Deathwish (2)

He had no idea why the Holy Kingdom’s Second Princess was staking her claim on him even more thickly than before, but the work in front of him still had to be done.

Naturally, the first step was to go find Noelle the moment morning came. His every move was in her hands, after all, and given what this woman was capable of, slipping out in secret was out of the question too.

“You want to go out?”
“I don’t think I said anything that strange…?”

Noelle narrowed her eyes as she asked, and Aiden shot back, bewildered. A person was allowed to step outside now and then. There was no call to look at him as if he’d said something outrageous.

“Is there, perhaps, something about your present life that dissatisfies you.”
“Sorry?”
“If there is anything you need, say as much as you like. If it is something I can do, I will do whatever it takes for you.”
“No, nothing’s uncomfortable…”

Loafing around beside Noelle while she worked at military headquarters day in and day out was honestly an ordeal in its own right. Anyone who saw him would take him for a live-in son-in-law and nothing more. So that was the reason he gave her.

“…Is that not a good thing for you, Aiden?”

“…”

“You do nothing whatsoever, and I still pay your wages right on schedule, with food, clothing and lodging all taken care of?”

“…”

She had a point. For something he’d only brought up as an excuse, it came out sounding rather odd.

When Aiden went on standing there in silence, Noelle heaved a deep sigh and swept back her hair.

“I had no particular intention of locking you up in headquarters forever, so it makes no difference to me… but take a guard with you if you can.”
“A guard?”
“Granted, you have shown me what you can do, so I need not assume you would come to harm easily. It is only that you have an air about you, Aiden, of dragging incidents along in your wake.”

“…”

“Which is why, frankly, I would rather you did not go out at all.”

He agreed. And nobody wanted out of this arrangement more than he did.

“…I’m only going out for some air. Wouldn’t a guard just get in the way?”

Considering what he was actually going out to do, though, saddling himself with a guard was a poor idea. He was hardly headed anywhere he could hold his head up about.

“No, even so, a guard—”
“I need some time to myself.”

“…”

It was the kind of excuse a husband worn down by more than ten years of marriage might give, but Noelle only sighed deeply, said nothing, and raised no particular objection. She had, after all, been glued to his side nearly all day long.

“Then off you go.”

Even so, he hadn’t expected permission to come that fast. The words came so breezily that Aiden could only blink at her in a daze.

“No bodyguards, no listening in, none of it, so go and do whatever you like. Take this with you instead.”

With that, Noelle handed him something: a switch about half the size of his palm, shaped like a personal security alarm.

“What is this?”
“A tracking device. We cannot have you running off before the wedding.”

“…”

“I am joking.”
“…I wasn’t going to run in the first place.”

He might well run, but she’d probably chase him to the ends of the earth anyway.

Noelle smiled, pleased with his answer, and went on.

“It is a signal beacon. Press it the moment anything turns even slightly dangerous, and I will come running at once.”
“…You’d go that far?”

Nobody knew better than Aiden, who watched from beside her every day, how crushing a workload she carried. Every one of those tasks bore critically on the running of the state. Was he really important enough for her to fling the whole lot aside?

“I am the one who brought you here, so sending you home safely once the contract ends is my part to play as well. It is not ‘that far’. It is simply a matter of course.”

With that, Noelle turned her eyes back to her documents, and Aiden looked at her, his own eyes widening a little.

…This person, really.

Setting aside the small matter of abducting a man out of nowhere, she did seem to take her responsibilities seriously, at least. For a kidnapper, the way she fussed over every little thing was almost parental.

“Thank you.”

She was a good person, truly. The thought came to him out of nowhere.

“I’ve been kidnapped by a weird person, Dad.”

…Then again, ever since she’d abducted him, it was hard to sum her up any other way.

The first thing he did once he was clear of headquarters was, naturally, to contact his family.

“What on earth is that supposed to mean?”

His father’s startled voice came down the line.

“Did you borrow money off the mafia or something? How many times did I tell you not to get tangled up with criminals like that—”
“You and I are criminals too, Dad.”

Hard to believe that a man who talked like such an upstanding citizen made his living as a thief. Then again, this was the man who had drilled into him from childhood that he must never, ever swim out of his depth.

