"Ah, Balyn! Precisely the man I was hoping to see."

Balyn blinked in surprise.

"I am?"

It's not that he thought the tall, pale clerk at the Yharnam Employment Agency was lying, per se. It was just that, well, she generally wasn't hoping to see him. Her usual reactions to his reaching the front of her line tended more towards the "pained tolerance" end of the emotional scale. As if she was suffering his presence rather than encouraging it.

It was really quite moving to be wanted.

"Yes," she told him calmly. "I have set aside a job which I believe would be highly suitable for you."

"This doesn't involve pigs again, does it?"

"No. Although I do feel constrained to verify: as a former hunter, I take it that you have no particular aversion to handling dead bodies?"

He blinked again. Really, it was turning into quite the day for being dumbstruck.

"Not in general. I mean, you get a little desensitized to that kind of thing after a few hours on the hunt, or else some beast sneaks up on you and tears your spine out while you're too busy retching to notice them. Again." Not that he didn't appreciate being able to complain about his numerous unfortunate deaths, but it also made him acutely aware of the fragility of existence, and he was all too understanding that as he was no longer linked to the Hunter's Dream, his anticipated tolerance to the messy cessation of life was back to the typical once only. "But unless it's someone I know or that kind of thing, I don't think I would have a particular problem with it."

"Excellent. There is a job involving corpse transport, and a number of our workers are squeamish about such things. Also, it can be difficult to find proper coffin-making materials in the current post-Blood Moon recession and therefore hunter experience can be useful if boards break."

"Oh. Those kind of corpses."

"It wasn't specified, but we like to be thorough."

"So you figure that as I've put down a few legless undead in my time, I'd be a good choice?"

The clerk nodded solemnly.

"Yes, that is one reason."

"You have more than one reason to specifically select a job for me in particular?" Forget dumbstruck; this was going straight to "am I sure I'm actually awake?" territory.

He was pretty sure he was, though. He had experience with dreams.

"It surprised me as well. However, such is the case. The job request is from Iosefka's Clinic. I believe that you are working towards paying off your debt for medical services owed to them?"

"Yeah, that transfusion wasn't cheap. I really should have read the fine print in that contract."

"And my understanding is that you are remaining here in Yharnam despite the city's notably unwelcoming attitude towards outsiders because of that debt?"

Balyn nodded.

"Yeah, I know that sometimes I'm not the most perceptive guy out there, but I really don't want to find out the hard way what bill collectors are like in this place!"

The clerk didn't quite smile; she never really smiled or changed expression, but she had that knack of somehow conveying her emotions anyway. Her almost doll-like impassiveness nonetheless screamed out a sense of immense self-satisfaction.

"Then in order to secure your ability to return safely and swiftly to your home nation, we should arrange for you to pay off your debt as quickly as possible. Since this is a debt owed directly to the current client, I arranged for a bonus to be paid in exchange for the payment amount being applied directly against the debt so that they do not have to interrupt their cash flow by actually paying you in coin."

"A bonus? Nice! So what's the job?"

"Unfortunately, while the clinic workers do their best, there are still cases where they are unable to save the lives of terminally ill or injured patients. Therefore, it becomes necessary to transport the bodies for proper burial. Though I must say, their success rates have improved of late."

"Probably the extra finger lets them be more dextrous with surgical instruments," Balyn murmured.

"Pardon?"

"Never mind. Hey, wait a minute. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth or anything, but what does Iosefka's Clinic need with a body transport service? They've got a cemetery right there. Admittedly it's kind of small, but it runs really deep so there's plenty of room."

It was the clerk's turn to look dumbstruck. Or at least as close to it as she ever did. There was a blink, at least.

"They do?"

"Yeah, it's literally adjoining their courtyard."

She folded her hands on the desk in front of her and stared at him in abject bewilderment. It was an expression he was entirely too familiar with from past experience, and Balyn couldn't help but look down at her hands to double-check that the fingers were not made of articulated wood or porcelain.

Nope, just ordinary skin.

"If I recall the layout, isn't that cemetery separated from the clinic courtyard by a gate?"

"Well, yes, but..."

"One that only locks from the cemetery side, if one desires to do so?"

"Well, yes, but..." he repeated, then managed to move on from that sage remark. "I mean, that's not the only connection between the two."

"...Oh?"

Balyn wondered if other people ever got the sensation that a yawning pit was about to open up beneath their feet.

"Sure! All you do is go out the cemetery through a back gate, and down a little path into a garden with a well. Then you climb up a rough wooden ladder than somebody built up against the garden wall, cross over the roof across a bunch of buildings that don't seem to have any internal doors connecting them to the clinic, and smash through a back window. Well, I mean, that impostor doctor had already done that first, so I didn't do any breaking, only entering, but I mean, what could possibly be a more...direct link...than..."

"Yes?"

"...Am I going to be pushing a hand-cart with these coffins, or am I going to need to drive a wagon? Because the last time I had to take responsibility for a horse, it attacked me with a giant glowing sword, and if something like that happens again, I'm going to have to insist on some kind of hazard pay."

~X X X~

A/N: It never really struck me until now that honestly, that little graveyard really does feel more like "next door" to the clinic than "where the bodies from the place are buried."