The Wanderer
"Heh, I'm not stupid enough to go around calling strangers 'old man.' Who'd be getting the better end of that deal—me or them?"
Watching the disdainful look on the boy's face, listening to the contempt laced through his words, Vermouth felt the anger she had just smothered begin to surge up all over again.
But angry as she was, she couldn't help noticing that the boy hadn't questioned what she'd said earlier—which meant he really did know about Cointreau's situation.
Her eyes darkened. She turned to look at Cointreau and said, with more than a touch of displeasure, "Don't you think it's a little careless to go telling outsiders about the Organization?"
Cointreau blinked, needing a moment to work out what she meant. Then he smiled helplessly. "I didn't say anything I shouldn't have. As for how he found out..." He spread his hands. "Your guess is as good as mine."
"Ma'am, don't tell me you've got bad eyes and a bad memory?" The boy flashed a wide, mocking grin at Vermouth. "Didn't I already tell you? If it's about me, why not just ask me directly? Why do you keep going around asking other people? Honestly, I have no idea how you picked up such a bizarre habit."
Vermouth took a deep breath, then looked at Cointreau with a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "Can I kill him?"
"Of course not." Cointreau raised an eyebrow.
He hadn't expected Vermouth to lose her composure so easily. They'd barely met, exchanged a handful of sentences, and she was already angry enough to talk about murder. Cointreau shook his head inwardly. She'd been put on too high a pedestal for too long—this was nothing, and she already couldn't take it.
He still remembered the first time he'd met the boy, when the little brat had called him ridiculous, an idiot, a man of terrible taste who was getting on in years. Had he said anything about it? No—at most he'd given the kid a thrashing. Nothing like Vermouth, flying into a rage and howling for blood.
"I've already spoken with the Boss," Cointreau went on, deciding an explanation was in order since Vermouth was genuinely furious. "The Wanderer will be joining the Organization. For now, he's important to us."
"Don't call me that!" The boy frowned, glaring at Cointreau. "I'm not part of that group anymore. The moment I decided to leave, that name stopped being appropriate. I won't answer to Balladeer."
Only then did Vermouth realize that after all this back-and-forth, she didn't even know the name of this insufferable brat.
"Then what am I supposed to call you? You keep insisting I ask you directly—so kindly introduce yourself."
Vermouth couldn't understand it. How could a kid who wasn't even an adult matter so much to the Organization that Cointreau had made a point of informing the Boss? But if the Boss had said so, it meant that for now, she truly couldn't touch him.
Fine. She would very much like to see just who this little demon was—what identity, what abilities—to have earned such favor from the Boss.
"My name?" The boy arched an eyebrow and let out a cold laugh. "Heh. I don't have one. Call me whatever you like. If you truly can't think of anything, 'Wanderer' will do. Names mean nothing to me."
"As for your earlier question—how I knew you were old. I used to be in the same organization as Kaeya. I was one of the Fatui, originally under the Snezhnaya division of the Teyvat Syndicate, and 'Balladeer' was my codename back then. That tidbit came from the coworker of a former colleague of mine in Snezhnaya—he just let it slip. How he came to know it, I have no idea."
"Of course, if that information is truly so sensitive, then you shouldn't be blaming the people who overheard it. You ought to reflect instead on your own organization's sloppy security—that's what let the news leak."
With the boy's background laid out before her, Vermouth finally understood why the Boss had agreed to let an underage recruit into the Organization—and why he seemed to value him so highly.
She would never have guessed that this beautiful, slender child had once belonged to that mysterious Teyvat Syndicate.
When Bourbon had first brought back intelligence about Kaeya's organization, the Organization's intelligence division had launched a dedicated investigation, but they'd come away with almost nothing useful. Beyond what the Teyvat Syndicate deliberately chose to show, the Black Organization knew precious little about them.
Scarce intelligence meant there was nothing to seize on. Combine that with the outcome of Rum's move against the Dawn Winery, and the picture was clear: for all that the two organizations were cooperating quite pleasantly at the moment, the Black Organization regarded the other side with real wariness.
She had no idea how Cointreau had tracked down someone like this, but a recruit with firsthand knowledge of Teyvat would surely be an enormous asset to their intelligence work.
"Oh~ very well then, Wanderer. Mind telling me who that colleague of yours was?" Vermouth couldn't be bothered to press him on why he had no name; the moment she had something to call him, she used it.
And she was genuinely curious about this colleague the boy had mentioned, so she asked outright.
As for his parting jab at the Organization's security—dwelling on it would only anger her, so she'd learned to simply ignore his barbed insinuations.
"Il Dottore—the Doctor. A piece of human garbage who deserves to be cut apart by a thousand blades." The Wanderer's voice went low and dark, and a sinister edge crept into his tone as he pronounced the name. It was obvious he and this man had a score to settle.
Vermouth suspected this might well be the very reason the Wanderer had left Teyvat.
"Ahem. Finished catching up?" Cointreau coughed pointedly. "The Boss has entrusted the Balladeer—no, the Wanderer—to Gin's supervision for the time being, and I need to take him to meet Gin now." He glanced at Vermouth with a smile. "So, might I trouble you to step aside?"
"By all means." At Cointreau's none-too-polite reminder, Vermouth considered for a moment, then stepped aside with a smile.
But once Cointreau and the Wanderer had passed her, she didn't continue in her original direction. Instead she turned around and fell in behind them, clearly intending to tag along to see Gin.
Catching Cointreau's questioning look as he glanced back over his shoulder, Vermouth brushed a hand through her hair with a smile. "It's been a while since I last saw Gin. Might as well have a chat."
At a reason so obviously invented on the spot, Cointreau didn't bother to challenge her. He just smiled, turned back around, and kept walking.
After a stretch of corridor, the three of them filed into the training grounds, where Gin was, quite evidently, waiting for them.
Cointreau gave Gin a brief rundown of the Wanderer's background.
Gin frowned, eyeing the boy's overly slight frame with open displeasure. So thin. Who knows if he can even fight. This is the action division—the brat had better not slow us down.
The fact that he had no name and called himself the Wanderer drew no reaction from Gin at all. A name was just a label; if the kid proved capable, they'd assign him a codename and simply call him that.
What mattered now was learning what this brat could do—and, more importantly... why he wanted to join the Organization.