PandoraHearts ~Caucus Race~, Vol. 2 (23 page)

“Let’s do fireworks!” Oz said.

Pandora Headquarters, Oz’s room, three o’clock in the afternoon.

He was hugging a bag full of handheld fireworks to his chest. Someone had given them to him as a souvenir from a foreign country, he’d said.

“……Fireworks?”

Gilbert, who was standing by the window, looked outside.

The windowpane was wet with fine raindrops, and the faint noise of the rain reached his ears.

It was a rainy day.

The landscape he saw through the window was subdued, its colors dark and shadowed. With a small sigh, Gilbert turned back to Oz. He looked sorry.

“We can’t do fireworks if it’s raining, you know.”

“No worries, Gil. We’d be waiting until night anyway. It’ll stop by then,” Oz declared, bursting with confidence.

Gilbert was sure that confidence was groundless. Although his master had an internal maturity that didn’t match his boyish appearance, Gilbert thought the unusual
souvenir—handheld fireworks!—must have sent him into a childish excitement.

Once again, Gilbert turned to the window, looking up through it at the sky.

The leaden sky was covered in heavy, black rainclouds that seemed to go on forever.

The mere sight of a sky like that was depressing. Gilbert almost sighed again, but managed to catch himself. Between Pandora and the Nightray family, he was unusually tired, but he didn’t want to let it show in front of his master. In a small voice, he muttered:

“Is this really…going to stop?”

“This ‘fireworks set’ is amazing! It has kinds I’ve never even seen before in it. Like these, see, the ones that look like thin threads… Wait, are these really fireworks? Maybe they’re parts for some other firework. Well, we’ll just light them and see what happens.”

Oz didn’t even seem to have heard Gilbert’s mutter. He was happily rummaging through the bag of fireworks.

Gilbert glanced at Oz, smiling a bit wryly at his delighted master.

I hope it does clear up, since Oz is so enthusiastic about this… I hope it does, but…

Once again, he looked out the window at the endless cloudy sky.

But I bet it doesn’t
, he thought.

Ten at night. Outside, it was raining.

“The rain isn’t letting up…”

Gilbert sat down on the sofa, glanced at the window, and murmured.

As he’d predicted, even after night fell, the rain had continued. It wasn’t raining all that hard, but it fell obstinately. It didn’t seem likely to let up.

It might not even stop until tomorrow morning
, he thought.

Oz was on the bed, hugging his bag of fireworks and moaning discontentedly: “Uuuuuhh.” Alice lay beside him, breathing deeply and heartily as she slept.

That evening, Oz had invited Alice to come light fireworks, too. She’d been eager at that point, but when the rain didn’t stop and the fireworks didn’t begin, she’d said, “I’m through waiting!” and gone to sleep, without even going back to her own bed.

Gilbert glanced at Oz, smiled wryly, and spoke to him, trying to soothe him.

“Hey, Oz.”

“………What.” Oz’s answer sounded a bit sulky.

“Why don’t we save the fireworks for tomorrow? It’s already late.”

“I want to do them today.”

“Why? …The fireworks won’t go anywhere, you know.”

“Because I’m in a fireworks mood
today
!”

What kind of mood is that?
Gilbert thought. Oz had flung his legs out, and he kicked them petulantly.

“—I caught the I-want-fireworks disease, so there’s no helping it, is there, stupid Gil?!”

What kind of disease is that?
thought Gilbert.

At 11:50, it was still raining.

“It’s practically tomorrow, Oz. Let’s do them tomorrow.”

Gilbert reasoned with Oz, handing him some herb tea he’d just made. Oz took the teacup with both hands and said,
“Thank you,” but he didn’t respond to what Gilbert had said. Gilbert couldn’t understand why he was so set on lighting fireworks.

Somehow, it didn’t look as though he was simply so happy about the fireworks he’d received that he wanted to light them right away.

If Oz wanted something, Gilbert wanted to make it happen for him.

“…If you want to light them no matter what, should we ask to borrow a room somewhere?”

“??? A room? Where?”

Oz looked mystified. Gilbert knit his brow, thinking.

“Let’s see. It would have to be a place where it’s okay to use fire, so… Maybe the kitchen?”

“……Do you think it would be fun to light fireworks in the kitchen?”

Oz had asked the question with a straight face, and the only answer Gilbert could give him was, “……No.”

Oz lifted the teacup to his lips, glanced at the window, and sighed.

The sight of his wistful profile tugged at Gilbert’s heart, and he cast about for a plan. Lighting fireworks in the kitchen certainly wouldn’t have felt “real”; the idea had been a dull one. “Right,” he murmured, searching for something better.

Fireworks were an outdoor pastime, and it was raining outside. The easiest thing would be to postpone them until the next day, but…

“Otherwise, I guess we could light them under an umbrella or something—”

Gilbert had spoken without really thinking, and even as he thought,
Nah, that’s not it
, Oz’s eyes went wide. He cried out in a voice that no longer held the faintest trace of a sigh:

“That’s it! Gil, that’s it! We can just use an umbrella!”

“Nuh, no-no-no, Oz, wait, that wasn’t—I was just thinking out loud…”

“Aaaw,
man
! It was so simple! Why didn’t I think of that?!”

