Dark Moon
The carriage rolled into X-district. I watched the outside through the window.
True to its reputation as the most lawless corner of the city, the atmosphere was oppressively dark. Broken roads, crumbling walls, factories that had long since ceased to run. The wind that slipped through the window carried a mingled scent of rust and sea.
A long time ago, X-district had been a thriving place. Cargo ships had come and gone dozens of times a day, and the laborers who worked there had numbered in the thousands.
Then a new port opened in D-district, and X-district fell into ruin.
"Sir. I'm sorry, but I don't want to go any farther."
The coachman spoke. His tense voice was thick with unease and fear. X-district was ranked among the worst for public safety in all of Neo London. An ordinary person who wandered in carelessly was all too likely to end up bleeding.
Instead of arguing, I held out my pocket-watch-style smartwatch. He processed the payment quickly.
"I understand. I'm grateful you brought me this far. On the way back… I'll find another carriage."
"You won't find a carriage willing to come into X-district. Call one from W-district."
"Appreciate the advice. That's useful."
"I'll be going, then."
The carriage departed.
Drawing on my knowledge of the original game, I walked the streets of X-district. The broken pavement was a mild inconvenience.
Just as Yuria said — all I did was switch the brand of my suit, and the citizens of Neo London treat me with a bit more respect.
Yuria really was something. I walked on with that thought in mind.
At some point I felt eyes on me. Someone was watching. There was no hostile intent, so I ignored it and kept walking.
I turned into a dim alley. Even the sky — the only bright thing left in this district — was barely visible between the walls.
I walked the alley for a long while, mapping its layout in my head.
"Hey."
A man appeared. The one who'd been tailing me.
"What is it?"
"Looking for the labor agency, aren't you? I'll show you the way. Follow me."
"…"
I followed him. After weaving through a tangle of side streets, we arrived at a building with a sign that read X Labor Agency. The man walked straight inside without hesitation. The first floor was packed with chairs and tables. Looking at the empty bottles strewn across the tabletops, it was hard to tell whether this was a bar or a labor office.
A few men seated at the tables watched me in silence, on guard.
"Rose! Brought one in! Don't know if he's a client or a worker! Fancy-looking gentleman!"
The man who'd guided me shouted.
"Send him up to the second-floor office! Michael, you stay downstairs."
A woman's voice boomed down from the second floor. She had a set of lungs on her, that was for sure.
"Fair warning — don't try anything stupid. …Go on up."
I felt a strong urge to slap this arrogant bastard across the head.
But a mage's cold reason held the impulse in check. I was the one who needed something here. And his attitude, while irritating, wasn't quite past the point of tolerance.
"How much for the guide fee?"
"Just buy me a bottle of booze later."
I nodded and climbed to the second floor. Three doors. I opened the one marked Office and stepped inside.
Click. Click-click-click-click.
A woman sat at a computer, hammering away at the keyboard.
Her black hair was tied back. She wore a wine-colored blouse and jeans. Her right arm was mechanical, and her chest was rather full. The top two buttons of her blouse were undone, revealing a deep cleavage and a glimpse of a black bra. A black rose tattoo marked the right side of her neck.
She stood and pointed to the sofa.
"Have a seat. What brings you to our agency?"
"I need work."
"What, so you're a laborer, not a client?"
Openly disappointed, she sat back down at her desk. She pointed with one finger. There was a water cooler and instant coffee.
"Workers serve themselves. Help yourself."
"I don't drink cheap stuff."
"Oh, is that so. How very distinguished of you."
Clack-clack-clack-clack-clack!
The keyboard clattered cheerfully.
I didn't press her. I simply sat in silence.
If you wanted to do business in Neo London, you had to be a gentleman — even if it was only for show.
After ten minutes of unbroken quiet, Rose was the first to sigh. She pulled her hands from the keyboard and looked at me.
"Look. Our agency doesn't have any work a gentleman would take. Gentlemen don't do this kind of low-grade labor in the first place."
"I know this place isn't just a simple labor-dispatch office."
"Well, it's not exactly a secret at this point, so I won't deny it. But I don't broker jobs for just anyone. Got a letter of recommendation?"
"No."
"Great. Your reliability just took a nosedive. Brokerage is built on trust. Give me a reason I should put work your way."
"You need capable workers too, don't you?"
"I've never seen you before. And that means you're a London rookie. Who's going to trust a rookie enough to work with them?"
"5-Class mage."
"What?"
"I'm a 5-Class mage. Trust can be built over time, I believe."
"…Seriously? I find that hard to believe."
Rose narrowed her eyes and studied me.
I opened my Astral. My presence flared sharp and intense in an instant. Rose gripped the desk with her mechanical arm.
"…I can't tell if you're 5-Class or 4-Class, but you're clearly not ordinary. What's your name?"
"Yujin Meier."
"Age and address?"
"Do I really have to give those?"
"Not necessarily. Why did you come to our agency? That one you do have to answer."
"You find it hard to believe a 5-Class mage would walk into a labor agency of his own free will."
"Are you kidding me? 5-Class mages are the kind of talent big corporations fight over. If you walked into the Neo Round Table Council right now and asked for work, the bureaucrats would be over the moon."
"That sort of thing doesn't suit me."
"Hmm. What kind of jobs are you looking for?"
"For now, ones that make money fast."
"Anything you won't do? Don't tell me you draw the line at murder."
"Murder contracts are fine. But anything that involves serving a master — I refuse those outright. I might end up killing the master."
"Hmm. What you want is something any other broker could arrange. What's the real reason you came to me?"
"I heard that unlike other operators, you don't interfere deeply. And that you don't try to hold people when they decide to quit."
