“Are you alive…?”
My voice trembled involuntarily.
Madame Moss’s condition looked that dire.
Crimson blood was soaking the sawdust, and her face was pale.
“…Ugh… ah…”
Only a raspy sound, not words, bubbled up from her throat.
But she was alive.
Her terror-stricken eyes focused on me.
“Don’t worry. You’ll be treated by a doctor soon!”
I shouted urgently while fumbling around the inside of the pumpkin.
I had to find the time fuse or whatever it was.
I had to find it and stop the explosion to save both the Madame and the people in this ballroom.
But the only thing my fingertips caught was damp sawdust.
‘Damn it, I can’t see it!’
The sawdust was spread too thick, and my vision was limited to the pumpkin’s eyes and mouth.
There were only three or four minutes left at most.
There was no way I could find a time fuse when I didn’t even know what it looked like in that time.
‘Then, I have to at least get Madame Moss out!’
It didn’t matter how evil the Madame was.
I had to keep her alive first so she could pay for her crimes or whatever else.
“Take my hand, Madame!”
I reached out without waiting for an answer.
I had to grab that bloodied arm and pull her out.
If I carried her on my back and ran quickly, she might at least keep her life.
However.
“…!”
The Madame’s hand, which had been reaching toward me, stopped.
“Madame…?”
Her gaze moved past my shoulder, toward the outside.
The Madame’s ballroom had become a scene of carnage.
The crowd was fleeing while hurling insults at her.
And Daisy was standing beside me, looking down at the Madame with an inscrutable, expressionless face.
The Madame’s eyes, which had been consumed by fear, suddenly flashed strangely.
— Slap!
Where did such strength come from?
The Madame struck my hand away.
“Madame!”
My eyes widened.
I reached out again to save her, but…
“Mr. Hayes! You can’t!”
Someone roughly grabbed the back of my neck.
“Are you planning to die with her?!”
It was Charlie.
— Tick, tick, tick!
The ominous sound of a clock’s hands echoed from the bottom of the pumpkin.
“Damn it, get down!”
Charlie hugged me as if tackling my body and rolled away.
And then.
— KABOOM!
A roar. A massive pillar of fire soared upward.
The pumpkin’s head exploded, and burning fragments scattered in all directions.
The completion of the Pharmakos.
It was the foulest and most flamboyant execution by fire.
“Aaaaah!”
Before I could even regain my senses, I heard a scream.
It was Daisy.
Perhaps because she had faced the explosion head-on, a sharp wooden splinter was lodged near her eye.
However, her distorted gaze was fixed not on her wound, but on the inside of the pumpkin.
With her face hideously contorted, Daisy screamed toward the flames.
“What are you doing, Madame! You’re not supposed to do that! Why are you so calm?! Why?!”
Daisy wailed in front of the burning pumpkin.
Transparent tears mingled with blood.
“You should be begging to live! You should be struggling pathetically! This way, this way it’s just like…! It’s like you chose this death!”
Daisy acted like a madwoman, convulsing before dashing forward. I caught her before she could leap into the flames and pinned her to the floor.
I wasn’t late. This time.
— Bang! Bang!
Another explosion occurred.
Since the previous explosion had blasted through everything blocking it, this one was an unrestrained flight upward.
The colorful fireworks that had been trapped inside the pumpkin shot out as if to pierce the ceiling.
Embers fell everywhere, and screams erupted once again.
An ember fell on the back of my neck as well.
It was hot, but for some reason, it felt surreal.
I stared blankly down at my empty hands.
Slowly, I understood what had just happened.
‘The Madame… she chose death herself.’
Inside that dark pumpkin, the Madame must have heard everything.
She must have realized that her foulness had been laid bare before everyone.
In the final moment, rather than prolonging a miserable life, she chose to meet a grand end.
It was a choice typical of her, a woman who valued how she appeared to the public more than anything else.
‘Is this the expulsion?’
The Pharmakos was a festival to decide on a scapegoat to be driven out.
Just as a coachman leaving on his own journey is exempt from the festival, one who walks out on their own feet cannot be an exile.
By accepting her own death, the Madame defeated Daisy and departed.
‘Perhaps I, too, was defeated by the Madame…’
Because my empty hands were trembling with such a sense of helplessness.
Thick white smoke rose into the air.
It was the conclusion of the long party.
***
— Epilogue —
Fortunately, despite the scale of the explosion, the casualties were quite low.
Ironically, it was thanks to the failure to uncover the truth of the case all at once.
When the commotion first started with the claim that the fireworks had been swapped, the fearful ones fled.
When it was revealed that fireworks were inside the pumpkin, more people left, and after the bloodstained black cloth was pulled from the pumpkin, the vast majority exited.
By the time the shout went up that an explosion was imminent, only a handful of people with more guts than sense remained, which prevented a tragedy where exits were blocked or people were crushed to death.
Most people were able to safely exit the ballroom before the explosion.
Even those who didn’t get out in time were mostly far enough from the blast site that they only sustained minor injuries; their lives were not in danger.
There were only two fatalities.
