Chapter 22

Long wooden poles were apparently extremely useful, serving to hang laundry, open and close wooden windows high up in the mansion, and even knock down wasp nests that formed under the eaves in early summer.

Kururu, who managed the household chores inside the mansion and was full of ingenuity, showed us yet another use for that wooden pole.

“Ow, that hurts! Kururu-chan!”

“Who are you calling Kururu-chan? Do you need more of the stick?”

The ones being poked in the back, smacked mercilessly on the thighs, and driven into the mansion courtyard like criminals were the young swindlers who were always loitering in front of the gate.

“What the hell, all of a sudden…”

Watching them grumble in sullen tones, I ended up asking Kururu without thinking.

“Um, are we really using them?”

Kururu turned only her beast ears toward me and flicked them lightly. That probably meant yes.

“She’s saying she’s giving useless bastards like you a job.”

As Kururu planted the stick into the ground, the young men muttered among themselves, “We didn’t ask for one,” only to be glared at by her.

“You haven’t forgotten that I’ve been feeding you leftovers from the mansion, have you?”

At those words, the sullen-looking young men made even more displeased faces. Apparently that was something they did not want pointed out.

When I came to this mansion too, I was often given food in one way or another.

And the one making that food was the girl standing before me now, Kururu, who looked remarkably natural beating men with a stick.

Still, I had always assumed those swindlers were able to stay camped out by the eaves only because Iiria and Kururu had given up on chasing them away, but Kururu’s tone made it sound a little different.

After all, it was very easy to imagine Kururu feeding those men who had no income and sat around hungry at the doorstep, grumbling all the while.

“It’s not difficult work. Go hear people in town complain about taxes.”

“Huh?”

The young men looked genuinely puzzled.

“When the job is done, it’s three silver coins per person.”

By the daily wage at my company, that was three days’ pay. Hearing the reward, the color in the young men’s eyes changed.

“Well, if there’s pay, you should’ve said so.”

“Complaints about taxes? Not collecting them?”

“There are all kinds of taxes, you know. Is there some specific person whose story you want?”

The way they all spoke at once was like a pack of young dogs spotting a ball in their master’s hand.

“Ask this guy for the details.”

And with that, Kururu casually shoved the ball straight into my hands.

“Explain it. These guys are, well, the most trustworthy people in this town.”

“Huh?”

My surprise came from how utterly unexpected Kururu’s words were.

And on top of that, the swindler youths looking at me had completely changed from how they acted when speaking with Kururu, glaring at me suspiciously as if to intimidate me.

Just as I thought about asking Kengo, who was doing other work inside the mansion, for help, Kururu slammed the stick into the ground with a thud.

“I’ll cut off your meals, you lot.”

The young men stuck out their lips like children and looked away, then reluctantly nodded.

The swindler youths made money off people with words rather than brute force, but they looked more than tough enough for men engaged in such disreputable work.

I felt instinctively intimidated, but if Kururu said she trusted them, then I figured they could be trusted. And it wasn’t as though I had any other useful people in mind. I had to stop being picky and make use of what was within reach.

That was what I thought, but the moment Kururu disappeared back inside the mansion together with Iiria, the swindler youths crowded around me with frightening expressions.

“So why are you so close with Kururu-chan?”

“And more importantly, you guys were out walking around with Kururu-chan and the others that night a little while back, weren’t you?”

“Actually, you’re way too close to Kururu-chan. Are you beastfolk too or something?”

I immediately understood why they had been looking at me so suspiciously.

And the fact that they even knew about the night of the scrap magic stone experiment told me they were indeed well informed about what went on in town. Kururu had had a proper reason for asking them to cooperate.

Even so, before talking, I first had to clear up a misunderstanding.

“I’m basically treated like Kururu-san’s underling, though…”

The young men looked me over from head to toe, then nodded as though something now made sense.

“Yeah, no way Kururu-chan would let a pathetic-looking guy like this into her heart.”

I was probably at least a decade older than they were.

