Thud,
"Huh?"
The moment I was carried out of the burning back alley on Capris's back.
Right behind us, I heard something collapse, so I instinctively stopped heading for the river, unease rising in me, and turned around.
What I saw there was...
"......Huh?"
Capris, lying unconscious and bleeding after being struck on the head by some fairy I had seen somewhere before. Blood was pouring out so heavily that the ground was already soaked red.
"C-Capris, y--"
"Oh dear, you mustn't make such a fuss. No, no. Everyone will turn to look."
Just as I tried to rush over at the sight, someone else came up behind me, clamped a hand over my mouth, and held me in place. That voice. I knew it. Where had I heard it? Who was it? I knew I had heard it before. It was stuck in my memory. And yet...
...Ah, I remembered.
"A l-l-loan shark...!"
"Oh dear, thank you for remembering, valued customer~"
Loan shark. That was definitely the voice of the man who had lent me money and seized my house...! But why now, of all times? Why?
"I-I've been paying back the interest and rent properly..."
"My, if it were only that, we'd be so happy too. But we're in a terrible fix ourselves now. A fire suddenly broke out and all our precious property went up in flames, you see... Haa... And to make matters worse, someone carelessly splashed oil all over the back alleys, so we can't even tell where the fire started..."
Ah, now that he mentioned it, I had heard about this. The houses in these back alleys had all been bought up or seized by loan sharks, so in practice, they were the real owners.
And now that the entire back alley had burned down, they had to collect compensation for the property that had gone up in smoke.
Normally, they would somehow wring money out of the arsonist, but from what I heard, even they still hadn't figured out who had started the fire.
Then who, exactly, were they going to collect compensation from...?
"......You're saying we have to pay compensation?"
I couldn't see the loan shark's face, but for some reason I knew it instinctively.
He was smiling. With a grotesque grin that twisted every muscle in his face, he was laughing in a delighted, eerie way, as if to say I had answered correctly.
"Yes... that's right! Since we can't find the bastard who should be paying, we'll have to collect compensation from you customers instead. What a pity."
As if trying to satisfy both his anger at the arsonist and his sadistic urges at once, he stuck out his tongue and licked the air, bringing it close to my face. The hot breath spilling from that tongue sent chills all over me.
"Th-then why did you do that to Capris...?"
"Capris? Ah, so that's the name of that frail-looking fellow. He's collateral. For the bastards who can't pay money, we need something else to take instead. For you, that's him."
"...! H-he has nothing to do with me...! Even if you keep him, it won't mean anything to me...!!"
The instant I heard the word collateral from his mouth, denial burst out of me almost like a reflex.
He had no value or meaning to me. So using him as collateral would be no different from pointlessly throwing away a life. Surely it would be better to find something else of value and use that as collateral instead? That was what she was saying.
Of course, it was a lie.
My chest was pounding hard, my breath was trembling violently, cold sweat was running down my body, and my eyes were gradually losing focus. Was it because I wasn't used to lying and was trembling with anxiety, or because I had slightly violated my own meaning of serving everyone?
I couldn't tell which. But I couldn't stay like this. I owed him a debt. He had carried me out of the fire while I was nothing but dead weight. As he said, I could not repay kindness with betrayal...!!
"Oh, surely not. Just looking at your face, customer, I can tell that's not true. You're trembling with anxiety like that; anyone can see you have a face that can't abandon someone. Especially you."
"......N-no. I could leave him behind if I wanted to--"
"Well, even if you could, it doesn't matter. It's fine if you don't come anyway. That fellow there. Even so, he looks like he has plenty of mana, so we can probably use him as payment for the existence tax or something. For the rest of his life. Locked away in a narrow, dark basement, having his mana sucked dry, and staying there forever~"
.......The loan shark was smiling. He was grinning, not even trying to hide that his happiness had reached its peak, and he mocked me as if he knew everything.
"So you can go now too? We got one like that, so you may leave now. Come on, what are you waiting for? Hurry up and go."
Then he let go of the body he had been holding. If he really meant it, then I would send you off. Smirking and sneering, I staggered forward, walking toward the fairy who had knocked Capris unconscious, as if I were about to head for their office or some other debtor.
"Ah, of course, if despite this kind act of mine you still want to get that collateral fellow back, then according to the agreement, bring the designated compensation to our office. Then we'll have to secure another piece of collateral!!"
"W-wait...!!"
And just like that, they ignored my last words and ran off somewhere, carrying Capris on their backs, moving very quickly. Off to find another debtor and something else to extort as collateral.
*
And a few hours later, in the now-extinguished back alley, there was a single lump of iron burned black and ruined beyond recognition.
It must have been the corpse of some fairy. Had it run a hardware store when it was alive?
"No, more importantly..."
I looked at the house that had burned down until only its shape remained. Since it had been built of stone, the basic frame was still there, but the roof had burned away and collapsed, and the inside was filled with rubble and ashes.
Wow. So he really had escaped from such a fierce blaze. And with dead weight on top of that.
He truly had done me a great kindness. If not for him, I would probably be dead by now. Yes, so then...
"......I really do have to do it."
Steel your resolve. You have to break the duty that has been given to you. It will hurt. It will be painful. Your body and heart will be a mess. You may regret it later.
But there is no helping it.
If you owe a life, you have to repay it. No, you must repay it.
Shaking hands, fear that I was forcibly ignoring but which kept surging up anyway. Baban Si, who is kind to everyone and helps others. I had to break what had been passed down from the ancestors. I had to harm those loan sharks.
But what I found even more frightening than that was...
"Repaying kindness with enmity..."
I hate that. I hate it. I was supposed to be the one saving lives, but instead I was the one who got saved. I, who was always the excuse for trouble or the one left until the very end, had been saved instead.
And yet, I had caused them such enormous trouble.
At a time when I should have thanked them sincerely and repaid them with even greater kindness, I had repaid them with something called collateral, with what was essentially human trafficking, as if they were my enemy.
So I had to save him.
Even if it caused trouble for those loan sharks, betraying someone who had helped me was a far more vile thing, and I knew that better than anyone.
So she clenched her trembling hands and headed for the castle of the Grimalkin lord. Right now, the only one who could restrain those rampaging lunatics as quickly as possible was that lord.
What she herself could do would come after that, at the very least.
But elsewhere in this place, where Baban Si did not know, something else was happening.
"I-I mean it! In twelve hours, we have to charge over there!! Don't look back, just go!!"
"Neigh. No matter how much I transcend the laws of the world, I still haven't transcended Her Majesty's law y--"
"Thirty fish-shaped pastries. Prepaid."
"Hee-haw, to be honest, I had already resolved to transcend Her Majesty's law someday."
Outside Darlington, on the green plains, the young lady who had gone out of her mind to get her boss back, and the fairy horse who had been tamed by the taste of fish-shaped pastries, were preparing to charge in and reclaim Capris.
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