The Client's Request Is Absolute Law (3)
"Ah, Leehyun! B-blood!"
Henna pressed a packet of pocket tissues into my hand. I cinched the smartwatch strap tight in a hurry and stanched the bleed with what she'd given me. It must not have been much of a wound; the nosebleed stopped almost at once.
"Taking a watch off isn't ussually like thiss. I think the residentss here have some peculiar trait. We'd better be careful ssso it doessn't come off!"
"It's known that hearing the voices of similar cephalopods from another world deals a psychic shock," Pascal said. "Looks like these ones have the same sort of symptom."
A squid who had been preparing the dedication ceremony noticed the commotion and came over.
"Oh dear! Are you all right?"
"Yes, it was nothing seri—"
I didn't even get to finish. The tentacle monster seized my arm and hauled me off somewhere, and a slick, slimy sensation climbed my skin.
"You must have pushed yourself too hard, doing all that design work on such a short schedule! It's our fault for asking too much of you, so please—at least while the nameplate is being installed—sit down and rest!"
Why is this resident so kind, nothing like the client who kept their distance? Excessively kind...!
The squid sat me briefly at a banquet table being laid for the reception.
"Please, eat whatever you like while you rest! We prepared plenty of food, so don't feel the least bit burdened!"
"...Yes. Thank you."
They'd shown me kindness, so I answered in kind. On the table, though, something was writhing—something I absolutely did not want to eat. No. Something I felt I absolutely must not eat.
Ugh... this place is seriously wrong. The job had me looking at all kinds of visuals, and I liked that; I even watched movies as a hobby. I'd seen my share of fantasy, too, and still I felt as if I'd never once laid eyes on a life-form like this, or a city like this. I sat with one thought and another, and a little time slipped past.
I feel... awful. A newbie who hadn't even been at the company a full week could not comfortably rest on his own! Just as I decided I ought to get up—
Tikkiririk!
From under the table came a peculiar sound. I ducked my head to look. What was it this time? Gray mucus, studded with countless eyes. Something like a small slime. And it was staring at me.
A local resident? Some kind of wild animal? A single eye had already been horrifying enough—how many was this? If I ran, would it catch me? A whole swarm of thoughts tore through me in the space of a second.
Tikkiriri—ik?
As if my panic had been needless, as if it were only curious why I'd frozen, the gray slime merely cocked its body.
...It's not thinking of hunting a human? Too soon to relax, but the panic eased a little. When I loosened my locked-up limbs, the strange creature even wagged a portion of its mucus like a tail.
...Almost like a dog. Did one of the locals keep it? Ah—back there, footprints. No. Drag marks, running all the way in from outside the city entrance.
An outsider to the city... come from beyond the gate. I'd seen a few low burrows outside the walls, packed with slimes that looked just like this one. So that was their habitat.
"Leehyun, are you feeling a little better now, yess? Oh wow, what are you looking at?!"
Henna had come up beside me at some point and peered at the slime along with me.
"It must like people! Hehe, how cute."
Even so, that was a bit much. Maybe because she wasn't human, her standard for cute was nothing like mine.
Kiiing, kkng, heh-heh...
Did it come because it smelled the food? The lump of mucus strained upward toward the tabletop. What about this disgusting thing could possibly taste good enough to covet?
...They did say I could eat a little. And it was begging so pitifully. As a test, I knocked some food off the edge of the table. With a fork, of course, so it never touched my hand!
Kekkerik—! Kkekkekkerik—!
The slime snatched up what I'd tossed it and spun in delighted circles.
"Oh my, they're here to play again."
A few residents who had been preparing the event noticed the little stir and gathered around.
Tikeririroririk!
"I hear the leadership's been trying to exile these things lately. They don't do the work they're given like they used to, and they keep refusing to listen."
"Really? Hmm. They're cute, though. Just keep them. Since when does livestock obey people a hundred percent of the time~?"
These squids were aesthetically dead. They thought this was cute? Seriously?
The dedication ceremony for the fortress city, Opticon, will now begin. Residents, please take your seats.
The residents who had been watching the slime with us settled into the chairs set out in rows, and the mood drew itself into something more orderly. Another squid, one who looked like a figure of importance, climbed the platform beneath everyone's attention.
"Looks like the mayor's about to give a speech."
"I hope it's over quick~."
Their voices stayed low as they talked among themselves.
The voice droned out through the microphone, heavy and booming.
"Why's he so fixated on the slimes? This city was built by working them, too~. Wouldn't it be enough to just leave them be?"
The way kids endure a principal's lecture, the residents muttered a reasonable amount of complaint among themselves and rode out the boredom.
The moment the mayor's speech ended, the construction that had been paused so as not to interfere started up again. A keen whine of hammers and drills, and before long every installation was finished.
"Let's go see the new nameplate!"
"Oh, the poster's pretty."