And yet, just like the story that Nodon was apparently younger than me, perhaps because of the harshness of the lives they had lived, or maybe because of some racial difference, they looked more adult than I did, and they probably saw me as the younger one too.

“So? What do we have to do to get praised by Kururu-chan?”

Swindlers who disregarded the authority of the lord and loitered in front of the mansion.

It seemed that, at the very least, I had to revise that initial impression.

Kururu, a strong-willed beauty persecuted for carrying beastfolk blood, who still served dutifully as Iiria’s attendant and, for all her grumbling, fed these homeless fellows, was apparently something like an idol to young swindlers who had failed to walk the straight path in life.

Even so, they were proper swindlers.

And the fact that they occupied the most conspicuous spot in the busiest square in town seemed to mean they were minor powers in the underworld of shady occupations in this town.

From what I heard, they were even the bosses of the children who worked as pickpockets and snatch thieves.

Which was why, when it came to information about town, they claimed to know everything from a stingy baker cheating on weights to what Nodon had eaten for dinner the previous night.

“Though when it comes to Kururu-chan and beastfolk, they notice right away if you tail them, so we don’t know as much there.”

When I asked them to gather information on how often townspeople paid taxes, to whom, and how much, the young men exchanged glances with one another, left one person behind, and scattered into town.

That remaining one was a young man named Marks, who seemed to be their leader, at least nominally.

“If there’s ever something you don’t want us finding out, ask that Kengo guy—the human-beastfolk one—for help. He knows really well how to shake us off. We don’t have eyes in beastfolk territory.”

Marks’s words reminded me of the night we had tested the synthetic magic stone. Kengo had chosen the stone dumping ground inhabited only by beastfolk, and now it was clear that had been the optimal choice.

And as for human-beastfolk, I thought it was a very fitting nickname for Kengo.

“So Iiria-chan is finally trying to stand up as a proper lord, huh?”

Naturally, Marks and the others had been curious why we suddenly wanted to gather information about taxes.

We could have ordered them to do it without telling them anything, but anyone was more motivated if they knew why they were working.

So I had explained that Iiria had her reasons and had resolved to take the town’s economy back from Nodon’s hands.

And Marks and the others had reacted even more strongly to that explanation than I had expected.

“We’re all for it too. Iiria-chan’s the only one who donates to the orphanage, after all.”

Leaning against the wall, speaking with me while still shooting sharp glances around the square from time to time, Marks’s words made my eyes widen a little.

“Did you think we all came from nice respectable homes?”

Noticing my look, Marks smiled with a tired expression.

“We used to live fighting stray dogs and crows for food, but after Iiria-chan and the others came here, things got a lot better.”

What little tax revenue there was had gone straight out as soon as it came in.

At the top of the expense list Iiria had rattled off had been the orphanage.

“She still gives food to my little brothers all the time. The only part I haven’t really been able to live up to is when she tells me to get a proper job.”

As Marks gave a wry smile, there was a scar on the right side of his jaw that sometimes surfaced depending on how the light hit it.

Looking closely, I could see many old scars on his hands too.

“But if we disappeared from in front of this mansion, weird creeps would have a free pass. It used to be pretty bad, you know.”

“To this place?”

Were they trying to make some selfish excuse for their scams?

I thought that for a moment, but what Marks said next was something much more typical of this world.

“It was about five years ago, I think, when those girls came here. Both Iiria-chan and Kururu-chan were still really just girls back then. They were thrown into a place like this all alone, with no allies and no acquaintances. And since both of them were cute, from the perspective of greasy craftsmen and merchant guild bosses, they were just helpless little rabbits… maybe a puppy and a kitten. Well, whatever you call them, that’s what they were.”

I felt where the conversation was going, and it must have shown on my face.

Seeing how unaccustomed I was to this sort of thing, Marks gave me an almost gentle wry smile and shrugged.

“Don’t worry, it ends happily ever after.”

I had my doubts, but Marks had said this earlier.

If they disappeared, weird creeps would get through unchecked.

“There were people who tried to threaten Iiria-chan, trick her, butter her up, and exploit her position as lord, and of course there were those who more directly tried to lay hands on them too. Kids with both human and beastfolk blood are popular in certain circles, you know.”