Oz was getting excited all on his own, and when Gilbert tried to put a damper on that excitement, he wouldn’t listen.

Oz gulped his herb tea in one go, even though it must still have been hot, and leapt down off the bed. The room around her had grown noisy, but Alice slept on, undisturbed. From the way her mouth moved as if she were chewing something, she might have been dreaming about eating.

Grabbing the bag of handheld fireworks he’d left on the bed, Oz looked at Gilbert.

“Gil, you’ve got an umbrella, right? That blue one.”

“Uh, yeah, it’s…in my room, but— Look, that’s not what I—”

“All right, go get it and come meet me!” Oz said exuberantly. As if he still couldn’t quite believe it, Gilbert asked:

“…Are you serious, Oz?”

The answer to his question came, not in words, but in the form of a brilliant smile.

Oz was serious.

The sound of fine rain striking the cloth of the opened umbrella.

I wonder which is weirder, lighting fireworks in the kitchen on a rainy day or lighting them under an umbrella?

Gilbert thought, but no answer presented itself.

Both seemed pretty weird to him.

In the courtyard of Pandora Headquarters, on the rain-wet lawn. It was late at night, on top of everything else, and the courtyard was completely deserted. A few lamps were still lit in the rooms of the building where most of the staff members worked, and hazy light spilled out into the courtyard.

Gilbert thought that if any of the employees who were working late happened to glance into the courtyard, they’d wonder what in the world they were doing out here.

As he stood there, holding the umbrella, even Gilbert wondered what they were doing out here.

“And anyway, what’s fun about standing out in the rain lighting fireworks under an umbrella?” he muttered to himself, silently. …But.

At Gilbert’s feet, there was the sound of a flame catching, and a faint light began to glow.

“Hey, it lit, it lit! Look, Gil, it’s pretty!”

Drawn by the voice, he looked down. Under the open umbrella, crouched beside Gilbert, Oz called to him cheerfully, a lit firework in his hand.

The firework Oz held was a simple one, just a thin tube packed with a mixture of gunpowder and colorant. Once lit with a match, thanks to the metal powder’s flame reaction, it spouted colorful fire that seemed to slice through the darkness.

“Whew! It’s raining, after all; I wasn’t sure what I’d do if it didn’t catch.”

“Well, it did. That’s great…”

Oz was honestly enjoying himself, and Gilbert’s response was rather evasive.

He couldn’t seem to get over feeling odd about the fact that they were standing in the rain, setting off fireworks under an umbrella.

Even if he was glad that Oz was genuinely having fun.

“Oz, why did you want to do fireworks that badly? …Even though it’s raining…” Gilbert asked.

Just hearing “fireworks mood” and “I-want-fireworks disease” hadn’t told him anything. It made him suspect that Oz was worried about something and trying to vent his frustrations.

“……………………” For a little while, Oz was silent.

When Gilbert also kept quiet, waiting for a response, Oz spoke, still gazing at the firework.

“—I told you, I just wanted to, that’s all. There’s no reason.

“Is it that weird?” he added.

Gilbert thought that, if he had to choose between “weird” and “not weird,” it would have to be “weird.” As he was wondering how he should respond, Oz murmured, “Oh, the firework’s over.”

One handheld firework didn’t last very long. When the flame died away, Oz threw the burned-out remnant of the thin tube into a tin bucket he’d set out in the rain. He took new fireworks from the bag at his feet.

“Okay, this time I’ll light two at once!”

As Oz grew more animated, all by himself, he looked up at Gilbert and asked, “Do you want one, too, Gil?”

Smiling wryly, Gilbert shook his head.

“I’m holding the umbrella. I have to make sure you don’t get wet.”

“I’m glad your umbrella is so big. Thanks to that, I’m not getting wet at all.”

“That’s why I have it in the first place.”

Gilbert spoke as if that was the most natural thing in the world. Oz looked perplexed: “Huh?”

“If it was just me, I wouldn’t use an umbrella. The coat I always wear is enough.”

At those words, Oz fell silent for a little while.

Then he said, mischievously, “That’s my valet, all right,” and nodded in exaggerated approval. His gaze went to the umbrella that spread above him, and he laughed, seeming a little embarrassed.

“Since you’re holding that umbrella, even in the rain, the sky’s always clear where I am.”

This time it was Gilbert’s turn to mutter, “Huh?” Oz gestured at the umbrella with the firework tube he held.

“Your umbrella’s blue. See?”

That’s the color the sky is when it’s sunny
, he seemed to be telling him.

Gilbert looked up at the umbrella’s canopy. When he’d bought the umbrella, he’d chosen blue simply because there hadn’t been any other colors. There hadn’t been any particular reason.

A blue umbrella, huh…?

Oz went back to playing with fireworks. He really did light two at once, giving little cries of appreciation at the multicolored flames that shot out. “It’s like a bouquet,” Oz murmured. Then, as if he’d remembered something, he looked up.

“Come to think of it, umbrellas get compared to flowers that bloom in the rain, don’t they? In novels and things, I mean.”

“Hmm? Yeah, you’re right.”

“Even if they both get compared to flowers, I guess this is a pretty weird combination, huh?” As Oz spoke, he looked between the umbrella and the flames of the fireworks. Umbrellas were used on rainy days, and people played with fireworks on clear days. Gilbert agreed with him there.