‘Clop, clop.’
The mail carriage gradually slowed down.
Crowds of people and familiar signboards came into view.
I had returned to Crossburn Street in the Imperial Capital.
“Whoa! We’re finally here!”
Lure stretched her arms and shouted joyfully.
“How long did it take? Nine days?”
It seemed Bassanio’s boast about the speed of the mail carriage wasn’t a lie.
Even though we traveled the entire way by carriage without a train, we arrived in the capital in only ten days.
It was worth the struggle of being squeezed between mailbags in the rattling carriage.
“Technically, it was eight and a half days. We left in the evening and arrived in the morning.”
“That’s true.”
I opened my pocket watch, and it was 11:00 AM.
“At this hour, it wouldn’t be too rude to visit someone.”
“Eh? Where are you planning to go as soon as we arrive?”
Lure made a face of pure disgust.
“We couldn’t even straighten our backs in that carriage. If I were you, Master, I’d go straight home and roll around for at least half a day.”
“You do that. You’ve worked hard.”
I might have been a bit of a harsh boss, but I wasn’t so cold-blooded that I’d tell someone to start work immediately upon returning from a long business trip just because it was still morning.
“I think I’ll go meet the people who sent me telegrams to loosen up my stiff body.”
“Aha. You mean Chairman Peterson and Detective Baron?”
“Exactly.”
While I was in the Northern Region, I received two telegrams.
One was from my former client, Chairman Peterson.
The other was from Detective Baron, an temporary partner I was investigating a case with.
“Then who will you meet first? Chairman Peterson? Or Detective Baron?”
“Well…”
I fell into thought for a moment.
‘Chairman Peterson wrote in his telegram that he had prepared a reward I would find satisfactory.’
Since I only needed to receive the payment, it wouldn’t take very long. I was also quite curious about what kind of reward the chairman had prepared.
On the other hand, I still didn’t understand what Detective Baron’s telegram meant.
‘He said he harvested a large pumpkin… What on earth does that mean?’
I didn’t know the meaning, but I had a feeling the conversation would be long.
Just as my heart was leaning toward Chairman Peterson…
“Whoa! It’s an ugly mister!”
A young voice drifted in through the carriage window.
‘How rude. I don’t know who they’re talking to, but that ugly mister’s feelings are going to be hurt.’
“It’s true! Ugly mister!”
“Hey guys! There’s an ugly mister over here! Everyone, come quick!”
But something was strange. Why… were the children’s voices getting closer?
‘…Is our coachman really that ugly?’
It couldn’t be me.
No way. There was no way it was me, right?
However, the voices continued to approach.
“Waaaah! Ugly mister!”
Children gathered in a bunch under the carriage window.
Each of them wore a colorful mask.
“Ugly mister! Give us candy!”
“Mister! I want snacks! I’m really good at giving compliments!”
“No cookies? Cookies?”
What was this situation?
A pack of tiny bandits hiding their faces behind masks?
While I was flustered and unable to keep up with the situation, Lure, who was beside me, also looked out the window and gasped in surprise.
However, her surprise was in a slightly different direction than mine.
“Oh my goodness! I can’t believe today is the *Pharmakos* festival! I was so busy I completely forgot. What should we do, Master? We obviously don’t have masks, and do we have any snacks?”
“Masks? Snacks? Uh, I have neither for now.”
As I answered dazed, the children who overheard began to grumble.
“What! You don’t have any snacks, mister?”
“Guys! The ugly mister doesn’t have any snacks!”
“This is bad! This mister is even uglier than my house’s pumpkin! He’s going to get caught by a ghost!”
“Yeah! The mister is super ugly!”
“He’s as tall as a beanpole! And his expression is weird!”
“He’s u-gly! He’s u-gly!”
‘So…’
I tried to use my brain.
One: Children in costumes demand snacks. Two: If they don’t get any, they scare you by saying a ghost will take you. Finally: This Pharma-something festival Lure mentioned.
Clues began to assemble in my head.
‘So, it’s something like Halloween?’
A festival where you get teased for being ugly if you don’t give out snacks? And later, you even get taken by a ghost for the crime of being ugly?
What kind of depressing festival was that?
‘Is this some kind of marketing tactic by a snack company in this world too?’
Just as I was drowning in suspicion…
“You brats!”
The coachman yelled at the children.
“Do you think ghosts only haunt people with ugly faces? Ghosts haunt people with ugly hearts too! Any kids playing mean tricks just because they didn’t get snacks should watch out, or they’ll be burned instead of a pumpkin!”
“Che!”
“No snacks! So stingy!”
The children grumbled and soon swarmed away. Only then could I finally breathe a sigh of relief.
“So, what is it? That Pharma-thing?”
“Pardon?”
At my question, Lure’s eyes widened in surprise.
“You don’t know the *Pharmakos* festival?”
“My hometown is a bit far away… So what is it?”
“Hmm, originally *Pharmakos* means ‘scapegoat’.”
“A scapegoat festival? That sounds rather gruesome.”
“There are indeed some gruesome aspects to it.”
According to Lure’s subsequent explanation, this festival originated from an ancient ritual.
In ancient times, this region used to select the ugliest person every year at the end of the year.
They were treated like a king for a day, and then driven out of the village once the sun went down.
