IGTL Chapter 32

Chapter 32 – Noume Legal Consultation Office Gets Whiplash from the Assailants’ Parents Going Off the Rails

My name was Noume Hachiya.

I was a lawyer at the Noume Legal Consultation Office.

To negotiate a settlement, I’d asked a detective agency run by a relative, the YABAI Detective Agency, to track down Takahashi Kakeru’s whereabouts. And somehow, that information had gotten passed along to my clients too, and some of them had apparently rushed Kakeru head-on.

From what I heard, this mess happened because the client and I had overlapping requests out to find Takahashi Kakeru, and they “collided” somehow…

I… didn’t get it.

What did that even mean?

What was this?

The parents of the assailants had ignored me, their court-appointed lawyer, and not only called the victim directly even though he said he didn’t want a settlement, they’d gone as far as identifying his hotel and storming it…

It was already a bad situation, so why would they pour gasoline on it like that…?

Did these parents want to turn their own kids into criminals?

If you couldn’t reach a settlement with Takahashi Kakeru, then all your kids were going to end up with criminal records, you know?

If you didn’t settle, then as things stood right now, there was a one-hundred-percent chance they could be punished for robbery resulting in injury with a sentence of six years or more, you know?

That was how heavy robbery resulting in injury was.

Did you understand that part?? Seriously??

I’d figured from the first phone call that negotiating a settlement with Takahashi Kakeru was going to be rough, so I thought I’d at least lock down his location first. I never imagined they’d go hire a detective on their own and charge in…

I was speechless.

C-Could this still be salvaged?

More importantly… were they idiots?

Hiring a detective and going on the attack… I could understand panicking when your kid got arrested, sure, but this was so wildly out of left field it defied common sense.

And how did they even learn about Takahashi Kakeru in the first place??

I hadn’t told them the victim’s name or contact information, not even once!

Did they figure it out from the video?

Did they identify him by watching that clip of the high schoolers assaulting him?

Or was this my relative going rogue?

Did they connect my request to find Takahashi Kakeru with the assailants’ parents’ request and link them together…??

No. Even if I kept speculating, it wouldn’t fix anything.

F-For now, I needed to contact them and make sure they didn’t do anything else reckless…

If they kept acting on their own like this, then depending on how it escalated, the assailants’ parents themselves might end up in handcuffs for what they’d done at Kakeru’s location.

I grabbed the receiver off the table and hurriedly called the high schoolers’ parents.

But no one answered.

“Damn it! It’s a day off. Maybe I’d get it on a weekday, but why aren’t they home at this hour!?”

If this was how it was going to be, I should’ve gotten their parents’ cell numbers from the kids.

With no other choice, I left a message on voicemail.

“Please… just stay quiet and behave…”

If they went even further off the rails, it wouldn’t be funny anymore. Not even a little.

I pressed my hands together toward the household shrine, slowly closed my eyes, and prayed.

◇◆◇

After I’d driven off the parents of those assailant high schoolers, I lay around in my room watching TV when I heard a knock at the door.

“Huh? Who could that be?”

Was it housekeeping?

I’d put the “Do Not Disturb / No Cleaning” tag outside the door, though…

I got up from the bed and put my eye to the peephole.

Standing there were the same assailants’ parents who’d tried to talk to me in the restaurant earlier.

“Uh… what…?”

What was going on?

Why were these people in front of my room??

“We know you’re in there!”

“Get out here right now!”

“So you thought you could mouth off to us earlier, huh!? Cut the crap already!”

Ugh…

The second I stepped outside, I could practically see the disaster waiting for me.

Yeah, no way I could leave the room like this… What was I supposed to do?

Still, how were they even outside my door…?

The Candeo Hotel elevators should only have been usable by hotel guests or restaurant patrons. Don’t tell me they’d actually booked a room just to try and force a settlement with me?

No…

They’d looked like they were waiting for me at the restaurant, so maybe they’d used the restaurant as an excuse to get access to the elevators.

Either way, it was impressive they’d figured out which room I was staying in. That detective was scary good.

But if I went outside right now, I had no idea what they’d do.

This was something the hotel needed to handle.

Ignoring the assailants’ parents as they hammered the door and kept hurling insults, I picked up the phone installed in the room and called the front desk.

“Yes, this is the front desk.”

“Hello. This is Takahashi in room 1015 on the tenth floor. There are suspicious people pounding on my door right now. Could you deal with it?”

“Suspicious people? Understood. We’ll dispatch staff immediately.”

“Thank you. I appreciate it.”

I set the receiver down, and while I waited for the staff to arrive, I recorded the knocking and endless abuse using a recorder I pulled out of Item Storage.

A few minutes later, it sounded like the staff had arrived, because I heard a voice from the other side of the door.

“What do you think you’re doing!? You people!”

That was fast. Solid response time.

I’d been shocked by the assailants’ parents’ sheer mobility, but this was just plainly out of bounds.