Vanta's design had gone up at the gate, the place that joined the inside of the city to the outside. A fair crowd of residents gathered, murmuring as they looked.
Tikerilli—rik!
Curious, perhaps, at the tentacled residents clustering near their habitat, slimes came popping out of the burrows and drew in close.
Tirorik? Kkigeririk?
They loitered around the residents as if full of questions. But the residents' reaction had turned subtly different from before.
The mood is... a little off. The cheerful chatter of a moment ago was gone without a trace. They only stared at the slimes, faces impossible to read. And then a low sound reached me.
Their voices had changed into an alien tone with no inflection left in it. The mechanical drone grew louder.
They were reciting the slogan written on the poster.
This is wrong. Like something's broken... Faced with the grotesque turn, I found Henna beside me and asked.
"Henna, do you... know why they're suddenly doing this?"
The woman whose expression was always bright had gone dark. Her mouth worked as if she had something to say, and then she shut it again.
The huge, one-eyed creatures advanced on the eyes set in the mucus. Slow, but certain. With a heavy tread. Before I could grasp what was happening, the residents were already squared off against the slimes at close range.
And then the tentacles lashed out, splitting the air in an instant.
Shhk—!
The stretched tentacles reached their targets without an inch of error. And then they crushed, and smashed, and trampled, and tore; eye and eye and eye split apart, scattered through the air, and some unknowable fluid poured out.
Kkekeririririk!!!! Kkiiiiikririiiiiiik!!!!
They did not stop. They made for the creatures' home, collapsed the burrows, burned them, ground them, shattered them, brought them down.
Red flame filled everything in front of me. Things that had once been someone's house, someone's family, the whole of a world, burned in countless numbers. With the sound of the fire devouring them, screams spread from inside like smoke.
A burning world had opened before my eyes. I looked at it and let out a low groan.
Maybe... I did this. The thought came that it might have been me.
If I think about how strangely the residents changed, then the design I made might have... I sank into the thought, staring at that hideous sight.
"What are you spacing out for. Let's clock out."
The team leader grabbed the both of us by the scruff and shoved us through the Dimensional Portal Door that had been installed. Everything simply cut to black.
The company, again. The office was so quiet it was as if that noisy world from earlier had been nothing but a dream.
I can't believe it... Henna, desperate to escape the bad memory even a second sooner, packed her things and left the moment we got back.
I... should head home too. But the afterimage of the fire kept flickering, and I sat at my desk in a daze.
...What time is it. Clock-out seemed long past. The only Fridays that had ever failed to make me happy were the ones when I had to come in on the weekend. Ah. Of every Friday I had ever lived through, this was the worst.
"Drink."
While I sat there in the office, utterly blank, the team leader set a warm cup of tea in front of me. Unexpectedly kind of him. Or else I looked so far gone he couldn't stand to leave me like that.
Something doesn't sit right. All of it was bizarre. Right up until that moment, the residents hadn't been so hostile toward the slimes. And then their attitude turned on a dime, and they crushed them, and burned someone's entire world.
No matter how I think about it. There was only one thing that could have been the turning point.
...Did this start after they saw the nameplate and the poster?
"Team Leader. May I ask you one thing?"
Pascal gave a light nod.
"Did the residents massacre the creatures from outside because they saw the poster we made?"
"...You could say that."
Pascal explained the company secret that had never been written into the contract. Work produced with the company's proprietary design program, once made from the production department's special materials and released into the world, generated effects that defied all reason. The message a design meant to deliver seeped into the unconscious of the intelligent beings it targeted—and depending on the circumstances, it took hold with considerable force.
"...Sometimes the result runs against your own beliefs. Like earlier."
Did someone like me, living the life of an ordinary small citizen, even have beliefs? All I'd wanted was a stable job where the paycheck landed on time. Without anything to leave me feeling like this.
If I keep doing what the client asks just to save my own skin... is this going to keep happening?
The team leader simply looked at me. He didn't say much. He waited until I brought the warm tea to my mouth. Until the heat thawed my rigid body, even a little.
"...Still, though."
Then he spoke.
"Good work, Leehyun."
It was still an insane company, packed with things that could drive a person out of their mind, but I decided to revise my score of the team leader. His mouth was rough, but he was capable. He pretended otherwise, and yet there seemed to be a warm side to him.
And above all. In a company full of beings that defied common sense, it was a real comfort that there was another human. Right—compared with the nightmare of a senior I'd had back when I worked at the subcontractor, he was a saint. I was quietly grateful for my luck in bosses when—
Creak. Crick-crack—
...?
All at once, the silhouette of the superior in front of me changed, dramatically. Silver fur bristled thick over that slender body. What I saw were claws, fangs, ears risen into triangles.
"...Ah. Was tonight a full moon?"
You said there was a human here!! You said there was a human here!!!!!!