That's Why She's Obsessed #7
"Customer information is confidential, you said? But what happens if I cut your throat?"
The wooden counter, the scattered tables and chairs—the Assassin's Guild branch that had looked so much like a tavern lay in ruins. As if a typhoon had torn through, chairs were flung about, the tables and counter smashed to pieces, and the dozens of men who had guarded the place sprawled across the floor.
They were not dead. Every one of them still drew breath. The cuts on their bodies were real enough, but only at a level where the bleeding could still be stopped. In other words, the result made it glaringly obvious that someone had deliberately held back so they would not die.
The architect of that carnage, Helena, sat on one of the few chairs left intact and posed her question with perfect composure. Arms crossed in arrogance, she looked down with open contempt at the man moaning in pain at her feet—the branch master of this outpost.
"That is...!"
"Of course, if I did that you wouldn't be able to talk, so I couldn't dig out any information. And your guild might decide to take revenge and come after me. But could the Assassin's Guild actually manage it?"
The branch master had no answer for the mocking question. Assassins sold fear through murder; they were not the sort to wage open war. That did not mean their personal strength was lacking. The bare minimum for assassination was rigorous training of body and technique, so aptitude for combat came as a matter of course. But standing against a real army with a monster like Helena at its head was pure absurdity. It would be nothing short of walking to one's own death. Severing a single branch and calling it finished was far more profitable.
Weighing human lives in terms of profit was distasteful in its own right—but then, these were people who made their living doing exactly that.
"They... couldn't."
The branch master knew the trade well enough; he could only nod. Being human, he clung to his own life, and inwardly he prayed with desperate sincerity that he might walk out of this place alive. And as if answering that prayer, Helena's voice reached his ears.
"If you dig up the information I want, I'll spare your life. But pull your branch out of Krauser territory. Can you manage that?"
"I... I can! No—I'll make it possible!"
Even a knight who had spent a lifetime tempering his sword could not casually reach the pinnacle of Sword Expert. And Helena was a genius who had attained that highest rank before even coming of age—while also holding the status of a duke's heir. To the Assassin's Guild she was an impregnable fortress they could never hope to challenge. Yet that fortress itself had opened a path to survival; there was no room for hesitation. To live, he would have to do the impossible.
Helena seemed satisfied with that resolve. She gave a single nod, and in the same frost-edged voice moved on to the heart of the matter.
"Good. Then first question. In the past week, have you received any assassination requests—yes or no?"
"Th-there are! Three of them!"
"Tell me all of them."
The branch master answered with the utmost deference, as if addressing his own superior. She was not his superior—but once his life hung in her hands, she outranked even the guild master.
Every assassination case he listed had already been completed. One commissioned over domestic violence. One requested to eliminate a commercial rival. And last of all, a job to infiltrate a knight order's campsite and assassinate one ordinary man. It was a den swarming with knights, true—but they were not to touch the knights themselves, and that was why he had accepted it. The memory was still vivid.
"Who commissioned the killing of the man at that campsite?"
"That was... a man I'd never seen before. He said he was only following orders himself."
Following orders. Meaning the person Helena suspected had not come in person. Well—that arrogant child would hardly have been desperate enough to come himself. Helena felt a flicker of disappointment, but decided it was plausible enough, and asked the name just in case.
"So. What was that man's name?"
Assassination contracts were sealed through face-to-face deals. The guild's policy of taking the money and being done with it aligned perfectly with clients who wanted to expose as little of their identity as possible. Once the job succeeded and word of the death arrived, there was no need to set foot near the Assassin's Guild again—convenient for everyone. But the guild was never content to stop there. They routinely assigned secret tails to clients and dug up their true identities. Information they almost never used—insurance, in case some client someday tried to pressure the guild.
"Allen. A man staying at the same Krauser mansion as you. We observed him for a long time, so there's no mistake."
Allen was an alias. At the very least, no man by that name lived in the Krauser mansion. But now that she knew he was somewhere she could reach even at this very moment, the rest would likely go far more smoothly.
"Appearance? Do you remember?"
"Yes. Height about a little shorter than that fellow collapsed in the corner by the counter over there. Brown hair. Build... he ate well enough that it wasn't bad."
Helena studied the man the branch master indicated with his finger, matching him against the details she had carefully filed away. That height, a moderately sturdy frame, brown hair—common enough features. But if the subject was someone from the Krauser mansion, the field narrowed to an extreme. Narrow enough to compress down to a single person.
"Heh. Charles. It's Charles...."
Charles. Helena repeated the name, the corner of her mouth curving. It was a smile born of pure delight—yet it held not a shred of warmth. Touch it and your fingers would freeze.
"Last question. Tell me where the poison that dosed Zion Altram came from. You know, don't you? Just say that, and I'll spare your life as promised."
"I know! I'll tell you...!"
"Ah. And as I already said—you will withdraw this branch. If the Assassin's Guild is discovered inside Krauser territory again after today... you understand?"
The branch master watched Helena turn her back after taking the information, bowing his head again and again. Battered as he was, a few days of rest would let him move again. If he could keep his life simply by pulling the branch out, it was a deal that left him well ahead. Surviving a monster with all his limbs attached was practically a feat in its own right.
Thank the gods I'm alive. Truly, thank the gods.
Watching Helena vanish completely into the dark, the branch master's mind filled with nothing but the joy of survival—so completely that not even a trivial thought could slip through the cracks.
