Chapter 34 Chapter Thirty-Three

At noon, a military truck drove over.It's a huge thing, spewing clouds of gas and making a terrific noise, like something from an ancient age of expansion.She heard the sound of the thing a block away; when she actually saw it, even though she knew something about it, she still almost cried out.It was frighteningly fast, and the noise it made was even more frightening.When she was in Japan, Emiko saw a similar truck.Mr. Iwato explained that the fuel for this vehicle is liquefied coal.It's filthy and carbon-intensive, but it has magical powers, like ten giant elephants tugging at it from within.There is nothing more suitable for this thing for military use, and civilians can neither legally obtain the energy for its use, nor can they afford the huge taxes it brings.

It stopped, and the blue smoke from its exhaust spiraled upward.A troop of kink-spring-powered miniature bikes followed, men wearing either the black uniforms of the Royal Panthers or the green uniforms of the military.Others jumped out of the truck bed and rushed to the front door of the apartment building where Mr. Anderson lived. Emiko hid in the alley and lowered her body even lower.At first, she considered running, but before she had walked a block, she realized she had nowhere to run.Mr. Anderson is her only safe haven in this raging sea. So she stayed close, watching the ant-nest apartment complex where Mr. Anderson lived.She thought hard, trying to make sense of it all.She was still surprised that the person who broke the door and rushed in was not a white shirt.It should be a white shirt.If it was in Kyoto, after such a long time, the police would have captured her with police dogs with excellent sense of smell, and she had even been executed on the spot by angry people.She had never heard of a new human who refused to obey humans so thoroughly.Not to mention that there is no new human being like her who shed a large amount of human blood with her own hands and then escaped.Shame and hatred burned in her chest at the same time, she couldn't stay here.The only place she could ever hope to be safe was the foreigner-only apartment building, which had been thoroughly invaded.There was no place in the whole city that could show kindness to her.

More people jumped from the army trucks.As they walked this way, Emiko hid deep in the alley.She figured they must be expanding their search, and braced herself for a quick escape against the heat of her body.If she started running from here, she could escape to the canal, cool off there, and start running again. But those people just walked back and forth on the main road, and didn't seem to have any further search or pursuit of her. There was chaos at the apartment complex.The Panther soldiers dragged out two men wearing burlap hoods. The skin on their hands was very pale. They must be foreigners.She thought one of them was Mr. Anderson, and she could recognize his clothes.He was pushed forward by the group of soldiers, stumbled, nearly fell, and hit the back of the truck hard.

Two Panther soldiers cursed and dragged him to the car and pushed him over to the side of another foreigner.More soldiers jumped into the car and surrounded them. A limousine pulled up against the curb, its distinctive coal-diesel hybrid engine humming low.This vehicle was very strange in shape, and compared with that troop truck, it could be said to be very quiet, but the emissions were also huge.This is the vehicle that the rich ride.It is almost impossible to imagine what kind of person can own such a huge amount of wealth... Emiko gasped.It was Akarat, Minister of Trade, getting into the car surrounded by bodyguards.The onlookers watched all this in amazement.Like them, Emiko was completely stunned.Then the limousine started and drove away, followed by the troop truck roaring.The two vehicles left a cloud of smoke on the road before disappearing around the corner without a trace.

All they left was silence.After the roar of the truck engine died away, the silence oppressed everyone like a tangible thing.She heard people whispering: "Politics...Akarat...Farang? General Pracha..." Even with her extraordinary hearing, she still couldn't capture any meaningful information.She stared at the direction in which the truck disappeared.If she made up her mind, she might be able to keep up... She dismissed the idea.This is impossible.Wherever Mr. Anderson went, she couldn't get involved.Whatever political vortex he gets into, it always ends in the same ugly way.

Emiko wondered if she could simply sneak back and hide inside now that everyone was out of the apartment building.Outside the building's main entrance, two men began handing out flyers to the passing crowd.Two more men arrived on cargo bikes with more leaflets bundled on racks.A man jumped off his bicycle, posted a flyer on a lamppost, picked up the bicycle, rode on and continued on. Emiko took a step forward to get a flyer, but a stab of panic stopped her.She didn't try to get the flyer from the cyclist, let them ride away, and then cautiously approached the one posted on the lamppost.She focused on making her movements look more natural.She doesn't want to draw unwanted attention.She pushed gently into the assembled crowd, fighting for a better position among them, craning her neck, trying to see the leaflet's contents between the black hair and the trying to straighten body.

The crowd began to murmur angrily, and some sobbed.A man turned his face away, eyes full of sadness and fear, and squeezed past her.Emiko slipped into a gap in the crowd.The whispers became louder and louder.Emiko approached the leaflet as cautiously as possible, carefully, carefully, slowly, slowly... She held her breath. His Royal Highness Somdej Chaophya, Protector of Her Majesty the Queen.The text that followed...she forced her brain to keep going, translating from Thai to Japanese.She realized that these people around her, these people pushing her from every direction, they were all reading the words on the leaflets, and these words described a clockwork girl walking among them, a woman who killed the queen. The Clockwork Man of His Majesty's Protector, an agent of the Ministry of the Environment, a creature of deadly force.

They huddled around her, nudged past her as they read the text—all of them thinking she was one of them.The only reason these people allowed her to live was because they hadn't seen the truth about her.