The Curse of Belle Epoque Mansion
After finishing my strange conversation with Shari, the mansion's ghost, I left the estate at once and told Tina and Silphy everything. Tina was thoroughly astonished by what I'd been through inside.
"So… you resolved it by talking with the mansion's ghost? Does that mean the curse is gone now?"
"That's about the size of it. It was never a curse to begin with. The kid in there just wanted someone to know what had been done to her."
"I can hardly believe it… that it could be resolved so easily."
Her surprise was only natural. A mansion curse that no one had been able to break no matter what they tried had just been… amicably talked through with a ghost.
"While we're at it, why don't we all go in together and confirm it?"
I proposed it to Tina and Silphy. Silphy startled and shuddered, asking, "W-will it really be all right?" — but in the end she trusted me enough to come along, however reluctantly.
We went back inside the mansion and found the little ghost girl waiting for us. True to her word, Shari didn't show Tina or Silphy any hallucinations. She sat perched on a bookshelf in her ghostly form, watching us arrive.
"Is that child… the ghost?"
Tina asked, looking at her.
"That's right. That's Shari — the ghost of a demon child who died in this mansion."
"To think a child like that is a demon…"
Tina couldn't take her eyes off her. Even Silphy, who'd been trembling with fear only moments ago, seemed to change her mind the instant she saw Shari's true appearance.
"Sh-she's… so cute…"
A peculiar flush crept across Silphy's face. Given the image people usually had of demons, Shari's appearance must have been a genuine shock. The little ghost tilted her head, swinging her short legs back and forth as she sat on the bookshelf and looked down at us.
"Do you think what was done to a child like that was justified?"
I said it while looking at Shari's ghost — so insubstantial she seemed liable to vanish at any moment.
"……"
"I don't. This isn't a matter of race."
Tina nodded quietly, her expression complicated, as if in agreement.
"Anyway — with this, can we process the request as complete?"
I asked Tina. The request had been to lift the curse on Belle Epoque Mansion. What had been taken for a curse all this time was simply the truth Shari had shown to anyone who entered. Now that I'd made a promise with her, no one who came into the mansion would be subjected to those terrifying visions anymore.
"I'll have to report it to the guild first, but I think it should be possible."
Tina answered as she pulled out a notebook and began writing something down with focused attention. If the guild processed the request as complete, ownership of the mansion would pass to me. A mansion worth tens of thousands of gold, finally in my hands…
Wait. Hold on.
I looked at Shari and realized something rather important. This was a complete lemon of a listing. Who in their right mind would buy a mansion like this?
Knock, knock, knock.
"Mr. Patton? Are you in, Mr. Patton?"
The front door of Patton Noia, former owner of Belle Epoque Mansion. I'd come back to his house, this time with Tina, the guild receptionist, in tow.
"What now."
Patton cracked the door halfway and glared at me, already irritable. In truth, the Belle Epoque Mansion request was as good as finished. It was an unusual case, so it hadn't been formally closed yet, but the report to the guild was already in. Strictly speaking, Patton no longer had anything to do with the request.
But I really, really wanted to make him pay.
"This is Tina, a receptionist from the Adventurer Guild. We've got some important news regarding Belle Epoque Mansion."
"What?"
"Simply put, we've finally lifted the curse on the mansion. And while we were cleaning, we found a box stuffed with gold in the study."
I tossed him the bait I'd prepared. A man who loved to gamble was bound to take it. Of course, no such box of gold existed. It was a ruse to lure him back to the mansion.
"Th-that! Ah… I'd completely forgotten! That box, you mean?"
He took the bait immediately, just as I'd expected. His greed was overflowing, but his acting was terrible.
"Ah, so it belongs to you, Mr. Patton?"
"Well, s-something like that! Yeah! Thanks for finding it. Just send it over here."
"Ah, well, you see. There's a procedure involved. The guild is currently holding the mansion in temporary custody."
"Procedure?"
"That's actually why I brought Ms. Tina with me today. If you really are the owner of that box, you'll need to come in person, confirm it, and take it yourself."
I lied with a perfectly straight face. A box of gold? Procedure? I had no idea about any of that. I was just wrapping whatever came to mind in a plausible-sounding package. If he'd thought about it for even a second, he probably would have noticed something was off. But Patton was so blinded by greed that, fortunately, he didn't catch a thing.
"Isn't that right, Ms. Tina?"
I looked to Tina standing beside me, seeking her confirmation to make it more convincing. She was looking at me with a rather complicated expression — the kind of look that said, You really have no trouble spinning lies, do you — and I could practically feel her trust in me dropping a few points. Oh well.
She played along, addressing Patton as if she had no choice.
