Even If I Shout (3)
“Thank you. Thanks to you, the damage was kept light.”
I listened to the city guard’s words of gratitude with an indifferent look on my face.
“I only did what had to be done.”
Then I thrust my foot out toward the one who had just approached. A priest purified the curse clinging to the underside of my boot. The black liquid vanishing made it look as though the leather itself had briefly shriveled.
“The cause.”
Anyway—my concept isn’t about doing this for thanks.
I looked over the zone the other priests had just finished purifying. The passage through the wall was choked with corpses and the luggage they had carried. People swallowed by the curse before anyone could even try to save them.
“…Demon followers, of course.”
I had saved a fair number, yet measured against the total dead they were only a handful. Lamenting that fact, I rose to my feet. The new angle let more of the scene inside come into view.
“Damn it. Demon worshippers.”
The most striking were the dead soldiers and adventurers at what looked like a checkpoint. Between them sat a wooden crate packed with dozens of flasks—every last one shattered. Circumstance suggested the curse had been sealed inside those bottles.
“O God, grant peace to these poor souls…”
One of the guards prayed as he gathered a soldier’s body. Everyone present bowed their heads with him. Solemnity stained the air a deep blue.
“…Does this sort of thing happen often?”
“Not often. But it isn’t rare either,” answered the priest who had been praying beside me. “I hear several cities in the north have already suffered the same way.”
Grim news. Not a whisper of it had reached the south. The northern front was said to be especially fierce; that must be why every report of this kind was concentrated up here.
“Still, the damage this time was light. We stopped it from getting into the city.”
Was it, though? Had those flasks been carried inside, the toll would certainly have been worse—but larger damage elsewhere did not make this damage small.
“…Even so, every gate will stay closed for the rest of the day. Perhaps until tomorrow.”
I narrowed my eyes at the bodies laid out in neat rows along one stretch of ground.
“Stay back!”
“O-our luggage—”
“Back! Your goods will be returned after a thorough search!”
“What about the checkpoint, then? How are we supposed to—”
“The gates stay shut until the situation is resolved!”
“Wait—when will we be allowed in?!”
“Stand aside! Details will be given later!”
Sadly, the trouble here was only beginning.
“What in the hell is this mess?”
“…I have no excuse.”
“No excuse? That’s all you’ve got?”
A woman a full head taller than the average Middle man shot to her feet, unable to contain her rage. Crack. Her massive hand slammed across the man’s face.
“When the report comes back that something dangerous is coming through, you crack down early. You deal with the bastards before they can interfere with our business. How many times have I told you? Huh? How many times?!”
“Y-you did say—”
“And you still couldn’t manage that one simple thing? Couldn’t even train your subordinates well enough to keep this fiasco from happening?!”
“I-I’m sorr—”
“Sorry? Sorry? That’s what you think you should say right now? You clawed your way this high and the only word that comes to mind is ‘sorry’?”
The man staggered, but she gave him no quarter. Crack! Barely back on his feet, he took another slap and went down again.
“That garbage you picked clogged the checkpoint. What now? How are you going to cover today’s losses, and how are you going to make up for every copper we’ll lose once the inspections get even tighter?”
Waiting for him to stand was itself irritating. She seized him by the collar and hoisted him clean off the floor. His toes barely scraped the boards; choked gasps escaped his throat.
“I told you clearly—this venture is life or death for the caravan. I told you to be especially careful. And you pull this? You dare? You dare?”
Thud! Just as the man’s breath was about to give out, she flung him to the ground. Her thick, fluffy ash-blue hair bounced once with the motion.
“He’s the trash you chose. So get out there right now, take responsibility, and clean that trash up. Make sure I never lay eyes on him again!”
“Yes, ma’am!”
“Seize every last bit of his property! We have to recoup the damage he did to the caravan! And your own salary’s forfeit too!”
She finished by slamming a boot into his shin and driving him out. Then she chewed on a carefully manicured nail, irritation written all over her face.
