The Human-Stick: A Perfect Fusion of Two Extremely Incompatible Beings

"You bunch of goddamn frauds!" Thirin shrieked at the top of her lungs.

"Committing such a disrespectful scam right in front of Sir Klaus, the newly appointed Decurion of the Imperial Guard Security Force?!"

"......!!"

Thirin spun around and shoved the back of the idiotically frozen Klaus, propelling him straight into the middle ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of the gambling den. The moment the bewildered man stumbled forward without the faintest idea what was happening, Thirin ducked behind him and bellowed again.

"Behold, the arrival of the honored newly appointed Decurion Sir Klaus! Everyone face-down on the floor! You're all under arrest, yah!"

An icy silence swept through the gambling house. Every eye locked onto the immaculate blond officer who stood there blinking in pure confusion. Then those gazes slid from his face down to the crisp imperial uniform and the officer’s sword at his hip.

"......"

"Shit, it’s the real security force!"

"Run!"

"Flip the tables! Trash everything!"

Chaos detonated. The moment they heard the security force had arrived, every thug, punk, and bottom-rung adventurer in the place overturned their games and scattered like startled cockroaches.

"......"

They fled, but most of them had probably done nothing especially wrong. In the gray zone, however, survival always trumped innocence. The first one to bolt when public authority showed up was usually the one who lived longest. No one could predict what kind of trouble might come knocking.

And the mastermind who had turned the entire place into a madhouse? What was Thirin doing?

"Ooh......"

She let out a soft sound of admiration and promptly bent at the waist. Klaus could only stare in disbelief.

......She’s lost her mind.

Thirin had begun frantically scooping up the coins scattered across the floor.

"........."

Klaus was utterly speechless. This woman never remained inside the boundaries of his common sense for even a single second. Had she really turned him ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠into a uniformed puppet just so she could do something this low-class?

After one thorough sweep of the gambling den floor, Thirin straightened up. The corners of her eyes curved with clear satisfaction at how nicely her pockets now bulged.

"This little stunt isn’t half bad. The haul’s surprisingly decent."

"........."

Seeing Klaus’s flabbergasted stare, Thirin subtly averted her gaze and muttered.

"......Money that’s been abandoned like this belongs to whoever claims it first."

Is she insane? Or just a professional beggar?

Klaus had unintentionally seen straight through to the core of Thirin’s being.

Thirin pretended not to notice his look and called out brightly.

"Right, next spot."

She’s seriously going to pull this crap again?

She did. The next was another gambling den.

"By order of the shining star of the Imperial Guard, newly appointed Decurion Sir Klaus! Not a single one of you illegal gambling scammers move!"

"Damn it, the security force is here! Everybody run!"

Next came a black-market trading post.

"As the top graduate of the Imperial Academy’s class of 1557 and under the command of newly appointed Decurion Sir Klaus of the Imperial Guard Security Force, I hereby declare an emergency seizure and search of this illegal weapons transaction site!"

"W-we’re just trading scrap metal… aaargh!"

Then it was some random back alley.

"Under the command of His Excellency Klaus, the greatest genius in the entire history of the Imperial Academy, future Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Army, and newly appointed Decurion of the Security Force! Is there anyone here engaging in illegal breathing without a permit?!"

"Wait, why the hell would you need a permit to breathe…"

"......"

Thirin rampaged through the back alleys and gray zones, shouting almost like she was having a seizure.

"Security Force! Newly appointed Decurion! Klaus! Security Force! Newly appointed Decurion! Klaus!"

She didn’t seem interested in actually catching the local thugs. She didn’t appear to be after money either. Sure, she had snatched some ownerless coins back at the gambling den, but that was it. She never touched the goods the black-market dealers had dropped in their panic. She simply kept repeating Klaus’s name and title over and over, as if her real goal was to make sure not a single person in the back alleys remained unaware that newly appointed Decurion Klaus had arrived.

Klaus felt like he had been stripped naked in public.

After turning several more back alleys into complete disasters, Thirin finally stepped into a shabby inn. It seemed she had already booked a room.

Bang.

"Bounty hunter."

The moment the door slammed shut, Klaus could no longer hold back.

"Just what the hell are you doing?"

It was absurd. Beyond absurd. This woman had told him she had taken him on in order to search for missing children. But what possible connection could her current antics have with finding missing kids?

