Chapter 10
An Uninvited Guest (3)
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When I looked at the cross-section of the severed thumb, I could glimpse the resolve that had cut it off without a shred of hesitation.
“Alright. Now get out.”
At Kairus’s words, Jonathan made a dumbfounded expression.
“You brat. This is my shop.”
“But I was mainly the one dealing with these guys.”
Since it was Kairus who faced them as the enemy, it wasn’t particularly strange for Kairus to decide their treatment.
“They were after me, weren’t they.”
“They won’t be after you anymore. Or more precisely, they probably can’t.”
Without a thumb, you couldn’t grip a weapon tightly, so the number of weapons you could use properly became extremely limited.
“What does that matter. The point is, some bastard paid money to slit my throat. That’s what matters.”
Kairus let out a thoughtful sound and looked at Claujan.
“I’d like to let them go, but our boss here seems intent on hearing who hired you before letting you walk.”
At Kairus’s words, the man stared at Kairus as if he had been wronged.
“You said you’d let me go if you just took the thumb!”
“I’m more than willing to let you go. But, you see.”
Kairus said that and turned to look at Jonathan.
“How should I put it. It’s become a situation where I have to get one more person’s permission. Even if I made a promise, our boss isn’t my subordinate or someone I hired.”
Kairus wasn’t someone who could issue an order and expect it to be obeyed. In fact, Kairus was a subordinate employed by Jonathan.
If the person above refused, then even a promise that had already been made couldn’t necessarily be kept. A promise made by Kairus only bound Kairus.
Just as Kairus had thought earlier, this long-armed monkey really needed to experience a bit of social life.
Kairus spoke in a subtly persuasive tone.
“But if our boss just learns who sent you, he’ll probably agree to my suggestion. Right?”
At Kairus’s words, Jonathan nodded.
“Just spit out who ordered you. Then we’ll do as this guy suggests.”
The stage was set. In the end, the man, who was still dripping blood from the stump where his thumb had been cut off, finally answered.
“I didn’t hear a specific name. In the first place, once you get paid, it’s none of your business who the client is.”
That wasn’t a lie. But obviously, an answer like that wouldn’t satisfy Jonathan.
“There must have been some distinguishing features.”
Jonathan wasn’t some towering figure whose removal was unimaginably difficult. Whatever he’d done in the past, these days he was just a restaurant owner who fought decently well and cooked delicious food.
Which meant, naturally, that whoever had ordered this job wasn’t some overwhelmingly strong figure or a crime boss trailing countless underlings behind him.
There was a high chance that he had commissioned the job himself, and even if he hadn’t, as long as they found out some features of the person he met, it wouldn’t be hard to trace the trail.
“He had a tattoo on his left forearm. It was a woman’s face with snakes instead of hair.”
“What an unbelievably pathetic bastard. How is he still alive?”
Kairus spoke up immediately. Seriously, to go hire someone for a murder job and not even bother covering up an arm with a tattoo.
Even outside Bennett City, it was common sense to conceal obvious features like tattoos when you were doing shady business.
And it wasn’t even a generic tattoo like an anchor, a skull, or a rose. At that point, it was practically begging to be tracked down and killed.
Could it be that the person begging for death had actually been himself?
“That should be enough.”
Jonathan also seemed to judge that such a clear feature was sufficient. He stepped slightly to the side, opening a path to the door.
“Get lost, and if you come back next time, come as a customer.”
“Damn it, if you were me, would you come back?”
The man immediately snapped back. After being beaten like a dog and losing a thumb, he was lucky to run off with only his life.
Even if he went hungry for days, he probably wouldn’t feel like paying to eat here.
“Alright then, get going. And if you come as a customer but act like a bastard again, I’ll cut off the other thumb.”
Kairus bid him farewell like that and turned to look at the remaining men.
“So, what about you lot? Thumb? Or head?”
One or the other would have to be taken before they could leave here. At Kairus’s words, they clenched their jaws and stared at their own thumbs.
“Oh, and if you’re too scared to cut it yourself, I can always help.”
There were people in the world who could stab someone else’s belly with a knife but couldn’t even prick their own thumb with a needle to draw blood.
Out of consideration for such people, Kairus was perfectly willing to slice off their thumbs himself.
“Khah…”
And one by one, they began to slice off their own thumbs. It seemed everyone had decided it was better to lose a thumb than their head.
“Hey, you. Stop right there.”
Kairus called out coldly, stopping one of them.
“Y-you mean me?”
Kairus nodded toward him.
“You’re left-handed. So why are you cutting off your right thumb? You think you can play games with me?”
At Kairus’s words, the man’s eyes widened, and his mouth opened silently.
“I’m originally right-handed.”
“Bullshit. I saw you using your left hand as your main during the fight just now, you bastard.”
At Kairus’s words, the man was left speechless. Was he really remembering something he’d only seen in that short moment?
Was he really remembering which hand every single person here used?
The man who had been called out felt as if darkness was falling before his eyes.
“Go cut off your left thumb too.”
Then Kairus handed back the thumb he had cut off and given him earlier.
“Here. If you have the skill to stitch it back on, go ahead and try. Why the hell did you bother cutting off the wrong thumb?”