"That's right. Nobody treats their workers freer than we do. In exchange, the commission is higher than elsewhere. Twenty percent."
That was more than five percent higher than the competition.
Of course, I already knew that.
I knew who Rose really was. The X Labor Agency was far safer than the alternatives. Worth the steep commission.
"Elemental mage, right? What's your primary element?"
"Lightning. I can handle the others reasonably well."
"Hmm. Did you come from a Magic Tower? Or the Mage Association?"
"Neither."
"If you don't want to say, fine. As it happens, I've got one job available…. Want it? Simple work — go to a power plant and use lightning magic."
I stared at Rose, incredulous. She sipped her cold instant coffee with a shameless expression.
"You're asking me to do work that 1-Class mages handle?"
"There's a power shortage right now. Base pay is fifty thousand credits, plus bonuses depending on how much electricity they need. And fifty thousand credits is nothing to sneeze at."
"This is a complete humiliation for a mage's pride."
"Pride like that just gets in the way of making money. You in or not? If you don't want it, forget it."
"…I'll take it. Where do I go?"
I said it with a sigh.
Starting with a trivial job — just like the original.
Rose was clearly testing my work ethic, deciding whether I was someone she could trust.
"Low Power Plant in W-district. Converted from nuclear to mana seventy years ago."
"Running short on mana?"
"Beats me. I don't know the details. Probably the Round Table Council siphoning power for another one of their pointless experiments. I'll contact the plant ahead of time — just tell them you're from the X Labor Agency."
"Understood."
I stood up.
Fifty thousand credits base pay. As she'd said, it was no small sum.
"Looking forward to it, Mr. 5-Class Mage. Neo London's power supply is in your hands!"
"…"
Rose approached the man standing on the building's rooftop. The man in the coat waved the moment he saw her. He was a detective she had hired.
"Came to check if I'm doing my job properly?"
"You weren't filing reports, so I had no choice but to come myself. How's it going?"
Rose pulled a telescope from her coat and put it to her eye, looking at the old house the detective had been watching.
"Why go through all this trouble? Just plant a camera somewhere and monitor from there."
"Install a camera carelessly and you get sued."
"…You got sued?"
"Once. Had to pay a million credits."
It was six in the morning. The air was cold.
"Yujin Meier. 3-Class citizen. I checked — the identity was created recently."
"He said he arrived in London not long ago. Where's he from?"
"Unfortunately, I couldn't determine that. However, I confirmed that Bilstein Corporation was involved in forging the identity."
"…The Bilstein from the Empire? He's a bigger fish than I thought. Anything else?"
"Nothing. It's too clean. Even accounting for Bilstein's involvement, it's suspiciously clean."
"Clean is good. At least on the surface, there's nothing wrong. …Hmm?"
The door of the house opened and someone stepped out. A maid. A silver-haired maid with a broom, sweeping around the front gate.
"A maid. He said he had no money, yet he's well-off enough to hire a maid."
"My guess is the maid is the reason he has no money."
"…Maids are expensive labor, sure. But enough to make a 5-Class mage struggle?"
"You know how much appearance factors into hiring a maid. Looks like that, and even with zero skills she'd easily pull in hundreds of thousands of credits a month."
"Hmm. A 5-Class mage and a beautiful maid…. There's something we don't know… huh?!"
Rose flinched. She nearly dropped the telescope.
"Rose? What's wrong?"
"…I locked eyes with that maid."
"That's not funny. We're three kilometers away. She just happened to look up."
"…You think so?"
"If she'd really noticed us, she wouldn't just stand there. Look — she's focused on sweeping the yard."
"You're right. I must have imagined it."
"Rose. How much longer do I have to keep up this boring surveillance?"
"Hang in there three more days."
Rose turned and walked away.
Ten days had passed since I hired Yuria as my maid.
Yuria was nearly perfect at her duties — yet she had her gaps.
Last time, she'd botched the laundry and ended up working in nothing but a single shirt. Even when I offered to lend her clothes or buy new ones, she insisted it would only be for half a day and refused to listen. I had to work very hard at behaving like a gentleman.
Yuria had surprisingly careless moments. When she cleaned, her skirt would flip up and bare her rear, or she'd do something embarrassing while sweeping…. Or she'd get soaked while cooking and her figure would show through in ways that were hard to ignore.
And every other day, she'd mix up the rooms and crawl into my bed to sleep. According to her, she'd leave the bathroom and absentmindedly walk into my room instead of her own. She apologized, but I didn't particularly mind.
Yuria never closed her door properly. Whether it was some childhood trauma or something else, she always left it cracked open. Fortunately, she was thorough about the front door and the windows.
The problem was that she didn't close the bathroom door either, so more than once I'd walked in while she was using it and created an awkward situation.
And three days ago, passing by her room, I'd caught her masturbating. For someone who seemed like she'd never do such a thing, her self-pleasure was remarkably lewd — lying on the bed with her lower body raised, rubbing her sex furiously with her hand. I held my breath and watched.
Beyond that, strangely erotic incidents with Yuria kept happening. Lately even the slightest stimulation was enough to get me hard, which was becoming a problem. I found myself wondering whether I should visit a brothel and take the edge off.
And tonight. I was asleep when a peculiar coolness woke me.
Yuria, wearing purple underwear, was undressing me.
"Yuria…?!"
"I'm sorry, Master. I simply can't hold back any longer. I kept hoping you would take me… but it seems I overestimated your self-control."
While I was still reeling, she pulled off my underwear.
Slap!
My erect cock sprang free like a coil and smacked her across the cheek.
"Oh my."