Chapter 104 – The Place Reached Against the Current (Six)

Colin hastily tried to put out his cigarette upon discovering Ray, who had come up to the rooftop.

“Ah, Ray-nim.”

“It’s fine.”

Ray approached Colin’s side.

──.

As he inhaled the bittersweet cigarette smoke, a strange sense of calm washed over him, bringing to mind the times he had spent with Niles.

Colin, unsure what to do with the cigarette in his hand, awkwardly continued the conversation.

His attitude toward Ray remained as respectful as ever.

“Have you eaten?”

“Yes. I have.”

Ray’s gaze fixed intently on the base of the railing.

Among the scratches and scribbles carved with a knife, familiar names were visible.

“Ah, those are graffiti we did when we were young. Hyung Niles, me, and Brook. The three of us carved graffiti on the rooftop of every building we could climb. A sort of ‘leaving our mark’ thing that boys of that age tend to do.”

Ray looked at Colin, who smiled sheepishly, then turned his gaze forward again.

The sky, beginning to darken, came into view.

Thanks to the considerable height of the rooftop, a large portion of the Sector could be taken in at a glance.

“I came up because I wanted to ask you something.”

“Yes. What are you curious about?”

“Why did Niles form Nisohwa?”

Ray and Niles didn’t know much about each other’s pasts.

The boy didn’t even know his own past.

The man, weary from the aches of life’s fatigue, didn’t look back on his past.

‘Not that we ever asked each other in the first place.’

For the boy and the man, the present was always what mattered.

Thus, the fragments of the man’s past that the boy held in his palm were just that—fragments.

The ones the man, rarely given to sentimentality, had let flow down the river along with hazy cigarette smoke.

Colin, who had been lost in thought for a moment, gazed into the distance and spoke.

“It was when Hyung-nim had just become an adult. He said he wanted to create an organization. He had a book in his hand at the time.”

“A book?”

“Yes. It was a book he found in a scrap heap. A novel. It wasn’t unusual. Hyung-nim often rummaged through scrap heaps looking for books. When he had spare money, he’d buy them from bookstores too.”

Ray nodded.

“Right. Niles once said he read a lot to cultivate his literary sensibility.”

He remembered hearing something like that.

Though at the time, he didn’t know what books were.

“No. That’s not it.”

“Then?”

“It was to memorize fancy lines from books to use when seducing women.”

“Literary sensibility….”

“No.”

“Literary….”

“Absolutely not.”

“…….”

Come to think of it, Niles probably wasn’t smoking when he said that.

“Well, we were all at that age back then. Anyway, Hyung-nim seemed quite deeply impressed after reading that novel. Roughly, it was about a back-alley boy who doesn’t give up on his dreams, works hard, and enters high society.”

The book’s title was Nisohwa.

A flower blooming in the mud.

After that, Niles gave each of the brothers in the gang a flower name.

Saying that all of you are seeds of possibility that can bloom splendidly if given the chance.

It goes without saying that the boys in their mid-to-late teens, who saw proving their masculinity as the value of their lives, threw a fit and staged a coup.

They didn’t succeed, of course.

The so-called toughest fighter in the group was Niles, and the dissidents who opposed the policy all had their noses broken and became a bouquet of flowers.

The law was far away—no, such a thing didn’t exist in the lower Sectors—and fists were the closest thing to law.

“For reference, I was Honeyflower.”

“…….”

The Honeyflower Ray had seen in books was a very dainty and cute-sized flower.

Honeyflower continued speaking.

“Hyung-nim’s goal was to create a Sector environment where children’s potential wouldn’t be trampled. He said he was already an adult, too late to bloom his own potential, so he would help other young potentials sprout instead.”

To that end, the most urgent task was eradicating violence within the Sector.

Gangs generally saw street orphans as commodities for human trafficking or expendable bullet fodder.

There were cases of scouting, but those were truly rare.

If you had to name the biggest threat to street orphans, it was undoubtedly the gangs.

“Hyung-nim was a smart person. He knew that indiscriminately terrorizing gangs would be useless.”

