Not All Lives Are Equal
We arrived at the house, but we couldn't park in our usual spot.
"I've thought this since I first met him, but Benjamin really is a man of grand gestures."
"He's particularly generous with you, Priest."
Jamie parked behind a vehicle loaded full of construction materials.
They bowed.
When Jamie and I stepped out of the car, a man and woman in suits guarding the materials truck inclined their heads toward us.
"Your juniors?"
"There aren't many people above me in the organization."
"As expected of the Doberman."
"……."
The look that brushed my cheek stung a little more than usual, but since that was the reaction I'd been after, I rather liked it.
"It's quite quiet."
The materials had arrived, so work ought to be underway upstairs—yet outside, and even now as we climbed the stairs, the only sounds were Jamie's footsteps and mine.
"When you do anything in the slums, soundproofing is essential."
"I think a little differently from you on that."
Soundproofing is a measure to keep noise from leaking outside. But if sound can't escape from within, that also means you can't hear anything from outside either.
In an environment where you never know when someone might try something, voluntarily shutting off one of your senses wasn't something I'd recommend—efficiency aside, for safety alone.
"Let me try to guess why."
"You can't hear outside sounds from inside either, so isn't soundproofing a bit dangerous?"
"……."
When I casually laid out the reason, Jamie pouted her lips for just a brief moment.
"I was going to try figuring it out myself for fun, but it seems I'm only getting in the way, so I'll leave it."
"...Yes."
Her reply came a beat slower than usual.
"Priest."
I was full from lunch and learning various things about the slums from Jamie when she, mid-lesson, turned toward the door and called me.
Knock… knock, knock.
Judging by the hesitation in the knock, it clearly wasn't one of Benjamin's associates.
"Come in."
Click.
Even the speed at which the doorknob turned was extremely slow.
"E-excuse… m-me, haha… ha…"
The moment I saw the state of the person who opened the door, I knew Vita's advertising had finally started to work.
"Did Vita send you?"
"Y-yes…"
A man with sunken cheeks and fingers barely covered by skin hanging from tattered long sleeves nodded.
"Please have a seat on the sofa over there."
"I-it'll… get dirty…"
"It's fine. Sit down."
And if he was worried about getting things dirty, it was already too late.
Wherever he'd come from, something that looked like mud clung to the man's shoes, and with every step he took, dark brown footprints stamped themselves one by one across the floor.
At least he doesn't seem to have come from a pile of filth.
There was a smell, but it was the perfectly ordinary body odor of a regular human who hadn't washed for three or four days.
I pulled over a chair and sat facing the man on the sofa.
"Did Vita roughly explain things to you?"
"Th-that… a-addiction… treatment… y-you'll… do it…"
"And of course you heard it's not free?"
"……."
The man licked his lips—so dry I wondered if he could even produce spit—and swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing.
"Judging by your situation, paying with money looks difficult. Your name?"
"Ca-Carlson…"
"Good. Mr. Carlson. In exchange for treating your addiction, you'll investigate the people bringing drugs into this area from the Western Slum and report back to me."
"Th-th-th-that's…"
The man who'd been looking at me as if he'd do anything darkened further—though his face had seemed to have no room left for more shadow—and his eyes trembled with anxiety.
"You're free to refuse. However, in that case, there will be no treatment. Get up as you are, open the door you came through, and leave——"
"P-Priest!!"
He came down from the sofa and dropped to his knees right there, grabbing my pant leg.
"I-i-if I'm not careful, I-I'll die! P-please! Anything else, a-anything, I'll do anything…!!"
I understood his behavior. But understanding doesn't mean I can empathize. So I was curious.
"Mr. Carlson."
"Y-yes!!"
I took in the sight of him nodding frantically for a moment, then peeled his fingers off my pant leg one by one. He was so thin it wasn't particularly difficult work.
"Wouldn't it be better to just die than live like that?"
"…What?"
"You spend most of the money you scrape together on drugs. While your mind briefly visits heaven on the high, your body falls further apart, and when the effects wear off, your mind goes to pieces along with it."
"Th-that's…"
If he'd taken drugs of his own free will, I'd have nothing to say.
Someone who tries to soothe boredom with drugs—words themselves are meaningless.
But the fact that he'd come to me through Vita's introduction meant he at least wasn't the type who'd touched drugs voluntarily.
