Forgiveness
His story, free of even a single falsehood, came to an end. It hadn't been a short tale, but what he meant to say was clear.
Kill the mine owner. His deeds could not be undone, but the fact that he had been the one to commit them could be buried.
"I can give you everything within my power. The ownership of the mine once he's dead, and whatever funds remain—though he drained most of them expanding the operation. Whatever you want, and no risk will come of it."
"Why are you asking me?"
"Because you were the first person who ever came here claiming to buy the mine and forced me to admit my connection to Danny."
"That's not what I meant. Why don't you do it yourself? You said you're the only one who knows his true identity. Dealing with him isn't something only I can do."
He frowned. For a moment a thick revulsion wrapped around his heart, but he refined it considerably before putting it into words.
"...Could you do it?"
"What?"
"Could you kill with your own hands a pitiful life that no one but me has recognized—a friend consumed by the ghosts of the past who gnaws himself away, a friend who, without my help, could vanish at any moment without anyone knowing?"
Still in that refined tone, he stressed each and every word with force.
"Sometimes I even think... if only, back then, when Danny was shot by that coward after the gold, I had buried Danny right there with that coward. At least then there wouldn't have been the corpse pits of the mine."
"...What did you just say?"
Annie reacted to the unforgettable word and glared at him—at the man who, according to the name that had appeared in his story, was Mr. Red.
"Ah, you don't know about—"
"You knew about the pits?"
Cutting off Mr. Red's words, which had misread the intent of her question, Annie bent and reached a hand toward her thigh where her belt was fastened.
"That look on your face—you've already seen them, then. Yes, I knew. Of course I knew. Hiring them was all my doing. Danny only handled the payments and holding the documents."
"So you knew full well that people were dying there?"
"...I have nothing to say. I simply couldn't stop."
"You—because of you—"
Before it was too late, I seized Annie's hand under the desk. After kneading it firmly a few times, Annie stopped speaking before Tom's name could leave her lips.
"Because of me, many people died."
He calmly revisited what he had done.
"I can't bring myself to say something like 'they're only beastfolk, so it's fine.' I know full well they were lives too. I killed them. I killed them. I killed them."
Receiving Annie's sharp gaze, he continued.
"I am a murderer. When I die, I'll stand beside Danny and receive Bushin's guilty verdict. I'll wander eternity in a sea of endless suffering, and I'll certainly come to regret it."
"...You regret it?"
Annie's face grew confused. Probably because she had never seen a reaction like this before.
"It wasn't the overseers' cruelty, and it wasn't Danny's fault. It happened because I couldn't shoot Danny. For the sake of that one man, I worked so many people to the bone and drove them to their deaths."
He let out a heavy sigh and met Annie's eyes.
"Young lady, for the sake of this coward that I am, for the sake of the pitiful slaves who are still dying even now, for the sake of a legend that will never forget my wretched friend—will you pull the trigger?"
Annie's hand trembled. The mine owner's death—hadn't that been what Annie wanted? It had been permitted, no, urged.
But what threw Annie into confusion was that judging whose fault it ultimately was was no easy matter.
"What if I refuse, and I report this fact along with California's place of residence?"
"That's up to you. I couldn't stop such an action, but... the next day, an article would run. About an old man found dead by a self-inflicted gunshot at the newspaper office."
"...I see."
There was not the slightest tremor in the old man's ash-gray eyes. He was looking at everything objectively, and he even knew what kind of person he himself was.
"I'd like to accept. It's not as if it would do me any harm."
"Is that so! Thank you. Then—"
"But I don't think it's my decision to make."
I turned the question to Annie, the girl who was bringing her fingernail to her lips with a troubled look.
"What will you do?"
In truth, Annie knew that whether we accepted or refused wasn't what mattered. It was simply a question of who lived.
If we took this deal, the mine owner would certainly die. If we refused, the opposite result would follow—but since we already knew Danny's residence, that wouldn't lead to Danny living.
We are wanderers. We don't need to care about the village's legends or anything else. So the most important thing in the choice laid before Annie—no, this choice itself could even be equated with the question:
Will you forgive the old man in front of you?
"......"
Click, click, click.
The sound of a fingernail being bitten by teeth, a dozen times.
Tap, tap, tap.
The sound of a foot rolling against the floor, some thirty times.
"Ugh, ah..."
A collection of sounds that nearly became words with meaning before oxidizing just short of the throat, several times.
