New Beginning
Even a passing breeze made the wooden frame groan and sway as if it were finally howling to be put out of its misery. That was the state of Helen’s house now.
In front of the iron fence that left rust on your fingers at a single touch, and the nameplate fashioned from bent black wire, stood a suit—nondescript tie, nondescript monochrome jacket—who reached into the briefcase in his hand and pulled out a thick brown bundle of documents.
“Please review and sign.”
Like most men in suits, he spoke in a flat, flavorless tone as he casually held the papers out toward Flat Cap.
The documents passed straight from Flat Cap’s hand into Helen’s. She grunted and fumbled with the string binding them.
“What are you doing?”
“This kid’s the owner.”
“Tsk. Ah, pardon me.”
Helen steadfastly ignored the first hint of emotion—the click of the suit’s tongue—and finally worked the string free. She studied the documents, scrawled in careless cursive, then gave a firm nod.
“Do you happen to have a pen?”
“Here.”
Using the ink pen Flat Cap handed her, Helen signed her name with the same painstaking care she usually reserved for scribbling something half-heartedly.
It almost felt like a challenge, but the seasoned salaryman of a suit refused to be drawn into such a basic opening gambit. He merely nodded, unfazed, and barked an order to the laborers waiting behind him with their tools.
“Get started.”
The suit waved a hand and stepped back a few paces. The workers took his place and, before long, set upon Helen’s house with hammers and pickaxes, systematically smashing it apart.
“Let’s go.”
“Yeah.”
Helen did not watch the house she had lived in for the past few weeks come down.
Even when cries of “Aaaagh! It’s collapsing!” and “Run for it!” rang out, she never once looked back.
That was what came after the house once affectionately nicknamed a mansion had truly collapsed with a great crash.
Having pulled off a grand slam of sorts—losing country, legs, and home in one fell swoop—Helen accepted Flat Cap’s hospitality without protest and lived for a while out of his office.
Of course, she did not stay for free. Drawing on past experience, she paid her room and board by consulting on ways to squeeze money out of delinquent debtors.
“Hmm… this one has a daughter? Lower grades at the academy… Quilton Academy, is it? Rather prestigious place…”
Helen rifled through a stack of documents thicker than her own head, rested a finger against her temple for a moment of thought, then delivered a clear solution.
“Memorize the girl’s face and go stand outside the school gate at arrival time. When you spot the target—well, the child—ask her in a nice loud voice when her father’s going to pay his debts. The exact line doesn’t matter. Just plant the idea in every student walking through that gate that she’s a debtor’s daughter. Lower grades are especially sensitive to what people think of them.”
Flat Cap found this diabolical line of thinking—wherever it had come from—deeply concerning, yet he adopted Helen’s advice with enthusiasm.
He had no choice. The results were simply too good.
“Waaaaaah!!! Daddy, pay the money alreadyyyyyy!!!!”
“You son of a bitch…”
A particularly vicious debtor, livid at Flat Cap’s utterly reprehensible collection methods, crawled over to the ash-strewn fireplace, reached up the chimney, and tore free a secret fund he had fastened firmly in place.
“Get lost! Take this money and never show your face in front of my daughter again! Vanish right now! Don’t you ever come near us!”
Flat Cap casually snagged the brick-hard wad of cash with one hand, gave a single curt nod, and walked out, leaving the household that had been reduced to powder in an instant behind him.
Shoulders rolling once under the suddenly heavy money bag, he headed for the address of the next vicious debtor.
“Failed inventor? An irredeemable dopamine addict. One self-made son… Go tell the kid what kind of man his father really is. Sounds like the old man’s been bleeding him dry.”
“Skill matters, but patrons care about personal reputation too. I’ll cover the debt myself, so please just forget everything you heard about my father right here.”
“Young lady from a wealthy house? Have you tried the social club circuit yet?”
“Please… anything but that. My fiancé must never find out… I’ll borrow from somewhere else if I have to, just please…”
“Self-employed, no kids… Doesn’t matter. I’ll drop a word at the print shop. Later, find the flyers and scatter them in front of his shop.”
“You crazy bastard. I’m barely hanging on as it is and you’re spreading that kind of rumor? I’m shutting the place down. I’ll pay you with the sale money—never come back.”
“Simple enough. Just visit his business partners and let them know about his finances.”
“Ha… Fine. I’ll have an employee wire the money first thing tomorrow. Just stop the malicious smears against the company’s reputation.”
