Chapter Four: The Detective’s Commissioned Case

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“Since there’s a recent goal, the plan now is to conduct a more thorough search of the room—to look for currency, find a city map, and examine the books. Through the written word, I will learn about this world, investigate its era, religious customs, and cautiously adapt to this place. Should I stay for three months to help the detective finish his task, and then decide what to do next once I understand everything?”

Shade summarized the current situation, accepting the fact that the detective was dead. The worst part of this world was not its mysteries, but the complete absence of the original owner’s memories, leaving Shade utterly ignorant of this world. Apart from that, the situation was relatively manageable.

Rising to his feet, Shade headed toward the washroom.

The gas lamp there was faulty, and even at full power, it emitted only a faint glow.

Looking into the mirror within this dim light, he saw a man with dull golden hair, dark brown eyes, unmistakably Western features, about twenty years old, with an expression tinged with nervousness and standing around 1.8 meters tall.

Since he had once been a vagrant, his looks were not particularly striking, but by Shade’s own aesthetic standards, he was still quite decent.

“This is me. Don’t be scared anymore by the stranger in the mirror.”

He carefully reminded himself internally but didn’t step away immediately. Instead, after cautiously glancing around, he whispered softly:

“Hey, are you still there?”

He tried to communicate again with the murmuring woman’s voice to ascertain what—or who—she was. But after a long silence, there was no response, and he had to accept reality and give up for the time being.

Next was the search for money. Earlier, when looking through the kitchen, he found no food, and this body was clearly hungry. So he had to momentarily set aside other worries and find money to eat.

But another surprise came. About half an hour later, Shade sat back on the sofa bathed in warm yellow light, his expression one of indescribable panic.

In his hand was a single banknote marked with the number 10. The bill was worn and stained, smaller than the cards in the diary. The front bore a portrait, while the back displayed the royal crest of the Kingdom of Delarion, where he currently was.

He had searched every corner of the house, rifled through all the books and documents, emptied every pocket in the wardrobe, and yet this single bill—seemingly slipped into a crack behind the bookshelf—was all he found.

“Could it be that prices in this world are so special that this one bill can sustain me for three months?”

Though he tried to reassure himself with this joke, he knew deep down it was impossible.

“This is bad.”

He leaned back against the sofa, closed his eyes, and stared up at the white ceiling.

“Mr. Hamilton, where on earth did you hide the money? I promised to stay, you wouldn’t leave me penniless, would you...?”

Despite the fear, he genuinely wished he could catch up to that horse-drawn carriage carrying the coffin, shake the corpse inside awake, and demand answers.

If the language was incomprehensible, a bit of cleverness could keep one alive; if the body was handicapped, courage could still ensure survival. But without money, it was utterly impossible.

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Mr. Spike Hamilton clearly never cooked at home; the kitchen lacked even a single vegetable leaf, so there was no question of rat carcasses. Shade had no idea when this body last ate, but it was obvious he needed food now.

Given human limits, Shade had to find money immediately or find a way to earn it, or else come sunset, he might be forced to scour alleys behind restaurants for scraps in garbage bins.

“No, that can’t happen.”

He looked at the solitary banknote in his hand with a grim expression, his face as dark as the sky outside.

“Though I don’t know the denomination, it’s still money. Plus the [Sun 3] card from the diary—that should keep me alive. But since I can’t find money for now, I must consider long-term ways to earn.”

The knowledge of a traveler might be valuable, but monetizing it in an unfamiliar place was both troublesome and dangerous, especially in a world imbued with mysterious powers.

He remembered this was a detective agency, and Mr. Hamilton had said before he died that he had left some relatively safe tasks behind, so that “someone not very bright” like Shade could maintain the detective’s identity and keep the agency running.

Since he hadn’t found the deceased detective’s money, he had to prepare for the worst and think carefully about future means of livelihood.

“Come to think of it, Mr. Hamilton knew the original Shade wasn’t very intelligent, so he must have left simple tasks to keep the agency operational. Maybe he’s already solved those cases and I just need to collect payment! Though this world has mysteries, ordinary life is still the mainstay.”

Shade suddenly had an idea. He stood up and took the diary from the shadowy bedside table, then gathered the detective’s relics—account books, memos, and work logs—from the study. Although no money was found earlier, these items were all there.

Detective Spike Hamilton was extremely methodical and meticulous. Though Shade had no background in accounting or business management, he was moved by the detailed records of the agency’s operations. Mainly, Shade was moved because the unsolved cases were all very simple and mostly completed.