That sharp woman would never have sent me a defective human like that as a customer. And more than anything, as the advertising model herself, what she hated more than anyone was drugs. She wouldn't get close to someone who'd taken them willingly.
"I asked Vita to only promote this to people with a firm will to get treated."
"T-treatment! I sincerely want treatment! I really do!!"
"No."
I peeled him off again. Then I looked straight into his eyes, which were shaking even more than before.
"If you'd truly had the will, you would have accepted my proposal just now without any hesitation."
"B-but!"
"But what's the point of treatment if you end up dead anyway?"
I thought I understood why, despite supposedly sharing the same will for treatment, Vita and the man before me looked so different.
"Does accepting my request mean death is certain? Hardly."
The first thought that should have entered this man's head upon hearing my request wasn't death, but how he could dig into the organization's backside without getting caught.
But this man, the moment he heard my words, had already decided he'd be found out and foresaw his own death.
"I'll add a condition. If you get caught digging around, you bite your tongue and kill yourself, regardless of the situation."
"……!?"
I lightly pushed the forehead of the man whose mouth was just flapping open and shut with my index finger and smiled.
"If that's hard to accept, please just get up and leave."
"P-Priest… please…!!"
There are times when a person is allowed to be selfish, and times when they must not be.
And for the man before me, the present situation belonged to the latter.
Regardless of how the party concerned might think of it, I had already conceded quite a lot to him. From the moment he failed to recognize that and made the selfish choice of prioritizing his own safety, our relationship had twisted in a way that could never continue.
"Then let's do this."
"Yes! Yes!!"
Thinking I was giving him another chance, he nodded vigorously.
Well, if it's a chance, I suppose it is one.
Of course, the subject of that chance simply wasn't the man in front of me.
"Please deliver this to Vita. If she looks at it and brings you back to see me tomorrow, I'll reconsider somewhat."
I drew an upside-down beer bottle on a notepad, tore that part off, and pressed it into his hand.
"Th-thank you! Thank you!!"
Whether to find Vita or not, he bobbed his head at me in something that barely counted as a greeting, crawled on his knees across the floor, then staggered to his feet and hurried outside.
"Next time, please leave it to me."
I was about to turn the chair back and wipe the floor when Jamie, already prepared, brushed past me and whispered softly.
I crouched beside her and wiped the floor as I asked.
"Leave what to you?"
"The inverted beer bottle. That's what you used when you smashed the heads of those shopkeepers selling tasteless food, isn't it?"
"Indeed."
I pulled out the wad of bills I'd been playing with on the way back and tucked it into the front of her chest.
"No praise stamp today, so this will have to do."
"…You're giving it to me?"
"Yes. That's Jamie's now."
"Next time I'll have to wear clothes with a bit more room."
"That's sexual harassment."
"…I should be the one saying that."
With the two of us wiping, cleaning the floor didn't take long.
"Jamie."
"Yes, Priest."
She was washing things in the kitchen with even my share of the rags when she glanced back at me as I wiped the sofa.
"This is purely my personal opinion, but I don't believe human lives are of equal value."
"What a coincidence. Neither do I."
She turned her head back forward.
"Surprisingly similar values."
"Well, yes."
She answered reluctantly, as if she wanted to deny it but couldn't quite bring herself to—and that reaction lifted my mood a little.
"That's why I didn't leave it to Jamie. Personally, if Jamie has to kill someone… hmm, send them to God's side?"
"Just say it."
"No. Talking with the lady made me realize that precisely because this is the slums, one must maintain even more dignity."
"Yes, well."
Her reaction was reluctant again.
"Anyway, if Jamie has to send someone to God's side, I'd prefer you send someone of a bit more value. Wouldn't the god receiving the soul prefer that as well?"
"…Certainly. Whichever god receives the soul might prefer a somewhat more valuable one."
That wasn't what I'd meant to convey, but I had no intention of telling her that.
"More importantly, Jamie."
"Yes."
Having finished wiping the sofa, I headed toward the kitchen and smiled at her as she diligently washed the rags.
"When you're done with that, we're going to tour the western border zone."
"…I'll return the one million Mora."
I didn't answer.
Instead, I undid one more button on her front and tucked another wad of one-million-Mora bills I'd received from Coltech between her breasts.
"Damn…"
She seemed happy enough to curse, which made me happy too.