Look Hard Enough and It's Bound to Turn Up
Early dawn.
After draining several bottles of hard liquor straight through the night, Lupin buried the innkeeper she had killed in a sunlit stretch of the courtyard, pressed her palms together, and muttered.
"I wanted to try the cooking. What a shame."
She poured a libation of fresh liquor over the grave and lined the unopened bottles from yesterday neatly alongside it. Now it was time to clean up. The innkeeper must have cherished this place; leaving it a wreck was out of the question.
"Ngh..."
But the moment she looked again at the blood-soaked interior of the inn, irritation surged all over again.
This world's technology stood shoulder to shoulder with modern Earth's, and yet the state of things was no different from a martial world where thugs with martial arts ran wild. The instant a quarrel caught or a fight broke out, it was slaughter by default. The agencies meant to keep the peace were already in over their heads; anyone who looked like more trouble than they were worth simply had a bounty posted and was left alone.
To survive, Lupin had needed a spine of her own, and she already had no shortage of experience cutting down enemies with a sword or dropping them with a gun. Blood didn't frighten her. It didn't even disgust her. What sat wrong was that she hadn't been able to hold her temper for a single moment.
"Ha. I should've pulled their nails out one by one and worked them as slaves hunting treasure chests."
They had the nerve to trick people with a treasure chest? She ought to have run them as human detectors on a ration of one bean a day. To let a chance that golden slip through her fingers!
"...Wait."
There was someone she had forgotten. The one who had sweet-talked her with the promise of a fine treasure chest—the root cause of the sea of blood this inn had become.
"That bartender."
She'd treated Lupin well for a week, and Lupin had taken a genuine liking to her. Sure enough, liking curdled into loathing in an instant.
Vatslava, bartender at the concept bar Antique, had been on the job for about half a year. By the bar's standards, that made her a senior.
The fact that a six-month employee counted as senior said everything about the benefits. People quit at the drop of a hat and new ones came in to replace them. Between nightmare customers and the owner's abuse, lasting half a year was a miracle in itself.
If it hadn't been for the side work, Vatslava would have walked away long ago. The fat sum that came in every time she sold someone off was more than her wages, so even the worst of the nightmares at the bar hurt less. And if that nightmare happened to be an empty-headed fool? All the better.
Preparing to open on her own, Vatslava turned it over. What sort of customer would walk in today? If only people like that pink-haired absolute nightmare who'd been sold off yesterday showed up every single day.
"..."
She was humming a song that was going around, la-la-la, when she clicked the lid of the empty icebox open to fill it—and doubted her own eyes.
"Hhk."
Startled as she was, she shut the box first and made herself think. Why was this woman here? A corpse? Passed out? Had the boss sent her? Why?
More than that... hadn't their eyes just met?
"Hello."
While she was still deliberating, the woman opened the icebox lid herself and shook her whole body like an animal caught in the rain. Shards of ice clinging to Lupin's long hair showered down over Vatslava.
"I came because I had a few questions."
She rummaged in a pocket of the harness belt hidden beneath her chest and drew out something that glinted. It was the business card Vatslava had stuck on her two days ago, when she'd thrown her out of the shop. Her handwriting was still there on the back, untouched.
"This. I went where the card said, and there was nobody there."
What was she supposed to say? Claim she knew nothing? What had happened? What about the trafficking ring? Was this woman an undercover sheriff? Had she let herself get caught on purpose, just to find out Vatslava had been handing people over?
A thousand thoughts tore through Vatslava's head while Lupin went right on talking.
"So, about that. You wouldn't happen to have any other information, would you? Something to do with treasure, or treasure hunters."
Maybe it was the smooth, even face, or the smile that seemed to say I don't know a thing.
"I'm a treasure hunter. I haven't had a real score in months, that's all. If you know anything, mind sharing?"
As the moments passed, Vatslava's wariness gradually ebbed. Lupin looked far too green to be a sheriff.
Hhk. No!
The scene she had just witnessed rose again in her mind, and tension clamped hard around her chest. The woman had been hiding quietly in the icebox. She had been watching Vatslava from the moment the lid came open, already aware she was coming.
This woman was dangerous.
"That card is from our shop, yes.... I'm sorry, but I'm not the one who gave it to you."
"Oh. Is that so?"
Lupin scratched at her temple.
"Hehe... that's strange. It was exactly the same hand as the receipts you write out every day...."
"......"
A flat, unblinking stare. The two of them looked at each other while time crawled past.
The one whose patience ran out first was Vatslava. If she could just get a kitchen knife from one side of the counter in her hand, the other woman wouldn't dare attack her lightly—that was what she told herself. She didn't have the nerve to stab anyone. In truth she was looking for the knife the way a hedgehog looks for its spines.
"...Huh?"
Where the knife ought to have been, there was no knife. The Case of the Missing Twin Kitchen Knives. Investigator Vatslava's brilliant deduction continued. Maybe they'd been moved—but one look at the clean cutting board settled it. She hadn't prepped today's ingredients yet. The knives absolutely should have been in the rack.
"Looking for these?"
"Ah, thank y—"
It wasn't a missing-knives case. It was a kidnapping. The person closest to the rack had clearly been Vatslava. She was an ordinary human and had no idea what had happened. But it was chilling all the same.
