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Dumpling Girl and Brunette Grandpa

The Daily Road

July 10, 1930, Evening Edition, Page 2

The Challenger’s Ruthless Ballad: Promises to Spill the Champion’s Blood!

Challenger Eddie Sawyer spoke directly to our reporter!

“The fact that the champion is the ex-mayor’s son means nothing to this dangerous challenger.”

“He’s a dunce. A pebble by the roadside.”

“His father is an eggplant. His mother is a watermelon. His friends are spinach.”

“William is no champion. And here’s why…”

“His punches are wilted cabbage.”

“His hooks are salty pickles.”

“He’s nothing more than rice cake nibbled by mice.”

What a foul-mouthed challenger!

New Yorkers eager to hear the challenger’s bold and fresh roars, gather at the Brooklyn Bridge tonight!

Chapter 4: Dumpling Girl and Brunette Grandpa

The space was cold and humid, despite it being summer.

The walls, once light green, had darkened with grime to a near-gray, covered with handprints that looked smeared by filthy hands. These marks were a sign of the many people who were imprisoned here, screaming and pounding against the walls in the relatively short history of the New World. One side of the room was lined with iron bars.

In the corner, a doll-like girl, about 140 centimeters tall, sat neatly on her knees. She wore a charming pink yukata with a light blue obi, and her mysterious silver hair, tinged with golden highlights, cascaded down her back.

Her jewel-like emerald eyes glinted dangerously, and her glossy cherry-red lips parted.

“Rotten clogs found during the neighborhood’s weekend ditch cleaning,” she muttered in a deep, raspy voice. “Chikuwa buried by a dog in the yard trying to hide it.”

In addition to the handprints, the walls were scrawled with insults like “asshole,” “son of a bitch,” and “fuck you.”

The gray room was bleak. From beyond the iron bars, the savory scent of fried noodles wafted in, mixed with the smell of the toilet.

Victorique was glaring at the wall. Her glittering hair draped over her back, fanning out on the floor like the wings of a fairy.

“Paper lantern that burst into flames because of too much oil. Bland radish. Lovely blue glass wind chime with a goldfish design, blown by a gust of wind, hit the window, and shattered into pieces.”

Her slender shoulders began to tremble with anger.

“Dried squid I used as a bookmark that rotted immediately. Manju placed on the Buddhist altar. I didn’t do it on purpose, but that stupid former Imperial Army raging old man kept nagging and nagging!”

A police officer’s voice came from outside the iron bars. “Hey, keep it down!”

Victorique glared in that direction. Footsteps approached, accompanied by the clinking of chains. A police officer in a black uniform, wearing an NYPD cap adorned with a silver badge, stood before the bars. A gun holster hung from his waist.

Peering into the cell, he said, “Seriously, young lady. You have such a pretty face, but you can’t even give a proper address.”

Victorique narrowed her eyes without a word, and the policeman sneered.

“All you’ve got is your looks. They say you can’t have everything.”

Victorique’s eyes darkened dangerously.

From the neighboring cell came a faint, feminine singing voice. “When the cranberries bloom…”

“Hey, you shut up too. Keep it down,” the policeman barked, and the singing stopped abruptly.

Victorique continued to stare at the wall. Frustration flickered across her small profile. Water dripped somewhere. Faint car horns could be heard from outside the building.

“This place is similar to the de Blois tower where I was born and raised,” Victorique murmured. “Does that mean this is also a home?” She looked around, seriously pondering. “That might be the case. Hmm! If so, then there is no problem.”

After that, she became as still as a beautiful little figurine. Like an extremely expensive porcelain doll in a shop window, waiting for someone to buy her. A beautiful but lifeless curio. A proud and cold blue flame.

From the neighboring cell, the faint singing voice of the woman continued.

“When the cranberries bloom, I’ll go home, I’ll go home. Because you’re… waiting for me.”

“My lecturing sounded like what an old man would say, while Victorique’s insults are novel? Impossible. Absolutely, positively impossible.”

The Daily Road editorial office.

Young reporters, either shirtless or clad in sweat- and grease-stained shirts with suspenders, crowded the room. Phones rang incessantly, typewriters clattered like gunfire, and loud fans roared in rhythm. The scent of cheap food suggested it was already lunchtime.

