The City Where Gray Rain Falls Chapter 29

It wouldn’t just be a matter of stripping him of his uniform. They would likely seek to slit his throat in the manner that inflicts the greatest suffering a human can feel, and hang him at the crossroads they passed through every day.

He did not fear death itself, but if it came at the hands of the city’s grease-stained officials, bureaucrats desperate only to cling to their posts, it would be loathsome.

There was no such thing as an honorable death in this city, so Samuel wanted, at the very least, a death he could accept. A death by his own hand, or by someone he could acknowledge. And if not that, then to live, to seize true freedom and enjoy everything he could right to the very end.

In any case, this incident had to be resolved in absolute secrecy, and there was little time left. Yet the Chief of Security did not appear impatient or agitated in the slightest.

The way he tilted his head slightly, eyes cast down as he stroked his chin, conveyed an air of perfect composure. Neither the failure of an operation as Chief of Security, nor the prospect of reporting to the executives three months from now, seemed capable of instilling any fear in him.

‘Where did I start missing the signs?’

What had ruined Samuel’s mood were the “anomalies” that had, with laughable ease, deceived his eyes during the execution of this operation.

The black-haired young man who, despite clearly having come from outside, denied being a rebel. And Vincent—whom he had believed to be the perfect citizen—who had known the exact location of an ancient relic even the Chief of Security hadn’t known existed, and who had vanished, carrying only that single item.

These two had defied the expectations of the new Chief of Security, a man thoroughly seasoned in dealing with rebels, and were making it impossible for him to assert anything with certainty.

“What’s the situation?”

“The bodies of the two rebels who took their own lives have been examined and disposed of according to standard procedure. However, as for the escaped ‘Vigilance Corps member Vincent,’ we searched to the extent possible, but…”

“He wasn’t found?”

“…No. I have no excuse.”

Sera bowed before Samuel, acknowledging her fault. She herself had been in charge of vetting the Vigilance Corps members, and what had occurred while her superior was away also fell under her responsibility.

For days, they had secretly tracked the sewers and, using every pretense they could devise, had scoured Sector 26, where he had lived, as if picking through it for lice—but nothing had turned up. They couldn’t even determine where he had gone, so she was prepared to accept whatever punishment was due. She deeply shared her superior’s view that incompetence was a crime; at this point, excuses were meaningless.

“His home. What state was it in?”

But instead of rebuking Sera, Samuel asked for the detailed circumstances.

“At Vincent’s residence, there was a body that had been dead for several days. It’s presumed he killed the victim himself while planning this operation.”

“…Ah. His wife, I take it?”

“Yes. There were no other materials inside. Painkillers distributed by the Central Health Center were found. Judging by the condition of the body and the fact that no witnesses had seen her for several months, it appears the wife had indeed been bedridden for a long time. Even if he hadn’t killed her, she likely would not have lived much longer.”

He had killed the wife he had been trying to save with his own hands.

Considering everything he had done up to that point, it wasn’t incomprehensible. He was a man who had waged a war of attrition against the city, spending the lives of countless young people without a second thought. Even a wife he had truly loved—couldn’t he have killed her if necessity demanded it?

“Aside from that, was there anything else unusual?”

“…Ah!”

Sera’s head snapped up and her eyes went wide, as if something important had just struck her.

“There was a box storing a boy’s clothing. When I checked the records, it turns out he had a son, reported deceased less than a year after birth, twenty years ago.”

“A son?”

“Yes. But there were not only clothes for a newborn, but clothes for various ages, never worn. When we asked the neighbors, the majority testified that the baby’s cries, back then, had been so unusually robust—not at all like a child who was about to die—that the news of his death had come as a shock.”

“…Now that is interesting.”

Samuel closed his eyes gently, and in his mind, the individual incidents settled into place one by one, like puzzle pieces, onto a vast and hazy sketch. More pieces would be needed to complete the picture, but it seemed he could at last begin to faintly discern what lay beyond.

A husband who had killed his wife with his own hands. The son of that couple, officially recorded as dead. The purpose behind stealing the ancient relic of the city—not something from the basement or any other useful secret—when he had known the inside of the Security Department so thoroughly. The reason he had moved personally, at the risk of being discovered…

An unexpected context was beginning to emerge from that chain of events. This time, a meaningful smile spread slowly, thinly across both corners of Samuel’s lips.

“…Record the escaped ‘Vigilance Corps member Vincent’ as deceased.”

“If we expand the search…”

“No. He’ll have left the city by now, anyway. He has the blueprints.”

What could be the reason for targeting the city’s original blueprints—not even recent ones? The answer Samuel arrived at was simple.

While gray buildings had sprung up above ground and the city had taken its present shape, the one thing that had not changed in the slightest from the beginning was the sewer system laid beneath the ground.

The original blueprints would detail all manner of passages and mechanisms. Even with his bad leg, he would have been able to make his way safely out of the city. That is, if there was a reason compelling him to go outside personally in the first place.

“Silence everyone who has even the slightest knowledge of the truth of this matter. Render them entirely unable to speak, if need be. …And gather every scrap of information you can about that dead son, too.”

“Yes.”

Now, then. It was the turn of the young man—the bait—stowed away in the basement.

What were the odds of meeting a young man careless enough to catch the Chief of Security’s attention, yet who wasn’t even a comrade belonging to the rebels? And a fool, at that, who had gone to rummage through a place full of musty garbage of his own accord—someone even Samuel hadn’t been able to recognize.

Samuel still didn’t know who the young man had been trying to find in that back corner of the archive room, the place where materials slated for disposal were collected.

He had said he was looking for someone. Had he wanted to confirm the fate of a comrade old enough to be his father? Or perhaps it was all a lie, and he had stayed there on Vincent’s orders to draw attention. Whatever it was, it didn’t matter much.

He could simply dismiss their meeting as mere coincidence, or just another example of the rebels’ novel infiltration tactics, and be done with it. He could kill the utterly useless young man as a way to vent his anger. His objective was to track down the ‘Head’ of the rebels and root out their forces—not to grasp the pitiful personal circumstances of some nobody.

“…Tch.”

But why was it that a petty, lingering unease—no bigger than a hangnail—refused to go away? The kind of maddening snag that, the moment you tear at it wrong, leaves a raw wound stinging all the way down to the root of your nail, yet never tears off cleanly, tormenting you with its rough edge right to the very end.

Tap, tap, tap. The fingers resting on the edge of the desk struck against it restlessly, urging a decision.

“Damn…”

Instinct. Samuel could never ignore that thing called instinct, the one that coiled itself inside his chest and reared its head.

Did he really need to lean on something so uncertain and intangible—an instinct that merely insisted all of this was like a single, sprawling mural, connecting into one whole, and that if he killed that duplicitous opponent, someday he would come to regret it?

And yet, he could not simply dismiss it. When faced with great danger, his instinct had always been a steadfast partner that saved his life. Sometimes, it arrived a step ahead of even the most perfectly constructed rational judgment, pulling him in the exact opposite direction—but straight down the path that was, without fail, the correct one.

After a brief deliberation, Samuel opened his eyes slowly and gave an additional order to Sera, who stood waiting before him.

“Move the prisoner in the basement to an empty room at the official residence.”

“…Sir?”

Move a prisoner—who was clearly of rebel or outside origin—to the Chief of Security’s official residence?

At this suspicious command, Sera unintentionally revealed a flicker of bewilderment toward her superior, but Samuel, without any detailed explanation, simply returned to his chair and sat down, adding only an indifferent directive.