I Clean Gods to Pay the Rent

0007 Anomaly

    Matches the job description... wait a second — did I ever actually ask what the Oddity Cleanup Bureau's job description was?

    As if someone had wiped the condensation from a pane of glass, or drawn back the masking curtain of a theater, the "job description" he'd inexplicably forgotten eerily broke through the red-haired woman's blockade of smiles and surfaced from the depths of Cassius's mind.

    Otherworld demons out to scavenge souls, maddened evil bells scheming to make their will descend, radical gods preparing to seize control of the world, special weirdness born of human obsession, undying wraiths escaped from the normal order of time... ugh...

    A dense crop of sweat beads broke out across Cassius's face almost instantly, and with every item of the job description the red-haired woman had described that he brought to mind, the sweat thickened by another degree.

    Some near-instinctive intuition kept firing warnings at Cassius: that gorgeous-but-dangerous red-haired woman was, in all likelihood, not just toying with him...

    And just as Cassius was desperately recalling the Oddity Cleanup Bureau's job description, trying to gauge exactly how dangerous that "runaway Contaminated" was, Mira — her expression equally uneasy — was wheeled over by two nurses.

    "Cass?"

    At the sight of Cassius inside the ICU, the pale-faced girl seemed to find her footing at last; her taut expression unconsciously eased a touch, and then, urgency written all over her face, she said:

    "Cough... I think they've got the wrong patient! Cough cough... There's no way our family can afford the ICU, but no matter how I tried to explain, they just wouldn't... cough cough cough... Cass! Hurry, you go talk to them for me! We... cough cough cough cough..."

    "Relax — they didn't get anyone wrong!"

    Hearing Mira's heart-rending coughing, Cassius — himself in a cold sweat — hurriedly rose, crossed the room in two strides, and helped the two nurses maneuver his struggling sister onto the bed, then comforted her gently:

    "The job I went looking for yesterday came through. I'm an incident handler under the Police Department now — I get a yearly reimbursement allowance from the Medical Bureau, so it won't cost the family anything!"

    The job came through? And it sounds like he's a public servant of the Kingdom?

    At those words, Mira couldn't help brightening; a flush of excited color suddenly rose on her pale cheeks, her eyes brimming with delight as if she wanted to say something.

    But the very next second it dawned on her: with her brother's present circumstances, the odds of landing a good job were slim to none — yet the hospital's attitude couldn't be faked either, so...

    "Cass... you have to tell me the truth!"

    From somewhere she found the strength: the ghost-pale girl gripped the bedrail, forced her upper body upright, and glared at Cassius as she burst out:

    "Did you... cough cough... did you take some dangerous job to pay for my treatment? You... you... cough cough cough cough!"

    "It's not dangerous, it's not! I'm perfectly safe!"

    "Liar!"

    Cassius's explanation only made the pale girl more frantic; covering her mouth as she coughed, she clutched the rail and snapped:

    "If you hadn't taken one of those deadly jobs, then where... cough cough... where would the money for the ICU come from... cough cough cough cough..."

    "In your condition, you shouldn't be talking right now!"

    Holding Mira's shoulders with both hands and pressing his coughing, flushed-red sister firmly back onto the bed, Cassius hurried to explain:

    "This job of mine really isn't dangerous. As for why the benefits are so good — mostly it's that there are no holidays, we're on call all year round, we have to be on the scene the instant anything happens, and the work itself is extremely hard."

    He took out his "Mother Scarab certificate," unfolded it, flashed the "Level-3 Incident Handler" title — and then, with a perfectly straight face, began spinning whatever came into his head:

    "See the job title? Incident handler! Your brother's job sits in the Oddity Cleanup Bureau under the Police Department — day to day we mainly... um... mainly handle the surveying and cleanup of homicides and accidents and the like.

    "Say we get a serial dismemberment case, or some big traffic pileup — I'm the one who goes in to clean up the scene afterwards, all that blood-and-gore mess, the kind that would make a normal person puke at one glance!

    "The work's tiring, filthy, and creepy, and there've never been many takers, so the pay and perks are excellent... Feeling easier about it now?"

    The Oddity Cleanup Bureau? Cleaning up crime scenes?

    After hearing her brother's explanation, the pale girl hesitated, then said, half believing:

    "Really?"

    "Really!"

