Omake Week 2021, Day 7: And so we come to the end of another Omake Week with a story that's actually a direct sequel to an earlier omake. I hope everybody had fun, or at least didn't hurt their head too much banging it on the wall at all the awful puns. (Do they count as "Dad Jokes" if I'm old enough to be a dad but don't have kids?)

~X X X~

"I have to admit, this is a surprise."

Alfred tilted his head to give Balyn a curious look. Or at least Balyn assumed that was what he was doing. Underneath that conical gold ardeo, he might have been crossing his eyes, wiggling his nose, and trying to roll his tongue into a U.

"A surprise? How so?"

"Well, it's just that this is the first time that anyone's gone to the Yharnam Employment Agency and put in a request for my services for a second time. The clerk was so shocked that she just sat there frozen for the longest time, just her finger twitching away for seconds to let me know she was still alive. I thought for a while that she'd had a stroke, until eventually I looked over her shoulder at what she'd been reading when she froze up and got some insight into what was going on. I guess having a second person witness what she had seen helped convince her it was reality, because she started talking again."

"I can't imagine what the problem was. You did a perfectly good job working with me out at Byrgenwerth. Not a single insect was left standing when we were through, and Provost Willem even forgave you for nearly cooking him."

"I really do need to work on that flamesprayer's spread pattern," Balyn noted. "But it's his fault, too, for hanging out in that fly-infested lunarium after hiring exterminators. If it wasn't nearly getting caught in a flamesprayer, it would have been one of those pressure canisters full of that blue mist. He did take it pretty well, though. I guess it was nothing compared to the student pranks Laurence got up to back in the day."

"I heard a rumor that Rom went and hid a whole lecture building once, and when Willem asked her to return it she pretended she had nothing to do with it, put on this total vacuous act."

"After a stunt like that, I'm not surprised that she never finished her degree and just stuck around the university."

"But in any case," Alfred returned to the point, "this is Executioner Exterminators' biggest job yet, and I need an assistant that I can trust. Someone with previous bug-hunting experience. Someone that can operate alone without my direct supervision."

"Alone? You're not coming with? I thought you said this was your biggest job."

"It is, but…let's just say that I've had my differences in the past with my client."

Balyn couldn't imagine how the kind of man who wore a golden cone without eyeholes for a helmet and carried a giant wheel could possibly have interpersonal issues with anyone.

"So who is the client?"

"It's Annalise, Queen of Castle Cainhurst."

"Didn't your mentor abandon himself to martyrdom just to keep her locked away from the world?"

"Well, yes, he did, but that's no reason why her prison has to be crawling with insects."

"And?"

"And Cainhurst is a very large castle, which matters a lot when you're in a business that gets paid by the room," Alfred muttered.

"I guess there is that." Balyn wondered if the library counted as one room or three, being broken up among three floors like it was.

"Just make sure that you clean everything out. From what she told me, the bugs in the courtyard have been breeding and some of them have even gotten inside the building. They're harassing the headless ghosts, since they can't tell the ghosts aren't actually bleeding."

"Sounds nasty. But if Annalise is willing to hire you, then doesn't that mean she's forgiven whatever happened?"

"Well, she's certainly been acting like she doesn't remember it lately. It's not even forgiveness, really. It's more that she doesn't even acknowledge there's something to forgive, like in her world I never…well, like she's back in a time before it ever happened. Even so, I don't want to take any chances, not when cleaning out everything in Cainhurst's front yard could really put my business on the map."

"Yeah, I guess I see your point. You wouldn't want the Queen to look out her window, see you taking care of the Bloodlicker problem, and get ticked."

There was a moment's pause.

"I'm beginning to have second thoughts about sending you anywhere without adult supervision."