The God Who Does Not Answer (1)
The next morning.
"Next!"
At the examiner's call, a well-dressed old gentleman came shuffling forward at his own unhurried pace. He had barely settled into the chair when the enormous werewolf sitting across from him—easily two meters tall—dipped his head in greeting.
"Good day to you. I am Blaszek, Scent Officer of the Southern Border Immigration Office."
So spoke the werewolf, a pen comically small in his massive grip. "What business brings you to the Immigration Office today?"
"Came to see about my departure, actually."
The Crossline Kingdom did not examine only those entering its gates. For every soul coming in, another was heading out, and records had to be kept on the way out as well—which was why the Immigration Office was always bustling with arrivals and departures alike. If there was one mercy, it was that the screening standards for departures weren't nearly so strict.
"In that case, may I have your name and destination, please?"
The old gentleman answered with a smile. "William Kafka. Thought I'd do a bit of traveling down to the southern continent."
"William Kafka."
At the name, the Scent Officer pulled a thick tome stamped Entry Records onto the desk and flipped it open. The werewolf's eyes skimmed down the ledger until, somewhere near the middle, they stopped.
"Here you are. Let's see... from the Skadi Empire in the north, age sixty-eight, entered one week ago... no traveling companions." He cast a sidelong glance at the old man, then closed the ledger. "Very good. Everything matches. As far as this office is concerned, there are no issues with your identity."
"Splendid."
"Although... there is one thing that troubles me."
Kafka, who had been smiling in the belief that everything was wrapped up, froze for an instant. The Scent Officer studied him a moment, then pointed one huge finger at the map hanging on the wall beside them.
"...Are you quite certain you'll be all right traveling alone?"
"Hm?"
"The southern roads are, it's true, better maintained than those at our other borders. But there is no guarantee you won't run into bandits or monsters along the way."
Kafka followed the pointing finger, and there they were—the danger zones of the southern continent, all circled in red.
The werewolf's tone was genuinely worried as he went on. "If you'd like, we could help you find a traveling party. There are several merchant caravans headed south."
"Hahaha. Much obliged—very kind of you. But I'll manage."
Kafka shook his head, then gave the hem of his coat a little flip.
"Retired mercenary, you see."
A well-oiled dagger slid into view. "Keeping this old body in one piece is something I've been doing for a good few decades now."
True to his word, Kafka's frame was lean and hard, and his claim to have been a mercenary looked no lie at all.
"Hmm. Then I foresee no problems whatsoever. Approved."
Only then did the Scent Officer relax his scowl and raise his stamp.
—Thump.
The short, blunt words bit into the paper.
"We wish you a safe journey. The Crossline Kingdom will always await your return."
"Thank you kindly. Ah—but, tell me."
"Next—pardon?"
The Scent Officer's mouth, mid-next, hung awkwardly open.
"You all seem dreadfully busy in there. Something the matter?"
Kafka tilted his head slightly to peer past the werewolf into the interior of the office.
And indeed, the Immigration Office today was in a state of near-chaos. On any ordinary day, the attendant would have drifted quietly about his rounds, and the examiners—eyes already on the clock—would have been stamping away with listless, machine-like indifference.
But what Kafka was looking at now was something else entirely.
"Central Officer, sir! We've drawn up statements from those present during the entry-denial incident!"
"Oh, have you? Who gave the statements?"
"Two of the ordinary entrants who were there on the spot, sir!"
"Excellent work. Into the evidence locker with them."
"Yes, sir! No exceptions at the border!"
Attendants showing more enthusiasm than they had in their lives.
"Who was it that first noticed something off in the cargo manifest? The Touch Officer, wasn't it? I'll need a copy of that. And the passenger ledger—? The Scent Officer vetted that one, sir. The paladins' names were mixed in among the common travelers' entries." "Hmm. Then that was done deliberately too, to throw off suspicion. Good—bag that as well."
And the examiners working with sharper, hungrier eyes than anyone had ever seen on them.
And at the very center of that crowded, thrumming office—
"Statements get bound with blue cord! Anything relating to entry regulations gets marked red! Everything else, bring it directly to me!"
a young man with black eyes stood directing all of it.
Under his command, stack upon stack of documents began marching neatly into a box labeled Evidence Locker.
Kafka watched the scene as though beholding a troop of the most devoted soldiers, and spoke with real admiration.
"Well, I never. First time in my life I've seen a government organ work this hard."
"Ah, well, you see..."
The Scent Officer gave an awkward laugh and rolled his eyes. "We-we're about to enter our internal audit period, so everyone's been a bit... zealous. Hahaha."
