
Carousel asked with a gracious smile.
“Ah, getting close to forty and the memory’s starting to go, is it.”
“No, Rodeo-ssi. I never said I’d process paperwork for someone who hasn’t answered my question.”
“…….”
“…….”
A stale silence passed, and Rodeo let out a voice full of irritation behind a smiling face.
“So. What is it. If an Esper goes near Chalice they get executed or something?”
“…Close.”
“What do you mean close?”
“What the senior Espers representing the facility want right now is to maintain the status quo.”
“The status quo of the pain Chalice goes through?”
“The maintenance of a state called non-monopolization.”
Rodeo’s face flooded with horror, as though he’d just heard something grotesque.
“Non-monopolization? Non-monopolization? Is Chalice some kind of product? Why are the ones who know what it’s like to be treated as tools pulling this kind of shit?”
“You said it yourself already. Once you get to the top, they’re all the same.”
“…….”
“…….”
“Ink too?”
“…Yes, Ink too. Actually, Ink more than anyone. He wants to give it back tenfold.”
Rodeo put both hands on his hips and turned his head toward the opposite wall. The situation was utterly, bitterly bleak. Once — in the most painful period of his life — they had been colleagues who understood each other’s suffering better than anyone. Rodeo squeezed his eyes shut and exhaled, then suddenly lifted his head and opened his mouth.
“What about you.”
“…I also led the Liberation Movement. But look at me. Stuck in a nothing 4th floor office, in this small room, without even a title like honorary director — isn’t it obvious? I said the right things and got demoted for it.”
Rodeo’s lip curled at one corner listening to Carousel’s bitter words.
“Don’t take comfort in that. Espers like me are a handful. You’d be better off assuming everyone you know either torments him or wants a share of him. There’s a reason Chalice lives in hiding. It’s only recently that conditions have finally been put in place where remote Guiding is impossible depending on the Guide’s state, and that’s the only reason the absolute worst has been avoided.”
“Right, and Chalice seemed oh so satisfied with that. Just that. Didn’t he. And yet he still filed for a dedicated Guide. Must’ve been perfectly content — so why did he do it? Doesn’t that explain the situation better?”
Carousel answered with firm eyes.
“Chalice filed because a young Esper with a high matching rate had appeared, and he thought he wouldn’t be interfered with. That’s why he contacted me the moment the detection went off. …As for me — I approved it because I thought if you put your mind to it, you’d have the ability to protect Chalice. You were discovered less than a day ago and I’d already moved Chalice. I still have full access to classified information, which means I trusted you.”
“…So in other words, you’re saying you helped Chalice.”
“Yes. The reason I’m on the 4th floor processing paperwork isn’t just because of being kept in check. The number of Espers I’ve connected to Chalice… you’d probably be the twelfth. I’ve been filtering out only the ones who are friendly toward Chalice and arranging for them to be contacted in advance without a blind—”
“No, if you want to help, why don’t you do it yourself. Why aren’t you?”
Carousel, cut off mid-sentence, bit his lip as though forcing down rising irritation and changed the subject.
“…That’s why I said there are things you need to know. When I said Chalice has been through a lot, that wasn’t a joke — you know that now. And it doesn’t only target Chalice. Getting in the way — whether you’re an Esper or anyone else, these guys don’t care.”
“…….”
“If Chalice becomes someone’s dedicated Guide, setting aside the loss of a major high-end Guiding venue… for some it means losing someone to torment, and for others it means losing Chalice entirely. Every time Chalice filed for a dedicated Guide, don’t you think the Espers gathered and poured every pressure they could on him, real or manufactured? I need to help connect whoever can protect him the moment they appear — which means I’m not in an appropriate position to do it myself. I’d already been demoted, and I couldn’t afford to become a target any further.”
Rodeo had been quietly listening to the long explanation, but still looked like he didn’t fully understand.
“So — what changes if I become a candidate? Is there any guarantee they won’t gang up on me the same way?”
“You have nothing to lose in this timeline. What leverage could Espers with everything to lose possibly use against an Esper with nothing to lose?”
