The Dog Needs a Master

“What are you doing here? I went to all that trouble servicing you all night so you wouldn’t dream, and now I find you in a place like this?”

“I... I was working a part-time job.”

It felt strange to hear a voice coming out of her mouth, so Erabelle stammered a little.

“......?”

He looked puzzled. Erabelle fumbled in her pocket and showed him the bill folded in half.

“They paid me 1.5 cp above minimum wage per hour.”

“I see.”

I shouldn’t have asked, Dezeb grumbled as he looked away.

“You seemed to be having an interesting conversation. But I believe you should be having it with me, not this person.”

His question was perfectly matter-of-fact.

He picked up the teapot on the table and poured himself a cup as though it belonged to him. In the deathly silence of the drawing room, the sound of tea pouring rang unnaturally loud. Somehow, the mere sound of tea being poured was chilling.

“I even left Bayer behind. Answer me. Quickly.”

Still, there was no reply.

“Why did you summon this person to discuss something you should have discussed with me?”

The priest edged backward.

Then came a strange sound from beyond the door.

Crunch. Crack... Something breaking. A commotion. Crunch, crunch... The sound of something chewing on something else....

The retreating priest began to tremble.

“W-we did not invite the young lady here with any intention of harming—”

But another grisly crunch came from outside the door, and the priest trailed off.

“If you had, I wouldn’t be pouring tea right now, would I?”

It did not particularly look as though all he was doing was pouring tea, but Dezeb said it shamelessly.

“S-Sanctuary... has the authority to summon military personnel. This meeting was entirely legitimate.”

“Military personnel assigned to Sanctuary, perhaps. Lieutenant Erabelle Vermilion holds a spirit-realm license. Sanctuary has no authority to summon her.”

Since he was discussing jurisdiction, he apparently still intended to pretend he was human. In a world where insubordination could erupt directly into violence, the limits of one’s authority were extremely important—but only to humans.

Dezeb had never once cared about the limits of anyone’s authority. If he had, he would not have become the leader of the most dangerous criminal organization in the entire universe.

“There... there appears to have been some mistake....”

Bang! Bang!

Something pounded desperately against the closed drawing-room door.

Crunch, crunch....

The pounding gradually weakened, then vanished altogether, leaving only the chewing.

Crunch. Crack—

“N-nothing like this will ever happen again....”

“I should hope not,” Dezeb said calmly.

“You cannot simply summon someone from a marquis’s house as you please. House Avganis has the right to refuse as well. With our engagement approaching, this person is as good as a member of the house already.”

It was something of a stretch, but Dezeb nevertheless continued the remarkably reasonable conversation. He seemed to have left everything unreasonable outside the door.

“You are not to summon her again without prior notice. I’m busy.”

After taking several sips of tea, he added,

“I hope Sanctuary remains well preserved. I imagine it is necessary for the cycle to continue.”

“Wh-what do you mean by...?”

“The tea is acceptable.”

Cutting him off, Dezeb set down his cup and called to Erabelle.

“Erabelle?”

“Y-yes.”

Erabelle stiffened. He gently smoothed back her slightly disheveled hair.

“It looks like we’ll be returning sooner than planned. Probably sometime this evening?”

“Has something happened?”

“Nothing major. It seems your father received the marriage proposal and intends to come at once. Apparently, he already left this morning. Since he’s coming anyway, both families have decided to gather at House Avganis.”

“...Excuse me?”

“Be ready.”

The moment he finished speaking, something coiled around her entire body. Before she could ask even one more question, her vision went black.

Erabelle slowly opened her eyes and stared at the familiar ceiling of the living room.

.......

The faint sound of a game connected to the television reached her ears. She stared blankly at the ceiling, her eyes unfocused, then slipped a hand into her pocket and rummaged around.

Her fingers closed around a bill.

A neatly folded rectangular bill. Judging by the feel of it, it was definitely worth 10 cp.

A dream was supposed to end as a dream, all right? If it followed me back into reality, that was far too terrifying!

Erabelle went limp and slowly slid off the sofa.

“Ah, fuck! You scared me.”

Sanche, who had turned off her movie without permission and started playing a game, noticed her moving and nearly jumped out of his skin.

“Are you a corpse? Why are you suddenly doing that after waking up?”