In the end, the man who had tried to pull a cheap trick had no choice but to cut off the thumbs of both hands. Even if the number of thumbs he had to cut increased from one to two, it was still better than losing his head.
“It goes the same for the rest of you. I remember everything, so don’t try any nonsense, and if you’re thinking about it, cut it off honestly now. Just now, since you were the first one I caught, I let you off with a warning…”
Kairus said that, then made a slicing gesture across his neck with his knife.
“But the next person I catch will have the watermelon sitting on their shoulders harvested without any warning.”
Once your head was gone, you wouldn’t even be able to regret it.
And seeing how he had instantly picked out the guy who’d cut the wrong thumb, no one could treat Kairus’s threat as mere bluff.
Roughly five people ended up losing the thumbs of both hands as the price for trying to fool him.
It wasn’t because the remaining men were so upright. They were simply still hesitating to cut off their thumbs at all.
“From now on, let’s just spend the rest of our lives never seeing each other again, living our own lives properly, growing old, and dying.”
Kairus, having finished all the necessary procedures, offered a parting greeting as he stepped aside to open the way.
Once all of them had left, Kairus let out a small sigh and headed into the kitchen to get the mop.
“Why?”
Jonathan, who had been watching, suddenly asked Kairus a question.
“Pardon? The floor’s filthy. Boss, were you really planning to do business with it looking like this? The customers will lose their appetites, and your sales will drop.”
At Kairus’s words, Jonathan replied.
“Not that, you bastard. There was no real reason for you to stay here and deal with those bastards.”
It was something common in Bennett City. Whether you were an employee or anything else, once your own life was in danger, it was normal to just run for it to save yourself.
In fact, that was considered common sense. Kairus pulled out the mop from the kitchen and answered.
“While you were away, I was the one who agreed to watch over the shop. I do my best to keep my promises.”
He only did his best. If a promise became impossible to keep, Kairus didn’t insist on upholding it.
To be precise, he wouldn’t make a fuss trying to keep a promise that had become unkeepable.
If there was anything resembling a rule in Kairus’s life, it was probably exactly what he’d just said.
Hearing the answer, Jonathan looked at Kairus for a moment, then stuffed a wad of chewing tobacco into his mouth.
“Is that so? Fine.”
Kairus and Jonathan once again moved busily and somehow managed to get the shop back to normal before it was time to open for business.
“What about the smashed door? That’s not something we can fix within today.”
“Just leave it. It’s not like this is the only shop in this neighborhood with a busted door. Everyone will probably just think, ‘Did some robbers show up?’ and come in anyway.”
Whether that was really normal or not, Kairus couldn’t say, but Jonathan’s answer was so brisk that he had no choice but to accept it.
This was the kind of place where people would casually hire someone to murder the restaurant owner. A broken shop door in Bennett City was about the same as a glass getting cracked during service anywhere else.
“Anyway, thanks.”
If Kairus had simply obeyed the intruders and walked out of the restaurant, Jonathan would have been dead.
The fact that Jonathan was still alive, and could even pursue the man who’d commissioned his murder, was entirely because Kairus hadn’t abandoned the shop and had bought time until Jonathan returned.
And Jonathan wasn’t the sort of man who would fail to notice that.
“You could always express that touching gratitude in the clear form of a pay raise.”
At Kairus’s words, Jonathan answered.
“I don’t feel like giving you a raise.”
Kairus let out a lament as if it was truly regrettable.
“Ah, risking my life to protect this place, and all I get is empty praise not even worth a single pyint.”
Jonathan, listening to the lament, spoke up.
“You don’t plan on working here your whole life, do you?”
At Jonathan’s question, Kairus paused for a moment before nodding.
“How did you know?”
“Most people, after working here, spend the rest of their time lying around sleeping.”
But in the two months since Kairus had been hired, he had never done that. No matter how much stamina you had, there was a difference between simply being strong and being worn out from work.
Even someone who loved exercise would still feel exhaustion after a day of physical labor.
But every time the work was done, Kairus always went out.
“You think you can really learn much about Bennett City just wandering around alone?”
At Jonathan’s words, Kairus nodded with an awkward expression that suggested he agreed.
“You’re right. Just walking around by myself….”
He hadn’t managed to find anything particularly useful. In this city, when a stranger struck up a conversation, it almost always ended up as either begging or a mugging.
If you were unlucky, you could even be kidnapped and sold across the sea to spend the rest of your life as a slave, all just because you’d carelessly talked to someone you didn’t know.
To avoid dying or ending up crippled, the people of this city had an extreme, almost instinctive wariness of others.
“Are you looking for someone?”
At Jonathan’s question, Kairus answered honestly.
“Not a person some things.”
Jonathan didn’t ask specifically what Kairus was searching for. Kairus already recognized that as Jonathan’s way of showing a kind of consideration.
“If you’re looking for stolen goods circulating within Bennett City, the Areumdri Pawnshop is the most reliable place.”
The Areumdri Pawnshop.
“One of the organizations that make up the Canal Management Committee.”
In other words, it was one of the heavyweight criminal syndicates powerful enough to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Valorn Empire Security Corps or the Aylan Republic Police Department.
“I know where one of their businesses is. It’s in the Upside. I can tell you the location.”
“You think someone that big would even bother sparing a glance at a nobody like me coming to look for something?”