Aiden let out a deep sigh and went on.

“I did get kidnapped, but it’s not that serious. I’ve been kidnapped somewhere I get a full stomach and a warm bed, and I’m getting paid for it, thank you very much.”
“…What in the world is that?”
“It’s a whole thing. I can’t explain right now, but believe it or not, it’s all true. This is the most expensive neighborhood in the imperial capital, and here I am living in it.”
“Can’t they kidnap me along with you?”

…And this man called himself his father.

Still, if his father knew what kind of seat Aiden was sitting in right now, he’d very likely faint dead away. Better to save it for later, once everything had settled down, and tell it like a war story.

“Anyway, Dad.”

Unreliable as his father was,

there were still parts of him Aiden could trust and leave things to.

“Do you know anyone in the imperial capital’s black market?”

A brief silence seeped down the line, followed before long by a deep sigh.

“You’re going to go work there too?”
“There’s some information I need to gather. I’ve got no connections here, so I need an introduction. Where should I go?”
“Billy Hagen, at the tool shop. The password is the crescent moon and the sun.”

A petty back-alley thief he might be, but a man who’d fed himself that way for decades inevitably built up a ‘network’ through the work, and it was nothing to scoff at.

Aiden answered with a snort of a laugh.

“That’s cute. Got it.”
“Aiden.”
“Mm?”
“Take care of yourself. Don’t forget that Sicella and I are always on your side. If anything happens, tell your family.”
“…I know.”

These two, at least, would be on Aiden’s side until the end of the world. That was exactly why he was struggling like this: so he could live in peace again with his dad and his little sister.

“…Haah.”

And, honestly.

Calling the place he was walking through right now a struggle was no exaggeration in the slightest. The imperial capital’s underworld gave off a vicious air, every bit as its name suggested. Wherever he looked, there was nobody but people trailing the reek of something rotten.

He had gone out of his way to come here anyway, and for one reason.

Act 1 starts here.

Act 1, the Fissure in the Imperial Capital, told of large-scale unrest and treason breaking out inside the Empire’s capital. That much he knew for certain. He also knew what to watch for first.

Illegally trafficked weapons get dumped onto the black market in bulk.

Large-scale unrest and treason naturally called for a trained army, and the supplies to arm one didn’t fall out of the sky. The usual way was to smuggle them in through some dark route, and Act 1 opened with the ‘protagonist’ getting tangled up in an incident involving weapons trafficked exactly like that.

“…”

Right. The protagonist.

The system windows called Noelle and the Holy Kingdom’s Second Princess the scenario’s most crucial people, and true to the label, they were the ‘most crucial’ figures entangled with the protagonist. Neither of them was the protagonist, though.

The center of this world, who moved the story axis of the entire game. The savior who would, in the end, save the world. Someone like that had to exist somewhere.

Had to, without fail.

Because they’re my express ticket out of this scenario.

What Aiden had to do now was find them and dump every last burden he’d been handed onto their shoulders. An extra like him ought to vanish, and the person who truly deserved to shine ought to be put up on the stage. Being the Lionhearted’s groom, a scenario to save the world: every last one of those headaches.

To pull that off, he needed at least a rough outline of the incident set to break out a few days from now. If this world had a protagonist, they would be tangled up wherever something like that happened.

…

But.

What if there wasn’t one?

What if, just as nothing had turned up in the records he’d searched before, they didn’t exist at all?

…No, nothing’s certain yet.

Confirming even that much was exactly why he’d come all the way out here.

Here it is.

His thoughts carried him right to his destination: Billy’s Workshop. Even by black-market standards, it was a remarkably plain name.

When he stepped through the door, a middle-aged man who looked as though greeting a customer had never once crossed his mind glanced over at him lazily.

“The crescent moon and the sun.”

At the password, the shop owner scratched his cheek and answered.

“Information runs fifty gold. What is it you want to know?”
“I’ll give you five hundred, so scrape together everything on here, and do it properly.”

Aiden set a bundle of papers he’d prepared in advance down on the counter with a thud. They concerned the weapons circulating through the black market. Even a rough grasp of that flow would make it easy enough to sketch out the deal sites, the sellers and the buyers.

