Chapter 279: Playing with Feelings (3)
The Georgen Northern Branch Chief’s office.
“Good work.”
Branch Chief Yuland commended Chief Inspector Borch. Borch smiled and nodded.
“Thank you.”
“With a record like this, you could probably transfer to Central.”
“You’re too kind.”
“No, no. If you wanted-”
“I’m truly fine where I am.”
Borch suddenly turned his gaze toward the window. A faintly swirling blizzard. The sight alone seemed to carry the bitter cold with it.
“I’m a man better suited to the North.”
Then he added quietly.
“The blizzards. Serving as a sentry, guarding this wall of ice against the barbarians of the north…… it feels like my calling.”
“……If that’s how you feel. I’m certainly glad to have you here.”
The Branch Chief placed a hand on his shoulder. Borch dipped his head slightly.
“Ah, right. By any chance, what happened to Sergeant Paul from Central?”
That rookie had no parents to begin with. Meaning he had no family or connections backing him.
“With that much circumstantial evidence and testimony… well, he’s definitely a spy.”
“Thank you. Then, about what I asked you before…….”
Borch’s request. The Branch Chief chuckled.
“Of course.”
Borch would bring people from his hometown into Georgen as Agents. People he knew well, brought down from the snow-covered mountain villages.
“With your investigative ability, you definitely need people capable of backing you up. But…… I can’t touch Lacordak. It belongs to the Jackal Family.”
“Yes. That’s fine.”
Jackal. A family that carried itself like the nobles of Central here in the North.
Their martial prowess was indeed renowned. The current House Head had once been said to rival Sebestian.
Of course, that had been thirty years ago, and Sebestian had only been a green young man in his twenties at the time.
“I’m grateful for even that much.”
“Haha. All right. Off you go.”
Borch left the Branch Chief’s office.
Quite a few people gathered around him in the corridor.
Among them were new faces who had yet to receive their Agent uniforms, but soon would, along with the many other Agents who already followed Borch.
“…….”
Borch stood among them with a stern expression. They all bowed their heads at once.
His sharp gaze swept over them, then suddenly stopped.
“Sergeant Elmer!”
He had spotted Elmer, newly discharged from the hospital.
“You could’ve rested a little longer!”
Borch approached the man, who had come limping over on crutches, and beamed at him.
Elmer greeted him with an expression that looked somehow embarrassed, or perhaps guilty.
“Sergeant Elmer here!”
Knowing full well what had happened, Borch deliberately grabbed his hand and raised it high.
“Played a crucial role in apprehending the spy at Georgen Central-”
Bang──!
At that moment, Georgen’s main doors suddenly burst open as if they had been smashed apart. People came flooding in through them.
The Northern Agents hurried to block their path.
“What do you think you’re doing-”
“Good to see you, Chief Inspector Borch.”
A familiar face called out to Borch from beyond them.
Gewin of Georgen Central.
Borch responded coldly.
“Chief Inspector Gewin. What do you think you’re doing?”
“Well, before we get to that, how about you release our Paul first?”
“…….”
Borch stared hard at him.
“Whoa there. Better watch that glare of yours. Do you know who we are? I’m asking if you know who we are.”
Huh?! Gewin’s eyes bulged as he stiffly thrust his neck forward, but then.
“We’re from the Sentinel Knight Order.”
Operations Officer Hans presented his identification first.
Borch silently clenched his teeth, while Elmer and the other Agents’ eyes widened. Gewin looked sheepish for a moment and cleared his throat.
“……I’m telling you, you picked the wrong person to mess with. That Paul was a close friend and classmate of Sir Maximilian Ebenholtz!”
Meanwhile, Sentinel Agents who had already gone downstairs emerged from the underground detention cells with Paul.
“Paul! You okay?! Our Paul! Our Paul!”
Gewin hurried after him.
“Our Paul, you’ve been through so much! You really went through hell! You really did…….”
Operations Officer Hans remained behind and stood before Borch. Hans smiled as he faced Borch’s rigid expression.
“Pleasure to meet you. I’m Hans Wenzel, Operations Officer with Sir Maximilian’s Knight Office.”
“……So the Sentinel can involve itself in the North too?”
Instead of returning the greeting, Borch’s eyes sharpened fiercely.