I... I have to run.
Driven by instinctive fear, Vatslava looked past the counter. The entrance wasn't far. Vaulting the counter was easy for someone her height, and if she could hobble Lupin's mobility on the way, escape would be a piece of cake. Decision made, she glanced down at her feet and aimed precisely for Lupin's shin, which looked as if a hard kick would snap it.
Whoosh—!
"Eughk?"
The toe of her shoe cut empty air. In the same instant her balance went, and her other foot slid out from under her on the tile. Thud. A heavy blow landed on her pelvis and her whole body rang with it. Vatslava couldn't even get out a proper groan; she just lay there, trembling.
Click. Click. Crunch.
The hard leather sole of a shoe ground down on her abdomen.
"Come on. If you've got good information, share it. Don't try to hog it all yourself."
"Urk.... Wh-what do you mean, hogging...."
"You know. Where the treasure chest is. You know, and you're just not telling me."
"No. No. A tr-treasure chest? I don't know anything about that!"
The easy grin on Lupin's face went cold all at once.
"Why don't you know?"
"Because there never was any treasure chest in the first—urk."
Crunch. Lupin stomped down hard on Vatslava's stomach. Her belly caved in as if there were nothing inside it at all.
"Come on. Repeat after me. There is a treasure chest."
"Th-there isn't—hk."
"There is a treasure chest."
"Hhk... hhk.... No. I'm saying there isn't one because there isn't—kek."
"There. Is."
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
Her organs were all screaming for a group hug. If Vatslava kept stalling her answer, they were going to be ruined for good. In the end she couldn't endure it, and she shouted.
"Th-there is! A treasure cheeeeest!"
Only then did Lupin's foot leave her stomach. Lupin shrugged, then took the kitchen knife and snapped the neck off an expensive bottle of hard liquor sitting on one side of the bar.
Glug, glug, glug, glug.
She poured the liquor straight down her throat the way one might blend a wine, and asked again.
"So. Where's the treasure chest?"
"I'll... I'll look for it."
"Whoa. Young and rich, here I come!"
First, get out of here alive. If she could just keep her life, there'd be a next time, wouldn't there? The problem was the crazy woman in front of her. A sloppy lie was never going to work on her. She'd torture someone into producing a treasure chest that didn't even exist. Fingernails, toenails—she might pull those too.
"I can hear it. I can hear it. The sound of your brain turning."
"Y-yes?"
"You're gonna go tattle to the boss~."
"N-no! I wasn't thinking that!"
"You can tattle. I don't care if you tattle. Just bring me the treasure chest. Man. This is so easy. Right?"
Her eyes had gone. The look on her face said she was willing to make an enemy of the entire trafficking ring, not just Vatslava. By the size of the bounty alone, they were one of the handful of biggest outfits in the whole region. Where did confidence like that even come from?
"Answer."
"I-I'll find it!"
"Kyah. Now that's decisiveness! A round of applause!"
Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap. Mad applause followed, and through all of it the knife in her hand never once dropped.
Why was she looking for a treasure chest in the first place? Wasn't that the sort of thing out of legend, chased only by self-styled treasure hunters lost in delusion? Or did she mean something else—not a treasure chest, but a safe full of stolen goods...?
"Um. If you could first tell me what you mean by a treasure chest......"
Finally. She's actually listening to me.
Catching the shift in Vatslava's heart, Lupin flashed a bright grin.
"I'll say it only once, so listen carefully. What, by definition, is a treasure chest?"
She pointed at the icebox she had been curled up inside and launched into a full speech. A long rectangular body. Guarded by finicky security, traps, and mechanisms. A box that, once the lid was opened, brimmed with rare and precious treasure.
"You understand now? What a treasure chest is."
The human will to live was truly something. A treasure chest lingering in a corner of Vatslava's memory shouted that it was right here—even though it was a memory she didn't want and had shoved down as deep as it would go.
"Ah. Ah. Uh. Ah... I th-think I remember."
Was it when the boss had forced her to pay her respects at the safe house? The boss's safe she'd seen then had looked just like a treasure chest. Accessories, jewels, valuables. A safe packed with gold bars and bundles of cash. One way or another, it matched Lupin's description perfectly.
"A tr-treasure chest. I know of one."
"You flip your story like a cocktail shaker. A few minutes ago you said you didn't know."
"I j-just remembered! A treasure chest I saw clear as day with my own two eyes! Our boss has it...!"
"For real?"
Lupin gave the knife in her hand a light toss. The two blades spun wild through the air and planted themselves dead-center in the rack some five paces away. Don't lie again—that was the threat, shown rather than spoken. Just picturing those knives buried in her back or her neck sent a chill crawling over her.
She needed to give Lupin some reason to trust her. A fierce light shot from Vatslava's eyes, desperate to show that her heart was sincere.
"It's real. It really is...!"
But for someone whose whole life had been clocking in, working the night, sleeping, and living shut up in that same box, nothing was harder than meeting another person's eyes dead sober.
"Um. P-please don't look at me like that."
The one who had just threatened her with a knife fussed with her hair, color rising in her cheeks.
"...Pardon?"
The one being threatened was thrown into utter confusion.
