The City Where Gray Rain Falls Chapter 24

“…I’ll be hoping there’s a clue inside to help you find your friend. Are you ready?”

Perhaps it was because he had a steadfast ally at his side. Isaac nodded boldly. He felt far less tense than when he had first opened the archive room door and stepped inside. He had even been under the illusion that Asel was waiting for him beyond the red door.

“Ahem, you give this area a better wipe. I’ll take that side!”

“Yes.”

Those words were the signal. Vincent raised his index finger and pointed overtly at a corner, then, using his mop like a cane, gradually slipped away in the opposite direction down the corridor.

Isaac casually scanned his surroundings, then used the wire loop—which looked much sturdier than the one he had used last time—to open the archive room door and slipped swiftly inside.

That motion carried none of the hesitation or worry from the day before; only a thick, clinging sense of anticipation remained.

∞ ∞ ∞

Samuel was not one to welcome variables. He was closer to the type who found it irritating when a plan went awry or a situation arose that could not be perfectly calculated—so it was more accurate to say he disliked them.

The reason he had chosen to watch the black-haired young man—who was a variable, and who had almost certainly entered the city through illegitimate means, whether as a rebel or from outside—was because of some intuition.

Despite their overwhelming advantage, the city had never once succeeded in exterminating the rebels. Countless rebel underlings had been eliminated and expelled, yet they crawled back out of the shadows to hide somewhere in the city and reveal themselves without warning.

This was a tiresome game that had been going on for over a century.

The pieces the rebels possessed were mostly “pawns,” easily made and replaced at will, while their “king” and “queen” still remained entirely unknown.

Unlike the city’s rulers, who occupied a confined space and passed their seats of power down hereditarily, the rebels in the vast outside world shifted their bases frequently and kept their personal details strictly secret from one another.

Perhaps that was why. The pattern of the game never broke free of its fixed mold.

Rebels infiltrated the city; the city’s rulers captured them; a set amount of time passed; the rebels planted more spies and applied pressure again.

The rulers, belatedly realizing the danger had crept right up to their chins, would scramble to carry out loud but ultimately hollow mop-up operations.

As a result, on the surface the city always stood firm, and while the rebels were never quite enough to bring it to ruin, they were seared into the citizens’ minds as a threat in both name and reality.

Samuel found this cycle exceedingly tedious. The eternal roleplay, utterly dull and without end, while everyone wore such grimly solemn faces—and the way they burned through countless lives and resources without a second thought, all while having no intention of reaching a decisive end.

Even the process of torturing those who were clearly just expendable pawns to fabricate truths and intelligence, or digging traps and waiting for the opponent to fall in—all of it bored him to the point of yawning.

Everyone would be optimistic about the city’s victory, but as long as neither side knew the other’s cards until the very, very end, this useless, exhausting game would continue.

Everyone had a card they wanted to keep hidden, and such cards could only be revealed in moments of crisis.

The young man called ‘Joshua’ from Sector 28 was unmistakably the variable Samuel had long been contemplating, and he fit the profile of the “special card” that could overturn this tedious situation.

Because pushing a young man who was a rebel yet seemed nothing like one—a young man who appeared utterly naive and innocent—into the very heart of the city was an entirely new pattern, one never seen before.

He could not know whether this was the intention of the rebel commander outside, or the intention of the so-called “Head” rumored to be within the city. But Samuel could feel it at last: someone had taken a seat across from him on this chessboard who might make the game a little more interesting.

Knock, knock. After two knocks sounded outside the darkened office, the news Samuel had been waiting for was finally delivered.

“He’s made his move.”

The variable had taken a step toward achieving his goal. At last, today, he would learn what the black-haired young man had come to this place to find.

At the thrill of having a long-standing curiosity resolved, and at the thought that he would now glimpse the cards of the opponent playing this game against him, Samuel slowly stretched his lips into a silent smile in the darkness.

∞ ∞ ∞

The archive room had not changed in the slightest from a few days ago.

Why would it have, overnight—the boxes shoved haphazardly onto the bookshelf ledges, the dust rolling around in clumps, the utterly useless-looking materials displayed casually and carelessly on the front rows?

Swiftly running his eyes over the bookshelves he had already seen, Isaac made his way inside. Not here, not here. Just as expected, nowhere within his line of sight was there a label that seemed related to what he was searching for—population, personnel, deceased persons, citizen rosters.

Soon he reached the dark gray wall where the man and woman had enjoyed their tryst. As it hit him anew that the man who had used the wall for support while scattering sensuality everywhere had been the Chief of Security, Samuel himself, his body shuddered with terror.

He could still almost hear the man’s unhurried footsteps, his cold voice laced with warning, his low, heated groans—but Isaac shook his head vigorously from side to side and resolved to focus all his attention on the small red door set into the wall beside him.

To open the door and enter, he first had to move the desk blocking his way. It was the very same desk he had hidden under the last time.

Screech. With a small sound of friction, the desk was pushed aside. Now facing the door without any obstacle, Isaac gulped, swallowing the tension pooled near his throat, and prayed fervently that what he longed for would be waiting beyond this door.

Once his own small ritual was done, he took out the piece of wire from his pocket with a careful posture and probed the keyhole.

‘That’s strange.’

There should definitely be a sensation at his fingertips. But no matter how much he strained his ears or worked his hands frantically, there was nothing to catch on. With rising impatience, beads of sweat formed on his forehead, and his legs trembled with tension.

‘No way.’

When he gripped the doorknob, slippery with sweat from his palm, and turned it firmly, the door opened as if it had been waiting. It had never been locked in the first place.

Suspicion flashed through his mind—that the security was utterly lax for a place supposedly storing important records.

But then again, considering the Security Department as a whole, the materials stored inside here might not be all that important, or perhaps the person in charge of managing this place had simply been careless and forgotten to lock the door.

Having rationalized it to himself in this way, Isaac drew a deep breath and stepped over the threshold, which was about a handspan high.

Beneath his feet and before his eyes lay a pitch-black, unknown realm where not a single ray of light entered, but there was no helping it. The answer would be here. Even if he were to be buried and suffocated by the darkness, it would be enough if he could find even the smallest trace of Asel.

And so Isaac melted into the darkness. Without a sound, the red-painted door swallowed the stranger in a single gulp and slid smoothly shut, as if it would never open again.

∞ ∞ ∞

Unlike the previous space, where he had been able to make out objects even without a lamp, the interior beyond the red door was so engulfed in darkness that he could not discern an inch ahead—as if heavy, thick curtains had been drawn over every window.

In this uncertain, unknown space, the small light of a lamp was desperately needed. That trifling, meager flame produced when a stiff wick soaked in cheap oil met fire and flared up, burning bright.

His eyes needed time to adjust to the pitch-black world, but there was no way Isaac had that kind of leisure. Even if it was somewhat dangerous, he had to light the lamp he had brought this far, confirm what was here quickly, and get out.

‘I put it in here.’

His fingers moved delicately, searching for the match, rummaging through the pocket sewn onto the chest of his shirt.

“…Ah!”

In a moment of carelessness, the slender match slipped between his fingers and fell to the floor. Because it was as light as a feather, he couldn’t even hear the sound of it hitting the ground, making it impossible to tell where it had gone.