The Food Chain

— 2 —

Now and then, among the beautiful hosts of stars embroidering the heavens, a few burned alone, breathing out a venomous light.

Whenever those crimson-flaring stars appeared, the world was certain to be overturned at least once. Astronomers named them Calamity Stars and feared them, while the rulers of nations cried out to heaven and offered up sacrifices and prayers. Across the long span of history, such a thing had already come to pass four times. Tracking the paths of the Calamity Stars and bracing for what was yet to come was, then, one of an astronomer's duties.

"A Calamity Star, and the gray star that guides it. You need more personnel to investigate the two of them and trace ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠their movements?"

"Yes, Your Majesty..."

But what, really, is a duty? It is something that must be handled along with everything else, even when one is already buried in work. For the past five years the stars had been behaving anything but ordinarily, and the Imperial Astronomy Bureau had been laboring day and night because of it. Now a Calamity Star on top of all that. What were they supposed to do? Whether it was more hands or a vacation, they needed something, and so they had no choice but to submit their petition and then simply lie down on the floor.

The Emperor was immovable.

"Come now, it's still only a baby star. Stop looking as though the end of the world arrives this very instant. You will all come in to work tomorrow, same as always."

The astronomers, who had been counting on playing sick for about a week, let out a collective groan. A working person's wish to rest for seven days straight was, it seemed, common to every dimension.

"The investigation in question will have to move quickly. For the time being, all of you will be working overtime and on weekends. See that you endure it. I will make the extra pay and the meal allowances generous."

Aigoo—please, even just more personnel. Not a zero-day week, but a seven-day week. The astronomers wailed as if the sky had fallen, and before long the imperial guards marched them forcibly back to their posts.

A short while later, once the procession had cleared the grand hall, the Emperor's third daughter—thirty years old, unmarried—stepped into its center with a single maid, displaying the full elegance of her bearing.

"You've come, Emelin."

"Yes, Your Majesty. You called for me?"

"I told you that in private you may call me Dad."

Emelin flicked a glance at the maid beside her.

"This is a public setting."

"Enough of that. I hear you're free at the moment."

"Some thirty-five urgent matters have just occurred to me. You wouldn't listen if I listed them, so go on, speak."

The speed of it, the control of breath—it was a match for any bestselling assault rifle of modern Earth. Undisputed number one in imperial rap.

The Emperor gave a slow shake of his head.

"I mean to inform you that I have no intention of dragging the boy back to the palace by force."

"Did the sun rise out of the ground today? Anyway. So how am I supposed to phrase it?"

The Emperor's youngest son, the one who had run away from home, had loved watching the stars since he was small. He even possessed a smattering of astronomy, and would understand well enough what a Calamity Star was.

Day four of the serial murders. The case closed on an absurdly anticlimactic note.

"The mafia all ran off, can you believe it? Even the neighborhood petty crooks must've gotten spooked and bolted. Last night, for the first time, not a single person died under mysterious circumstances."

"Angel pigeons, angel pigeons."

"They really were prettier than ordinary pigeons, weren't they? Rounder. Cuter."

"Ugh. I still feel weird about them killing people."

"What's the problem? They only pick off the bad ones anyway. Gasp. Don't tell me my friend is a criminal?!"

"Shut up, dumbass. What, are you defending the cult?"

Everyone but the mafia was laughing. The cult's reputation had nowhere lower left to sink, so having its image laundered even this much was a blessing, and the city, rid of the mafia, brimmed with more life than before.

"No way..."

Only one person among them was swallowing tears of blood, wretched and utterly wronged.

"How could this happen in a single day...?"

She had reached three stars in pigeon magic and Grade 3 in Life Force Trade, and last night she had climbed the northern mountain in high spirits, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠certain she would ransack every Secret Safe there was. And look at this. The pigeons never took off. They only blinked where they stood, cooing and fussing in a circle around Lupin until, as time passed, they vanished with a pop. For the whole of that span she couldn't move a muscle, trapped in the middle of the flock.

Just in case, she tried the pigeon magic again. Another pigeon party. Dumbfounded, Lupin closed her eyes, deciding it had to be a dream. It was not a dream. She got up, and nothing had changed. There truly was not a single person left in all of Ryabolsk City who still possessed a Secret Safe.

"Lupin. You're really not going?"

"I said I'm not going..."

"Then shall I accept it in your place?"

"Bring it back and I'll throw it straight in the trash."

A Brave Citizen commendation was to be held, honoring the detective and assistant who had rendered such distinguished service in closing the case—but why would Lupin go? She had never so much as seen the mayor's face, and she hadn't particularly wanted to help catch criminals in the first place.

"That temper. Anyway, I'm off."

Fortunately, Yegor had banked a few affection points two days earlier with a classic hero-party cliché, and so Lupin's fit ended there. The two of them took their leave, and Lupin, left alone, planted her head on the table and muttered.

"Did I get too greedy......"

