The City Where Gray Rain Falls Chapter 25

Frantically, he searched the inside of the pocket, but there was no spare match. Regrettably, the one he had just dropped had been the last.

The single match had to be somewhere nearby. Isaac crouched down at once, careful not to step on it and render it useless, and with every nerve in his fingertips on high alert, he began groping along the floor, searching for an object with a similar feel to the match.

‘Where did it go? Quickly…’

But no matter how much he expanded his search range, inching forward on his knees, all that met his touch were gritty grains of sand, dust, and the chill seeping up from below. He couldn’t feel anything even remotely resembling the match.

The room remained pitch-black as ever. He had to rely entirely on imagination to guess its size or what furniture might be placed within it.

He had no idea how much time had passed, nor what was happening outside. The only things filling this space were silence and the faint sound of Isaac’s breath escaping his nose.

“…Ugh!”

Thud. Before long, his head collided with something solid, producing a dull sound.

It seemed he had struck his forehead against something as sharp and hard as the corner of a desk. Before he could even register the pain, a box toppled down feebly, its contents spilling out with a clatter and fluttering in every direction.

Since the noise had been fairly loud, he clutched his head and strained his ears, wondering if someone might have heard. But there was no sound of footsteps rushing toward him, having noticed something suspicious, nor any sound of a throat being cleared.

“Ha… hup!”

At the sigh of relief that escaped him before he knew it, Isaac clamped his mouth shut again and picked up one of the papers scattered across the floor.

Was it a picture, or writing? In the darkness, he couldn’t make out what was written on it at all, so he gave up on finding the match and lighting the lamp, and instead turned his body to the right, where he guessed a window might be.

When he reached the window on his knees and gently parted the heavy curtains draping it, the light from outside the building—kept on for the Security Department’s surveillance—seeped faintly through the gap.

The light that passed through the dust-caked window to reach the paper was far too dim to read every small, densely packed character. Still, Isaac strained his eyes, searching for spots that were at least somewhat legible, and deciphered them one character at a time, spaced apart.

“Re… bel… de… ceased… report… form?”

The box he had accidentally knocked over. Inside it was information on deceased persons of rebel origin. This place, just as he had predicted and just as Vincent had said, was undoubtedly where records on those who had died in disgrace were stored.

Unlike the booklets that listed the achievements of successive Chiefs of Security, the documents—each on a separate sheet—bore no photograph to allow for easy identification of a face.

The gap between those who had ascended to the city’s seats of power and those who had died without anyone noticing was surely as vast as the distance between heaven and earth, between the city center and Sector 28. As a result, what he now held in his hands were old records processed indifferently according to procedure—but for Isaac, for now, that alone was enough.

Frantically, Isaac scrambled back to the spot where he had been sprawled moments before, gathered an armful of the papers strewn across the floor, and brought them to the window. It was to see if there was any person who could be presumed to be Asel.

Estimated age 40s? No.

Red hair? Not this either.

Height 180 cm? No… not this.

If even a single detail in a record didn’t match, he moved immediately to the next sheet. The ones he had already checked, he flipped over and stacked at the very back so as not to lose them.

All of them were people whose dates of death were twenty years ago, or even longer. But he did not let go of the thread of hope, straining his eyes to examine each one.

‘Not here, not here. Where did the rest fall?’

The ones he had picked up numbered only a little over twenty sheets. In them, there was not only no Asel, but no one who even loosely matched his description. It was far too early to feel relieved and optimistic that he was alive—the floor was still littered with documents, and he hadn’t even reached the most recent deaths yet.

To gather all the papers that had flown far, Isaac crawled on his knees through the darkness, groped the floor with his hands, and swept over it as thoroughly as he possibly could.

“…?”

Then, tap. His hand touched something convex and hard. It was neither a document he had dropped, nor a box, nor any piece of furniture in the room.

“…!”

A pair of sleek leather dress shoes—and rising solidly above them, two legs. Someone was standing there.

He had felt not even a hint of a presence, had heard not a single breath.

Belatedly, he tried to pull back the hand he had placed on the shoe and flee, but the other man moved his foot faster, pinning the back of Isaac’s hand to the floor.

“…I was waiting to see when you’d notice me.”

A cold voice. Isaac remembered with vivid clarity who this voice belonged to.

“Agh.”

He struggled to free his pinned hand from under the sole of the shoe, but the more he writhed, the harder the foot pressed down. Tears trickled out, and like an insect caught by one wing, he could do nothing but flail helplessly in place.

“Ahaha. Look at this.”

From above came the clicking sound of a switch, and the light overhead flickered before blazing to life, illuminating everything around him.

His eyes, barely accustomed to the darkness, tried to retreat behind his eyelids, rejecting the piercing rays. His mind—desperately trying to deny the situation unfolding before him for the sake of survival—spun dizzily, fit to shatter.

Even in that moment, Isaac blinked, instinctively trying to confirm who it was that stood planted on his feet before him. Because until he burned that presence deep into his retinas, the present moment felt as though it would never truly sink in.

He lifted his head with great effort, a faint spasm trembling through it, and let his eyes dart upward along the seam that ran in a straight line from the ankle.

His gaze barely escaped the seemingly endless long legs to reach the jacket fastened with gold buttons. Then, past the black belt and holster, sweeping over the pristine white fabric once more, his eyes at last reached the other’s face.

Vivid red lips, blue eyes, thick lashes, blond hair swept back neatly.

‘…An angel?’

The moment he faced him, his own predicament was momentarily forgotten. It was because, upon seeing his face, Isaac recalled the beautiful angels from the stories he had often heard in his childhood. Perhaps it was because he wore white. It only deepened the illusion that he had come to save him.

But the acrid smile spreading across the corners of his tilting, unsteady lips—and the furrowed brow that carried irritation, as if some insignificant insect had landed on his clothing—reminded him that this man was no guardian angel, no saint, no savior.

A white uniform. That alone left no room to doubt the man’s identity.

“Sa… Samuel…”

“Yes, yes. So today you actually know who I am. Quite commendable.”

The one man he must never come face to face with, the most dangerous being in the city, the watchdog raised by the Party, the new Chief of Security—Samuel—was looking down at him.

“I’m fairly certain I instructed Vigilance Corps members to clean. How on earth did this little rat find his way in here?”

Ah. Everything was over before it had even begun. He had found no clue about Asel, and no excuse would ever work before this man. The man had already known everything from the start, and he had been waiting here quietly all along, jaws agape, for Isaac to notice his presence.

Hah, hah. Isaac felt the imminence of his death with his entire body. His breathing turned ragged of its own accord, his heart pounded with a loud, frantic, heated beat, but his hands and feet were cold, as if the chill of the floor had seeped into them.

“Now. Shall we hear your answer?”

“Th-that is, I mean…”

The man’s tone was laced with pure curiosity, as if wondering what sort of excuse he might spin. Knowing full well that this was not an offer of a chance to prove his innocence, Isaac stammered, desperately casting his mind back to the excuses he had prepared before opening the archive room door.

That he was sick of cleaning, that he had wanted to catch his breath, that he had followed someone suspicious inside and ended up here—would that man ever believe such a thing?

“Aaargh!”