Chapter 15

Chapter 15 : Free Event to Celebrate the Grand Opening (1)

『We solve all your ★worries★cares★troubles★ in the world!

Unprecedented! No fee! Completely free!

Whatever the request, refusal is refused!

Please seek out 〈Fixer〉 Riwin!

Detailed scheduling is available through one-on-one consultation.

※Note: Confidential requests will be kept from everyone…… wink.』

Wink, really.

I treated the flimsy sheet of paper as though it were some atrocious cursed object, crumpled it up with great care, and threw it out the window.

“I do not need it.”

Ochel, who had come first thing in the morning saying Pan told her to deliver it, calmly rummaged through her clothes.

“He predicted you would react like this. So there is one more.”

Ochel held out another strange sheet of paper.

I had the distinct feeling that if I crumpled this one too, she would simply take out another, so I did not even bother unfolding it and held it as far away from me as possible.

It was my declaration that I would never do this, no matter what.

“You are saying Pan gave me this. Why?”

“He told me to pass on his words. Ahem. Slave No. 1’s refusal is refused. Retu seemed very interested. If you continue to be troublesome, I might send you there—”

“—Do it. I mean, no. I will do it. I will do this.”

Retu was the ruler of the Mist, the same side that had tortured me.

I absolutely did not want to go anywhere crawling with hard-core psychopaths like that.

Compared to that, this forest domain really was paradise.

---

Ru’s fear-of-heights support group had merely been preparation for this day.

Apparently, word had spread a little about me doing all sorts of things out in the open.

And why, exactly? What was so enjoyable about watching me suffer and flounder through all that labor?

I denied reality, but the grand opening proceeded smoothly anyway, and before long, the day itself arrived.

Taking accessibility into account, the location was not set inside the ruler’s castle but near the night-market street that ordinary people frequented.

Since Pan himself had chosen the location and told me to do it there, there was no problem on that front. Still, if he was going to make me work for free, then the very least he could do was provide the premises.

Right. That was the greatest problem.

I protested that even if I was not a real slave, making me work completely unpaid was going too far, but he refused to budge.

I could not argue when he said that, considering I was already being fed, clothed, and housed, what possible need did I have for extra income?

I was a freeloader.

I was in no position to complain if they decided to drag me away and kill me again at any moment.

And the only thing I knew how to do here was labor with my body.

There was one more reason I had not protested more forcefully.

Only a few days after receiving that curse-ridden sheet of paper from Pan, the system, which had been quiet for a while, caused trouble again.

I had not even properly agreed to do this yet, and it abruptly started a countdown on a Time Quest telling me to succeed in my first commission.

Naturally, it was another forced quest, and now I had been dragged out here to hold an opening with not a single customer in sight.

The Epic and Field quests had no time limit and no penalty, but Time quests were garbage, with both a time limit and a penalty for failure.

‘At least they do give something.’

The list of quests steadily piling up made me sigh.

[【Epic】 Let Us Make an Incredible Ending (In Progress)]

[【Epic】 Find the Surface Folk in League with the Underfolk (In Progress)]

[【Field】 Treasure Hunt—This One Won’t Be Easy (Paused)]

[【Time】 Succeed at Your First Commission (In Progress)]

Seeing those colorful quest markers glittering in the corner of my vision one after another made it difficult to immerse myself in anything at all.

Even when I played games, I had never been the sort to let quests pile up like this.

‘Are all of those even possible?’

It felt like looking at a list of overdue deadlines.

Miserable at the thought, I found myself absently rubbing the leaves of the plants filling the space beside me.

No matter how I thought about it, I could not shake the worry that perhaps Pan had seen right through me when I let something slip about curiosity or interest.

The solution had appeared far too perfectly, at far too perfect a moment.

If I wanted to find the traitor, I needed to meet as many people as possible.

I still did not understand how life worked here. I did not know who was who, what sort of personalities they had, or even much about the relationship between the Underfolk and the Surface Folk. About all I knew were the useless details of the protagonists’ violent love life.

