"Actually, wait a second! Aren't guards supposed to protect public order!?"
"Yes, and?"
The troop leader answered Tomochika with the same confidence as before.
Blonde hair, blue eyes and sharp facial features; certainly not Japanese, but fluent in the language nonetheless.
"So you saw what happened! We were about to get kidnapped, why didn't you interfere!?"
"That would be what you call a small sacrifice before a great cause. It seems you don't have an eye for the bigger picture of things! We were investigating a crime syndicate to get the nobles connected to it."
"So you wanted to track where we would be sold off to?"
Yogiri made sure to speak in a polite tone. There was no reason to needlessly resist, after all.
"Exactly! Even if we had captured them here, they wouldn't have disclosed who they're dealing with. We'd know, because we've repeated that mistake over and over already!"
"Takatou-kun... This world really does lack decent people..."
He could only agree, although he was thinking the woman was more of a blockhead than a bad person. Randomly disclosing investigation results, bragging about them even, couldn't be normal.
"Well, then it's a shame they all started mysteriously dying. May we leave now?"
Yogiri played innocent.
It would have been easy to kill them all, but the guards held governmental authority. If they could just talk themselves through this situation then that would be for the best.
"That's precisely it! Based on what it looked like they all began dying on the spot, indeed. Most mysterious. And that's why asking you two, the ones that saw it all from close up, would be the quickest route to the root of things."
"Aren't you worried it might have been our doing? Getting too close in that case would be dangerous, wouldn't it?"
Yogiri wasn't a fan of unnecessarily digging too deep into things, but he thought it strange and asked her about it.
"Of course, the possibility that you two are responsible for this is certainly there. You are the ones that were about to be abducted, after all. However! We possess the celestial protection of saints! The gifts of Japanese, those bestowed to them by the sages, do not work on us! How do you like that! I can tell by your look you didn't know that, did you? Hmmm? Has your anxiety finally caught up with youuu?"
She smirked, convinced that she successfully drove the two sage candidates into a corner.
Since the source of the candidates' gifts were the sages it would only make sense for them to also have a way to suppress the gifts bestowed by them. There was most likely quite a number of Japanese with the sages' gifts, which would indeed raise a need for the protectors of public order to have immunity against them.
――Meaning, opposing the sages with powers given by them would be difficult, huh.
Yogiri started to feel like he could understand the general gist of things.
Sages summon sage candidates and give them the task of producing a new sage from among them. Those new sages then summon new candidates themselves, and the cycle repeats. There most likely existed a hierarchy where those of lower rank could impossibly defy those of higher rank.
"Er, no. No anxiety here. Not like we have gifts in the first place."
"What!? Oi, George! Analyze them!"
"Understood. ―― Indeed, they do not possess gifts. I don't see any traces of magic around here either, so the possibility of them having done anything is low, I would say."
The man right behind the female knight answered. He, too, spoke natural Japanese.
"How can this be!?"
She flared up at Yogiri, who wasn't particularly distraught.
"No point in asking me, I have no clue either."
"Then why did you lie! Doesn't that just make you suspicious!?"
"I only wanted to avoid being questioned for an explanation on the situation. Sorry, but we don't know what happened here ourselves. Even if we had told you the people around us started collapsing and dying out of nowhere, wouldn't that have been difficult to believe?"
"Damn it! Fine, whatever! Everyone, get to work! We have to examine their bodies!"
Peevish like a child the guardswoman took her subordinates along to the back of the blind alley.
"Sorry about that, you two. A surprise interrogation like that must have been unpleasant. But trust me, the commander's not a bad person. She just has a, well, really bad case of tunnel vision."
The man called George remained next to Yogiri and apologized to them.
"No problem, now that the misunderstanding has been cleared up. This is a question purely out of curiosity, but you were planning on letting us be kidnapped, right?"
"It pains me to address it so bluntly, but yes, we concluded that you wouldn't be killed immediately, and with that in mind we were going to carry out our investigation."
So he answered, looking even more apologetic than before.
"Well, we were saved in the end so I guess it's fine."
"Ah, but I'm afraid we can't let you go home right away. May I trouble you to come along to headquarters and fill out an eyewitness report?"
"Sure. Oh, and not to ask for it as a recompense, but could you introduce us to a place to stay the night? We were actually supposed to be taken to a hotel when we ended up here instead."
"Certainly, that's fine."
"Hey! One's alive! A dogman!"
The troop leader yelled as if she made a scientific breakthrough.
The only survivor from going easy on them.
――Best to kill him before any problems arise.
Or so Yogiri thought, but then again, in a way the dogman was the fruit of his labor. And so, for sake of commemoration, he decided to leave him as is.
＊＊＊＊＊
After finishing the paperwork Yogiri and Tomochika were let go without any issues.
He was worried that the request for an eyewitness report was only a facade to arrest them, but luckily that wasn't the case.
The people of this world held absolute faith in gifts; him and Tomochika didn't possess any, so they were hardly even considered suspects.
They were told about several places they could stay at and decided to go with the highest class one among them.
A cheap hotel might not only be unsanitary but also a hotspot for crime, and since they had more money than they could burn through they both agreed not to be stingy.
"Ooooh! Wow, this is great! It's like a castle! Although not like I've ever been in one!"
Tomochika expressed her surprise upon entering the hotel, even throwing in a quip.
The lobby was bright as if it was day, with all kinds of glowing and sparkling things. One could tell that the furniture was high class at a glance, and yet it was modest enough to maintain a feeling of harmony. The cleaning staff must have been extremely thorough, there didn't seem to be a speck of dirt nor dust.
"Doesn't this feel sort of like a love hotel?"
"Huh... Wait, have you been to one!?"
Tomochika's surprise went up a notch.
"I got to stay there for a while once, had a similar feeling to it."
"Having heard that, this whole atmosphere suddenly feels super cheap!"
"So, how about the room? Should we share one?"
High class as the hotel may be, this was still a different world and one never knew what might happen. As far as safety went Yogiri was thinking that staying together would be for the best.
"Nuh-uh――. No way I'd stay with a guy going on about love hotels――"
"Alright, let's go with neighboring rooms then."
He wasn't that serious when proposing it, and a neighboring room should be good enough to let him protect her.
They went up to the desk and booked their rooms. There was no problem with getting a room in Japanese, most likely thanks to the high class nature of the hotel. Finally, they agreed to meet back up in the lobby the next morning.
＊＊＊＊＊
After splitting up into their respective rooms Tomochika was alone.
Her room was plenty well-lit. Magic or electricity, one of the two seemed to allow regulating the light at will. It was a single room, but nonetheless spacious and full of pomp. The bed was huge, more than enough room for both her and Yogiri.
"Geez, what am I even thinking."
Currently, Tomochika was completely reliant on Yogiri; without him she most likely wouldn't have come this far.
In that regard she was truly thankful.
As such, she thought that it would have been difficult to tell him off if he were to approach her under these circumstances.
"But still, what is he thinking anyway――. Wonder if he actually has interest in me――. Or is it really just my boobs――"
If such a situation actually arose all of a sudden she would be rather hesitant about it, but, just maybe, after taking the proper steps...
Tomochika couldn't deny there were feelings like that, but that sentimental mood was blown away in a heartbeat. Someone was in her room.
"Who's there!?"
Whoever it was, he or she was floating in mid-air.
Immediately running out of the room and calling for Yogiri would have been the smartest choice, but Tomochika was too dazed to react. Not out of fear, but because she recognized that person.
A fat girl in a kimono, who was far from just being familiar to Tomochika.
"Sis!?"
The girl before her had the same face as someone Tomochika was used to seeing nearly every day of her life, her older sister.