Whether it was by chance, by design, or because she was being actively avoided, Alexander did not encounter Yuni once. Monday passed without incident, Tuesday went by peacefully, Wednesday drew to a close, Thursday ended, and as Friday evening approached, the entire week had gone by without a single meeting. Furthermore, whenever Alexander stopped by the hospital, she would be intercepted by the psychiatrist, who would hold her captive with an endless, lecture-like monologue. She was always sent home before she could accomplish her goal of visiting Yun.
Something was not right. Alexander felt it. But on Thursday, her father had told her she was overthinking things.
However, Alexander’s sense of unease proved to be correct. The answer was revealed at the detective agency, where she stopped on her way home.
“Listen here, Mr. Colt. We can’t do any more than this, we’re at our limit. Your Alex is diving headfirst into the muck, and she’s gone so far we can’t pull her back.”
Stopping in front of the detective agency’s entrance, Alexander tilted her head at the familiar voice coming from inside.
“Mr. Colt, you’re Alex’s father, aren’t ya? You’ve got to lay down the law with her, or things are gonna get real irreversible, seriously.”
The rapid-fire, machine-gun-like speech, delivered in a lazy, flippant tone, belonged to a female teacher from Alexander’s school.
Taking care not to make a sound, Alexander opened the door just a fraction. Using a hand mirror to get a view of the scene inside, she focused on the appearance of the speaker.
“Pellmond Varlozzi is already seriously pissed off. Which means it’s only a matter of time before our boss, who’s over in North America at the moment, gets wind of this. And he’s got a real short fuse. If he gets angry and goes on a rampage, it’ll be a total disaster. So that’s the one thing we want to avoid.”
Three figures were reflected in the hand mirror. One was a man of medium height and build with greying hair—her father, Douglas Colt. Another was a short man with a childlike build—unmistakably Patrick Lerner. And the third was a slender woman, about 155cm tall.
Her long, flaxen hair was tied up in a ponytail. She wore large, funky earrings, and her clothes were outrageously flamboyant. A light pink T-shirt adorned with colourful polka dots, and a navy-blue miniskirt with frilly ruffles. Her knee-high socks, which covered her legs up to her thighs, were a garish fluorescent pink with thick, equally garish yellow stripes. And her shoes were pastel blue pumps. Her glasses, barely visible from the side, were a bizarre fluorescent green. The sight of the woman in her eye-watering attire made Alexander doubt her own eyes.
“...You’ve gotta be kidding me. She was an ASI agent...?!”
Her name (which, she now realised, might be an alias) was Elisabeth Taylor. She was a teacher at Alexander’s school who taught computer technology, mainly hacking.
Her teaching style, which prioritised practical application over theory, was a subject of controversy within the school, and many students lamented that the content was too advanced for them to keep up. Alexander was one of those students who had been left behind.
Whether because of this or not, she had heard that her school was competing for last place in the state for computer technology results. However, there were also rumours that the very few students who could keep up with her lessons had already acquired skills that were viable in the professional world and were earning a little money with them.
—There is no room for intrusion in the cyber-defences I build. And they are constantly evolving. They are as impenetrable as the impregnable Aeropolis Alusthogrun, no, even more so.
That was her catchphrase at school. Until now, Alexander had dismissed it as nonsense, but considering the possibility that she was an ASI agent… —it now seemed that it might be true.
The woman in the outlandish outfit rattled on in a high-pitched voice.
“So, Mr. Colt, we also want to avoid anything happening to your Alex. That’s why we can’t have her getting involved with those twins.”
“I understand that you can’t have that. But why, what’s the—”
“Sorry, Mr. Colt. Can’t tell you the reason. It’s an order from up high.”
“...Up high, you say. Who exactly is this person?”
“Can’t say that either. All I can tell you is, he really, really hates all the trouble surrounding Abaddoselenium. And this whole thing, we’ve been trying to keep him from—…”
“Related to Abaddoselenium?”
Her father’s voice was slightly strained. Alexander, too, held her breath as she watched the scene through the hand mirror.
Patrick Lerner’s hand shot up. He smacked the woman beside him hard across the head with his open palm, then pinched her cheek.
“You can stop talking now, Lucan.”
“Ow, that hurts! Don’t hit me with your iron hand!”
