[83]
After explaining how he started his job, January continued by confessing that he had killed an Esper and escaped.
Susanna, who had been listening to the escape story that began with Chris joining in, wiggled her finger.
Understanding what this meant, January cautiously approached.
When he pushed back his hair to reveal the nape of his neck, Susanna muttered.
“They really did a crude job…”
Susanna glared at Chris as if he were some kind of beast.
“He’s got a burn.”
“…Wasn’t it painful?”
January was startled by the mention of a burn.
“No. It didn’t hurt that much. I probably didn’t notice because of the drug effects…”
“It seems that they raised the output to try to track you somehow, which caused the device you attached to overheat.”
Susanna clicked her tongue.
“As always, those Baekyah people are all so crude.”
“There’s no need to drag Yuri into this over my mistake.”
“Miya had the same thing attached.”
Chris paused at those words.
The Luciano family was famous for treasuring Miya Luciano, yet she had a tracking device attached?
“Yuri Sobolev did give her a signal jamming device, but since it was long ago with an older model, she lived with the burn.”
Susanna’s eyes gleamed like someone who had finally found a target for her resentment.
“Let’s remove this first.”
“It’s close to the brain. If touched wrongly, he could die.”
“This isn’t my first time doing this.”
Susanna answered indifferently, then jerked her chin.
“What are you doing? Just standing there staring? Connect some tables.”
Chris arranged the tables using telekinesis without moving a finger.
Susanna looked at him with a peculiar gaze. She seemed to have expected Chris to physically move the tables.
“Get up there.”
At her words, January stepped on a chair, climbed onto the table, and lay face down.
“You already said the drug is in your system, so I suppose you don’t need anesthesia?”
“P-please give me some.”
At his timid voice saying “Just in case,” Susanna clicked her tongue and opened a cabinet.
When Susanna took out a white pill from a bottle with a blue label, a glass of water gently descended beside it.
It was Chris’s doing.
“What a strange day. I thought you were an Esper who could transform into a wolf, but you’re a telekinetic.”
January touched the cup as if newly realizing this.
“When I wake up, this won’t all be a dream, right?”
If all this were a dream, then he wouldn’t have killed someone with his own hands.
But if it really were a dream, he felt like he might want to cry.
“Do I have to see that unlikable face even in my dreams?”
Having said that, Susanna pulled out something like an old radio. When she turned the dial as if searching for a channel, violin music flowed out.
“You can turn off the tracking interference device now.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. This thing may be a relic, but it’s quite useful.”
Though it was suspicious considering she called it a “relic,” they couldn’t keep using a device that caused burns.
“Let’s finish this quickly.”
“Don’t need to tell me.”
Susanna snorted and gestured with her chin.
January, who had been hesitating, had a determined look on his face.
He put the pill Susanna gave him in his mouth and gulped down the water.
After placing his upper body back on the table, he asked:
“Will it be over soon?”
There was no answer.
Chris became interested as he watched Susanna create a transparent ice blade like glass.
Originally, Susanna’s combat style involved creating multiple ice awls and showering them down.
‘That’s inefficient.’
That’s what Chris thought.
Ice eventually melts.
Isn’t it a useful ability for assassinations where weapons need to be concealed? But Susanna insisted on frontal attacks, until people recognized that wounds with repeatedly pierced vital points were her doing.
Susanna was the type who thought, why bother with control when you have power?
But now, Susanna was moving a scalpel she had carved from her ability with extreme concentration.
“Why aren’t you saying anything?”
With January’s second question, the center of his nape split open. Without checking elsewhere, Susanna knew exactly where the chip was attached.
The ice blade moved delicately, cutting out and severing the chip’s circuit in an instant.
“Now.”
At Susanna’s word, Chris removed the tracking chip and crushed it.
The chip turned to powder instantly, with just a few drops of blood beside it.
Susanna looked at him with renewed astonishment. She’d heard that while she was away from the Winter Continent, both the Godrin and Luciano families had fallen, and Baekyah had consumed everything.
A beast without natural predators tends to become duller. But Chris had become an even greater monster than in the days Susanna had known him.
“Is it? Is it over?”
January asked, flinching his shoulders.
He hadn’t felt any pain, though he had sensed something touching him.
“Wait. I need to stitch up the tear.”
Grumbling, Susanna took out thread and created a sharp ice needle.
The aftercare didn’t take long.
“How’s that, neat, right?”
Susanna grinned as she finished the sutures.
“Quite good.”
Chris praised her quietly.
