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The request may be written with an impersonal tone, but based on the hefty reward offered, one can surmise that the former must be a noble who wants to help their family―or themselves―regardless of the cost. Meanwhile, the cheaper one could be from a commoner frantically scraping together whatever money they can offer.

Based on this, a helplessly kind person may elect to choose the former―if not both requests. Though if they chose both, they’d likely get into trouble later on.

『Well, there’s no need to accept this―』

Just as I was speaking to Ciel, 「You there,」 someone suddenly talked to us. Turning to the origin of the voice, I see a robustly built woman wearing a commoner’s attire holding a listless young boy’s hand.
No matter how you look at it, the boy looks sick, so why bring him along? This is going to be troublesome. Sighing to myself, the woman attempts to approach Ciel.

Mia came in between us, asking, 「What is your business?」 and the woman argued, 「I’m speaking to that girl.」
Mia unfalteringly responded, 「In that case, I will relay your message,」 and it seems like the woman gave up as she began speaking.

「That request; the girl has been staring at it, so she must have the medical herb. I’m begging you here, would you accept my request instead?」
「The medical herb?」

Mia has no idea that we were looking at an A-rank request, nor does she know what medical herb the woman was talking about. That’s why her response is not wrong by any means, nor do I consider this a major mistake on her part.
Ideally, Mia would ask Ail―Ciel―if she knows about the said herb, to which Ail would deny with some made-up excuse, ending the conversation.

In fact, Mia turned to us, as if to ask something.
However, the woman continued before Mia could speak a word.

「I know that the reward isn’t that much, but this is all our family can muster. If we had more time, we might be able to scrounge a bit more money. But they said that my child doesn’t have long to live.
Look, he’s in so much pain… He’s such a good boy, you know? Always working hard with a smile for our sake…」

The woman was intoxicated by her own story, and I’m already all fed up. Looking around, a third of the people seemed sympathetic to the woman, while another third didn’t care, and the remaining third were annoyed just like me.
The Hunter Guild staff seem to be observing for now. They probably want to avoid needless trouble with the client, which careless intervention could bring.
At the end of the day, the Hunter Guild can’t exist without its clients, after all.

In the midst of this, Palra and Belltina have arrived at the Hunter Guild and are perplexed to see Ailneige in the center of trouble. The two started discussing something and seemed to have resolved to approach us, so I had Ciel turn to their direction.
Honestly, I sensed someone who could make this even more troublesome, so I’d feel bad if they got involved. Frankly, I wouldn’t want to get involved if given the choice, so I want to keep them from getting dragged into this issue.

Hearing my explanation and request, Ciel turned to the two, who then noticed her gaze. They silently stared at each other for a few seconds, and then Ciel shook her head. There’s a limit to what eye contact can relay, but they should understand what this gesture means. And it seems like they did, but they hesitated for a moment before finally taking distance to avoid getting dragged into this mess.

「You’re not accepting it when I’m begging here so earnestly!?」
『What happened all of the sudden?』
『I wonder the same thing.』

The woman suddenly yelled with a voice of anger and bewilderment, to Ciel’s and my shared confusion. However, I quickly realized the possible cause, so I relayed it to Ciel.

『She must have mistaken your head shake as a refusal.』
『Now that you mention it, that sounds plausible, but I wasn’t really listening, so I don’t even know what I could have refused.』
『She probably interpreted it as us not wanting to give her the medical herb.』
『But I haven’t even told her that we have it.』
『In her mind, we already have it on hand. And some portion of the people overhearing this are probably assuming the same thing. 』

The woman spoke to us under the presumption that we had the plant, so many of the onlookers seemed to have the same misconstruction.
To be exact, it’s not really a misconstruction, but Ciel never said she has the four-leaf clover, so they don’t know whether Ciel has the item or not. In other words, it’s a Schrödinger’s cat situation.

However, at this point, she’d probably just think we’re lying if we deny having it, and, at worst, she might not be convinced unless we empty our pouches as proof. If we were here as Cielmer or Ainsel, we could probably shut her up with our A-rank hunter influence, but unfortunately we’re currently low-rank hunter Ailneige.
We’re posing as a noble incognito, but we don’t really have any family name that we can use, so we can’t go with that reasoning either.

How do I say this? We’ve practically lost the moment we got her attention, so all I can do is sigh. At this point, I can’t help but wonder if we can just destroy everything, but that’ll be a problem and it’ll be bad for Ciel’s education, so that idea goes straight to the garbage bin.

Just as I was considering us simply ignoring the woman and escaping this place as the best option, 「Since she’s in need of help, isn’t it best to lend her a hand?」 another great nuisance raised his voice.