Chapter 6 – “Finally, a Paying Human… I Think”

I, Detective Erik—reluctant isekai import, part-time miracle survivor and full-time caffeine enthusiast—am officially doomed.

No, that’s not melodrama. That’s a professional assessment. Last night the Queen of this kingdom—yes, the actual Queen, complete with crown and the sort of dramatic presence that makes thunderstorms feel underdressed—kissed me. On the mouth. Then she proposed marriage.

I repeat: proposed.

To me.

A man whose most reliable skill is finding lost goats and making coffee strong enough to remove paint.

The moment her royal lips left mine my soul packed its suitcase and tried to sprint for the nearest dimensional exit. I could already see the headlines: Local Detective Becomes Accidental Monarch, Kingdom Braces for Incompetence.

I wanted to run. Not jog. Run. Through the gates, across the fields, straight into the darkest forest and maybe, if the gods were kind, right off the map.

And then—because the gods here have a wicked sense of humour—she woke up. Apparently she’d been faint from yesterday’s chaos. Now she was perfectly awake, perfectly regal, and hugging me like we were a long-lost couple from a tragic ballad.

Behind me, Lucy and Lily arrived just in time to witness the royal embrace.

Their faces were a painting of shock, though not—judging by their expressions—for the reason you’d expect. It wasn’t “oh no, our detective is romantically entangled with the Queen.” No. Their eyes said something closer to:

Option A: “Wait… does this mean Erik will be the next king and we have to bow to him?”

Option B: “Did a dead crop just kiss him? Should we burn sage?”

I’m still not sure which possibility horrified them more.

Anyway, thanks to the mysterious System that brought me to this world, I somehow survived the night. Between the gun it gifted me earlier and this unexpected royal kiss, my life has become a bizarre checklist of events I never asked for.

By dawn, I’d convinced the Queen to recover first and—very politely—suggested we revisit the topic of marriage in, say, a month. Preferably never, but I tried to sound diplomatic.

There was no way I could ask her for money. She’s the Queen. It’s the duty of citizens to protect their monarch, not to send her an invoice. And since she’d just proposed to me, asking for cash felt like the sort of faux pas that gets a man catapulted into orbit.

Which left me with a very earthly problem:

How, exactly, was I supposed to pay salaries?

Lucy and Lily had been helping me from day one and so far my detective agency had earned precisely zero silver. Unless you count the occasional free apple pie as currency—which sadly the local landlord does not—my finances were emptier than a bard’s promises.

So, time for Plan B: marketing.

Flyers. Posters. Anything that screamed “Hire Erik the Detective” in bold letters.

I set to work making flyers by hand. Nothing fancy—just parchment, ink and the desperate optimism of a man who hasn’t slept properly since arriving in a parallel universe.

“Anything lost, any case solved—two silver per case!” I wrote.

To put that in perspective: here you can buy a week’s worth of food for five silver. A basic monthly salary is around ten silver. A hundred silver equals one gold coin, and fifty copper coins make a silver.

Mostly, people use coppers. Each coin carries the Queen’s picture and a pinch of magic so no one can copy it. Which means, of course, that I can’t simply print my own and pretend to be rich. Not that I’d try. Probably.

With the flyers drying on the table, I turned to my two trusted assistants.

“Ladies,” I said, “we’re going to distribute these across town. And because I’m a generous boss, I’ll treat you both to coffee afterwards.”

They stared at me blankly.

Coffee meant nothing to them. At least, not yet.

I brewed a small pot—thick, dark, and aromatic enough to resurrect the dead. One cautious sip each and both sisters went from mild curiosity to wide-eyed revelation.

“More,” Lucy demanded, like a knight discovering her true quest.

Lily, normally the quieter one, nodded so vigorously her bangs bounced.

“Deliver these flyers,” I said, “and there will be more coffee.”

I’ve never seen anyone run so fast. They streaked out the door like caffeinated cheetahs, leaving only the scent of ink and ambition.

For the next week they kept it up, delivering flyers daily and reporting back for their coffee ration like clockwork.

After spending those days with them, I started to really see them—beyond their silver hair and habit of startling me at inconvenient moments.

Let me introduce you properly, because it’s frankly criminal that five chapters of this story have passed and you readers still have no idea what these two look like.

Lucy

Lucy is twenty-five, tall and fair, with a body built like a model who decided weightlifting was more fun than dieting. Think runway grace combined with the muscle tone of someone who could carry a dragon out of a burning barn.

Her hair is pure silver, like moonlight captured and spun into strands. It falls all the way to her waist and, somehow, she manages a new hairstyle every single day. Braids, buns, elaborate knots—I’m convinced she’s secretly running a tutorial channel in another dimension.

