Survival Instinct (3)
Then again, it wasn't exactly easy for a woman to set out as a bounty hunter on her own.
The job assumed combat as a baseline, after all. Unless she was a mage, she wouldn't have made that decision lightly.
"Yeah. The level isn't that high, though."
"Bounty hunting's rough work. You must have some confidence in a fight."
"That part's usually not the problem. The problem's somewhere else."
"Somewhere else?"
"I keep losing the targets."
Somehow, I felt like I already knew why. Even after only a brief meeting, her personality was impossible to pin down—the kind of person whose expression gave away nothing about what she was thinking. That troublesome temperament of hers had to be part of the reason she kept letting targets slip away.
"Any particular reason for that?"
"Tracking's the issue. I'm confident in my speed, but I'm not used to following trails."
"Well, when the job involves pursuit, it's never simple."
"There are just so many people who are really good at running. So I keep racking my brains over it. Nom."
The towering pile of set meals had already dwindled to nearly half. The volume she ate was one thing; the speed was something else entirely. Looking at Sinel's frame, it was a mystery where she even found the space to put it all away.
Watching the set meals steadily vanish, I said, "Your food bill can't be cheap."
"I try to fill up on the cheaper stuff when I can."
"To cover that, you'll have to catch a lot of wanted criminals. How much do you usually get for one?"
"The cheap ones are about a thousand credits. Catch a big fish and you get more, of course. Want to see?"
"I'm curious, yeah."
"It's right here."
Sinel pulled out her smartphone, brought up a screen, and held it out to me. It was a list of criminals with bounties on their heads. Scrolling down the roster, I saw each entry graded by the severity of the crime and the danger the criminal posed.
There were Grade 3 targets with four-digit credit bounties, Grade 2 targets whose bounties usually ran around ten thousand credits, and higher up the list, Grade 1 targets averaging thirty to fifty thousand. At the very top sat the Special-Class wanted criminals, whose bounties exceeded a hundred thousand credits.
Considering how vicious and dangerous they got the higher you went, it was clearly a structure where you earned in proportion to the risk you took on.
"Special-Class bounties are enormous."
"They're also really good at hiding—and really good at fighting."
"Still, if you catch one, you'd be set for a while, right?"
"Yeah. I hope I can catch one someday."
Special-Class wanted criminals. They showed up often enough in the original novel. Using either exceptional brains or considerable combat ability, they tended to cause no end of trouble in the story. Most of them eventually fell to the protagonist in a fight or got subdued and hauled off by the security forces, of course.
"If you work at it, you'll catch one. Someday."
The fact that they appeared in the original meant there were descriptions of them—affiliation, combat level, behavioral patterns. The information I had on them was far from sparse. Once I had a force of decent size, going hunting for them wouldn't be a bad idea at all. A hundred thousand credits shimmered briefly before my eyes.
"You're pretty confident."
"This city's perfect for swallowing up anyone without guts. Especially out here in the Outer District."
"Then, uh… what was your name again?"
"Percival Smith."
"So, Mr. Percival, what do you do?"
Her question about my current occupation left me a little flustered. If I answered honestly, I was an unemployed con man. But I could hardly say that in front of a bounty hunter. I turned it over for a moment, then settled on the cover story that seemed easiest to sell.
"Me? I run a business."
"So you're a boss. What kind of business?"
"Information broker."
"Information broker!"
I didn't know why, but the reaction was good. And looking at it one way, it wasn't even a lie. I had sold information on how to get stronger and walked away with gold and jewels for it. Watching Sinel's eyes light up with enthusiasm, I took a bite of my cold burger.
"Thanks to you, I ate well."
At the entrance of the fast-food place near the hotel, Sinel had finished off the set meals faster than expected and only declared the meal over after polishing off ice cream for dessert. We cleared the trays and stepped outside into a dark stretch of street that looked little different from when we'd come in. It was late enough that "dinner" was a stretch—midnight snack felt more accurate.
As I started walking back toward the hotel, Sinel fell into step beside me.
"Sinel, right? Is your place far from here?"
"Not that far. About thirty minutes if I walk normally."
"Closer than I thought."
I walked on with that thought and found myself snorting under my breath. Sinel was a bounty hunter who took down criminals alone. I, on the other hand, couldn't even guarantee I'd beat the girl walking next to me. Who was I to be worrying about anyone?
"……?"
Thud.
In the middle of that pointless fretting, a sudden impact stopped me in my tracks. Someone had shoved between me and Sinel and kept going. The man in the hoodie glanced back at me for a second after brushing my shoulder, tossed out a single word, and walked on.
"Excuse me."
His steps looked hurried, like he had somewhere urgent to be. I watched him pass ahead of us and turn into an alley—and only when I put my hand in my pocket did I realize the problem. Something that should have been there was gone.
"……A thief."
The thin envelope I'd been carrying, and the credits inside it, had vanished. Fortunately, he'd only cleaned out one pocket; the bulk of the credits in the other side were still safe. Even so, the fact that I'd just lost the entire bounty Sinel had given me before we came here left a sour taste. It might not have been much compared to what I still had, but money was money. Losing less of it didn't make it any more acceptable.
Sinel, matching my pace, asked, "Pickpocket?"
"Looks like it."
The Outer District where I lived already had a rotten reputation even by this city's standards—security was notoriously bad. On the surface it was a place crawling with criminals and bounty hunters, so frequent pickpockets weren't exactly surprising.
Hearing that I'd just been robbed by the man we'd passed, Sinel pushed the edge of her goggles up with a finger and said, "I'll go catch him."
"What?"
"He might be a wanted criminal."
Haste
With that, Sinel shot forward. Haste—magic that warped the body's sense of time to move at high speed. The way she sprinted after the pickpocket was so fast it was hard to track with the naked eye. Only then did I understand why she'd said her magic burned through calories so hard. Distorted time shortened the body's metabolic cycle, which meant calorie consumption spiked by the same measure.
I couldn't just stand there and watch, so I ran after her as hard as I could.
"Sinel! Sinel Cloverbloom……!"
Both the pickpocket and Sinel had already left my field of view and turned into the alley. When I forced my legs faster and rounded the corner where she'd disappeared, a familiar voice reached me. It was only a short cry, but memorable enough. The owner of the voice was, of course, the pickpocket we'd just run into.
"Aaaagh! My leg!"
He was rolling on the ground, clutching his leg and screaming. The red wound visible on the leg he was holding told me exactly what kind of situation he was in. And standing next to him was Sinel, calmly wiping the blood off her knife.
Extraordinary? Or just extreme? Either way, whatever her appearance and personality suggested, the contents were unmistakably those of a bounty hunter.
"Caught him quick. Here's the money he stole."
Sinel held the envelope out to me with a look that seemed to be waiting for a reward. It was definitely the one the pickpocket had taken moments ago. I looked at the envelope in her hand for a moment, then opened my mouth.
"Any interest in working for my company?"