“Find Miss White’s runaway sister, tail Mr. Lawrence’s mistress, search for the lost orange cat Miya, inquire about a doctor who treats eye diseases... they all look easy and not very dangerous. Oh, Mr. Hamilton already handled most of them. If I stay to manage this place, thoroughly finishing one case in two or three weeks would be enough to keep the agency running.”

Shade flipped through Hamilton’s handwritten reports, summarizing. But for now, he didn’t need to run the agency long-term—he just needed to get some money to survive short-term.

Comparing the difficulty, payment methods, and amounts of the four remaining cases, Shade decided to start with the commission to “tail Mr. Lawrence’s mistress.”

From the report, detective Hamilton had been tailing the case for months but recently stopped due to poor health. The report could be handed over to the client to settle remaining payment, but Hamilton left a note for Shade, written in simple words for his limited literacy.

The note said that to complete the commission, it was best to submit a recent record to get a slightly higher payment and avoid the employer’s suspicion.

In other words, Shade only needed to tail the mistress once more to complete the commission. While not perfect, it would satisfy the employer—Mr. Lawrence’s wife—and secure the remaining commission payment of 1 pound 4 shillings, out of the total 1 pound 7 shillings.

According to the detective’s notes, this was a considerable sum.

He chose this commission not only because of the pay but because Hamilton had handled many such marital infidelity cases—they were the simplest and least problematic to hand over. Spike Hamilton wasn’t a famous detective but was very skilled in infidelity investigations.

Shade did not want to stay in this creepy, recently vacated house, drinking cold water and eating scraps of paper for hunger, so he prepared to start the investigation, aiming to submit the report before dusk.

“No problem. First get the money from this commission, then slowly unravel the secrets of the deceased detective and find out the source of the voices in my head. Everything will get better!”

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He encouraged himself silently. First, he found a city map. Combining Hamilton’s relics and the calendar on the wall, he inferred the likely location of the mistress named “Mrs. Lassoa.” These were simple tasks, but the hardest step was to locate his current position on the Tobesk City map.

The detective agency’s Tobesk City map had many annotations left by the previous detective, including the taverns he frequented for information and the black market spots for trading “sensitive goods.”

However, the original detective never marked his own home on the map. Fortunately, while searching through the files, Shade found a past tracking record with the route of an operation, confirming that this apartment was at No. 6, Saint Duran Square, in the city center of Tobesk.

“Thanks to Detective Spike Hamilton’s meticulous records... this is... a house right next to the central city square, hmm? What must the property price be?”

Shade was surprised. Just two streets from Saint Duran Square, he found a palace complex called “Yodel Palace.”

From a crumpled newspaper, between the front-page news of the city’s third round of steam pipe renovations and the third-page report on the collapse of the ancient Karas Mountain Tower, the second page mentioned that Yodel Palace was the residence of the Delarion Kingdom’s royal family.

Shade, who had never owned a home in his original world, suddenly felt his heart race. The panic and tension were momentarily replaced by a burst of excitement.

He murmured to himself, looking at the documents in hand:

“In other words, the place I’m in is the capital city of one of the two great kingdoms of this world—the Kingdom of Delarion—and I’m living in an apartment beside the central square... I actually have a house like this, and yet I’m worried about starving to death?”

The tight grip on his emotions suddenly eased, but a house wasn’t something that could be turned into cash immediately. He hadn’t abandoned Hamilton’s three-month commission either. He’d secure his footing first and then consider his next moves.

At least a genuine smile replaced the tense expression on his face. With a property in such a prime location, there was no need to worry about the future...

The smile faded gradually as Shade realized he hadn’t found any deed or title documents, not even a rental contract.

“Could this apartment be rented?”

The more he thought about it, the more plausible this became. If he could afford such a location, why run a detective agency? Just collecting rent would be enough to support himself. Even if the detective’s business wasn’t purely for profit, the interior decoration didn’t seem like it belonged to Hamilton himself.

“In other words, I might have to pay an unknown amount of rent every month?”

Shade drew this astonishing conclusion and glanced again at the calendar hanging on the living room wall.

It was now the third week of June, known as the Month of Sunshine, Saturday. If rent were to be paid, it would most likely be due at the beginning of every month.

“This world also uses the twelve-month system, and the dates are similar to before... Maybe I should just run—pack my clothes, drag my suitcase, carry a bucket, and escape. Start this mysterious world journey as a vagrant... Staying here without income, Hamilton might even have left debts I don’t know about.”