That fucking bastard.... No wonder he’d packed without me even nagging him. Ah, so that was what he meant when he clicked his tongue earlier and said I still didn’t know? That son of a—

“What? Did you have a bad dream or something? Hey? Could you answer me?”

“...Fuck off.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!”

Erabelle reached out, grabbed the remote, and—beep—turned Romantic 4 back on.

“Argh!”

Sanche, who had been in the middle of fighting a boss, was overjoyed.

But only for a moment. The instant the television came on, a breaking-news report was already airing.

“.......”

It reported a temporary disruption in the connection to Sanctuary. A shock wave had been detected and was under investigation, but for unknown reasons, confirmation was being delayed.

The report was accompanied by footage of a half-destroyed temple falling into the physical realm....

He said he hoped Sanctuary would remain well preserved.... His standards were clearly very different from most people’s. Still, judging by the footage, it did not look as though he had smashed the entire place to pieces.

“Wh-what the hell? What happened all of a sudden?”

“Why are you panicking? You’re contracted to the planetary deity of your family’s domain anyway.”

“That’s true, but it’s Sanctuary!”

Yes, it was Sanctuary. At least eighty percent of the population, whether in the Federation or the Empire, would now be experiencing problems with their primary signum licenses.

Letting Sanche’s hysterics wash over her, Erabelle murmured,

“James... life is like a potato chip.”

Red letters flashed like warning lights above adorable James’s head.

“Even after it breaks and breaks and breaks again, there’s always something left to break.”

It seemed to be getting ground into dust.

Sanche, who had been loudly expressing his shock, turned back to her.

“What kind of bullshit is that?”

“Shut up and fuck off.”

“.......”

Sanche remained still for a moment, then abruptly sprang to his feet and switched off the television. He immediately snatched the remote and bolted.

“Hey!”

Erabelle leaped off the sofa and chased after him. Naturally, she failed to catch him, and the emotional rift between the siblings deepened yet again that day.

“I told you to call him.”

How sad. I really had meant to. I truly had—five hundred years from now.

“I warned you.”

It was all so unbearably sad that Erabelle wanted to punch the jeering Sanche in the solar plexus.

Under Count Vermilion’s silent stare from the enormous screen, she smiled awkwardly.

“...We’ll speak when I get there.”

It would be nice if we could just speak now....

Erabelle put on her most pitiful expression, but the Count merely snorted and ended the call. She had begged him repeatedly not to come, only to make matters worse. He had already been sulking, and now he was furious.

“This way, please.”

She parted ways with Sanche and followed her escort. It felt strange.

She was aboard a House Avganis vessel.

It was a marquis’s ship, yet every person walking around inside belonged to the 41st Division.

Sanche was with her in this den of iniquity, and astonishingly, she felt perfectly fine. After watching him live under the same roof as Dezeb for the past ten days, she had grown used to it.

Life....

Once Erabelle entered the cabin she had been shown to, she quietly turned on her pad, connected it to the Count’s location data, and collapsed listlessly onto the bed.

The Dogs had bowed and scraped as they escorted her there, as though attending to an especially demanding VIP.

The cabin resembled the guest wing of a grand estate, befitting the dignity of the future Marquis. Erabelle had been left there alone. Dezeb, the cabin’s actual owner, had returned earlier than expected and apparently had work piled up, so he had stopped by only briefly before leaving again.

“.......”

Alone, Erabelle idly thumped her heels against the mattress. Then, staring vacantly at a pendant light that probably cost more than she did, she began humming an outdated song.

Why are both families suddenly meeting?

She could not remember the lyrics, so the song turned into an endless loop. After humming the same part several more times, she buried her face in both hands and heaved a deep sigh.

Then, just as suddenly, she lowered her hands and stared intently at her pale forearm.

“.......”

Those characters that had covered it in dense, chainlike rows....

That dark red color....

“...It really was the same color.”

Exactly the same color as the pills she was currently taking.

Exactly the same as those dark red pills—the color of his blood.

Groaning, Erabelle rolled over and curled into a small ball, then closed her eyes. She continued groaning for a while before falling sound asleep.

When she finally woke after a long, deep sleep, it was morning.

...I actually fell asleep.

She had been sleepy. She had slept extremely well, even in this situation.

For fuck’s sake....

Grumbling, Erabelle habitually pulled her pad closer and checked the Count’s location data she had connected to the day before.

Then her eyes widened, and she shot upright.