Chapter 14 — I’m Not Sharing a Room With a Guy That Goes to Love Hotels
“Wait, hold on a second! If you’re a guard, that means your job is to keep the city safe, right?!”
“Yes. And?” the soldier responded without batting an eye. Blonde hair framing an attractive, blue-eyed face made it clear that she wasn’t Japanese, but she still spoke the language like it was second nature to her.
“Then what do you mean you saw everything from the beginning?! We were being attacked! Why didn’t you help us?!”
“You’ve got to break a few eggs to make an omelette, right? I can’t blame you for being upset when you haven’t seen the whole picture. We’re investigating a particular criminal organization, trying to smoke out the nobles who are running things behind the curtain.”
“In other words, you were planning on waiting to see who they sold us off to?” Yogiri asked, making sure to keep his tone polite. There wasn’t any reason to start a confrontation.
“Precisely! Even if we had arrested the whole gang just now, it’s unlikely they would have told us anything. We’ve tried that a number of times already, after all.”
“Takatou...it looks like this world really is full of nothing but terrible people...”
While he certainly agreed, Yogiri was more concerned with how freely the guard was sharing this information. It was surprising that she would speak so openly about an official investigation.
“Well, for some reason they all started collapsing one after another. So what do you want from us?” Yogiri continued to feign ignorance. Killing the soldiers would be easy enough...but this time he was up against public officials. If he could talk his way out of it, that would be a far better option.
“That’s the thing! From where I was standing, they all seemed to fall over on their own. I can’t imagine what could have happened. Since the two of you were so close, I thought you might be able to clear it up for us easily enough.”
“Did it not occur to you that we might have done something to them? In which case, wouldn’t it be dangerous for you to be close to us right now?” Maybe he was taking it a step too far, but Yogiri couldn’t help himself.
“Oh, of course there was a high probability that you did something to them. After all, you were just about to be kidnapped! However...we have the blessings of the Sage. The Gift rendered to otherworlders is ineffective against us. Ah, from that look, I’m guessing you didn’t know that, did you? You’re starting to get a little worried, perhaps?” The guard broke into a grin, as if she had just pinned them into a corner.
If the Gift was a power granted by the Sages, it made sense that the Sages would have a system to counter it. There were probably a fair number of otherworlders who had received these Gifts. As such, those in charge of keeping the peace would need a way of dealing with them. It would also make it difficult for those granted power by the Sages to turn that power against them.
Yogiri felt that he had finally caught a glimpse of the way this world truly worked. The Sages summoned candidates, and from them new Sages were born. Those new Sages then summoned more candidates. In this way, they had built a layered structure where those at the bottom could never disobey those above them.
“No, I’m not all that worried since the two of us don’t have the Gift in the first place.”
“Wait, what?! Hey, Jorge! Inspect them!”
“Yes...as they say, they don’t possess the Gift,” a man standing just behind the leader answered. He also spoke in perfect Japanese. “In addition, I see no traces of magic in the vicinity. The probability that they did something themselves seems rather low.”
“What is going on here?!”
“Not sure what you expect me to say,” Yogiri quipped.
“Then why did you lie?! Can’t you see how suspicious that looks?!”
“I thought explaining would be a pain. I’ll apologize for lying, but we really don’t know anything. It’s not like you would have believed us if we’d simply said that they all started collapsing on their own.”
“Dammit! Fine! Let’s go — inspect the bodies!” Sulking like a child, the captain led her retinue into the alley.
The guard named Jorge stopped beside them as they passed. “My sincere apologies. I’m sure being accosted like this is quite frustrating, but Captain Edelgart isn’t such a bad person. I guess you could say she has a tendency to get tunnel vision.”
“As long as her suspicions have been cleared up, it’s not a problem. If I may be blunt, did you actually intend to let them kidnap us?”
“Yes, and it pains me to admit it,” he replied apologetically. “It appeared they had no intention of killing you just then, so our plan was to observe and follow.”
“Well, all’s well that ends well, I suppose.”
“I’m afraid we can’t simply allow you to return home like nothing happened, though. Could I trouble you to accompany us to headquarters? I’d like to take down a written statement.”
“Sure. And, not like I’m asking in exchange or anything, but could you show us somewhere we can stay for the night? We were actually on our way to find a hotel but were led here instead.”
“Of course. I can at least do that much.”
“Hey! One of them is alive!” the captain shouted, as if she had made some great discovery.
It was the dog beastkin, the only one that Yogiri had decided to spare.
Maybe I should kill him after all... Yogiri thought briefly. But after going through the trouble of keeping him alive in the first place, as irritating as it was, he decided to let it be.
After giving their statements, Yogiri and Tomochika were released at once. Yogiri was half expecting to be arrested on the spot, but apparently the request for a written statement had not been a cover. It seemed the people of this world had an absolute trust in the Gift. The two of them, possessing no obvious abilities, simply didn’t qualify as viable suspects.
As promised, Jorge introduced them to a number of hotels, from which they picked the most luxurious. A cheaper option might have had problems with cleanliness and safety, and they had an abundance of money at the moment so there was no reason to be stingy. The two of them had agreed on that immediately.
“Wow! What is this?! This is amazing! It’s like a castle! Not that I’ve been inside a castle before...” Tomochika began gushing the moment she stepped inside.
The lobby was bright as day, lit by numerous shining objects. At a glance, all of the fixtures were clearly expensive items, but none of it seemed overdone. The place was perfectly clean, and not a speck of garbage was visible anywhere.
“Does this look kind of like a Love Hotel to you?”
“Hang on, you’ve been to one before?!” Tomochika’s surprise continued to grow.
“Yeah, I hid in one once. It was a lot like this.”
“Well now I can’t help feeling that all this gaudy stuff makes it look cheap!”
“So, what are we going to do for rooms? Just one for the both of us?” On top of being in a high-class hotel, this was a whole other world. There was no way of knowing what could happen. When it came to safety, it was in their best interest to stay as close to each other as possible.
“No way I’m sharing a room with a guy that visits Love Hotels.”
“Then I’ll see if I can get us adjacent rooms.” His suggestion hadn’t been all that serious anyway. Being in the room immediately next to hers was probably good enough for protection purposes.
Heading to the front desk, they filled out the paperwork. Perhaps because it was such a high-class hotel, they had no problem doing so entirely in Japanese.
The two of them decided to meet up in the lobby the next morning.
Tomochika stepped into her room.
The interior was rather bright at first. But whether it was magic or electricity, it seemed she had free control over the light levels. Despite being a single room, it was a remarkably large and luxurious space. The bed was big enough that the two of them could have slept side by side with plenty of room to spare.
“Ugh, what am I even thinking?!”
As it was, Tomochika was already relying on Yogiri for everything. Without his help, there was no way she would have made it this far. She was plenty thankful for that. So if Yogiri came to her now, she felt it might be difficult to turn him down.
“But I wonder. Is he really all that interested in me? Or does he just like my boobs?”
While she wasn’t happy with the idea of him suddenly coming on to her, if he followed the right steps, then...
As that kind of vague feeling tried to creep its way into her head, it was immediately blown away by the sudden realization that she was not alone.
“Who are you?!”
A moment before, she had been looking at an empty room. But now someone was floating in the air right in front of her.
“Chiharu?!”
She should have immediately run to find Yogiri — that was the best course of action, she knew, but she just couldn’t bring herself to do it. Because she had seen this person before.
But perhaps saying that about her own sister was an understatement.
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