Omake Week 2020, Day 7: And we conclude Omake Week for this year where we began...with Balyn still trying to find his way in the daytime streets of Yharnam. It's enough to make the night of the Hunt look like a good dream!

~X X X~

The office looked somehow learned and decrepit all at the same time. The shelves were piled high with tomes, some in neat ranks with identical bindings, obviously parts of a series, while others were mixed and matched in assorted sizes and materials, some even piled sideways on top of others. Certain of them looked like they'd never been touched, while others were worn, crack-spined, and crumbling, with sheets and slips of paper shoved into them to protrude at odd angles. The desks were massive, with green leather blotters and cut-glass lamps to provide light for working late into the dark hours. It was easy to see what parts of the room saw heavy use and which didn't; dust lay thick in the corners while other areas were completely spotless.

It was, in short, exactly what Balyn would have expected a law office in Yharnam to look like. It wasn't the kind of place he'd have naturally gone to on his own, but Iosefka's Clinc employed bill collectors that had apparently given up tomb prospecting when it became too easy to bother with.

"Well, Mr. Balyn, we've reviewed your resume, and I have to say that your experience exactly fits the kind of man that we've been looking for. It's fortunate that you're available, especially right after a night of the hunt."

It was the female half of the legal duo that had spoken, the Hunter in the name Hunter, Tomb & Cord. She had shaggy red hair, bristling brows, and red, bloodshot eyes that looked like she'd spent the night of the hunt curled up with three or four bottles of pungent blood cocktail while she waited for the screaming outside to stop.

Frankly, Balyn didn't think it was such a bad idea. He'd have considered it himself if he'd been given the choice.

"Quite so, quite so," echoed Mr. Cord. He looked to be much older than his partner, his hair reduced to a wispy white fringe around the crown of his long, narrow head, his pasty white skin deeply seamed by wrinkles. When he wasn't talking, his mouth had a habit of sagging open in an O, as if his jaw wasn't strong enough to hold it shut any more.

If there was a Mr. or Ms. Tomb, Balyn hadn't met them yet. Maybe they were underground with the rest of the tombs.

"I understood that you needed someone to deliver documents for you," Balyn said. "How does my past experience as a hunter apply to that?"

Cord broke into a wheezing laugh, while Hunter gave way to a fit of heavy, snorting chortles.

"Clearly, Mr. Balyn, you've never attempted to deliver service of process before!" she said.

"Well, no, I haven't."

"If you had, you'd understand. People will go to almost any lengths to avoid receiving proper legal notice. You see, once they've been served, they have to show up to court or default judgment can be entered against them, so they'll flee and run and squirm like scrambling rats. So they have to be chased. Stalked. Hunted down like the prey they are."

"But not slaughtered, Mr. Balyn," Cord hurried to interject. "No, no, can't get blood from a corpse, now, can you. Well, right at once I suppose, but not in the future, and a future income stream is what we're after, reliable payment over time for our client's behalf."

"I…see…" Balyn murmured. He didn't really see, but he figured that staring into eldritch vistas beyond all human comprehension was only the barest warm-up act for wrapping his brain around the arcane intricacies of the legal code. They were all lucky, he supposed, that the scholars of Byrgenwerth had only been archaeologists and natural philosophers. "So what do I do?"

Hunter picked up a sheaf of documents, her thick, sharp nails scoring the edge of the paper.

"Find the defendant in this case and put these documents into his hands. I don't care how 'formless' this…Oedon…may be; he's about to learn that the Yharnam courts take a very dim view of deadbeat parents who abandon their responsibilities to their children!"