#02. Kiriyan Masis
I put down my pen and listened to the babble from outside. Hands were tingling with pain. 'How come this amount of paperwork could even exist in this cramped kingdom?' I combed my hair with my fingers and adjusted my glasses. I needed to wear prescribed ones because of my poor eyesight. Naturally it was not from sword fights, the cause of it was an awful amount of chores that kept drowning me on a daily basis. 'Is this what you call, the gap between the ideal and the reality?' A silly thought came to my mind.
"Sir."
A secretary standing next to the door called me. I intertwined fingers behind my head.
"What is it?"
"Rose Selion, master of Hellon Knights has paid a visit."
The secretary seemed to be surprised by my sudden frowned face. Rose. He was the only person in this palace who could make a crack in my emotion. The only thing was… it had never been in a good way. Anyhow, how is that secretary dude still not used to my mood change after all the time he has served me for?
"Would you like me to let him in?"
"He's already in."
I let out the voice of full annoyance. Surprised by it again, He looked back and fled out of the room. "If you'll excuse me!" Damn.
"Hey! Kiriyyyyyyyan!"
I pulled out my sword towards him running with his arms open.
"Aaargh! What on earth are you doing to me?"
"Don`t make a noise when you come in my office."
"You always treat your one and only friend poorly like this." After avoiding my sword with his eyes closed, Rose pouted his lip and grumbled.
"Who the hell is your friend, Rose?"
"Aaaah, Kiriyan. Come on, just be warm to me - ."
"Shut up."
I cut him and dropped into a couch. Though I never offered him a seat, Rose had his way and sat down my opposite, yawning big.
"Would you like a cup of coffee? Kiriyan?" He glittered his golden gemlike eyes.
"…Why don't you just go and mind your own Hellon Knights' business? Seriously?"
"Hey, what are you saying?! I`m always burning with passion for my cute children! It's just… I'm not cut out for it!"
"Given your sleeping hours, even a sloth would be busier than you! Unanimous."
"Enough sleeping time always help activate your brain."
"I didn`t know that sleeping 18 hours a day was called 'enough', jackass."
"A handsome man is a natural sleepyhead…"
I shouted, and he squatted in the corner of the room and started muttering. I mean, does 'handsome' really have anything to do with anything? Stupid.
However, it was the fact that he was a very sharp and good-looking guy. High nose, slim jawline, silky hair reaching to his waist… and to top it all off, he was 6 feet tall. The only thing was he usually did not give a damn about the blessed appearance at all. Before I knew it, he laid down a cup of coffee on my side and brought his one to his lips. He always manages to find where the coffee is no matter how many times I change its location. How could he?
"Ah – Sir Kiriyan. Fantastic! It`s sweet."
"…Just tell me why you are here already." Got tired, I leaned back and rested my head on the couch with my eyes closed. As always, he must have dropped by for nothing but just to kill time. Play along just a bit, and I would freeze him out.
"Sir Kiriyan."
What? I opened my eyes feeling somewhat serious mood.
"Why now?"
"Well… actually. I came for some help from Ensis Knights…" His golden eyes were gazing at me intently. I had mines fixed on his too. "Did you say that you need my help? You, Rose 'the peerless power' Selion?"
"What? What have I done?"
"I know how much you are capable of. Don`t pretend to be a fool!"
"Aah, Sir Kiriyan. I am nothing more than a poor handsome guy...aaargh!"
A blameless couch got slashed half by my downstroke. Of course, that 'peerless power' jerk had already backed out of its way, chuckling. I felt homicidal sense from the bottom of my heart.
'How come I lose my temper whenever he shows up?'
"Sir Kiriyan."
When I looked up at him, he winked at me. "An investigation."
In addition to the typical jobs for knights such as royalty escort and warfare, there was one more special duty for us and that was none other than 'investigation'. Even in this bean-sized palace, naturally there was police force in charge of public order. But they must have thought that it was not enough and drove us out of the palace saying, "Punishing criminals is also a sacred duty of a knight!". Damn. I could not help it. Thanks to that, my workload had become double. No, that's not what matters. Why is Hellon Knights the only one out of this, having their own fun?!
"It is clearly here on the map…" idiotic voice again. After getting lost, Rose had been wandering around for almost 3 hours. Moreover, where we wound up being was the middle of nowhere with enormous ultraviolet rays striking our skins! Hey, did you seriously think here is where we would want to be?
"Just hand it to me."
I snatched the map from him and found out literally in 10 seconds, that he and I had been just going around in circles. I had to desperately resist the impulse to grab a hilt of my sword.
"Rose."
"Yes? Why?"
"I can see why Hellon Knights are free from doing investigations."
I won't complain about things anymore. I muttered under my breath.
"How are you doing, Sir?"
I returned a salute and looked around a scene. It was a wise call to ignore that goober's 'Please take me too----' and send him back home, now I could keep my normal face thanks to it. The only problem was that normal face usually looked angry to others. As a proof of that, the knight standing in front of me was shaking his hands holding the report that seemed to be an incident outline. Hey, I'm not a demon or something!
"Hmm…what have we got?"
The reporting started with my businesslike tone. I thought he was only trembling his hands, but his voice was shaking too. Just great.
