Leading Mirka along, Yuri returned to Café Argent.
“—And so it turns out, Mirka is actually a duelist!!”
Athena and Fram were waiting for him, and he quickly informed them of this shocking fact, however—
“...Mirka, I think lying is bad.”
“No matter how gullible Yuri is, you shouldn’t just lie to him like that.”
He received exactly the reactions he expected, which caused Mirka to throw herself over the table.
“Urgh... Why won’t either of you believe me...”
“I mean, I’ve never seen you duel before,” Athena plainly stated.
Fram pointed to her own left arm and said, “In the first place, you never even wear a Proof.”
On any outing, a duelist was required to wear their Proof on their left hand. Yuri had lived with her for a month, the others even longer than that, and none of them had ever seen her wearing a Proof.
Mirka glumly lifted her head ever so slightly. “If it’s my Proof you’re looking for, I always have it on, don’t I?” She off-handedly gestured toward the gem hanging on her neck.
“...Err, that’s a staff badge, isn’t it?” asked Yuri.
“Yes, yes. Its main purpose is to access the terminals in Babel Tower, but there’s nothing preventing me from using it to duel, you know.”
“Then what happens to your rate when you duel?”
“Back when I first got the staff-member Proof, I synced it to my duelist one, so it properly gets recorded under my name. Well, I see no real reason to carry two of them around, but people don’t often try to duel the receptionists, so I can understand why a majority don’t know.”
After she finished her explanation, Mirka took a calculated look back at Yuri, Athena, and Fram.
“So, do you believe I’m a duelist yet?”
“...Sorry,” they replied in chorus.
“Good, of course I’ll forgive such an honest apology.” Finally back in high spirits, Mirka drank a mouthful of coffee. “On another note, how goes the member search?”
“It’s been a stormy voyage, to be perfectly honest,” Yuri replied.
“As I thought. I saw you with Haring a minute ago, but by the look of things, he turned you down.”
The moment Mirka mouthed the name, both Athena and Fram’s faces warped into frowns.
“...Yuri, your dragon friend was Haring?”
“Hmm? I mean, we dueled, so that makes us friends.”
“He definitely is from the Dragon Tribe, and in light of our current situation, he’s not a terrible choice, but...”
“Of course he’s a bad choice! I mean, it’s Haring we’re talking about!” Athena screamed, her voice clearly frenzied as she loudly rose to her feet. Her expression was, for once, filled with blatant disgust, the hair on her ears and tail standing on end.
“C-Calm down, Athena!”
“No way! I can’t fight alongside people who do bad things!”
“I get where you’re coming from, Yuri, but I have to side with Athena on this one.”
Fram offered a small nod in her favor. However, Yuri couldn’t accept this.
“...I don’t think Mr. Haring is a bad person.”
“Likely because you haven’t been in the duel city for long. I’ve never fought him personally, but the fact stands that the rumors around him are never good.” Smoothing over her expression, Fram went into the rumors surrounding the Dragon Tribe man. “In his duels, he specifically targets newbies to take their money; he steals other peoples’ prey in the dungeon; he blackmails outside merchants into unfair trades... Even ignoring these rumors, his standard violent behavior stands out, so if you stick around him, you could get dragged into all manner of unnecessary trouble.”
“But those are just rumors, aren’t they? It’s not like—”
“They’re not rumors, I’ve seen it firsthand,” Athena interrupted. She was in a sharp, seething rage, just like when he first met her on the docks. She refused to say a word after that, so Mirka picked up where Athena left off.
“It happened shortly before you got here, Yuri. He was the suspect of a certain incident.”
“...An incident?”
“Remember how I told you about newcomers being tricked into contractual duels?”
While the principle of “the loser must obey the winner” was a tacit understanding, a contractual duel was where it was made into an official contract. According to Mirka, it was now mandatory to explain at registration how this system could be misused for evil.
“It’s mainly abused for money, but lately, we’ve been running into other sorts of issues. Those who use malicious contracts to effectively treat new kids like slaves.”