Showing up at the victim’s hotel and marching all the way to the door of his room? Yeah, no.

After a while, the area outside the door went quiet.

When I pressed my ear to the door, their voices got fainter and fainter.

They’d probably gotten hauled off by hotel staff.

Nothing was more troublesome than assailants’ parents with “initiative.”

Still… what now?

They’d clearly identified the hotel and my room, but leaving the hotel right now came with risks.

Could I at least get them to change my room?

While I was thinking that, I heard another knock.

“Excuse me. This is hotel staff. May I have a moment?”

“Yes. I’ll be right there.”

Just in case, I checked the peephole first.

It was hotel staff.

After confirming nobody else was there, I opened the door.

“Sorry to keep you waiting. And, um, thank you. I really appreciate you dealing with that.”

“No, we’re the ones who should apologize. We have issued a ban from the premises to those individuals. We can also change your room, if you’d like.”

“Huh? That’s okay?”

The staff member nodded.

“Yes. If it’s acceptable to you, Mr. Takahashi, we can prepare a room on the fourteenth floor. We can move you immediately as well. What would you prefer?”

Honestly? That was exactly what I wanted.

“Please. I’d like to change rooms.”

“Certainly. Then I will guide you now. Do you have any luggage you’d like us to carry?”

“No, I don’t have anything to move. Could you show me to the new room?”

“Of course. Right this way.”

I grabbed my key card and followed the staff member.

“This will be your new room, Mr. Takahashi.”

We took the elevator up, and once we reached the room on the fourteenth floor, the staff member collected my old key card and handed me a new one.

“Then I will take my leave. We truly apologize for the inconvenience.”

“No, no. Don’t worry about it.”

After closing the door, I looked down through the window.

There were several police cars parked in front of the hotel.

The staff member had said they’d been banned, but it looked like something even harsher had come down.

Honestly, it was fair.

Common sense said this was unacceptable. The assailants’ parents trying to demand a settlement by going to the victim in person? That was no good. It was trespassing, and dragging the hotel into it with zero regard for consequences was beyond the pale.

But… was it really okay for even the assailants’ parents to end up in police custody?

At this point, it didn’t even feel like “settlement” was the topic anymore.

Not that I had any intention of agreeing to a settlement in the first place…

Still, the way they screamed earlier was insane.

If someone else had been in this room instead of me, things might’ve gotten even uglier.

Well, whatever.

It probably sucked for them that even the assailants’ parents got arrested, but it wasn’t my problem. They just self-destructed on their own. Sure, I had a feeling they’d try to pick a fight later, but all I had to do was not engage…

Thinking about it, living out of a hotel was kind of nice.

If this happened at home, I’d have to call the police, and it wasn’t like they’d rush over immediately. A hotel had staff who responded right away, and that was honestly amazing.

I’d worked part-time at a convenience store about seven years ago, and when I caught a shoplifter and called the police, the station was less than fifty meters away. And yet it still took twenty minutes for an officer to lazily ride over on a bicycle. I’d been furious.

…Anyway, that story was over. Old news.

The point was: hotel life sounded pretty good.

Maybe I should just switch to living in hotels altogether?

Yeah… the more I thought about it, the more it sounded like the better option.

If I had 180 million yen from that scratch ticket win, living in a hotel would be easy. I should think it over.

“Alright then…”

An adventurer the Adventurers’ Guild introduced to me might come by the inn today.

I guessed I’d log into DW for now…

I’d already had breakfast, and the weirdos had been taken away by the police.

Word that the assailants’ parents got arrested would spread fast in that circle, and they probably wouldn’t try anything for a while.

Besides, as long as I stayed in my room, it was fine.

And while I was logged into DW, I wouldn’t have to worry about any of it.

I lay back on the bed and muttered, “—Connect ‘Different World’,” then logged into the world of DW.

The moment I logged into a room at the inn “Drowsing Inn” that I’d squeezed out of “Land Shark Main Office”, I heard a knock at the door.

“Lord Kakeru. Forgive the intrusion while you are at rest. May I have a moment?”

“Yes, that’s fine. I’ll be right there.”

That timing was way too perfect.

I never would’ve expected an event to trigger the second I logged in.

When I opened the door, an elderly inn attendant and a tough-looking old guy were standing there.

“Uh… what can I help you with? And who is this…?”

When I asked, the inn staff looked troubled.

“Er, this gentleman is here because he wishes to be hired as security for the “Drowsing Inn”.”

“Huh? This guy?”

The man who wanted the job, with a face like a lion, broke into a grin.

“I’m Raynel Goodjob. Former S-rank adventurer. Pleasure. Now that I’m your inn’s security, leave it to me. I’ll clean up some punks like that Refrigerator Clan you made enemies of, no problem.”

The person the Adventurers’ Guild had recommended as security for the “Drowsing Inn” was a former S-rank adventurer.

As I stood there, dumbfounded, Raynel Goodjob grabbed my hand and pushed for a handshake.