Madame Moss, who met her flamboyant end inside the pumpkin fragments. And the culprit of this incident, Daisy.
The wooden splinter that had flown during the explosion and embedded itself near her eye became the cause of an infection.
The doctor said she was young and would soon recover, but Daisy defied the doctor’s expectations and passed away after suffering in her hospital bed for ten days.
Was it perhaps because she no longer had the will to live?
‘In the end, the belief that I wasn’t late this time was also an illusion.’
I had failed to save Daisy.
Just as I had failed to save Madame Moss.
It wasn’t that I sympathized with the culprit.
Daisy was certainly a victim of Madame Moss, but at the same time, she was an accomplice. Had she not ignored the Madame’s crimes all along until she became a victim herself?
This incident was also a crime that could have easily claimed hundreds of lives.
The only lives she had cared about were mine, Charlie’s, and the detective’s, and even then, she had abandoned them without hesitation when her plan was at risk of falling apart.
‘Just because I don’t sympathize with her doesn’t mean I like this ending.’
What I disliked most was the fact that I had become a hero through this case.
“Look at this. Your face is on the front page again today.”
Detective Baron, who was lying in a hospital bed, tossed the morning newspaper onto the nightstand.
In the newspaper, I could see myself standing on the stage with a solemn expression, clutching a Jaguar mask.
[A Rising Star Detective, Hayes, Saves the Citizens of the Imperial Capital!]
My stomach churned at the sight of the embarrassing headline.
It was an article I had once desperately wanted, but not like this.
“…I’m sick of these obvious tricks.”
I said cynically as I flipped the newspaper over to hide the illustration that exaggerated my face.
“Since Madame Moss’s crimes were exposed, the newspapers that can’t escape blame for those crimes are trying to force a hero into existence. Coldly speaking, I was just a failure.”
I hadn’t been able to prevent the death of the victim or the death of the culprit. I hadn’t even stopped the explosion beforehand.
Even though I knew who the culprit was from the beginning, I hadn’t been able to prevent anything.
This was the first failure I had experienced since falling into this world and starting work as a detective.
“Don’t be so cynical.”
The detective, who was more cynical than anyone, clumsily tried to comfort me.
“Why not think of it like this? You didn’t fail to prevent two deaths; you prevented the deaths of 200 people. If it wasn’t for you, everyone would have been blown up with the fireworks while enjoying the festival, completely oblivious. Even those who luckily avoided the blast would have been crushed to death in the chaos. How many could have survived that carnage? You saved them all. Besides, hmph!”
Detective Baron snorted and added.
“My life is among those you saved.”
“Detective…”
He grumbled as if embarrassed.
“That ignorant woman. Does it make sense that she intended to keep me alive? After tying me up and feeding me nothing but water for ten days? Did she think I was some vigorous man in his 20s? Even for someone in their 20s, that would be difficult!”
Detective Baron’s face was still haggard.
Even though two weeks had passed since the incident ended, he still hadn’t been able to leave his hospital bed.
In addition to the long confinement, he had exhausted all his strength by remaining at the scene after being released.
“If I had been locked up a little longer, my life would have been in danger. I kept my life thanks to you. Thank you for finding me.”
I couldn’t raise my head even at the detective’s sincere gratitude.
“No. It was only natural. To begin with, I bear responsibility for this matter too.”
I had asked Detective Baron to investigate the past.
It was because of that request that he suffered such hardships while trying to investigate Madame Moss.
“Hmm? What do you mean by that?”
However, the detective looked puzzled.
“Responsibility? How is it your fault that I ran into bad luck with that crazy secretary while investigating Taylor John?”
In an instant, my thought process came to a halt.
“Excuse me…? You were investigating Taylor John?”
“Of course. That’s what I’ve been focused on for the past five years.”
The detective picked up a glass of water and moistened his lips as if his throat were dry before continuing.
“I heard a rumor from an informant that Madame Moss intentionally hid Taylor John’s tracks five years ago. Considering the accusation the culprit made that day, that rumor was probably true.”
“A rumor…”
Daisy had certainly mentioned it once.
That a mistake the Madame made five years ago had become a rumor and was now dragging her down.
Wasn’t it because of that very rumor that the Madame decided to make Daisy the scapegoat?
But that mistake was hiding Taylor John’s tracks?
“Damn it. I missed a truly regrettable opportunity. I should have interrogated the Madame properly that day.”
The detective could not hide his regret as he gripped the bedsheet tightly.
“Seeing as she went out of her way to hide a serial killer’s tracks, the Madame definitely knew who Taylor John was. Since she was close to him, she must have intended to hide him.”
The detective’s voice seemed to grow distant.
Clues that were like fragments began to assemble themselves in my head.
Madame Moss called Taylor John ‘darling’.
Just as she had called me.
Madame Moss erased Taylor John’s name from the newspapers.
Just as she had done for me.
They say that before the possession, I hated having my activities published in the newspaper.
Before the possession, very few people knew what I did.
Before the possession, I was of quite high social standing.
A chilling shudder crawled down my spine.
‘No way…’
An unbelievable hypothesis came to mind.
‘Was my identity before the possession… Taylor John?’