While putting away the thread, Susanna grumbled that if she had met Miya earlier, there wouldn’t have been burn scars on her neck.
“Thank you.”
January bowed his head.
“Never mind that. Just follow me.”
Susanna gestured and shuffled forward.
“Stay here.”
When they went upstairs from the pub, they saw a space that had been converted to resemble a house.
The room was divided into several compartments, making it somewhat like a dormitory.
“…This is?”
“A place to dump people who are so drunk they can’t recognize their own parents.”
Susanna’s explanation was straightforward. It didn’t seem to be her living space.
“The kitchen is over there… but is your face known?”
January slightly furrowed his brow.
“I’m not… sure.”
“The possibility of a quiet manhunt?”
“More than likely.”
“Damn it. I’ll bring you food. Don’t go outside recklessly, just stay put quietly.”
Though her words were rough, January nodded with a face showing no fear at all.
“Understood.”
January opened the door next to him and paused.
He had discovered someone sleeping under a sheet.
“Not there. Here.”
Susanna slammed the door shut and pointed to the next room.
Having been so surprised by the reunion with Chris Danil, he had confused the rooms.
“…The smell. Like an addict.”
Chris muttered.
An Esper’s keen sense of smell could identify someone’s nature just from scents in the air.
Drug users had a distinctive stench.
“I told you it’s a place to dump people who are so drunk they can’t recognize their own parents.”
Susanna replied as if it were nothing.
“Weren’t you talking about people drunk on alcohol?”
January asked in astonishment.
Susanna hated drug users so much that he had stopped coming here. Yet the second floor of Susanna’s pub, Safe Haven, had a place like this?
“I heard you hate drug users. Yet you readily help them.”
Chris asked, as if speaking January’s thoughts.
“I do hate them.”
The answer was firm.
Chris thought the conversation would end there. Her tone suggested she didn’t even want to mention it.
“Miya…”
Susanna moved her lips several times, then stopped as if in pain.
Chris waited patiently without pressing her despite her silence.
“Miya died. Damn it.”
A faint sob was buried in her voice.
Even after several years, it was still a fact she didn’t want to accept.
“She was always going around wanting to help people. There was this guy who clung to Miya. There was a man who asked her to pay for his drugs, but Miya always refused.”
As Susanna muttered that their child had a soft heart but was firm in such matters, her eyes were filled with affection intertwined with pain.
“That bastard came to the store. Unfortunately, the syrup had just run out and I had gone to buy some. I told Miya she didn’t need to close the door. ‘You know I’m fast, right? I’ll be back quickly,’ I boasted loudly.”
When she returned, Miya was dead.
The man had already looted the cash register and fled.
She intended to chase him down and kill him. But Miya’s murderer had already died from an overdose.
The corpse had a face with a wide, delirious grin.
“Damn… so I thought about it.”
Susanna said through gritted teeth.
“But… but you know.”
She closed her eyes tightly and moved her lips with a subdued voice.
“If I went around cutting up drug users, saying I’d kill them all because someone like them killed Miya, she wouldn’t like that.”
Miya Luciano was so upright and righteous that it was hard to believe she carried the blood of the disgusting Luciano family.
Enough to make Susanna Godrin, who was equally trash, dream of a completely different life.
‘As expected of a Luciano’s daughter, she was incredibly stubborn.’
“Miya told me there was no need to get blood on my hands, and to save it for when I needed to close the shop.”
Following Miya around and helping with her work, Susanna realized how inadequate a human being she was.
‘How can such a small shop have so many things to worry about?’
Susanna was born into the Godrin family, manifested as an Esper, and lived for the family’s benefit.
Though Guides were rare in the Winter Continent, it wasn’t difficult for Susanna to secure the resources she wanted.
Living a dissolute life, Susanna had a world-changing experience when she met Miya. It wasn’t simply because the other was a Guide.
She had lived a life where blood was naturally repaid with blood. Suddenly, she began to doubt that way.
Susanna was constantly fighting the thought that she was becoming weak to experience such hesitation.
Sometimes she was overwhelmed by the impulse to think, what’s wrong with cutting off the breath of those who are going to die anyway? But Susanna decided to turn away from that.
When she decided to live with Miya, she left everything from her past behind. Including that way of life. There was no more Susanna Godrin.
There was only Susanna, the owner of Safe Haven.
Chris, who had been quietly observing her, asked:
“Have you given up on revenge?”
Susanna smiled weakly and answered with a bitter tone:
“That’s why I don’t accept them as customers.”
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