A side fringe—side hair bangs, as she calls them—frames her face, occasionally drifting into her brilliant green eyes. Those eyes are the kind of sharp emerald that makes jewelers cry with envy, and they’re guarded by thick silver eyelashes so striking they could double as weapons.

Her usual outfit is a knight’s suit: polished armour and practical boots. But on her off days she swaps steel for colour—maybe a yellow top, maybe red—paired with black trousers that somehow make her look even more formidable.

Her hobby is martial arts practice. “Keeps the reflexes sharp,” she says, usually while casually breaking a training dummy in half.

Sometimes I catch her smiling to herself—a weird, private little grin that suggests she knows something the rest of us don’t. And every so often she fixes me with a stare so long and intense I start checking behind me for ghosts. It’s like someone—or something—possesses her. Either that or she’s planning my surprise birthday party three months early.

Lily

Then there’s Lily—Lucy’s nineteen-year-old sister and living proof that genetics enjoy variety.

Where Lucy is tall, Lily is small: a mere 149 centimetres, exactly twenty shorter than her sister (Lucy is 169 cm). She’s cute in a way that makes you instinctively want to hand her pastries.

Her body doesn’t show the same martial-arts muscle; she’s soft and quick, like a squirrel disguised as a scholar. But she shares the family’s trademark silver hair.

Lily’s hair stops neatly at her neck and is crowned by thick bangs that cover her forehead entirely, like a silvery curtain. Beneath that, her left eye is bright green while her right is a darker, deeper shade—a quiet duality that seems to change with her mood.

Her usual outfit? Something I keep calling “half pants,” though the locals insist that’s not a thing. Imagine knee-length trousers and a blue top—simple, practical, and perfectly Lily. (For the record, pants and T-shirts haven’t been invented here yet. I’m basically speaking fashion gibberish every time I describe her clothes.)

Lily spends her days conducting strange experiments with her own. Don’t ask me for details; even she calls it “weird experiments.” Whenever something finally works, she shouts like a triumphant horse—loud, long and startling enough to scare passing pigeons.

When she fails, she doesn’t cry. She just sits and stares at the wall for hours, absolutely motionless, as if trying to out-meditate a statue. Sometimes I wonder if this “stare disease,” as I’ve nicknamed it, is a genetic trait passed down from their mysterious ancestors.

After a week of distributing flyers and coffee bribes, the sisters had become my tiny, silver-haired advertising army. The townspeople now know there’s a detective in town who charges two silver per case, and my office smells permanently of freshly brewed coffee and sibling rivalry.

If you thought life in another world meant sword fights and legendary treasures, let me introduce you to reality: coffee grounds in my hair and a queen who has turned my office into her personal royal lounge.

It had been a full week—plus two extra days for dramatic tension—since my accidental engagement to Her Majesty. In that time, the grand total of paying cases for the All Solve Detective Agency remained a resounding, echoing zero.

You’d think “detective with mysterious otherworld gadgets” would attract at least one missing-cat job. Apparently not. Either this kingdom has solved crime entirely or my advertising flyers are being used as napkins.

The only people benefiting from my effort so far were the three women who had adopted my tiny agency as their second home. And the Queen, of course. The Queen benefited from everything.

Enter Urara

Before we get to the royal squatter, let me introduce the third member of this increasingly chaotic household: Urara.

Urara is currently obsessed with insects. Not just in a “look at the pretty butterfly” way. No, she finds the strangest bugs imaginable, carries them back like prized jewels and then… experiments. The kind of “experiments” that make the insects reconsider all their life choices.

I feel genuinely sorry for any beetle that crosses her path. If reincarnation exists, may they come back as something with better legal representation.

Urara’s hair is a statement all by itself: long and fiery red, the kind of red that makes blacksmiths jealous. She changes the style every day—braids, messy buns, elaborate twists—like she’s competing in a secret hair-styling league with Lucy. By the way Urara is 18.

Her eyes are a warm brown, soft enough to lull you into thinking she’s harmless. Don’t be fooled. Behind that gentle gaze is the mind of a scientist who has already named her pet centipede “Gregory” and is considering building him a tiny obstacle course.

She usually wears a simple grey dress—practical enough to chase bugs, stylish enough to make me wonder if grey has always been that flattering. Her boots are sturdy, scuffed from many an insect expedition, and she wears a smile so cheerful that I sometimes forget she’s probably dissecting something in the next room.

When it comes to coffee, Urara is firmly on Team Milk. If I pour her a cup of my strong brew without adding milk, she looks at me as though I’ve just handed her a cup of molten lava.

