Let's Live Kindly
Long ago, back when my name was still Cheon Si-jun instead of Asty.
In the days I spent roaming the remote corners of the world with my utterly unhinged senior, she once gave me a single precious lesson.
"Junior, this senior of yours will teach you how to become a millionaire in a single day."
"Wait—if we're going to make money, why the gasoline can—"
"Alright! The motherless debt-slave system is now out of service! If you've got a problem with that, you should've earned your money the proper way!"
It wasn't that crime isn't crime so long as you don't get caught… but rather that third-world loan sharks have a far more extreme job than most people imagine.
For one thing, their clients are almost entirely poor commoners, so the scale of each deal is never particularly large. Most of them have no stable work, and many lack even a scrap of property that could serve as collateral—meaning the money they borrow is frequently never repaid.
On top of that, debtors with nothing left to lose often dig in their heels or simply vanish overnight. And then there are the rare cases of foreign terrorists who show up looking for operating funds, clean out the vault, and burn the ledgers for good measure.
That last one is far too uncommon to treat as the norm, but the point stands: for all sorts of reasons, loan sharks have it rough in their own way.
You might ask why they don't simply quit the business. The answer is that this kind of financial service exists because demand creates supply. Even the poorest souls who live hand-to-mouth need somewhere—anywhere—to borrow money, don't they?
Respectable banks that shun violence and obey legal interest rates have no interest in lending to bottom-rung lives with no capacity to repay. Government aid programs have usually already been exhausted, or personal circumstances make them inaccessible. So the defective customers who can get money nowhere else end up at the loan sharks' door—and high rates plus coercive collection become, in a sense, inevitable. Without them, every loan would be written off and the lenders themselves would end up on the street.
The gentlemanly loan shark died out long ago. All that remains are the bloodless, tearless misers who learned the hard way that honest dealing with beggars yields nothing. That is why the trade is so mercilessly cold, and why its practitioners keep company with thugs even while the world curses them. They do it to survive.
Society calls them cruel and base, but the truth is they are only thrashing about to feed their own families.
"So you kidnapped the children of debtors who skipped town and filmed pornography with them? Because the money still had to be recovered, no matter what?"
"I-I'm the real victim here! Just thinking about the money I spent feeding those brats still makes my hands and feet shake—"
"You call that an excuse…!"
"Whoa, whoa. Put the gun down first, Senior. You'll actually shoot him at this rate. Murder's the one thing we can't clean up after—you know that."
…Of course, that reading is far too generous to our criminal friends. In reality, most of them crossed every conceivable line in the most inventive ways imaginable. Gut a man who couldn't pay and sell his organs on the black market. Drag him to a labor camp, work him like a slave, then kill him. Kidnap his wife and children and sell them into brothels. In the worst cases they had ties to local rebels rather than mere gangsters, or they engineered defaults from the start because they wanted bodies, not money. And when the lending outfit itself was nothing more than a money-laundering front for a massive criminal syndicate—well, no further explanation is needed.
Compared to the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel loan sharks of developing nations, South Korea's third-tier lenders look like angels. At least they still have to watch out for the authorities. In the neighborhoods we used to roam, the police were either in on it or treated like the neighborhood punching bag.
"Which brings us to the question: just how far gone are the loan sharks of thirteenth-century Europe, where public authority barely exists?"
"…S-Saintess, did things like that happen every day in the world you came from?"
After that long-winded explanation I tossed out a question whose answer was already fixed. Rebecca stared at me, thoroughly flustered. Her eyes held worry for my safety mixed with a faint thread of doubt.
Hmm. Looks like the parallel-world spoilers I just dropped were a bit much for her.
"No? In places where people ate well and lived well, that sort of thing almost never happened."
Twenty-first-century Earth wasn't quite that hopeless a place. Developed countries with solid public order were safe, of course, but even in developing nations where the authorities were a joke, the neighborhoods where the rich clustered were every bit as secure and humane as any advanced country. I just happened to spend most of my time in the truly hellish districts because I was babysitting my senior.
"…Ah. I see. So that is why the Goddess…"
Rebecca murmured something incomprehensible and drifted off into her own private world. Her only real job was to stop the other side from using force if things went south, so for the moment my silver tongue was enough. No need to drag her back to reality.
"This is the place?"
"Yes. The biggest name in this city—Loan King Billy—runs his business on this very street."
…Well, the moment would come when her strength was needed anyway.
I narrowed my eyes and studied the building: a two-story brick house ringed by thin iron bars, giving off a bleak, desolate air. Cold and hard, yes, but otherwise an ordinary little office—the vault and personal hideout of Montpellier's Loan King himself.
"Hmm…"
"Saintess? Is something wrong?"
…Did I stare too long?
Old man Pates checked on me with a puzzled look. I gave a vague shake of the head and stepped inside.
Right. People seeing this for the first time rarely notice. Even if you've seen it somewhere before, you miss it unless you look carefully.
"Hey, old man, this isn't the kind of place you bring half-grown kids—"
"Ah, you must be the famous inventor, Miss Asty. What business brings you to our firm?"
The Loan King's information network was even better than I had expected. Before the bodyguard who mistook us for ordinary customers could risk his life being polite, the man himself stepped forward and opened the conversation. Everything about him said he had known I was coming. No wonder the office was tucked away in such an out-of-the-way corner—he must have planted his underlings all along the streets. We had walked straight into his mouth without realizing it.
"An inventor only ever visits a firm for one reason. I came to talk business."
With Rebecca here, nothing truly dangerous could happen. I smiled as if nothing were wrong and looked him over.
Holy shit, how can a human being look this greedy?
I started trying to read something important from his appearance, then decided there was nothing left to deduce and simply looked away. In all my life I had never met someone whose entire character was written so plainly on his face. How does a face drip with avarice like that?
I wasn't channeling some ancient physiognomist and reading minds through bone structure. Loan King Billy truly looked vicious and cowardly from the first glance.
"Ah, business—excellent. So you need investment, then?"
See? The moment he scented money he was already bowing and scraping to a girl young enough to be his granddaughter. Watching him throw away every scrap of dignity and turn into a pure money-fly almost made me feel sorry for him. Since waking up in this body I had been dismissed for my age more times than I could count, but this was the first time someone had honestly rubbed his palms together and come running for cash.
"No. Not investment—donation."
I had zero intention of handing him any profitable venture. As if anyone would form a healthy, productive partnership with a loan shark. All I wanted was to relieve the poor and spread the Goddess's true teachings, exactly as She intended.
"The greedy Count would never tolerate outsiders meddling in his own enterprises. Even if the paperwork says otherwise, on the surface it has to be disguised as pure, uncompensated patronage."
That much was not a lie. Count Montpellier would never willingly let the Saintess who had fallen into his hands slip free. Of course I had no plan to set up independent businesses behind his back, and I had no intention of using the money I borrowed here for any business at all—but that was the sucker's problem, not mine. If anything, I was about to take dirty money and cleanly return it to society. He ought to be thanking me.
"Even so, those terms are impossible. Why should I take such a dangerous risk?"
True to form for a bloodless, tearless Loan King, he showed not the slightest interest in social contribution. I had no choice but to let slip a tiny fragment of the secret I had been carefully hiding.
"…Because only then will this city survive the war that is coming."
The Count is plotting treason.
So spit out the money already, you useless old fossil.