Chapter 259: When the Snow Falls (3)
「Stinger Pharmacy」
“…….”
The owner of Stinger Pharmacy, Pharmacist John Stinger, stared blankly down at the paper he had just signed with his own hand.
“…….”
Before him lay a stack of cash, bonds, and a Mana Stone of the highest grade.
They were the price of the contract.
The man who had initially suspected a scam and nearly thrown me out on the spot had gone completely speechless once the contract payments started piling up on the table.
“……Gulp.”
He blinked, then swallowed dryly.
I asked him.
“Are you sure you won’t regret this? You’ve already signed, but still.”
“…….”
He raised his gaze and looked at me. Blink. Blink. A face that said he couldn’t even comprehend what he’d just heard.
“Regret it…… Why would I……?”
The question was so utterly sincere that I nearly burst out laughing.
If anything, he seemed afraid the contract might be undone, and gathered the goods on the table into his arms, clutching them to his chest.
“We are businessmen from the Empire.”
From my perspective, it wasn’t an entirely pointless concern.
He was a Highlander, and I was an Imperial.
The cola itself would earn tens of thousands, perhaps even hundreds of millions of times more than what had been paid on this table, but beyond even that.
This would soon become the drink of the Empire’s soldiers.
Because his invention would sweep across his homeland, across this entire continent.
“……You’re an Imperial? Your Highland Language is so fluent.”
I answered with a smile.
“If you wish to change your mind, even now-“
“Oh, no. Not at all. With terms like these, there’s no reason for me not to sell. If anything…… how on earth did you find out about it and come here?”
Only belatedly did curiosity seem to rise in Stinger.
I answered, gazing straight into his eyes.
“I happened to drink it once, some time ago.”
Suddenly, Dieter’s gaze shifted toward me from where he stood beside me.
“It was good. The taste stuck with me, so I came looking for it.”
“……Oho. Lucky me, then.”
It wasn’t a lie.
In my life before the Regression, I had been wealthy the first time I tasted it, and homeless the last time I drank it.
There had been days when I drank it from a glass, and days when I shook the last drops from bottles someone else had thrown away.
My status had changed, and the seasons had changed, but the taste in my memories had always remained the same.
Perhaps that was what made something a ‘product’.
“Either way, I’ve already signed! Even if, if you come back later and tell me to hand all this back…… the answer is no!”
He looked ready to pack up and move house this very night.
I smiled faintly.
“Don’t worry. We’re the ones who’ll be building a business on this drink. You’ll need to collect your royalties, too.”
0.1%.
Judged by the rate alone, it was absurdly stingy, but as a courtesy owed to a great man, it was more than sufficient.
“I-I don’t need them…….”
A timid man. Stinger seemed more cowardly and fearful than I’d expected.
Perhaps he had never been the sort of man capable of handling something as enormous as Cola in the first place.
Or perhaps the thing he had created had simply grown far too enormous for him.
“In any case! The contract is done! You can’t take it back!”
Misreading my gaze, Stinger bristled like some hedgehog raising its quills.
“I won’t.”
I packed my bag full of the original recipe, the concentrate, and samples of the raw ingredients.
“Well then, take good care of your health. I’ll come see you again sometime.”
Jingle.
As I stepped out of the pharmacy, the dazed farewell of a man hugging his bundle of banknotes trailed after me.
In the future I had lived through before my Regression, that black drink would become the symbol of Highland, conquer the tongues of the continent, and ultimately be counted among ‘the most perfect products ever created by mankind’.
Now it belonged to the Empire.
……No, it belonged to ‘me’.
* * *
The Yaken Expedition, as Gonzalo had arbitrarily named the six of them, kept alternating between walking and stopping throughout their journey across the mountain range.
Before climbing any ridge, they always dropped flat and scanned the ground below, and when crossing a valley, they ran one at a time, spaced apart.
By day they slept in the shade of rocks or in caves, and they advanced mostly after the sun went down.
“Whew…… cold. So damn cold.”
Even now, hidden in a crevice of rock at the foot of the slope, the five of them were huddled together.
Through the falling snow, a single shadow came sliding soundlessly toward them.
“Hey. How’s it lookin’?”
It was the scout, the Yaken man ‘Falcon’.
Without even pausing to catch his breath, he went straight into his report.
“The checkpoints are locked down tight. They’ve got hounds, and more soldiers passing through. I listened in, too. They say they’re hunting deserters who ran off with two Yaken. Descriptions are circulating as well. A mustached sergeant and a married Yaken couple.”
“Oooh…….”
As expected of a Yaken. He repeated every last word he’d overheard while passing near the outposts without missing a syllable. Apparently, if he simply stood downwind, he could hear conversations from dozens of meters away.
