What the Hell Kind of Church Is This? (1)
For a few days after our first client, nothing that came through the door was worth much.
I took a request to rescue a kitten stuck up a tree and found it perched on the lap of a pretty cat beastkin, so the job was a bust. I covered a convenience-store shift and cracked open the skull of an elf who wanted to barter a tree branch for expensive liquor. Most of the work was like that. Hardly the sort of thing an errand agency ought to be taking, but if we turned our noses up at even these, we couldn't keep the place open.
"What are you doing?"
"Oh, sunbae. I'm making hot dogs. Want one?"
"You... hot dogs?"
The noise coming out of the kitchen already had me suspicious. I went to look, and there was Dias, up to something again. The same idiot who couldn't even measure black tea leaves properly—where did she get the confidence to make hot dogs? I leaned in.
Bubble, bubble, bubble...!!
"...Don't tell me you think you're supposed to drop them in once the oil boils like water."
"I'm not?"
"...Put one in."
The oil was heaving like lava off an active volcano. I covered my face as I said it.
Taking that reaction as her chance to prove, once and for all, that she was right, Dias dropped a hot dog into the furiously boiling oil.
Ten seconds later, the thing that had gone into the oil looked exactly like coal fresh out of a mine.
"........."
Crunch.
Dias stared blankly at the coal that used to be a hot dog. Then, as if she simply refused to admit defeat, she took an enormous bite.
A crackle every bit as crisp as freshly fried chicken rang out, and in the same instant my hand came down on the back of her head.
"You that desperate to get cancer?! Why are you eating that!!"
"I thought maybe the flour I used turns black when it heats up... And they said this isn't even close to enough to give you cancer!"
"Where does flour like that exist! And that only holds if you eat something a little burnt. You think eating something that's turned into coal is the same thing?"
I killed the burner that had been heating the oil without pause, then threw the windows wide to drag the smoke choking the building back outside.
Only after the oil had cooled could we finally make a proper hot dog.
I picked up the finished one and went over to say my piece, only to find Dias with her head bowed, thoroughly depressed.
The black tea last time, the hot dog this time. She'd done her best, in her own way, and the results were always terrible, so of course she was disappointed.
Clack.
"Eat."
"...You're not going to say anything?"
"It's not like I made you throw out every last tea leaf, the way I did last time. And you did your best, didn't you."
"Sunbae..."
She looked ready to cry on the spot.
I snorted at the face she was making and bit into the hot dog.
Crunch.
"Cucumber hot dog, you bastard."
"I am not that much of a kid, okay?!"
Crisp crust, and then the revolting chew of hot cucumber. I flipped the table.
The table went over, and food waste that had no business existing in this world took to the air.
The moment any of it hit the floor it would have been garbage, but Dias could not accept that. She moved fast and snatched the hot dogs out of the sky.
"Don't tell me the gallery recommended this one too."
Nearly every bizarre stunt Dias had pulled so far started with her asking the gallery a question and some troll feeding her garbage. Suspecting the same thing this time felt entirely reasonable.
"What are you talking about! Other people, maybe, but this is one of my favorite foods!"
"What could that possibly taste like..."
"Re. Spect. My. Taste!! Do you have any idea how many fights break out these days when somebody won't respect preferences by species?"
"You're telling me to respect the guy who puts mayonnaise on kimchi. Unbelievable."
A food that might, if you fed it to a hundred people, get one of them to call it good—and she wanted respect for it. I raised my middle finger with pride.
Faced with my extremely tactful refusal of the cucumber hot dog, Dias insisted I take just one more bite.
"It'll taste the same if I eat it again?!"
"Come on, just one more bite? It's really good with mayonnaise!"
Now she was trying to pry my mouth open and force the thing in.
I blocked with the hand she wasn't already holding. She clamped down on the other arm hard enough to break it.
"Agh..!! I'm eating a hot dog with actual sausage in it..!! You respect my taste too..!!"
"Just quietly join the cucumber-hot-dog camp with me..!!"
