A Spotless Cleanup
Crystal stared at the enormous check in front of her and started digging through her memories. She was trying to recall how she was supposed to handle unexplained kindness—only to realize, almost immediately, that there was a fatal problem with that approach.
Ah, right. I've never received anything like kindness.
Until now, the only times people had approached her—when they weren't shunning her out of jealousy over her talent—were when they wanted to use her abilities or satisfy their own appetites. Crystal had never allowed such people anywhere near her. She smashed them or crippled them so thoroughly they never dared try again. Aside from Peter, who was about as close to a friend as she had, she possessed not a single memory of anyone treating her well.
This is awkward.
She wasn't agonizing over whether to take the check Benjamin was holding out. Being sold to Benjamin—no matter what he did to her—would be infinitely better than being dragged off by those operators, defiled, and worked until she died. She simply didn't want to accept it without knowing what it meant. Even if it was poison, she would swallow it. But she wanted to know what kind of poison it was first.
So before taking the check, Crystal asked him a question.
"Senior. Have you fallen for me?"
"Don't be ridiculous."
The look of genuine disgust on Benjamin's face as he scowled couldn't possibly have been an act. It was so real she almost felt hurt.
"Then were you planning to tell me to stay out of your sight after I take this? Or not to cause you any more trouble?"
"You're saying nothing but stupid things today. If I wanted you gone, all I'd have to do is wait. Why would I go out of my way to prepare something like this?"
He had a point. If Benjamin Jenkinson had truly found Crystal Baker a nuisance, he wouldn't even have needed to wait—he could have gotten rid of her long ago. He had more than enough power to do it. It wouldn't have been difficult.
"Then why are you helping me? What do you want from me, Senior?"
"Nothing. No... actually. If I had to say, just keep living the way you have been."
The more they talked, the less Crystal understood what was going on in his head. Why would he casually hand over this much money if he wanted nothing in return? And what did "keep living the way you have been" even mean? No matter how she turned it over, it refused to make sense.
"...I don't really get it, but is that what you want, Senior? For me to keep playing around—pulling pranks that make your life difficult?"
"Yes."
That was basically telling her to stay by his side, Crystal thought, and a strange, ticklish sensation stirred in her chest. Benjamin, on the other hand, just looked thoroughly fed up.
"If it wounds your pride, or if you hate the feeling of being pitied, do whatever you want. I'll tear up this check."
"N-no!"
Before Benjamin could so much as pick it up, Crystal snatched the check at the speed of light and clutched it to her chest.
"Ahem. I'll gratefully accept this. You don't have to worry. Even if it takes me a lifetime, I'll pay you back."
She meant every word. She had never once broken a promise she'd made, and she fully intended to keep this one too.
That very day, Crystal wiped out every last bit of her debt and returned to the dormitory in high spirits. She was certain this would be one of the best days of her life.
Until Jane failed to come back by curfew.
I set down the pen I'd been writing with and took the coffee Miya handed me.
"So where was Jane?"
"Apparently she was staying alone at a hotel near the school. Crystal tore the girls' dormitory apart looking for her, but Jane had actually left with proper permission."
So they'd been in a cold war ever since.
I'd thought I'd cleanly cleared Chapter 3, aside from a bit of trouble brushing off that inexplicable kindness. Apparently I'd been mistaken.
Originally, Chapter 3 of the game had a hidden solution for paying off the debt: getting help from Jane White. The choices were finicky, and you had to grind her affection, but if you managed to get Jane's help, the debt problem resolved itself with almost laughable ease.
But that was only in the game. Crystal would never have asked Jane for that kind of help, so I hadn't even considered it as an option.
However.
"Crystal is furious, but I understand how Jane feels too. Even if it was a relative who borrowed the money without permission, her family's company almost sold her friend. It's not surprising she can barely look Crystal in the face."
That was true. I remembered it being different in the game, but in reality, the place Crystal's relative had used her as collateral to borrow a fortune from happened to be the White Merchant Guild. Technically it was a loan company under the Guild, but from Jane's perspective, that hardly made a difference.
"Peter wants to get them to make up, but there's nothing he can do, so he's frustrated. And that wo— Senior Fletcher seems uncomfortable with how heavy the atmosphere in the clubroom has gotten. Same for me."
"I see."
Now I understood why every club member had been wearing such a gloomy face lately. I nodded, set down my cup, and picked up my pen again.
"...Are you just going to leave it like that?"
"Of course. As a noble and as club president, I have neither the motive nor the reason to interfere in a friendship."
Even if Crystal and Jane split up for good, it wouldn't have a major impact on the overall flow of events. All the more reason not to get involved. Right now, the manuscript I needed to soothe the publisher that had started pressuring me about a new work was far more urgent.
"Alright. Then I'll go to bed. Don't push yourself too hard, Brother."
"Good night."
That night, for the first time in a while, I stayed up until morning working on the manuscript.