“Well, ain’t that somethin’.”
Gonzalo clicked his tongue in amazement.
The more time one spent with the Yaken, the harder it became not to trust them. They never once lost their way even in a blizzard, could find streams by smelling water, and now they could even scout out enemy positions.
There was definitely a reason the Imperial knights liked keeping them close.
“……Is this really the time to be impressed?”
Ricardo grumbled. The other squad members wore similarly irritated expressions.
“So what’s the plan? They’ve even got hounds out searching, you heard him. We’re deserters now, no two ways about it.”
Gonzalo sank into thought for a moment.
Honestly, even Gonzalo himself hadn’t expected things to come this far, and he’d begun to sense that they were, to some degree, screwed.
But a commander must never let his fear show.
“Whew…….”
He drew out a cigarette and put it between his lips, then let out a sigh and tucked it back away.
A lit cigarette would give off both its smell and its glow.
“……This was going to happen anyway.”
“What?”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?! Let’s go back even now and tell them it was a misunderstanding!”
“That’s right! All this misery over one smell some Yaken picked up-“
“I told ya. That fuckin’ bastard of a captain!”
As his squad members’ complaints threatened to explode, Gonzalo instead clenched his teeth and shouted even more furiously.
“He meant to steal our reward from the very start! Look at it! Look at this damn circus out here! Republican partisans are still alive an’ well and runnin’ loose, and they’re pullin’ this kinda bullshit just to catch us?! Does that make any sense to ya?!”
He meant that their response was far too excessive.
“They’re throwin’ this goddamn fit ’cause they’ve got somethin’ to hide! Even if we hadn’t run, that man would’ve pinned some crime or other on us! That captain, his reputation was rotten from the start. Word’s been goin’ around forever that he skims the bounty money, y’know that?!”
In truth, he had never heard any such rumor, but this was how leadership worked.
What frightened subordinates needed was conviction. The conviction that their choice was the right one.
That conviction needed no source, so even a plausible lie would do, so long as it kept the ranks from scattering.
“……Then, what do we do now?”
The youngest’s question.
Even if they went to some other unit as they were and explained themselves, the odds of things working out were slim. A deserter’s testimony versus an official dispatch from a command post captain. There was no need to ask which one the army would believe. They’d be caught and killed before they ever reached central Zerpha.
“Whaddaya think.”
Gonzalo jerked his chin toward the southeast, beyond the snow-covered ridge.
Every land route, whichever way they went, led into the net of checkpoints, but Zerpha had one more road besides land.
The sea.
That coastline, formerly under the control of those Republican morons, had returned to the Royalist Faction with the recapture of the south.
Which meant its chaotic ports still lacked properly established administration and garrisons.
And that sea connected to the Empire.
“We’re…… going to the Empire.”
“…….”
“…….”
“…….”
“…….”
“…….”
Five pairs of eyes turned on him all at once.
They were the faces of men looking at a madman, and it was, in fact, a crazy thing to say.
“What, what’s with the faces? And ya call yourselves a squad? If ya got a better idea, let’s hear it!”
Everyone shut their mouths. The more they thought about it, the more this seemed like the only way.
They had tried to earn a little Yaken bounty money, and instead crossed a river they could never come back from.
“See?! Don’t worry, just trust me, I keep tellin’ ya!”
As if he’d known it would come to this, Gonzalo put on a deliberate show of confidence, thumping his own chest.
“Boats’re my specialty, y’know that! I’m ex-marine!”
…….
The southeastern coast of Zerpha.
──Whooosh.
Several pairs of military boot heels trampled the sand where the winter sea rolled in and broke apart.
“It appears they departed through here into the Merdia Sea.”
The fishing villagers’ statements all matched. Men in military uniforms had stormed in at dawn and requisitioned a fishing boat before heading out.
All the boat’s owner had received at gunpoint was a single sheet of paper with ‘Kingdom Army Requisition Slip’ scrawled carelessly across it.
“Unauthorized requisition…… no, wait. At this point it’s just plain robbery, isn’t it?”
“Lieutenant Colonel, sir. Let us send an official dispatch to the main force.”
At the words of ‘Cesc’, the field command post captain who had come leading the pursuit party, the lieutenant colonel pressed his temples.
“How exactly were you managing the front line?”
“My apologies, sir.”
“What’s the damage?”
“They fled with the two Yaken we had under our protection, and two sentries were killed.”
The incident had already been fabricated.
The two Yaken had indeed been under the protection of Captain Cesc’s command post, but the story now was that Gonzalo and his subordinates had come and stolen them away.
