A Knight Does Not Forget a Grudge (3)
"......Impressive."
Admiration Simon could not hide seeped into his voice. When the commission had first come in, all he had meant to do was pick up a little pocket money. Now that things had come this far, the careless man he had been the day before seemed nothing but a fool.
"If I'd taken it more seriously, the sum I'd have made would have been different. I want to beat my past self senseless."
"That's at least the thirtieth time you've said that, Simon."
"Thirty? It's been exactly forty-one. If you're my secretary, you ought to remember that much."
"...The fact that you're counting them one by one means you aren't normal either."
"I'll take it as a compliment."
He let out a long breath. A little idle chatter with his secretary, and the regret gnawing at him eased, if only slightly. But the moment he checked the papers on the desk, his gut began to ache all over again. For a human being, that was simply the way of things.
Day 1 — Among the mid-sized trading companies, circumstances discovered indicating that the master of the Greenbell Company is an Illegal Mage. Confirmed that the Greenbell Company itself was a funding line for a heretical organization, and that it had been raising a private army.
Day 2 — Information delivered to Sir Rihan (alias). Annihilated within half a day.
Day 3 —Illegal Mage apprehended. His body was left a wreck, but it was judged that extracting information remained possible.
Such were the contents of a file that set the situation down in detail, as it had unfolded across three days. Three days' worth, and yet a thickness one could hardly imagine — but Greenbell had been enormous even among the mid-sized trading companies, with a great deal to wring out of it, and the file had swollen accordingly.
It was dizzying, too. However confident a man might be in his own strength, destroying something on the scale of a mid-sized company ought to take a month at the very least. That it had not even taken three days sent a chill through him, and the passage that told how the knight had handled the mage was enough to give him nightmares.
His own nightmares, however, were apparently nothing worth mentioning.
— Slave-trading company. Annihilated.
— Narcotics company. Annihilated.
— Assassination organization. Annihilated.
— Mercenary company. Annihilated.
The ones who had been annihilated were probably not even at the stage of nightmares. They would be one step from losing their minds.
"......Is this a human being?"
The roster of groups large and small wiped out within fifteen days came at him as nothing short of terror. Some were tied to heretical organizations, but others had simply been caught by the knight in acts of plunder, or in the rape of villages, and annihilated on the spot. In those cases the very shapes of their faces were past recognizing, and most of those who lived, he was told, did nothing but drool from the extremity of the shock.
"...Who could possibly have known? That the underworld of the South would convulse like this in fifteen days."
"It isn't only the underworld that's convulsing. The trash up in the daylight, the ones who prospered right alongside them — they aren't merely in danger. From what I hear, quite a few of them are shaking."
"I should have worked them over in advance. The money I could have squeezed out of this trash..."
"That's enough of the forty-second regret, Simon. You have to look ahead."
"......Yeah. I should."
This latest lament of his was little more than a joke. Would a man who had climbed all the way to chairman of the Guild Union spend forever regretting what was already past? If he had time to regret, he would rather spend it on something more productive. In that spirit—
"...What's our premium client doing right now?"
"Resting in the warehouse, as I understand it."
"We're looking after him with nothing lacking, yes?"
"Of course."
"That's a reli—"
"...is what I'd like to say, but unfortunately, he's declining most of the hospitality."
"......"
"They said he was frugal, and he truly is frugal. I want to do something for him, but there's nothing I can do."
"...No opening to slip through, with that man."
Simon felt a thick, clinging disappointment. This was not a matter of client and client. He wanted to be closer than that, and the man would not show him a single gap. Even so...
"That he treats us as equals is rather likable, I'll give him that."
"I feel the same."
They were two people who could not deny it: a client without greed, one who knew how to be considerate of them, was likable on a purely human level.
...Lee Han found the situation burdensome.
"Here is your tea."
"The meal is ready as well. Oh — there's also a dish made from an unusual grain imported from the East. It's called paella. I hope it suits your taste."
"And how about a glass of wine, perhaps?"
Ah... This really is too much.
"...I will say it again. There is no need to treat me this well. Give me the ingredients, and I will cook for myself. If I need something, help me then, and only then."
He delivered the refusal firmly, but the attendants who heard him only drew nearer, all gentleness.
