After that, lingering a little longer in Jhin's arms every morning turned into a habit for Pecorine. The other girls had no real objections; they just couldn't understand why the two of them acted like ordinary friends for the entire rest of the day, and only got affectionate at dawn.
Were they seriously still dancing around each other, even now?
In the girls' eyes, Pecorine, face buried in her breakfast, had become an unfathomable mystery.
Kyaru tossed the newspaper onto the table. "Looks like something's wrong with the water at the Golden Sea Dream lately. Let's hold off on seafood for a while."
"Let me see..." Kokkoro picked up the paper and leafed through it, then frowned. "Mass fish deaths from unknown causes, and suspicious figures wandering the shore at night?"
"Could it be monsters causing trouble?" Megumin dragged her gaze away from the cola sitting on the table, fighting down her appetite. Her diet plan was nearly finished, and she wasn't about to throw away all that effort over one moment of weakness. "There are plenty of weird monsters in the sea too, aren't there?"
"If a monster were feeding, it wouldn't leave the fish corpses behind at all."
"Fair point."
Jhin rubbed his chin. Something surfaced in his memory, and he turned to Kyaru. "Do you remember the pompadoured man we ran into back then?"
"You mean the guy the Axis Order almost drove insane?"
"That's the one."
"Didn't he throw his soap into the sea right in front of us?"
"He did, now that you mention it." Kyaru nodded, then caught on and stared at him with wide eyes. "You think he's the one behind all this?"
Jhin waved a hand. "Too early to say that. But he's suspicious, at the very least. Once I'd fully recovered, I went and asked around about those three Axis Order believers. They've never sold soap that only makes bubbles. Edible soap, sure, they had that. Swindling, cheating, and throwing tantrums in the street are their main recruitment methods."
"Put that way, that soap really is suspicious."
"Let's go investigate tonight. We finally got a vacation. I'm not letting him ruin it."
The girls all agreed to his proposal.
Night came quickly. When the Gourmet Edifice group filed out of their rooms, the front desk saw they were heading out after dark and went out of its way to warn them to be careful, since things hadn't been very peaceful lately.
Jhin looked at the taverns and barbecue stalls with half their lights already out and sighed. "Guess this whole business really has hit them hard."
"What a despicable creep, wasting food and wrecking people's lives!" Pecorine clenched her small fists, wishing the culprit would appear in front of her right that second so she could knock him flat.
"Let me think. Last time he showed up around here, I think..."
He led the girls to the stretch of shore where they'd met the pompadoured man before. Not a soul was in sight. There were only fish corpses, pale bellies turned up, washed against the sand by wave after wave. If people hadn't come every morning to clear them away, the whole beach would have reeked of rot long ago in heat like this.
"Of course he wouldn't show up in the exact same spot..."
"Then should we search inland?"
"He needs to throw the soap into the sea, so he has to be near the water. Let's follow the beach."
Jhin's guess proved right. They followed the shoreline until, near the edge closest to the distant lone island, they spotted the pompadoured man. He was sobbing and sniffling his way through a speech to chase off a couple who'd come here for a private tryst, and his lines were word for word what he'd told Jhin before, without a single change.
By then Jhin was certain the man was involved. Even if he wasn't directly responsible for the change in the seawater, he was tied to it somehow.
He shot his companions a look, signaling them to keep their weapons hidden, then took Kyaru's small hand and walked over. "Hey, don't tell me the Axis Order is still hounding you?"
The pompadoured man jolted at the voice, then relaxed when he saw it was someone he'd met before. He forced out a strained smile. "Yeah. I already paid them compensation, but they still corner me every single day trying to make me buy this soap. If I don't buy, they threaten to spread rumors about me everywhere."
"You really are unlucky."
"Tell me about it."
Jhin tugged Kyaru along as if to leave, then turned back suddenly. "Oh, right. Does that soap of yours really only make bubbles?"
"Huh? Oh, yeah. All it does is make bubbles. You can't wash clothes with it at all."
"My girlfriend loves popping bubbles. Since you don't want the soap anyway, how about you give me all of it? I'll take it home and make some bubbles for her to pop."
"Huh?" The pompadoured man clearly hadn't expected that request. He blanked out for a moment, then stammered, "B-but I paid money for that soap..."
"You don't want it anyway, and dumping it in the ocean is just a waste. Better to give it to me so I can make my girlfriend happy." Jhin never once offered to pay a copper, committing fully to the role of a freeloader. It was all an act, staged for the man's benefit.
The pompadoured man's face darkened with irritation. "No! You want to take something I paid for, for free? Not a chance."
"Not even one bar?"
"You... if you come over here and take it yourself, I suppose I could spare you one. Just one, mind you. Don't get greedy."
Jhin let go of Kyaru's hand, scratching her palm lightly as he did. She understood at once, ducking her head in a show of bashfulness while her left hand, tucked behind her back, signed to the others to ready themselves for a fight.
Four steps. Three. Two. One.
As his target finally stopped in front of him, the pompadoured man smiled the smile of a man whose scheme had worked. "You really want this soap?"
"No. I don't care about the soap." Jhin bared a row of clean white teeth. "I just want to know whether you're the one poisoning the water."
The clownish, pitiful mask vanished. Something cold and grim radiated from that utterly ordinary face. "Too much curiosity is a bad thing in a young man."
"The urge to know is an instinct everyone's born with, and I happen to be the sort with an unusually heavy dose of it."
Since Jhin refused to leave even after repeated warnings, the pompadoured man saw no point in keeping up the performance. The lethal toxin he'd dumped over the past stretch of time was already enough to poison these waters, which meant his revenge against those three lunatic believers was essentially complete. They loved to scream about their damned goddess of water day in and day out. Well, now he'd fouled her sea. Let's see what that goddess could do about it.
And if she couldn't even handle a little poison like this, then the god those people worshipped was nothing but a useless deity!
Imagining the look on the faces of those Axis Order believers, the ones who had harried a Demon King's Army officer like him into absolute chaos, at the moment their faith shattered, the pompadoured man threw back his head and howled. "Wonderful! Absolutely wonderful!"
His skin began to split. A murky, half-solid substance reeking of rot poured out through the tears, and within moments he had become a colossal, dark purple slime, its maw crowded with fangs.
____
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