The detective had also heard the rumors of Fuzzy Dice being connected to orphanages, and he had also had a similar idea as Mira. If the rumors were true, then maybe he could try following the trail of money back to Fuzzy Dice.
He used various means to gather the information he wanted, including money, connections, and his own feet. After following various leads and doing a thorough investigation, he obtained a conclusion.
「Something in me told me that those rumors had to be all true.」
Saying that with a showy tone of voice, the detective began to detail everything he had done to arrive at that conclusion, and a certain change he noticed at the end of that lead.
Mira really only cared about the actual results he got, but she also related to the way the detective felt about it, so she did not interrupt him. It was the nature of men to want to talk about all the time they devoted, and the highlights they encountered across their journey to a goal.
So Mira kept her urgency to herself, and instead ordered a third serving of soft cream. Her outlook about her current situation was that she could eat as many desserts as she wanted for free, as long as she listened to the detective’s story.
「It was pretty rough, but in the end looking through all of that was about to pay off.」
Mira was eating her third serving as she listened to the detective finally get closer to the climax of his story.
In short, the detective’s story so far was as follows.
He had started by thoroughly investigating the orphanages in the continent.
That obviously meant going through an enormous list of locations, which was basically going down the list of orphanages officially recognized by the United Adventurer’s Guild, including those in small towns and villages, totalling a number higher than five hundred.
The detective went to all of them, going through their documentation to see if there was any trace of them receiving money from Fuzzy Dice.
And then he eventually found one orphanage that he felt was slightly odd.
「While they’re all called orphanages, their organization and design can differ from one place to another.」
In general, it was possible to group orphanages into three types.
One type was largely supported and run by the church’s donations, and were attached to it. That was the most common type, but even they had variations depending on how much money the church decided to allocate to a location’s orphanage. Sometimes there would also be greedy priests skimming money off the top from the donations, worsening the orphanage in their charge, adding even more variance into the mix.
Another type were orphanages largely run by nobles and their coffers, high class orphanages of sorts. Nobles would donate to them either to give off the appearance of being good people and improve the public’s perception of them, or simply because they genuinely wanted to help the orphanage. Those places would usually focus on teaching the kids various lines of work, and most of the kids there would become maids or servants for nobles.
The last type were private orphanages, run by common people. They were much more scarce compared to the other two types, and their management was usually completely different as well.
It was one of that latter type that caught the detective’s attention, as it also was an orphanage located near a place where Fuzzy Dice had appeared before.
「Their managers were extremely strict and secretive, but somehow I managed to talk them into showing me their financial records. As I looked through it, I noticed something surprising. Their income in donations was fifty percent larger compared to the average of other nearby orphanages.」
Orphanages, regardless if they were run independently or by nobles or the church, would hardly ever let anyone see their financial records, but somehow the detective had talked them into it, and he spoke of it like it was hardly a difficult feat.
But by now Mira had already noticed that the detective really liked to talk of impressive feats like they were nothing.
「But man, that really was one of the most exhausting times of my career.」
That was the thing, as he said that, the detective kept glancing at Mira repeatedly, almost as if coercing her into asking about it. It was actually hard to not notice his intention.
「Peeking into the inner workings of places run by the church and nobles is quite the feat, I must say I admire your skills.」
Seeing that the detective was stalling and refusing to move on, Mira decided to voice the words he had been trying to get out of her that entire time. That instantly made the detective grin with satisfaction as he said, 「All of the connections I built as an adventurer kept coming in handy.」
Saying that, he was ready to start narrating some of his past exploits.
「Ohh, that’s incredible. I’m sure you must’ve found something of interest in the financial records you eked out with those connections, did you not?」
Saying that, Mira gently pushed the conversation back on track. There had to be something more than just seeing that said orphanage received fifty percent more donations, otherwise the detective would not have put so much emphasis on that. And if that was not enough proof, the detective actually stopped narrating a previous adventure and happily detailed his findings again.
「Yes, of course. But those ladies I talked to vehemently refused to admit it… Or rather, they probably weren’t hiding anything.」
The detective continued gathering financial records of more places, and he found there were many others showing such odd spikes in donations when compared to their neighbors, with some that had received a sum fifty times larger than the average.
「But the similarities didn’t end there for those orphanages. They all also had a time when their finances were in the red, and management had to pay out of their own pocket to keep the children fed.」
Considering orphanages largely ran off donations, some variance in their income was understandable. But even accounting for that, the sudden spike in donations was unnatural, and those orphanages were all managed by the church or privately, located out in the poor countryside.
The detective also added that said donations were so big that they would let all the children in the orphanages live for a whole year without worry. On top of that, the large donations would always happen to come in within a week of one of Fuzzy Dice’s heists.
「I actually went to visit all of those orphanages myself, and I spoke to them in great detail.」
The detective was suspecting that Fuzzy Dice’s main hideout was in one of those orphanages, or maybe they were helping him. But in the end he could not find any trace of him anywhere near there.
There was nothing around or within the orphanages, and neither the adults watching over them nor the children acted suspiciously like they were hiding something.
「I’m pretty confident in my ability to judge people, and I can see through acts and deception pretty well. But not even the children looked like they were lying. If all of that was actually an act, then I wouldn’t mind hiring all of them to form the best theatrical show.」
After joking a bit, the detective added that the donations had all been dropped off personally by someone anonymous, who never showed himself and just left it there in the middle of the night when everyone was asleep.
The orphanage’s manager simply said that they would find strange boxes, with a note that said 「For the children.」
The managers had no idea who was behind that, so they could not confirm nor deny that it came from Fuzzy Dice.
「The circumstances all point to Fuzzy Dice, but when I discussed it with my connections in the church, they said there was no admissible proof of it, which is a position I actually support too. After all, if the authorities learn that those donations came from fraudulent sources, they would confiscate all of it.」
There was no definitive proof, so the church would not recognize the donations as coming from Fuzzy Dice. Still, the only person in the church that heard all of that was the higher up the detective knew.
「But I’ll have to ask you to keep this secret too, please. Not everyone’s the same in the church after all, as there’s all sorts of people there.」
There were always people who joined the church with avarice, and would do anything to enrich themselves. It was easy to imagine what such people would do if they knew the whole story.
「Yes, I shall do so. My lips are sealed.」
The lives of children were more important than the fact that the money was stolen. Mira was also not the kind of person to obsess about following laws down to every letter, so she happily promised to keep the secret.
Afterword:
I really have to say…it’s quite difficult to do some worldbuilding in an exciting way, without being too verbose or too abbreviated.
I have to choose what’s important enough to mention, and what isn’t and can be skipped.
If I just list out the most important key points, the writing becomes stale, but if I go into too many details it gets way too verbose instead.
I’m always struggling to find the right balance between them.
Everyday I’m reminded of how much one’s skills, instincts, and more importantly experience are necessary to write.
I feel like this is a struggle that will accompany me for the rest of my life though.
But for now I’m still too inexperienced, so I’ll just keep going, even if it gets too short, or too verbose!
……
Somehow I feel like this is the first time I’ve actually talked about something worthwhile in the afterword..!
Anywayyy
Trial and error is all I can really use to get through this, so things might become tedious for some parts, but I’d be glad if you could hang around for a bit longer.
With all that said…
We’ll keep touring around with the detective for a while longer!
