4

He said he wouldn't come again, but as one in charge of security, I couldn't swallow his words whole, naturally reporting everything that happened that day to a superior—including the phone number Hakui-kun had written on my hand.

I knew I might be reprimanded for sending him off without stopping him, but that said, I couldn't be negligent with my work. But not only did I not receive the summons I had resolved myself for, I didn't even get any advice on how to handle it the next time a child came around. When it got to that point, it felt as if my report had been crumpled up and tossed, something wasn't sitting right—but as he declared, Hakui kun didn't stop by the museum after that, so it didn't develop into the same predicament again.

Hakui Riku.

While he said we would never meet again, it was simply the case that the site of our reunion wouldn't be the museum… and while I'm putting on airs, I might as well introduce the third and final person who brought a turning point to my life. As truth would have it, he was the one who most harshly tripped up my feet, so instead of beating around the bush, perhaps I should have introduced him first, but there's a process to these things.

Because it was only because of my encounters with Kyouko-san and Hakui-kun that my third encounter turned out as it did…

The bonds between people truly are bizarre.

It goes without saying, the incident that followed occurred because it had to—regardless of whether I was involved or not, it was an inevitable occurrence. I don't intend to say it was my doing or anything pretentious like that, and I'm not virtuous enough to shoulder too much responsibility for it.

Now then, while I first misunderstood Kyouko-san as an elderly woman in need of a.s.sistance, the third was, without any mistake, an old man. He did dye his hair white, but as he came to the museum with a cane, well, there's no doubt about it. It's just, even if I did feel obliged to look out for him, he emitted an aura that made him difficult to approach. To put it simply, a grumpy air.

Like the others, he also… stopped his feet before that painting.

Before the painting Kyouko-san would stare at, and that Hakui-kun copied—granted by that time, Hakui-kun had stopped coming to the museum, and Kyouko-san said the painting wasn't two hundred million but two million, not even lowering her walking speed to look at it. As always, I had no choice but to stand there, so whether I liked it or not, the painting entered my field of vision… but what had once been an 'incomprehensible abstract' when I first took this position had become a 'two hundred million yen masterpiece', after which it became clear what was painted was a 'landscape of the planet earth', and after that, for some reason, its value bombed to 'two million yen', a hundredth of its original value. Unsure of how I was supposed to face it, my position in the room was becoming unstable.

So when the old man in a hakama came to a stop before the painting, I won't deny I curiously looking forward to what would happen this time. I ended up hoping for the next plot twist to come. Those aren't the right feelings to hold on the job, and I know I should reflect on that, but that being the case, the retribution bestowed on me was simply too great for the sin.

Undue suffering… no, if I wanted to bring up suffering, the painting 'Mother' suffered a far crueler fate than me.

On top of having her contents stripped bare by a boy wonder, and her price beaten down to one hundredth by a white-haired beauty, she was finally smashed to pieces by the mysterious old man's cane.

"Ah…!"

By the time I could react, the cane's second blow came down on the canvas… the poor depiction of earth, as if it had collided with a meteor from a movie, was smashed into pieces.

"H… hold it right there! What do you think you're doing!?"

Between my stiffening from sudden circ.u.mstance to the return of my senses was only an instant, and rus.h.i.+ng over took less than two seconds… but with a deftness that didn't let one feel his age, he made good use of even that small period, showing no mercy to the canvas that had fallen from the wall to the floor, and showering it with strikes from his cane.

His handling of that stick was so wonderful I had to wonder if he carried it not because his legs were weak, but because he had intended to do it from the moment he left the house—but this wasn't the time to be impressed. At the point I had grappled the man away, the painting had- frame included- been rendered impossible to repair. Still unsatisfied, he continued to put up an intense resistance with immense power I couldn't expect from an old man. It felt like he would shake me off if I let my guard down, but as I was dealing with an elderly person, the most I could do was a Nelson hold. I couldn't quite slam him to the floor.

"Unhand me, you insolent wretch!"