‘Unless I can read minds or something…….’

I was restlessly running my fingers through my hair when I lifted my head at the sound of someone approaching the doorway.

“Wow, it looks quite convincing.”

That was Ochel’s first impression as she carried in a large flowerpot with apparent ease and looked around the inside.

Not once had the little bell on the door chimed. Her movements were that nimble. At that point, I started entertaining a very reasonable suspicion: perhaps that strip of black cloth was a trap, and she had some sort of third eye.

“I knew this flowerpot would suit the place. Shall I put it here?”

The room was already full of plants, so I felt there was no real need to add even more, but by then Ochel had already set the pot neatly at the center of the consultation table.

“If you speak to it, it bears pretty fruit.”

“……Does it understand words?”

“As if that could be true.”

“……?”

“I meant you should take an interest in it and not let it die.”

For a moment, I vividly pictured Ochel silently disposing of a withered flowerpot in the near future, but I pressed the thought down and kept it to myself.

After wishing me good luck and commenting that at least it must be nice to have no customers, Ochel left. Pering and Ru came by in turn after that.

“These are promotional flyers. I have also posted one on the notice board at the entrance to the night market, so customers should arrive before long.”

—said Pering, leaving behind hundreds of flyers.

“It is such a shame. I really liked Riwin’s copying. No, perhaps I should just entrust the first commission to youuu? For the next month or so, I need a copyist……”

—said Ru, gifting me a splendid quill before being dragged away by Pering.

In the end, they were not people who meant to commission me at all, merely congratulatory visitors.

That said, there was one person who by rights ought to have come running in the most excited of all, and yet, strangely enough, he was quiet.

I took out the tea Ru had recommended as having an effect similar to coffee while she was overworking me in the archive these past few days.

Pan did not show up until the hot tea had long gone lukewarm and the first lamps of the night market were beginning to light one by one.

Then, at last, he pushed the door open and stepped inside.

“I brought a grand opening gift…… though perhaps I am late?”

In his hand was the travel record I had left in my room.

“That is a gift?”

That was mine.

I held out my hand, telling him to return it at once, but Pan ignored me completely, waving the book around as he mocked me.

“If you behaved, I might have returned it nicely.”

“And if I do not, then what? Are you going to come at me? Ahaha.”

“I suppose people tell you often that your personality is rotten?”

“No. This is the first time.”

“What exactly are you planning to do by reading someone else’s diary? You said it was a grand opening gift, so hurry up and hand it over.”

I already had no worthwhile customers coming in, and now only bizarre people were arriving to scrape at my nerves.

After we made enough noise to nearly knock over the flowerpot Ochel had left behind, I finally managed to calm things down and get the book back.

“I annotated it. There seemed to be quite a lot of sloppy material in there.”

“What?”

I had not even properly examined the book myself yet, and he was telling me he had gone and done something to it?

I flipped through it in a rush, only to see red writing hopping all over the pages.

By the time I took in the sheer ruin of it all, complete with strange little drawings that might have been notes or might have been graffiti, I was so angry I almost transcended the feeling entirely.

He had scribbled childish nonsense all over this ancient relic—which, admittedly, had not been definitively proven ancient.

“What exactly do you think you are doing to someone else’s book?”

“You called it a diary, did you not? It is not.”

I had no response to that.

So I went back and started checking from the beginning again, starting with the newly restored foreword.

『 It was a youthful act of rebellion from a time when I was still weak.

┖ Calling that weak is absurd. It was the escapade of someone far too strong.

I wrote this in the hope that it might be of help to that child who comforted me.

┖ Not comfort. What he probably needed was warmth.

Therefore, if by chance you are not that child, I would prefer that you return it to where it belongs.

┖ If I picked it up, then it is mine.

Sure knows how to hold a grudge ⇒ —Sek— 』

The moment I saw the state of the first page, with lines aggressively drawn across it as though in jest, all reason abandoned me and my head throbbed so badly that I clutched my forehead and sank into a chair.

