There was a reason why Charlotte had to take me with her.
“Tell me if you feel something.”
“Ah…. I don’t really know if anything like that will happen though.”
She didn’t know what kind of miracles my supernatural power could work, so she brought me here on a whim. Maybe I would be able to give her a clue about Valier’s whereabouts if I visit the place he was last seen. That was probably what she was thinking.
Charlotte probably already had all the information she could get out of this place.
However, there still seemed things she wanted to check out personally, and she thought, if she brought me, things might change, so that led to this situation.
“Have you ever seen someone that looks like this?”
Charlotte wandered around, carrying Valier’s portrait, and began questioning people. I was pretty sure that she already went around the scroll shops, but Charlotte still went ahead and wandered around the shopping street asking passers-by.
Have you seen him? If you have, do you know where he went?
Of course, this was still the Aligar District shopping street. A place where you’d earn hatred if you didn’t spend any money.
“What are you brats doing here? You can’t look around. Scram.”
Charlotte was wearing a robe, but she was still very small, so one could see her as anything but a minor. I couldn’t see her as an adventurer either.
Neither did the person in front of her. He didn’t even allow us to take a look.
How very gangster-like.
He let some choice words fly our way, saying stuff about some kids just wandering in willy-nilly without even buying anything. He even asked us if we were crazy.
He sure had some fragrant words to offer. So fragrant that he’d immediately bite his tongue off if he knew he was directing them to the First Imperial Princess.
In that case, we should have just worn our Temple Uniforms, not our casual clothes. That way they’d think there was big money to earn from us.
“…I knew it was going to be tough, but there are a lot of people who don’t even want to listen to what I have to say.”
After walking around the place for quite some time and getting pushed out of store doors, she was obviously tired. Charlotte let out a sigh.
“……I feel like the point you’re focusing on is kind of wrong. Aren’t you supposed to get pissed off by commoners treating you like that?”
Charlotte did grumble a bit after she got kicked out and treated the way she was, but she didn’t seem angry. Hearing my words, Charlotte laughed helplessly.
“He swore at me while I was in disguise. Wouldn’t it be really weird if I suddenly said something like ‘You peasant! Do you know who you are talking to’?”
She was intentionally hiding her identity, so Charlotte seemed fully prepared for what kind of treatment she’d receive when no one was able to recognize her as the Princess. It seemed like what was important for her at the moment wasn’t her honor or pride.
When I witnessed Charlotte getting back up on her own feet, I could feel just how desperate she was.
“Can you sense anything?”
“……No.”
“As I thought….”
As if she didn’t expect much from this, Charlotte didn’t seem very disappointed.
“Let’s go.”
However, she didn’t seem to have any intention to give up just yet.
* * *
The only place one could get any information was at the scroll shops. Fortunately, not everyone was slamming their doors in our faces.
“Just who is that brat that everyone’s looking for ‘im? Did that brat cause some incident with those fake scrolls of his?”
The Scroll Store owners who remembered me generally reacted like that. A boy who came to them to sell some fake scrolls, and that group of people who were rushing about looking for him ever since then.
They seemed to think that I got involved in some huge crime.
“People who looked like Guards just came around askin bout ‘im, and now some kids like you are after ‘im as well.”
The store owner seemed to find this situation very strange, saying that everyone suddenly started looking for that boy.
“I can’t tell you why we are looking for him, but it’s very important. Could you tell me everything you know about him?”
“There’s nothin’ much to it. A few months ago, a young boy came here tryin to sell some scrolls. Although they were very well-made, they were very shoddy. So I thought he was tryin to sell me fake scrolls. In the end I kicked him out. That’s all.”
“Okay…. Thank you.”
“Sigh, that brat must have gotten into some serious trouble. That’s why people should earn their money through honest means. You should be mindful of that as well.”
The shopkeeper came forward and gave Charlotte a warning, then we left the store without saying a word.
“Sigh…. In the end, they only told me things I already knew. Nothing changed.”
Even if one went to investigate and question the same witnesses personally, it was only natural that their testimony wouldn’t be any different from what was written in the reports.
“What did they mean by fake scrolls?”
Of course, I wouldn’t know why Charlotte was wandering around in this place and why Valier even came here with my current presumed level of knowledge. Charlotte looked at me from inside her robe and opened her mouth slightly.
“I told you that this boy escaped with me from the Demon King’s Castle, right?”
“You said, he saved your life….”
“I can’t tell you everything, but this boy had his reasons for separating from me.”
Because of the possible retaliation from Bertus, Valier fled. That’s what Charlotte believed to be the reason. Of course, she didn’t know that I actually ran from her because I was a demon.