From the left desk came a cry of “I’m hungry!” and promptly from the right, “Here’s some bread!” A round, heavy-looking loaf flew like a baseball. Voices clamored from all directions: “Bread, bread!” “Give me some bread!” The reporters’ faces were hardly visible behind the piles of paper on their desks.

Kazuya emerged from the glass-walled office of the editor-in-chief. “I simply can’t agree with this. If I’m considered old, then Victorique is even more,” he grumbled with a face just like an old man. “After all, she’s descended from the nobility of the Old World, born into a prestigious marquis family. And on top of that, she’s insufferably arrogant. Ouch!”

Like a phantom punch from Victorique, a round, hard bread smacked his soft cheek. Just before it hit the floor, he caught it.

“Over here!” Someone signaled from the left.

He tried to throw it, then thought better of it and walked over with the bread.

A reporter typing away shot him a sideways glance. “New guy, huh? Rare to see a Chinese one.”

“No, I’m…”

“Doesn’t matter. Just shut up!”

Kujou frowned. Then, from a nearby desk, all sorts of requests came at once.

“I spilled my coffee. Hey, new guy, get a mop!”

“While you’re at it, get me some milk.”

“Hey newbie, got nothing to do? Season this meat with salt and pepper, cook it nicely, put it on a lovely plate and bring it here!”

Kazuya stood surprised, irritated, and bewildered. Just then, someone slapped him hard on the back of the head with a file.

“Hey there, brunette grandpa. So, you got hired on probation, huh?”

Rubbing his sore head, Kazuya turned to see a tall, slender woman in a suit. She held a cigarette in her mouth. It was the woman from the PR department who helped him with the missing person notice.

Kujou hesitated for a moment, then nodded slowly. “Yes. I was surprised, but… I thought I’d give working here a try.” He wondered silently if he could really make it here. Then, realizing something, he asked, “Wait, who’s this brunette grandpa?”

“Some leave after getting temp hired, and the ones who stay are pretty quirky,” the woman went on without answering his question. “It’s a weird workplace, but it’s better than having no job. At least you’ve dodged the executioner’s block for now.”

“Y-Yeah. But who’s this brunette grandpa?”

“If you get hired full-time, you’ll get a weekly salary, but during probation, it’s pay-per-task. That annoying geezer won’t give you a cent unless you go and collect it yourself. He pretends to forget otherwise.”

“Oh. So I should get paid for what I wrote earlier.”

The editor-in-chief’s office door burst open.

The strong, independent woman touched her forehead with her index finger and said, “Ciao!” before disappearing.

The unshaven editor-in-chief stumbled out of his office and began calling out names that indicated various nationalities. Several men and women stood up, grabbed the pens tucked behind their ears, and held them in front of their stomachs like guns.

“All right. I take it you all have nothing to do.”

“Of course we do!”

“We’re clearly busy!”

“You want us to do more work? You’re one awful boss.”

“That’s why no one likes you.”

“Sh-Shut up! Printing an evening edition means we’ll need articles for tomorrow’s morning edition. Otherwise, the back of the paper will be completely blank.”

“Tch.”

“Fuckin’ geezer.”

“Idiot.”

They clearly didn’t have much respect for their boss. The editor-in-chief’s face turned ashen from irritation.

“Enough! Listen up, boys and girls! We just got a tip about a half-naked handsome man climbing the Empire State Building. Get a photo before he turns into pancake on the pavement. You two, go cover tonight’s boxing match. Also, there’s been a mass sighting of ghosts of old women at the Dakota House.”

“What? Ghosts of old women?”

“Turns out it was just a reunion of a girls’ high school that burned down during the Civil War. Go interview them and dig up some old stories, good ol’ memories of schoolgirls from back in the day. And if you can get a comment from some war-traumatized young guy who mistook them for ghosts, we’ll have ourselves a nice then-and-now of youth in this country. We’ll make it a three-part series. You and you, get going! And stop eating bread while your boss is talking! And you’re still eating even after I called you out?! What are you, kids?! All right, then. Huh?”

The editor-in-chief looked around the floor, visibly annoyed. “Damn, they’ve all gone out. Not enough reporters,” he growled. Then, he clapped his hands together.

In a creepy, coaxing voice, the man called out, “Hey, old yellow monkey. Cute little Oriental.”

Kazuya turned around grimly. “Are you talking about me?” he asked in an eerily low voice.