"Yes. I apologize for the inconvenience, but we would ask that you follow the proper procedure."
"Tch. Fine, whatever."
In the end, Patton agreed to visit Belle Epoque Mansion with us. With that, everything was in place.
Shari, the demon ghost bound to the mansion, was a good kid. She hadn't even harbored any desire for revenge against Patton, the man who had cruelly tortured and murdered her. But I had persuaded her otherwise, and before leaving the mansion, I'd made her a proposal.
A bad adult who isn't punished will eventually do the same thing again. So even if she had no desire for revenge, Patton still needed to be punished. If he wasn't made to pay, another poor child like her might end up the same way. I would bring Patton to the mansion, I told her. Together, we would see that he got what he deserved.
Shari had accepted my proposal, and now Patton stood at the front door of Belle Epoque Mansion.
"This… this is really fine, right?"
"The curse is gone now. If you're that worried, we'll go in first."
"R-right. I just need to grab that box and go home."
Now that he was actually about to enter, Patton seemed to be getting a bad feeling about it. He had no idea that everyone here — me, Tina, Silphy, and even the ghost Shari — was in on it together.
I'd given Tina and Silphy a rough outline of the plan. Race aside, this was a case of kidnapping a child and doing unspeakable things to her. Both of them had seen Shari's small, fragile appearance with their own eyes. After seeing that, could anyone still say, She's a demon, so it doesn't matter? Tina and Silphy had agreed, and they'd signed on to this plan to punish Patton.
I led him deep into the mansion. Shari, of course, had hidden herself.
"This is the room where we found it. The box."
I picked one of the mansion's many rooms at random and opened the door as I spoke. Naturally, there was nothing inside — just a single bookshelf sitting forlornly against the wall.
"Where… wait, hey—!"
The instant Patton leaned in to look, I shoved him into the room from behind and slammed the door shut.
"What the hell is this?! Hey! Open this door!"
His frantic shouts came through as he pounded on the door from inside. I ignored him and locked it from the outside.
"All right. I'm counting on you, Shari."
After locking the door, I spoke quietly, and Shari materialized behind me, her translucent body sliding into view. Then she passed straight through the wall and into the room where Patton was.
"W-what happens now, sunbae?"
Silphy, who'd been watching, asked me.
"That guy needs to experience what we went through."
"You don't mean…"
The sound of Patton pounding on the door, cursing and screaming, went quiet. It was starting.
What I'd asked of Shari was to make Patton experience the same horrific hallucinations we'd gone through — except not once. Continuously, for twenty-four hours straight. He could feel for himself, on an infinite loop, just how horrific the things he'd done had been.
And so began the ghost's gift of mirror therapy. Where I came from, crimes against children were serious felonies too.
"Well then. Shall we come back around tomorrow?"
Feeling thoroughly refreshed, I stretched once and left the mansion with the two of them.
Patton Noia was a broken man.
Spending twenty-four hours trapped in hallucinations of the brutal torture he himself had inflicted had, apparently, been quite the shock. The visions Shari showed him had no effect on his physical body, but they were more than enough to shatter his mind. When we went back into the mansion and opened the door, we found him unconscious, his face a mess of tears, snot, and drool. Even after he woke, he would mutter incomprehensible things and scream at empty air with half-dead eyes.
After he went home, a rumor spread through Kubel that Patton Noia had gone mad after losing too much money gambling. His reputation hadn't been great to begin with, so what had actually happened to him was quietly buried under the story that he'd simply snapped and gone insane.
Well. He'd brought it on himself. And Shari, who'd suffered all of that for real — not as a hallucination — and died from it… how much worse must it have been for her?
Once the request was wrapped up, I gave the interior of Belle Epoque Mansion a rough cleaning. I also found, belatedly, the entrance to the basement Patton had used as a torture chamber. Some of Shari's remains were still inside.
We gathered her remains and held a modest funeral for her beneath a large tree in a nearby forest. It was a funeral attended by only three people — myself, Silphy, and Tina — but at the end, Shari's ghost appeared before us. Though she couldn't speak, she expressed her gratitude by smiling and waving as we laid her to rest. Then her translucent body, catching the sunlight that filtered through the great tree, slowly faded away.
Go on, then. Be at peace.
May you be born as a happy child next time.
With everything settled, I returned to Belle Epoque Mansion alone. But the moment I opened the door—
"Wh… what?"
Something tiny came scampering over and plastered itself against my leg. It definitely stuck to me — except I couldn't feel a thing.
"You… why are you still here?"
It was the ghost, Shari. The girl I'd been certain had passed on was waiting for me at the mansion, perfectly intact.