The shop owner leafed through the documents, running his eyes over them, and before long a snicker escaped him along with a snort.

“Sticking your hands into information that’ll get you killed. Dangerous work suits you, does it?”
“…I don’t have a choice.”
“Pity.”

The irony of having to plant himself in the middle of exactly that kind of situation in order to avoid it. While Aiden cried on the inside, the man put another question to him.

“What’s the deadline?”
“As fast as you can manage. How long will it take?”
“Tomorrow’s plenty. You keep your promise about the five hundred gold.”

His father’s acquaintance, all right. The man handled business in a way worth trusting.

Aiden nodded along and browsed the shop at his leisure while the man moved the documents from the counter to his own workbench. This black-market tool shop in the imperial capital clearly carried far more goods than the magic-device shop in the outskirts’ back alleys where he used to operate. The first item to catch his eye was proof enough of that.

…Why on earth is something like this for sale on a black market?

As a ‘man in the trade’, Aiden recognized it at a glance: a variable mask and a voice modulator, both powered by a magic stone.

They were perfectly suited to crime, but strictly speaking, government agencies had been the ones researching them. They had no business sitting out in the open in a place like this, and outside the imperial capital, you’d never so much as lay eyes on top-grade goods like these.

“Buying? I guarantee the quality, but there’s no haggling.”
“…I don’t have the money.”

In truth, Noelle had made his ‘signing fee’ so generous that he had a fair bit of pocket money, but he clearly wasn’t going to need to spend it on something like this anytime soon. A situation that called for ‘deceiving’ someone with gear like this wasn’t likely to come along easily, even in his current position.

“…”

Which is to say.

That was what he would have done, if a certain sight outside the window hadn’t caught his eye.

“…?”

Aiden craned his neck and looked at what was happening right in front of the shop.

Something about it.

Gave him a sense of déjà vu.

Out there was a ‘sight’ he’d probably better not just leave alone…

“…!”

And then, the instant he made out that shape clearly.

His eyes slowly widened.

The instant he read the message that had surfaced along with that sight, Aiden’s face drained of color.

…No.
No.
No, surely not.

Surely this couldn’t be the situation he was picturing right now. With that thought, Aiden checked the contents of this ‘Sub Quest’, his pupils trembling.

“…”

He dragged a hand down his face, eyes gone slack.

…I don’t want to live.

Considering what he’d have to do from here on, it was a natural sentiment.

“Let me ask you something.”
“What is it?”
“This thing. How much is it?”

What Aiden pointed at as he spoke was the mask and voice modulator he’d waved off as too expensive a moment ago.

The black market being what it was, all sorts of people turned up there, but there were a few things everyone avoided by unspoken agreement. Standing out, bringing valuables along, coming in defenseless…

On that count.

The small girl standing there now was no different from prey bleeding freely in the middle of a pack of sharks.

Everything about her prompted the same question: what was someone this highborn doing in a place like this? She wore a finely tailored suit, unmistakably an artisan’s painstaking, stitch-by-stitch work, with matching gloves and boots. Selling the outfit alone would cover an ordinary citizen’s living expenses for a month without breaking a sweat. However you looked at her, from whatever angle, she did not belong here.

“—Walking around dressed like that, nothing good’s gonna come of it, little lady.”

And when those elements came together, this sort turned up the way iron filings are drawn to a magnet.

A pack of ruffians wearing furtive smiles. Each of them held a weapon that would be hard to call good quality, but here and there among them a few carried small firearms like pistols. For ordinary people without supernatural powers, that alone was a fine excuse to pretend they hadn’t seen these men, and this was the black market, a lawless zone to begin with. A scene like this wasn’t even worth a second glance. Sure enough, as the pack closed in around the girl, nobody anywhere made a move to interfere.

“This place isn’t gentle enough for you to go poking around in pretty clothes like those. Did you come here without even knowing what kind of place it is?”
“Isn’t it the black market?”