Violence cannot be uprooted.

Even if you block it in one place, it gushes back out from another like sewage from a drain.

“So Hyung-nim made a decision.”

If violence cannot be erased.

Then he would become the greatest violence within the Sector himself.

As long as he reigned as violence himself, at least other violence wouldn’t dare raise its head.

“At first, everyone in the group opposed it. Street orphans taking on gangs? That’s nonsense—.”

“It doesn’t seem that nonsensical to me.”

Colin’s mouth hung open for a moment.

Then he chuckled.

“You’re saying exactly what Hyung-nim said back then.”

Though the name was half-serious, half-joking, Nisohwa’s activities were deadly serious.

They were practically a vigilante group.

Like other gangs, they collected ‘taxes’ from residents, but the rate wasn’t very high.

Most of the collected money was used for organizational upkeep.

“Honeyflow… Mr. Colin. Did Niles have a flower name too?”

“Hyung-nim was Lilac. But he liked—ahem, ahem. Anyway, they were all just nicknames we used playfully when we were young.”

Ray recalled what Lilac had said in Sector 50.

「Collect less tax? If you take too much at once, the shops go under. We need to last together. We’re all just trying to make a living.」

He didn’t rationalize it.

「We’re still just thugs, though.」

He didn’t call them vigilantes or neighbors or anything like that.

If he had to describe the relationship, he said it was a symbiotic one, where their roots intertwined to grow stronger together.

「I want you guys to grow up well. Without getting shot, without starving. When I see you, I think of Faroshu and feel sorry.」

He said that too.

“Do you know who Faroshu is?”

“He’s the protagonist from Nisohwa.”

He said he was a real person.

Come to think of it, he probably wasn’t smoking then either.

Anyway, the Niles of the past moved forward with relentless steps to realize his ideals.

And in Sector 46, he erased the existence of all gangs except Nisohwa.

And then he was betrayed by Brook.

That was two years ago.

“May I ask how Hyung-nim… talked about Brook?”

Ray told him without holding anything back.

“…That’s just like him.”

Colin continued the story.

Creating the minimum environment where street children could sprout their potential.

At first, he thought it was a ridiculous plan and felt strong resistance.

But gradually, he was swayed by Niles’s thinking, and as the realization of the plan drew nearer, he wanted it more than anyone else.

“The other guys probably all felt the same.”

While talking, a great deal of the emotions accumulated in Colin’s Vessel had been released.

The hidden parts were revealed.

So Ray realized.

‘So that was it.’

What Niles had left behind in Sector 46.

Yeah, no wonder he couldn’t find it.

It was hiding among emotions of such vivid colors.

At the center of Colin’s Vessel, a star was shining.

The starlight that only those with clear principles and convictions could possess.

It took exactly the same shape as the star Niles had held.

Ray came down to the first floor with Colin.

The table where people were gathered.

Veronica’s face looked as if she had witnessed the end of the world.

“Once you open your eyes to the opposite sex, you’ll change completely. Late-blooming passions are scarier, you know. Heh heh.”

“……!”

“With a face like that, how could you be satisfied with just one woman? I’d sooner believe there are flying deer in the sky.”

“……!!”

“Hey, even as an example, that’s going too far. Deer aren’t birds, how could they fly?”

Words tossed left and right.

A high-intensity earthquake erupted in Veronica’s pupils.

The subtle emotion that had tinged the teenage girl’s gaze when looking at the boy had long since been deciphered by these seasoned, wicked back-alley gangsters.

It wasn’t that these immature villains had malicious intent.

It was just that the girl’s reactions were so transparent and amusing they couldn’t stop teasing her.

Ah, but they should stop.

Their opponent was a Wizard.

“What’s going on?”

Ray approached Philip nearby and asked.

“Hmm… What’s going on, you say.”

“Why is Veronica so flustered?”

Philip thought this guy wasn’t much different from those villains over there when it came to being wicked.

‘Well, well. He heard that conversation and still hasn’t caught on.’

Philip didn’t think Ray was generally clueless.

