A Soul as Collateral
Benjamin's mansion, which I visited again after a little less than a month, looked much the same as the last time I'd seen it.
"Welcome."
When I stepped into the dining room — Ms. Secretary having opened the door in his place — Benjamin was already settled at the head of the table, greeting me with an easy smile.
I pulled out a chair about one seat away and sat down.
"You seem to have put on some more weight."
"What?"
Benjamin's eyes went wide. Ms. Secretary, who had just closed the door behind her, hurriedly turned her head aside and covered her mouth with her left hand.
"Haven't you?"
"Hahahaha!!"
When I pressed the point, Benjamin burst into laughter so loud the chair beneath him and the massive dining table rattled. The noise was on the level of heavy machinery chewing through a construction site; I covered my ears until it finally died down.
"Ahh, whew. Yeah. I like how consistent people are."
Benjamin wiped a tear from the corner of his eye with his index finger and spoke with a pleasant smile.
"I've never really checked my weight in my life, so I wouldn't know. But if you say so, I must have put on some."
"Cutting back on food is torture, so you should get a bit more active."
"Heh. I'll take that to heart."
Benjamin tugged his mustache once, glanced back, then addressed Ms. Secretary, who had by now recovered her composure.
"Tell them to put a little more care into it than usual."
"Yes, Boss."
Ms. Secretary left. Benjamin rested both arms on the table, laced his fingers, and set his chin on top of them.
"I've been getting occasional reports about you, and it seems you're adapting far better than expected."
"Wherever people live, it's all much the same, isn't it?"
"Hahaha!! Yeah. You're right. Wherever people live, it's all much the same."
Benjamin's eyes deepened for just a moment — but it really was only a fleeting instant.
"I heard you punched a nice clean hole through Fuji Junpei's skull."
"About the size of a thumbnail, but it should provide decent ventilation."
"Why'd you kill him?"
The laughter vanished in an instant.
"Benjamin."
"Speak."
"I'm the kind of person who, fundamentally, doesn't care what happens around me — who kills whom, who steals what, who does drugs, rapes, sets fires, whatever — so long as it doesn't harm me."
"Most of the ones who crawl into this place are like that. Indifferent to others — more precisely, just finding their own path is hard enough."
I nodded at his reply.
"But from what I've observed, even those who end up flowing into this cesspit and settling here out of necessity seem to draw their own lines and live by them."
"Is that how it looks?"
"At least to my eyes."
"So?"
"So nothing more than that Fuji Junpei crossed the line I drew — and crossed it spectacularly."
When I answered that way, Benjamin unlaced the fingers propping up his chin and tugged on his mustache.
"Would that line happen to have something to do with food?"
"That's correct."
"Ever since I heard the report that you'd cracked a few heads of the food vendors in Sector 12 on your first day, I knew you thought of food as something rather special."
"Not 'rather.' It's the reason I keep living."
Even when I watch something funny enough that others laugh and chatter along, I can't empathize. I just put on a mask to match the atmosphere.
But the moment I eat something delicious, my mood lifts on its own.
For me, good food was one of the truly few things that could bring joy to living.
Of course, lately I'd been enjoying other sources of pleasure besides food — that was an open secret.
"Just how awful a thing did he serve you that you put a hole in his head?"
"There's a misunderstanding. I don't blame someone just because something tastes bad. The heart behind serving it, the process. If it's food for sale, the price too. I score all those elements together."
"And Fuji Junpei scored so low on your scale that he needed a hole in his head?"
"He built up all this anticipation saying it was a dish with a very long tradition from the Archipelago, then prepared properly fermented fish for himself and rotten fish that only looked the same on the outside for me."
"Enough to blow a man's head off, alright."
Benjamin not only understood that choice — he even advised that next time the same situation arose, I shouldn't send them to the gods in one go, but make them suffer very slowly instead.
"Do you need help?"
"If you're referring to the Fuji Junpei matter, I'm fine."
"Figured you'd answer that way."
I decided to ask the now-laughing-again Benjamin for something else.
"Instead, there was a female employee named Yoko who worked under former president Junpei. I've entrusted the interior design to her, and I'd be grateful if you could help ensure materials are supplied smoothly."
"The one guarding you is Jamie, right?"
"Yes. Not quite on Ms. Secretary's level, but a quite excellent woman."
Benjamin nodded once in agreement and continued.
"I'll make sure it's handled properly through her."
"Thank you."
After that we exchanged a bit of small talk, and the closed door opened as Ms. Secretary entered with other servants and filled the empty table with all kinds of appetizing-looking dishes.
Clink.
"Thank you."
"Not at all."
Even though I hadn't asked, Ms. Secretary brought a glass herself and poured lemon champagne for me.