Lucan. That was apparently the name of the woman in the flashy clothes. The woman called Lucan made an exaggerated show of being in pain. Patrick Lerner clicked his tongue. Then, for once, he spoke concisely.
“Lucan. Shut your mouth. Now.”
With that, he released her cheek. The woman called Lucan fell silent.
After confirming that she had shut up, Patrick Lerner coughed once. He then straightened his slightly askew tie and put on a superficial, amiable smile. And then, he was back to his usual self. The exchange of sarcasm began.
“Mr. Colt, it’s really becoming a problem. With the help of my friends and other colleagues, we’ve managed to keep Alexander away from Miss Yuni Ertl, and by extension, Miss Yun Ertl, for the past week, but I’m not sure how much longer we can keep it up. It would be a great help if Alexander herself would avoid the sisters, you know…”
At that moment, Alexander’s and Patrick Lerner’s eyes met through the hand mirror. His grinning face was reflected in the mirror she held.
“Why don’t you stop eavesdropping and come in, Alexander?”
Alexander slowly and quietly opened the door. She then popped her head in, a strained smile on her face.
As soon as he saw her, her father buried his head in his hands. Patrick Lerner, on the other hand, wore a look of utter amusement.
“Still, unlike the young man who was seriously injured, she seems to have a bit of potential. Don’t you agree, Father?”
Patrick Lerner smirked, and her father’s expression grew increasingly grim. Behind them, Alexander was frozen, unable to move in the tense atmosphere.
And then Patrick Lerner spoke.
“My request, and by extension, the agency’s, is simple. A promise that you will never get involved with those twins again. That’s all. If you can agree to that, we will have no more to say on the matter. —So? It’s not a difficult proposition, is it? This is the best outcome for both of us. You stand to lose nothing. We, on the other hand, will have to postpone securing new personnel, but… well, for the time being, we can avoid any damage. No unnecessary confusion will be created. If you are both citizens loyal to the Federal Republic of Alusthogrun, you must know there is only one choice to be made, don’t you?”
Alexander was confused. A storm of thoughts was raging in her mind, and her composure had been blown away somewhere.
“…”
It had all started with something small. A whimsical act of saving a bullied girl, that was all it should have been. But somewhere along the line, everything had taken a strange turn.
Elaine Varlozzi. She had taken on a request from her to dig up a past incident, a miracle had occurred, an answer had been found, a truth different from the historical record had emerged, and the name of a man who had been branded a great sinner had been quietly vindicated. It should have ended there. If Alexander had not got any further involved with those sisters, none of this would have happened.
Why was the ASI chasing the sisters, Yun and Yuni?
What did they have to do with Abaddoselenium?
Who were they in the first place…?
Alexander did not know. She was not supposed to know. And yet, she had stuck her nose in where it did not belong. —And now, the bill was coming due.
“Alexander. You heard him.”
Her father, who had been looking down, now looked up at her.
“...Can you swear it? That you will never get involved with those sisters again.”
Patrick Lerner’s large eyes were also fixed on her, and “Lucan” was watching her too. Alexander silently nodded her head once.
“Oh. So that screechy hacker’s alias is Elisabeth Taylor. …How utterly disrespectful to the great actress. She should know her place.”
The fragrant aroma of coffee wafted on the wind, reaching Alexander along with the scathing words. She gently handed the large paper cup of coffee she had just received from the psychiatrist to the man sitting on the bench and laughed quietly.
“You’re awfully harsh on her, aren’t you?”
“Yes. I have a certain respect for her cracking skills. We rely on that technology on a daily basis. But… —everything else, you know.”
“Meaning?”
“It was during a stakeout with her. In a situation where I needed her to be quiet, she started screeching away, and because of that, the target spotted us. I was in a real mess that time. It escalated into a shootout with illegal drug dealers… There were twenty-five of them, and just the two of us. I can’t forget that hellish hour we spent waiting for backup, even if I wanted to.”
A loosened black tie hung from the collar of the man’s shirt. His suit jacket was off, folded on his lap. It was Deputy Manager Patrick Lerner, sitting on the bench with a large bag, looking exhausted.
Alexander sat down neatly beside him, a man who was openly displaying such a slovenly appearance. The two of them sat side by side, facing the garden in front of the psychiatric ward, a place that was eerily empty of people.