He was going to scold her. He might even say he was disappointed. Anxiety, fury, and unease churned together in her head.
“Damn it all.”
The position she had been angling for had just slipped farther out of reach—because of her own subordinate, no less.
“Aaaagh!”
Was that bastard half-blind? How do you pick people that badly?!
“Aide! The moment this is finished, demote that piece of garbage! We don’t need anyone who can’t even train his underlings!”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Nothing vented rising anger as cleanly and easily as violence. With a scowl she flipped the table. The heavy solid-wood slab crashed over onto its back.
“Shit—now the losses are—”
Even then her merchant’s mind kept racing, cold reason working out solutions independently of her temper.
“…Better this way. We’ll use the chance to root out every last follower of Envy. Their leader’s gone and they’ve already lost their power; this is fair payment for getting careless.”
Clink.
A round gem that looked like a pearl glittered at her ear.
Just in case some hidden demon contractor tried to spring out, I stayed at the site until evening. The Inquisitor came running at one point, but we exchanged no real conversation. More precisely, she kept looking for openings to talk and I ignored every single signal.
Nothing else of note happened. No demon contractor appeared. The dead and their belongings were all collected—including the corpse of the presumed demon worshipper. The gates were sealed completely; anyone still outside would not be allowed in until tomorrow. The only ones granted entry were those who had witnessed the entire incident and could still remember it—and even they were marched in under heavy guard as if they were criminals being transported.
Knock-knock.
That part was no longer my business, so I chose to leave. Curiosity about the current state of my gloves made me detour to Meister’s workshop on the way to the inn.
Knock-knock.
Why isn’t he answering? Or has he already closed for the day?
I tried once more, then decided he was out and prepared to give up. That was when the door creaked open.
“I was just thinking I needed to talk to you. Perfect timing.”
So the place has an automatic-door function too. I stepped through the unmanned doorway and eased it shut behind me. Clank. Even trying to be quiet produced a loud echo.
In the meantime Meister finished engraving something onto the object he was crafting and carefully set it down. His face looked oddly darker than it had half a day ago.
“Just so we’re clear—this isn’t my fault.”
The opening line already made me uneasy. I met the eyes of the Meister who had just stood. When our gazes locked, his violet irises rolled aside.
“Your gloves vanished. Completely. Without a trace. All of a sudden.”
My own brows slammed together. My gloves? Vanished? Why?
“I’ll say it again—I didn’t do anything. Well, not nothing, but nothing that should have made the gloves disappear.”
Another rapid-fire excuse. The slight sideways shift of his pupils suggested this time he did feel a little guilty about something. Still, I didn’t think the fault was his. Breaking them would be one thing; vanishing without a single scrap remaining felt like an entirely different domain.
“Clarify the circumstances.”
“…All right. First I’ll tell you what experiments I ran on the gloves.”
If I wanted any grasp of the situation I would have to hear what he had done.
“I started by identifying the material—whether it was leather or something leather-like. Surprisingly, it turned out to be perfect leather. So next I looked for the reason the leather restored itself. These were the tools I used for that…”
Fortunately—or perhaps not—Meister’s explanation was surprisingly easy to follow for a genius. Even a complete outsider like me could follow most of it. What I understood, though, was the purpose of each experiment rather than the underlying principles. Pure science would already have been hard enough; layering magic on top made it inevitable.
“What was the moment of disappearance like?”
“Almost identical to when a separated fragment vanished. It melted away.”
He added hastily:
“For the record, the experiment I was running at the time had no reason to make anything melt like that.”
Odd digression, but I suddenly felt like an investor sitting with legs crossed, watching a CEO who still had nothing to show. All I had ever given Meister was a single pair of gloves.
“It’s true.”
But why had they really vanished? They weren’t even a soul-bound item that returned to its owner. Right—not soul-bound.
…Wait. Soul-bound?
A possibility flashed through me. Half-hoping, half-dreading, I opened the inventory at my waist.
Black, Left Hand
Of course. The gloves were right there.
“…Right. That would explain it.”
