The Exorcist

Two days later, 4:44 in the morning.
That grotesquely late hour had been specially requested, by no one else but the client’s own insistence. So Solomon likewise prepared his gear to match the time and stuffed in every last joker card he had saved for emergencies.
Two top-grade invisibility potions and three vials of Doom Poison.

Once fully prepared, Solomon finally left his room and headed for the hotel lobby, where Jean Baudri was waiting.

“The client is a high-ranking official of the City Council.”

Jean Baudri, the clergyman troll overflowing with intellect and refinement, had arrived ahead of time and was waiting for Solomon. And true to form for such a refined troll, he looked as though he had been absorbed in reading until just now, as he set down the book in his hand. Solomon glanced at the title.

[How to Write a Good Paper]

It was a plainer title than expected.

“Which is why he would prefer, as much as possible, not to have his private disgrace exposed publicly.”
“So that’s why he’s dragging innocent people out at this godforsaken hour before dawn and making them run in circles.”
“That is correct.”

Jean Baudri said this as he rose with his trollish bulk. He was not dressed in the suit Solomon had seen him in at the mansion that day. He wore a pitch-black clerical coat and a broad-brimmed clerical hat, a cappello romano, pulled low over his head.
It was unmistakably the stereotypical uniform of an exorcist.

“Well then, shall we go.”

The troll moved through the Door Room. What was remarkable was that even though it was an ordinary-sized door, Jean Baudri passed through it without difficulty. Toward 「Sun Street」 in District 10, which lay beyond the door.

The upscale residential district of the bourgeoisie, one of the two great powers ruling Guild City.
Once they left the hotel and stepped out into the predawn streets, a soft drizzle was falling. It was a night with an inexplicable eeriness to it.

The streets in the hush of four in the morning were beyond merely quiet. Because of the drizzling rain, a thick gray fog had mixed with Guild City’s characteristic smog, and the scattered gas lamps lining the way gave off a pale lemon-colored glow like watercolor.
Toward that place, two figures… no, a man and a troll were making their way.
Before long, they found themselves facing the Molesworth family’s villa mansion, rising imposingly through the gray fog as if to overwhelm them.

‘It really nails the atmosphere.’

Between the drizzling strands of rain, Solomon looked up at the mansion. The villa lay sunken in deep darkness, with only a single second-floor window lit.
Even so, the light leaking through the window was far from warm. A lone light burning in the dark. It resembled the lure of an anglerfish in the deep sea, drawing prey in with its glow. That included the curtain’s shadow dancing beneath the ominously flickering light like a hanging body.

It was unmistakably the opening of an occult film. A mansion that looked suspicious at a glance, a girl said to be possessed by an evil spirit, and coming to save them, a clergyman… and even an assassin.

Creeeak.
The moment Solomon opened the door first and stepped into the mansion, Jean Baudri, the troll clergyman, squeezed his absurdly massive body in behind him.

“Welcome…….”

Before them, an old man with a pale bloodless face, apparently the butler, spoke.

“My lord is waiting.”
“……”

The inside of the mansion was luxurious, but the air hung heavy as lead. When they crossed the absurdly grand marble corridor and reached the lobby, a pot-bellied man came hurrying over in a sweat-soaked shirt, as though he had been waiting for them.

“F-finally, the hotel’s……!”

William Molesworth, Director of the City Council Public Health and Quarantine Bureau. The man responsible for the city’s cleanliness and sanitation examined the two of them. He showed no particular surprise at the sight of the troll. If anything, the one that made him blink in apparent surprise was not the troll, but Solomon beside him.

“By the way, the one with you is……?”
“Oh, a trustworthy partner.”
“If you say so…… then I’ll trust him.”

At Jean Baudri’s explanation, Director Molesworth seemed to accept it without much concern.

‘He probably specifically named that troll clergyman for the commission himself.’

Solomon calmly understood the situation. In any case, no one would pick a ninth-floor guest, one of the hotel’s acknowledged powerhouses, through some kind of lottery.

“How is your daughter’s condition, Director Molesworth?”

The troll asked as he removed his rain-damp clerical hat, the cappello romano.

“The worst. I called in several exorcists from the Holy Church earlier… they all either went mad or killed themselves.”

As was evident from the troll clergyman standing right here, churches existed in this world too. Setting aside how well faith and belief might protect anyone from the evils of this city.

“Oh, that was not a particularly cost-effective decision from an economic standpoint.”

Jean Baudri said this with a shrug. The director ignored the comment and pointed upward toward the balcony.

“The room at the far right end of the second-floor corridor. Please… handle it quietly. Without leaving a stain on my reputation. If the City Council finds out, my career will be finished that very day!”
“Oh, you need not worry on that point. The hotel’s confidentiality contract is absolute.”

Seeing that the man cared not for his daughter but only for his own preservation, Solomon let out a hollow laugh.

“Well then, shall we go carry out the commission? Director, please wait here.”
“I-I’m counting on you. Please, somehow……!”

The clergyman and the assassin climbed the absurdly grand Y-shaped staircase in the marble lobby and crossed the long corridor. The room at the far right end. As he stepped forward, Solomon flinched at a chill that ran down his spine.

