episode_0101

The words Ayakashi Hiko, the girl in front of me whose true nature was completely unknown due to all the expensive beauty treatments she’d undergone, uttered were very simple and clear.

The Zashiki-warashi from that absurd story.

Whether it was truly a mysterious entity that even current scientific technology couldn’t prove, or perhaps an innately gifted con artist who was lucky enough to be mistaken for one, it meant that Ayakashi Hiko and I were connected through it.

“…Explain in more detail.”

Don’t you already know enough? The ‘real one’ hidden inside K&H’s imported implants, which were arriving at Rossboard.

Hiko’s finger lightly tapped my chest.

More precisely, my heart.

It was where the Ayakashi ampoule had coincidentally been injected.

Originally, a Zashiki-warashi is like a guardian deity of a household. While it stays in the house, it’s a yokai that brings all sorts of blessings and good fortune to the family.

Ayakashi Hiko’s eyes, visible from her upturned head, were slightly clouded as if she was recalling something.

The Ayakashi, those people, didn’t want to let go of the good fortune they had coincidentally gained, so they wanted to keep the Zashiki-warashi permanently. Even if it disappeared, they would create one themselves.

“Create one?”

Listen. Their abilities were astonishing, so they analyzed the descendants of the Zashiki-warashi, meaning those who inherited the eldest son’s blood, and ultimately did something absurd.

Hiko’s finger, curved at the corner of her lips as if mocking someone, sliced through the air.

Then, a hologram appeared before me, displaying a paper densely packed with text, giving a dizzying impression.

Interpreting it as I squinted and read carefully, it was a document pathologically detailing the biological analysis and chemical structure of a certain entity.

And in that document, the word referring to the experimental subject caught my eye.

“What in the world is this…”

A fresh shock struck me.

The idea that megacorps secretly captured disabled individuals living gutter lives and conducted human experiments on them was often a joke I’d hear, but seeing evidence that it was real now gave me a headache.

I clicked my tongue at the calm descriptions that didn’t treat the test subjects as human beings.

Efforts to create a fake that was more real than the real thing. After countless trials and errors, they—should I call it a coincidence?—ended up creating one serum.

“…And that was the ‘real one’ that was in the transport truck?”

Nod.

Hiko nodded her head up and down without a moment’s hesitation, as if she had no intention of denying it.

I truly wished it wasn’t the case, but considering what had happened to my body afterward, it was something I couldn’t possibly avoid by simply turning my head away.

Originally, Nojaburo, that guy, was supposed to be injected with the one produced at the headquarters. But thanks to you, he must have been quite furious.

I almost instinctively turned my head in the direction I had come from.

Beyond the still tightly closed window, the murderous intent and hostility that dying old man had sent my way now made a little more sense.

Perhaps that was why he was struggling to breathe, barely clinging to life with an old-fashioned life support device.

Thinking that I had actually extorted something from the Ayakashi Chairman made a chill run down my spine, accompanied by a tingling sensation.

“I understood that the ampoule belonged to Ayakashi and that Chairman Nojaburo was supposed to be injected with it, but if it had already been produced, was there any reason to specifically seek me out?”

Of course, from Ayakashi’s perspective, I might be an utterly brazen thief, but I wasn’t the kind of person they would go to such lengths to catch.

Even if I only vaguely heard about the bounty mentioned by Kathleen’s company, wasn’t it 1% of Ayakashi’s total stock?

Besides, if they really wanted to catch me, wouldn’t it have been resolved at a much lower cost when I was still in the Lower City?

Didn’t I tell you? It was merely a coincidence. What was embedded in your body was the entirety of what Ayakashi had ‘coincidentally’ produced.

…

I heard it cost nearly 80 billion credits to create it, didn’t I?

80 billion credits? Isn’t that almost 10% of Ayakashi’s total market capitalization?

It seems I wasn’t just a petty thief, but a legendary master thief.

At that overwhelming sum, I felt cold sweat trickling down, soaking my freshly washed body.

“…But if there’s no continuous production, even if they create one Zashiki-warashi, nothing much would change, would it? If it’s the child of a Zashiki-warashi, isn’t it the child of the eldest son who founded Ayakashi? If so, the Ayakashi owners, whose principle is bloodline succession, should be Zashiki-warashi themselves… So why did Chairman Nojaburo try to get injected with the serum to become a Zashiki-warashi?”

The serum’s effect was to completely transform a person’s internal structure, making them entirely different.

Presumably, the desired transformation from this serum was the Zashiki-warashi’s blood.

However, this raised a question.

Why did Ayakashi Nojaburo, who could be considered the true owner among Ayakashi’s executives, try to inject himself with a serum that would transform him with Zashiki-warashi blood?

“Ahaha! You’re smart. Or is it that your intuition is good?”