“…”
Just then, Patrick Lerner clicked his tongue and placed the paper cup he had just received from her on the bench. As Alexander peered at his face, wondering if something had displeased him, he suddenly thrust his right arm forward.
Clank. There was a hard sound, and something fell to the ground. Then Patrick Lerner muttered.
“...I knew it. I had a feeling this would happen.”
What had fallen to the ground was his own right hand. Just now, the part of his arm from the wrist down had dropped off like a ripe chestnut.
Alexander was stunned by the suddenness of it all, but seeing her reaction, Patrick Lerner laughed. He then picked up the fallen hand part with his left hand and, while reattaching it to his right wrist, said,
“I’m actually a prosthesis user, you see. So this happens sometimes. I’ve been so busy, I’ve been skipping maintenance…”
“Was it an accident…?”
“No, I’m told it’s congenital. I was born with only my left arm being normal, the rest were defective. …However, my childhood memories are vague, so I’m not sure how much of that is true…”
Patrick Lerner’s words were somewhat evasive. Although Alexander was curious about what lay behind them, she sensed the sensitive nature of the topic and did not press him further.
Patrick Lerner then changed the subject.
“Anyway, what brings you to a place like this?” he asked.
As he spoke, he picked up the paper cup with his repaired right hand. He then took a sip of coffee and watched her intently.
With no reason to lie, Alexander decided to tell him the truth.
“Thanks to Dr. Carlo Santos, I’ve started working as a nursing assistant here. The pay is low since I’m inexperienced, but any work is better than none.”
“Carlo got you… —a job as a nursing assistant, in the psychiatric department?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
Alexander nodded. At this, Patrick Lerner’s face contorted.
“Of all the places, you chose the psych ward… There must have been other nursing assistant jobs. Somewhere else, not here.”
“I heard that the work of a nursing assistant is the same everywhere.”
“Yes, that’s right. A nursing assistant’s job is the same, no matter where you’re assigned. It’s to do the jobs that today’s clunky machines can’t. Making beds, assisting with meals, excretion, and bathing, and other miscellaneous tasks.”
“See? It’s the same.”
“But. It’s obvious that being a nursing assistant in a psychiatric ward is by far the toughest, isn’t it?”
“Not really. There are no severe cases here, and it’s not particularly dangerous. I actually find it quite soothing talking to the grandmothers with dementia. It’s surprisingly enjoyable.”
“You’re a strange one. I wouldn’t want to come near a place like this unless it was for work…”
Alexander dodged Patrick Lerner’s disapproving gaze with a wry smile. She then asked him the same question he had asked her.
“More importantly, what brings you here, Mr Lerner?”
“Work, of course. I wouldn’t come to a place like this otherwise.”
“Work…?”
“Due to my profession, I often visit psychiatric wards like this. Getting information out of senile old people, making deals with the crazies locked up in here… It’s a chore that’s tougher than a shootout.”
“Huh…”
“And sometimes I ask Carlo to do a psychological analysis of a madman who hasn’t been chained up yet. He’s an expert in dissociation and personality disorders, a relatively famous analyst in his field. I can get a more accurate profile from him than from the arrogant profilers at the Alusthogrun Bureau of Investigation.”
“So, what business brings you here today?”
“Can’t say. It’s a secret.”
Patrick Lerner said with a straight face. He then put on a pair of white cotton gloves and began to rummage through the bag he had placed under the bench. He took out an old notebook and, reading its contents, said,
“By the way, did you have a look at the souvenir I left the other day?”
The souvenir. It was what Patrick Lerner and “Lucan” had left for her father when they had visited the detective agency.
The contents were a video file of the same surveillance footage that had been given to Elaine Varlozzi. Just yesterday, Alexander and her father had watched it together, trembling with trepidation.
“Yes, I saw it.”
The video file contained a clear recording of the moments just before the “Tragedy of Alftheniarand.” The scene was what appeared to be the central control room of the power plant building, and the footage began with two men arguing.
One was a dark-haired man—a younger Pellmond Varlozzi—who was pointing at the image of the reactor on the monitor and saying in a grief-stricken voice that it was over, that the runaway reaction could not be stopped.
