The City Where Gray Rain Falls Chapter 21

“…I still can’t understand why you’d go so far as to risk danger to help me.”

At those words, the years layered thickly around Vincent’s eyes drew curving, gentle lines.

“Because I’m a ‘deserter.'”

“…!”

“So if I meet a friend like you, I want to help.”

A deserter. With that single word, the petty suspicions washed away clean, and at last he could understand everything his partner had been saying all along.

∞ ∞ ∞

‘Deserters’ were those among the rebels who infiltrated the city, then abandoned their assigned missions and chose to live under false identities—it happened more often than one might think.

The longer the mission dragged on, the more dropouts there were. If a person found a lover or started a family, they inevitably chose to settle into the city rather than risk their life on a mission.

The rebels called them traitors. They had entered the city with critical missions, yet instead of fighting for the city’s liberation or the ’cause’ the rebels sought, they pursued personal advancement and happiness.

Deserters were people who, even while watching their comrades get arrested and die, would cravenly hide themselves away and never emerge, terrified that both the city and the rebels might discover their true identities. That was all Isaac had ever known them to be.

“What I told you is all true. That my wife is sick, and that I joined the Vigilance Corps because I needed money.”

In reality, this was the first time he had met a deserter face to face. From the rebels’ standpoint, they might be traitors—but perhaps they were all just ordinary people trying to protect their own lives, like Vincent.

“I don’t even remember what my original name was anymore. I’ve lived as Vincent, a citizen of Sector 26, for many times longer…”

The look in his eyes and his tone as he regarded Isaac seemed utterly devoid of falsehood. Truly, for his wife, for his family. He appeared to be a solid, upstanding citizen who had forgotten his past name and lived on, a rare man of character who wanted to repay even a small kindness.

“I recognized it at a glance. And that you didn’t come here on an officially assigned mission—that you came to find something you wanted for yourself. …Though I never imagined you’d actually get into the archive room.”

“…”

“You came to find someone, didn’t you? Someone precious to you.”

As Isaac’s tense head slowly dipped down in affirmation, a bittersweet smile settled on Vincent’s face.

“I had friends too, back when I was young. I let them go, not knowing any better. They were innocent, young, fired up with passion, going on about how they could accomplish any mission, no matter how hard, if it was for the cause…”

One of the most powerful forces that drives a man: regret.

While he was busy just surviving on his own, seized by sudden fear, making excuses because he was afraid of death, his young comrades threw themselves into the fire like moths, with no thought for their own lives.

He had wanted to save them—those who, even when captured by the Security Department and subjected to brutal torment, never sold each other out to the very end. He had wanted to put an end to the tiresome cause, the loyalty, the whole conflict between the city and the rebels.

“But I had no way to save them, and no confidence I could change anything.”

Long after, his comrades from the past followed Vincent like shadows, like ghosts. Because he hadn’t helped them, hadn’t saved them. Because he had run to save his own life.

Thousands upon tens of thousands of hours passed that way. The city remained unchanged, but the memories of the outside grew faint. He could no longer even recall his comrades’ faces. He believed his guilt over failing to save them, and his true identity, would be buried with him in a death that was not far off. Before he met Isaac, he had certainly believed that.

“Now, I’m not a rebel anymore. I don’t even know who the current commander is, and I can’t help you tear the city down. I just hope there won’t be any more people who, like me, fail to save someone in time and live the rest of their lives in regret.”

The line Vincent drew was clear. He wasn’t offering help as a rebel, but as a fellow outsider who had come to the city from beyond—someone trying to make a different choice than he himself had in the past.

“Even now, if I could go back to that time, I’d tell them to throw away the damn mission and just live. That it’s all utterly useless. That a few lives like ours won’t change the world.”

The limping gait that had been setting its own peculiar rhythm paused on a comma and came to a halt. He looked up at the empty air, pretending nothing was wrong, and wiped his eyes with his sleeve, but dampness had soaked into the creases.

His moistened eyes now turned to Isaac. He didn’t know what to say, but the man didn’t seem to be expecting any plausible words of comfort either. Still, wanting to respond to the sincerity the other had laid bare, he began to speak.

“I…”

As if to say there was no need to struggle for an answer, Vincent’s hand came to rest gently on his shoulder. The long soliloquy now shifted into a question directed at him.

“You’re planning to find that friend of yours and leave the city?”

“…Yes.”

“I thought so. Usually, people who come from outside either fall in love with the city or end up in awe of it. But you weren’t like that. The way you looked at this place, it was like you found it utterly sickening. Like you wanted to get out of here as soon as possible.”

Perhaps Vincent had understood everything the moment he first laid eyes on Isaac. And yet he had kept his mouth firmly shut until now, and even his answer to the question of why he was helping had been given by revealing his own circumstances and past.

“Let’s think about how you’re going to find him—from now on, together.”

“…Thank you. Vincent.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Isaac felt that Vincent was more trustworthy than anyone else he had ever met, the only truly proper adult. With his help, it felt as though meeting Asel might not be far off.

In a heart once filled only with a nameless anxiety, hope now wriggled and sprouted anew, bringing with it a ticklish flutter he almost wanted to scratch raw.

∞ ∞ ∞

On the 9th floor of the Security Department, in the office of the Chief of Security, a report on rebel movements and the state of security within the city was underway.

The representatives from each department had all stuffed their bodies into uniforms neatly pressed along the seams, their expressions wiped immaculately clean, so that at a glance it was impossible to tell who was who. But the new Chief of Security, unlike his predecessor, never forgot a face once he had seen it.

From the lowest-ranking newly appointed officer to the janitor, there was no one among those who passed through the Security Department that Samuel could not remember. The same went for the sinners dying in the basement cells.

The exceptionally capable Chief of Security could file away the minute features of every individual, along with trivial details of information about them, inside his head and retrieve them whenever needed.

Therefore, to tell a lie before him, to waste time with clumsy excuses, or to presumptuously rattle off facts he already knew point by point as if teaching him—these were acts close to deceit.

Above all, Samuel preferred to eradicate problems at the root rather than extend compromise or leniency, so at any moment, one could be purged without a trace.

“…So.”

“Ha, I understand you have a separate operation in progress, but is it even proper to keep it top secret even from us, the bureau chiefs? I doubt you’ll manage to capture even a single rebel that way!”

Today, the one who had provoked the Chief of Security’s ire was the Director of the Intelligence Bureau, who had been his superior not long ago.

In a setting meant for concise reporting, he had unleashed a lengthy harangue, disguised as advice, telling a Chief who was a good twenty years his junior that they could never eradicate the rebels this way.

Naturally, everyone present felt their blood run bone-dry, and chilly sighs they dared not voice swept through their chests. The few eyes that still had some freedom trembled left and right, searching for a way out of the hair-trigger situation.

“So, it seems you all think that way, do you?”

“…”

In the uncomfortable silence, the Chief of Security, who had been seated before his desk, pushed his chair back and rose. His white uniform, without a single stain, rustled softly as he drew closer to the Intelligence Bureau Director, whose head was held particularly stiff.

“Should I be taking your advice to heart? Hm?”