Chapter 25

If Kengo, Iiria, and Kururu had successfully gotten through the prospecting matter, then this time the operation was one in which I would be the key.

I had been tormented endlessly by the anxiety of whether I could really pull it off, but soon after leaving the mansion and starting to walk, a strange sense came over me that I simply had to do it.

Following Marks’s lead, we made our way through town while avoiding notice.

By the time we arrived at the Eder Company, my resolve had completely hardened.

With the guidance of a boy from the Eder Company whom Marks had apparently bribed beforehand, we slipped into the company through the back entrance. Crossing the lively loading area from a distance and reaching the office in a more secluded part of the company, Marks straightened his collar sharply and looked at me, tilting his head slightly as if to confirm things.

The moment I nodded, Marks kicked the door open like a common thug.

“Yo, old man Eder.”

Striding broadly into the office, Marks sat himself down on Eder’s desk while the man stared in stunned silence.

“Y-you’re Marks? W-what is this? And the one standing there is…”

Eder turned his gaze toward me and Kururu, and the very next instant, his face looked as though someone had wrapped hands around his throat.

“Looks like you can guess who your guests are.”

My eyes met Eder’s, and he looked like a man trying to swallow a stone.

Of course Eder knew my face, and he noticed the marks where I had been struck. In an instant, he seemed to understand a great deal.

But surprisingly, he showed no sign of resistance.

Perhaps he had heard the rumors that a magician had appeared at Iiria’s side and had expected that sooner or later, it would come to this.

“I hear today’s the day you hand over the taxes you squeezed out of the town to your boss, huh?”

Eder neither denied nor affirmed it, nor did he even wipe the sweat from his face. But it was not because he was brazen. He was simply on the verge of blacking out altogether.

“If you’ve got something to say, say it now. Before your head bursts like one of those stones from the mine.”

In time with that threat, Kururu slowly let her right hand slide out from within the robe.

The way Eder recoiled then was pitiable enough to stir sympathy.

“Hey, old man Eder. You know this guy’s face, don’t you?”

Marks pointed at me.

I stood there without saying anything. My role was to play the pitiful, foolish traitor who had confessed everything about the inner workings. I needed Eder to understand that there was no longer any escape for him.

“I-I was only following orders! It’s true!”

If I had written such an obvious line into the script of one of my games, I think it would have ruined the whole thing.

That said, if I had been in his position, I might well have said the exact same thing.

“If I hadn’t stayed in Nodon’s good graces, I would have been out on the streets! It’s true! It’s not like I wanted to cooperate with him!”

Kururu stood in the middle of the room without saying a single word.

Shaken out of his mind, Eder had half-risen from his chair, then tumbled out of it and collapsed to the floor. Marks remained seated on the desk, looking down at him with a cold smile.

“My sisters and the other girls sure were in your care quite a bit too, weren’t they?”

“T-that was… no, that too was because of Nodon…”

I could not tell what expression Kururu wore beneath the hood.

But even though her ears and tail were surely wrapped tightly in cloth so they would not give her away, it felt as though they might burst out at any moment.

“Well, that depends on how much you cooperate. Whether you accept everything like this one did and cut ties with Nodon, or else…”

Eder puckered his mouth as though he had swallowed a large stone.

I approached him then. What came to mind was my workplace in the previous world. The soul-crushing power harassment, and the coworkers who had ended up in a war of informing on one another just to protect themselves.

Remembering each step I had taken on those mornings when I went to work at that office, which had become a hell on earth, I stepped forward and said this.

“It’ll be easier on you if you just give up.”

Eder’s eyes were nailed to mine as though they were being drawn into them.

Then his shoulders sagged.

“Under the desk…”

“Huh?”

“Under the floorboards… there’s a ledger…”

Marks looked down at his feet and got off the desk.

“Please… please, at least spare my life…”

“If you’re going to beg for your life, do it at Iiria-sama’s mansion.”

At Marks’s words, Eder seemed to go completely blank.

From inside her hood, Kururu stared at him without moving. She looked calm enough, but her hands were clenched so tightly they had turned white.

She probably had mountains of things she wanted to say, and surely wanted to drive a kick into him too.

Or perhaps, now that one of Nodon’s faction, which she had long thought impossible to defy, stood before her, she was fighting the urge to snuff out his life altogether.

But we had discussed it beforehand. No killing. Just as, during the magic stone processing experiments, we had discussed that there would be no stealing.

If she chose to, Kururu now possessed enough power to turn this town to ash. She had probably only brought along a small fragment of magic stone to use as a threat, but even if she had hidden a synthetic magic stone engraved with a magic circle, I would not have known.

Still, Kururu would not do that.

It seemed that Kururu noticed the gaze I turned toward her, something almost like a prayer.

I could not see her expression because of the hood, but I felt as though she smiled a little, and the tension left her hands as well.

While that was happening, Marks pulled up the floorboard, and from beneath it emerged a bundle of documents bound in leather.

“For a villain, he sure is diligent about keeping the numbers.”

Eder had served as the pipeline through which the town’s collected taxes were funneled back to the Nodon Company.