"A usual case. A kidnapper committed arson after killing a man and a woman. They look to be husband and wife in their 50s, weapon's been gone, kidnapped one is a seventeen-year-old girl. Been trying to ID her, and a blood test shows that there's no blood trace of third party so she shouldn't have been hurt. Given the circumstances, it could've been just one perp rather than multiple, and there's no sign of robbery…"
I narrowed my eyes. I kindly wanted to ask him which part of this case was 'usual', but stopped. The tension of an investigation for 'commoners' always dwindled like this, just because of where we were standing in society. The knight in front of me, would be mucking around as well with a cigar in his mouth as I leave. Long live power!
"Let's look around here."
"Yes, Sir."
I decided to investigate the house myself. I thought there would be only little chance to find any clue about the criminal in a totally burnt house, but the existence of the 17-year-old girl who had been kidnapped was making ripples in my mind. Given this kingdom's incomprehensible way of thinking, it didn't take a genius to know the palace would not let me exercise a formal right of investigation for this case. If they had sent out the only knightage in the kingdom (except for Hellon Knights, that is) to this kind of stuff regularly, instead of closing cases we would have had to worry about the kingdom overrun by external invasion anyway. (Of course, our poor Perriun Kingdom had been a neutral country.) Still, I could not understand why Rose had gone out of his way and handed this case to me. I had to do it personally because it was not official. Moreover, we were running out of time.
"Um…?"
While thinking about irrelevant things to the case, something caught my eyes. "Hey. What is that?"
His eyes chased my finger, then he ran and brought back a burnt-out book. Its front cover was all but unrecognizable, so I had to look into it page by page. My face became harden.
"You."
"Yes, Sir."
"Had you not noticed this before I got here?"
"I had."
I furrowed my brow at his answer.
"Shouldn't have judged a book by its cover. This is a clue, not just part of this mess."
"What are you talking about?"
"…Do you know anything about 'channeling'?"
"Channeling?" He appeared to know the word, but did not seem to understand why I was asking. In fact, I was not any the wiser. "Calling departed soul and making it stay in caller's body… that's what a dictionary would say, isn't it?"
"Is there any more than that? I mean… besides that."
"No. there shouldn't be, obviously." I opened one page of the book.
"What the hell's with the contents of this book…?"
Surely I knew the word 'channeling', but I had never seen or heard real channeling in these days. I had thought it was nonsensical and too unrealistic to believe, but it almost felt like the book's contents were becoming the connecting line to that fantasy. Maybe…
"It might not be just a cut-and-dried case."
I muttered. The reason the knight in charge had not paid attention to the book must have been from the thought 'it couldn't be real'. However, if there was a 'real' connection between the abducted girl and channeling… it would leave us the dangerous conclusion that it had been a premeditated crime for something we had not thought about, rather than an accidental one.
Amazingly enough, the afterwork of the criminal had been perfect. The house that had given us few clues was only desolate. The best investigators had been called out to search every nook and cranny, so the house was now vacant. We could not comb through it more even if we wanted to.
"The reason for arson must have been to destroy the clues. But I wonder, why isn't there even one single footprint left… just what are the odds?"
"Great job. It's unbelievable that they had done it all by themselves. Thumbs up."
Aurelio, who was standing behind me winked with a sense of agreement. His appearance, with his spectacles over the tip of his nose, was meant to be a veteran detective rather than knightage's second-in-command. His freezing blue eyes were standing for his such temperament. He had been making a great match with me in terms of being calm and unruffled in every moment. Not to mention that he was very good at his work.
"Anything special?"
"Well, not really. But…"
"But…? What is it?"
"A child came to the office the other day, said she'd want to meet you."
"A child? What's her deal?"
"Beats me. I asked her several times and said I'd take you to him if you tell me, but she said nothing."
"So, what did you do?"
"She kept coming in and going away. To eat something, I suppose."
"Strange… Anyway, you didn't come all the way out here only because of that child, right?"
Actually, I could already expect the reason why Aurelio had come the moment he arrived. For withdrawal.
"Duke Guillermo's got mad angry. He wanted you to come to his office as soon as you get back to the palace."
"…Maybe you could bring some good news for a change."
"I can't help it." He laughed.
It was just my insistence from the beginning. In principle, we could not do anything without a formal command from the palace (a matter of course). Merely because I was a commoner, I wanted to turn this damn reality over. I had been able to investigate freely till now thanks to Aurelio, but nowadays it did not work all the time. I felt headache and closed my eyes for a moment.
"Still many suspicious things remaining... but we may have to go back to square one."
"Do you want me to withdraw?"
"…Yes."
He raised his hand for salute and walked back to search parties standing idly. Looking at his back, I tried to organize complicated thoughts in my head. Leaving aside the things related to the case, I could not wrap my head around an objective over the past two days of investigation. In retrospect, it was not deniable that most of my past investigations had been all about cleaning up messes for aristocrats. Other than those stupid ones, there rarely were some of commoner's secret commissions that had got through the Ensis Knights HQ. But even so, this case was kind of pain in my ass. Rose, who had never meddled in other people's lives and had never allowed them to meddle in his, had asked me to take care of this case.
'…What the hell has he got up his sleeve?'
While walking toward Aurelio ordering withdrawal to knights, I felt something in my mind kept getting on my nerves. Even though I had never experienced this sort of case, it felt like I had gone through a similar one somewhere in the past.
Oblivion.
I frowned as much as I could. A sliver of my childhood, which had been painted over black and never reoccurred to my mind, had been tormenting me for several times over that period.
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