Annie, piercing through a bizarre silence that seemed capable of swallowing the world—
"...I'll accept."
—spared the old man before her.
Bitterness spread through Mr. Red's eyes, but he soon forced the corners of his mouth upward.
"A wise decision, young lady."
"Very well. However, I think we'll need to make a few modifications."
"How so?"
"You only need to do two things. Pull the overseers and the slaves out of the mine, and write an article."
"An article."
"Yes. That the mine was discovered to have been forcibly occupied by a temporary goblin raid."
The old man stared at me as if to ask what nonsense I was spouting.
"Goblins? Did I mishear? Those green, squat, stupid little river-traders—taking a mine?"
Well, a natural reaction. Not many people know their true faces.
"Such things exist. Will you do as I say?"
A brief silence passed.
"...I will. You believed the words of a man you met for the first time today, so I ought to do the same."
An admirable decision. Thanks to that, I wouldn't even need to put up a deposit. Those creatures would certainly charge fifty just for coming this way for a short while.
"How shall we handle the compensation?"
"One thing will do. Stay out of what comes next."
"...I won't ask what you intend to do, but could you tell me a little about that 'what comes next'?"
"Well, things like the ownership of the mine, or the whereabouts of the slaves."
"Very well. They were never mine to begin with. No—they never belonged to anyone."
From the old man who spoke so lightly, not a shred of regret could be found.
"Good. You don't need to come with us, do you?"
"Don't even joke about that."
"Then, farewell."
I stood Annie up—she had been sitting blankly, not even realizing the conversation was over.
Even after rising, Annie fretted and fretted for a long while, then—
"...Goodbye."
—bowed her head in greeting.
"Take care, young lady."
As if fleeing the old man's smile, Annie spun around in a hurry and crossed the newspaper office's threshold even faster than I did.
"This seat must have been uncomfortable. It wasn't a conversation fit for a lady's ears, I suppose."
"No. It wasn't because of the conversation."
If you knew who that lady was, you would have offered gratitude and praise for this very action and still fallen short.
"She's just... in a bad mood, that's all. As anyone can be at times."
"Yes, there are days like that. Take care, and thank you."
I stepped out onto the street where Annie was waiting. Her gaze was fixed on the ground. Her expression was somehow vacant. Beyond the glass window to the right, the old man was still watching us.
I moved in front of Annie, bent my knees and crouched down to face the face over which confusion had settled. Annie's eyes were turned toward me, but their focus was not on me.
"Annie, is this okay?"
"I don't know. I just... I just..."
She hesitated, moving her lips up and down, then—
"...why I was going to shoot, what I wanted to do, what Dad... what Dad would want—it's all a jumbled mess now."
She looked to the right, beyond the glass, at the old man who was looking at her.
"...You know? When I was apart from Dad, he was nothing more than a memory. But now he's always with me."
She fixed on the old man those two green eyes that somehow seemed darker than usual.
"It's not just the words and actions Dad made that exist only in my memories. Everything Dad would have done even though I never experienced it—he tells me as if it had actually happened."
The old man beyond the window waved toward us. Annie... pressed her hat down so hard it seemed the outline of her ears might show.
"At the very least, what Dad wants isn't his own revenge. He'd tell me to use that time to look back at myself, crushed and tattered by emotion. And... to forgive."
Forgive. I had thought that word lost its meaning quite a long time ago.
"Can you forgive Red and Danny—both of them?"
"No. It's not that. Those people are secondary."
Clenching her teeth hard once, Annie forced the words out with difficulty.
"It's forgiving myself. All the mistakes I made. The waste and the failures. Letting go of everything. He'd tell me to try again."
Annie took her hand off her hat. Then, with a faint smile at the corners of her mouth, she waved toward the clear glass beyond the window where her own reflection shone.
"...That's what I have to do. I'll forgive. The one who killed Dad."
Even I could not clearly know who she meant.
It could have been one, it could have been two, it could have been all three—and it wasn't certain to whom Annie had waved, either.
But one thing was certain: Annie's movements, which had settled into an even heavier place ever since we visited the mine, had grown a little lighter.
Contrary to my thoughts, it seemed the word forgiveness had not yet lost its meaning.
As if shaking everything off, Annie let out a light breath, then took hold of my arm as I crouched on the ground and pulled me up.
"Let's go. Finish this quickly, and find everyone."