"Hehe. How could we ever?"
"The chairman told us hundreds of times to look after you properly."
"This is our work, Sir Knight, so you needn't feel so burdened."
"......"
Approached like that, he could not bring himself to be any firmer.
...Fighting would be easier.
Someone else might have envied being ringed by beautiful maids, but for Lee Han it was an ordeal. Because beautiful women were unfamiliar to him? No. He was not that much of a bungler. It was only—
Ah. Brush them the wrong way, and a wrist goes flying...
Make the wrong contact with these maids, and he had the feeling disaster would follow. His strength had surged without warning of late, and controlling it had grown difficult all over again. And of all moments, these frail women were at his side. He had no choice but to be careful without end.
How to put it. The feeling of keeping a newborn kitten or puppy beside you? Touch them wrong and they might be hurt, and so his every movement grew careful of its own accord. But he could not bring himself to put the thought into words. Well, of course he couldn't.
I'm afraid that if I so much as brush you wrong, your arms or legs will burst like balloons. How was he supposed to say a thing like that? He would be lucky if they did not mark him not merely a madman, but a lunatic.
And so Lee Han showed them every consideration he could, and said that he was burdened, that they needn't look after him — and the maids answered that it was their job, and refused. The tug-of-war had gone on for fifteen days in the guild's "warehouse," known by another name as the villa. To other eyes, however, the man in the middle of it looked like this.
"He seems warmer than I thought, Tina."
"I think so too, Tig."
In the twins' eyes, it seemed, he came off as sweet. The chatter of two tiny wolf-human siblings, watching him with bright, round eyes.
The dark-skinned man who had promised his help when Lee Han declared the hunt had, regrettably, not taken part in the hunt himself.
What was it again?
That he'd promised to take the dwarves back to their homeland — was that it?
True to a regressor, he seemed to be tangled up with peculiar sorts in every direction.
...Even so, the dark-skinned fellow could not simply leave the vampire hunt alone, and he had backed Lee Han in two ways. The first:
According to the dark-skinned fellow, even with the blood of a vampire's true body in hand, finding that body was an extremely difficult matter. Better, he had advised, to shake down the bastards of the cell network one by one and gather information that way. Sure enough, the guild had been a genuine help, and because of it eleven organizations, large and small, had now met their end at Lee Han's hands.
Someone had stuck up a thumb and said it was impressive, as expected — but the credit was not Lee Han's alone. The one who ought to be praised was, rather, the dark-skinned fellow's second form of support.
??
Personnel. Two rather cute twins. To the eye they looked no more than seven or eight, and at first it had been hard to believe they were in fact twelve. He had taken the dark-skinned fellow's word for it, given how confidently the man recommended them, and by now he was certain they were a formidable pair. Their ability, at least, was the real thing.
Half-Bloods... The world really is full of strange phenomena.
Half-Blood. It meant a race with something other than human blood mixed in — atavism, in so many words. A race born at rare odds, when someone among the ancestors had inherited a special blessing, or a special blood. And those two twins were precisely that.
Wolf-humans.
A mystery-race of which only a very few existed even among the beastkin, and one famous for never showing itself in human society. The twins, however, were a peculiar case, born from the womb of an ordinary human woman. Born of a human, and yet not human... Those children's lives could not have been smooth either. And indeed, as if to prove it, a wariness toward people clung to everything they did.
"Um, young master, young lady? You've got some dust on you. You really ought to wipe—"
Whoosh!
"Huh? Where did they go?"
Approach them, and they hid. For creatures with such short legs, they were quick — absurdly quick. No different from cats at all.
Ah. Wolves are canines. I probably shouldn't call them cats.
While Lee Han followed that worthless thought, the wolf twins had already hidden behind his back.
"...You shrink from everyone else. Why do you come to me?"
He didn't feel they had grown particularly close, so why, every time they hid, did they come around behind him?
"...Your body's big, so it's good for hiding."
"Yeah, yeah."
"...Cocky little things, for a pair of cowards."
"W-we're not cocky."
"W-we're nice..."
"......"
Why was it?
This annoying feeling, like I'm thinking of nieces and nephews I don't even have.
Only today did Lee Han realize that he and small children were a poor match.