The City Where Gray Rain Falls Chapter 16

“…If you have urgent business, it should be fine to slip away for a moment. No one will mind.”

Having paid his respects to the guest of honor, Gideon naturally drifted away toward those with whom he was personally acquainted.

The corner of Samuel’s mouth rose as he stared quietly at his retreating figure. Gideon seemed to be the only one who understood the purpose behind an unwelcome Chief Commissioner stubbornly pushing ahead with such a conspicuous event.

Everyone knew the two most important men in the city were present here, and sycophants were already beginning to gather. So, as the esteemed gentleman had said, it would be fine to slip away for a moment.

Samuel checked the clock on the wall. The appointed time was drawing near. Though he had set it unilaterally, his ‘appointment partners’ would not deviate from his expectations or disappoint him.

Tilting his body slightly, Samuel murmured an order to his adjutant. Then he seized the wrist of the woman in the most eye-catching dress among those who had been casting sticky glances at him for some time, and slipped out of the banquet hall with light steps, as if heading to the restroom.

Though the event was held for him, no one paid much attention to Samuel’s departure.

∞ ∞ ∞

His legs trembled with anxiety, and his hands were soaked with sweat. Unconsciously, Isaac dropped the thin wire he was holding onto the floor several times.

‘No, no. Get a grip.’

Leaving Vincent, who had dozed off, behind, Isaac, having suppressed his presence to the absolute limit, was standing, coincidentally enough, in front of Room 301 on the east side of the Public Security Bureau’s main building—the records room.

A temporary collection point for documents deemed useless for now but kept for future policy-making or meaningful analysis, materials that might be used someday.

The dust-laden past of the city, stacked in layers so thick that even the person in charge would have to look for a long time to find what was where, was all gathered there.

‘The registry should be in the Public Security Bureau’s records room. As he said, it’s a place that collects data on citizens’ births, deaths, and changes of residence.’

‘Unidentified bodies and criminals are also recorded, at least once. Their appearance, their height, that sort of thing.’

‘I understand how you feel, but it’s not a place you can enter recklessly. Though I suppose that’s true of anywhere in the Public Security Bureau…’

Every single detail of Vincent’s elaboration on how to find a missing person was lodged in Isaac’s mind, and he simply couldn’t let it go.

Even the very person who had said it told him to forget it, and concluded it was impossible. But to Isaac, who had come to the city without any proper plan, blindly searching for Asel, those words had become his only hope.

A month since Asel had left for the city and vanished. A few more days while Isaac gathered what little information he could and made inquiries in Sector 28. And now, just patrolling the outskirts close to the outside as a neighborhood watch member, looking for him, had taken well over another week.

In the span of a month and a half, he hadn’t found a single small clue, not even someone who resembled him.

The city was cruel, and Asel was innocent and pure. Perhaps he had died before even reaching his utopia, trying to secretly hide in a sewer or a truck hauling garbage.

Maybe a corner of his heart had tried to resign itself that way. He hoped Asel was alive, that they could hold hands and escape this wretched place, but he needed some small confirmation. That contrary to expectations, he hadn’t died. That he was alive somewhere in the city.

If only he could know that, then what Isaac had to do going forward became clear. Not giving up until he found Asel, who was somewhere in the city, until they met again.

Even if it took his whole life, as long as Asel was alive, as long as there was even the slightest possibility that they could meet no matter what dangers lurked, it was fine. He could bear any amount of danger. All he needed was a very small hope.

‘Just a little more…’

The opportunity given to him today was an unexpected windfall Isaac had never anticipated.

He had heard about what the records room was like from his partner just the day before yesterday, and learned yesterday that the neighborhood watch would be summoned due to the new Chief Commissioner’s inauguration.

Then, because of Vincent’s arthritis making it difficult for him to climb stairs, the third floor—close to the watch office and with the least ground to cover—was assigned as their patrol area. And his only watcher, his partner, had nodded off and fallen asleep in a corner. Everything had fallen into place perfectly, as if scripted.

A small unease flickered through him, that it felt too much like someone had arranged it, seeing through his circumstances. But he couldn’t afford to turn back now over a doubt of that size.

‘Please, work.’

After meticulously straightening the bent wire and jamming it into the keyhole, Isaac turned the wire in one direction, more carefully and slowly this time.

‘It’s open…!’

A sensation of certainty traveled to the tips of his fingers gripping the wire, and a grin of exhilaration tugged at his lips. When he turned the doorknob to the right, click, the locked door opened.

Through the crack in the door, the smell of dust that scratched at the throat spread. It must be from the aged documents. Before anyone else could spot him, Isaac quickly slipped inside and closed the door.

‘I’ll just take a quick look and get out. Before Vincent wakes up.’

At last, the final guest—unaware that he had even been invited to the new Chief Commissioner’s banquet—had joined. A naive guest, at that, inflated with futile hope.

∞ ∞ ∞

After a bit of a struggle, Isaac managed to get inside the records room, only to be seriously flustered by a space far larger than he had imagined.

The room was packed tightly with bookshelves, as befitted its purpose, and all sorts of documents were stored in boxes of exactly the same shape and size, making it impossible to gauge what to look at or where to start.

Still, if he checked them one by one from the entrance, he thought he might at least be able to read the words written on the outside of the boxes, even if he couldn’t get a detailed grasp.

Faint light seeped through the window cracks, but not enough to make out letters. Isaac turned on the old lamp he had brought just in case and shone it up close.

‘…History, …Registry?’

All he could see were records of the old city’s appearance, its history of changes, a list of past Chief Commissioners. Things that were of no interest or use to him right now.

‘I don’t have much time.’

Before Vincent, asleep in the corner of the corridor, woke up. Or before someone, finding the silence suspicious, came looking for the absent watch member. He had to get at least a small clue about Asel.

‘Deceased, registry, unidentified, rebel, outsider…’

Desperately chanting what he was looking for in his mind, Isaac scanned the words the person in charge had written for classification and ventured deeper inside.

Near the entrance were records on the city as a whole, and as he went further, records divided by sector. Soon, he should be able to find the boxes containing records on the deceased.

‘Is this the end?’

But the result was different from what he expected. There seemed to be nothing here about the dead or about names. Because the gray wall with no more bookshelves beyond it marked the end of the records room.

‘What’s that?’

A new hope appeared before the lost Isaac. At the end of the wall, a small, red-painted door—utterly out of place in this colorless space—was blocked by a desk covered with a white cloth.

The door handle had a keyhole, but it seemed such a simple mechanism it might as well have been attached as a formality. Like when he entered here, he felt he could easily pick it with a single thin wire.

‘What should I do.’

He might have rushed past and missed a box marked ‘Deceased.’ Vincent might wake up and start looking for him. Going back to the entrance right now was the right thing to do. Yet Isaac’s steps and gaze stubbornly refused to leave the red door.