“The category for an ugly person was very broad. People with congenital deformities, those with genetic diseases, those who committed crimes and felt no guilt, or those with severely low intelligence. Or, just people who were plain ugly. They would pick the most severely ugly among them.”
“So they were kicking out people who were detrimental to the community.”
“Yes. And they believed the exiled person would take away all the village’s bad luck. Back then, they thought evil spirits that brought misfortune loved hideous people.”
Perhaps at the time, it was a procedure to keep a small community safe.
However, as times changed, people gradually began to question this cruel festival.
Still, they couldn’t easily stop the event.
Banishing the year’s bad luck was considered a very important ritual.
“That was when some genius thought of a way. A way to sacrifice a pumpkin instead of a person.”
Now, as the end of the year approached, every household would bring an old pumpkin and carve a face into it.
The more hideous it was, the better.
Buckteeth, snaggleteeth, a hawk nose, or a snub nose. Anything was fine.
They would use their full imagination to create the most ridiculous and ugly face possible.
And on the night the festival ended, the ugly pumpkin would be burned along with the evil spirits, bearing all the year’s misfortune.
“But to do that, you have to trick the evil spirits. They have to believe the pumpkin is a real person. So, everyone wears animal masks to pretend they aren’t human.”
“Hmm, I see.”
I thought it was strange that the children’s masks were mostly in the shapes of animals. But there was something I still didn’t understand from that explanation alone.
“Then what about the people not wearing masks?”
Among the people walking the streets, there seemed to be quite a few bare faces. Every single child wore a mask, but the adults did not.
“They’re people the evil spirits might attach themselves to if they stay still! That’s why the children ask for snacks. The children receive snacks, and in exchange, they diligently praise the bare-faced person as being handsome or pretty. That way, the evil spirits won’t attach to them.”
“So that’s why they were making such a fuss saying I was ugly? They’d call me handsome if I gave them snacks, but since I didn’t, they got cranky and called me ugly.”
What wicked little brats.
“Fine. I understand everything. Just one last thing.”
“What is it?”
“Does the evil spirit distinguish gender too?”
“Huh? Why would it?”
“Then why did they only scream about me being ugly? The coachman and you are both bare-faced too!”
When I appealed my sense of injustice, Lure burst into laughter as if it were the funniest thing in the world.
“They don’t usually mess with the coachman. This event was originally about exiling the ugly people of the village, right? So people from outside the village don’t count. And the reason they didn’t call me ugly is…”
Lure gave an annoying, cheeky smile.
“Because I’m standing next to you, Detective. Think about it. If two people with bare faces are walking together, who would the evil spirit attach to?”
“…The uglier one?”
“Correct!”
I will not forgive you, brats!
“So, there are three ways to enjoy the *Pharmakos* festival. Either enjoy the costumes by wearing a mask, enjoy the shower of praise from children with pockets full of snacks, or walk around with a friend and enjoy watching who the children target.”
As she spoke with a beaming grin, Lure looked like someone already enjoying the festival to its fullest.
It seemed the fatigue of the trip had completely vanished for her.
“…I’ve decided on my destination, Lure.”
To be honest, I couldn’t be sure about Chairman Peterson.
I didn’t want to admit it, but that round face of his had its own kind of cuteness. Children naturally liked faces that looked like cartoon characters.
To be certain, it had to be Detective Baron.
“I suddenly miss the detective very much today.”
Lure laughed as if she understood.
***
After getting off the carriage in front of the post office, I parted ways with Lure and headed to the police station.
However, the story I heard at the police station was different from my expectations.
“Detective Baron? That guy isn’t here.”
“Is he on patrol again?”
I frowned and asked the officer in front of me.
I knew Detective Baron was the black sheep of the police station, but wasn’t this a bit much? Sending him on patrol on a day like this, of all days!
‘That’s too cruel! Especially to Detective Baron!’
But the answer that came back was unexpected.
“That guy has been absent without leave for ten days already. Tsk, if he was going to be like this, he should have just resigned.”
“What did you say?”
Detective Baron was absent without leave?
‘That shouldn’t be possible.’
Wasn’t he a man whose lingering attachment to being a police officer was overflowing? He was someone who stubbornly endured even while being so disregarded at the station.
There was no way he would stop showing up to the police station without a word…
‘Could something have happened to him?’
“Mr. Hayes!”
Just then, I heard a voice I had heard once before from behind.
“You are… Mr. Charles?”
“It’s Charlie!”
A hollow-faced police officer was looking at me with tears in his eyes.
‘Right, the one who said he respected Detective Baron…’
He was the officer who had investigated the Taylor John case with us.
“Uwaaaa! Mr. Hayes! I really missed you!”
Charlie clung to me, tears and snot streaming down his face.
“It’s a disaster! Detective Baron has been missing for ten days already!”
Missing for ten days?
‘If it was ten days ago… isn’t that around the time I received the telegram from the detective?’
“Please calm down for now, Mr. Charlie. Could you explain in more detail?”
“Of course! If it’s you, Mr. Hayes, you might be able to find out what on earth happened to the detective!”
Charlie sniffled and said to me.
“First, come this way. I’ll explain in a quiet place.”
I followed Charlie, moving to another spot.
A chilling sense of anxiety about the detective’s disappearance washed over me.