The Curse of Belle Epoque Mansion
After hearing from Narration the shocking truth behind the hallucinations I had endured at Belle Epoque Mansion, I sat perched on a nearby boulder, staring at the estate from a distance as I tried to put my thoughts in order.
That horrific experience had actually happened?
If something like that had truly taken place inside those walls, then what in the world had the owner of this mansion done? The ghost of Belle Epoque Mansion hadn't been fabricating nightmares. She had simply been making people live through exactly what she herself had suffered.
"Tina, about the owner of this mansion."
I asked the receptionist.
"Is there any way to find out what kind of person he was?"
Tina flipped back through the pages of the notebook she'd been writing in, the sheets fluttering under her fingers. The notebook held the details of the commission, which meant the earlier pages would include information on the client as well.
"He appears to be someone who made a great deal of money through trade in Kubel. I can't disclose his full identity — guild policy, to protect our clients. He purchased the mansion three months ago, but because of the curse attached to it, he says he hasn't been able to use it at all."
Three months. And if the curse had kept him from using the mansion at all, then the visions the ghost was showing us were almost certainly the work of whoever had owned the place before him.
"Tina, I think if we want to understand this curse, we're going to need to look into the mansion's previous owners."
"Is that so?"
"The visions this mansion shows aren't just ordinary illusions. Silphy and I experienced the exact same thing, down to the last detail. The adventurers who abandoned this commission before us probably went through it too. Which means there's a real chance the ghost here is showing us what she herself lived through."
I explained it to Tina as if I'd pieced it together through deduction, even though Narration had already confirmed it as fact.
"I see... But as I said, I can't share the client's information."
"The client bought this mansion three months ago and couldn't use it because of the curse. So the client isn't involved."
"Then..."
"We need to find the owner before that — the one who sold the mansion to the client."
Honestly, this was the only lead we had left to play. Even if we kept investigating the mansion itself, there was nothing we could do against a ghost. Exorcism rites, wards, anti-spirit items — none of it worked. Holy magic and purification were useless too. That left only one path: digging into why a ghost had attached itself to this mansion, and why the curse had fallen on it in the first place.
It wasn't a story from this world, but I'd heard that to lay a vengeful spirit to rest, you had to resolve the grudge that bound it. And to do that, I believed we had to find the person who had actually committed those atrocities Silphy and I had been forced to endure.
"This is necessary to complete the commission. Is there anything the guild can do?"
I asked Tina. She thought for a moment, then answered.
"Let's head back to the guild first and discuss it."
Three days had passed since we'd witnessed those horrific hallucinations at Belle Epoque Mansion. Tina had obtained the Guild Master's permission and was gathering information on the mansion's previous owners. Meanwhile, Silphy and I took a short rest, trying to put the shock of what we'd experienced behind us.
Unlike me — who'd weathered the visions relatively well, with little lingering aftereffect — Silphy said she was still having nightmares.
"You're amazing, sunbae... How can you be all right after going through something like that?"
No, honestly, I'd come this close to having my mind snap too. If Narration hadn't yanked my sense of reality back into place, it would have taken me just as long as Silphy to get over it. But showing her that would only make me look unreliable, so I kept it to myself.
"Anyway, I wonder what actually happened in that mansion. Torturing someone to death like that..."
"Thinking back on it now, a lot of emotions came flooding in along with the visions. So much sadness, so much fear..."
"I don't know what kind of bastard did that, but he's unforgivable."
"He really is."
Silphy nodded so hard her mushroom-bob shook.
That afternoon, we went to the guild, and Tina had welcome news.
"I've compiled a list of Belle Epoque Mansion's previous owners. I only barely got permission — I told them it was necessary to resolve the commission... If we don't find a lead from this, I'll be in a difficult position too."
"It really is necessary, so it'll be fine," I told her with conviction.
The documents she handed over contained brief information on every former owner of Belle Epoque Mansion, excluding the current client. Four people had owned the mansion since it was built. Quite a few owners for one estate, surprisingly.
But the one I was interested in was the owner who'd used the mansion right before the client took possession. If a curse had attached itself to the place, using it as-is would have been impossible — so the cause of the curse had to be the owner immediately before the client.
I went through the papers until my eyes stopped on a particular sheet.
NAME:Patton Noia
STATUS: Noble (Purchased his noble title with money.)
CURRENT LOCATION: Kubel
NOTES: Sold the mansion directly to the present client.
"Patton Noia... this is the one."
Patton Noia. The man who had sold the mansion directly to the client.
"You can even find out things like that?"
"The guild keeps even the most trivial information."
"This man... he's in Kubel right now?"
I pointed to the section listing Patton Noia's current whereabouts.
"He doesn't seem to have a very good reputation. Apparently he lost a fortune gambling and sold the mansion in a hurry."
"If he's a lowlife, that only makes him more likely."
