What Kind of Festival Is This? (2)
The Magic City wasn't home to just academies — ateliers and corporations packed its streets shoulder to shoulder.
They developed and tested all manner of magical tools and spell arrays, or supplied the goods the academies needed for their lectures.
Of course, back when the city was first being planned, there had been loud complaints — accusations that magical waste and overpopulation were mere excuses to shove mages out of the capital region.
But whatever its origins, the Magic City had since become the mecca of all things magical, drawing in mages by the thousands.
Truly a street of magic. Even the trivial little objects lining the roads turned out, one by one, to be magical tools if you looked at them closely.
Which, for me, meant one thing: a minefield.
There was every chance I'd wander into a magical tool shop by mistake and end up owing restitution. Touch a streetlight and I could be arrested for damaging public property. Accidentally break one large-scale magical tool, and months of my salary would vanish in an instant.
So I made a habit of sticking to streets I'd walked at least once before.
After all, the penalty assignments are over now.
This latest 'Secret Party investigation' wasn't a penalty assignment — it was an official mission. Meaning anything I broke would fall under 'Bureau business,' and could be covered by public funds.
Well, I'll probably get an earful about it anyway.
Wine cafe.
I found a reasonably decent bar and pushed open the door. The smell of alcohol, cooking oil, and heavy perfume mixed together and stabbed at my sinuses.
A few patrons' gazes lingered on me for a moment before sliding away.
I really should buy some clothes to relax in.
With my stay in the Magic City stretching longer, I needed something more comfortable to wear. This longcoat did have a certain... work-clothes feel to it.
It wasn't even an officially regulated Inspection Unit uniform. I just wore it all the time, everyone started copying me one by one, and before anyone noticed, it had become the unit's unofficial uniform.
Their choice to copy me, I suppose.
Still, when a whole crowd of them stomped around in nothing but black longcoats, gathered together they looked rather depressingly gloomy.
"Lady Killer Ryuu. Whatever you've got."
The bartender looking down at me seated in the corner of the bar gave a slight frown.
"Sorry, but you look a little young... Could I see some ID, perhaps?"
Right, with all the academies nearby, they check this stuff carefully.
I pulled my ID from my coat and handed it over. The bartender gave a small nod, and before long set a cocktail down in front of me — the color of limewater in a martini glass.
A daiquiri, is it.
I left the cocktail alone and quietly surveyed the establishment.
The Secret Party's invitations were mostly extended to customers sitting alone at bars. But there didn't seem to be any fixed location or time of day — which meant scoring an invitation was pure luck.
This place doesn't look promising either.
This was my fifth attempt, and sadly, still no contact from the Secret Party's organizers.
Maybe I'll call it a day.
It was getting late. I'd just raised the cocktail to my lips to down it in one go when —
"Hey there, miss. Got a minute?"
Two men had sidled up on either side of me.
Should I throw them out?
At the second and fourth bars, similar characters had approached me as well. I'd followed them on the off chance it meant something, but sure enough, they'd just been ordinary sleazy pickup artists.
Judging by the look of these two, probably no different.
Well, they say third time's the charm.
"I do, actually."
"Oh? Heh heh..."
The two men exchanged glances between themselves.
"We'd love it if you came along with us for a bit. What do you say, care to follow?"
"If you insist."
So where would it be? If this ended at another seedy motel in some back alley like the others, I was going to be thoroughly bored.
It was not, in fact, a boring place.
The establishment my escorts led me into was that legendary game — the one infamous for being hardest to gather four people for. A mahjong parlor.
surely they didn't drag me here because they couldn't round up four players.
That would be impressive in its own way, but sadly, I was in no position to play mahjong with them. Not that I didn't know the rules.
That one cost about five million Erk per table, if I recall.
The automatic tables used for mahjong were magical tools. Nobody here wanted the sight of mahjong tiles popping into the air like popcorn.
Apparently, what the men wanted was not a mahjong partner. They led me past the parlor and deeper into the building, stopping at last before a certain door.
"Boss, we're coming in."
"Yeah."
They knocked twice, opened the door, and bowed respectfully toward the men inside. Then they pulled me by the shoulder and planted me before the 'boss' of the room.
"We found you a woman that's exactly your type, boss — a real piece of work! She looks like she'd have a filthy temper!"
"What do you think? Look at those eyes — vicious, right? You can tell just by looking that she's someone who's soaked someone else before!"
The ponytailed man, half-reclined in the owner's chair, stared blankly at my face. Then, mouth hanging stupidly open, he dropped the cigarette he'd been chewing onto his own trousers.
"Ow! Hot hot hot!"
Watching the man's hopelessly sloppy antics, I clicked my tongue, briefly.
"What are you doing? Get on your knees."
Sicario.
One of Serket's four great factions.
If Morgue were endlessly twisted seekers of knowledge, Sicario acted for one thing alone — their own satisfaction, their own pleasure, their own instincts.
