Chapter 18: The Nighttime Her Does Not Trust the Daytime Me

“…I hear the daytime me was in your care.”

The post-closing guild wrapped in silence. Illuminated by the dim light of the lamp, the girl had the exact same figure and appearance as the thief Roux, who had come in during the day in tears, saying, “I don’t know what my nighttime self is doing.”

However, the air she wore was completely different. If the daytime her was a friendly puppy, the girl before me now was a black panther with its vigilance completely bared.

I slowly placed the ledger I was holding onto the desk and turned to face her.

“…Roux, is it?”

“I’m Luna.”

The girl spoke in a short, terribly dry voice.

“Don’t lump me in with that daytime idiot.”

“Luna, then.”

Approaching the counter without a sound, Luna looked me up and down as if appraising me. Within that gaze, there was absolutely none of the dependency or affection the daytime Roux had shown. It was a cold, observant eye — one solely for discerning “friend or foe.”

“I hear that daytime idiot was here crying like a fool.”

“She wasn’t being a fool. She was seriously distressed.”

“How naive.”

Luna snorted and spat the words out.

“She’s full of openings. She trusts people too quickly. That idiot doesn’t understand in the slightest just how much trouble she invites by carelessly fooling around.”

“Trouble?”

“Yes.”

Luna crossed her arms and furrowed her brow in displeasure.

“The dagger that idiot placed on the desk during the day — because she was about to get swindled by an information broker in the back alleys, I ‘recovered’ it during the night as a warning.”

“I see.”

“Her boots were covered in mud because I went to the forest at night to search for the travel funds she dropped during the day. Even the increase and decrease of the silver coins is the result of me calculating and managing our living expenses.”

The answers to the inexplicable phenomena Roux had been terrified of were revealed one after another. They were all “cleanups” the nighttime Luna had performed to protect the daytime Roux — or rather, to protect their shared body.

“And yet, what does that idiot do? Even though I go out of my way to cover for her, she gets terrified all on her own thinking, ‘Maybe I’m doing dangerous jobs,’ and ends up crying to a receptionist she doesn’t even know.”

Luna’s tone quickened just a bit. Beneath her cold attitude, irritation and helpless dissatisfaction bled through.

“If I didn’t move at night, that idiot would have died in a back alley long ago. And despite that, she’s scared of the nighttime me. …From my perspective, that daytime idiot is far more of a threat. There’s no telling what kind of idiotic thing she’ll do next.”

“So, what do you want to do about the daytime her?”

When I asked quietly, Luna abruptly snapped her mouth shut.

“…What do I want to do, you ask?”

“If the daytime Roux is a nuisance, you could stay awake around the clock. But you aren’t doing that. You yield the daytime hours to her and wake only at night to do the cleanup. Why?”

“That’s…”

Luna averted her eyes slightly.

“Because one body cannot move for twenty-four hours. For me to rest, I have no choice but to leave the daytime to her.”

“Is that the only reason?”

“…Even if I come out during the day, I can’t smile well. Negotiating requests, getting along with companions… she handles all of that better. So I just leave it to her.”

Luna clicked her tongue in frustration.

“In short, I hate that the question of responsibility is left completely open.”

“Responsibility.”

“Yes. I pay off the debts that idiot racks up, and that idiot enjoys the fruits of what I do. Even though she possesses none of my memories, she lives wearing the same face as me. …In the end, which of us is supposed to take responsibility for this body?”

Luna’s question was terribly pressing.

The daytime Roux was terrified of not knowing what her nighttime self was doing. In contrast, the nighttime Luna was irritated by not knowing what her daytime self would do next, and was exhausted from being forced to shoulder all the responsibility alone.

During the day, I’m clung to and cried upon. At night, I’m met with cold eyes and a sharp tongue. It felt like the difficulty level of my consultation desk had skyrocketed, all because of one girl with two faces. Even the dissociative cases from my previous life hadn’t been split this cleanly down the middle between day and night.

“…Hey.”

Luna glared at me sharply.

“You told that daytime idiot, ‘Let’s figure it out together,’ didn’t you.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Then answer me. Which one do you think is the ‘real’ one — the daytime her, or the nighttime me?”

It was a testing gaze. Cut one off and let the other live. Or forcibly integrate them back into a single personality. Her face looked as though she was waiting for me to present that kind of “common solution.”

“I am a receptionist.”

“Huh?”

“I’m not a spirit medium, nor am I a high-ranking mage. Therefore, I have no intention of discussing which of you is the real one, or whose soul came first.”

“…What do you mean?”

“I’m saying there is absolutely no need to decide which of you is real in the first place.”

When I declared this clearly, Luna’s eyes widened faintly.

“I have no intention of dealing with only one of you. I will consult with the daytime Roux, and I will listen to the nighttime Luna’s stories.”

“…Are you an idiot?”

Luna spat out.

“That girl and I don’t even share memories, you know? Dealing with both of us is the pinnacle of inefficiency. It would be faster to just leave the useful one and erase the other, wouldn’t it?”

“There is no guarantee that the one left behind would be able to live happily if the other were erased.”

I tapped the ledger on the desk lightly.

“The daytime Roux is terrified because she doesn’t know about your cleanups. You are irritated because you don’t know what the daytime Roux will do next.”

“…”

“The biggest problem right now isn’t ‘which one is real.’ It’s the fact that there is absolutely no coordination between two people sharing a single body.”

I looked straight into Luna’s cold eyes.

“Therefore, what we need right now is to organize the practical work so that tomorrow doesn’t fall apart.”

Luna didn’t answer. She merely stared back at me, as if appraising my words.

Normally, one would treat the bright daytime Roux as the “pitiful victim” and the cold nighttime Luna as the “troublesome alternate personality.” However, just as I hadn’t made a fool of the daytime Roux, I didn’t deny the nighttime Luna’s claims, either. I accepted the reality of her labor — that she was “doing the cleanup” — as a practical, administrative problem.

Whether that conveyed itself to her or not. The tense air surrounding Luna loosened just a tiny bit.

“…And so?”

Luna raised her chin slightly.

“What exactly do you intend to do by ‘organizing the practical work’?”

“It’s simple.”

I took a brand new notebook from the desk drawer.

“If your memories disconnect between day and night, you just need to leave a record. First, let’s create a handover method between you and Roux.”

When I offered the notebook, Luna looked down at it with suspicion. A handover. In other words, a proposal treating herself and her daytime self as “cohabitants” of the same body — shift workers handing off to each other at the end of a rotation.

For a few seconds, Luna looked back and forth between the notebook and my face. Eventually, she let out a hmph through her nose and looked away, arms still crossed.

“…If you have no intention of choosing, I’ll listen to what comes next.”

Her voice remained cold, but there was a definitive shade of concession bleeding through.

The daytime thief does not trust her own night. The nighttime thief does not trust her daytime self.

A new client with completely opposite faces and double the troublemaking potential. My workload continues to increase, but it seemed I had at least succeeded in getting her to the negotiating table.