I hardly felt ti pass while the construction for the new location was ongoing. Excitent and genuine joy at seeing a project progress were one hell of a drug to make you forget about everything else that was wrong with your life–I was loveless, stuck in legal proceedings that were frankly draining my sanity, and a goddamn ghost that no one could get rid of was harassing … But hey, my new restaurant that was going to be filled with cute clown girls was getting closer to becoming a thing! That was worth ignoring all the bad stuff, right…?
Honestly. I was getting increasingly dissatisfied with my love life. I genuinely wasn’t finding any man who ca even remotely close to what I sought, but I knew that my standards weren’t high enough to the point that only a handful of n could qualify. I knew that there were plenty of them out there–They just didn’t show up to try and seduce ! How in damnation was it possible that the n I had an interest in would also be the n who did not want anything to do with ?
Sure, I could be intimidating, but that alone couldn’t possibly be enough to discourage them… Was I just aiming for a kind of man who was into won completely different from ? What were the odds?
…While I was struggling on this front, the court case was still going on. It had been nearly a whole year at this point, and this piece of crap wasn’t making any progress. I had to give it to her, Eleanori was an excellent actress and could rival when it ca to pulling on the heartstrings of the jury… The jury had changed several tis as well. The case was taking so long and required so much ti that many people who had actual jobs to do would end up quitting, and this made the case even longer, as the new jury would need to get caught up to speed on the details.
It was just ridiculous at this point.
As for the ghost… I had honestly begun fading his existence out of my mind. Even when I spotted him, I would just subconsciously ignore his presence entirely. It seed to make him irrationally angry, but like the little coward that he was, he never did anything to . He truly was scared of getting close.
I guess he was aware of my ability to easily restrain spirits to eat them… Oh, I’m thinking nonsense again… This has been happening more and more, too. I randomly think or say things like they are facts when they clearly aren’t. I’m… I’m fairly certain that it is a sign of psychosis or sothing like that, but I couldn’t find any solution to the problem whatsoever.
Anyway. I would rather look at the upcoming sister location. The structure was being built rapidly. I was employing the best of the best to build a place that was solid. The materials being used were quite expensive, but I had so much money that I honestly couldn’t tell the difference in how this affected my funds… And since I had a constant flow of earnings, it felt like I essentially had infinite coins as long as I didn’t actively do everything in my power to spend them.
In any case, the construction of my new place was in parallel with the construction of the residential buildings. Thanks to the influx of people these cheap hos were going to bring, my business was pretty much guaranteed to be an instant hit by sheer proximity. I was planning on bringing the sa philosophy from the other restaurants, so there would be nus cheap enough even for commoners to be willing to co by often, and with so many of them who were going to be around? It was going to be great.
I’ll need to be very careful with the security, however. A newly opened place and a flood of people were a double-edged sword. If there were any problem, a mass of custors would quickly bring it to light. I needed to make sure everything would be safe and secure from the very mont the doors opened…
For now, though, my bed was calling . I closed the curtains as the dark spectre stared at through the window, and fell asleep like a rock, awakening at the first rays of sunlight as per usual.
The day was normal–Abnormally so, actually. It was normal in the actual sense of the word, not normal like what I had grown used to lately. The ghost did not show up at all, nothing ca to remind of the court case, and I was in good enough of a mood not to think about the fact that I was probably going to stay a single woman for a long ti… I took care of paperwork at the main location and eventually went down to see how things were going, and everything was just fine.
My employees were just as efficient and capable as I rembered them to be, the automatons were working as intended and performing on stage… They were actually singing a new song that I had added to their repertoire. There was a need for so freshness, after all. Playing the sa songs over and over again would grow tiring for the clients.
I breathed in the fresh air–The VS, or Vent System, might not seem like much, but its ability to make it seem like the air inside was just as fresh as the air outside was an important part of the restaurant. It made the place feel far less suffocating. Only our restaurants had access to such advanced ans to make the custor experience so enjoyable.
As I observed it all, I noticed Gigi walked by holding a mop.
“Did sothing happen?”
“The usual, a kid ate too quickly and then went to the play area, took the slide and…”
“Ah, a vomit incident…”
Everything was truly normal. Until I noticed soone enter the restaurant. Imdiately, I marked them as suspicious in my mind. Sothing about the way this man walked wasn’t right, and he wore a hat while looking downward, clearly trying to hide his face.
I cracked my knuckles. Paying close attention to him… I feel like I’ve seen him sowhere before. Is this not the sa guy who tried to take control of the Security Computer back then? He’s back again? That’s a good thing, actually. I can get so answers out of him.
My instincts told that he was on Eleanori’s payroll and was here to try to sabotage the restaurant. Either as purely a way to get back at , or to coerce with further threats of sabotage so that I would cough up the money she wanted… I felt like this guy didn’t really know what he was doing, however. He moved awkwardly, pretending to order sothing for a few minutes before trying to slip away into an employee-only zone.
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He did a good job evading my employees, showing a certain skill in terms of stealth, but I saw the whole thing from start to finish. He slithered into the maintenance area, where the automatons would be checked, cleaned, repaired, and tested for malfunctions. I casually followed after him.