“…”

The answer came back almost cheerfully, and the man who’d spoken found the words stuck in his throat. Anyone listening would think she’d finished lunch and gone out for an afternoon picnic…

“…Didn’t think you’d be stupid enough to come here knowing that. What were you thinking, coming all the way—”
“To enjoy my hobby.”

The answer had gone off the rails and kept right on going, and the ruffians all went blank at once.

“What?”
“It’s my first time at the imperial capital’s black market. I’ve been to the bad part of town back home plenty of times, though.”

The girl was still smiling away as she said it.

“Could you help me out a bit? You lot look about right for it.”

The ruffians traded looks, and before long, snorts of laughter leaked out among them one after another.

“Sure. We’ll help. Course we’ll help. Let’s head over that way first and hear a bit about what we can help with, yeah?”

Whoever said it pointed at a back alley tucked out of sight even by black-market standards. No doubt the picture was filling itself in second by second in their heads: strip the girl of everything she owned, then take her hostage on top of that and shake down those precious parents of hers for more.

And even with a crisis that dire right in front of her, the smile on the girl’s face only grew brighter, as though she were genuinely relieved to have found people who really would ‘help’.

“Let’s hear it nice and slow. Hm? We’ll have plenty of time from here on—”

The man went on, his face no longer able to hide what he was thinking, until a hand seized him hard by the shoulder and cut him off.

“Which bastard is it!”

He spun around snarling, and flinched at once.

The man who had grabbed his shoulder had, quite simply, a nightmare of a face. Skin as lumpy as if someone had carved it with a knife in painstaking detail, a scar running from forehead to throat, a hooked nose; he was blind in one eye, and half his lip was gone. The sheer hideousness of it would turn even a criminal who’d been through fire and water white as a sheet on sight…

“Clear off.”

Even his voice was bizarre, like a knife scraping sheet iron, enough that every man gathered there took a step back just from hearing it.

“Wh-what, you want a fight, you son of a—”
“Don’t make me say it twice.”

The voice dropped another notch. As that ghastly mug came closer, someone let out a strangled yelp.

“Last warning. Clear off.”

“…”

Unmistakably, oratory passionate enough to move the heart. The proof was that every last ruffian there got the message and scattered in a rout without a word of backtalk…

“—You too.”

Next, the man who had displayed such splendid eloquence turned to the girl and spoke as if spitting the words out through his teeth.

“Get yourself home, quick. This is no place for the likes of you.”

With that, he turned coolly on his heel without a trace of regret, a man whose business was done and who was going on his way.

“Ahjussi.”¹

But the girl’s voice came right after him and caught him by the scruff of the neck.

“You know who I am, don’t you?”

His hands and feet seemed to freeze, and Aiden, still in his ‘disguise’, slowly came to a halt.

“…What’s that supposed to—”
“You didn’t come to save me, did you?”

“…”

“I can pretty much tell.”

She was right, no doubt about it.

What Aiden had stepped in to save wasn’t this girl who ‘looked’ defenseless but the ‘pack of armed ruffians’. Or rather, that was how it stood once you considered who this girl was.

…Those fellows just now had been sticking their necks into a lion’s maw, and Aiden had grabbed them by the collar and hauled them back out.

“That won’t do. Here I was finally about to have some fun, and you had to go and ruin the whole thing.”

“…”

“I could’ve handled those guys as ‘self-defense’. Hm?”

Hands clasped behind her back, her face still beaming, the girl came toward Aiden at a quick little trot. Her voice was sweet, like jade beads rolling across a tray, but listening to it, Aiden felt as though his blood vessels were drying up and cracking.

“What are you going to do?”
“…Do about what, exactly?”
“Take responsibility, obviously. You wrecked my leisure time.”

“…”

“I had a little room to spare now that I’d come all the way to the Empire, so I carved out the time and grabbed a good opportunity, you know.”

Damn it.
Goddamn it all.

While Aiden chewed over those words one after another inside, the girl kept talking, her face still beaming. He knew that face from memory as well.

The Holy Kingdom’s Second Princess. A crucial figure of the main scenario, and of the Holy Kingdom’s side within it.

And this figure, of all people,

“Hey, would you keep me company for a bit?”

said it in a tone that made it sound like nothing much at all.