"L-Lady Helena...!"
An hour when the silence itself felt smothering, when the darkness stood out all the more sharply. The brown-haired man, Charles, knelt trembling on the floor of Helena's room in the dead of night. Only moments earlier he had been deep in sleep in the servants' quarters—yet when he came to his senses, this was the state he found himself in.
And the one who had dragged the sleeping Charles here without a single footfall—Helena—pressed a blade tip to his Adam's apple and slowly opened her mouth.
"Shut up. Quiet. Raise your voice one more time... and I'll pin your throat with this knife and roast you on an iron plate into a skewer. If you understand, keep it down."
"Y-yes...!"
The abuse and murderous intent pouring from Helena—utterly impossible to reconcile with the gentle girl she had always seemed—stoked Charles's terror. Even so, his body obeyed the instinct to survive and followed her razor-edged commands with perfect diligence. He could not have been more fortunate.
"You commissioned the Assassin's Guild to kill someone, didn't you? And don't even think about changing the subject. I've already looked into everything."
As expected...!
Charles squeezed his eyes shut, thinking that what he had dreaded had finally arrived, and carefully nodded. The blade was already against his throat; a violent shake might punch a hole straight through it.
"L-Lady Helena. I... that was..."
"Drop the useless noise. What I want are short answers. Core information only—no unnecessary flourishes."
Helena pressed the blade against Charles's Adam's apple as if she would not tolerate even an excuse. Just enough not to pierce it—only a light prick of the outer skin, enough for a thin bead of blood to well up. No real danger to his life. But the sting of the steel and the warm seep of blood swallowed Charles's reason whole. The raw instinct to give her exactly what she wanted and live shoved him forward from behind. Whoever had threatened him before, whatever they had said—none of it mattered now. The most primitive violence, the most easily understood killing intent, stood right in front of his face.
"I-I understand."
When Charles finally forced the words out with that resolve, Helena asked her questions with a sharp, unhurried edge, as if there was no longer any reason to delay.
"Good. Then I'll ask. The one who told you to kill the man at the campsite was Kane, correct?"
"Th-that's right. Lord Kane put me up to it."
With this, Kane might kill him. But if he refused to answer, Helena's blade would kill him first—so extending his life even a little was the only correct choice. Charles answered without hesitation, clutching the conclusion he had wrung from his meager wits. Whether he had no backbone, whether it was unmanly—none of that mattered. If a man of his low station could simply keep this one life, that was enough. He wanted to shake off as quickly as possible the sensation of walking a tightrope between two sheer cliffs.
"Alright. Then do you know anything about the poison Zion ate? From the circumstances, it's certain the man you hired for the assassination was the one who dosed him."
"Th-that was also Lord Kane's doing. He ordered Ross—who'd been temporarily assigned—to clean up after poisoning Lady Helena, so..."
Ross. Helena reacted with flat indifference to a name she had never cared about. She had no interest in where the murdered man had crawled from; as long as she could trace the connection, nothing else mattered. But Kane's personality being what it was, he should have been able to issue a one-sided order without explaining anything. He was not the sort of man who bothered to persuade Charles with reasons.
"Kane would have just told you to kill him. How did you find out the rest?"
"O-out of curiosity I eavesdropped on a conversation with Ross. I'd introduced him when you needed a temporary laborer for a few days, and to think he'd..."
She had asked only on a hunch—and the answer that came back left Helena thoroughly pleased. The reason for not using someone from the Krauser household to administer the poison was easy to imagine. By employing a man with no prior ties, it would be that much easier to cut the tail clean. Indeed, before the man was killed at dawn—and afterward as well—the mansion had remained quiet. On top of that, there had clearly been an intent to leave as little room as possible for the trail to lead back.
"Ahaha!"
A snort of laughter forced its way past Helena's lips. Catch one tail, and everyone connected to it came tumbling out so cleanly. Of course she had to laugh—Helena rationalized it to herself.
"Good. But I need evidence."
"I-I know the poison's source. I heard it from Ross..."
Ross had been terrified when ordered to lace the poison, but with his family held hostage he had no choice but to try to kill Helena with it. And Charles, keeping company with him, had heard any number of things right up until Ross left for the campsite. The poison's source had been one of them. As for the poison itself, though, Helena already had her evidence secured; she did not need Charles for that. She had only asked for verification.
"Never mind. I already know about the poison. In any case, with this I've secured both testimony and evidence... I'll finish everything tomorrow morning. So you're sleeping here tonight. Just in case Kane gets desperate and tries to silence you."
As if her business were concluded, Helena pointed to a corner midway between the window and the door. If by some chance an assassin slipped in, she intended to move herself and cut their life short.
"Y-you're sparing me?"
"Of course I am. You still have to testify if things are going to resolve cleanly. But once this is over, you're banished from the duchy. Remember that."
"Th-thank you! Thank you!"
Charles roared in a low voice and slammed his forehead to the floor. Exile from the duchy would hurt—but the door to the possibility of keeping his life had swung wide open, and he could not help but rejoice.
"Tomorrow. Tomorrow is when..."
Eyes that raised goosebumps, as if staring into an abyss. Lips pressed into a hard, straight line. Helena wore an expression like a doll's, and like a broken phonograph she simply repeated the word tomorrow over and over inside her head.