While the actual owner scrambled to field calls pouring in from every client, a mid-level manager finally emerged wearing an awkward expression. Flat Cap clapped him twice on the shoulder and left without a word, never looking back.
After repeating the process two or three more times, the money bag had grown heavy enough to be a genuine burden.
Shoulders beginning to ache, Flat Cap dropped heavily onto a bench in a corner of the square—the one with the “No Loitering / No Sleeping” sign.
“Fucking easy…”
Sitting there, chain-smoking, Flat Cap seemed lost in thought.
Or perhaps it was a kind of revelation. Idly watching the cigarette smoke draw pale-gray trails through the chill early-winter air, he felt in his bones just how primitive the trade he had made his living at truly was.
Collection work in the old days had always meant using rough fists to damage a debtor’s body and inject fear. That had been the long tradition, the global standard.
Helen’s method was completely different. Not a single drop of blood, not one crude curse word.
She simply took precise aim at social face and reputation. A person could catch a serious illness and feel fine again in three months. But a human whose reputation had been shattered lived with permanent disadvantages in the local community and high society. Helen understood that as naturally as breathing.
“What the hell did they teach you…”
He flicked the butt to the ground, crushed it under his boot, thought of Helen’s birth mother—whose face he could barely even recall—and walked slowly toward the next debtor’s address.
A few weeks later.
“Sparrow.”
“Birdseed.”
“Teeth.”
“Straw.”
“Earth.”
“What the fuck are you clowns doing?”
“Nya… Ah! You’re here, boss!”
Flat Cap, arriving at the office for the morning, smacked Tungtung and Bisil each once on the head—they had been playing a word-chain game with Helen in the middle while she sorted documents—and dropped heavily onto the sofa.
“Oh, you’re here. Go make me a cup of tea… You’re here.”
“Heheh.”
“Tch—late.”
True to his looks, Bisil—who possessed a certain talent for flattery—scratched the back of his head sheepishly.
Flat Cap sipped the black tea Bisil had made, fell silent for a moment in thought, then spoke.
“We’re ruined.”
“Excuse me?”
“I said we’re ruined.”
Having casually detonated a nuclear-grade statement in a completely flat tone, Flat Cap carefully watched the employees’ flustered faces before continuing.
“Any of you seen a single customer walk into this office lately?”
“Huh… now that you mention it…”
Tungtung and Bisil closed their eyes, tilted their heads, and made thoughtful grunting noises.
Come to think of it, for the past few weeks they had just been making and selling waterproofing agent the way Helen had taught them, then coming back when they had free time to play with her.
So… yeah… they had no memory of entertaining any recent customers. Flat Cap left Tungtung and Bisil alone as cold sweat beaded on their forearms and pressed on.
“Word’s gotten out. We’re the absolute scum of the earth now. People are saying they’d rather slice off a pound of their own flesh without spilling blood than borrow money from us.”
“Hmm, we have been going a bit overboard lately.”
“Yeah. Boss, you got no blood or tears left?”
“You little bastards…”
Flat Cap raised a fist while Tungtung and Bisil threw their arms up to protect their crowns. Meanwhile Helen, who had been listening quietly, saw her face go pale at terrifying speed.
“Uh… is it because of me? If… if that’s the case…”
The moment big droplets began welling in Helen’s large, shocked eyes, Tungtung and Bisil scrambled over to soothe her.
“Don’t cry. If you cry, your parents won’t give you presents at year’s end.”
“Doesn’t that mean she can cry then?”
“No, you fucking idiot. Why would you say that out loud?”
“Waaah-waaah-waaah-waaah.”
After delivering swift divine punishment upon the two sinners who had dared make Helen cry, Flat Cap left the steaming-headed Tung-and-Bisil pair on the floor and approached Helen, who had begun wringing out tears in earnest.
“Stop crying. It’s not your fault.”
“B-but still…”
“Don’t worry. I’ve already got a plan for our future livelihood.”
“Huh…?”
At that heart-stirring declaration—the kind that would make even a cold machine heart give a standing ovation—Helen’s tears cut off as if someone had flipped a switch. She stared blankly at Flat Cap’s back as he walked, hands clasped behind him, over to the window.
In front of the glass that framed a leaden sky and the morning sunlight somehow still managing to push through the clouds, Flat Cap spoke.
“Let’s try stepping out into the light for once.”