On the other hand, the old man showed no signs of cooling off… forget that, his heel naturally started slamming into my s.h.i.+n. The man was wearing geta instead of shoes, so when the corners dug in, the pain was no joke.

The painting's removal from the wall sounded the alarm, and with such a ruckus I was sure that backup would come soon enough, but I wasn't confident I could restrain the old man without injuring for that long.

"Please calm down… what's gotten into you?"

"What's left to explain!?"

I asked without expecting any proper exchange, but surprisingly he did give what sounded like a response.

"How dare they think they could get away with something like this! The sheer nerve!"

Saying that, the old man glared at me… with all the pressure he put on, I got the urge to just let go of his arms as he ordered me.

"A-anyways, just calm down. If you stop resisting, I'll release you…"

"Shut it, you can start by calling s.h.i.+kihara!"

s.h.i.+kihara? I thought over who that might be before remembering the curator had a name like that… meaning this person was telling me to call the curator?

If I had to say, the one who was going to be called somewhere was the old man who had committed such violence… but the man's overbearing way of addressing the curator without honorifics wasn't easy to ignore. He had too much dignity in his rage for me to write it off as an old man's hysteria, and I felt like I might end up obeying him if I was caught unprepared. I was on the verge of calling the curator, but if I just did as I was told there, it would be the same whether a security guard was stationed there or not. Now that he had destroyed what I was to protect, there was already practically no point in my being there, but even so, I was unable to abandon my station.

"If you want to say something, I'll hear you out…"

"b.o.l.l.o.c.ks I say! It's a waste of breath on a knot-eyed amateur like you!"

"Knot-eyed? By knot-eyed, you mean…"

I could understand if he said an outsider security guard was a waste of breath, but what did he mean by a knot-eyed amateur? As if to take a stab at the moment I spent pondering, the old man rapidly untangled one of my arms, holding his cane aloft. His dynamism unfit for his age astonished me… at the same time, I couldn't help but question what sort of impulse was driving him so far. I seized the cane he was about to lower.

"D-do you have some bone to pick with the planet earth!?"

I cried… and suddenly.

All of a sudden, the old man went docile—draining his power, he also stopped stamping his feet. With his one-eighty, I was about to fall over from my own left-over momentum.

"Speak."

Quietly this time, the old man spoke… Just because he had stopped resisting, releasing the perpetrator of such violence was crazy, but he had already preceded me and released the cane from his hand… he discarded his armament.

I was half lifting him up in that air, and once he had stopped thras.h.i.+ng around, precisely because were practically stuck together, the feel of his slender light const.i.tution was conveyed to me… My respect for the elderly that had turned off in crisis came back to me.

At the end of my hesitation, I let go of his withered branch- though from his previous rampage it was surely too powerful for that label- of a body. Of course, keeping myself ready to cope if he started going at it again.

"Hmph."

But for now, it looked like my worries were undue, and all the freed man did was straighten out his disheveled traditional clothing… looking at him like this, even retracting my own build from mind, he was a small-built old man; though his eyes were to sharp for me to think of him that way… I wonder what it is, he didn't give off the slightest sense he had given up resistance and surrendered on my intervention.

"You mentioned the earth. Can you understand that painting?"

I was perplexed by the question he tossed over… really, what was it? Ah, was he referring to my 'Do you have some bone to pick with the planet earth' line? No, if he asked whether I understood the picture or not, I could only say I didn't. All I had was hand-me-down knowledge from Hakui-kun. If I was told two hundred million, it looked like two hundred million to me. If I was told it was the earth, it started looking like the earth, and if I was told it was two million, it started looking like two million… that was the extent of my eye for appraisal.

But even if he was calm for now, thinking of the old man's temperament, I couldn't imagine answering honestly was the appropriate response. So while it was far from sincere.

"Yes. It's a landscape of earth seen from s.p.a.ce… isn't it? That's why it was given the t.i.tle 'Mother'."

I'm surprised a child's opinion helped me to such a degree, but the deed was acknowledged and, "I see," the old man gave a profound nod.