“…Huh — is that a compliment or an insult?”
“Interpret it however you like. Either way, since there’s no telling what might come flying at you, starting this is going to require resolve. I’m saying you can’t go into it thinking you’ll just sort out some paperwork and be done. You’re trying to tuck it out of sight with some half-baked guilt, aren’t you — that’s not going to cut it. You need to be able to be a shield. Entirely above board. The matching rate already gets you halfway there. The other half needs to be filled with something else.”
Rodeo grinned.
“I’ve got that covered. Something completely above board.”
“Can I trust that?”
“Of course. It’s never failed me once.”
“…Alright then. I’ll start the formal dedicated Guide registration process, so you’d better come prepared starting tomorrow.”
“Before that, let me ask just one thing.”
With movements quick as if he’d had it ready all along, Carousel opened a file and rapidly began filling in the blanks. When Rodeo just stood there in silence, Carousel stopped his hand and looked at him — and only then did Rodeo open his mouth.
“Why do you help Chalice like that?”
“…….”
“I’m asking because I was wondering if there’s some kind of tragic love story… secret pervert… that kind of episode — do you have feelings for Chalice?”
“…No, not for Chalice. There’s just some history tangled up between us.”
The day passed in the blink of an eye. The silver-haired counselor assigned to Rodeo’s treatment seemed to be trying to gauge his current baseline state from the examination done the day before, tossing out various conversation topics about his daily life — but Rodeo kept zoning out or getting lost in other thoughts and asking for things to be repeated, so no progress was made, and the session was wrapped up earlier than scheduled.
“I’ll be in charge of your care going forward, so I sincerely hope you’ll be able to focus on your treatment tomorrow.”
The capitalist smile visible behind gleaming silver-framed glasses was quite ferocious, but Rodeo couldn’t concentrate on their conversation in the slightest. No matter who was in front of him or what they asked, Carousel’s warning kept surfacing and fading and surfacing again, over and over in Rodeo’s head.
Since you’ve said you’ll do it, this has to succeed. If it falls through again this time, I think Chalice will give up entirely. The fact that you’re cooperating out of simple ‘human decency’ — not even a stray dog would believe that nonsense, but it doesn’t matter. Whatever your real reason is, dropping out midway isn’t an option. Even after the dedicated Guide registration is complete, the monitoring will continue. I’m telling you this isn’t a matter of lending your name for a while. If you can’t cooperate all the way to that point, back out now. I haven’t pressed submit yet — if you don’t want this, say so now.
Rodeo was regretting the boast he’d let slip without thinking in response to those testing words. He wasn’t foolish enough to regret helping Chalice after coming this far. He didn’t need anything as grand as a solemn resolution about what lay ahead. But — if he got any more deeply entangled with Chalice from here — could he keep from being found out? That desire he had tried to suppress, tried to erase, and yet disgustingly had never once disappeared — could he hide it? That anxiety and shame refused to leave Rodeo’s head.
In the end, even as the counselor tidied up the few sheets of paper in his hand and rose to leave, Rodeo had failed to hold a proper conversation with him — and the counselor stood at the door, needlessly retying his silver ponytail tightly, waiting for Rodeo’s answer, before finally letting out a sigh. He said his farewell in a tone that expected no reply and left the consultation room, and Rodeo laid back on the sofa as if sinking into it, throwing both legs up onto the chair the counselor had been sitting in.
Send it. It may be helping a two-faced discriminatory bastard, but the injustice of an organization that has soared is harder to stomach than that of an individual who has fallen.
“…The hatred for the facility goes back longer too.”
As Rodeo continued to chew over his conversation with Carousel, a sudden fear crept over him. If he were to count on his fingers the people in his life he had every right to hate forever, Chalice was the first name that came to mind. The feeling that pressed down on a desire he could not understand — that feeling was something Rodeo needed. The coexistence of those two mindsets was confusion, yes — but it was also equilibrium. With both emotions present at once, Rodeo could protect himself.