Pain locked the hand that had been holding her off. She didn't miss the opening. The hot dog charged my mouth.
Right before that huge, imposing hot dog could ravage the inside of it—
Ding~
The bell announcing a customer rang through the agency like a savior, and the hot dog lunging for my mouth froze where it was, a statue.
Thwack!!
I didn't waste the pause. My stiffened hand knocked the hot dog aside, and I went to greet whoever had walked in.
"Anyone here?"
"Welcome! Have a seat, please."
I settled the customer standing in the doorway at the table where we heard requests, and asked Dias to brew some black tea.
"Dump every tea leaf in again and I'm taking it out of your pay."
"Do I look that stupid to you?"
"..........."
I looked at her with an expression that sincerely asked whether she believed that. She puffed her cheeks as far as they would go and stalked off to the kitchen.
Praying that a proper cup of tea would come out this time, I turned back to the customer.
The first thing that stood out was the black clothing wrapped around every inch of them, even in weather where the sun was pouring down heat like it meant to die doing it, and a face so pale it had gone past white and become bare bone.
Meet them at night and a ghost, seeing nothing but a floating head, would greet them warmly as one of its own.
If they're a skeleton, does that actually make them the same species as a ghost?
The outfit alone, and I would have assumed they simply couldn't be exposed to light. The cross hanging at the neck told me this was a priest.
"What's a priest doing here?"
"I've come to place a request. Lately the church's believers have been collapsing every morning, and even when we review the CCTV, nothing out of the ordinary is recorded. It's quite troubling."
"The people found collapsed there—do they say they don't remember anything?"
"Yes... All of them remember coming to the church at night. After that, they say, nothing."
From the church's side, it was an impossible mess.
Handle it wrong and someone might sue, claiming this had happened to them on church grounds. People kept passing out, so the church's reputation was rotting too. And no ordinary believer was going to walk back through those doors after an experience like that. The denomination had every reason to be losing its mind.
"Have you tried posting someone to patrol at night?"
"The person we posted was found unconscious as well. It's becoming frightening."
"..........."
For a second, the observation that running into him at night would be scarier than any of that climbed all the way to the top of my throat. I swallowed it and took a sip of the black tea Dias had made.
Slurp.
"The black tea is quite good."
"R...ight... it is."
Setting aside the fact that the tea he drank ran straight through his body and left a patch of his clothes soaking wet, I did everything in my power not to spit out the violent salt hitting my tongue.
I turned to find Dias, who had brought the tea. Only her head was poking out of the kitchen, and she was laughing.
The color had come out right, and she'd already botched it once, so I'd let my guard down and assumed she'd gotten it right this time. My mistake.
Gulp.
Holding together a smile that was one breath from collapse, I swallowed the soy sauce wearing a black tea's clothes.
Dias's punishment could wait. I went back to the priest's request.
"So what you're asking, in the end, is that we find out why the believers ended up that way."
"That's correct."
"And how did you hear about our agency?"
"Ah, the reviews were good, so I looked you up."
"Reviews?"
We hadn't been open long, and we were tucked into a corner like this. Unless someone came looking on purpose, we were easy to miss.
The priest drew a glove shaped like a hand from inside his robes and worked a phone with it. Being a skeleton, he apparently couldn't operate one bare.
After a few taps, he held the screen up in front of my face.
It hadn't even been up a day, and already the review had a crushing lead in upvotes and comments over the other hit posts.
I was glad we'd gotten advertised without meaning to. I was also worried that a fresh crop of nightmare clients was about to find the door.
"All right. I'll take the request."
"Thank you. Then allow me to guide you to our church."
"Could you wait here for just a moment?"
"Of course."
I accepted the job, picked up the bat named Conversation from beside the chair, and charged Dias.
Crash, bang, clatter!!!
"I'm sorry!!"
"I raised!! An ungrateful!! Little beast, that's what I did!!"
The moment I came at her she tried to run. I drove her into a corner, and we had ourselves a session of physical conversation.
The priest took the screams drifting out of the kitchen for music, and savored his black tea.