"It looks like they're not complete knotholes… but in that case, you're even more of a dullard than I thought. It's all the more sorrowful to see you had a discerning eye on you…"

"U-um, what do you mean by that?"

"… Alright."

Without answering any of my questions, after taking a scrupulous rude look over me, "Whelp. What's your name?" he asked.

Whelp… owing to my height over one eighty centimeters, I had never been referred to as such, and for a moment, I couldn't tell he was talking a bout me. In the end, it looks like Kyouko-san was the only one who could discern my name from the tag on my chest… could it be my nametag was completely meaningless?

"Oyagiri Mamoru."

"I see. Then Mamoru. I'm going to give you a test."

Despite being a ruffian taken in… despite being someone who would be turned in to the police, the man spoke with a majestic, imposing air. His tone overly condescending, he had shown strong enough resistance to warrant it… but at the word test, for some reason, I felt some intrigue. What did he bite onto?

I couldn't tell… and as I couldn't tell, the old man pointed at the fragmented canvas strewn across the ground.

"Try putting a price on this painting."

"… A price, is it?"

"Yeah. It can be a general estimate. Nearest whole, just give me the first price that comes to mind."

With the eyes of a true appraiser strongly trained on me, he issued me an order… I looked at each piece of the dispersed canvas in turn. Price… on that question, I naturally recalled Kyouko-san—the white-haired woman who first appraised the painting at two hundred million, and after that, as if forgetting that episode entirely, she revised it to two million.

Just as I jumped onto Hakui-kun's opinion, could I ride aboard Kyouko-san's take there as well? But even if I wanted to, Kyouko-san had given two. The two hundred million she would spend an hour admiring, or the two million she barely glanced at—which price would be right to say in this situation? Before right and wrong, was there even a correct answer to the eccentric old man's query? I got a feeling he would take offense to whatever I said and call it wrong. Perhaps he even had a vague sense that the answer it was a landscape of the earth wasn't an answer of my own… isn't that why he was testing me?

Instead of a test, was he pulling of my mask? In that case, I couldn't carelessly be caught up in his trap. But even if I wasn't going to borrow Kyouko-san's words as is, I would have to give my own honest opinion; problem being, I didn't have one on the matter.

"What's wrong? Can't answer? If you don't know, just say you don't know."

It was fact that I couldn't answer, he was right when he said I didn't know, but honestly admitting I didn't know would make me too much a greenhorn to the old man… I still had some will in me.

I tried thinking.

I didn't have to appraise… I just had to deduce.

If hypothetically, I used Kyouko-san's estimate as a base, the options would be two hundred million or two million… in that case, just considering it in turn, the obvious choice would be the latter.

That went without saying, it was a problem of chronological order. The day Kyouko-san said two hundred million yen, and the day Kyouko-san said two million yen, the problem wasn't which day Kyouko-san's eyes were more trustworthy… the main problem was which one was the latest information. Putting aside whether Kyouko-san's opinion changed after that, she never stopped her feet before the painting again—if its value had returned to two hundred million yen, then surely she would have spent an hour admiring it as she did in the days of yore.

With her detective insight, she had noticed the price plummet of something I couldn't detect any change in, and if there were any further changes, she wouldn't overlook them… but if I had to be pedantic, it wasn't as if Kyouko-san came by the museum every day. In essence, she hadn't stopped by in the past week; I had no guarantee the painting hadn't changed in that timeframe…

At the very least, if I knew what basis Kyouko-san used for her change in price, I would be able to proceed without hesitation, but she wouldn't tell me, and I had no developments myself… she said she wouldn't deduce for free.

In that case, should I have made a formal request?

No, at that point, I had no telling the information would be necessary… and in the first place, there was no finality to Kyouko-san's pricing. To the end, that was her personal opinion— there was no guarantee this old man would take to it.

