When Five People Gather (3)
I carried Orphe into the lodging, stripped off her armor in a rough hurry, and laid her down on the bed.
“Ugh...”
Watching Orphe suffer through her hangover, I found myself thinking of my little sister.
Their personalities and looks were nothing alike—so why? Just because they were the same gender?
Oppa! Eat this!
There had been a time when she followed me around without question.
In my younger days I had still been pure, still believed unconditionally in the potential of people.
She was blood. I thought if I told her my grand dream she wouldn’t laugh. So I told her.
A fatal miscalculation that overlooked human folly.
What the hell is that? You sound like a total idiot!
Back then my patience had been paper-thin. I could not tolerate those words.
I wanted to deny the truth that my little sister—raised under society’s merciless tyranny that sorted everything into normal and abnormal—had already become a hominid.
A ninja’s dream never ends!
With the heart of a man forced to weep while cutting down his own general, I drove a straight punch into the head of my little sister—no, the chimpanzee.
Of course I hadn’t trained my body yet, so the damage was negligible.
Waaah! Daddy~!
After that I got the living daylights beaten out of me by a powered-up gorilla.
Even now I don’t think the fault was entirely mine. Mocking someone’s dream is a serious crime.
Still, responding emotionally to a hominid had been my greater mistake.
“Orphe, I’m really glad you’re human.”
In the end I gained enlightenment, grew, and succeeded in becoming a runaway ninja.
All that remained was to fulfill the duty that came with it.
“Nin-nin.”
Leaving the completely passed-out Orphe behind, I stripped with the Ninja Undressing Technique.
My body, armored in efficient killing muscle, was enough to make even the Sixth Heaven Demon King, lord of the lust realm, lightly wet himself.
“I’ve waited for this day, this very moment.”
I put on the ninja suit bought with the money from selling Ocul’s hide, using the Ninja Dressing Technique.
The black suit, woven from some unknown fabric, was light and superbly elastic.
I’d paid a premium for it after being told it was high-quality cloth mass-produced by some magic tower and released onto the market. It was definitely excellent.
The biggest selling point was that it wasn’t some skin-tight spandex nonsense—it had the proper form of a martial arts uniform, cloth-like and sharp.
From what Orphe had told me, the magic towers were giant corporations run by fake onmyoji who called themselves mages. Their power and social standing were so high even the royal family didn’t dare mess with them lightly.
A runaway ninja’s gear always had to be perfect.
I was almost grateful they’d made something this good. Of course, if those bastards turned out to be capitalist yakuza, there would be no forgiveness.
I wrapped the cheap black hood around my face.
A perfect ninja knot sealed it tight.
It felt a little stuffy because it was cheap, but it was usable. Next came the weapons.
Unfortunately, no shop sold shuriken.
This primitive fantasy world had no concept of ninjas, so awareness of ninja tools was nonexistent.
I simply stored the daggers the instructors used to carry into the suit. With that, the runaway ninja was complete.
“Runaway ninja Shin Nobin. Deploying.”
I opened the casement window, crawled out, and climbed onto the roof.
Deep night. Even the market lanterns had gone dark. A large residence entered my field of vision.
The lord of Martolan, was it? Rumor painted him as an ordinary lord.
But truth is never revealed over dinner-table banter.
Only a fist soaked in blood and sweat is granted the chance to approach the truth.
Was he a noblesse-oblige human... or a political yakuza?
“Nin-nin!”
Being a commercial district, the buildings were dense.
I raced across the city, leaping from rooftop to rooftop.
Naturally I was in Floating Shadow state, so no one would ever see me.
After about five minutes of sprinting I arrived in front of the lord’s house. Up close it looked like nothing more than a nouveau-riche medieval-style villa.
Toshot!
A ninja jump carried me lightly over the fence. Silent landing, of course.
Looking around, I spotted quite a few guards patrolling with small lamps.
They seemed to move according to carefully planned patterns.
I advanced slowly, checking for magical barriers.
If I barged in clueless and had to come back out muttering “Tch, a barrier,” it would look ridiculously uncool.
I’d learned that while fighting the bald guy. Magic—or magical tools—were dangerous.
In a life-or-death fight against an equal, that hidden trump card decided the match.
Luckily I could sense magically treated objects with my sixth sense.
When I asked Orphe, she said people with that ability were rare.
The qualities of a perfect runaway ninja were not distributed equally to all.
All clear.
Fortunately there was no barrier.
Even a backwater lord should face assassination threats, yet he’d made no preparations at all.