The editor-in-chief wore a disturbing smile. “That’s right. We got a tip about a boy riding a lion in Central Park early this morning. It’s probably a hoax, so make it a short, amusing piece. If you can’t give me a good article…” He snapped his fingers. “You can kiss your job goodbye. That’s right!”

“What? An assignment right away?” Upon remembering, Kazuya quickly added, “Oh, that reminds me. About the manuscript earlier. I heard it’s pay-per-task.”

“Yeah, yeah,” the editor-in-chief said tiredly. “Payment for the article on the challenger.” He pulled out three crumpled bills. “Don’t say it’s low now. It’s like this at first.”

Kazuya took the money and bowed. All right, now to find Victorique.

Just as he was about to dash down the hallway, the editor-in-chief scratched his chin and looked around the room, searching for someone. “Nico!” he shouted. His voice was so loud that Kazuya stopped in his tracks.

From a corner came a drawn-out reply, “Who, me?” The owner of the voice appeared.

A young man with shaggy hair and a beard. Black hair, black eyes. Wearing a light green shirt with a camera hanging around his neck. He looked friendly, but his lips were oddly twisted. He had been feeding pizza crust to a stray cat curled up on some documents. Munching on a cold slice, he waddled over.

The editor-in-chief grabbed the shoulders of the Italian youth with his right arm and the Oriental youth with his left, pulling them close, rubbing their foreheads together.

“This big guy is Nicholas Sacco, a trainee photographer. I can’t say where exactly, but he’s got a screw loose somewhere. Just got him on probation thanks to a relative’s request.”

The youth grumbled, “Come on, you said I seemed very promising.”

“That’s because the more I complimented you, the more meatball spaghetti you served me. I was starving. And this here is a mysterious Chinese boy. Just arrived at Ellis Island yesterday. He might not look it, but he has a little girl.”

“No, I don’t! When I said girl, I meant… she is my… um…”

“Why are you blushing? It doesn’t matter. Shut up! You two are a team starting tomorrow. Write an article and take photos of the boy on the lion sighted in Central Park. If you can’t, don’t bother coming back. You’re both fired.” He snapped his fingers again and even winked. “That’s right!”

The Italian youth, Nico, shouted, “This isn’t what you promised!” He stared fixedly at the editor-in-chief as he walked away. “He said he would pair me up with a good reporter for my benefit, but now my partner is some weird Asian dude,” he grumbled.

“Fine, fine. Pick me up tomorrow morning. I’ll be at the Rome Café in Little Italy.”

He wrote the location of the cafe on the map Kazuya held out. “Man, why does my partner have to be an Oriental?” he mumbled as he left.

“What a rude guy. Doesn’t seem like we’ll get along… And he’s gone,” Kazuya sighed.

But now I can finally go find Victorique, he thought, heading out of the editorial department.

A shrill female laughter erupted. Sitting at the nearby desk was the blonde secretary with pigtails who entered the editor-in-chief’s office earlier. She stretched out her slender, beautiful legs peeking from her mini-suit and rested her bright red high heels on the chair next to hers.

Holding a receiver in one hand, she exclaimed, “No way!” and laughed in a similar fashion. “I’d love to be arrested by you, sir.”

Kazuya walked past her and out into the hallway. The elevator was crowded, so he made for the emergency stairs in the back and hurried down.

The back of the building was even more desolate. The rusted iron stairs shook with each step. Stray cats lounged in the shadows, and cigarette butts littered the landings. The walls were dirty and covered in graffiti. The sunlight was so bright that he blinked several times.

Kazuya’s footsteps echoed lightly. As he was about to run down the sidewalk, a loud voice called from above, “Hey, brunette grandpa!”

Looking up, he saw two women sticking their heads out of a fifth-floor window. The tall PR woman with a hat tilted at an angle and a cigarette in her mouth, and the blonde secretary with the pigtails. They seemed to be friends, placing an arm around each other’s shoulders.

“Who’s the brunette grandpa?”

“We got a call about the missing person!”

“What?!”

The blonde secretary seemed incapable of keeping her voice down, shouting loudly enough for the whole street to hear, “What a cutie. I like him.”

“He might not look it, but they say he’s got a daughter.”

“What?”

“Plus, she can speak and read multiple languages.”

As Kazuya anxiously watched them, they finally remembered him and looked down again.

The blonde secretary made some gestures. “You ultra wouldn’t believe where the call came from. The NYPD, the 82nd precinct!”

“The NYPD?!”