“It belonged to someone... he ate...?”
“Probably.” Yukinari frowned. “Maybe someone just dropped it, but I can’t imagine a xenobeast going out of its way to eat an armband off the ground.”
“That’s true.”
“In other words, there’s a good chance that it ate the owner of this band while he or she was wearing it.” The band got stuck in its teeth and avoided being digested.
After a moment’s silence, Yukinari said, “I’m not really looking forward to this, but...” Then, he grabbed Durandall again and plunged it into the monster’s belly. “Since it’s already dead, I don’t think there should be any spray of blood or anything, but stand back. Just in case.”
“Mn...”
Dasa obediently retreated and watched as Yukinari opened the monster’s stomach with his weapon. When the tear was wide enough, he set the gun aside once more and began feeling in the opening with his hands.
“Ugh...” His face contorted at the ripe stench that emerged from the creature’s stomach as his fingers sought something within. He found what he was looking for, cut it out with Durandall, and finally produced precisely what he expected: a human skull, or at least part of one.
“Is it someone from Friedland...?” Dasa asked from her spot a few paces away.
“We don’t know exactly what this guy’s territory was, but I have to think any bones would have been completely digested in the time it took him to come from another town or village.”
Truth be told, even the skull wasn’t all there. An inventory of the rest of the stomach’s contents revealed pieces of a pelvic bone and a femur, relatively sturdy bones. Everything else appeared to have been digested already. Yukinari suspected that the process would have taken more than a day or two...
“What’s this? A ring...?” There was something else left along with the bones; maybe it had survived because it was made of metal. “Maybe these two things will be enough to identify the owner.”
It wasn’t a mass-produced item, and close inspection revealed what appeared to be a name carved on the inside. It was extremely dirty, hard to make out at the moment, but a bit of cleaning would make it legible. And once they knew who the items belonged to, perhaps the effects could be returned to their family.
“If they’re from Friedland, I’m responsible,” Yukinari murmured.
Obviously, he couldn’t patrol everything outside the town and the fields, nor could he look out for every single person who might carelessly wander away to some dangerous place. And yet he couldn’t help thinking that if he had been stronger, strong enough that the xenobeasts and demigods knew to stay away from his territory, he might have prevented this person from becoming a victim.
“It’s not your... fault, Yuki.”
“...Thanks.”
He wiped off his left arm with a cloth and then remounted Sleipnir.
✦ ✦ ✦
●
When he got back to Friedland, Yukinari went straight to the Schillings residence.
This was actually his normal procedure. Yukinari was Friedland’s god, and with his unusual hair and eye color, along with his rather unique style of dress, he tended to stand out. Or rather, he naturally drew the attention of the townspeople. The citizens were apt to think that any time their god went out, it was for some important reason; anticipation and anxiety would spread among them. Even if Yukinari felt he was simply going for a walk, the people of the town would assume there was some deep meaning to his excursion.
And so he had come to begin and end his trips at Fiona’s mansion, as a way of telling people that this was just a normal patrol. Since arriving in Friedland, Yukinari had realized that even gods had problems of their own.
Of course...
“There’s this thing, too,” he muttered as he parked Sleipnir in front of the mansion and hopped off, intensely aware of the small leather pouch at his hip. It contained, of course, the armband and ring he had recovered from the xenobeast. The leftover bones he had wrapped separately and loaded on Sleipnir. He figured he would have them interred at Friedland’s cemetery later.
Fiona was the town’s deputy mayor. Information naturally came to her. She might not know all the details, but if someone had gone missing in town, she should have at least gotten a report about it. It might give Yukinari the hint he needed to figure out who owned this jewelry.
He greeted the servant easily, as he always did when entering the Schillings mansion.
“Hm?”
In the living room, he found Berta and Ulrike. Berta, he assumed, was once more there to take care of Angela, who was still in the underground room, and Ulrike must have accompanied her from the sanctuary as a guard. So it wasn’t necessarily surprising to see them both there, but Fiona was in the room, too, and seemed to be conferring with them about something.
“What’s going on? Something wrong?” Yukinari asked, perplexed by the somber atmosphere.
Fiona looked up, apparently startled by his voice. “Yukinari, perfect timing,” she said.
“It is?” These visits to the mansion were, as mentioned, completely routine. “Did something happen?”
“Yes, that’s what—” Fiona gave a small shake of her head. “I’m sorry. First, tell us about your patrol.”
Evidently she assumed he would give his typical report of “nothing unusual.” She could have easily asked him to put it off; that she didn’t was a sign of the deputy mayor’s methodical nature.
“I found something a little strange myself,” Yukinari said. Feeling almost apologetic, he produced the armband and ring from his pouch and set them on the table.
“What’s this?” Fiona asked. “It looks like... an armband and... a ring?”
“Yeah. Actually...” And Yukinari went on to give them the short version of events. How he had been attacked by a xenobeast. How he had defeated the monster without trouble but found bones inside it that appeared to be human. How these accessories had also been in there. His guess from the condition of the bones and ornaments was that the victim had not been very far away when they were eaten. In other words, that there was a good chance it was someone from Friedland.
Fiona listened to him with a pained expression on her face—but when Yukinari told her the name carved into the ring, she blanched.
“Yukinari. Are you sure about that?”
“Er... Yeah. I suspect it’s... the name of whoever owned this ring. I can’t be certain, though.” Somewhat intimidated by Fiona’s reaction, Yukinari picked up the ring and handed it to her. He had already washed off the xenobeast’s saliva and dried the ring, so it no longer looked repulsively dirty.
Fiona studied the inscription on the inside of the ring.
“What’s going on?” Yukinari asked.
“I never expected to get the proof from inside of a monster,” Fiona muttered after a minute. Then she looked at Yukinari as if just remembering he was there. “I’ve actually been looking for this woman myself. The issue I wanted to address has to do with her...”
“I knew it. Missing? Her family must be worried.” Yukinari felt a stab of guilt.
But Fiona said, “No, they’re not.”
“Say what...?”
What could it be, then?
“Actually, something strange is happening in town,” Fiona said. “Or I should say, happened in town.” She related how a man’s rotting corpse had been found in a certain home, and the man’s wife might be the killer. “So hypothetically, if she is the killer, we thought it would be more dangerous to leave someone who would do such a strange thing at large.”
And Yukinari, through sheer chance, had discovered what seemed to be the remains of the same woman.
“So maybe that xenobeast attacked her while she was trying to flee. Either way, she won’t be able to cause any more harm.” There was just a hint of relief on Fiona’s face.
She had wanted to talk to Yukinari precisely about the search for this woman and the possibility of strengthening the town’s safety measures. But with the suspect deceased, there would be no more need for concern. And yet...
“Wait, hang on,” Yukinari said with a frown. “All we’re sure about is the name on the ring. We don’t know whether the bones I found in that monster belong to the woman or not.”
He was thinking back to the detective novels he had read in his previous world, when he had been a normal high schooler. This could be misdirection, a deliberate attempt to send an investigation off in the wrong direction. The body and the personal effects were ultimately separate things. Just because they’d been found together didn’t mean the remains belonged to the woman in question. Maybe the woman had been trying to throw off her pursuers by dressing some body in her own clothes and feeding it to the xenobeast.
And then there was...
“The date.”
The mutter came not from Yukinari but from Dasa.
“What about the date?” Fiona asked.