Lucy, by contrast, takes hers black—so black you could use it to stain wood. Lily prefers tea, claiming my favourite blend tastes like “a warm hug.” I pretend not to be touched by that. I fail, but I pretend.

The Queen Who Moved In

And then there’s her.

I get chills even thinking about the Queen, and not the pleasant kind. She has an aura that could silence a room full of bards mid-ballad. She’s thirty-five, effortlessly pretty, with eyes the colour of fresh snow—doll-like white-silver that seem to see through every excuse I’ve ever prepared.

Her hair is a long, silk river of blue that catches the light like moonlit water. Little bangs rest lightly across her forehead, framing a face that could convince entire armies to lay down their swords.

Every day she wears a different royal outfit, each one a masterpiece of embroidery and luxury. And every day, without fail, a delicate scent of flowers trails behind her—soft enough to make me wonder if she bathes in an entire meadow.

You might wonder how I know these details. Simple: she visits me every single day.

At first she claimed it was to hear my answer to her proposal. (Still pending. Forever pending.) But soon she discovered my electric appliances—the coffee machine, the fridge, the microwave, even the washing machine—and that was it.

The Queen now spends more time in my office than in her palace. She has effectively relocated her royal court here. Her father, who apparently has the patience of a saint, runs the kingdom by proxy and sends two unfortunate men to deliver official messages.

Whenever I suggest—politely—that perhaps Her Majesty should return to her actual throne, she just smiles and says, “Here is best.”

“Best?” I argue. “This is a detective agency, not a summer villa. Pay rent at least!”

She ignores me. Royals, I’ve learned, have a black belt in ignoring.

Meanwhile, I am still a freeloader to the mysterious System that dragged me into this world. The fridge, mercifully, provides an unlimited supply of food, or I’d have been reduced to begging in the royal court by now.

It’s a humbling thought: without that magical fridge, the future King-Maybe would be fighting pigeons for breadcrumbs.

A Quiet Afternoon

One particularly warm afternoon, the Queen had claimed my bed as her throne. Not a royal dress in sight—just a simple top and loose trousers, looking for all the world like an off-duty goddess. She lounged like she’d invented the concept, lazily eating slices of melon.

Lily was nearby, concocting what she called “melon and assorted fruit juice experiments,” which sounded less like a drink and more like a potential crime scene.

Lucy had just come back from town and was at the counter, brewing her customary mug of black coffee. Urara bustled in with the excitement of a treasure hunter, proudly displaying a beetle the size of my thumb.

I was at the stove, frying rice and wondering how my life had turned into a cross between a café and a royal science fair.

That’s when a knock rattled the door.

Knock. Knock.

A voice called out, “Is this the All Solve Detective Agency?”

For a second I thought I’d misheard. A customer? After one week and two days of financial drought? My heart did a little tap dance.

“Yes!” I nearly shouted, wiping my hands on my already food-stained shirt. “Coming!”

The Clients

I opened the door to find a large man and a young woman—probably his daughter—standing on the porch.

The man looked wealthy: well-cut clothes, polished boots, the faint air of someone used to being obeyed. He gave me a once-over, taking in my casual, slightly greasy outfit, and his first expression practically screamed: This is the detective? Are we sure this isn’t a scam?

Not my fault. Laundry day is complicated when your queen refuses to vacate the washing machine.

He stepped inside with a smirk, like he was doing me a great favour by gracing my humble agency with his presence. I resisted the urge to bow sarcastically.

But the moment he crossed the threshold, his smug expression collapsed.

His eyes widened. Sweat beaded on his forehead. He froze like a statue mid-smirk.

I watched his gaze dart around the room—first to the coffee machine, then to the humming fridge, the microwave, the washing machine, and finally the collection of miscellaneous gadgets I’d cobbled together from the System’s gifts.

Each new sight made him twitch harder.

Ah. I understood immediately. He had never seen anything like these electrical appliances before. To him, they might as well have been artifacts of forbidden magic.

The young woman clutched her father’s sleeve, her eyes wide with a mix of fear and curiosity.

I decided to break the silence before he either fainted or declared me a heretic.

“So,” I said with the professional calm of someone who had been waiting nine days for this moment, “what’s your case, sir?”

The man swallowed, still staring at the coffee machine as if it might sprout wings. Then, finally, he tore his gaze away and met mine.

“I… we… need your help,” he said, his voice trembling.

Music to my ears.

At last—an actual client. Maybe, just maybe, I would be able to pay Lucy and Lily their salaries without having to pawn the Queen’s melon supply.