Then my eye suddenly caught the way he had added that note, almost as though he personally knew the author’s name.

“You know someone called Sek?”

Pan had been idly poking at the soil in the pot Ochel brought, but at my question he tilted his head.

“You mean the one who wrote that book? Know him? Of course I do.”

That sly grin immediately brought back the way he had laughed and laughed when we first met, though I buried the unpleasant association for the moment.

“Sek is the Underworld Lord.”

“……?”

“He is Underfolk.”

The mismatch in the information stopped my thoughts cold.

In the Original Work I had read, the Underworld Lord—the male lead—had been named Karon.

“So then Karon stole the lordship from……”

I muttered the conclusion that rose in my head, only to bite my tongue when Pan’s face suddenly appeared right in front of mine.

With narrowed eyes, he stared at me as though trying to peel back my inner thoughts. It was the first time I had seen that genuine expression of his again since the execution ground.

“Karon?”

“……The Underworld Lord I knew was named Karon.”

“Did you not say you had lost your memory?”

“It does not seem I lost all of it……?”

That was a mistake.

I had spoken too carelessly, before I had even fully grasped how the Original Work was moving.

Sek, the Underworld Lord, had been in the Black Forest, and Pan knew him. On top of that, the record had clearly been left behind a long time ago, weathered with the passage of years. So the child it referred to was probably—

‘You are not the traitor, are you?’

Pan, who had a connection with Sek, the possible former Underworld Lord.

The Surface Folk in league with the Underfolk.

I could not bring myself to ask it directly.

Pan, too, seemed to be trying to read my thoughts in return, but it was impossible that he could truly discern that I suspected him of being the traitor.

He would clearly never understand anything about systems and Original Works either.

The bell above the door rang, and only then did Pan finally move back from where he had been staring directly into my eyes.

Three or four little children, none of them looking even ten years old, had cautiously opened the door and were poking their heads inside.

They tiptoed in murmuring among themselves, but the moment they noticed Pan looking back at them, they all jumped in fright and scurried backward.

“I-it is the ruler!”

“It is Lord Chezer!”

“It is Lord Pan!”

“It is the boss!”

Each child called Pan by a different title, then clapped their hands over their mouths and began fussing as though they had encountered a celebrity.

I stared at them in something close to disbelief, then shook my head.

“You are quite popular, are you not?”

“Naturally.”

Pan shrugged smugly and patted each child on the head one by one.

Looking at the warm, genial face he wore now, so utterly different from the way he had been glaring at me only moments before as though he wanted to strip the flesh from my bones, I could not help wondering just how shameless a person had to be to serve as a ruler.

“The sign out front was hung by me, so let that count as your grand opening gift.”

I lifted my brows, slightly startled to hear something I had never known before.

The sign had a picture of a quill and a dagger crossed together, wrapped in a circle of thorny vines.

It hung beside the door, and I had even thought it suited the place rather well. I had been ready to give Ochel or Pering high marks for good taste, but to think the one responsible had been Pan.

“You can thank me later.”

Pointing at the four little children who were still staring with their hands over their mouths, Pan gave another casual shrug and walked out.

The children remained frozen until the tinkling bell above the door had completely fallen silent. Then, as though nothing had happened, they rushed inside and began exploring.

They peered beneath the wide consultation table, lifted the decorative picture frames hanging on the walls, opened every antique-looking drawer one by one, and even rearranged the order of the little wooden dolls lined up below the window.

Since they might become my first clients, and since they were also children rescued from Pan’s clutches, I tried to be patient. I truly did. I even tried to steady the corners of my mouth as they trembled.

“Children?”

“Aah!”

“Wah!”

“Eek!”

“Hic!”

I had called them as quietly as I could, yet they all froze at once in the middle of what they were doing and rushed back to plaster themselves against the wall.

Anyone looking would think I had done something to them.