"So, what score does our chef get?"
"I'll give it a nine."
"Out of ten, I assume?"
"Yes."
Benjamin looked my way with a gaze that was satisfied yet tinged with curiosity.
"Standards differ from person to person, but objectively speaking, I think it's fully deserving of a ten."
"I'm curious myself whether a ten is even possible."
"What's the criterion for that one point, then?"
At that question, I lightly rinsed my mouth with the fresh, clean lemon champagne and answered.
"Something I don't think I could ever taste again until the day I die — in simple terms, a once-in-a-lifetime dish."
"Haha, so in practice, nine is a perfect score."
I nodded, and Benjamin sent me a look of understanding.
And so the enjoyable meal ended, and after the empty dishes had been cleared away—
"I've drawn up a few business proposals."
"Hmm?"
Benjamin, who had habitually started to pull a cigar from his breast pocket before pausing, raised his head to look my way.
"Would you care to hear them?"
"Go ahead. Setting everything else aside, the fact that the proposer is you makes it interesting."
"Oh dear, you'll be disappointed once you hear them. Nothing special — things anyone might have conceived of, but only conceived of because of the slum's ecological structure."
The businesses I would propose to Benjamin were two.
One was loan sharking.
In fact, when you think of the mafia, gangs, or organized crime, loan sharking is one of the first things that comes to mind. But in the slums, no one does it.
Part of it was that most people who would try to borrow money even in the slums were dead-end lives with nothing left behind them. The bigger reason, though, was that it was all too common for the person who borrowed the money to be murdered by some third party no one even knew.
It wasn't like the modern world with CCTV on every street, and in extreme cases — if they died to monsters in a dungeon — there was no one left to hold responsible.
So what were the conditions for doing loan sharking in the slums?
Simple.
Give up on the money.
"Have you gone mad?"
"Fortunately, I'm of sound mind."
The moment he heard that to do loan sharking you simply had to give up on getting the money back, Benjamin's gaze shifted into a rather familiar look.
"I'll provide the necessary capital."
"You will?"
"Yes."
"Look here. Loan sharking isn't something you can do with pocket change."
"I know. So for starters, as a test, I'll put up one billion Mora."
"One billion?"
At Benjamin's look asking if I really had that kind of money, I immediately withdrew one hundred million from the Benefit Bank.
Thud-thud-thud──!!
And a rain of money bundles began pouring without pause into the dining room.
"You…"
Benjamin looked once around at the bundles of bills filling the surroundings, then raised his head to look at me again and asked.
"Are you by any chance of royal blood from Han?"
"I'm of thoroughly ordinary commoner origins."
"…I see."
I'd only told him the plain truth, but for some reason Benjamin didn't seem to believe it at all.
"So, you want me to put this to work?"
"Something like that."
As I'd stated from the beginning, to do loan sharking in the slums, you paradoxically had to give up on the money. So the reason I'd proposed loan sharking to Benjamin wasn't to make money.
"Use this money for the loan business, and all the profits generated from it may be yours, Benjamin. Of course, even if every person who borrows the money dies and the one billion evaporates, that's fine."
"The terms are suspiciously good."
"Well, I have no interest in money."
I pulled from my breast pocket a contract I'd prepared in advance and handed it to him.
"In exchange for taking all the profits from the loans, Benjamin, you must have every person who borrows money carefully read this contract once and obtain their signature."
Benjamin shifted his gaze to the contract I'd handed him.
The contents of the contract were ordinary.
Except for one single clause.
1. Priest Baek Jinhyuk shall be referred to as Party A, and the contractor hereafter as Party B.
2. Party B shall repay the amount borrowed from Mad Dog ( ) to ( ) by ( ).
3. The base interest rate shall be ( ).
4. Should Party B fail to repay the money by the deadline in clause 2, the deadline shall be extended until ( ).
5. Should Party B fail to repay the money by the deadline in clause 4, Party B's soul shall be forfeit to Party A, and Party B shall become a resident of Party A's dreams for as long as Party A desires.
6. No exceptions of any kind shall apply to clause 5.
It was a thought that had struck me when I learned Verdia had brought Vita's long-time connection into her dream as an actor.
If she could do it, then as her proxy, couldn't I do it too?
"Soul…?"
At Benjamin's uneasy look, I smiled and nodded.
In a place where it wouldn't be strange at all to have everything you own taken from you by anyone, anywhere, anytime, there was no more certain collateral than that.
"Putting up your soul as collateral for money — that's all it is. No one is forcing anyone. No one is deceiving anyone. And above all."
I lightly flicked the empty champagne glass with my index finger.
"If they pay the money back on time, there's nothing to worry about."
Yes. If they pay it back on time.