The Saintess Makes a Contract
"So. Did the food suit you?"
"I-it was delicious..."
"No need to curl in on yourself like that. The person who made it cooked it just to see the one eating it look that happy. Isn't that right?"
"Well, yeah."
The whirlwind of a dinner was over. Eila, the woman, and the man sat with a low table between them.
"I went and fed you, and you're not about to walk out with a cold little 'goodbye,' are you?"
"...Was that your intention from the start?"
"Call it looking out for each other. I give you a meal, you give me information. Not a bad trade, is it?"
The woman spoke as she lit a cigarette.
"Hooo... ahhh! Nothing beats a smoke after a meal. Want one?"
"No, thank you. I don't care for tobacco."
"No? What the hell do you even live for? Poor thing."
As if the cigarette were something sweet, she sucked at it hard enough to hollow her cheeks. Before long, nearly half of it had burned down black.
"So. I've got a few things I'm curious about. You don't have to answer if you don't want to."
"You treated me to a good meal, so I'll answer as far as I'm able."
"Now we're talking! Oh, before that..."
The woman clapped her hands, then dug through the pocket of her coat.
"Here. Catch."
"What is this?"
What she held out was a single sheet of paper, white and stiff. One side bore a small map. The other—
Kang Seon-ah
"Rainbow... Enter...tainment? Repre...sentative Direc...tor... Kang Seon-ah."
"My name. And my company."
The woman, Kang Seon-ah, flung both arms wide as she said it.
Eila looked around. Mold crept over the cracked walls and floor, and the ceiling light flickered on and off, laying a gloom over the room.
"What sort of work do you do in a place like this?"
"Shouldn't you say something first? I gave you my name. It's only polite to give me yours."
She had the feeling she was being led. Was this woman simply good at conversation? A representative director was the highest person in a company, wasn't she? She remembered the Hero telling her so. The person at the top of a company was much like the master of a trading house, so of course she would be used to talking people around. Eila let the thought end there.
"Please call me Eila."
"Eila? You're a foreigner?"
"Yes."
"No family name?"
"No."
To become a Saintess was to cast off every attachment to the secular world and stand as the Lord's proxy—to erase every trace of the people one had known before taking the title. Not that it mattered. She had been an orphan from the start, and had never had a surname to begin with. Eila smiled bitterly.
"Eila. Foreigner. No family name..."
Kang Seon-ah murmured it under her breath.
"So what does this company do?"
"On paper, it's a hunter office."
"...A hunter office?"
"Yeah. Only two hunters on the roster, though."
Ten years had passed since the dungeons appeared, and they had settled into ordinary life. In that span, countless professions had risen and vanished, and among those newly born, hunters were of course included. By the nature of the work, hunters tended to operate on their own, and that brought problems of its own—trouble over contracts, trouble over paperwork and administration. The ones who laid a bridge between hunters and the people who needed them were—
"None other than us! Rainbow Entertainment!"
"......"
Finished with her passionate speech, Kang Seon-ah shot to her feet, threw her chin at the ceiling, and stretched both arms straight out. Eila was at a loss for words.
"Put simply, it's a staffing agency, hunter edition! But asking about something like this... your country doesn't have a system like it, does it?"
"No, it doesn't."
She answered, though she hadn't understood even half of what Kang Seon-ah had said. She had only thought, So it's something like a guild, and gone along with it.
"Then the paperwork—"
"Whoa, hold on. We take turns. One question at a time."
Kang Seon-ah held a hand out toward Eila.
"My turn. Hmm... that sword. What is it? Mind if I take a look?"
Eila dropped her gaze to the sword at her hip. The Hero's Holy Sword. Her eyes narrowed.
Kang Seon-ah waved the notion off.
"No, no. I don't need to touch it or anything. I just want to see it."
"......"
If all she wanted was to look, then... well. Eila took the Holy Sword in one hand and lifted it as it was.
"Will this do?"
"Hmm... can you draw it, by any chance?"
Eila's expression hardened for a moment.
