Even so, I wasn't all that afraid of the monster. I was simply shocked that something like it existed.
Because judging from Greenleaf's file, it wasn't a brutal, bloodthirsty creature. It was like the demons in stories, tempting people to fall and sell their souls. But as long as someone held fast to that line, it couldn't lead them astray.
Compared with the demons in stories, who had all sorts of tricks up their sleeves, its methods seemed rather limited.
Small-loan companies on the market today had plenty of problems, more or less. They didn't use the brutal, cruel debt-collection tactics of loan sharks, but they weren't exactly aboveboard, either. The companies had their issues, and many people who took out small loans weren't ordinary financial customers. They were deadbeats who had planned to default from the very beginning.
It was a tangled mess. Generally speaking, when things went wrong, both sides were responsible—not just legally, but morally, too.
When faced with a mess like that, it was hard to say who was good and who was bad. Add in a monster that had "kept up with the times" and the traps it set with its contracts, and at its core it was still just a rotten mess.
As an onlooker, I didn't have a good impression of either side. At the same time, I knew perfectly well that neither I nor the people around me could ever end up in such a crisis.
It had nothing to do with me, so I'd keep my nose out of it. That was probably one of humanity's inherent flaws.
Even knowing there was a monster in the mix, it was hard to get fired up about "ridding the people of this menace."
It was different from that new thing that had opened