The trespasser approached the storage room for spare parts… He pulled out a screwdriver from his pocket, trying to loosen so of the screws–It was… A pathetic attempt at sabotage. Literally any of my chanists would notice and fix the issue if they were to ever actually interact with this particular part.
I loudly cleared my throat, making the intruder jump up in fright as he quickly turned around.
He pointed the screwdriver at shakily.
“S-Stay back! Or I’ll stab you!”
“Shiver timbers! Co on, Buddy. Drop the screwdriver before you hurt yourself… Or should I remind you that under the defence laws, owners, employees, and animated properties are allowed to use deadly force to deal with a threat? Don’t worry, though. I won’t kill you. I’ll just break all of your limbs, unless you tell why you’re here, of course”
“Y-Y-You are an evil being, Nebulo! How dare you deprive a widow of what she not only deserves, but needs?!”
“Pardon? I think I didn’t quite hear you”
“You are just trying to keep everything to yourself! You were only after the money and businesses! Eleanori told everything!”
“...I guess I was right to suspect her, then… Do you have anything to say? What did she promise you? Heh… Who am I kidding? The way you speak about her is a dead giveaway. I doubt even she would sink low enough to let you do anything with her, Little Guy. You'd better find sothing else to lust after”
There is truly nothing more disgraceful than a man without self-respect like this.
“Shut up! I won’t listen to the words of a woman like you! Eleanori told the truth!”
“And what might this truth be, exactly? HER truth? Take this advice from : When soone says ‘his’ or ‘her’ truth, it usually just ans a lie”
I was feeling patient since today had been a good day, but this guy did not help his case. At all.
“She told that you were the reason your brother died!”
“...”
…
The intruder visibly paled, probably realising that he had said sothing he never should have said. He stumbled back deeper in the storage room until he eventually bumped into the very back of the room, where fully-assembled automatons were standing deactivated. Only their steel skeletons were present, and they lacked heads altogether.
The robots here all used the sa skeletal structure, but only had minor differences in the skull section.
I walked closer and grabbed a disembodied automaton arm.
“W-Wait! I am sorry! I didn’t an to say that!”
“It’s a bit too late to apologise. Make sure to struggle. Let’s make it last”
“Please, I-!”
He was suddenly cut off, and my eyes opened wide as he was grabbed by several of the headless, battery-less automatons behind him. They pressed onto his neck and took hold of his arm, quickly resulting in several sick crunches before dropping the intruder as a twitching ss. His neck was broken, but death was not imdiate. He was suffocating to death as the displaced vertebrae put intense pressure on his trachea.
He tried lifting one of his arms, but it had been snapped in several places–Despite the severe damage, not a drop of blood was drawn. The attack had been surgically brutal, and now, the automatons were back to their original positions. It was like they had never moved.
How the hell was this possible? They should be incapable of moving due to lacking a battery, not to ntion that even if they did have a battery, they weren’t equipped with anything else either, including the pieces that would give them their MI, or in other words, even if powered, they couldn’t have recognised an intruder, or even done more than move when prompted directly.
I was confused, but certainly not sorry.
I bent my knees, looking into the eyes of the intruder, watching as life slowly seeped from them.
“...Your fear is delicious, My Friend”
It did not take long before he was truly gone. His heartbeat stopped completely. He was nothing but an empty shell now. A re corpse… What am I going to do with this? A brutal death like this, even if he was an ard intruder, was going to bring bad press.
I searched his body, but apart from so more tools, a handful of coins, and so trash, there was nothing. I presud that he was a nobody, and that no one would ever realise he had gone missing, but just in case–I needed to cover my tracks.
I slung the dead body over my shoulder and headed to another part of the maintenance area, where various old things no longer in use were stocked in case they could be repurposed in the future. There, there was a big mascot costu. This one had been acquired by buying out a competitor that had gone bankrupt.
Unlike the outer shell of the automatons here, this one did not leave any part exposed when worn, so I shoved the corpse in it for now. I will co back for it later.
I told the day watcher that he was in luck today and could go ho early. I was never averse to giving rewards to my employees, so he didn’t find it weird at all and simply thanked .
Seems like he hadn’t seen what had happened on the CS. Good, it made things much easier as I wiped the footage and perford so complicated tricks to replace the missing parts with duplicated footage showing the empty maintenance area.
However, I couldn’t do the sa thing with what the caras had recorded at the entrance and main dining area. Replacing the footage would make it obvious if anyone dug even just a little bit into this.
Thankfully, Leton’s spirits must have truly been watching over . I knew exactly what to do and was able to do it in just over an hour.
I ‘edited’ the footage to remove the intruder, and even made it so the door opening wouldn’t be present from when he entered. I really did everything I possibly could to pretty much erase this man’s presence from the restaurant.
Alright. I’ll just need to do the sa thing when I bring the corpse out and clean the empty costu for anything incriminating which might have been left behind.
Then… Then I was going to have to do sothing about Eleanori. Outside of the courts of justice.
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