Hiko clapped her hands in delight at the question I posed.

The answer is simple. It’s because they didn’t inherit the eldest son’s blood. Wars, accidents, assassinations, terrorism… it was a turbulent era.

“…So what does Ayakashi want from me then?”

“Hmm~ My body’s stiff from just sitting here, so let’s go for a light walk. Follow me.”

Hiko, who had risen from her seat, lightly hopped down from the veranda into the central garden.

I followed behind her, also stepping onto the garden barefoot, just like Hiko.

The fresh yet slightly cool sensation of the grass blades on the soles of my feet felt incredibly awkward.

As if her words about a walk were true, Hiko led me, humming a tune, and slowly walked around the garden in silence.

Here and there in the garden, which exuded an antique atmosphere with its energetic pine trees, well-maintained unknown plants, rocks, and Japanese-style decorations, the desolate forest of skyscrapers in Eclipse Point and the barren wasteland visible beyond created a stark contrast.

How long did we walk in silence like that?

“Come to think of it, you asked what Ayakashi demanded.”

Where our feet stopped was a pond where large carp swam.

Perhaps because they weren’t fed automatically and were quite used to human interaction, when Hiko approached, they swam over with their large bodies and gaped their mouths, so Hiko scattered the prepared feed for them.

“No matter what Ayakashi demands, I’m just a mere mercenary with no ability to fulfill anything.”

“That’s not true, so don’t be so cynical.”

As I watched the carp gulping down the feed floating on the water, their mouths gaping, Hiko, who had been squatting in front of the pond, straightened her back again.

“You came up to the Upper City because of Roden, didn’t you?”

“…Just how much do you know?”

Almost everything about you? Your first record was being registered as John Doe in the Eclipse Point database 10 years ago, then you drifted between various companies as a salaryman, were declared missing at 29, and as if you had no intention of hiding, you created a fake identity as John Doe again through a broker. And since you’re a regular and member of Rune’s Bar, it goes without saying that you have a special relationship with that child, and you act quite like a playboy…

“Wait! Wait!”

Sweating profusely at the stream of information that poured out of Hiko’s mouth as if she had prepared it, I covered her mouth.

Even with my palm covering her mouth, she mumbled her lips, tickling my palm, as if she still had more to say. At the same time, Hiko’s gaze, as if asking what I was doing, made me cover my forehead.

“What kind of background check…”

“There’s no need to call it a background check; you’re quite famous.”

As if presenting evidence, the incidents I had caused while living as a mercenary over the past year popped into mind again.

Though I was listed as deceased back then, it was my first commission, successfully escorting the EPSB director, who had been pushed out in a political struggle and was attempting to detonate a bomb, and helping him recover.

The gang war at Rossboard, which was exposed to the media’s cameras, was also the reason I began to get so deeply involved with Ayakashi.

The high-speed kidnapping incident on Centum Street, which I handled a bit roughly, and Closing Age, where I showed outright fierce fighting…

Besides those, there were also incidents like the Bram Stoker matter or escorting Kathleen, which ordinary people wouldn’t know about, but megacorps understood the circumstances. Hearing about such events from someone else’s mouth, it seemed I had done quite a lot of major things in the past year, more than I thought.

Anyway, getting back to the point, Ayakashi no longer has the capacity to produce that serum again. Friction with Huanglong and competition with Xenotech are not light matters that Ayakashi can simply pour massive funds into… Thanks to that, factions split and many rumors spread, so that was its first and last production.

Somehow, I could imagine Chairman Nojaburo’s reaction when he first heard the news that the serum had disappeared.

Didn’t he perhaps spit blood?

The poor old man, who was already not in good health, was now truly pathetic.

“…But if there’s no continuous production, even if they create one Zashiki-warashi, nothing much would change, would it?”

Even if it was symbolic and brought legitimacy to Ayakashi, it was a highly inefficient endeavor.

If the goal was to safely perpetuate the Zashiki-warashi’s bloodline within Ayakashi, shouldn’t they be able to produce multiple serums?

To my question, Hiko nonchalantly provided an answer to resolve it.

Originally, Nojaburo, having become a Zashiki-warashi by injecting the serum, intended to have a child with me and produce a child who inherited the strong Zashiki-warashi blood, thereby solidifying his own status and legitimacy.

Hiko, who had muttered that it was an idiotic plan, gleamed her red eyes with a mocking, somewhat sinister smile.

“The dogs of Xenotech will take care of it for you, so take the Ayakashi surname.”

“Huh?”

“It was an idiotic plan that I didn’t care for, but since things have turned out this way, shouldn’t you take responsibility?”

“Huh?”

A soft touch on my chest, and Hiko’s hot breath close against me.

A strange, playful smile somehow lingered on the true owner of Ayakashi.

“Come now, let us copulate vigorously.”