Since the door to every single inn had unfortunately been shut tight by the time I’d arrived, I was without a place where I could stay for the night.
However, in my moment of need, Clarice extended me a helping hand.
“You don’t have lodgings, right? Stay at my house.”
She readily offered this solution as she showed me up to the fourth floor of her office, or rather, her home.
What an incredibly kind thing to do. Truly a lifesaver. I see no reason to decline.
“That reminds me, what about dinner? Have you eaten? If you like, how about we eat together?”
As soon as she’d led me up to the fourth floor, she prepared a meal for us with familiar ease. She warmed up a stew she had prepared ahead of time and placed it on the table with some bread.
“…Are you sure this is all right?”
I couldn’t ask for anything more, could I?
“Dinner without conversation is lonely, after all.”
I immediately took her up on her word. Actually, before I could even give her an answer, she had already prepared a portion for me, too.
If nothing else, the way things were going, I had managed to get dinner. The warm, delicious stew filled my empty belly.
By the way, there was a hidden side to her tasty offer.
“I want you to help me with my work tomorrow.”
“……”
And so over dinner, she suddenly said that to me.
I nonchalantly averted my eyes, thinking I could play coy and pretend I hadn’t heard her, but Clarice doubled down and asked pointedly, “As you know, we lost a member of our team earlier tonight, so would you lend a hand?”
“……”
Ah well.
Somehow or other, I figured it was something like that.
“…It certainly will be difficult for me to refuse, now that you’ve fed me dinner.”
Not to mention that ever since I arrived here and up until just now, you’ve shown me nothing but kindness.
“Of course, if you do help out, I’ll pay you accordingly.”
“For now, I’m not really so worried about the money, but it seems like a pretty dangerous job, so I’m more anxious about that part of it.”
“Ha-ha-ha. Don’t tell me you lost your nerve when you saw the aftermath of what that wandering dead did earlier? You’ll be fine. Things like that rarely appear, and even so, rightfully I ought to be the one taking responsibility for those particular creatures and taking them down myself. The ones I want you to handle are the ordinary dead.”
“Those translucent creatures that take human form?”
“Right. I mean, basically, if you think of it like exterminating jellyfish, you’ll do fine. One or two dead should be easy enough for a witch to defeat, right?”
“…I guess you’re right.”
If that’s all it is, fine.
I nodded in agreement.
After that was settled, we spent a short while eating our meal across from each other.
After we finished dinner, as promised, I spent the night in her house. I had a bath and made myself at home, then the two of us relaxed at the dining table for a while.
While we were sitting around, since we had a little time before bed, she told me a few things about her background. According to Clarice, she had become a witch in order to hunt the dead.
“The first confirmed sighting of the dead in this land was about three hundred years ago. They’ve got some history, like a local custom.”
Apparently, they still didn’t know exactly what had caused the dead to start appearing.
The magical energy in the surrounding forest probably played some part, extending an evil influence into the city itself and making it possible for the dead to appear. The same thing had happened in the land the cats had controlled and the land the objects had controlled. When the magical energy that prevails in forests overflows, it can prove to be harmful to human society.
I made this conjecture and interrupted Clarice’s story to present it to her.
When I did, this was her reaction:
“Yeah. Actually, I reached basically the same conclusion a long time ago.”
“……”
Clarice told me she had reasoned that there was nothing to be done about the dead coming back. Most of the people there probably thought the same, she said.
She also told me that, to be honest, most of the dead were slow-moving and didn’t have much ability to fight, so it wasn’t impossible for normal people to deal with them if they felt like it.
In fact, when the dead had first begun appearing, that’s what they did. The citizens had apparently dealt with the nighttime dead on their own.
But it sounded like, even so, there was a great need for an institution like the Crescent Moon Company.
“The ranks of the dead, you see, take the forms of people who used to live here in the past.”
That included the ones I had encountered.
And the other dead that had been disposed of that night in town.
Clarice said all of them were the same way, taking the forms of people who had lived there and then died there.
“They look like your dead family members, but if you touch them, you get hurt. In the worst cases, people can die. The dead are much too dangerous to let them encounter the city residents.”
Apparently, that was why each member of the Crescent Moon Company acted under the shroud of darkness, before any city residents set eyes on the ghouls.
“That’s an admirable goal.”
I was straightforward with my reaction.
I was sure that if this was a local tradition that had been kept up for three hundred years, the people there must have already been completely accustomed to it.
I didn’t even question the fact that there wasn’t a single person left who was interested in walking around outside at night.
“I want you to exercise your talents to the fullest tomorrow night, as one of us.”
I felt certain no one there wondered how long they would live in fear of the dead or when it would come to an end. Because closing up your windows at night was just common sense around there.
Was that really such a good thing? Or was it something regrettable?
I didn’t really know.
But I simply agreed.
“Well, I’ll do the best I can.”
✦ ✦ ✦
The following day, I had a lot of free time when the sun was up, since our work would begin at nightfall.
Clarice told me, “You can do whatever you like during the day. I’ll basically be out in town on business all day, so you can come and go from the house as you please,” and handed me a key to her house with a very, very casual attitude.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
“Aren’t you putting too much trust in someone you just met yesterday?”
“I doubt you’re going to do anything bad.”
“But it’s easy enough to imagine the possibility that I might steal everything of value during the afternoon, then abandon the job at the Crescent Moon Company and disappear.”
“If you only stole a little bit, I probably wouldn’t even notice, so that’s fine.”
No, that’s not fine at all!
“Do you not have any attachment at all to your money?”
“I’m not just heading up the Crescent Moon Company for show, you know.”
Ah, it sounds like you’re earning a substantial amount.
With a confusing mix of emotions, partially shocked and partially impressed, I let out a sigh, and Clarice added, “If you go out into town today, I think you’ll understand.”
As she made this intriguing announcement, she gathered up her things to go to work. Then she warned me, “During the day, my mother often comes out into the dining room, so if possible, I think it would be better for you to be out.” It was a roundabout way of telling me not to stay in the house too long.
After that, she left.
“Huh…?”
Exactly what is going on here? I wondered as she left me behind.
As if urging me to hurry up and go, a loud thud, thud sound of something hitting a wall echoed from the direction of the bedrooms.
“……”
A scrap of paper reading Please eat and some stew, the remainder of last night’s dinner, had been left behind on the dining room table.