And on top of that.
“Why the Yaken?”
“Likely a scheme to use them as bait to defect to the Empire…… In truth, sir, a number of Yaken corpses were discovered along the edge of the mountains.”
An even greater criminal act was being pinned on them as well.
The lieutenant colonel’s brow creased.
“You’re saying that was their doing too?”
“The circumstances suggest so.”
“There’s no motive. Yaken only fetch a reward if they’re brought in alive.”
“……The story changes if they’re Republican agents. They’re Rangers, Lieutenant Colonel.”
Zerpha’s special forces, assembled by scraping together hunters, poachers, mountain men, sailors, and others who had spent their lives in the mountains and on the water.
But as their backgrounds suggested, they came from the lowest rungs of society, and their identities were difficult to verify. Most had been accepted without any ideological vetting simply because they were highly capable, which made them difficult to rely on.
The lieutenant colonel glared out at the horizon as though his head ached.
“First, contact the Navy and put out a warrant to the coastal patrols.”
Clicking his tongue, he continued.
“If they’ve slipped out, their sea route will run toward the Empire…… As it happens, I know a man in the Imperial military myself. I’ll send word.”
“Yes, sir!”
The captain gave a crisp salute and withdrew.
After taking three steps away, he spoke quietly to the Adjutant waiting behind him.
“The Lieutenant Colonel is writing a letter to the Empire. Find out who the recipient is before it’s sent. There should be one of our comrades nearby who can carry out the directive…….”
Kill every last Yaken.
That was the new directive handed down to ‘them’.
* * *
Since I’d bought the cola anyway, I spent a long while touring Highland’s many famous sights, and it wasn’t until the following evening that I returned to the suite of the finest hotel.
“There should still be room for the scholars to refine the flavor a little more.”
I poured cola concentrate in just the right proportion into a glass of sparkling water packed with ice.
I stirred it gently, then took a sip.
“Ahh…….”
I let out that familiar exclamation and closed my eyes.
For a moment, the memory of that day, the feelings of that day, brushed across the tip of my tongue.
In my homeless days, I hadn’t had the money to buy it, and until now, it hadn’t existed for me to find.
“……Now, if we add a bit more bite and depth to this.”
Once a few things were added to the original, it would become the flavor I remembered.
It was a flavor that couldn’t even be attempted without knowing the original.
“Dieter. Try it.”
I held the glass out to Dieter.
“Yes, sir.”
Dieter took a sip too. Gulp.
“…….”
A brief silence.
Then one more sip. Gulp.
For this taciturn man, taking two sips was practically a standing ovation. That was how novel the flavor must have been.
I watched his reaction closely and asked.
“Well?”
“……It is good.”
As he answered, Dieter’s eyes glinted faintly.
“Coming from you, that basically means it’s perfect.”
I chuckled softly and stepped out onto the balcony.
A Highland evening, the wind sweeping past. A city of colorful brick houses stretching endlessly into the distance.
The lights of cargo ships glided slowly along the river cutting through the city center, while somewhere in the distance a large clock tower announced the time with an extremely irritating sound.
“……It’s snowing.”
Swish, swish.
Snowflakes settled white across the surroundings as though decorating the entire city.
The scene carried the peculiar peacefulness of an island nation.
“Sir Knight.”
Suddenly, Dieter called to me from behind.
Before I could even turn around, he spoke.
“Can you see the future, Sir Knight?”
……For a moment, my heart stopped.
Dieter Schmidt was a man who thought as deeply as he spoke bluntly.
In place of empty pleasantries and social tact, he was the type to stack up the numbers and walk straight to a conclusion. He trusted only what could be verified as reality.
Therefore, he did not joke. He was a man who hardly even understood such things.
Which meant those words had emerged only after countless hours of worry and thought, carrying his genuine feelings.
Leaning against the railing, I turned to face him.
“……The future?”
“Yes, sir.”
For the past several years, Dieter had executed my every instruction.
Stocks bought before they rose. Bonds sold before they collapsed. Factories built before they became necessary. And now, even an obscure pharmacy in the outskirts of Highland’s capital, a place I had never once visited before.
Once was luck. Twice was insight.
But if dozens of attempts all hit their mark, a man who kept the books couldn’t help but become interested in the probabilities.
Therefore, this was an honest question, worthy of an accountant.
Perhaps it was even the very doubt I had secretly been hoping for.
And so my answer, too…….
“That’s right.”
Was simply honest.
“I lived through the future and came back, Dieter Schmidt.”
* * *
The Merdia Sea. A sea where waves surged like mountains and rain came pouring down in thick, driving sheets.
