Chapter 14
Friedrich Pain had moved his residence to this house from the very moment he officially signed a contract with the
Foundation Coalition and was hired as an external contractor.
Actually, strictly speaking, this house wasn’t originally owned by the Foundation Coalition.
But Friedrich, setting aside legal ownership, believed he had the right to live here, and the Foundation Coalition, out
of respect for him, let him have his way.
*– Creak, rattle-rattle.*
Friedrich used the house as he pleased.
It wasn’t as if there was anyone interfering,
and besides, since his access to the information held by the Foundation Coalition was limited, he had to run around
and gather information himself.
Newspapers, magazines, trivial gossip, rumors, information coming through police connections, the movements of
figures in the political and financial worlds.
The information to collect was overflowing. But unfortunately, Friedrich’s head capacity had its limits.
Even he couldn’t remember everything.
*– Squeak!*
So he turned the house itself into his brain. Headlines of important events were pasted on the walls at eye level; the less important they were, the higher up or lower down they went.
He stuck pins into photographs of people and connected them with strings to mark relationships.
Useful knowledge that could be applied to any situation was laid out on the living room table for easy reference at any time.
On the dining table, he arranged clippings of the morning’s latest news so he could scan them at a glance, pick out valuable information, or find missing puzzle pieces of forgotten cases.
Having built this vast and meticulously ruled domain entirely as his own, Friedrich could not possibly welcome the sudden contact that came that morning.
*– Creak, bang! Bzzzz!*
Code name Cosette. She was someone who at least had an acquaintance with Friedrich. She belonged to the Field
Operations Department of the Anomaly Management Bureau of the Foundation for the Preservation of Humanity.
The name sounded grand, but in a nutshell, should one call them the assault squad operating at the very front lines?
As such, Cosette had more frequent encounters with Friedrich compared to other departments,
and after her senior was promoted and officially handed over the duties of collaborating with external contractors to her, she maintained a close relationship with him.
Friedrich also maintained a decent relationship with her, as she was easygoing and not finicky.
But the Foundation Coalition had delivered unpleasant news through her.
They said they were sending someone to help him from now on, so please cooperate and let them stay.
At first, he thought they had finally found the obedient assistant he had requested,
but instead of an assistant, they had hired a child who knew nothing as an external contractor equal to him.
*– Scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch.*
……Anyway, Friedrich was in a bad mood.
This house was not just a residence.
It was his long-cultivated hideout, a record center, and his mind.
As such, it was filled with information about him everywhere, to the point where that idiot could grasp everything about him in an instant if he so chose.
He liked observing strangers, but hated the reverse situation.
Friedrich, with his black-gloved hands, sat down in his ‘office’ on the second floor and tapped his fingers on the desk.
He definitely needed time to think.
Why did that human come here?
If it’s a decision made by the Foundation Coalition, common courtesy would be to give at least a week’s notice.
Delivering a surprise notice through Cosette on the very morning itself clearly meant the Foundation Coalition didn’t trust him-
*– Rub, rub, rub, rub, squeak. Rub, rub, rub, rub, rub!*
“Enough!”
What in the world are you doing out there to make such a racket! I can’t even think!
Friedrich, his irritation reaching the boiling point, flung the door open.
But there were a couple of things he had overlooked.
First, there was someone else in the house now, not him,
and second, that person was scrubbing the floorboards to purify this demon’s lair.
The reason they started with the second-floor hallway floor, not the first or third, was probably because they wanted to finish cleaning quickly while Friedrich wasn’t coming out,
but unfortunately, Friedrich had come out of his room on his own due to the unexpected noise.
So,
“What the he- Aaaagh!”
It was inevitable that he slipped on the soap-slicked floor,
“Huff.”
That a bucket full of soapy water happened to be right in front of the door.
That the person, who had been kneeling and scrubbing the floor vigorously, looked up with wide eyes and stood up in surprise.
That Friedrich fell flat on his back, drenched from head to toe in dirty soapy water.
*– Thud!*
“Hey, hey there! Are you okay?”
All of it was inevitable.
***
Raimund was confident in his cleaning skills.
The house in Residential District 5 was dilapidated, and the marks of someone having lain on the floor were clearly visible.
He had managed to make that house livable.
This house should be fine too, just by cleaning it.
He had searched every nook and cranny of the dirty house and barely managed to find something that could be called detergent.
It wasn’t cleaning detergent, of course; it was a dish soap someone had already opened, but it had suds, so it should be able to scrub off some of the old grime.
Taking a shoe brush from the shoe cabinet at the entrance and a worn-out dishcloth hanging over the sink, he filled the bucket from the basement with water.
After shaking the dish soap into it generously, he swirled the soapy water and thought.
Where should he start?
Considering the weight of the bucket, it would be better to start from the third floor and work his way down. The first floor would probably take the longest to clean, too.
On the first floor, he’d have to roll up the carpet and put the books back in place.
Plus, the kitchen was such a mess that he didn’t even know where to begin.