In response, the other man, with hair the colour of withered grass—the deceased who had been blamed for everything—was furious. You must have predicted this would happen, so why didn’t you do anything? he had demanded. For a while, the conversation between the two men, one calm, one irate, continued.
‘Pellmond, you could have prevented this, couldn’t you?!’
‘Yes, I could have. But…’
‘Are you telling me the executives shot down your proposal again?’
‘…’
‘It’s always the same with you! Just a string of excuses, and you do nothing! You just make your ominous predictions that always come true, and you do nothing! Why don’t you act yourself?! You have the ability to make it happen, you have money, power, everything you need! Why don’t you use it?!’
The man with the withered-grass hair raised his voice, shouting at the dark-haired man. He grabbed him by the collar and shoved him away. Then, in an irritated tone, he asked what could be done to buy some time. The dark-haired man replied.
‘…We have to cool the reactor. In theory, that might buy us some time.’
‘How much time?’
‘…I don’t know.’
‘Pellmond!!’
‘That’s how little we know about Abaddoselenium! I never predicted a situation like this would actually happen. This is an unknown event that no one could have foreseen!’
Hearing the dark-haired man’s words, the man with the withered-grass hair stood before the control system, his mind made up. Turning his back on the dark-haired man, he said one last thing.
‘The cape, the lining is made of real mink fur. If you sell it, you could probably buy a used car. Give my cloak to Theresa. —…And you, take the children and run.’
The footage continued until everything was swallowed by an ominous light. The man who had died in that footage appeared not as a villain, but as a hero in Alexander’s eyes.
But the record left for posterity had been distorted by someone’s hand.
“It’s a scary thing, the darkness that lurks behind order. …To frame a brave man who fought to the end, risking his life, as a villain of the highest order. Just because the dead can’t talk back, it’s a dirty way to do things, I always think.”
Patrick Lerner muttered, sipping his lightly sweetened coffee with a look of distaste while flipping through his notebook. His voice lacked its usual cheerfulness, and Alexander took his words as his true feelings.
Perhaps these words were the ‘true face of Patrick Lerner’ that the psychiatrist had spoken of. A man with a strong sense of justice, serious to the core. Alexander caught a glimpse of that. And showing a rare moment of honesty, Patrick Lerner continued.
“It’s a strange thing, isn’t it? That the fallen hero was saddled with a baseless crime, while the genuine scumbag who survived was given the title of ‘Founding Father’.”
“...Calling him a scumbag is a bit much, don’t you think?”
“Not at all. In fact, his late wife described him in much the same way. A genuine scumbag.”
See, it’s written right here. Patrick Lerner showed Alexander the inside of the notebook, pointing to a line with his finger. There, in a messy cursive script, were indeed the words ‘a genuine scumbag’.
He then showed her the back cover of the notebook, pointing to the name written there. Bridget Elora. He then asked for confirmation.
“So, that’s the Senior Technocrat’s wife’s diary…?”
“I received it from a certain person. I thought about giving it to Pellmond Varlozzi, but he said, ‘I don’t need such a thing. Just get rid of it for me,’ so now I’m stuck with it. I’m thinking of giving it to Mrs. Varlozzi, but I haven’t had a chance.”
With a mischievous, childlike grin, Patrick Lerner flipped through the pages of the notebook. Even if the owner is dead, doesn’t he have any concept of privacy? The question arose in Alexander’s mind, but her curiosity to know what was written inside won out.
Perhaps seeing the sparkle in Alexander’s eyes, Patrick Lerner became loquacious. He began to share the information he possessed.
“Bridget Elora. She was a part-time psychiatrist at a small mental health clinic in town. According to my research, she had an excellent reputation. She was known for being exceptionally skilled at adjusting medication dosages. However, her reputation for counselling, the kind that connects with the heart, was apparently very poor. And her father was Dr. Richard Elora. He was a psychiatrist… or rather, a neurologist, who specialised in developmental disorders such as autism, savant syndrome, and Asperger’s.”
“A father and daughter, both psychiatrists…”
“It’s not that uncommon. Carlo is the same. …But anyway. Her father, Dr. Richard Elora, was once very interested in a young man who suddenly appeared in Boston. The young man had no name on any official records, and he had no memory of his own. He was a very interesting young man. And when Dr. Elora had him take an intelligence test, he scored an astonishingly high number…”
“What happened to this young man?”
