The underground bunker is long and intricate, like the inside of an unknown underworld creature.
Dazai and I put our hands on the damp wall and moves forward, the dim light being our only hint. Occasionally, black insects would scurry away near our hands. We can hear the sound of water dripping somewhere.
A wind is blowing inside the shelter. It is a cold and moist wind that smells depressing like someone's breath. Dazai and I follow the direction of the wind.
"Even if we can get out of here," Dazai says as he walks behind me. "It doesn't mean that they will give up on the "painting" just like that. You will need some kind of measures, unless you are going to move every week. What do you think?"
"Nothing in particular. There is no need to move either." I reply as I move forward. "I have been attacked quite a few times for things related to my past. But I have always managed to get out of it somehow. This time too, I will live until I die."
"That is such a wise way to live." Dazai sighs.
I understand what Dazai wants to say. But in my case, if my past is coming for me, there is a part of me that wants to give up and let it do what it wants. How should I call it? Guilt? Or atonement? I don't know.
However, if it will involve people around me like this time, I can't just keep philosophizing like that. As Dazai has said, it might be time to come up with some countermeasures.
"Dazai, if it were you, what would you do for a counterm..."
I turn around. Dazai is not there, at the spot I expected him to be.
He is far behind, crouching down, with his hand on the wall of the corridor.
"Sorry but ... can you... just go ahead..." Dazai says with a shallow breath. "I will... take a break and... chase after you."
His face is pale. His fingertips are trembling.
I rush back to Dazai and put my hand on his side to support him. His body is as cold as ice.
"What happened?"
"When I was kidnapped... while I was unconscious... they probably have... something..."
I return Dazai to the floor, and the moment I stand up to check his symptoms, I see the future.
A flash of light. Sound of wind.
Then Dazai's chest bursts open, his ribs pop out, and on his chest blooms a huge flower of blood.
Instant death.
That is a bullet.
I grab Dazai's neck and pull him vigorously. Dazai falls forward. A bullet shoots through the space where Dazai was just a second ago, landing on the wall behind us and making a damp sound.
I drag Dazai out of the corridor, hiding ourselves behind a concrete pillar. There are several bad things that can happen in life, but being targeted by an enemy with a gun from a far distance in a closed underground corridor is definitely one of them. Not to mention being unarmed, with an injured person who cannot move.
"I have underestimated you a little bit."
From the other side of the corridor behind the pillars, comes a familiar voice. The ex-cop with gray hair. There is a strong dilatoriness of someone who has been used to making people wait in his movement. It is a kind of power that older cops always have.
"We gave your bandage friend some percutaneous poison when he passed out. His limbs will become numb and he won't be able to scratch his own head for a while."