It was not mere cold. Beyond the surrounding temperature suddenly dropping, it was a bleak chill sharp enough to ache in the bones. Frost spread along the marble floor tiles, and before long, white breath escaped with every exhale.
Watching the mist of his breath break apart like dancing smoke in the air, Solomon silently steeled himself.

‘It’s just ahead.’

Creeeak.
Jean Baudri, the troll clergyman, turned the doorknob first. The moment he turned the icy-cold knob, a skin-cutting gale burst from beyond the door.

Whoooong!
Their coat hems fluttering, the two entered the room without concern.

At that moment, the wind stopped. The frost settled, and even the freezing chill that had been enough to make their breath plume white came to an end.

‘This is…….’

At the same time, seeing the scene laid out before him, Solomon frowned faintly.

It was a princess room.
It was the very ideal of a bedroom for an upper-class bourgeois young lady, the kind of room girls everywhere would dream of. Wallpaper filled with a gentle warmth. Lace curtains tinged faintly pink fluttered at the window, and on the luxurious vanity sat a large mirror, a carefully kept powder box, and a transparent perfume bottle beside a vase of fresh flowers.

What drew the eye most of all was the gigantic Victorian-style canopy bed in the center of the room.
Four pillars stood beneath a crescent moon shaped arch. Each pillar was intricately carved with rose patterns, and the embossed brass and platinum decorations here and there cast different gleams depending on the angle.
The silk draped between the pillars likewise showed off luxurious embroidery stitched in alternating gold and silver thread.

Beyond that curtain, there was the shadow of a girl.

“Welcome.”

Still seated, the girl moved her hand and drew back the silk curtain hanging between them. At last, the girl herself came into view. Dressed in pure-white lace sleepwear, sitting primly atop the bed.

There was nothing like drool suddenly spilling from her mouth or her neck twisting grotesquely. On the contrary, with a voice clear as a silver bell, the girl smiled gently with an elegance that had lost none of its grace.

Hair too beautiful to be fully described as merely elegant, and skin touched by a faint paleness. A mature beauty more than fitting for a bourgeois young lady. Even so, a trace of youthful softness still showed through. There was even a rosy flush blooming on her cheeks so that she would not seem overly pale or bloodless.
She was truly a girl like a sculpture.

“Are you priests from the Church?”

At the girl’s soft voice, Solomon answered as though it were somebody else’s business.

“No, I’m an assassin from the hotel.”

As an assassin of the hotel who had literally come on commission to eliminate an evil spirit.

“Have you come… to harm me?”
“Yeah. I came to punch a knife-hole through your back.”
“Ah, scary.”

At those words, the girl shrank back as if frightened. She had the sort of fragility that instinctively made one want to protect her, as though she might shatter at any moment.

“I’m so scared… hngh, I’m frightened…… sob, sob.”

Before long, the girl could no longer properly continue speaking and was openly sniffling. Solomon stayed silent. Not because he had been charmed by the girl’s appearance, but because he was not the primary party to this commission in the first place. There was an order to things, and even as a partner, that order was no exception.

“Oh, it appears…….”

And so Jean Baudri, the troll clergyman with his cappello romano pulled low, opened his mouth.

“We seem to need to be a bit more honest with one another.”
“……?”

Solomon thought he was spouting bullshit, but Jean Baudri didn’t care.

“Needless formality, affectation, and persona are the height of inefficiency, socially and economically alike, as they create transaction costs to a frankly unnecessary degree.”
“……”

“So I shall begin by discarding needless ceremony and pretension myself.”

As solemnly as ever, the intelligent and refined troll clergyman continued speaking. The girl looked at him with tearful eyes.
It happened then.

A sound rang out.

Prrrrrrrt!

“Oh, pardon me.”

It was the sound of days-old gas, compressed under high pressure in the troll’s stomach, escaping from that place.

“The gas generation process of my intestinal microbial colony appears to have unexpectedly exceeded critical pressure.”
“……”

It was a bodily sound effect so loud that it was impossible not to understand what it was. In a sense, it was the most ‘troll-like’ sound in the world.
A brief silence. In that room fit for a princess, the troll’s stench… too foul to be described merely as unpleasant, spread like a plague.

“Holy fuck……”

Even from Solomon’s mouth, a curse escaped before he could stop it.
There was something else that could not hold back a curse either.

“Holy fuck……”

From the ‘princess’ before them. No, not from her mouth.
More precisely, her shadow had opened a grotesque maw in the shape of a beast’s jaws and was shouting. As though it were a living thing moving with a will of its own.

“Holy fuck, you troll bastard that ought to be shoved headfirst into a shit pit!!!”
“Oh, you’ve finally shown your true colors.”

It was the voice of the shadow.

[There are a few things in this world that simply cannot be tolerated.
A fairy who can tolerate insults toward her parents but not toward herself, or troll behavior echoing uncouthly through a room decorated for a princess, are good examples.
There’s also an assassin who just can’t pass up an exposed back of the head.]

“You goddamn bastard, my room now fucking reeks like vomit and shit everywhere!! You disgusting fucking troll bastard!! Write my name in your suicide note and kill yourself right now, you candy-ass troll piece of shit……!!”

There stood the princess’s shadow, utterly incapable of holding itself back. And with an impressively foul mouth at that.

“I’ll rip those nauseating, disgusting guts of yours to shreds and carve you up before I kill you……!”

At the same time, the objects all around the room began floating up on their own, though no one had touched them.