Anyone could wield the Holy Sword, and anyone could draw out its power, though not without certain restrictions. A Hero could use it because a Hero was a being who stood outside those restrictions. The condition for drawing it was a firm resolve in the moment of the draw—not the simple will of I will draw this sword, but the will of Because of this, I must draw this sword.
Eila gripped the scabbard, took the hilt, and tried to part the two.
"...I'm sorry. It won't come free."
"Yeah? So it's an artifact you can only use once some specific condition is met. That's the end of my questions. Go on. Ask."
"...You said 'on paper' a moment ago. Then what does this company actually do?"
"Hmm... which do you want? The answer overflowing with dreams and hope, or the one pickled in reality?"
"It doesn't matter."
"We're detectives."
Detectives?
Eila tilted her head. She had heard that word from the Hero: a name for people under a curse that left the dead wherever they went. Everything that had happened until now came together in her mind. Why plant a base in a filthy place like this? Because places like this had so few people. Her reaction was immediate.
"Let all that is filthy, all that is unclean, all that is profane, be gone. Return to the place that must lie beneath the name of the Lord."
[Purification]
In an instant, Kang Seon-ah's body sank beneath a pale green radiance.
"What the he— huh?"
The light vanished. Kang Seon-ah started to say something to Eila, then shoved up her sleeve and stared at her right wrist.
"What in the..."
"The curse is lifted now. You can rest easy and be around other peo—"
"You crazy bitch! What the hell did you just do?!"
Kang Seon-ah screamed loud enough to shake the building. The man who had been washing dishes in the kitchen came running out still wearing his rubber gloves.
"W-what's going—"
"Th-the curses I spent a whole year collecting... Th-this has to be a dream... A nightmare..."
"H-huh? The curses are gone? Why?!"
"How the fuck should I know!!"
The man and the woman shouted over each other. Left on her own, Eila had no hope of following what was happening.
"I am truly sorry."
"Haa... well, forget it. You didn't mean anything bad by it."
"I really am sorry..."
"It's fiiine~. I spent a year busting my ass like a dog to collect those, and all that effort and time got wiped the hell out by one little chant, but it's fiiine~."
Eila had her forehead planted on the desk. She resented the Hero.
After the brief uproar over the purification, the word detective she had heard from Kang Seon-ah turned out to be nothing like the word detective she had heard from the Hero.
I can't believe it was a profession...
Casting Purification on a hasty assumption was her own fault, and there was no one else to blame—but she still couldn't help feeling wronged.
Why was she collecting curses in the first place?
Eila swallowed the question. She was the one at fault here. This was no place to be asking something like that.
"Really, it's fine. Mind lifting your head?"
"...Yes."
Eila raised her head. Kang Seon-ah bit back a laugh. She looked like a puppy left out in the rain, all shriveled up.
Cute.
A shame, losing the curses she'd spent a year gathering—but it wasn't as if she had particularly needed them.
"S-so this company takes requests from other people. Is that right?"
Eila asked it, fidgeting.
"Yeah."
Put simply, they were a private inquiry office.
Good thing I don't have to give her the answer that's been pickled in reality.
"Um... then, would you perhaps be able to take a request from me as well?"
"What is it?"
Kang Seon-ah went to draw a cigarette from the pack, saw that exactly one remained, and tucked it back into her pocket untouched.
Eila said, "I'd like to find someone."
"Oh! That's exactly the work we detectives do. Name? Date of birth? Gender? What do they look like?"
"Ah, th-the name—"
"And the money?"
"...Is money required?"
"Obviously. You think we dig our living out of the ground?"
The air went cold in an instant.
"Miss, this is our job. You pay, and we take the request. That's the deal."
"Ah, um... I'm sorry. I didn't know."
"It's fine~. People don't know things. So, do you have money?"
Eila's shoulders drew in smaller and smaller.
"N-no. I don't..."
"If you don't have any yourself, just ask someone you know."
"......"
The only people she had met in this world were the ones on Jeju Island and the ones aboard the ship. Everyone else she had known had already returned to the Lord's embrace.
"Then how about this."
To Eila, who had gone silent, Kang Seon-ah said,