Since he was in the dangerous position of being the first one who would be dragged into the spotlight if anything happened, his claim that Nodon had forced him into it was, well, probably not that far from the truth.

But with the wealth and power it brought him, he had done whatever he pleased.

A merchant ought to know that one day, the scales would balance.

“That’s an insane amount… If this is theft, not even a hundred hangings would be enough to pay for it.”

Marks grinned crookedly and snapped the document bundle shut.

“So, that means you’ve got one more job to do for us now.”

Eder, who had been dazed, returned to reality.

A reality filled with pain and suffering, and one that could no longer be avoided.

“You understand what the smart choice is here, right?”

Surrounded by Marks, Kururu, and me, Eder placed his hands on the floor and swore to cooperate.

---

To make sure Eder kept his promise, Marks kept threatening him thoroughly afterward. The shop boys and servants at the company had already been bribed, so there was no point in trying to run; if he ran to Nodon, he would be abducted immediately and subjected to torments worse than death, and so on.

After Marks had made Eder understand the consequences in no uncertain terms, we left the Eder Company behind.

Besides getting him to explain the details of the tax collection, Eder had also been given another important role to play. Nodon’s hide was probably thicker than a cow’s, and he had enough wealth and nerve to insist that white was black if it suited him. That meant that simply thrusting the ledgers taken from Eder in his face would not be enough to make him take responsibility for the fraudulent tax collection. If he strongly insisted that he had never received such money, how could we prove otherwise?

So, in order to force an admission that the lawless taxation had really occurred, we decided on a scheme that would involve Eder as well.

Up until the moment we entered the company, I had worried whether Eder would actually do what we said, but thanks to Kururu’s intimidating presence as a wandering magician and the menace Marks carried as someone who lived in the back alleys, it seemed things would work out somehow.

It was while I was heading back in relief.

“You’re amazing, you know that?”

“Huh?”

At this stage it would be bad if anyone saw my face, so I was still walking home through the back alleys in my criminal style, but then Marks suddenly praised me.

“Eder’s no small-time crook himself, but to make him shake that badly… Were you ever captured in a war and tortured or something?”

“…”

While I stood there at a loss, Kururu silently came to stand beside me and peered at my face from beneath her hood.

For the first time, with eyes that looked worried.

“So you’ve gone through some terrible things too. If you want, I’ll listen.”

And then she lightly patted me on the back, as if encouraging me.

I had no idea what that was about, but only by the time we reached the mansion did I finally realize it was because of the expression I had made while threatening Eder.

I had certainly meant to make him think resistance was useless, but had I really looked like that…?

Maybe this world was harsh, but the previous one had been harsh in its own way too. Especially since Japanese working conditions were apparently so abnormal that even the word karoshi—death from overwork—had become English as it was.

Still, since it seemed to have helped things go well, I decided to think of it as a kind of severance pay. Well, I had ended up here before I ever got the chance to submit my resignation, though.

“The next one was the magic stone processor, right?”

“Before that, we need to get a signature on the magic stone transaction papers.”

The reason we had gone to the Eder Company on this very day was because it was also the day of the magic stone transaction with the Bax Company. It was the day when sufficiently large bait would be laid out to hook Nodon.

“Iiria-sama is…”

Kururu, having removed the hood of her robe and taken out the beast ears that had been bound down with cloth, flicked them a few times as she looked toward the courtyard.

When I looked from a distance as well, I could see Iiria being swarmed by several sparrows.

“I’ll sign it. The handwriting is the same.”

“…”

I thought she was spoiling her mistress, the territory’s lord, a little too much, but it was also true that I did not want to wake Iiria while she was sleeping. Kururu went into the next room and brought back a quill and an inkpot.

“Do you think Eder will handle it properly?”

On the dining hall table lay Eder’s secret ledger.

With this, even if Nodon was still out of reach, we could at least accuse Eder of illegally collecting taxes. If we appealed to the judicial officials in the provincial capital under Iiria’s name, Eder could be hanged, so the pitiful master of the company was now like a carp laid out on a cutting board.

“I don’t think he can escape while avoiding Marks-san and the others keeping watch, so he’ll carry it through properly.”

That same Marks had probably gone back to sitting in front of the mansion and was taking a nap there now that one job was done.

“True.”

Saying that, Kururu smoothly signed the transaction papers.

“I pray this will be the final transaction with that pig bastard.”

Even after sprinkling sand over the ink to dry it faster, Kururu kept staring at the papers.

Then she lifted her face and said mischievously.

“Want to stay and eat?”

A little of one sharp canine tooth showed against her lip.

“Before that, I think the kitchen probably needs cleaning.”

Instantly Kururu made the face of a child who had just remembered forgotten homework.

“I’ll help.”

When I rolled up my sleeves, Kururu looked like she was about to say something, then faltered.

“?”

When I looked at her, the girl who also served as the mansion’s attendant merely shrugged her slight shoulders.

“You’re not a guest, after all.”

She stretched out an arm and rolled up her sleeves too.

“You’re one of us. Help with the washing up.”

Kururu’s beautiful green eyes narrowed.

It felt like the gesture a cat made to show affection, but that was probably not knowledge I needed.