Watching criminals die had felt deliciously satisfying, but it turned out to have been a fuse burning down her own lifespan. Who would have thought that criminals, of all people, would be scared witless and run? Stay wicked straight through to the end, burning hot. Why get frightened and flee? Keep committing your crimes with your heads held high!

No. Call this a lesson learned.

This time it had ended this way because Klein's pigeons had gone around killing people at random. Nothing guaranteed that Lupin's own pigeons wouldn't pull the same stunt later and bring the same disaster down on her. Hadn't she, just two days ago, launched an indiscriminate assault on the mafia boss and the two detectives confirmed to be mafia informants?—The case file had been classified as Class-1 confidential within the police, so Lupin still had no idea of the truth behind the thirty kills.

Villains, as a rule, kept networks through which they spoke only among themselves, and the moment one of them sent up a danger signal, the rest curled inward like rats. There was no telling when the safes might vanish all over again in just this fashion. If she meant to use the pigeons with any cleverness, she first had to grasp exactly what standard those birdbrains used when they chose to attack. They did seem to prey only on human garbage. One moment they were birdbrains, and the next a legendary bird Pokémon. Utterly arbitrary.

At a time like ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠this, sitting them down and asking is best.

In the end, she would have to raise both Spirit Affinity and Avian Affinity. She wasn't certain, but in all likelihood the animal affinity that games spoke of included animal language. It was entirely possible she would ask in chirps and be answered in the spirit tongue, and be forced into a two-step translation. Even so, Avian Affinity came first. It was easy to raise, and it still wasn't clear whether Spirit Affinity was a boost to command or a boost to language.

As for the necessary preliminary work—overcoming the pigeon trauma, of course....

"I've been surrounded by flocks of pigeons three times already, so maybe I've gotten a little better..."

It had been half against her will, but compared with before, the trauma had eased by a sliver—in a manner so identical to the way she had once overcome her mimic trauma that it raised goosebumps. The so-called hold-me therapy. Not some grand method certified by a psychiatrist. Just a simple, brainless charge straight in.

"Ugh... I can still remember it..."

Lupin thought back on a certain lucky day. The day she had walked into a trap room and found a hundred treasure chests waiting. It had been wonderful, at first. But every time she opened one, the arrangement reset, and half of the hundred were mimics. Open one, get swallowed once. Open two, get swallowed again. When her luck held she found the real ones in a streak, and when it didn't, she had been eaten by mimics five times in a row.

And what sort of creatures were mimics? They gulped down a living thing of suitable size, steeped it in hot gastric juice, fed on the sloughed dead skin and the waste it secreted, and the moment they felt a little full, spat it back out. The worst of the worst. You didn't die, but every time you came out of a soak your body hung limp as a corpse, because their gastric juice served as both sedative and muscle relaxant. A fine narcotic, in its wretched way—and Poison Resistance didn't work on it either.

"Ugh. Thinking about it again, that was fucking awful..."

The way they clattered about and swapped places right in front of a person who could see them perfectly—how infuriating it had been. Driven half mad, Lupin had learned a great many things that day. Where a mimic was weak. What a filthy mess it became if you stabbed it with a knife from the inside.... Even so, she couldn't deny that the five-mimic combo had been the signal flare for overcoming her trauma. Horror games were only a little scary at the start, weren't they? Give it time and it turned into you son of a bitch, today one of us dies, does this game seriously not have a knife or a gun—fuck, fuck—every curse in the book.

"Right. It was something I had to do eventually."

She talked a good game, but she couldn't hide the tremor in her hands. Still, her resolve was set, and a stout heart—she was, in her own mind, every inch a man—had no choice but to see the thing through, even if all it came to was chopping radishes. And so Lupin lifted the block on her Avian Affinity Growth Value and made for the hill behind the Association.

She twisted herself, supple as a knot, into a cross-legged seat so she would be unable to bolt, and then her right hand came down. Smack! The pigeons that spilled out settled in around her just as they had the night before. The cooing party was underway. Its host kept her eyes stretched wide and ran through the multiplication tables in her head, meeting coo with coo.

Curruk-coo. Coo-roo, coo-roo.

They had been the same yesterday: the tighter they packed, the louder they got. It felt like cramming in a study café while the person in the next seat blasted music through their earphones loud enough to split them—a one-person public nuisance. Drawing on the time she had punished that nuisance of a woman, Lupin reached out before she realized it and closed her hand around a single pigeon.

"Quiet."

The thing stared straight at her. With those red eyes peculiar to white pigeons....

"Eek."

The one who lost the staring contest was Lupin. Truly a loathsome creature. A loathsome creature. A creation the gods had molded wrong. Still, she had just held a pigeon in her hand. Monumental progress. Riding that momentum—one more! The instant she caught a second, countless pigeons glared, red pupils blazing. It looked like a warning that if she grabbed another, they would not let it pass.

"Oh yeah? You can stare all you like. What are you lot going to do about it?"

Lupin rose, clenching and opening both hands until the warm-up was done.

"If you've got a problem with it, try swallowing me like a mimic."