“But what can a kid with amnesia and no proper knowledge do? He ran away recklessly, so the future seemed rather bleak at first. But he had some magic scrolls from the Demon King’s Castle. Perhaps that’s why he tried to raise some funds by selling them to the Scroll Shop owners on the Aligar District’s shopping street.”
Charlotte deduced the truth from only these bits of information. A boy who sold fake scrolls. From that, Charlotte might have concluded that those fake scrolls were actually demon scrolls, and that boy would be Valier without a doubt.
“However, the structure of demonic scrolls are vastly different from the scrolls we use. Merchants who have no magician-background would probably think he was trying to mess with them, trying to sell them fake scrolls.”
“Ah…. Is that so?”
Demon scrolls and the one’s humans used had structural differences. Without that knowledge I ignorantly wandered in every scroll shop and tried to sell them before I finally met Eleris.
“I don’t know whether he felt like something was wrong and realized that he wouldn’t be able to sell the demonic scrolls, but I heard he took a Fireball scroll from one of the stores to sell. That isn’t the weird part however. There were eyewitness testimonies that stated that he took a Fireball scroll, but no one ever bought one around that time.”
Eleris falsified her testimony, so that was where the trace got cut off.
“Maybe he stole it, got scared and simply ran away.”
“That’s possible. Then I would have to investigate shopping streets located in different places….”
Charlotte nodded her head after listening to my intentionally misleading comment.
“Let’s go to the store from where he stole the Fireball scroll.”
Of course, I didn’t actually steal it. That guy handed it over willingly, but I couldn’t correct her on this point.
Charlotte walked ahead to lead the way. That must have been information she had already been aware of, so did she really think that she would get any different results just because she decided to investigate herself?
* * *
Like that we arrived at the shop of this guy who gave me that Fireball scroll, blinded by greed.
-Squeak
I never thought I’d ever return to this place.
“……What? What do you kids want?”
Eleris told me this shop owner’s name, but I couldn’t remember it. He still looked as grumpy and greedy as before though. Charlotte took the lead and walked towards the counter.
“Are you Mr. Borton?”
“……Yeah, so what?”
When she called out the guy’s name, he seemed slightly surprised. Charlotte seemed to have compiled almost every piece of information about him prior to this.
“You reported that someone stole a Fireball scroll from you the other day, is that correct?”
“……What? You’re asking about this again? I told those Guards everything I had to say. Are they even having kids look into this now?”
It seemed like he was sick and tired of talking about this incident, as if he constantly had to repeat the story.
“I’m sorry to ask about this again. Still, this is very important to us, so we’re still looking into it. Could you tell me what happened back then one more time?”
Rather than pushing her point in an authoritarian way, Charlotte asked him politely.
“If I were to catch the guy, I was told that I would get lots of money in addition to my Fireball scroll, but I haven’t even found a single hair of him, so what does it matter? Just what kind of incident did that brat cause?”
That scammy merchant seemed almost convinced that the reason for so many people digging up information on me was that I got involved in some big incident.
“I can’t divulge such information. It’s classified.”
“You want me to tell you everything, while not giving me even a bit of information?”
Borton smiled as if what we asked for was absurd.
“Fine. I won’t get any rest anyway before I get that brat in my fingers.”
He was talking as if he held a deep grudge against the one who stole his precious Fireball scroll. Watching that greedy bastard getting angry in front of me made my blood pressure rise through the roof.
Normally I would have flipped the table right that moment, but I would get into some pretty serious trouble if I were to step up now, so I just clenched my fists and tried to endure it. He explained the situation, his face contorted by anger as he thought back to that time.
“So a couple of months ago or so, some well-young brat came to me with a scroll book and tried to sell it to me. However, they were all just really well-drawn fake scrolls. So I asked him, “Why are you trying to sell that shit? Get out of here!”, but when I kicked him out, he swiped a Fireball scroll. I was so angry when I found out later on. I tried to sniff him out, but it was useless. That’s it. Then there were a ton of people rushing around to catch that bastard. Who knows what kind of accident he caused.”
It was quite an arbitrary explanation. And the part where he handed me the scroll himself was drastically changed to me having swindled him.
“But what leads would you even gain from this? That guy might as well have disappeared into thin air or burrowed deep into the ground. I don’t even know his name.”
Borton sighed, thinking that no one would be able to find someone just based on such an eyewitness account. It seemed like he still spent restless nights thinking about the money he lost. Charlotte looked at Borton and smiled from within her robe.
“We definitely gained some leads from this.”
“From this?”
“Of course.”
Charlotte looked around the store, not at Borton himself.
“I’ve already found one, you know?”
Charlotte already noticed something that wasn’t in the report.
“What? What do you mean?”
Borton’s expression turned sickly pale when Charlotte suddenly said that she already found a lead.