“...But then wouldn’t they be fine as long as they could run away and report the matter to city hall?”
“And what if they couldn’t?” Mirka calmly narrowed her eyes. “I’ll kill you if you run away... That threat is about death in a duel, but even if it is artificial, experiencing death is enough to instill primordial fear. Then what would happen to someone who only just came to the duel city and wasn’t even accustomed to the pain from a duel?”
Once the duel was over, their injured body would be reverted as if nothing had happened at all. But during the duel, the pain and anguish would be real. At its extreme, the sensation of death could carve an instinctual fear into the bearer.
“From what I heard from a victim, a contract stating, ‘Duels can only and will always be initiated by someone of higher ranking,’ was imposed on the newcomers. Yuri, what do you think about those terms?”
“...It’s to make sure the newcomers couldn’t duel each other?”
“Correct. As outsiders cannot intervene in any way during a duel, the newcomers might use this to escape their surveillance. And of course, they wouldn’t want that. A Proof will reject a contract that obstructs its primary functions, so they got around that by making it not so they couldn’t duel but that they needed permission.”
While her tone didn’t change, there was a sense of repugnance seeping into the air around Mirka.
“A situation that can’t be escaped so easily. If anyone tries, they’ll be forced into a duel and instilled with the pain and fear of death... The children we rescued were all so fearful, so broken down and weakened.”
Those newcomers were probably the same as Yuri. Charmed by the prospect of duels, they ventured out to the city of their dreams, their hearts racing at the fun days of battle that awaited them.
Yuri understood the feeling well; that was precisely why he clenched his fist tightly.
“The matter came to light when one of the victims finally made it to city hall... And at the time, the one with them was Haring—”
“You mean—”
“It means he was involved with the incident,” Athena frigidly explained. “They were there when I happened to drop by Babel Tower. I saw him trying to drag away a beaten, crying child by the arm.”
The flames of rage seethed in her turquoise eyes.
“I tried asking what was going on, but he started screaming and suddenly challenged me to a duel. I immediately reported it and Haring was taken in.” Athena practically spat out the man’s name. “But there was no evidence, so he got off with a slap on the wrist. The victim kid left the city without testifying.”
This wasn’t her usual radiant air. She gave off an ice-cold, murderous intent, similar to her brother Elias.
“That’s why I hate Haring. I hate that he can still be a duelist after everything he’s done.”
Fram tapped her on the side of the head.
“Well, you see how it is. Just give up on getting him on the team.”
Now that Fram had said that, Yuri lifted his hanging head. “—Then the problem will be resolved if I can just prove Mr. Haring is a good person!” he declared, his smiling face a bottomless pit of cheer.
As the other three were taken aback, he continued on.
“I haven’t been here for long, and I don’t know about Mr. Haring’s past. But the Haring I know isn’t the bad guy you say he is.”
Anyone who heard that would think it was a completely baseless assumption. Still, Yuri said it with conviction.
“The first time I fought him was really fun. We clashed head-on, and I did my best thinking about what I could do to win. For the first time, I felt, ‘oh, so this is a duel.’”
Finally, firsthand, he experienced the image of a duelist’s battle he had drawn up as a child. Haring was the sort of opponent who could bring his dreams to life.
“I want an opportunity to fight him again and—if possible—I do want to fight alongside him. That’s why I want to invite him.”
Seeing him confidently force his way through the argument, Fram sighed lightly. “...You heard the leader. What are you going to do?” she asked Athena, who was folding her arms in thought.
For a while, Athena kept silent with a sour look on her face. Then she breathed a long, slow breath as if to release the tension in her shoulders.
“...Mn, fine, I get it,” she answered, before raising a firm finger, “but you have to convince me he’s a good guy! If you can’t do that, your Big Sis won’t allow it!”
“Alright! I’ll definitely prove it!”
Athena regarded his enthusiasm with a troubled smile. But, for now, the matter was settled.