The more I heard from Tina and the more I read of the documents, the stronger my conviction grew that this was the man who had committed those atrocities in the mansion.
"I need to meet this person."
I stood up at once.
The laws of this world were loose. Or rather, it would be more accurate to say they were full of holes. It wasn't that criminals went unpunished, but the arrest rate was low, and there was ample room to make things disappear with a bribe. Kill someone and don't get caught, and that was that. Steal and don't get caught, and that was that.
Even in the world I'd originally come from, people used to say the poor were guilty and the rich walked free — but here, it was far more extreme. Villages had vigilante groups, cities had guard corps, and the capital had its knight orders. The gaps in public order were filled, in part, by the guilds and adventurers of each region, and by the clergy of the Church. Even so, by my standards, this was not an era you could call well-policed.
But even in an age like this, torturing and murdering someone as brutally as those mansion visions had shown was not something that would be tolerated. If Patton Noia really was the one who had done it, then he was a man who deserved to be punished.
The home of the mansion's previous owner, Patton Noia, stood in a residential district of Kubel that had the look of a middle-class neighborhood. I came alone. If I brought Silphy along, I'd be too worried about her to focus on the conversation.
"Is anyone home? Is this Patton Noia's residence?"
I knocked on the door and called for him from the front step. After a moment, I heard a chair scraping inside, then footsteps, and the door opened.
"What do you want?"
"Ah — are you Patton Noia?"
"I am, but what's this about all of a sudden?" Patton Noia answered irritably.
The moment I saw him, I was certain. He was the man from the mansion's visions. In the hallucination, noise had scrambled his face so I couldn't see it — but meeting him in person, I knew it by instinct. He looked me over with snake-like eyes, appraising me, then immediately flipped to a dismissive attitude, as if he'd decided I wasn't worth taking seriously. As if to prove he was a man who'd bought his noble title with money, there wasn't so much as a fingernail's worth of aristocratic dignity about him.
"I'm here regarding Belle Epoque Mansion, which you sold three months ago. There's something I need to discuss with you."
"Huh? That business was settled a long time ago. Curses and whatever else — that's not my problem. That's for your side to deal with."
From the look of it, he'd already had an argument over the mansion. Well, of course he had. With a phenomenon that terrifying happening in the place, it would have been strange if the buyer hadn't protested. He seemed to think I was some kind of agent sent by the current owner. I neither confirmed nor denied it, keeping my tone deliberately vague.
"Well, the owner has already relinquished the property. Temporary ownership has been transferred to the Adventurers' Guild."
"The guild? Hmph. Anyway, I already sold that mansion. That was three months ago. Whatever happens there has nothing to do with me."
"Is that really so?"
I said it with a serious expression, cutting off Patton as he tried to wrap up the conversation in a hurry.
It was true — he had already sold the mansion. Judging by that confident attitude, he'd already settled things with the client who'd bought it from him. But what if ownership of the mansion had passed to the guild? In fact, the Adventurers' Guild had taken temporary ownership of Belle Epoque Mansion and put the entire estate up as the commission's reward. That wasn't a lie. And a situation where the guild temporarily assumed ownership of a mansion and offered it as a quest reward was by no means common. He clearly hadn't known any of this until now. Unexpected, unusual circumstances like this were always good at shattering certainty and sowing unease.
"Wh... what, is there some kind of problem?"
Patton's snake-like eyes seemed to soften, just a little. I didn't let the opening slip.
"Now that ownership has passed to the guild, we needed to re-examine the mansion's defects from the beginning. In that process, issues from the period when you owned the mansion have come up, Mr. Patton."
Of course, the guild had never discussed anything of the sort. I'd made it up entirely to rattle him. Well, technically I was an adventurer affiliated with the guild, so it wasn't a complete lie.
"So what do you want from me? Planning to hit me up for repair costs? I already sold the mansion. If anyone's responsible, it's whoever handed it off to the guild."
He still spoke with confidence, but unlike his initial attitude, a subtle unease had crept into his words.
All right. Time to probe a little.
"Mr. Patton, traces were found in the mansion of someone being tortured and murdered. I believe you might know something about that."
I hadn't seen it with my own eyes — but through the mansion's visions, I'd lived through that horror at exhausting, unbearable length. In a way, I knew it better than if I'd witnessed it firsthand.
"Torture? Murder?"
Patton cocked his head.
Ah. I'd jumped the gun after all. Even with the guild as my shield, I probably should have approached more carefully.
But a moment later, Patton's expression shifted as if something had occurred to him — and then he suddenly started to laugh.
"Ah, that? Well, I suppose if you found that, you'd start thinking strange things. I nailed it shut on purpose. How'd you find it? Pretty clever of you."
His reaction was... off.
"Are you... admitting it? That you killed someone in that mansion?"
I asked, and Patton answered.