Not a trace of embarrassment showed on Thirin’s face. She sprawled lazily in a chair inside the room, crossed her legs, and spoke. For some reason, the sight of her sitting like that suddenly irritated Klaus immensely.

"What do you mean, why?"

Thirin looked up at him with perfectly innocent eyes.

"For a creepy stalker like you, this is the only proper treatment."

"What kind of nonsense are you—!"

"Hmph."

Thirin gave a slippery little laugh.

"Listen well, Mr. Woman-Tailing Dog. Do you know what the most important part of reforming a criminal is? It’s creating a social environment that prevents reoffending. Why do you think you can keep following around a frail civilian like me? Because nobody knows who you are. Isn’t that right?"

"......"

Thirin folded her arms and stared at him.

"From now on, you can no longer freely stalk women. Call it building a surveillance network through social reputation."

"........."

Thirin nodded, looking extremely pleased with herself.

"See? I’m great at incorporating the latest trends. I’m the very definition of an early adopter."

"......"

Klaus closed his eyes. The reason he had obediently accepted the Security Chief’s order was to make amends for his mistake, to reflect on his actions, and because of the stated goal of searching for missing children. But this…

"Bounty hunter."

Klaus finally growled in a low voice.

"Is this your revenge? Have you been dragging me around just to humiliate me in public like this? When you said I had to repay my debt, did you mean I had to endure this kind of disgrace?"

The air inside the room froze solid. Thirin stared straight at Klaus as if she had noticed the change in atmosphere. Her eyes were not what he had expected. She was neither laughing nor flustered. There was no vulgar desire to shame or disgrace him in her gaze.

Thirin stood up.

"Humiliation?"

All trace of playfulness had vanished from her voice.

"Your very existence is an insult to the security force."

"...What are you talking about?"

"The Chief must have said something to you. Do you even know why you’re here?"

"......She said it was to search for missing children. But what does any of what you’re doing have to do with—"

Thirin didn’t let him finish.

"Do you know what this is?"

She pulled a worn sheet of paper from her pocket and flicked it at him. Klaus reflexively caught the fluttering page.

It was written in the guild’s familiar format, accompanied by a clumsy portrait of the child. A request to find a missing child.

Before he could react, Thirin’s cold voice stabbed into him like a dagger.

"I’m doing the job that neither your security force nor your precious empire has managed to do."

"......The security force operates according to proper procedure. Every case has its own priority—"

"Yeah, I know that too."

Surprisingly, Thirin readily acknowledged his point.

"You people are short on manpower. Public authority has always been like that everywhere. That’s why guilds and bounty hunters exist in the first place. I know that."

"......"

"And guilds or bounty hunters don’t like taking these trivial requests. The pay is pathetic, and above all, there are almost no clues."

Thirin let out a small sigh. The face of Rina, the guild receptionist, floated through her mind—the woman who had been so frustrated she could only stomp her feet because even she, whose job was to gather information, had no workable leads.

Klaus no longer knew how he was supposed to respond.

"Well, it’s not entirely the fault of individual imperial soldiers that these cases get buried. There are people inside who are doing their best in their own way."

Thirin’s gaze drifted into empty air for a moment.

"People like your Chief, for example. She really is a pitiful person."

"Pitiful?"

"Yeah. Even when I act like a complete lunatic, she still tries to speak to me with respect and work out some kind of agreement. Her head must be about to explode from having to clean up after a pathetic rookie subordinate like you."

"Agreement? What are you—"

"Do you know what the Chief told me? It wasn’t just ‘don’t overstep your authority against criminals.’ She also said she didn’t care whether those bastards lived or died. What do you think that means?"

"......"

"It was a warning not to pick fights with an inflexible idiot like you. Because if you just bring back their heads, there won’t be any annoying questions. She was trying to protect me from idiots like you in her own way."

Klaus was struck speechless. He had never dreamed the Chief’s words had carried that kind of intent.

"But you’re different, Mr. Stalker. You’re not the same type as your Chief."

Thirin’s voice now openly dripped with contempt.

"People like you prefer digging up dirt on those who actually get things done instead of doing the annoying, exhausting, and genuinely unprofitable work of finding missing kids. You’d rather harass them over some trivial accusation like ‘witch.’ Isn’t that right?"

