Missing Persons Search Operation (9)
Gert and the soldiers planted themselves between the crowd and the platform, holding back the furious throng.
"Everyone, please calm down! Acting like this isn't going to solve a damn thing!"
"Calm down, my ass!"
"You taking their side just 'cause you eat the same food now?!!!"
"That's right!"
In the middle of the complete mess the square had become, Angela strained to remember.
What she had been taught.
Hired into the great Esper family and working at Head Maid Chloe's side, she had watched every kind of human nature there was. No—Chloe herself was a walking exhibition of human nature.
A woman with no filter, who said one thing to your face and another behind your back. A thorough opportunist. A woman who went mad for money.
But she protected her own. She never wasted breath on empty lectures, and when she looked after someone, she looked after them properly.
She was also competent enough to shoulder every duty the family's other retainers ought to have been handling themselves.
Angela had once wondered why a person like that had appointed her Deputy Head Maid—so she had asked.
"Lady Chloe."
"What?"
Angela, assisting with office work, put the question carefully.
"It has been more than half a year since I began working here."
"Has it already? So what. Didn't I tell you not to talk in circles?"
Chloe's sharp glare made Angela close her mouth, then let out a small sigh.
"Haa… I still find it difficult to understand why I was appointed as your deputy, Head Maid."
"Ah. That."
As if the timing suited her perfectly, Chloe tapped the stack of documents in her hands into order—tap, tap—and shoved them into the desk.
"Because you're cut out for it."
She said it as if it were the most natural thing in the world, then poured lukewarm water into a teacup and drank. Their circumstances were so pinched that the tea leaves had already been steeped dozens of times; the water had neither fragrance nor flavor left—just flat and thin.
"I cannot speak the way you do, Lady Chloe. Nor can I manage people the way you do."
"So what you're really saying is you can't lie and you can't run a con?"
At the sly Head Maid's words, Angela quietly nodded.
"Then learn."
"…Is that something you can simply learn?"
"Yeah. Do what I tell you and you'll be able to. I learned it too. Besides, the first time's always the hard part—the second and third times are easy."
"…Easy, you say?"
"Haa. Want a simple explanation?"
Chloe refilled Angela's empty teacup as she spoke.
"Try selling this to me."
"Pardon?"
"I said sell it."
"…How am I supposed to—"
At Angela's protest, Chloe's brow furrowed and a smile touched the corner of her mouth. Sensing the prelude to one of the Head Maid's manic scolding barrages, Angela hurriedly opened her mouth again.
"Th-this is a teacup! It isn't a particularly fine brand, but… it can hold water, and… also…"
"Tsk. No talent for this either, huh. I've got a lot to teach you."
Chloe clicked her tongue, waved a hand as if to say forget it—and tipped Angela's teacup over on the spot.
Water went splash, ran across the desk, and soaked into Angela's skirt. Chloe held out a handkerchief with a wicked little smile.
"Your skirt's wet. What do you need?"
"…A handkerchief."
"Right. You've got demand for a handkerchief."
"Yes."
"And I'm supplying it?"
"That… is so?"
"Simple. Supply and demand. Even the dumbest bastards alive know that basic rule. The real problem is how prettily you package it."
Chloe poured water into the teacup again as she went on.
"Unfortunately, everything in this world is a brutal hell where you eat or get eaten. If you want to eat well, here's what you do…"
She brought the cup to her lips. Her expression went cold, and the corners of her mouth stretched all the way toward her ears.
"You make the prey's head walk itself right into your mouth. That's it."
—Gulp.
Angela swallowed hard at the sight of her.
"What if the prey runs? Starting's easy. You dangle the bait. Which means we can begin with this question."
"What kind of bait the prey wants… is that it?"
"Half right."
—Slurp.
Chloe drank down the flat tea and continued.
"Still, once you've figured out what they want, you've got the first button fastened. Next? Whether I can give it to them. If I can, it's sales. If I can't, it's fraud. There's only a single sheet of paper called conscience between the two. And looking at you right now, you're too much of a good girl to pull a fraud."
"……"
Silence is as good as agreement, they say. Angela listened quietly.
"Well, live long enough and your insides might burn black like mine and who knows how you'll change. Anyway. If I can give it to them—what then?"
"Couldn't you simply give it to them?"
"That's what we call a sucker."
Chloe beamed and pointed straight at Angela.
"……A s-sucker."
"Yeah. A sucker. A sucker who doesn't know how to push and pull."
Chloe picked up the paperweight from the desk and jabbed it into Angela's ample chest—poke, poke.
"You got played for a sucker and your whole life went to hell, didn't it?"
"……"
"Listen carefully. The other side wants something, and you've got it. So you give a little~ take it back~ and feel them out, right?"
With her other hand she mimed offering the handkerchief and snatching it away again and again—then suddenly drove deep into Angela's full breast.
"Ah…!"
"Then you shove it in like that—and sometimes…"
This time she only tapped lightly at the outer curve, as if stroking.