The lord of Martolan was either a fool lacking any sense of crisis or a penniless beggar.
The window was a sash type. I slid it up quietly and slipped inside like a butterfly.
Everything was silent. They all seemed to be sleeping soundly.
Living in a house this big with only family and a few servants? What a waste of space.
On tiptoe I checked every room in the house.
I rifled through all the furniture and desk drawers.
Nothing unusual.
In case there were yokai disguised as humans, I checked every face as well.
The lord, his wife, two daughters, one son, five servants.
All ten people: no abnormalities.
There was a safe of sorts, but I couldn’t steal money when I hadn’t even determined good or evil yet.
If he turned out to be a political yakuza, I could take it then. No rush.
I entered the lord’s room and knocked on the walls, searching for a secret chamber.
Thump-thump.
Nothing. The floor?
Thud-thud.
Something was there?! This son of a bitch—got you.
I yanked the carpet aside, pried up the floorboards, and discovered a small space.
About ten strange books were stored inside.
Blank covers, pages packed with nothing but text—definitely suspicious forbidden tomes.
Could they be grimoires for summoning yokai?
Whatever they were, I was confiscating every last one. I couldn’t read the writing, so I’d have to show them to Orphe later.
Swish.
I wrapped them all in the cloth I’d brought and slipped back out the window.
Coco-nenne.
By the time I returned home, Orphe had finally escaped the nightmare of the yakuza massacre and was breathing evenly in sleep.
Someday, if you live long enough, you’ll meet your late parents in a dream. When that day comes, you’ll be able to smile even while sleeping.
That’s right. You have to live. The one who survives is the one who sprouts the seed of hope.
My mission was singular: save as many innocent, guiltless lives as possible and realize paradise on earth.
The rich and powerful already took good care of themselves; no need to look after them.
But what about the common people?
Those who owned nothing but their own bodies—if they got mauled by some stray Poppy and were left half-dead, no one would care.
And if it wasn’t a Poppy but a yakuza, a samurai, or a yokai?
To the yakuza, the people were nothing but targets for extortion.
To the samurai, the people were tools used only to test a newly bought blade.
To the yokai, the people were nothing more than a single meal.
A runaway ninja kills every one of these evils and serves the people from the shadows.
Some might lecture that suppressing violence with violence is meaningless, that it only continues the chain of violence.
But I sincerely believe there are lives that can only be saved through destruction and slaughter.
“Nin-nin.”
I glanced at the sky. Morning was still far off. Time for a nap.
I quickly used the Ninja Dressing Technique to change into sleepwear.
Normally I slept on the bed while Orphe made do with a blanket on the floor.
She’d looked so exhausted that I’d moved her to the bed—and now I suddenly regretted it.
I roughly rolled Orphe into the corner and lay down beside her.
Too many things had happened today; sleep wouldn’t come easily, so I used the Ninja Sleep Technique.
One ninja leaping across rooftops, two ninjas leaping across rooftops...
I was out instantly.
“Ninja Wake-Up Technique!”
At the rustling sound I shot upright into a combat stance.
Orphe, startled half to death, dropped the clothes she’d been holding onto the floor.
Apparently she’d washed yesterday’s clothes and brought them back.
“Y-you scared me!”
“Sorry.”
A ninja must never let his guard down while sleeping in the field.
I got out of bed and pulled on my coat. After turning her head away, Orphe asked,
“About last night...”
“Nin?”
“Why were you sleeping in the bed with me?”
Well, the situation was certainly ripe for misunderstanding.
Still, the fact that she hadn’t woken me with a scream earned her bonus points.
Carelessly waking a ninja from sleep could get you stabbed. Her caution had saved her life.
I explained everything—from the drinking party the previous evening to my solo recon of the lord’s house.
“You went into the lord’s house alone and brought back books? That’s possible?”
“Nin-nin.”
“...You’re amazing, as always. Even if it’s only a baron’s house, infiltration shouldn’t be easy. Where are the books?”
I showed her the ten volumes I’d acquired the night before.
The moment she took them, her eyes narrowed—definitely forbidden literature.
“A Wise Couple’s Guide to Sex Life, How a Man Never Easily Bows His Head, Lasting Happiness... Lewd Monster Maid? This is Mr. Satton’s work...”
“Wait, what the hell is all that?”
“Looks like sex manuals and erotic novels...”
“Fuck me.”
My mind went blank. Goddamn it. Looks like I really need to learn how to read, and fast.