This House Has A Delicious Restaurant - Chapter 1 - Criminal Zerdan (1) - Part 5

“…You’re not sending the rescue signal through that necklace, are you?”

“…Yes, but I didn’t expect to be caught…”

Oh, if Obella were here right now, I’d like to grab him by the head. Sending such an incompetent person as a spy.

In the end, it was a step back. I felt the outside quiet down and realized it was evening.

I had been kidnapped in the afternoon…

“Someone might come again before nightfall. It would be better to use your ability to send the rescue signal then.”

“Understood…”

“Don’t worry. There’s still hope.”

“Yes…”

For some reason, I found myself comforting her, even though she looked somewhat gloomy. To make things easier, I asked for her name, and she said it was Diswen.

“I’m Moa Ablon. Let’s work together until we escape from here.”

“Yes, let’s do our best. I’ll make sure we escape safely!”

“It might be a good idea to lower your voice a bit.”

“Yes…”

Her previously confident demeanor deflated. While I felt a bit harsh for being cold to someone offering help, I decided not to get too close to her. After all, I’d already realized that Diswen was almost certainly a dead weight, and my goal was to seduce Zerdan to escape this place safely.

It would be great to win his heart, too, but I’m not counting on that. For now, I’ll just focus on escaping, then save the game and maybe turn it off afterward.

Oh, but if Zerdan shows up, should I still seduce him in front of Diswen?

After pondering for a bit, I decided it didn’t matter.

She’s likely going to die soon anyway, so who cares if she sees a bit?

Honestly, I had no more expectations from Diswen at this point.

* * *

“Can you use your ability on ants?”

“I’ve never tried… It might be possible, but they might be too unintelligent for it to work.”

“Have you tried it on any intelligent creatures?”

“Uh… no.”

Being tied up and left alone was boring, so I decided to chat with Diswen. Her answers weren’t very satisfying, but I did learn something.

When she tried using her ability on a spider in the corner of the ceiling, it worked, but not as effectively as it did on humans.

Simple commands like moving left or right were possible, but more complex instructions like going through the door to scout the surroundings didn’t work.

Of course, even if the spider could scout, there was no way to relay that information back to us, and her ability wouldn’t work once it was out of her sight. This ability might be more useless than I thought…

Diswen seemed to notice my thoughts from my expression and looked downcast.

“Talking with you makes me feel like my ability is pretty worthless.”

“Even the best abilities need to be understood and used properly to be effective. Your ability is great, Diswen. It just needs more research to increase its usefulness.”

“Thank you. I never thought of using it on anything other than people. Once we get out of here, I’ll do some research! It would be great if someone like you could be part of our team, though. That’s a shame.”

Diswen muttered sincerely, and I could only smile at her.

Well, even if Obella came to recruit me personally, I wouldn’t want to join.

“Are all your comrades special ability users?”

“All the main members except one have abilities. It’s not a big organization like this one, just a group of like-minded people or followers of our leader.”

“Diswen, do you follow your leader?”

“At first, I wanted to cooperate with our leader’s goals. My brother was killed by this organization.”

Her face darkened as she stared at the floor. I stayed silent, observing her for a moment.

Even though Zerdan is positioned as a secondary male lead and is very popular and handsome, he is a murderer. And none of his subordinates have any qualms about killing. That’s why I knew Obella was gathering like-minded people to stop this criminal organization.

These like-minded people… they might be victims.

“I shouldn’t have brought this up.”

“No, it’s fine. I know you didn’t mean it badly… My brother was killed about two years ago, but we haven’t found his body yet. I want to get revenge and find his body.”

“I’ll help you if I can.”

“Thank you. But with rumors of human experiments, I don’t know if we’ll ever find him.”

Diswen seemed to have half given up on finding her brother’s body.

It was a sad story, but I agreed with her. It was laughable to think that this place would preserve the body of someone they killed.

If only we could see outside.

I looked around the room again and suddenly realized something.

Maybe we can use this.

As expected, another person visited us in the evening to check on our condition. Unlike the men I had seen before, this one seemed a bit clumsy.

He was startled to see Diswen and me awake but checked to see if the ropes holding us to the chairs were still intact.

“Excuse me.”

“Yes?”

Diswen called out to the man, who answered nervously. She gave him a pretty smile.

“I need to use the restroom, but there isn’t one here. Could I use the facilities?”

As their eyes met, I could see his pupils slowly dilate.

Good, her ability works.

Diswen glanced at me and nodded slightly. Following my suggestion, she used her power to make the man untie her ropes. He then led her to the restroom with a dazed expression.

I had two reasons for sending Diswen out: primarily to send a rescue signal without drawing attention, and secondly, to scout the situation outside.

The room was quiet once Diswen left. I decided to use this time to understand and experiment with my newly acquired ability.

My ability, laughably, was to make body hair stand on end.

Fortunately, it seemed to work on me as well. As soon as I used it, I felt my body hair stand on end.

There didn’t seem to be any particular strain or limitation when using the ability.

I wondered how long I could hold out while maintaining my ability. Given that my condition wasn’t bad, I thought I could last longer than expected.

“Is it too much to use this for attack?”

Whether it was the sheer number of hairs or the fact that they were heavy as opposed to fluffy, it didn’t take as much effort as I thought it would.

I thought it would be useful for attack if I could make it stand up like a hedgehog, even if it looked ugly.

This time, I focused on the hair around my g*nitals. Then, I felt the hair stand up with enough force to lift my clothes slightly.

I’d have to touch it to be sure, but it seemed easier to use this ability than with my hair.

…Should I seduce Zerdan with my body and then pierce his lower abdomen with my hair right before putting it in?

I shook my head, dismissing the useless thought.

Let’s consider that a last resort. It’s not very dignified.

But other than the hair around my g*nitals, there wasn’t any place that seemed particularly useful. The fine hair on my body wasn’t sharp enough even when I made it stand up.

I also tried to cut the rope tied around my hands, but the existing hair was too weak for that. If it had been possible, I would have untied the rope and escaped.

“Truly useless…”