Hans answered calmly.
“The Sentinel may intervene anywhere when the security of the Empire is involved.”
Then he met Borch’s gaze.
“Chief Inspector Gewin was right.”
The smile at the corners of his mouth turned cold.
“You people picked the wrong person to mess with.”
***
In front of a hotel somewhere in the North. Yvette stood beside the luxury car Halbert Goering had rented.
“……Ms. Yvette. Are you ready?”
The man codenamed ‘Daffodil’, disguised as their driver, asked, and she merely nodded.
“Let’s go!”
Just then, Goering came out in a cloud of cologne.
Yvette suppressed a sigh and climbed into the back seat with him.
“Well, would you look at that. I managed to pull it off somehow.”
“……Thank you, Sir Halbert.”
Yvette halfheartedly humored Halbert as he congratulated himself, and they drove on until they arrived at the Northern Concentration Camp [Lacordak].
Yvette stood before its enormous iron gates.
“This camp is operated by the Jackal Family. You know Jackal, I presume?”
Lacordak was used to develop the vast, unexplored northern frontier. Inside, prisoners dug at the frozen earth with shovels and pickaxes.
Yvette smiled sweetly.
“Of course. They say once you go in, you never come out…….”
“Ah~ that’s an exaggeration. Prisoners here have fixed sentences too, of course.”
Halbert Goering raised a hand high in front of the entrance.
“Sir Halbert Goering. You’ve arrived.”
Apparently they had been expected, as the Camp Administrator came out to greet him.
“This way.”
He opened a small door beside the main gate and led them inside.
Everything inside the camp was gray. The snow-covered walls and roofs. Even the people’s faces seemed washed in the same color.
“Ms. Yvette. Tell this gentleman the person’s name.”
“Yes……”
Yvette gave the Camp Administrator his name.
The real name of the imprisoned Master.
“Yes. Please wait while I check the register.”
…….
Lacordak’s visitation room…… no, reception room.
Yvette stared blankly at the bundle and urn sitting on the table.
“…….”
Tap. Halbert Goering placed a hand on her shoulder.
“Apparently, he died a few weeks before we got here.”
Halbert lowered his voice. Yvette nearly lost consciousness for a moment. Her anemia made the room spin.
Which meant Master was already dead.
After all the hell they had gone through trying to rescue him…….
“……Administrator. How did this person end up at Lacordak?”
Yvette asked the Camp Administrator.
“Ah. One moment. The case file is…….”
Under Yvette’s gaze, he fumbled around, not even managing to hide his reddening cheeks as he picked up the file.
“Here it is. Suspicious behavior was observed, a resident reported him, and the police arrested him…… That’s all.”
“…….”
There should have been Revolutionary forces operatives inside Northern Georgen as well.
But Master had hidden his identity even from almost everyone in the Revolutionary forces. Was that how he had ended up being killed in the camp without anyone knowing who he was?
In a way, it was almost comical.
“But how did he die?”
“Who knows. Maybe he had some chronic illness.”
A chronic illness. Yvette let out a hollow laugh. It was laughable bullshit.
“By the way, what was your relationship with this person?”
“…….”
A bundle holding his belongings. An urn holding his remains.
Yvette looked back and forth between them before answering.
“He was from my hometown.”
In any case, the mission had failed.
There was no longer any reason to stay here for long.
“And these belongings…….”
“You may take them. Frankly, disposing of unclaimed belongings is a hassle for us anyway.”
“Yes. I will.”
Yvette opened the bundle containing his possessions. Inside were several sheets of paper that looked something like a will.
Long sentences……?
“…….”
But to Yvette’s eyes, the contents read differently. No, the entire thing was a cipher used only by the Revolutionary forces.
A sentence hidden within the letters. A map hidden within the spacing.
Yvette stared at the paper for a long time.
“……Ms. Yvette. Are you all right?”
Halbert asked worriedly. The Camp Administrator, meanwhile, was too busy sneaking looks at her face and body to pay attention to anything else, until Halbert abruptly bumped him in the ribs with his shoulder.
“……Ha.”
Once Yvette had decoded the entire message, she lowered her head.
There was a reason no one had ever known who Master was.
This Master wasn’t the first Master either. He might not even have been the second.
