What Brand of Perfume Do You Use?

The gold was remarkably heavy.

Without handling it personally, no one would have guessed that this minotaur's horns were made of plastic. Gold had been hidden inside the hollow plastic, and Hoshino's sword aura carved through it, exposing the smuggling kingpin's true form in a single stroke.

A minotaur without horns was simply too absurd not to laugh at.

Rope volunteered, "I'll find a place to recast this gold and sell it."

"If it were you, how would you spend this money?"

Hoshino asked with her head tilted. Rope was still immersed in the excitement of finally pulling off a huge score, and she had never considered such practical questions. Now, she fell into deep thought.

What would she do?

Her usual life had been simple and modest.

For a brief moment, the windfall seemed to have gone to her head, but Rope was cautious by nature. She began carefully considering her future.

For quite a while, she did nothing.

Hoshino mocked her, "Looks like you have no clue either. Why not stop and thank the gods first?"

Rope actually nodded.

Drawing on her half-baked shrine maiden knowledge, Hoshino instructed Rope to close her eyes and pray, bow her head slightly, clasp her hands before her, and remain that way for thirty seconds.

Hoshino had no idea whether she was teaching her correctly.

Still, Rope looked quite devout.

As long as the sentiment was there, the form was not that important. Being overly fixated on formalities was actually inferior... Hoshino comforted herself this way, concealing the fact that she was illiterate.

Still, a child like Rope probably did not believe in gods or ghosts. When she lowered her head and closed her eyes, only Rope herself knew whom she was thanking.

Thirty seconds later, she opened her eyes without making any remarks.

Rope led Hoshino back from the small pier, weaving through the slums. The horn-shaped gold was far too conspicuous; only after melting it down and casting it into long brick-shaped bars could Rope exchange it for Lungmen's standard currency.

In total, the gold could be exchanged for one hundred and twenty thousand Lungmen dollars.

It was an enormous sum for Rope, but for Hoshino, an old Arknights player, a mere one hundred and twenty thousand...

She did not even know how that little money had slipped through her fingers.

It would not be good to dampen the child's enthusiasm, so Hoshino accompanied her to the exchange. Rope and Hoshino each carried two aluminum cases, and for the first time, they felt how heavy paper could be.

It was time to divide the spoils.

The bright silver aluminum briefcases looked utterly out of place beside the cardboard-box furniture, but they had been given away for free, so Rope brought them home. As she counted the Lungmen dollars in the dilapidated house, she was still wondering how much the two aluminum cases could fetch.

She was, after all, a child who had grown up poor.

Hoshino was not particularly possessive, and besides, she thought something like this, practically a black mark on her record, was best thrown away sooner rather than later.

She would treat it as Rope's meal money.

They still had to keep collecting offerings and spread Hiyumaru's image to every household in Lungmen. They could not get hung up on such trivial matters.

Hoshino sat with both hands on her knees, her posture exceptionally proper. She closed her eyes and inspected the empty space before her.

Yae Sakura's exclusive weapon remained dim, and the mission progress was still [0%]. She had not saved Rope. Though the target was happily counting money now, she had not attained true salvation.

What counted as salvation?

Hoshino thought about it carefully and felt that, with her shallow knowledge alone, she simply could not solve that question.

"That shrine maiden actually claimed, without any proof, that she beat me?"

"Keep it down, Old Chen. Someone might hear you."

Chen Huijie's biggest flaw was her loud voice. Her voice surged from her throat like the roar of a raging dragon, while Hoshiguma gently reminded her, as though stroking an angry cat's fur.

Indeed, Swire, that bitch, could not be allowed to hear that.

Back to work.

It was surprising for a smuggler to report a robbery, but procedures still had to be followed.

They ignored Karon's tearful pleas and detained him immediately, only beginning their investigation afterward. Aside from tracking down the shrine maiden, they also had to locate the source of smuggler Karon's enormous unexplained fortune.

The former was the main task.

Chen Huijie remembered Hoshino because of that slash, and Swire had also become interested in Hoshino after seeing Chen's reaction.

Only Hoshiguma

still had other work to finish.

A thin file lay before her, with Codename: Rope written on its cover.

Hoshiguma's task was to evaluate Rope. She herself had entered the Lungmen Guard Department this way. While assigning Hoshiguma to evaluate these people was partly the higher-ups' decision, it was more the result of her own efforts.

Hoshiguma had seen many people like this.

They yearned to live under the sunlight, yet because they came from the slums, they never found good outcomes.

She never said it aloud, but she helped where she could at work. Her entry requirements were also extremely strict, and that was precisely where Hoshiguma's leadership came from.

Hoshiguma frowned as she wrote.

[On a certain day of a certain month, participated in one street robbery. Requires reevaluation; entry threshold should be raised appropriately.]

She did not place much faith in people's memories. Memory was easily influenced by emotion, and oni were always textbook examples of being irritable and hot-tempered. Hoshiguma preferred to make written records of what she saw and heard.

"By the way, who exactly is supposed to handle this case?"

Chen suddenly asked. Hoshiguma replied, "That question comes a little late. Superintendent Swire already left just now."

"She just left without saying a word?!"

Swire arrived in the slums.

To be honest, the slums were dominated by dull grays and blacks. That vivid streak of pink stood out as clearly as a landmark, and Hoshino had never tried to conceal her whereabouts. With an investigative mindset, Swire found her quickly.

Knock, knock, knock~

Rope had just stuffed the money back into the aluminum cases when knocking sounded outside.

"Guard Department, open the door~"

It sounded as though they would bring out a fire axe if no one answered. Rope was still hesitating, but Hoshino opened the door first.

It was like radiant spring sunlight, like cherry blossoms blooming in a courtyard.

Swire caught a faint, elegant fragrance completely out of place in the slums. It came from the shrine maiden before her. Unlike Rope, Swire had received an education and possessed a basic understanding of shrine maidens, that historical profession.

"You led others in committing robbery?"

"That was not robbery. It was their conversion after witnessing my swordsmanship, a perfectly normal act of religious offering."

"Swordsmanship?"

Seeing the confusion arise naturally on her face, Hoshino lightly flicked the sword guard. The broken blade slid one inch from its sheath.

The world fell silent.

Swire felt as though everything were drifting away. As a living individual, she suddenly ceased to exist, while her heroic soul crossed the boundless world of Terra and rapidly dissolved beneath the pale sunlight...

Three seconds.

She had [died] for a full three seconds.

Yet Hoshino's blade had emerged only that short inch before being fully withdrawn. By the time Swire came back to herself, the sword had already returned completely to its sheath.

She had not even noticed that the blade was broken.

Only the shrine maiden stood quietly before her, fragrant air lingering around her, as though cherry blossoms were blooming before her eyes.

"Would you like to convert?"

"What brand of perfume do you use?" Swire asked instead.