A tiny fishing boat fought its way through those vicious, surging waters.
Bang─ bangbangbangbang──!
Bullets came raining in from behind. Patrol boats from the Kingdom Navy had caught up before they knew it.
“Keep going!”
Bang─! Ratatatat──!
Gonzalo shouted as though trying to drown out the sound of the gunfire.
“Just keep going! We’re almost there!”
“Sergeant! The engine, the engine!”
At the youngest’s words, Gonzalo gritted his teeth. Black smoke was leaking from the engine. It sputtered like someone coughing, then quietly died.
Whoooooosh──!
Without propulsion, the bow was shoved wherever the waves pleased, and seawater spilled inside until it reached their ankles.
The youngest frantically bailed water with a pot while Ricardo lay flat against the gunwale and returned fire at the enemy.
Kraboooooom──!
Every time lightning flashed, the patrol boats behind them had drawn even closer.
“Over there!”
At some point, Falcon, the Yaken who had been standing rigidly at the bow, pointed somewhere into the heart of the storm.
“There’s another vessel! A big one!”
“Where!”
“That way!”
“…….”
Gonzalo couldn’t see a thing through the darkness and the curtain of rain.
But if a Yaken said something was there, then there was definitely something there.
“Everyone, grab the oars!”
They all picked up the thick branches they had loaded aboard as makeshift oars.
Gonzalo had made the Yaken carve them in preparation for the possibility that the engine might fail, shaving the ends broad and blunt like duck feet.
“Push!”
All six hung over the sides of the boat and rowed.
“Pull!”
Kraboooooom──!
The waves lifted the boat up and hurled it back down.
Each time, the branches bent as if about to snap. The skin peeled off their palms.
“Push!”
The six of them pushed and pulled with everything they had until their arms went numb.
──Flash!
Lightning split the sky.
Thanks to that instant of white light, they all saw it.
Half of what lay ahead, which they had mistaken for darkness, was a steel warship.
BWAAAAAAM──!
The giant vessel’s horn crushed the storm beneath its roar. Every member of the expedition clapped their hands over their ears.
──AOEN IS COMA DIQL KIZURA
A voice, amplified, descended from the dizzyingly high deck.
──AOEN IS COMA DIQL KIZURA, ONE, TOW, TRREE……
Tangled into the sound of the waves, the pronunciation came across bizarre and muffled.
It was hard to make out through the storm, but.
“I-It’s the Imperial Language!”
It was certainly the Imperial Language.
They hopped up and down on the fishing boat, waving both arms.
“Empire! Empire!”
“We’re allies! Zerpha Royalist Army!”
Beyond the warship’s railing, soldiers in naval caps stood in a row, rifles aimed as they looked down at the tiny boat.
“Here! Over here! Save us!”
“Please save us!”
“Quasi-Bloodline! We’ve got family records too!”
What were they supposed to shout? None of them knew the Imperial Language.
Gonzalo agonized over it, then bet everything on the single word that would be universal in any nation.
“Yaken! Yaken! Yaken──!”
He scrambled over, grabbed the Yaken couple by the arms, and dragged them to the front.
Only then did the reaction on deck change.
“Oh! Oh!”
The rifles aimed at them lowered. Short commands flew back and forth, and then a searchlight came on. A blinding beam shone directly onto the fishing boat.
The gunfire behind them had already ceased, and up on the ship, the rescue operation began.
“Hurry! Hurry!”
Whish. A lifeline weighted with a sandbag arced through the air and dropped onto the gunwale.
Gonzalo tied it to the fishing boat. Slowly, the boat was drawn alongside the warship.
“Ladder! Ladder!”
Rattle. A thick net ladder unrolled and came tumbling down.
“Let’s go! Ma’am, you first! Grab on and don’t let go, no matter what!”
The Yaken wife grabbed the rope ladder first, and the sailors on deck hauled the net up with her clinging to it.
Next came the youngest, then Falcon. Every time one of them climbed high enough, Imperial soldiers reached over the railing and hauled them aboard.
Gonzalo stayed behind until the very end, holding the boat in place.
The moment his turn came and he seized the net.
Crack-crunch─!
The fishing boat snapped apart under the waves and drifted away in pieces.
Gonzalo scrambled desperately upward and barely managed to collapse flat on the deck.
“Hah, hah…… we made it…….”
“God, I’m dyin’ here, shit…….”
“Gonzalo, you crazy bastard…….”
“……Who said that just now? Forget about your share of the bounty.”
“Fuck off…….”
On the deck, the six of them lay swollen like waterlogged sponges, drawing ragged breaths.
And around them, the Imperial sailors stood in a circle, looking down.
~~~
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