Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody, Vol. 11

by Hiro Ainana

  Our conversation showed that she was composed and cultured and seemed free of prejudice, since she showed no reaction to the demi-humans Tama and Pochi, so I hired her on the spot.

  Now I was dumping on her the task of hiring the rest of the orphanage staff.

  “That’s a serious responsibility…”

  “It’s all right. I’m sure you can do it.” I tried to ease the concerns of the new director, who looked a little overwhelmed.

  “But to allow me to determine the budget as well as the hiring practices is so…”

  “Don’t worry. You’ll keep obligatory records in a ledger, there will be audits, and we’ll come for observation a few times a year.”

  Arisa chimed in next to me, like a competent secretary.

  For some reason, she was wearing triangular glasses on a little chain and carrying a binder full of files, looking sort of like a cosplayer.

  “Audits and observations?”

  “Yes, it’s standard practice where I come from.”

  The director looked uncomfortable.

  “Please do not misunderstand. We are not taking these actions out of any distrust or doubts.”

  “Then what are they for?”

  “We trust you, you see, Director.” Arisa looked serious. “But others who do not know you may not. Thus, we take these actions so that we can prove to those outside the orphanage that no wrongdoings are going on within.”

  “I see.”

  She had really only rephrased the same information, but the director seemed to accept Arisa’s explanation.

  “Well then, until the construction is complete, I shall seek some permanent employees and a few subordinate workers.”

  “Thank you. Please do.”

  I gave her some money to cover her preparatory costs, and the interview ended.

  On the way back to town, I showed her the construction site and introduced her to the head carpenters, so I could probably entrust those meetings to her in the future, too.

  “There weren’t that many children today.”

  As we headed home from the morning soup kitchen the next day, Arisa made this comment.

  “It was probably because of him.”

  “You think so, too, master?”

  For some reason, the green-clad noble had come to help with the soup kitchen today.

  All he actually did was stand around in the staff area and smile at people, but some of the children had looked repulsed and gone home when they saw him.

  His creepy smile and makeup had probably scared them off.

  “Are you on close terms with that fellow, master?” Lulu asked.

  “No, if anything, I think I’d rather avoid him…”

  “We should chase him off, then!”

  “I agree with Arisa, I declare. That individual’s presence causes the larvae to shrivel, reducing their cuteness points, I report.”

  Even Nana was in favor of getting rid of the green-clad noble.

  “All right. I’ll figure something out.”

  Of course, the counselor was a higher-ranking noble than I was, so I couldn’t just flat-out reject him.

  Besides, I was kind of curious what had motivated him to come in the first place.

  “The viceroy’s wife is having another tea party two days from now, so I’ll see if she can mediate for me then,” I said.

  Arisa and Nana looked relieved at that.

  Oh right…

  “I have a request for you two, as well, if you don’t mind.”

  “Night services?”

  “No.”

  I’m not interested in receiving those from a little girl.

  “I was hoping you could talk to some of the housewives in the neighborhood and see if they’d be interested in taking on a bit of part-time work at the soup kitchen.”

  “Okey-dokey!”

  “Yes, master.”

  The green-clad noble’s supposed reason for coming to help was that we seemed short-staffed; I figured it would help to remove that excuse.

  “How many should we hire?”

  “Let’s see. We can probably pay about three copper coins per person per day, so maybe five… No, enough to fill the staff area to bursting would be even better.”

  “Oh yeah? I’d say we could go up to fifteen, then.”

  With that, Arisa and Nana left the mansion.

  “Plans?”

  “Let me think…”

  Since Mia wanted to help out, I thought for a moment.

  “Could you take Tama and Pochi out to explore around the mansion, then?”

  “Mm.”

  If I left the beastfolk girls to their own devices, they’d just start training again, so I decided to send them out to play under the pretense of guarding Mia.

  “Liza and Lulu, I’ll have you run some errands in town, please.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “What would you like us to buy?”

  “As many varieties of leafy and root vegetables as you can find. If you could investigate some market prices, too, I’d appreciate it.”

  I wanted to gather information about food supplies for the orphanage and the soup kitchen.

  I handed Liza a pouch filled with copper coins.

  “You can buy something to eat for yourselves, too, if you like.”

  “What? But…”

  “Just to research different flavors. If you want to be a better chef, you’ve got to investigate local cuisine and spices.”

  With that arbitrary excuse, I gave Lulu a gentle prod.

  If I didn’t give them a good reason, the modest Lulu and Liza would never spend money on themselves.

  If it was up to me, I’d let them go out shopping and dining as much as they wanted.

  “Oh, I know. Could you investigate some meat dishes as well as vegetables?”

  “As you wish, sir.”

  Liza’s expression was serious, but her voice was a little higher than usual. I pretended not to notice that her orange-scaled tail was beating against the floor with excitement.

  Once the two of them had happily set out, I headed into the study to teleport to the Ivy Manor.

  “Lelillil, how is everyone doing?”

  I’d come to the Ivy Manor to check on the girls who had been mortally wounded in the fire.