    Not wanting to tell her he'd joined a mysterious department where he could drop dead at any moment, Cassius raised his right hand, face full of conviction, and swore up and down:

    "If your brother's lying to you, then I'll stay a bachelor all my life and never, ever find—"

    "Cass! You cough cough... don't you dare say that!"

    She pinched Cassius's arm hard, forcing him to swallow the back half of that sentence, and the thin, worry-lined girl finally let her heart settle.

    Handling gory crime scenes wasn't much of a job either, but it beat hauling at the smelting furnaces down the mines or selling yourself off as a drug-trial guinea pig by a long way — and with the family in its current state, what was there left to be picky about?

    True, it fell under the rather dangerous Police Department, but his actual department was the Oddity Cleanup Bureau — going by the name, it sounded about the same as the Department of Roads' Public Sanitation Bureau, so it was probably another back-office post. Apart from being dirty, exhausting, and creepy, her brother most likely wouldn't run into any real danger. It was just that...

    It's all my fault for dragging you down...

    After biting down hard on her bloodless lips, Mira clasped Cassius's hand and, head slightly bowed, said with a face full of guilt:

    "Cass, once we're back at Slow Fuse Lane, if anyone asks what you do, just say you work at the Police Department. The dismemberments... the actual details of the work — better not to tell anyone else."

    "Huh? Why?"

    "Because you still have to get married someday!"

    Clutching her brother's hand, aching for him, the thin girl said, worry lining her voice:

    "Cleaning up dismembered bodies and such — there's no shame in earning your own keep, but it's still a little... If word of your actual job got out, you'd probably never land anyone from a good family..."

    "..."

    Looking at his sister — seriously ill in the most literal sense, yet still fretting over how he was supposed to get married — Cassius's mouth twisted, speechless.

    Oh, come off it! Someone like me, getting married?

    With the Oddity Cleanup Bureau's killer job description, run into any single one of those things and I'm probably done for — so instead of wondering who'd ever marry me, I'd better first work out who'd marry what's left of me...

    "Mm-hm, I'm not dumb, I definitely won't tell."

    Given that he could drop dead at any moment, and to avoid wrecking anyone else's life, Cassius had long since given up any thought of marriage and family — though there was no need to tell Mira that.

    Watching his sister, who had clearly taken the matter to heart, Cassius couldn't help smiling and promised:

    "As for my marriage, quit worrying. When the time comes to settle down, your brother will go out and sweet-talk the very best sister-in-law there is and bring her back for you."

    Having soothed his sister with a few words, Cassius — the "runaway Contaminated" still weighing on his mind — took a deep breath, looked over at the nurses, and asked first:

    "Excuse me — that... rather generously proportioned doctor? Didn't he come along?"

    "The chief? He'd meant to come along originally."

    At Cassius's question, the young nurse — who'd been briefed by the chubby chief well beforehand — immediately explained, looking apologetic:

    "But we'd only made it halfway when the hospital's emergency bell went off, and then a huge batch of critically ill patients was brought in — some public emergency must have broken out.

    "Under hospital rules, whenever that happens, every physician of chief-of-department rank or above has to report in, so the chief had no choice but to rush over ahead of us...

    "But please rest easy — before he left, the chief gave explicit instructions that your sister's illness will absolutely get the very best treatment!"

    A public emergency... it couldn't have something to do with that "runaway Contaminated," could it?

    After a moment's recall of the Oddity Cleanup Bureau's job description — one that could only be described as "insane" — Cassius's expression tightened at once, and his instinct was to grab Mira and run, before his sister could get swept into the danger too.

    But one look at the IV line in Mira's arm and her terribly frail complexion, and Cassius couldn't help hesitating. He pulled one of the nurses out of the room and asked quietly in the corridor:

    "How's my sister doing right now? Can I stop the IV and take her home for a while?"

    "That's... probably best not to?"

    The nurse said, looking a little stuck:

    "The chief knew you'd ask about her condition, so just now he made a point of filling us in on your sister's situation.

    "Because your sister stopped her medication without authorization for two months, three-quarters of her right lung has already been destroyed by the alchemical waste fumes, and her left lung is badly damaged too — it's only continuous intravenous cell supplements that have barely stabilized her condition.

    "If you stop her treatment and take her home now, then should therapy be delayed, they may well have to remove her entire right lung. Not only would her life expectancy be slashed, but for the rest of her life even the slightest exertion would... sir? Where are you going?"

    "I'm going home to grab some things! You go back to the room and look after her — whatever happens out there, don't come out!"