At Alexander’s question, Patrick Lerner grinned. After a moment of silence, he said,
“That amnesiac young man would later become the infamous great genius, Pellmond Varlozzi.”
“…—?!”
“The young man was undoubtedly a genius. He particularly excelled in the fields of mathematics and science. But his genius was not all-encompassing. According to the records, he had several deficiencies.”
“Deficiencies?”
“His episodic memory was on par with that of an ostrich. He also had a marked lack of creativity and empathy. He had zero sense of pitch or rhythm and was unable to sing. Dr. Elora noted that it was not comparable to being tone-deaf; it was more like a recitation. To him, music was nothing more than grating noise and a source of pain. He was also terrible at painting, apparently. The kind of painting that requires imagination, that is. He was very good at drawing and sketching, where there is a model to copy. He could produce photorealistic sketches, but he could not draw freely, according to Dr. Elora’s records.”
“…”
“The diagnosis Dr. Elora made was Autism Spectrum Disorder.”
Huh, so he was an eccentric character. As Alexander was thinking this, Patrick Lerner, beside her, grinned.
“However,” he said.
“…?”
“His daughter, Bridget, refutes that diagnosis in this diary. She says that while it’s true he is a genius, and he probably does have Autism Spectrum Disorder, that’s not the important point. The true nature of his deficiencies is alexithymia stemming from a dissociative disorder, and if he needs care, it is undoubtedly for that.”
“So it’s not a congenital defect…?”
“It seems to be a complicated matter. I’m not an expert, so I can’t say much in detail, but… Bridget’s view is that he originally had dissociative autism spectrum disorder, but a tragic event that occurred in his childhood compounded the issue and pushed him to the brink, resulting in a breakdown. I, for one, find this view to be somewhat lacking in credibility.”
Would you like to read it? With that, Patrick Lerner handed the cotton gloves and the notebook to Alexander. She put on the gloves and began to flip through the notebook, her eyes tracing the cursive script as she read.
“Bridget seems to have been a very meticulous person, and she seems to have loved that bastard from the bottom of her heart… —no, she seems to have been obsessed with him. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been able to write about him in such detail.”
Bridget Elora’s notebook detailed the time she had spent with Pellmond Varlozzi. Where she had gone with him, what he had said, how she had felt about it. Most of it was psychoanalysis. I think this, but he is not like that, so then… Such sentences went on and on, finally concluding with a diagnosis of dissociative disorder.
The occasional complaints and grumbles mixed in with the endless analysis made Alexander feel that the woman named Bridget Elora had truly lived.
“…”
The time he flew into a rage when she was cooking pork in his kitchen. The time she tearfully told him she wanted his child, and he suddenly ran out of the house and disappeared for several days. …—At the end of each of these episodes, the scrawled words, ‘What on earth am I supposed to do?!’ were filled with a raw, blood-fuelled anger.
Alexander was grinning as she read through the notebook, but it was unceremoniously snatched away by Patrick Lerner. We’ll continue this another time, he said. As he put the notebook back in his bag, he confided,
“To tell you the truth, besides work, I came here today to show this notebook to Carlo. His assessment was vastly different from Bridget Elora’s. Carlo’s analysis was that it was a case of co-occurring dissociative identity disorder and higher brain dysfunction.”
“You came here to reconfirm that?”
“Well, yes. And I was also curious to see your reaction to this notebook. Your father is a very rational man, so he wouldn’t even touch this notebook, foreseeing the consequences. But you, it seems, are the type to rush headlong into things, driven by curiosity, without thinking about the consequences.”
“…?!”
“Mr Colt certainly has his hands full with such a daughter. It makes sense that he would plant a listening device and a tracker in that watch-style communication device of yours.”
Patrick Lerner smiled knowingly, put on his suit jacket, picked up his bags, and turned his back to Alexander.
“Shouldn’t your father be arriving here any minute now?” he said as a final word, waving to Alexander and leaving the garden.
At almost the same moment, a bright red convertible pulled into the ward’s car park. The convertible was unmistakably her father’s. And the man of medium height and build who got out of the car was, without a doubt, her father.
“...D-Dad...?!”
In that instant, Alexander realised that her break was almost over. She shot up from the bench and rushed back inside the ward.
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