  “They’re still sleeping, sir.”

  “Still?”

  Lelillil led me to the guest room, where the five girls had the Sleep condition.

  “Yes, I’ve used the House Magic spell Sleeping Powder so that outside noise won’t wake them.”

  Now, there’s a spell straight out of a fairy tale.

  “Shall I wake them, sir?”

  “No, I’ve got some business to take care of first.”

  Lelillil and I headed into the basement laboratory.

  I wanted to make a mask for my Kuro identity.

  Of course, it wouldn’t be a literal mask. There would be no point in hiding my face with a similar mask to Nanashi the Hero’s when I was going under a different fake name, so I thought I would make a magical Disguise mask with the information I’d found while I was healing Tifaleeza and Neru.

  “Lelillil, fill a cultivation tank with liquid, please.”

  “Of course, sir!”

  Lelillil briskly set about preparing while I readied the equipment to match the instructions in Storage.

  “Lord Satou, would you mind terribly if I was to inquire what you might be making today?”

  Lelillil was being weirdly polite these days.

  “A living mask for a disguise.”

  It was the kind of mask you could peel off, like the ones often seen in mystery stories.

  The elves also had a recipe for a magic tool called a Face Disguise, but it looked like a pain to make, and my Light Magic spell Illusion could accomplish the same thing, so I’d chosen the simpler option this time.

  A clichéd disguise like this had a certain appeal, too.

  Today, I planned to make a disguise for Kuro
and another one to wear under Nanashi’s mask. The latter was intended to mislead anyone who suspected that I might be Nanashi by giving him different facial features.

  “Lord Satou, there’s been a change in the cultivation tank.”

  A white film had formed inside the tank to serve as the base for the Disguise mask.

  “Hmm, this is tough. It’s like trying to make a face texture in a 3-D CG program…”

  As I muttered to myself, I realized that I didn’t necessarily have to use the machine’s settings.

  Instead, I used Magic Hand to shape the mask into a face as if sculpting with clay.

  “Maybe I should give Nanashi a woman’s face?”

  I automatically started thinking of my friends and acquaintances, but I shouldn’t use a real person’s face as the base for this.

  It’d cause trouble for that person if I was out there wearing their face as Nanashi the Hero.

  No, I should use the face of someone who definitely didn’t exist in this world.

  So I based Nanashi’s face on that of someone I knew in my old world—someone I knew well enough to picture even if I hadn’t seen their face in a long time.

  “…Oops. I may have made her a bit too pretty.”

  I’d used the face of my childhood friend, but it came out probably around three times cuter than the real thing.

  Well, that would probably be fine for Nanashi’s face.

  “I’ll give Kuro a man’s face.”

  Since it was supposed to be a disguise and all, maybe I should make a super-macho face that was nothing like my own?

  I pictured a Hollywood action star as I made the second mask.

  Important characters have to have distinguishing features!

  That’s what Mr. Tubs, the director-planner at my job in my original world, was always shouting at the designers.

  He’d said it was easier for actors to remember characters if they had noticeable traits to associate with them.

  “Distinguishing features, huh…?”

  I decided to fall back on some old clichés, like heterochromia and a scar on one cheek.

  “Maybe I’ll make his hair and eyebrows an unusual color, too?”

  Muttering aloud as I worked, I came up with a pretty good disguise, no less unnatural than special-effects makeup from a movie.

  While I was at it, I used the hair I’d cut off Tifaleeza to make a white wig.

  Then I made red and blue contacts out of colored glass, resulting in a look akin to old-school 3-D glasses.

  “All right. That’s pretty distinguishing.”

  Trying it on, I thought the end result looked pretty good.

  Then I made a masquerade-style mask to cover the top half of my face, ensuring that the cheek scar was still visible below.

  This way, instead of showing the whole face from the get-go, just allowing glimpses under the mask would already give the impression that I was someone other than Satou. Then people would already be imagining a different face when they saw it.

  However, when I looked at the result in the mirror, something felt off.

  “It’s rather different-looking from the people of this nation, isn’t it?” Lelillil inquired.

  “Yes, it’s based on someone from my homeland.” I frowned, trying to figure out the cause of the strangeness. “Maybe I need more height and broader shoulders?”

  I was pretty slender for a man, so my body didn’t match up with the face of a foreign actor.

  Well, some shoulder pads and six-inch platform shoes oughtta cover for that.

  With that, I’d settled on Kuro’s default style.

  When I was disguised as Kuro, I figured I would model my voice and personality after an assassin the actor in question had played. If I remembered right, he was a brusque, arrogant character.

  That was a little more basic than I intended, but I could always get some pointers from the expert cosplayer Arisa later.

  Checking my log, I found that I’d acquired some new skills and titles.

  > Skill Acquired: “Masquerade”

  > Title Acquired: Mystery Man

  > Title Acquired: Master of Disguise

  It seemed a little late for the “Masquerade” skill at this point, but making the masks must have been what satisfied the requirements.

  Regardless, it’d probably come in handy, so I put the max amount of skill points into it and activated it right away.