It had simply been passed down this way, without names, with only the name ‘Master’ passed from one person to the next…….
[ ……Though my end comes to nothing like this, I hope that you, who read these words, will carry on after me. For the flame we carry within us, for the great cause that must be fulfilled……. ]
‘His next directive: for me to take on the duty of ‘Master’.’
“…….”
Yvette kept her gaze lowered for a long time, trembling with an emotion she could not explain.
…….
Inside the car on the way back.
Yvette leaned against Halbert Goering’s shoulder. She seemed to have dozed off for a while from exhaustion.
Looking as though he possessed the entire world, Halbert instructed Daffodil in the driver’s seat.
“Slowly. Drive as slowly as you possibly can.”
“Yes.”
As they continued smoothly along, a black car stopped in the road ahead, facing them head-on.
Halbert frowned.
“What the hell is with that guy?”
“……A checkpoint, maybe?”
“Ah~ come on.”
Honk──!
A horn suddenly blared from up ahead. Yvette jolted awake and lifted her head from Halbert’s shoulder.
Halbert’s fury instantly shot through the roof.
“You crazy bastards! Do you have any idea how important this moment is?! Who the hell are you?! Do you want to die?!”
Halbert climbed out of the car. With him outside shouting angrily at them, Daffodil asked from the driver’s seat.
“Master?”
“……He’s already dead.”
“W-what?!”
Daffodil flinched and nearly turned to look at her, then fixed his eyes on the road again.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“He died three months after being locked up.”
“Then…….”
“But he left me something, and a name.”
“Something and a name?”
“……Yeah.”
Yvette nodded faintly.
“The thing is probably the location where he stashed something, whether it’s bonds, account information, or whatever else. And the name…… he wants me to become Master.”
“Huh…….”
Daffodil swallowed and ran a hand through his hair.
Yvette gave a bitter smile.
“Daffodil. What do you think?”
Daffodil and Lily. The two the fake Master had recognized as the real thing.
“……What matters is what you think.”
Daffodil turned the question back on her.
Yvette let out a long sigh.
“I could probably do a good job. Maybe…… a few dozen times better than the previous Master?”
“Really?”
“Yeah, bastard. I was fucking blessed with these looks~ Be honest, you fell for me too. Your attitude changed at some point, didn’t it?”
Her manner of speaking abruptly turned coarse. Daffodil smirked as though there was simply no helping her.
“Then isn’t that a good thing?”
His words amounted to one simple question: wasn’t this a good thing?
‘Entrusting the name Master to me……’
Yvette’s expression abruptly sank.
“…….”
Why was that?
Someone’s voice drifted back to her ears like the scent of flowers.
‘Go far away.’
They said sound was the first kind of memory to fade.
‘As far away as you can.’
So it really was true.
Already, she could no longer clearly remember the exact tone of his voice.
“……No.”
Yvette quietly shook her head.
“…….”
Daffodil said nothing for a moment. He did not move either.
“……No?”
A single word suddenly dropped from his lips.
“Yeah. I…… think I’m going to quit.”
Daffodil’s face, reflected in the rearview mirror, went rigid.
Forcing himself to smile, he asked.
“Why? Lily, you just said it yourself. You think you’d be good at it.”
“Yeah. But…… it isn’t fun anymore.”
Yvette looked out the car window.
“I’m not having fun anymore…… Daffodil. I’ll leave it to you. Either one of us can do it anyway, right? I think you’d be good at it too.”
“…….”
Daffodil twisted around.
From the driver’s seat, toward the back seat.
His pupils had already blown wide, his gaze filled completely with Yvette.
“Then.”
Grind. The sound of teeth clenching.
“So you’ve turned traitor?”
“……What?”
Daffodil’s hand suddenly slipped inside his coat. Time seemed to stretch, flowing impossibly slowly. Just as the barrel of a gun emerged and took aim at Yvette…
Bang—!
The windshield shattered as a bullet tore through it.
“!”
The bullet struck Daffodil squarely in the back of the head. The impact knocked his body aside until it caught against the car seat. What remained of his crushed face came to rest turned toward Yvette.
“…….”
Brain matter, fragments of eyeball, optic nerve, shards of skull. Splattered with all of it, Yvette could do nothing but blink.