That left the third and second floors; the rooms on the third floor had all been empty when he checked earlier.
It seemed like he just needed to organize the clothes and shoes and dust there.
The problem was the second floor…
From what Raimund saw, it seemed the man’s main living space was concentrated on the second floor.
All the doors were closed, and the hallway was the dirtiest. Someone with hygiene standards this abysmal would clearly not welcome being helped with cleaning.
So it was better to get the second floor done quickly.
That person wouldn’t be able to insist on making a clean area dirty again, right?
For that reason, Raimund was diligently scrubbing the second-floor floorboards while Friedrich was holed up inside,
but the man coming out of his room sooner than expected was truly an accident.
On the first floor, on a sofa that had barely been dusted.
The man was holding an ice pack to the back of his head. Actually, it wasn’t an ice pack but a frozen loaf of bread, but he didn’t feel the need to mention that.
Raimund glanced sideways at the man whose eyes were now twice as slanted as before.
“What are you looking at? Never seen a person fall before?”
“I was just looking.”
He’d never met anyone with such a foul temper before.
The man cooled his bumped head with the frozen bread for a long while, then tossed his pocket onto the table.
A rather insolent attitude.
“You tried to kill me and failed, I see. If you wanted to assassinate me, you should have trained harder.”
“No, it was an accident, I told you.”
“An accident? Slicking the entire floor with soap without asking for any cooperation first?”
“That was an act of cleaning-”
“Never mind. I’ll say this nicely, so stop. I’ve been lenient because you’re young, but this is as far as it goes. I have no idea why the Foundation Coalition sent someone like you here to waste time on such pointless matters.”
“I said it was an accident! And I’ve apologized several times already!”
“If everything could be settled with an apology, why do we have police and laws?”
Raimund swept his bangs back and let out a deep sigh.
*Calm down, Raimund. Calm down. You didn’t come here to fight.*
“Fine. If you go to the hospital, I’ll cover the medical expenses. You might have a concussion or something. I can’t
pay you right away, but I’ll give it to you as soon as I receive my commission.”
“Save it. You want me to use stolen pocket money for my medical bills? You’re really painting me as the villain here.”
“Then what exactly do you want me to do?”
“This is my house. The title may be under the Foundation Coalition, but they acknowledge that I’m the actual resident. So.”
The man lifted his chin.
“Get out.”
“What?”
“If you didn’t hear me, I’ll say it again. Get out. I don’t want someone as careless and uncooperative as you in my space.”
The man finished what he had to say and stood up. But Raimund couldn’t move from his seat.
Careless. Uncooperative.
Raimund had never heard such words in his life. He was so used to being called worthless trash that he could smile and greet it.
Uncooperative? Careless?
Just who exactly is being careless and uncooperative right now?
Suddenly, something in Raimund’s head clicked.
In that instant, the thoughts that had only been inside his head spilled out without a filter.
“Well. I wanted to leave this dirty place anyway. I should contact Ms. Cosette and ask her to move me to an empty house in Residential District 4. It would be better than staying here and getting sick and wasting away.”
“…What did you say?”
“It’s dirty. I’ve never seen a house this dirty in my life. How should I put it? I get the feeling the middle of the sewage water where I set off a bomb might be cleaner than this?”
“What?”
“Are your ears clogged? Oh dear. The house is dirty, and you don’t even clean your ears. You’ll really get sick like
that. Actually, I figured it out when I saw the spider egg sac in the kitchen cupboard. Ah, this homeowner is truly
strange, dirty, and has hygiene standards converging on zero. I should just not associate with him.”
“Are you done?”
“Not quite. This was the first time I saw maggots forming a village in the sink! I was already startled, but then I saw
the scraps of paper plastered everywhere and realized something: the guy living here is out of his mind!”
Friedrich’s mouth hung open.
His pale complexion turned blue, then red again.
But Raimund’s cursed, unfocused mouth kept on babbling.
“They say a house shows its owner, right? Then this homeowner is just a wreck. Living in a place like this, wow.
You’d probably get a mental illness in just two days and check yourself into the hospital.”
“Listen here!”
“Surviving a week in this house versus surviving a year swimming in contaminated seawater filling the bottom of the
Foundation Coalition’s quarantine cells? I’d choose the latter without a second thought. Oh, and no need to thank
me. I was just stating the facts.”
Friedrich shouted.
“This is my house! If you’re going to be disrespectful, get out right now!”
Raimund also jumped to his feet and shouted back.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s your house or mine! What’s wrong with calling something dirty if it’s dirty?! If you don’t like
it, clean it up and live in it, you overgrown child! Clean up and live! It won’t kill you! No, just die! If cleaning will kill you, then just die!”
Blame and shouts directed at each other filled the living room and leaked out through the open window. Even the thick curtains couldn’t block out all the noise.
When the two, who had been screaming their heads off for a long time, finally fell silent due to hoarse throats,
the streetlights outside were already flickering on in the dark street.