  “Now, Lelillil.”

  Once I’d finished getting dressed up as Kuro, I decided to see how the burn victims were doing, since that was why I had come to the Ivy Manor.

  “Right away, sir. Wake Up Kakusei.”

  Lelillil broke the House Magic spell, and the girls awoke at once.

  “Wh-where are we?”

  “What happened?”

  “There was…a fire…wasn’t there?”

  The girls patted their faces and peered under their clothes, checking their skin for burns.

  Only the redheaded Neru and the silver-haired beauty Tifaleeza remained motionless, staring blankly at the ceiling without bothering to check on their bodies, since they’d had serious burns to begin with.

  Their eyes looked glazed over, as if they’d given up on life.

  “I can…see?”

  Finally, Tifaleeza slowly reached up and put a hand over her right eye.

  The light slowly began to return to her face.

  “What’s going on?”

  “See for yourself.”

  I placed a hand mirror in front of them. They looked reluctant for a moment, then their eyes widened as they saw their reflections.

  Once they’d patted their hair and faces, they quickly threw aside the blankets that covered them and pulled off their clothes.

  Beautiful.

  Even though I was accustomed to seeing the peerless beauty known as Lulu, I was enraptured by their immaculate bare skin.

  My heart already belonged to Miss Aaze in Bolenan Forest, but if this had been before I’d met her, and Tifaleeza were a bit older, I might have fallen for her in a second.

  “Tifa?”

  Neru stared at Tifaleeza in shock, so I handed her another mirror.

  “N-n-n-n-n-no way! You’re tellin’ me those burns of yours healed just like that?!”

  The young redhead, Neru, spoke surprisingly like a street thug.

  Part of her hair stuck straight up, as if to express her surprise.

  On an anime character (usually a slow-witted one), you’d call it an ahoge. At any rate, it suited her alarmingly well.

  “Whoooooooa, you gotta be kidding me! My body’s healed up, too, y’know!”

  Casting off her clothes, she exclaimed in shock as she looked at her own skin.

  Why do you need to take all of it off?

  As the buck naked Neru set about checking every square inch of her body for burns, I turned around and looked away.

  Unfortunately, that put the equally naked Tifaleeza back in view.

  There was bare flesh every which way I looked, so I decided to wait in the hallway until they relaxed.

  “Calm down already, damn it! …If you please.”

  After a while, I heard Lelillil shouting inside the room.

  She must have gotten tired of waiting.

  “How long are you going to make Lord Kuro wait? After he used all those valuable potions to heal your sorry asses! Erm, young ladies.”

  Fortunately, she seemed to have remembered to refer to me as Kuro in front of these young women.

  Once Lelillil called for me, I came back into the room.

  …Huh?

  For some reason, the girls were all prostrate on the floor.

  “““Thank you so much, Lord Kuro!”””

  Well, I guess Lelillil had mentioned that I’d healed everyone.

  “Are you ladies feeling okay?”

  The girls all raised their heads and nodded frantically.

  “Your master seems to have died. If you have somewhere to go home to, I’
ll take you there.”

  At this, they looked at one another but didn’t respond.

  Technically, since slaves were considered property here, their master’s next of kin might have the right to inherit them, but after their narrow brush with death, I doubted there would be any punishment for setting them free.

  Of course, if someone did come forward to claim them, I would just pay them off myself.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Touching their own skin and the beds around them as if checking for something, the young ladies continued to exchange glances silently.

  Finally, one of them worked up the courage to throw herself back on the floor and shout.

  “I—I have the ‘Analyze’ skill, sir. Please allow me to be your slave—I promise to be of use to you.”

  “I—I only have the ‘Sewing’ skill, but I’ll do anything you want. Please make me your slave.”

  “I can read and write! I can do math, too! So please allow me to serve you, master.”

  The other two girls followed suit, asking me to make them my slaves.

  “They’re all desperate to impose on your goodwill, sir.”

  At Lelillil’s scornful comment, I understood their reasoning.

  I sympathized with the girls’ plight, and I would be happy to help them get back on their feet as commoners, but I certainly didn’t need any more slaves.

  “““P-please, master!”””

  “I don’t need slaves.”

  At that, the three girls all hung their heads.

  “You two aren’t going to beg, whelp—erm, young ladies?”

  “Slave or not, Lord Kuro, I swear I’ll pay ya back for healin’ me.”

  Judging by her dramatic reaction to her burns being healed, my guess that Neru’s burns predated the recent fire must have been correct.

  “I know my face and body ain’t all that, so I dunno if I could satisfy ya as far as services of the night go, but I can do Everyday Magic, y’know! I swear I’ll be useful to ya!”

  Everyday Magic certainly is handy.

  Neru’s level was in the single digits, which meant she probably didn’t have much magic capacity, but surely she could eke out a living without having to become anyone’s slave.

  “Me too. I was a secretary at the castle in Lessau County. My only skills are ‘Heraldry’ and ‘Name Order,’ so that might not be of much use, but I’ll gladly take care of any filing and accounting. I promise to work three times harder than anyone else.”