Watching Do Hae head back to the hotel at Number 11, Ichi tugged his black leather gloves back into place.
"Ha―!"
Ichi's eyes, as he let out the sigh, were sunken.
Ichi had recently been working through the office's external schedule together with Felix. His pulling out of a schedule set for about a month and returning early was because a certain order had come down.
―Help the one who will come to 11 Rushiang Street.
Since it was an order closer to a request from the Elder who had looked after him since childhood, he had not worried much.
Because at the time he had not known that the bastard promised to appear would not appear.
"Instead some unrelated bastard has holed up in the hotel and is drawing every bit of attention there is to draw......."
When he first heard from Seo Mok about what had happened on the Styx cruise ship, it had been delightful.
When he heard that Sophia's entrance test had been completed without incident, he wondered whether the fellow was interesting.
He seemed to have no aversion to the Other Side, which raised a little interest as well.
―Which Other Side, did you say?
―Room 404, the one the hotel manager commissioned. Why? Is it connected to what you were looking into?
The Room 404 Other Side was an Other Side that had been generated deliberately, along with the Elder's request.
The target's family was said to be an important figure in the Resistance Army.
At any rate, it had not been prettily wrapped up for the sake of some passing Extra Number One.
And on top of that, that Extra Number One was a madman enough to leap clean past expectations.
"......I am the mad one."
It was he who had egged Sophia on about Do Hae's entrance test.
Because he had judged it cleaner for the unidentified Extra Number One, who claimed to come from a laboratory under the government, to simply die in the Other Side.
The Styx Company was quite angry at the cost of losing the government laboratory director it had been due to secure.
The government troops burned the laboratory, the remaining material evaporated, and the Laboratory Director, the only point of contact, was left abandoned, murdered by someone.
A bastard who came from there could not possibly be a normal bastard.
The Captain argued with the Styx Company, but the Styx Company decided not to discard what was practically the laboratory's only remaining trace.
Keeping someone close and shaking them down thoroughly was what the Styx Company did best.
"I did not expect him to pass the entrance test."
Ichi had originally intended to remove Do Hae in the Other Side.
Because one Ichi was enough to be held by a weakness and swung around.
And yet he not only came back alive from the Other Side he had been sent to die in, he also appeared to have taken the Room 404 Other Side's control rights.
"Ahaha, he was more of a lunatic than expected."
For someone said to have been holed up doing nothing but work in a government laboratory, Do Hae was field-built no matter how you rolled him forward or backward.
Just look at how he resolved Other Sides one after another, as if to make a point of it.
"Room 404, of all places......."
If the Elder came to know that it was Ichi himself who had made the target's whereabouts unknowable, it would not end with a letter of reflection.
"It goes with me to the grave."
Ichi tidied the reports sprawled on the desk.
The report he had shown Do Hae as if in threat had in fact produced little effect.
Either he had expected it, or what appeared in this material did not pierce the core. Ichi judged it to be the latter.
"He will be shaken down soon. Having been marked by that Styx."
Having caught the eye of bastards who are satisfied only when they have everything, Do Hae's life was certain to get as entertaining as his own.
Ichi, who had a foot in one of the main reasons it had come to that, decided to watch the interesting turn of events.
"I do not mind an interesting fellow."
Ichi ground the mere two pages of the report in the shredder and shrugged.
"I do hope he is not a killer sent by the government......, haha."
Recalling the look in Do Hae's eyes from moments before, Ichi hid the laugh leaking out of him.
However he looked at it, it was not the look of someone who had killed only one or two people.
***
Returning to Room 404, I was met with the Other Side Administrator flailing about in a bowl of water.
It had been half dead at the end, but it was alive after all.
I come back from being struck on the back of the head by Seo Mok and threatened by Ichi, and there it is, swimming away perfectly fine.
"You're back? Why so late? What were you doing? Don't tell me you couldn't find the way? Disappointing."
"Are you finished?"
"Wow. Scary."
It did not look the least bit frightened, yet it flapped about and sprayed water in every direction.
Lacking even the energy to deal with it, I lay down on the bed just as I was, and the bastard came scurrying over.
Thoroughly cowed, the bastard curled up and stealthily read my mood.
If I had to guess, it seemed curious about who the bastard I had chased was, why a bastard who had died came back to life, what sort of bastard he was to smash an entire Other Side, and so on.
Just thinking about the protagonist's final state feels like it would cure low blood pressure, so does it have to remind me of that right now?
...When I looked at it with that in my eyes, the bastard changed colors in bright patches and grumbled about having developed PTSD. In the end it turned its whole body the same mouse-gray as the sheets and came edging over again.
"Aren't you looking for him?"
"For what."
"That strange human."
I shot upright.
It sounded like the nuance of knowing, right now, the whereabouts of the protagonist whose escape route was unknowable.
"It's not exact."
"The conclusion."
"......For nothing?"
I swept back my throbbing head and crossed my arms to listen properly.
The Other Side Administrator rolled its large eyes left and right, then, at my silent urging, threw out exactly nothing but the conclusion.
"I can open the door."
"......?"
The thing shut its mouth tight again, flicked out its long tongue, then belatedly startled and burrowed under the sheets.
Don't tell me...... to the place the protagonist fled to?
