Meruru Vanishes

I told Silphy that Meruru had vanished without warning, and that I'd been digging through related information on the chance she might have gone looking for her older sister.

"I see... I noticed it was posted as a request earlier."

"That's why I was looking into it — ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠wondering if maybe she'd gone to find her sister..."

"Sunbae, have you been to Meruru's house?"

"Not yet."

None of the beastkin-related information Tina had given me was enough to constitute a decisive motive. There had to be some other reason. Silphy was right — we needed to look into the place Meruru had been staying.

More than anything, it was strange that Meruru of all people would just up and disappear without a word to anyone around her. If she'd been planning to be gone for a long stretch, she would have at least given Tina a heads-up. They were close. Meruru could be a bit of a fool, but she wasn't an ungrateful kid, and she wasn't heartless. If she'd meant to quit her receptionist job and leave the guild to search for her sister, she would have said something first.

The moment that thought settled, my worry only deepened. What if something had happened to her?

"Let's go check Meruru's place, then."

"I'll come with you, sunbae!"

The moment I stood up, Silphy fell in beside me as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

I explained the situation to Tina and asked her where Meruru's room was. She handed me a spare key and promised to let me know the moment any new word about Meruru came in.

A few adventurers had started showing interest in the find-Meruru request posted on the board, but nothing resembling useful information had come through yet.

I headed for the room Meruru had been living in the whole time she'd worked as a receptionist. It wasn't an inn. She'd been renting a small room, paying the landlord every month. An adventurer might as well take a long-term inn room, but on a receptionist's wages, a rented room like this apparently came out cheaper.

I opened the door and stepped inside. As expected, no one was there.

Meruru's room was far smaller than a typical inn chamber, but it was thick with the feeling of someone who actually lived there. Clothes that looked like hers lay heaped in a careless pile along one wall. Where a bed ought to have been, several floor blankets had been stacked in layers, and they were covered in shed fur that could only have come from Meruru.

A wooden cabinet stood against the wall. I opened it and found a single small jar sitting inside, all by itself.

"What is this...?"

The jar was packed with cubed jerky, cut into pieces the size of dice. Seasoned jerky of the kind they sold at street stalls, from the look of it.

She dumps her clothes on the floor in a heap, but the jar of jerky gets a cabinet all to itself. It was a lifestyle I couldn't quite make sense of — though, knowing Meruru, I supposed it tracked.

"No matter how I look at it, this doesn't feel like the room of someone who was planning to go far."

Having gone over the whole place, I said what I actually thought. If you'd made up your mind to leave for somewhere distant, wouldn't you at least pack a few things? Her way of living was a little strange, sure — but there was no sign she'd gathered her belongings at all.

The Narration sliding through my head only made the confusion worse.

Could you stop dangling hints and just tell me where Meruru went?

No. The fact that I'd even thought that meant that damn Narration was never going to just hand me the answer.

"Silphy, anything come to mind?"

I had nothing on Meruru's whereabouts, so I asked the person standing next to me. Two heads were better than one, right?

"Um... I was thinking Meruru must really like jerky. That stuff's delicious, you know."

"That's not what I meant."

"If she liked it enough to buy it and stockpile it like that, wouldn't she have wanted to take it with her?"

She had a point. Meruru had stuffed a whole jar of the stuff and tucked it away in a cabinet — this from someone who just flung her clothes on the floor. Looking at it that way, it really didn't seem like she'd disappeared because she was planning a long trip.

Then had she been kidnapped? Dragged off against her will by someone, and unable to come back?

But this was the heart of Kubel. There were far too many eyes for something like that. Out on the relatively empty outskirts, or in some back alley, maybe — but I couldn't picture it happening here. Even if something had gone wrong on her way home in the evening after work, there would have been a pile of witnesses.

According to what Tina had already looked into, though, not a single person nearby had seen Meruru at all.

"Sunbae, is this Meruru's bed?"

Silphy pointed to the stack of blankets in the corner of the room. They were rumpled in a shallow hollow, the way they ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠would be if someone small had lain there over and over. Long strands of fur — brown mixed with orange — clung to the blankets here and there. There was no need to say it. The fur had shed from Meruru's ears and that big, fluffy tail of hers.

"Is she shedding or something...?"

Then a thought brushed through my head. If we had blankets this saturated with Meruru's scent, couldn't we track the direction she'd ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠gone by smell?

I didn't like our odds of finding a trained search dog in this world. But if we could follow a scent — by whatever means — it would be a huge help in finding her.

"Silphy, is there any way to track a scent?"

"A scent?"