Klaus squeezed his voice out.

"That was… a legitimate investigation into the suspicions."

"Legitimate investigation?"

Thirin let out a short, dry laugh as if she had just heard the funniest joke in the world.

"Then where’s the evidence?"

"......"

"Do you have any actual evidence?"

Thirin’s voice grew colder.

"All you had was a gut feeling. You figured you could just find evidence later if you tried hard enough. Isn’t that how it was?"

She continued, voice laced with pure disdain.

"There’s a suspicious bounty hunter, so let’s arrest her first. What’s the basis? What did you say yesterday? ‘Consistent statements from violent criminals’? What an excellent piece of evidence. I never imagined an imperial officer would place such deep trust in the words of murderers, robbers, and rapists."

"......"

"I thought I was pretty free of prejudice, but I never expected to meet someone even more unbiased than me. Bravo."

Thirin was slowly starting to get genuinely angry. It was the same back home or in this fantasy land. While there were public authorities who tenaciously solved cold cases for twenty years, there were always those who tried to inflate their records by framing innocent people. The memory suddenly made her blood boil. She hurled the entire bundle of papers she had been carrying straight at Klaus’s face.

Thud, thud, thud.

Klaus was helplessly pelted by the bundle of documents.

"Stalking would’ve been better. You were going to frame someone without any evidence?"

"......"

The papers fluttering weakly to the floor were all of the same type. Heartfelt pleas from different parents begging for their children to be found.

Thirin looked at the dumbstruck Klaus and spoke.

"Sure. It’s fine to poke around like that if you occasionally hit the jackpot. It doesn’t waste much energy. You want to invest as little as possible while taking as much profit as possible."

"......"

"Truly excellent. That’s exactly how investment should work. I’ve learned a very valuable lesson from you, Mr. Stalker. I’ve ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠relearned that the easiest and most comfortable way to live life is always the correct one."

Klaus swallowed hard. Of course he had never intended it that way. But he could not refute her.

Her words kept ringing in his ears.

Invest as little as possible. Take as much profit as possible.

Images of high society flickered through Klaus’s mind. People who tried to obtain the maximum with the minimum effort. The young lady who “accidentally” dropped her handkerchief to create a connection with the heir of a wealthy family. The widow who squeezed out a single false tear to gain favor. The mistress who pressed her seductive body forward, trying to claim both the loyalty and desire of a young, capable officer.

Live life easily. Comfortably.

Klaus realized it. The essence was the same. How was what he had done any different from them? What evidence had there been for the witch accusation? Had he personally witnessed Thirin performing witchcraft? No. Had he followed her outside the city to verify the rumors? No. All Klaus had picked up were the statements of criminals. Thin, cheap reports that barely cost any effort to obtain.

Live life easily. Comfortably.

What was the difference between the young lady’s hand dropping a handkerchief and his own hand picking up a criminal’s statement?

Klaus silently gathered the papers that had fallen to the floor.

"...."

Silence.

"What? Nothing more to say?"

Thirin snorted.

"Mr. Imperial Guard Decurion."

After a long silence, Klaus finally lifted his head.

"......You said it was to search for missing children."

His voice was hoarse.

"I hope those words were true. What is your plan?"

Thirin blinked.

Look at this guy.

Klaus’s attitude had completely changed. Thirin gave a small laugh. It was surprisingly rare for someone to admit their own fault. And this man was one of those rare few. Her opinion of him shifted. She had planned to just sell his position and kick him out, but maybe he could still be useful.

"So you’ve decided to cooperate?"

Thirin sat back down and crossed her legs again.

"......"

Klaus suddenly found the way she crossed her legs extremely irritating. Why did it keep drawing his eyes like that?

Whether she knew what he was thinking or not, Thirin relaxed her voice and continued.

"Well, it’s not like I was only parading your name around just to humiliate you, Mr. Stalker."

"It wasn’t?"

"......Okay, it was a little fun. But since you’re a current and former stalker, you ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠should endure at least that much, right?"

"......"

Thirin shrugged at Klaus’s reproachful glare.

"Have you ever heard about how bees behave?"

"......?"

What was this woman talking about now? Klaus fell back into confusion.

Thirin spoke.

"Listen carefully."