Every time Kururu’s fang brushed her lip, it made my heart beat strangely fast, so hearing that almost made me feel as though I myself were being accused.

“Five years ago, we were still kids ourselves, not even fully grown. We could manage a decent ambush or two, but if the grown thugs those bastards hired glared at us, we were done for. So whenever some creep crossed this doorway, we’d contact his business rivals who were hungry for dirt on him.”

The enemy of my enemy was my friend.

Marks and the others had skillfully used the town’s balance of power to protect what mattered to them.

“I’d like to call us the royal guard, but really we were more like a mercenary band that just showed up on its own.”

It was only when he said that and smiled in embarrassment that I could glimpse the boy he must once have been.

“And the most suspicious guy by far to pass through those doors up till now was that Kengo fellow.”

Marks smiled only with his mouth, his eyes fixed sharply on me.

“But honestly, stranger things started happening after you showed up. Like Kururu-chan making a terrifying face while shaving magic stones late into the night.”

Apparently they had known about that too.

“You work for the Nodon Company, right? Five years ago, that bastard was the one who refused to give up until the very end on laying hands on Iiria-chan and the others.”

Nodon’s fondness for women was apparently notorious, and he had laid hands freely even on the daughters of households he held the upper hand over in business.

The reactions Iiria and Kururu had shown when they learned I worked for Nodon seemed to stem partly from things like that in the past as well.

“So I figured you were probably throwing impossible demands at Kururu-chan and licking your lips over some scheme to force yourself on her too… but it didn’t really feel like that. Especially the more we watched you, the less you seemed like one of Nodon’s people or his lackeys. Which just made you harder to figure out.”

I caught my breath at the words we watched you.

But Marks looked exasperated by my reaction.

“There’s no way a guy who visits the grave of some drifter who died at the unloading dock could be evil, right?”

The cemetery was supposed to be at the edge of town, a deserted place… or so I had thought.

“You stood out like crazy. And you went to visit Torun too, didn’t you? He’s one of the better kids among the little brothers, second only to Yoshu.”

Yoshu was the bright boy from the orphanage working at the Nodon Company, and Torun was the name of the boy with the broken leg.

“He already ate the bread you gave him right away, but apparently he still hasn’t touched the dried meat and is keeping it.”

I understood what Marks’s smile meant without him needing to say more.

That visit had been partly for my own sake, but it seemed Torun had been happy about it too.

“Kururu-chan’s behavior was a mystery, and Iiria-chan suddenly waking up to her role as lord is a mystery too. All of that started after you showed up.”

Marks stared at me steadily.

But it was a strange look, not quite the same as suspicion.

“Well, you did come back from the mines, after all. To us, it’d honestly be easier to believe you’re some kind of angel in human form.”

If I really were some supernatural being, I probably would not cower every time Kururu glared at me.

“Today, Iiria-chan and Kururu-chan had the most forward-looking expressions I’ve seen on them in a long time.”

Marks paid close attention to people.

And people were a kind of mirror.

When the faces of my coworkers in the previous world had begun to look worn and grim, that had also been my own face.

“If Iiria-chan says she’s collecting taxes, it can’t be out of greed.”

“Of course not.”

When I emphasized that point, Marks waved a hand as if to say he already understood. We would recover the proper taxes into Iiria’s hands, use that as leverage to take control of the town back from Nodon, and then Iiria would be able to manage the territory properly, while we would secure a stable life in this town.

When I had first explained it that way, the faces Marks and the others made had, at best, been the faces of sober men listening to the ramblings of a drunk.

“It might just be some plain-looking guy like you who ends up changing this rotten town after all.”

Most people lived believing the world as it stood before their eyes was simply the way things were.

I couldn’t talk big either, since it had taken my environment literally turning into another world and setting my rear on fire before I finally stood up.

But now that I had uncovered the secret of magic stones, I held the key to changing the shape of the world.

“Let’s see what you can do.”

Marks said that and pushed himself off the wall he had been leaning against.

His companions were coming back from across the square.