Say what you like, the thing was the owner of that Other Side. And its trait was opening doors and connecting spaces.
"Hey, hey, hey. Come out."
"I didn't do anything wrong."
"Who said you did?"
"You're not going to eat me, right?"
I looked with an approving expression at the thing as it poked its head out and said something beside the point.
With things diverging from the original work and the protagonist no longer appearing here, inferring his whereabouts had become quite difficult.
Considering that the protagonist's uncle had been an early member of the Resistance Army, openly asking around was difficult as well.
And here it hands me a gift I never expected.
"I don't eat baby snakes."
"I'm not a snake, though?"
"A chameleon is a lizard, and a lizard is a snake."
"Is that so?"
Is that so, my foot.
I picked the thing up by the tail as it sank seriously into contemplation of its own identity.
Dangling there, the thing's eyes rolled around and around.
When I handed it a bead of water floating in the air, the thing hopped in delight and stuck its head into the water.
"Open it now."
"......!"
Unable to answer because of the water, the thing hurriedly drank down the fist-sized bead.
"You're not taking the food and then wiping your mouth, are you?"
"No! No, no, look, there's a misunderstanding, I mean, there is one, sir!"
The thing rubbed its dainty forepaws together, curled its body round, and clung to my arm. Shoved right up to my nose, its expression looked quite troubled.
"As you know, it collapsed while we were coming out."
"The point."
"I came back from the dead, so most of my administrator authority is gone!"
"......You said you could open it?"
"Not right now!"
Should I kill it or let it live.
It is not that I do not understand.
By rights, an Other Side Administrator ought to die when the Other Side it owns runs wild and collapses.
Because an Other Side appears and an administrator comes into being afterward; the administrator does not create the Other Side.
By that reckoning, the thing being the administrator of the Room 404 Other Side, which had definitely collapsed while mass-producing monsters, and clowning around in front of me was the part that made no sense.
"Still, I'm recovering. Probably? If you gave me a bit more water......."
And on top of that, if I waited, it could open the door again, which is to say reconnect the Other Side.
The stupid thing did not even seem to understand why it was alive, so asking would be pointless.
In the original work the protagonist had definitely annihilated the thing and absorbed its ability. That was possible because the protagonist's ability specialized in the Other Side; in fact, in the original work the Other Side Administrator in front of me never even appeared.
I sent a pitying look at the thing, which by rights should already be dead. Though the thing was frightened by my expression and covered both its eyes.
"Is there a way to go there directly in reality?"
"No! The way space is perceived is completely different. Only from the Other Side can you know where there is. But you already know this......."
I threw one more mass of water at the thing as it muttered on with useless words, shutting its mouth, and got up.
It amounted to a far better direction than trembling with anxiety and blindly waiting for news of the protagonist.
"In any case, how do I cook that one down......."
Looking at the darkened Ability Office, I recalled Ichi's beaming mug.
A person to be especially wary of, one who had helped the protagonist.
If possible, it would be nice for him to be on my side rather than the protagonist's.
***
A field of vision limited to a small hole spread out before me.
Since it was winter and chilly, wearing a mascot costume was bearable enough....... When I turned my head, Ichi, dressed tidily as usual, was beaming.
"So what you wanted to do together was flyer promotion?"
"Now, now, Yongyongi is not allowed to speak."
"......"
The shabby costume, of the sort that might have turned up in some movie, looked closer to a monster than to a dragon. As did the strange design, on which it was unclear whether the markings were spots or stripes.
The puzzling part was that this Yongyongi was tremendously popular with children.
Hesitant yet undeterred, three or four children were always coming up to touch the tail and take photographs, and the mischievous ones poked at me or picked fights.
"Place your commissions with the Rushiang Street Ability Office! We are good at finding missing persons, and we offer counseling for your troubles. Escort work, of course, and you are also welcome when you wish to have a troublesome monster blown away!"
As if that would work.
Even at Ichi's absurd advertising, people laughed brightly at whatever it was they liked.
I checked the box of flyers set nearby and sighed. The flyers, said to have been picked up from the print shop early that morning, looked to number in the tens of thousands.
Half enlightened by resignation, I folded flyers into airplanes and put them into the children's hands, then whacked Ichi with my tail as he tore open a new box beside me.
"For the adults, please hand this out tucked in along with them."
What Ichi handed over was a booklet, and checking the table of contents, it unexpectedly contained useful information.
It mainly described the Other Side, how to respond when a monster appeared, and ways to survive longer and report it, which made it closer to an information bulletin.
Enough that, if not for the line "Please come to the Ability Office" printed on the cover, you could have called it a white paper on living in the Black Zone rather than a promotional item.
'This looks familiar. Where have I seen it?'
I thought I knew most things related to the original work, so had some merch been added without my knowing?
Setting the uneasy thought aside and handing them out with my soul set down, I found that Ichi had come close at some point and spoke to me.
"Do not answer, but there are a few things I wish to ask. Only nod your head."
When I nodded, Ichi held out a photograph copied in black and white.
It was fortunate I was wearing the costume head; for a moment I was flustered enough to be unable to manage my expression.
"Have you seen this person?"
The person in the photograph was the bastard I had tried and failed to kill days ago.
Ichi suspects me.