The remarkable sense and wit he occasionally showed were things that could never be displayed without the perceptiveness to grasp situations and read the meaning behind others’ words and actions.

But.

‘The problem is that only applies to situations related to combat or achieving our group’s objectives.’

There had been signals of affection Veronica had been unconsciously sending.

Staring at his face more than necessary.

Really, really indirectly bringing up whether there was someone (a girl) he had met before.

「A girl? The person I’ve known the longest is Madam Molly from the general store. I’ve been doing delivery work there since I was eight.」

「…….」

Of course, Ray hadn’t picked up on a single thing.

He dodged the signals Veronica sent with evasive maneuvers she couldn’t have imagined.

He had wondered.

Maybe Ray saves his perceptiveness for later?

To bring it out in a flood only when really needed?

Or does he know and just stubbornly pretends not to?

Anyway, Ray’s perceptiveness in daily life was presumed to be extinct, and the unfortunate victim was Veronica.

Of course, Ray could ‘see’ emotions.

But the possibility of him noticing Veronica’s feelings through his special vision?

That too seemed distant.

「Even if I see the Vessel, I can’t read all of the other person’s emotions. I’ve seen a lot, but there are still many emotions I haven’t defined.」

Ray would see the multitude of emotions contained in Veronica’s Vessel, but he wouldn’t recognize the identity of ‘romantic affection’ among them.

He would probably realize someday.

Later, when Ray comes to understand the emotion called love and defines it in his own way.

But when would that be?

Five years later? Ten years? Twenty?

Lately, Ray’s basic emotional range seemed to have expanded.

But it was hard to imagine Ray feeling love for someone and expressing it.

‘To have fallen for Ray of all people….’

Philip inwardly offered his condolences to Veronica and shook his head.

“Why is Veronica so flustered? Because she likes you too much. She likes you so much she’s flustered.”

“…Likes? What? If she likes it, why is she flustered?”

Leaving behind Ray, who was buffering from not understanding the meaning, he moved toward the table.

“Sigh.”

With a long sigh.

Anyway, he had to stop those immature gangsters.

If he didn’t want to see Veronica, who had held it in until she finally exploded, sweep the interior away with wind.

Ray expressed his intention to help the Loyalist Faction to Colin.

“Thank you! Thank you so much!”

Colin’s face was filled with emotion, while Philip and Veronica nodded as if they had somewhat expected it.

“You said there wasn’t much you could ascertain. About the Mercread that Brook brought in.”

“Yes. It’s embarrassing, but we were so short on personnel just holding the retreating front that we couldn’t attempt proper reconnaissance.”

The party moved with Colin to the interrogation room set up in a corner of the hideout.

The two Wizards of Mercread, who had been sealed in a drum, were tied to chairs.

Splash──!

“Hngg!”

“Ghk?”

As an Operative splashed water on their faces, they regained consciousness and woke up.

Looking around, they spotted Ray and trembled, groaning.

“Eeek! Eheheheek!”

“Y-you! Wh-what are you? H-how!”

The emotions contained in their Vessels were extremely unstable.

Anger, irritation, frustration.

And even delight and pleasure, which shouldn’t be present in this situation.

Various emotions, mainly in the red and black spectrum, sloshed like sewage.

Among them, the emotions with the greatest volume were the fear and terror etched into their minds by Ray.

Thud.

“D-don’t come! Don’t come closer! Heeek!”

“G-go away! You demon!”

Thud.

“I-I’ll kill you! If you come any closer!”

The elements released from their Rings tried to transform into Magic in the air.

But under Ray’s manipulation, they were torn apart and disintegrated into the void before even combining.

Thump!

Ray’s hands, using Metallization, roughly grabbed the faces of the two Wizards.

Before they could even react, his hands plunged into their mouths and seized their tongues.

“Guh!”

“Aghhk!”

“The person leading you now.”

His grip on their tongues tightened forcefully.

“I’m very curious. What kind of person. You’d better answer well with this tongue. If not.”

Ray caught his breath and spoke.

“I’ll pull this out.”