A Strange Man, You Say, Madam?

The twins’ questions continued unabated even after the sun went down.

After all, they had two mouths between them. Even when one grew thirsty from asking too many questions and stopped to drink some water, the other would simply take over.

Just as Tōru sighed, beginning to feel thoroughly exhausted, help arrived from an unexpected direction.

Someone began pounding forcefully on the room’s door, and a familiar voice called out from the other side.

“Euphie! Mary! I hear you’ve brought some suspicious man into your room. Open this door!”

It was Harran, the de facto chairman of the Ubaz Merchant Company.

Tōru looked at the twins and pointed at himself, silently asking whether he was the suspicious man in question. Both twins simultaneously pointed back at him and nodded.

“What should I do?”

“Just ignore him. If he tries to force his way in, knock him flying.”

“Got it.”

“—Hey! Are you listening to me!?”

Harran was growing increasingly agitated on the other side of the door.

As Tōru began humming along to the steady rhythm of the pounding, the twins found it amusing and retrieved a stringed instrument and a woodwind instrument from the room’s storage area.

Once they started playing, Harran apparently realized that his knocking was providing the beat for their performance. Frustrated, he delivered a powerful kick to the door.

“…You bastards are making a fool of me!”

“Boss, give it a rest. It’s already nighttime. The neighbors will hear.”

Hearing someone address Harran as “Boss” and try to stop him, Tōru listened carefully to the voices outside the door.

Apparently, the attempt at persuasion succeeded, and Harran and his companions moved away.

“Was that one of the Demon Centipede’s higher-ups who just stopped Harran?”

When Tōru asked, the twins, who had begun playing Polovtsian Dances, nodded simultaneously.

The one plucking the strings spoke.

“That was Wenz, the Demon Centipede’s clan leader and a Rank B adventurer.”

“Didn’t sound like he was wearing a magical prosthetic arm or leg.”

“…You can tell that without even seeing him?”

The twins stared at Tōru in puzzlement.

Tōru pointed toward his ears.

“You can tell from the footsteps, can’t you? Magical prosthetic legs make a harder sound, and someone wearing a magical prosthetic arm has their center of gravity shifted toward that side.”

“That’s amazing. We couldn’t tell anything like that.”

Tōru had casually lied through his teeth, but the twins were none the wiser. Impressed by his explanation, they continued playing their instruments while answering his questions.

“The Demon Centipede is a clan of approximately twenty members, nearly all of whom wear magical prosthetic arms or legs.”

“However, its leadership consists of a five-member Rank B adventurer party led by Wenz, and all five have their limbs intact.”

“The clan was founded a few months before our parents died and Harran took over the management of the Ubaz Merchant Company.”

“To join the clan, an adventurer must have lost an arm below the elbow or a leg below the knee.”

“Wenz and his companions claim they founded the clan to ‘create a place for those who have lost their limbs but know no way to live other than fighting.’”

It was certainly an admirable reason for founding an organization.

Adventuring was a profession in which injuries were unavoidable. Since adventurers often fought outside town, it wasn’t uncommon for wounds to deteriorate so badly that amputation was the only option by the time they returned.

However, the twins’ expressions as they spoke about the Demon Centipede contained not the slightest trace of respect.

Tōru felt much the same way.

If the clan’s stated purpose was genuine, there was no reason its members should be equipped with such shoddily made magical prosthetics.

“This morning, the Demon Centipede adventurer who picked a fight with me was wearing a badly made magical prosthetic arm.”

Apparently, this was information the twins already knew, as neither showed any particular surprise.

“The lower-ranking members of the Demon Centipede wear crudely constructed magical prosthetic arms and legs.”

“Some people have suggested that they simply use cheap, disposable equipment for everyday activities. However, they continue wearing those inferior prosthetics even when they leave town.”

It seemed the twins had also noticed the poor quality of the Demon Centipede’s equipment.

Tōru had spent the entire day accompanying them as their bodyguard, and they had barely left their room. They must have been investigating the Demon Centipede long before he arrived.

After spending the day with them, Tōru understood that these two were far more than ordinary sheltered young ladies. Their privileged upbringing undoubtedly played a part, but their intelligence went well beyond that. They accumulated knowledge across a wide range of subjects, reasoned logically, investigated whatever information they needed, and carefully planned the steps required to achieve their objectives.

Rather than simply fleeing from Harran, these two had been deliberately assembling the means to confront him.

And one of those means was presumably their newly hired bodyguard, Tōru.

If the twins had concluded that violence would be unavoidable from this point onward, then the situation might be far more serious than Tōru had initially suspected.

A mixture of caution and curiosity set his thoughts racing.

Meanwhile, the twins continued playing their instruments, displaying the breadth of their knowledge as though demonstrating an education that spanned worlds.

The sun had set, leaving the room dark. Bathed in the pale moonlight streaming through the window, the twins’ golden hair shimmered as they wove their music together, creating a scene reminiscent of a beautiful painting.

Tōru watched them for a while before speaking just as their performance came to an end.

“…Hey, there’s something I’d like to ask. Is the reason you two haven’t fled this company because you’re investigating Harran and the Demon Centipede?”

The twins smiled faintly, then stood without answering his question.

“Tōru-san, let’s go for a nighttime stroll.”

The twins extended both hands toward him in perfect unison, their smiles resembling those of mischievous fairies.

“We’ll probably have Harran and his friends waiting to greet us the moment we leave this room.”

Harran and his companions would undoubtedly have noticed that the music had stopped. If Tōru were in their position, he would certainly arrange an ambush. Since the twins had skipped lunch and still hadn’t eaten dinner, Harran would likely assume they would eventually come downstairs to the cafeteria.

However, the twins turned toward the room’s window with mischievous expressions, like children about to reveal the workings of a prank.

“You’re a Rank B adventurer, so jumping from the second floor should be easy enough, shouldn’t it?”

“I can do it while carrying both of you.”

“Then let’s do that. By now, the Demon Centipede members should have gathered in the cafeteria, wary of our Rank B bodyguard.”

Apparently, the twins had deliberately skipped their meals to draw Harran and his companions’ attention toward the cafeteria.

As expected, these girls weren’t the least bit innocent.

The twins quietly opened the window, narrowing their eyes in amusement. Then they pressed their hands together in an exaggeratedly adorable pose and turned toward Tōru.

“This will be our very first date.”

“We look forward to having you escort us like a proper gentleman.”

“That’s not part of the services I offer.”

With a wry smile, Tōru enhanced his physical abilities, scooped up a twin in each arm, and leaped out through the window.