"Ah, an audit. A blood-draining season, that. How long will it last?"
"Two or three days of this, at least, I'd say."
"Is that so."
Kafka leaned forward, and whispered—low enough that only the werewolf could hear.
"Would it have anything to do with the pilgrimage, by any chance?"
The werewolf's face went rigid.
"..."
"Come now, speak plainly with me, just between the two of us. When might the pilgrimage be coming back through screening?"
The Scent Officer held his silence.
"Everyone out there talks of nothing else. Even a hint would do. Eh?"
Kafka pressed on, persistent, his curious violet eyes glittering.
A long moment later, a very low growl came back as his answer.
"...We hope you had a pleasant stay in the Crossline Kingdom."
With those words, the Scent Officer bellowed, "NEXT!"
That means: off you go.
Kafka had no choice but to rise from his chair with nothing to show for it.
The old gentleman's body passed by the Scent Officer and out of the building, then made for the city gate.
He walked beneath the great stone statues atop the walls, and turned down a lane where people were few.
"...Hmm."
Kafka's eyes swept the surroundings. A deserted street, thick with silence.
"This will do nicely."
The city gate lay just past this stretch, but he paused to draw a slow breath.
And then—
—Creeeak!
A sickening sound of bones twisting echoed down the empty street.
"Ggh... khh...!"
—Crack, crunch.
His joints wrenched themselves in grotesque directions; his face and skeleton warped out of true. As though stricken by some dreadful curse, Kafka thrashed in wordless torment, unable even to scream.
What emerged after roughly five seconds was—
"Whew. Old bodies are so creaky and stiff. Never have liked them."
—Shahal, Vice Master of the Black Hand.
She cracked her knuckles back into place one last time and muttered, "Next time, I'm picking someone younger."
Changeling.
One of the rarest species in the world, the changelings were little known to most. It was difficult, after all, to even identify the species as a whole, when its members could wear the bodies of others. In ages long past, this had earned them the fate of being branded monsters and hunted without mercy—a history of sorrow. And even now, to be revealed meant who-knew-what horrors, so they had to stay forever hidden. An unhappy species, in every possible way.
And so, people had come to treat them as little more than legend.
All anyone knew was the rumor: a monster that eats three strands of your hair and becomes you.
And Shahal—she was precisely the one who had exploited her changeling gifts to the fullest and made herself Vice Master of the Black Hand.
"And men's bodies... they're just too big. In every way, really."
Sweeping back her pale violet hair, she spat something from her mouth.
—Plop.
Three strands of white hair bounced to the ground with a distinctly unpleasant sound.
It was an old man's hair. Specifically, that of the retired mercenary she had "processed" on her last job.
The name William Kafka was an alias—a false name that had never existed in the first place. What she had received from the already-dead man was a body and a set of clothes. And now that she'd seen his departure processed as well, there was nothing left to squeeze out of him.
"He said two or three days, I believe... So I just need to finish this before then."
She tossed the clothes off, one after another—the neat jacket and trousers, even the shoes beneath them. Only once she stood in her undergarments did the traces of the retired, nameless mercenary vanish forever.
Shahal plucked a shabby skirt and a threadbare blouse from a clothesline at the edge of the alley.
"Works out rather well, actually. With them all that frantic, no one will be looking twice at anything odd."
She dressed, then drew a small vial from her bosom. Inside were three more strands of hair—another victim's.
Dust-caked brown hair, without a hint of shine. She tipped it into her mouth without hesitation.
—Creak! Crack!
At once her whole body began to twist again.
"Ahhk...! Ngh...!!"
And five seconds later—
"Phew."
Where the alluring woman with pale violet hair had stood, there was now a beggar woman who looked as though she hadn't eaten in days.
"Let's get started, shall we."
Tucking the fallen dagger into her breast, the wretched-looking woman murmured to herself, then staggered toward the city gate.
In a cracked voice, her face a mask of suffering, she cried out:
"Pilgrims...! Good pilgrims, please... have mercy on me...!"
A beggar, begging alms to every eye, shuffled toward the pilgrimage.
With a dagger—and some potion her employer had given her—hidden away.
—CRASH!
The sound of shattering glass tore through the silence.
The hurled bottle burst apart, spilling its contents across the floor. In the water pooling slowly outward, a woman's face was reflected—wide with terror, dread, and helpless bewilderment.
"Haah... haah..."
Her ragged breathing carried not a shred of conviction, and her trembling eyes found no answer anywhere.
And the moment the spreading puddle touched her gone-cold feet—
"WHY?!"
The scream of the Saintess, Erzena Selaphe, rang out through the tent.