"…you just let them taste the surface. Because you've got to watch the reaction."
As Chloe kept teasing her chest like a game, Angela caught her hand and answered.
"Nn… so once you see the reaction, you know how to respond—is that what you mean?"
"See? Smart. Of course—the talent I chose myself."
Chloe praised herself, set the paperweight back in its place, and properly handed over the handkerchief. As Angela wiped her skirt—swish, swish—the lesson continued.
"Now for the real point. What you do after that changes completely depending on the situation. Case by case. Sometimes you have to gamble on pure instinct. Sometimes you've got enough experience to handle it actively. But…"
Trailing off, Chloe's eyes sparkled as she looked at Angela.
"The most important core is just two things."
"Two things?"
"Yeah. One is the will to eat. You've already got that. You're a hard worker with a stubborn streak. And you look like you've got more talent for conning people than I do. To pull a real fraud, you need a bit of psycho in you."
Angela almost nodded—then stopped.
Did that mean she was more of a psycho than the scolding demon and money-crazed woman sitting right in front of her?
Chloe caught the faint shift in Angela's eyes—the look of someone regarding absolute trash from top to bottom—and waved her hands apologetically.
"Hey, hey, hey! Don't look at me like that. I just think adventurers who go around slicing monsters are the real psychos."
"…And the second?"
"Ahem! The second is this."
Chloe reset the mood and smiled.
"Explain well. And persuade well."
"Pardon? Is it truly that simple?"
"Yep. That's all of it. At least within the basic framework."
"It never looked that simple to me."
Having spent the past six months witnessing Head Maid Chloe's frauds and rabble-rousing from right beside her—and never once recovering from the shock—Angela shook her head.
"Listen carefully. Whatever it is, you have to be able to explain it so even a ten-year-old brat can understand. And you persuade with everything you've got. Until that bastard slides down your throat. You don't give up. You keep persuading."
"…Yes."
"And I told you about the push and pull, right? While you're doing that, they pop out—tock, tock. Why the prey won't take the bait. They start telling you their worries on their own. If they don't, you poke until you find out."
"……"
"You strip those worries away one by one—snap, snap—and they go down your throat smooth as a fish with every bone pulled clean. That's how you eat prey properly."
Angela took Chloe's words deep to heart and sank into thought.
"Explain well. Persuade well. Keep trying until it works…"
"Push and pull well. Don't get played for a sucker yourself."
"…And strip the bones."
"Good. Harvest season—the merchant brats from Sachsen are in town, so let's go fleece them. Practical training, right now. If you take a loss on a deal, it's a pay cut. Go in ready to die if you don't eat."
"…..Yes."
Angela called up the harsh teachings she had absorbed over five years under Head Maid Chloe.
To break the present deadlock, the villagers had to be armed and the goblins had to be purged.
She entertained no other options.
She committed herself with iron resolve to completing this one thing alone.
To her, the villagers were prey.
Prey wriggling like loaches, trying to abandon the village and slip away.
Prey ready to run and leave their own wives and children to be taken.
Prey this skittish needed strong bait.
But she would also need to shake it just the right amount.
First: gather the scattered attention of the square.
Angela concentrated mana into one foot and stamped a true step into the ground.
—BOOM!!!
A tremendous noise rolled through the square. A shock like a faint earthquake radiated outward from her through the earth, and the uproar died away.
"I have something to say. I ask that you give me your attention."
She drew her glasses from her breast, settled them on her nose, and smiled as brightly as Head Maid Chloe herself.
Every gaze in the vicinity swung back toward her.
First, remove the anxiety. The prey was showing far too much wariness.
…Do I even need to bother?
The goblins were already at their doorstep.
Angela decided quickly and opened her mouth.
"If you wish to go to the Sachsen Viscounty, I will not stop you. However—the Sachsen Viscounty is currently suffering far worse damage than our Esper Baronry."
"W-what did you say?!"
"This is information that came out of a lords' conference several days ago. The talk has even turned to whether we ought to be taking in their refugees."
She mixed a measured amount of falsehood into the truth and inflated it. Accurate information never reached the public anyway.
"Hold on—who even is this girl, bossing people around since a while ago!"
The thick-dialected man who had been insisting they leave for Sachsen from the start challenged her—and Captain Gert stepped squarely into his path.
"That is Lady Angela, the Deputy Head Maid. She is the practical administrator of this territory, and a sixth-class adventurer."
"…Sixth-class?"
A sixth-class adventurer.
The minimum qualification required the ability to use mana, and the strength to match three orcs alone.
The pretty young adventurer lady they had taken her for was not only this territory's practical authority—she was no ordinary threat.
And now that they looked properly, she was more thoroughly painted in blood than the soldiers, and though she was smiling, there was something chilling in her eyes. Like a killer.
That was not an opponent anyone in their right mind would pick a fight with.
The dialect man shut his mouth of his own accord and stepped back.
One thorn pulled already.
Angela smiled inwardly.
Worth every harsh lesson under the witch, she thought.