As if not noticing his state of mind at all, she pulled out a scroll from under her robe.
“I’ll give you this scroll for a quarter of the regular price.”
“What?”
“It’s not fake. Please confirm.”
When that little girl suddenly took out a magic scroll and showed it to him, Borton laid it out on the counter and looked at it, a smirk evident on his lips.
“……Lightning Scroll…. It’s genuine. The market price for this scroll is 1 gold, so a quarter of it would be 25 silver.”
“You can buy it or not, it’s up to you.”
Charlotte mentioned that 1 gold was the correct price, so she didn’t have anything to complain about, so Borton handed her 25 silver as if they were candy. It wasn’t exactly a lead, but we could see that he was extremely elated having been handed something basically for free.
After receiving the silver coins, Charlotte smiled.
“Now then, during this whole process, when would I have had the opportunity to steal your scrolls?”
“……What?”
“You don’t have an appraising machine somewhere in the back, and it seems like you’re able to directly appraise if the scroll is fake or not at the counter. You said as soon as you noticed that the scroll the boy handed to you was fake you kicked him out. Please remind me. Just how did he manage to steal a Fireball scroll from the scroll cabinet behind you?”
Charlotte pointed to the big cabinet behind Borton. It was placed in a way that guests wouldn’t be able to access it.
If Valier showed him the scroll and Borton had to take it to the back to appraise it, he would have had the opportunity to secretly steal a Fireball scroll.
However, to stop the shop owner from sprouting such excuses Charlotte deliberately sold him a scroll at a very low price and watched how that transaction would proceed.
From the start, Charlotte was trying to see if it was even possible for someone to steal a scroll or not, taking the store’s structure into consideration.
Charlotte laughed, with her head slightly tilted.
“It’s absolutely impossible that he took a Fireball scroll like that. You’re hiding something. Out with it.”
Charlotte saw through Borton’s lie and completely cut off any form of excuse.
“Wha, what are you saying?! If I tell you he swiped it, he swiped it, you little bitch….”
His face swelled, confronted with this absurdity and he tried to step out from behind the counter.
“Hey, you idiot, watch what you say.”
“What?”
It was me who spoke up, not Charlotte, who was still wearing a robe. The fact that she didn’t reveal her identity seemed to mean that she didn’t want to pressure him using her authority.
“I’m a student of Temple’s Royal Class. If you don’t want this to get bloody, keep talking, you hear?”
Since Charlotte didn’t want to reveal her identity, I just revealed mine. Be thankful, you bastard. If I hadn’t stepped up you might have gotten exiled or worse.
“Te, Temple…?”
I waved my student ID right in front of his face, and I could see that he was slightly pissed off by being talked to like this by some young bastard.
“Yeah, Temple. You’d lose no matter what you’d do anyway, but are you sure you’re even capable of beating me up? Well, I’m pretty dang sure that I can hand your ass to you in a fight, no matter what. So, how about it? If you have the confidence to put a scratch on me, come at me.”
As I muttered these words with a threatening force behind them, the store owner seemed to struggle between his feelings of indignation after being looked down on by a young boy and not wanting to get into trouble by laying hand on a Temple student. Charlotte seemed a little surprised. She didn’t seem to have expected that I would interfere like this.
Anyway, Charlotte already saw through Borton’s lies. She would have found out the truth sooner or later. Assuming that to be the case, I’d rather get myself involved and show Charlotte my good side.
“If he stole it, you’d surely know how he did it, right? If you can’t even do that, just spit out what you’re hiding.”
I would most certainly appear much more intimidating than Charlotte, who covered her face. When I stepped up, Charlotte fell into silence as if she planned on just watching from the sidelines.
More than anything, I just couldn’t stand that bastard talk for even a second longer.
“Don’t you get that this isn’t just your run-of-the-mill case? You’re gonna be accused of obstruction of justice by spreading misleading information, you know? Are you gonna tell the truth now, or would you rather have someone you don’t know drag you to some dank basement and beat the shit out of you?”
I had no idea what kind of expression Charlotte made, hearing these ridiculous, threatening statements I made. It wasn’t like I could control Charlotte’s and Bertus’ forces.
These were just a list of scary words meant to get a reaction out of someone.
Misleading information. Obstruction of justice. Getting kidnapped.
If people hear these types of words lined up in a sentence, they’d rather swallow swords than gambling on the option that these were just empty threats.
I mean, it’s just simple blackmail backed by empty threats. I didn’t have a shred of authority to do anything like that after all.
“Tha, that’s…. That is….”
However, it was difficult to think of this as just simple blackmail from Borton’s standpoint.
I had no intention of backing down either.
When I saw him like that, I really wanted to see this bastard getting severely punished.