What was happening?
When she shifted her gaze beyond the window, Halbert Goering was staring at something.
Not at her, but at ‘someone’ approaching her. His eyes looked as though he had seen a ghost.
Thud— Thud—
Then, the sound of footsteps drifted in through the shattered windshield.
Soon, someone bent down and peered through the window.
Knock, knock─
“Pleasure to meet you.”
Yvette turned unsteadily to look.
“My name is Maximilian.”
A chilling voice settled over her as he introduced himself.
Maximilian. A man whose face, framed against the blizzard behind him, was so beautiful that it made him seem all the more like a calamity.
Wearing a smile more dangerous than the barrel of a gun, he said.
“I heard about you from my friend Paul.”
***
An interrogation room at Georgen Northern Branch.
“…….”
“…….”
The two of us sat in silence.
The lighting was kept as dim as possible. If she was observant enough, she might notice.
“What will happen to Sergeant Paul now?”
Those were the first words Yvette spoke.
“He’ll be retiring.”
Her shoulders trembled faintly at the word retiring. Even that tiny gesture was still part of her act.
She really was something.
“……By any chance.”
Yvette asked cautiously.
“Did Sergeant Paul say anything about me?”
“……Yes.”
I smiled faintly.
“He said you were the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his life.”
That was not a lie.
I had simply reached a point where I no longer attached much importance to a person’s looks.
“He meant who you were on the inside, even more than your appearance.”
When I mixed in a little lie, Yvette smiled bitterly and shook her head.
“He had me all wrong. My looks are the best thing about me.”
For a while, she rubbed the tabletop with her fingertips.
“Would it be possible for me to see him?”
“……No.”
I answered firmly.
“You probably won’t ever see him again.”
“Why?”
I thought briefly.
What should I say? How could I get Paul out of the picture without raising suspicion?
“……A chronic illness. He doesn’t have long to live.”
A chronic illness.
Yvette stared blankly at me.
“Is it…… serious?”
I nodded.
“Two months at most. He’s been taken to the capital now. It seems his condition deteriorated rapidly after being held in detention for so long.”
Yvette bit her lip.
Hearing the story I had made up on the spot, she gripped the edge of the table and sat deep in thought for quite some time.
“……So his health was why he had no choice but to drop out of Empire Point?”
I simply watched as she fitted the pieces together however she pleased.
“Well, I suppose you could see it that way?”
“Then…… Sir Maximilian. What was he like at Empire Point?”
How was I supposed to answer a question like that?
“……He was a kindhearted fellow.”
In any case, I needed to draw as much information out of her as possible.
“But he never wanted to hurt other people.”
Leave a blank in someone’s past, and people would fill it with their own imagination. All the more when it concerned ‘someone they wanted to know’.
“……Just like he is now.”
Yvette smiled bitterly as she continued.
“Sergeant Paul…… told me to go far away. As far away as I could.”
As far away as possible.
I quietly repeated the words, then shifted my gaze.
“To do that…….”
I slid the statement form toward her as she hesitated.
A demand that she betray the Revolutionary forces completely.
“…….”
Yvette continued to stare down at the statement. She said nothing and did nothing. She did not even look as though she was deliberating.
“…….”
I waited calmly as well.
Someone like Yvette should not be handled forcefully. There was no way to know what kind of life she had lived…… but one thing was certain.
In a world like this, beauty like hers truly was a curse.
“Paul asked something of me.”
I lowered my voice.
“Whoever you are, he asked me to keep you safe.”
Yvette’s breathing faltered for an instant. She raised her head and looked at my face, hidden by the dim lighting.
A look asking whether she could trust me.
“……I don’t have many friends.”
How many people had I met in my life whom I could truly call friends?
Because it was not a lie, an emotion I had not expected crept into my voice.
“That is why I want to cherish the friends I still have.”
“…….”
She stared intently into my eyes.
“I see. To think someone like you, Sir, would come all the way down here for a single friend……”
She smiled, still playing innocent.
“Then…… will you believe everything I tell you from now on?”
Almost there.
I did not look away from her eyes.
I simply tossed out the final piece of bait.
“I swear on Paul’s name.”
She would betray the Revolutionary forces.
~~~
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