A Delicious Turn Of Events

After leaving the restaurant, the twins headed straight for the inn where Demon Centipede was staying, apparently having researched its location beforehand.

The inn in question was in southwestern Darandy.

As one might expect of an establishment capable of accommodating all twenty members of Demon Centipede, it was quite a large building. It stood three stories tall, was shaped like a U, and even had a courtyard. Despite all that, its room rates were relatively affordable.

Since they had no intention of questioning the employees, they decided to circle the inn and begin their inquiries. Just as they were about to do so, a man with disheveled hair emerged from the darkness.

“Heh heh heh, little ladies, you shouldn’t be wandering into dark places like this—Gwah!?”

Tōru shoved the approaching man aside from outside his field of vision, then cornered him against a wall.

“Hey, old man, I’ve got a few questions for you. Whoa, don’t try running away. We just want to talk. Don’t make this difficult.”

He planted a hand against the wall right beside the man’s face to block his escape, grabbed him by the collar, and pinned him against the wall.

The term honey trap crossed Tōru’s mind, but he decided not to think too deeply about it.

“Got him!”

He turned to look at the twins behind him.

The twins had their hands over their mouths, looking astonished.

“An authentic Japanese kabedon!”

“It’s so much more impressive than when the two of us tried it!”

“Or was it katsudon?”

“I’m sure the appropriate phrase for a moment like this is ‘I could eat three bowls of rice’!”

“In other words, it’s a rice bowl dish!”

“An authentic Japanese katsudon!”

“Winner winner, chicken dinner!”

“Seriously, why the hell would I be doing a kabedon on some homeless old guy? That’s just depressing. No way. I’m not acknowledging this as a kabedon, got it? If you’ve got questions, hurry up and ask them.”

For that matter, why did the twins, whose knowledge of Japan came from books, even know internet slang? Perhaps they had read a book about video games.

In any case, Tōru gestured toward the homeless man with his chin to get things moving, and the twins, who had been chattering excitedly, finally addressed him.

“Now then, we’d like you to answer a few questions. We’ll pay you one silver coin for your trouble, so please answer honestly—”

Together with the twins, Tōru caught another two or three homeless people, bombarded them with questions, then gave each of them a silver coin before letting them go.

Although the homeless people had initially been frightened, they quickly regained their composure once they learned they would receive silver coins and answered the questions readily.

By the time the moon reached its highest point in the sky, the three of them had begun making their way back to the Ubaz Merchant Company.

“We didn’t get any particularly useful information.”

There had been no notable discrepancies between the homeless people’s accounts.

Demon Centipede had been using that inn for three years, and plenty of homeless people gathered in the area because they could get leftover food there. It was unlikely that they had coordinated their stories.

Tōru thought the investigation had been a bust, but the twins appeared to have noticed something.

“We heard something quite interesting.”

“Did we? I feel like all we’ve accomplished is letting Demon Centipede know we’ve been snooping around.”

These were homeless people, after all. They would probably try to earn a little extra money by informing Demon Centipede about Tōru and the twins’ investigation.

The twins raised their index fingers and wagged them from side to side.

“We effectively declared war the moment we hired you, Tōru-san. There’s no point worrying about what Harran or Demon Centipede thinks of us now.”

“More importantly, we heard something intriguing. It’s about the amount of firewood they use.”

“Firewood, huh?”

According to the homeless people, who had all agreed on this point, the inn’s consumption of firewood increased dramatically whenever Demon Centipede arrived and on the day before they departed.

Tōru, however, didn’t find anything particularly suspicious about that.

“They probably wash themselves to get rid of all the dirt from traveling. Heating enough water for twenty people to wash would require a lot of firewood. The same goes for the day before they leave. If they know they won’t be able to bathe for a while, it makes sense that they’d want to wash themselves thoroughly before setting off.”

“Tōru-san, have you ever used water magic?”

“Water magic? Not very often. Besides, water created with water magic disappears pretty quickly, doesn’t it? You can’t use it to heat bathwater—ah, I see. Firewood alone wouldn’t be enough.”

If twenty adventurers wanted to wash away the grime from their travels, they would need not only firewood but also a considerable quantity of water.

“Couldn’t there be a well inside the inn?”

“It wouldn’t provide enough water for twenty people to bathe.”

Well, that makes sense, Tōru conceded.

Darandy had a thriving agricultural industry and abundant water resources, but that didn’t mean its wells were inexhaustible. Wells within the town itself would almost certainly have restrictions on how much water people could draw.

“Then what are they using all that firewood for?”

“To heat water, presumably. Otherwise, the inn’s employees would become suspicious.”

“…Didn’t you just say they didn’t have enough water?”

“We said there wasn’t enough water for everyone to bathe. We never said they weren’t heating any water.”

“Well, fair enough. So what are they using the hot water for?”

Faced with that perfectly reasonable question, the twins shook their heads.

“We can’t say for certain just yet.”

“You’re not saying you don’t know, though.”

“Hehe. We do like a perceptive man.”

Apparently, they were deliberately avoiding the question.

After turning a corner, they emerged into a familiar alley.

It was the very place where Demon Centipede’s underlings had attacked Tōru early that morning as he was returning to his inn.

So this is where that alley leads, Tōru thought as he looked around, still unfamiliar with the town’s layout.

“Is something wrong?”

“Early this morning, I found a magical mechanical arm here that one of Demon Centipede’s underlings had dropped.”

“My, what an enormous thing to lose. Does drinking make people so oblivious that they don’t even notice when an entire arm goes missing?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. One of their underlings showed up almost immediately after I picked it up, so he must’ve noticed pretty quickly.”

“Wouldn’t it be more natural for him to notice the instant he dropped it?”

Now that they mentioned it, that was certainly true. A metal mechanical arm would make a fairly loud noise when it hit the ground. It was strange that the man hadn’t noticed immediately, and equally strange that enough time had passed for Tōru to find it first.

“Then maybe he left it here deliberately?”

There was a possibility that the man had intentionally left the mechanical arm there to secretly pass it to someone who would come along later.

The twins smiled faintly.

“It’s unfortunate that we no longer have the actual arm, but it seems we might discover something rather interesting.”