After school, same as always. Miya addressed the club members gathered in the clubroom with a confident air.
"None of you have other plans today, right?"
"We don't, but... why?"
It was Camilla who answered, filling in for Crystal—who didn't look particularly interested—and Peter, who was muttering something gloomy to himself. She'd been planning to leave early anyway since Benjamin wasn't around today, so she figured she could go along if it was just something to kill the time.
What Miya said next was far more than something to kill the time.
"Everyone, rejoice. Tonight, House Jenkinson will be hosting a small banquet. And the entire feast will be handmade by my proud older brother, Count Benjamin Jenkinson himself!"
Having strung together words that didn't quite seem like they belonged in the same sentence—Count, and homemade cooking—Miya surveyed the room.
As expected, the reaction was explosive.
"Senior cooks too?! What kind of food? Wait, no—don't tell me! I want to be surprised when I see it!"
"The president cooked it himself...? Are we even allowed to eat that...?"
Gulp. Gulp. Gulp. Gulp. Gulp. Gulp.
She felt a surge of satisfaction at her audience's response. Crystal, who'd looked completely uninterested in the world, had latched on in an instant. Peter had jerked his head up so fast she worried he'd snap his neck. And Camilla—a noble young lady—was making sounds a girl of her station absolutely should not be making as she swallowed. Watching them, Miya thought of her brother.
I told him not to overdo it.
Last night, her brother—who'd answered so curtly, as if he couldn't care less—had stayed up until morning finishing the manuscript, sent it off to the publisher, then said he was tired and would skip school. And as he did, he'd mentioned it offhandedly: she should bring the kids over for dinner.
He pretends not to care, but he still looks after the club members. I really love that about him.
Thinking of Benjamin, who was probably hard at work in the kitchen right about now, Miya glanced at Peter as if something had just occurred to her.
"Oh, and Peter—he said you don't get to eat unless you bring Jane."
"...I'll bring her no matter what it takes."
Naturally, Miya and Camilla glanced at Crystal, but she only shot a sidelong look at Peter as he clenched both fists and made his solemn vow. She said nothing else.
Before long, night fell.
"Dog. Come out for a second and taste this."
At his master's call, Dog, the gardener of House Jenkinson, emerged from the darkness. Inwardly cheering that he'd won an utterly unfair game of rock-paper-scissors against the old butler and the head maid for this very moment, he took a huge bite of the meat pie Benjamin had cut for him.
"How is it?"
"The best meat pie I have ever had in my life."
"I feel like you've said that before... well, as long as it tastes good."
His master nodded in satisfaction despite Dog's meager vocabulary, then took off his apron and started putting away the dishes. Dog tossed the remaining piece of pie into his mouth, looked at the food covering every inch of the kitchen table, and asked a question.
"Isn't this a bit much?"
"Hmm. It's been a while since I cooked properly. I think I got a little carried away."
Unlike his master, who looked slightly embarrassed, Dog didn't see a problem. He, the old butler, and the head maid would make sure not a single leftover went to waste.
"Are Logan and Madonna still cleaning up?"
"They should be almost done. I was thinking of heading over soon anyway."
"That so?"
With deft hands that inspired genuine admiration, his master finished putting away the cooking utensils in no time. Then he sniffed the clothes he was wearing, frowned, and said to Dog:
"I should take a quick shower before Miya brings the kids. And change clothes, too. I'll leave the rest of the cleanup to you—keep it spotless."
"Yes, of course."
Even if it was just a casual dinner, a noble couldn't greet guests looking unkempt. The moment his master left the kitchen to wash up, Dog slipped back into the darkness and headed for the garden, where the old butler and the head maid were still cleaning.
They'd finished faster than he'd expected. Old butler Logan and head maid Madonna were standing in the garden at their leisure, watching an outside cleaning crew haul away the corpses and scrub out the bloodstains.
"Good work."
"You've got it easy, Dog."
"The seniors are working, and you're off eating the Young Master's homemade meat pie all by yourself."
From experience, Dog knew there was no point arguing when those two started grumbling. He changed the subject by counting the corpses the cleaners were carrying off, then tilted his head.
"Over thirty? That's a bigger scale than we've seen lately."
"They were just nobodies. Not even worth capturing to dig into their backgrounds."
Well, the mere fact that they'd come after the master himself instead of Lady Miya made it obvious they were idiots without even the most basic information.
"Where is the Young Master?"
"He's gone to get ready to receive the guests. Madonna—there's blood on your sleeve."
"Ah, damn, there is. What a pain to change."
"Blood splatter? Getting rusty in your old age?"
"Shut it, you old coot. Unlike you, I'm still a vigorous woman in her prime. And I'm a monster specialist, remember?"
"...Do you perhaps not know what 'in her prime' actually means?"
The three servants bickered as they hurried to finish preparing for the guests.
Not long after, when Miya arrived with the club members, not a single one of them would have guessed a massacre had taken place in the garden.
Of course not.
They were professional servants, after all.