Although Roland was no mage and had no way of learning about the Holy Grail War in his current position, he could still use his knowledge of the plot to judge the timeline.
Even without his Stand ability, this minor obstacle would have been easy to overcome.
Shinto had been described as clean and pale, splendid yet utterly devoid of personality. Its modern buildings, assembled from soulless steel, glass, and paint, were nothing like the nostalgic old town of Miyama, making it seem like a modern steel jungle. Even so, it had something to be proud of.
That was the Fuyuki City Hyatt Hotel. It was not only the tallest building in Fuyuki City, but also the finest. Even residents who cherished the city's historic atmosphere would look admiring when they mentioned the hotel.
Its business suites were often vacant, too, so it would be easy to find out if someone had booked an entire floor.
Besides that, he could pray regularly at the church and check how often a certain Tofu Priest Mapo appeared in his daily routine, or keep an eye on the city's major public events for news of the distinguished Tohsaka Family's head attending. These crude methods, provided he actually followed through, would work far better than deliberately asking around for someone.
Still, people involved in the war, such as Aoi Tohsaka, would be the first to hear anything. To avoid arousing unnecessary suspicion, Roland had never deliberately sought out the Tohsaka Mother and Daughter. He had not expected to receive such a pleasant surprise while working.
"Well, it's time to get ready to move. From what Aoi Tohsaka said, it'll probably be around next week."
Roland unconsciously began biting his nails, his gaze turning dark.
Although he had no interest in the Holy Grail War and did not want to disrupt his peaceful life, Roland was still searching for traces of contract spirits, both to preserve that peace and to prepare for the future.
Finding them would not be difficult, either. Contract spirits were not natural beings, but creations of the Key of All Spirits. Without the knowledge and assistance the Key of All Spirits provided, it was impossible to successfully form a contract with a contract spirit, let alone assimilate its power.
Escaped contract spirits would follow their instincts and attach themselves to objects or creatures that attracted them. Objects were manageable; at worst, they would gradually consume their users and drive them mad. When they attached themselves to living creatures, however, things became dangerous.
Someone with low spiritual sensitivity would probably just hear disembodied murmurs regularly. Unable to use the contract spirit's power, they would gain, at most, some otherworldly knowledge they could not understand themselves, eventually developing a twisted obsession and descending into madness. That ending was not especially bad.
The truly terrifying ones were those highly sensitive "lucky souls" who were particularly compatible with the price demanded by the contract spirit. As they borrowed its power, their souls and very essence would be tainted by that force lodged in the gap between life and death. If they were lucky, they would merely lose their personalities and become irrational lunatics. If they were unlucky, they would turn straight into twisted monsters, perhaps even unleashing disasters that affected the entire world.
Yet Roland had found no information about any abnormal phenomena so far. Under the pretext of familiarizing himself with his surroundings, he had visited several famous sights during his regular walks over the past few days.
He had posed as a tourist to visit Ryuudou Temple, casually passed near the Tohsaka estate and the Matou Residence, and even found time to take a look around the suburbs. The Key of All Spirits had remained dormant, giving him no information.
That could mean only two things. Either the escaped contract spirit was extremely weak and had caused negligible effects, or it had already caused an enormous impact, but gaps in information and the circumstances kept Roland from learning anything about it.
Neither possibility was encouraging, but since the Key of All Spirits had brought him here, this city had to be where the contract spirit had left its primary traces.
"So, could the contract spirit have attached itself to one of the Masters in this Holy Grail War?"
Roland sighed, feeling a headache coming on.
I really don't want to get involved with any of this unless I have to. Oh well, I'll take it one step at a time. I'll leave the rest for tomorrow's me to worry about.
Watching the manager approach with a somewhat thick envelope, Roland kept his anticipation under wraps, but broke into a heartfelt smile.
Today, he had something even more important to finish as soon as possible.
On a street late at night, a tall, blond young man crushed the empty bottle in his hand and hurled it aside, as though venting his anger.
"That damned old man couldn't even die properly. He still had to make trouble for me? Those stubborn bastards in the Fujimura Group are idiots, too. That house is already mine, but they won't let me turn it into cash because of some dead man's wishes. And they tell me to treasure it?"
As though the words had brought back an unpleasant memory, the blond young man angrily opened another can of beer and gulped it down.
He was something of a known figure in Miyama Town, though not in a positive sense. In that struggling economy, there were plenty of layabouts, but even by ordinary people's standards, he ranked among the worst scumbags.
He did no honest work, bullied the weak, and indulged in drinking, women, greed, and gambling. He had squandered most of his family's wealth and angered his bedridden mother so badly that she died. Less than two years after being thrown out, he had returned home buried in debt-with a pack of vicious debt collectors in tow.
His elderly father had been forced to sell the family's remaining assets, keeping only the ancestral home passed down through several generations, before suddenly passing away. Even his funeral had been paid for through contributions from friends.
The irony was that this well-off family had weathered the collapse of the economic bubble largely unscathed, only to be torn apart by its own heir in a few short years.
Clearly, however, none of that had left any further impression on the blond young man. He remained absorbed in the joy of his unexpected windfall.
Although the property market had fallen on hard times, the old house had a good location and plenty of space, as befitted an ancestral property. It was the sort of place people wanted, and it could fetch a handsome price.
After hastily putting it up for sale, the blond young man finally realized the consequences of his past. The house's price meant that its buyers would inevitably be people of some social standing, and within Fuyuki City's circles, neither especially large nor especially small, those people cared more about appearances.
No one wanted to take this notorious hot potato off his hands. Even when he gritted his teeth and offered to sell it to the Fujimura Group, Fuyuki City's largest yakuza organization, at an enticing price several tenths below its value, they refused him without mercy.
None of those buyers were people he could intimidate, so in the end, all he could do was slink off alone and drink cheap canned beer by the roadside.
"Meow." Just then, a black cat strolled leisurely along the top of a wall on light feet. Perhaps because the smell of alcohol was so strong, it gave a somewhat disdainful cry.
The blond young man, already fuming, was predictably enraged.
"Damn it, every last one of you looks down on me. Even a cat like you dares!" The blond young man hurled his beer can with all his strength, but since he had drunk less than half of it, he misjudged its weight, and it struck only beside the cat's paws.
The startled cat shot away like an arrow from a bow, leaving the blond young man behind as he struggled to stand and find his balance through his drunken haze.
Then-the frightened black cat ran straight into a young man who had just stepped around the corner.
To the blond young man's surprise, although the other young man looked as though he had not reacted at all, his hand moved as if possessed by something incredible, precisely catching the cat by the scruff and lifting it up.
Roland glanced sideways, one hand instinctively protecting the bag he carried and the other holding the cat. He stared at the man and cat before him, utterly bewildered.
"So, what's going on here?"
Despite dangling in midair, the cat showed no sign of panic. Instead, it leisurely licked its paws, affectionately rubbed its head against Roland's hand, and let out a pleased cry.
"Meow-"