The Arrogant Wanderer
Bang!
A gunshot cracked through the room. The Wanderer jerked his head aside, and the bullet missed him by a hair.
The calm he had been wearing a moment before ignited in an instant. He slammed the door shut behind him with a resounding crash and strode straight up to Gin, his voice dripping with mockery.
"What, this dump of an organization holds debriefing meetings now? Looks like attendance is even mandatory — skip it and you die. Since when did the underground get into this kind of bureaucratic theater?"
Kir's mouth twitched at the corner.
She had known from her earlier encounters with the Wanderer that his temper was foul, but she had never imagined he would flaunt this kind of arrogance in front of Gin of all people.
By her reasoning, if the Wanderer wasn't truly loyal to the organization either, then he must have stayed for his own purposes — which meant he should be doing one of two things: keeping his head down to avoid attention, or showcasing his value so the organization would prize him and cement his position. Either way, nothing about him should have looked like this — like he couldn't care less about Gin, as if he were actively trying to provoke the man's anger.
And Gin's behavior was strange too. Anyone who had once defied his orders and wandered off from an operation would, by all rights, already be a corpse in Gin's eyes.
Instead, he had actually let Vermouth drag the man over here — and even after firing a shot at him, he had pulled his punch.
Yes, Kir had noticed. Gin had held back.
After all, if Gin had truly meant to kill the Wanderer, he would have had his Beretta trained on the door before the man ever opened it — not drawn his pistol only after the Wanderer had stepped inside and could see every move he made.
Kir glanced around at the others' faces and found that none of them seemed particularly fazed by the Wanderer's jab at Gin. Even Vodka, Gin's ever-loyal little brother, hadn't said a word.
Since when was the organization this tolerant? Or did the Wanderer actually hold some high rank? Though from what she'd heard, he didn't even have a codename yet.
What Kir didn't know was that Vodka's silence came down to a simple matter of comparison: compared to everyone else — Vermouth in particular — the Wanderer's attitude toward Gin was practically respectful.
Attitudes were always measured against something. If anyone else had talked to his Aniki like that, Vodka would have had his gun out and leveled at them on the spot. But with the Wanderer, he found it almost tolerable. At least if it had been Vermouth standing there, the Wanderer would surely have said far worse.
Thinking of it that way, Vodka decided the Wanderer still respected his big brother after all.
Gin's face remained cold. He offered no retort to the sarcasm, merely leveling his pistol at the chair beside him and gesturing for the Wanderer to sit.
The Wanderer's expression darkened, clearly displeased with being treated this way, but since he had already come all this way, he saw no point in pressing the matter. Brow furrowed, he dropped into the seat.
With everyone accounted for, Gin turned to Kir and was just opening his mouth to speak when she beat him to it, her gaze drifting toward the Wanderer with a hint of uncertainty.
"We're not all here yet, are we? I remember the Wanderer saying he entered the hospital with his brother — so shouldn't there be one more person?"
"Forget him. He's off the clock." The words off the clock came out of Gin's mouth with a distinctly odd inflection.
Kir had no idea when the organization had started observing things like work shifts and clocking out, but Gin's tone made it abundantly clear he had no intention of elaborating, so she prudently let the subject drop.
She turned back to him instead. "Then, Gin — gathering all of us here, is there a problem with the operation?"
Gin fixed her with a stare, his meaning veiled. "Something about today's operation still doesn't sit right with me. It went far too smoothly. I never expected Akai Shuichi to let us take Kir back this easily."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Kir frowned.
"Hey, isn't that a bit defeatist of you?" The Wanderer folded his arms behind his head and leaned back in his chair, eyeing Gin sideways with a distinctly mischievous grin. "Since when is a job going smoothly a bad thing?"
"Exactly. The plan was yours, Gin — doesn't it going off without a hitch just prove how well you designed it?" Kir had no idea whether the Wanderer was actually defending her or simply antagonizing Gin, but either way, she wasn't about to waste the opening to clear her own name.
Gin ignored the Wanderer completely. He shot Kir one cold, cutting glance and pressed on. "By all rights, Akai Shuichi should have stuck his nose into today's operation. But he never showed. You're telling me that isn't strange?"
"It is strange, I'll grant you that." Vermouth sided with Gin.
"Besides, Kir, you've been out of contact with the organization for ages. Who's to say the FBI hasn't talked you into turning traitor? And then there's the matter of..." Vermouth stopped mid-sentence, considered, and let the rest die on her lips.
"But hasn't Kir only just woken up?" Chianti pushed back at Vermouth — though she didn't exactly vouch for Kir's loyalty either. Clearly, Gin's words had planted a seed of doubt in her as well.
Then she rounded on Vermouth, visibly annoyed. "And another thing — can you stop leaving your sentences hanging? 'And then there's the matter of' — of what? Finish a thought for once, would you?"
In the end, Chianti couldn't resist taking one last swipe at Vermouth.
"I don't think you can blame Vermouth for that." The Wanderer, of all people, rose to her defense.
Just as Chianti, Korn, and even Vermouth turned to stare at him in bewilderment, he delivered the rest of the line: "After all, the old lady's getting on in years. The memory starts slipping — trailing off mid-sentence is perfectly normal at her age. Us young folks should be patient with our elders."
"HaHA! Good point — patience it is!" Chianti, who had been briefly wondering if the Wanderer and Vermouth had somehow become friendly, burst out laughing.
From that moment on, she found the Wanderer considerably less annoying.
As for Vermouth, her brows had knotted into a single furious line, and sparks seemed ready to fly from her eyes. She was livid — she could practically hear the thread of her own sanity snapping.
She drew a deep breath, wrestled the fury back under control, and turned a cold smile on the Wanderer, enunciating each word with deliberate slowness. "Nobody would think you were mute if you kept your mouth shut."
Kir, watching from the sidelines, could only marvel.
The Wanderer was drawing more fire than she was — and she was the one under suspicion of betrayal. At the moment, every pair of eyes in the room was fixed on him rather than on her.
Come to think of it, the organization she'd suspected of wanting to work with her was most likely the Teyvat Syndicate — which would mean this Wanderer was one of theirs.
So could the mole the Syndicate had planted in the Black Organization's upper ranks be the Wanderer himself?
No. That couldn't be it.
Kir dismissed the thought.
After all, the Wanderer didn't even have a codename. Nothing about him suggested he sat anywhere near the top of the organization.