They ate, slept, stole, smashed, and occasionally killed, wherever their emotions led them.
To put it broadly, they were common criminals. Or perhaps, brainless.
And the head of that Sicario — Lycaon — was currently smashing his forehead against the floor in front of me.
"Get up."
Lycaon sprang up like a coiled spring and snapped back into place, sending me a look drenched in confusion.
"Noonim, what brings you to a place like this...?"
Noonim, my foot.
"Don't call me that."
"Then shall I call you Boss instead?"
"Back to position."
THUD!
"Get up."
"Yes'm, Noonim!"
Lycaon rose and snapped to attention.
I shook my head. He was considerably older than me — why on earth he insisted on addressing me like that, I'd never understand.
"And what are you lot doing here, anyway?"
They'd gone so far as to set up an entire mahjong parlor this size just to lurk here.
"That is information we cannot disclose."
"Why not?"
"If you want to know, join Sicario."
Right — I hadn't expected a straight answer anyway.
"Morgue."
Lycaon's shoulders twitched, just slightly.
"So — is Morgue involved, or not? Just tell me that much."
"...Classified."
So it's definitely Morgue.
I let out a long sigh. Well, at least now that they knew I was staying in the Magic City, they'd restrain themselves a little.
...They will, won't they?
"You keep gobbling up everything in sight, something's going to go wrong."
"Then will you come feed us yourself, Noonim?"
I'd made them the same offer every single time, and every single time it was them who brushed it off.
"Join the Inspection Unit."
"Pass."
Lycaon smoothed down his pressed-flat bangs.
"You've already siphoned off every useful body I had into that Inspection Unit of yours... honestly, have you no shame at all?"
"I'd say they're all doing quite well for themselves, actually."
At my words, Lycaon's brow creased faintly. He fished a cigarette from his coat and stuck it between his lips.
"You think putting a leash on a wolf turns it into a dog?"
"I can certainly tame you that way."
"Honestly, how does not one word of mine ever land?"
Of course it doesn't?
"Do I have any reason to lose to you?"
"Haah! I'm just saying my piece, that's all. Anyway — that kid, is he doing all right?"
A pause.
I pictured Minion Number One, writhing in boredom on a hospital bed in his prime.
"Morgue got him. He'll be in the hospital for a while."
"Morgue, my foot. I don't even need to look — you clearly blasted him into next week yourself, Noonim."
Uh. Hmm.
"...No, I didn't."
"Haah, and yet here you strutting around like some crime-busting hero. Go catch yourself first — you'd look perfect walking into prison in your own handcuffs, all by your lonesome."
"......"
"And what kind of man pawns off someone else's dear little sister and then works her to the bone like that, huh?!"
"I don't work her to the bone. And nobody pawned her off, either."
I snatched the cigarette from Lycaon's mouth and snapped it in half.
"That was the deal from the beginning, wasn't it?"
As long as they didn't commit any overtly major crimes, we wouldn't arrest them. But if they happened to get caught doing something and hauled into the Bureau — well, then they'd work as Inspection Unit members.
That was the arrangement. If they didn't like it, they shouldn't get caught.
Besides, Lycaon was hardly in a position to play the aggrieved party right now.
"Do you not remember how many times I've let you walk?"
"N-now, Noonim, hold on—"
"Hey."
Lycaon unconsciously tucked the freshly-lit cigarette back into his coat.
"...Slip of the tongue. I'll pay proper compensation for it."
"That'll do."
"Anyway, we're not up to anything much. Just running a humble little mahjong parlor here, is all."
Watching Lycaon puff out his chest with utter shamelessness, I gave him a pleasant little smile.
"So. Got a rating for me?"
"Wha— er... no, we don't!"
That was a lie delivered without a single gram of shame.
There followed a minor disturbance in which a table collapsed and the establishment itself came down around our ears.
Nobody was hurt, mind you. The customers who'd very nearly had their wallets wrung dry by the Sicario crew were all safely sent on their way home.
I drove a fist deep into Lycaon's side as he gazed mournfully at the table belching black smoke.
"Ow — hey! You could've let this one slide! Why do you always come wrecking other people's businesses?!"
"Then don't get caught."
He'd piled the money in plain sight in the middle of the table, and now he wanted me to just look the other way? Make a sensible argument for once.
Still, meeting these guys did make things a little easier.
"By any chance — heard anything about the Secret Party lately?"
"You mean the Masquerade?"
I smacked the back of Lycaon's head.
"Ow! Quit hitting me already!"
"Hand it over."
"Hand over what?"
Don't play dumb with me.
"The invitation to that party."
"Why would you assume I obviously have one?"
"Because you obviously would."
Lycaon's mouth split into a grin so wide it looked like it might tear.
Right — of course you'd have one. There was no way you wouldn't.