Rather than saying something stupid to send him on another rampage, keeping silent or lowering my head and saying I didn't know would be the adult decision. It was disgraceful and an option I resented, but in all honestly, I didn't know the price of the fragmented painting, and regardless of how it was in the corner of my field of vision for months, I couldn't notice any changes with it.

No… wait. Change?

If we're talking about changes, there was a bigger one than any in the months I've been here. A dramatic change making it impossible to even compare to how it was before just happened. The old man smacked it with his cane, smas.h.i.+ng it frame and all… even if it's price the previous day was two hundred million yen, now that it's in pieces on the floor… there's no w ay that price exists. Kyouko-san had said something about 'the cost paid to preserve its value'.

"Zero yen."

"In it's current state, it is no longer possible to put a price on it… far from it, in the current day and age, its disposal might not even be free of charge."

Of course, it's not an s if the pains and zeal the painter put into it have become worthless… more so, because the actual article has been lost, they might actually rise in value but… its physical price as a painting was completely lost.

While changes can occur over the years, there are instantaneous changes as well… there's no need to say all things in life are transitory, there's no way anything can preserve the same value forever. Just as turning points in life can come at any time, an item's value, the values of society can change… there's nothing that doesn't die and nothing that doesn't break.

The moment the old man hit it, the painting had lost its value… whether it be two hundred million yen or two million, it was also a form of proof it had a definite unyielding value up to that point.

The old man grinned, he gave a wicked smile, "Hmph. I'll admit you've got some wit to you—I'll have to give you a pa.s.s." He said as he turned his hand towards me.

It appeared he was demanding the return of his cane… I had some hesitation, but come to think of it, I had no basis to determine the cane was only carried to destroy artwork. If his legs really were weak, depriving an old man of his cane would be horribly mean-spirited.

I held out the cane. Seeing how, after taking it, he immediately pressed it to the ground and entrusted his body weight, my decision was not mistaken.

That aside, judging by the old man's remark, my answer was by no means worth one hundred points… it felt more like I had used some clever loophole to barely pa.s.s. Well, he did call it for what it was. It was a scene where it wouldn't be strange if he screamed out that wasn't what he meant… I was just happy the old man had completely calmed down.

And in his plight, he decided to return some wit for wit.

"Now then, you must let me take my leave—all I did was smash a painting worth nothing, so naturally, you have nothing to fault me on."

He made a grand show of using his staff to walk off down the museum's recommended route… no wait, there's no way that logic would ever pa.s.s! I hurriedly circled ahead of him, spreading both arms to block his way.

"Something the matter? The one who said it was zero yen was you."

"Y-you're right, but you know that's not it—anyways, don't move. I'll call someone in."

"You're a hard sh.e.l.l to crack. That's what I've been saying from the start, just call s.h.i.+kihara in—tell him Wakui came by, and he'll understand."

"W-Wakui, is it?"

"That's right. Now get to it."

"O-on it…"

The old man's name had finally come to light, but more importantly, from his manner of speech, he made it sound like he was an acquaintance of the curator. In that case, it would explain his unchanging arrogant att.i.tude but… could it be the old man, old Wakui was a mainstay of the world of art?

He definitely looked the part… but would a prominent artist make such a mess of an art museum? Thinking about it logically, I couldn't imagine it so, but at present, it was impossible to think of that person as being within the bounds of logic.

As that was going on, the security guards from the other areas and the museum employees finally rushed in from the ruckus. As I reported the turn of events to them, old Wakui was led off to another room, and by the time I noticed it, he was gone. None of the guards knew him, but it seems some of the staff were aware of who he was, and looking at their courteous att.i.tude that went a little beyond caring for the elderly, I was sure he had to be someone big… whatever the case, as the one charged with the area the problem occurred, I was charged with cleaning up the mess.

So the ident.i.ty of the old man and what motives he held in his destructive actions, in the end, I could only come to know them on a later date… or so despite the gravity of the situation, I was still trying to keep optimistic.

I never saw it coming.

To think the events of that day would be cause for me to lose my job… that's why it became a turning point in my life.

A turn for the worse.