"Look at this. This is where Meruru slept every night. The spot has to be soaked in her scent. So if we could follow that smell, we might at least get a rough idea of which way she went."

"Wouldn't that be pretty hard? Indoors, maybe — but once you're outside, scents scatter and fade pretty fast, don't they?"

Judging by Silphy's reaction, tracking a missing person by smell wasn't a method this world used. In the world I'd come from, though, search dogs were a pretty standard way of finding someone who'd disappeared. You needed a well-trained dog, of course...

But it didn't have to be a dog. This was a world with magic. There might be some other method of following a scent that I simply didn't know about.

Who would know about something like that?

The name that surfaced immediately was the Guild Master — Algot. She'd worked all over, in all kinds of places. If I explained the situation, she might think of something.

"Let's head back to the guild for now."

Having finished looking over Meruru's room, I said as much to Silphy. She followed behind me with a face full of question marks.

The moment we stepped into the guild, I explained the situation to Tina and asked for a meeting with the Guild Master. Tina knocked, went into the master's office, and came back out a moment later.

"She says to come in."

I knocked on the office door as politely as Tina had, then eased it open and stepped inside.

Algot's Guild Master office was a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠meticulously tidy room. A banner bearing the guild's emblem hung on the wall, and a bookshelf stood packed with volumes. A large map bristled with pins stuck here and there, and several crates that looked meant for storage were stacked nearby.

Algot sat at her desk with a quill pen tucked behind one ear, reading a thick book. The moment I entered, she slipped a bookmark between the pages and closed it.

"You're looking for a way to track a scent in order to find Meruru, is that right?"

"Yes. I thought if anyone would know a method, it would be you, Guild Master."

"It might be possible, if you had another beastkin. Their sense of smell is said to be extraordinary."

Algot answered without missing a beat. Come to think of it, Meruru did have a special ability other people didn't — that knack for finding plants underground with some kind of keen sense. But had that been her sense of smell? It had always felt more like a sixth sense of some kind.

And if we needed a beastkin to find Meruru, where exactly were we supposed to get one?

"There aren't any beastkin around here besides Meruru, are there?"

"That's right. If you wanted a beastkin of Meruru's own kind, you'd have to go to Helvetica Island. And even beastkin of other kinds don't usually come to cities where humans live."

"Hmm... Couldn't magic do something about it?"

I asked again. Honestly, I'd never studied magic and didn't know the first thing about it. But I had this vague expectation that magic could do just about anything.

"Magic would be even harder, I think. You'd have trouble finding a mage who researches such an odd field. Most of them pick up magic that's practical — things they can actually use in a fight. Magical training is brutally difficult. No one has the spare capacity to pick up a useless trick."

Algot's answer shattered my illusions about magic. Come to think of it, even the mages I'd met in the subjugation force had mostly only been able to throw around a handful of offensive spells. The kind of versatile, anything-is-possible mage I'd been imagining was, in practice, close to impossible.

"Isn't there any method at all? As things stand, being able to follow Meruru's scent seems like our best shot at finding her. We don't exactly have other leads."

"Hmm... If it's a matter of heightening a particular sense, potions might be more promising."

"Potions?"

At Algot's mention of potions, Philstone's insufferable face surfaced in my mind like a trauma flashback, and I felt my brow furrow of its own accord. That potion-brewing addict — I wondered if he was doing well in his nice, cold prison cell.

"Magic has only ever developed in practical directions, so a spell for tracking scents would be hard to find. Potions, though, combine the effects drawn out of their ingredients, and they end up producing things no one expected. A potion that permanently changes your hair color if you drink it, for instance."

A drinkable permanent hair dye? That was incredible.

"So there could be a potion that sharpens your sense of smell, then?"

"I think it's entirely possible."

"But Kubel's potion refinery is..."

Of all things, what I needed had to come from Philstone's own specialty. And hadn't the Koubel Refinery already burned down in the Mandragora incident?

I must have looked worried, because Algot gave a faint, amused smile.

"You think that's the only place in the world that makes potions? Once Philstone — who'd been monopolizing Kubel's potion distribution — was arrested, a great many refiners heard the rumors and set up shop here. Right now, refiners who've poured in from every direction are competing with each other."

"Ah... I see."

So once Philstone, who'd had Kubel's potion trade in a stranglehold, was gone, other refiners had smelled the vacancy and swarmed in to take his place. People catching the scent of money and rushing in — I guess that's the same no matter what world you're in.

"As it happens, the guild already has a list of refineries we received for potion supply contracts. Why not take that and make a round of them? We haven't filtered them yet, so there are some strange ones in the mix."

Algot made the suggestion. It was a time for clutching at straws. I had no reason to refuse.