Useful No Matter Where
The subsidiaries under Starlight Guild were beyond counting. A certain company famous for its yellow signage was already notorious for spreading its tentacles into every industry it could reach, and even that sprawl was a cut below Starlight.
The guild had worked its way into every corner of the neighborhoods, to the point that even hole-in-the-wall shops borrowed its name, siphoning money out of the streets with ruthless efficiency.
But it bears repeating: Starlight Guild had never abandoned its identity as a hunter guild. It was rich enough to plate its rice in gold and eat it anyway, and when it came to raising hunters and training its rookies, it did not pinch a single coin.
How freely did it spend? There was a running joke that the guild tore up the paving stones in front of the hunter training center and laid them anew once a year.
At any rate, this same Starlight Guild kept a vast exhibition hall beside the research institute, the sort of place built to catch the interest of hunters and ordinary people alike.
All kinds of monsters lived inside it. Under government permit, of course, it was something like a zoo stocked only with creatures of low aggression and little strength, and the monsters on display were chiefly ones Starlight itself had captured.
It was more than enough to draw the curiosity of hunters who had yet to enter a gate, and of ordinary people who, lacking mana, could not set foot inside one at all.
There was a powerful charm in seeing monsters that had lived only in books actually moving and alive, and it pulled in crowds. Between admission fees and all manner of advertising revenue, the institute's finances stayed comfortably flush.
But if no new monsters or life-forms appeared, the number of visitors naturally fell away. And that meant the once-abundant budget began to pinch.
So putting a new life-form on display in a place like that was, in its way, a special occasion. If they meant to keep making money, fresh attractions had to keep coming through the door.
Only a few decades earlier, monsters had been terror itself to ordinary people. No matter how kawaii and pretty Hana was, she might have "disappeared" somewhere, or simply been disposed of.
Fortunately, policy had softened a great deal since then. Even a life-form from inside a gate could be exhibited openly in the hall, so long as it wasn't particularly violent and a hunter was assigned to it.
Yes. Hana, with her Strength stuck at F and not a single ability to her name, now had a duty, the same duty as a lion in a zoo: to stand before crowds, show herself, and win their affection.
When life is shit and everything hurts too much, people heal by watching videos of cute kids or animals. Shouldn't they put Hana to use in a place like this, with a face that could win over the masses? Left alone, she was a truly useless child.
Had she been an ordinary child, they might not have cared. But simply for being a life-form from inside a gate, she came buried under mountains of paperwork and every sort of regulation, and the cost of keeping her was no joke.
Because that upkeep was being spent, Hana had to go out and earn money despite her young age. Anyone looking on might call it child abuse, point a finger, and curse, but unfortunately Hana was not human, and those laws did not apply to her.
On looks alone, she wouldn't lose to any child actor, and the director in charge of the exhibition hall was confident. Picturing the hall packed with people who had come just to see Hana, he couldn't keep the happy smile off his face.
I had been asleep on a bed in a room drowning in lace, like some little girl's bedroom, when the feeling of someone poking my cheek woke me. Coming out of sleep was not a pleasant feeling. I hadn't slept deeply.
The one who had broken my sweet rest was none other than Kim Bora. From the crack of morning, as if she had no need of sleep herself, she was pestering me with those jabs. I opened my eyes, hated the finger digging into my cheek, and bit it. Not too hard, of course. If I bit with any real force she'd be in pain, so I bit the way you deliver a warning: Don't touch me! After that, Kim Bora would never lay a finger on my cheek again. Of course, it felt as if she'd already done the exact same thing several times...
"Hana, you're awake?"
Beaming, Kim Bora sat down beside me. I felt the bed dip and sway, and I rolled over so my back was to her.
I was still tired, and the longing to sleep a little longer burned in me. Kim Bora, as if she simply could not abide me like this, slid her hands under my arms and hoisted me into the air.
I really don't understand why she keeps picking me up. Dangling there, I kicked in fury, but my legs were too short to reach her. She hauled me off like that toward somewhere unknown, and a bad feeling settled over me.
"Ta-da~"
The place she'd brought me was a closet. The whole room was packed with clothes, the way celebrities and actors stash every outfit they own. My face went bloodless, and I tried to run.
It was obvious she meant to dress me up the way you change a doll's clothes. But as if she had already predicted exactly that, Kim Bora slammed the door shut.
"Ehh..."
I didn't even manage the start of a scream before I was caught in her hands and turned into a living doll.
Save me!!!
Kim Bora's first suspicion began in the bathtub. After she finished washing Hana, about half the water in the tub was gone, and what remained had taken on a green glow, as if bath salts had been stirred into it.
She couldn't push the thought any further than that. She had no idea why it happened.
When the same thing repeated at the second bath, though, something clicked. She went to Hana, who was rolling this way and that by herself in the room, looking bored.
Hana ran from strangers, so the task fell to her—the member of the institute's staff the girl was closest to.
Pluck!
She pulled a single strand of hair from Hana's head. Hana shrieked and fled from her side.
Pulling hair hurts, after all. Kim Bora held up the strand she had taken and dropped it, with a soft plop, into a cup of water.
An ordinary person's hair ought to float. Hana's dissolved the way coffee blooms into a cup, and the water slowly shifted from a pale white light to green.
Just as she'd thought. She had watched Hana's hair melt the moment it touched the pond last time, so she had been able to guess this much.
The way a person keeps shedding hair without ever thinking about it, the strands that aged and fell from Hana—not the ones still rooted in her scalp—changed the color of water the way bath salts dissolve. Of course, the more water there was, the paler the color became.
"Hmm..."
But something made her hesitate. By everything she knew, the powers carried in the byproducts of gate monsters were aggressive, every last one of them.
One monster's saliva was venom potent enough to put cyanide to shame, and the others each bore abilities just as fatal to people. Kim Bora's hesitation made perfect sense.
Even so, she could not take her eyes off the water, which held a rich emerald light so beautifully colored it seemed made to be drunk.
Hana's cute face shimmered at the edge of her thoughts, and the girl didn't possess a single ability meant to harm a person. So Kim Bora drank the water in the cup just as it was.
The instant the cold liquid passed her throat, her eyes flew wide before she could stop them.
!!!
Her pupils had blown open on their own. Her lips quivered, and her hands shook.
For a moment Kim Bora felt her mind snap so clear she wondered if she had entered nirvana. The second the water went down, the murk in her head burned away, and the fatigue of long overtime seemed to blast off her in a rush of heat.
It was unmistakably cold, and yet as it slid down her throat a warm, lucid feeling climbed from her esophagus, and she could not get hold of herself.
It had, quite literally, the power to cleanse body and mind. It also carried a strange addictiveness that made her want another sip at once.
This... she could swear it worked better than any energy drink on the market.
No. Comparing this tea to an energy drink was an insult. Bring any beverage or tea in the world, and none of them could stand beside it.
Having felt an effect that was anything but ordinary, Kim Bora advanced slowly, undeterred even by the frightened look Hana was giving her. She needed a sample to show the department head.
Hana stared at her with desperate intensity and backed away as if terrified, but this was a narrow room. There was nowhere to run.
Hana felt the killing intent flashing off Kim Bora well enough. Sadly, a grade-schooler's body could not overpower a grown woman's.
And so the only sound left in the room was Hana's voice, crying in pure misery.