I pulled them out, seized by a feeling I couldn’t quite name. If I had to put it into words, it was a mixture of doubt and unease about the origin of the equipment.
“……?”
Meister, who had raised an eyebrow at my sudden reach into the bag, now stared with eyes wide open.
“Why is that coming out of there?”
I don’t know either. I never knew it had this function.
“Are you messing with me?”
“Never.”
I turned the gloves over in my hand, then tossed them onto Meister’s workbench.
“…You didn’t know about this either?”
“No.”
“How…?”
Luckily Meister was sharp enough that the misunderstanding didn’t last long. While he used simple reasoning to clear the air and then started forming new theories, I crossed my arms. My head was a mess.
“Fine. This is going to take a while.”
He responded in his own way: peeling off the work clothes and pulling on the outer coat hanging on the wall. The slender arms characteristic of the Slender race—yet packed with the muscle his profession demanded—vanished under a robe of the sort mages often wore. Judging by the look of pure annoyance on his face while he dressed, he simply refused to repeat the daytime spectacle.
“Let’s go to a tavern. If we’re going to dig into this, I need to hear more about the situation in which you ‘coincidentally’ obtained them.”
So in the end I still have to explain. Crushing the swirl of thoughts, I followed Meister. I hadn’t eaten dinner anyway—might as well grab a meal while we were at it. That single hollow consolation was all I had.
“Shall we start talking?”
I didn’t have to buy him dinner. Then again, Meister wasn’t treating me either. In that spirit I ordered extra food without hesitation. Exactly then he tried to begin the conversation: “No need to drag this out.”
“First—where did you get this gear? The Mage Tower? Some family heirloom?”
I wiped my mouth with a napkin—more food was coming, but the grease was annoying—took a sip of water, and looked him straight in the eye.
“If you want to hide it, just hide it. But don’t you dare say the word ‘coincidentally’—”
“I don’t know.”
“What?”
“It was simply in my possession from a certain point onward.”
Hmm. Looking back, this amnesia excuse has been surprisingly useful.
I folded the sauce-stained napkin inward and leaned back in the chair. Tap-tap. Meister’s fingers drummed the table.
“…Why did you lose the memories?”
“Do I look like I know?”
“Fair. If you knew we wouldn’t be having this talk.”
He rested a hand against his mouth, face growing serious.
“The only missing memories are the moment you obtained the gear?”
Conversation with him required a bit of extra thinking simply to keep up. He didn’t omit words so much as skip entire steps of reasoning. Still, a little thought was enough; I didn’t have to look foolish by asking.
I shook my head.
“Then the odds that obtaining the gear itself caused the amnesia are low.”
Tap-tap. Habit, apparently—he kept rapping the tabletop.
“Your order’s ready.”
The bouillabaisse and caponata I had added arrived. Calling them bouillabaisse and caponata was generous; in reality they were closer to a soup of cheap fish and vegetables dressed with sauce. Nothing as refined as the modern versions, but they tasted good enough that I had ordered more.
“Every piece of equipment you use—they all share the same traits?”
“They do.”
“Including that bag?”
I gave a slow nod at the question pointing to the inventory.
“And each piece has the same abilities?”
“…Only the bag has the extra function of holding more items. Aside from that, yes.”
Where in the world had this gear come from? Had it simply appeared the moment I logged in? Or before that? Questions I had shelved as unsolvable kept welling up. A brief ringing filled my ears.
“And the reason you’ve worn them all this time is pure practicality?”
“Yes.”
…Still, I don’t actually hate the clothes themselves. Without them I would have suffered every clothing-related hardship imaginable by now; that much was obvious.
“Fair enough. If I had gear this useful I’d grit my teeth and wear it too. Looking at how long you’ve been walking around in it, there don’t seem to be any curses or side effects either.”
Meister’s agreement lightened my mood a fraction.
See? Anyone would wear clothes like these. Maybe if you had never put them on you could refuse—but once ignorance had already let you enjoy every convenience they offered, there was no going back.