Subcontracted to the Final Boss
"Audrette, why are you grinning like that?"
"Haha! I guess I'm excited about the meeting with you!"
Whatever nonsense my fellow guild members were spouting, I kept my focus on the work at hand. Setting aside the mountain of tasks piled up in front of me, the very first thing I set out to do was figure out which romance fantasy novel this world happened to be.
Fortunately, this was an information guild, and with newspapers stacked everywhere, gathering intelligence was easy enough. The result of my research: I now knew exactly which story I'd landed in.
This world is the setting of The Villain Duke's Daughter Saves the Nation.
It was a light bit of fluff I'd read to kill time, and luckily I hadn't read it all that long ago, so the plot was still fresh in my mind. It started as a child-rearing story and followed the heroine all the way to adulthood — the protagonist gets adopted by a terrifying duke, and then, twist of twists, it turns out she's his long-lost biological daughter from when she was a baby.
In this country, three factions — the imperial family, the Temple, and the House of Duke Caliard — each wielded their own divine authorities, keeping each other in check. Among them, the heroine belonged to Duke Caliard's house.
Honestly, though, a ducal house standing shoulder to shoulder with the imperial family AND the Temple seems like a serious balance problem.
I did wonder why rebellion never broke out in a world like that, but in the end, I decided to just accept this sloppy worldbuilding and move on. From the newspaper articles, I pieced together the timeline: the heroine hadn't yet come of age or made her society debut. No romance with the crown prince had kicked off yet — instead, the story was presumably still in its domestic child-rearing phase. Afterward, she'd fall in love with the crown prince, ally with the imperial family, and drive out the Temple — the most corrupt of the three factions.
I think I saw the name Audrette somewhere in there... or maybe I didn't?
Was I just an extra? As I was pondering that, a hand came tapping at my shoulder.
"Audrette, could you help me out real quick?"
"With what?"
Susanna stood behind me, beaming sweetly. Hmm. Every time that girl smiled like that, something ominous followed....
"We have a visitor at the guild!"
"Uh, right...."
As the name made abundantly clear, the Global Information Network Guild was a nobody outfit, a total bottom-feeder in the industry. Still, the occasional trivial request did trickle in — things like find the person my husband is having an affair with.
"How about you take this one, Audrette?"
"Why me?"
"Aww, but my stomach hurts today...."
Susanna put on an act so transparent a child could see through it. But instead of telling her to shove it, I paused to think it over. Susanna had joined the same time I did, yet she'd buttered up the Guild Master early on, so the two of them were on relatively good terms. I wasn't ready to pick a fight with her yet.
"Why not ask the assistant manager for help? I'm new here — I wouldn't know what to do."
"The assistant manager went out for a smoke an hour ago and still isn't back!"
Unbelievable. Our assistant manager was famous for being a "passion pay" evangelist who somehow spent three hours a day on smoke breaks himself. Swallowing the bile rising in my throat, I asked Susanna:
"So what's this visitor like?"
"Hmm, from what I could see, he had a black hood pulled way down over his face — couldn't see a thing. But he had several cheap, gaudy gemstone rings on his fingers, so I'd guess he's just some parvenu?"
"...!"
Hold on. That sounded like someone I knew.
I recalled the description of the crown prince from the original novel. He wore a handful of rings made of low-grade gemstones. In one scene, the heroine had even asked him about it.
"Your Highness, why do you wear rings like those?"
"Oh, it's nothing. They're just items."
Someone matching the crown prince's description had just walked into our guild? That felt less like coincidence and more like fate. If the crown prince had business at an information guild at this point in the story, then....
"I searched for you so desperately I ended up visiting the neighborhood pawnbroker."
In the original, the crown prince received help from the heroine before her debut, and then went searching for her everywhere in order to repay the debt — because at the time, she'd been hiding her identity.
That's it! That's exactly what this is!
The crown prince was looking for the original heroine, and he'd come all the way to our little information guild to find her! Just like a proper romance-fantasy heroine transmigrated into the story, connections with the powerful were starting to line themselves up for me! Better build that network fast.
Having reasoned it that far, I slipped back into my original clueless-Audrette persona and told Susanna:
"Fine... I'll take it...."
"Oh, wonderful! Thank you so much!"
Susanna fluttered her hands and scampered back to her desk. Hiding the smile that threatened to leak out, I headed to the room next door.
This tiny building consisted of exactly two rooms: the office where we worked, and the reception room for greeting clients. Oh, and by the way, the bathroom was in the building next door. Ha. Classic derelict bottom-tier company.
I opened the reception room door and found a man seated inside, hood pulled deep over his face.
"Good afternoon, sir...."
I sat down across from him and offered a greeting.
"Would you like something to drink?"
"Got anything?"
"There are some tea bags in the office, but I have to restock them with my own money, so honestly it's better if you don't have any...."
"...Understood. I won't drink, then."
"So, what brings you here today?"
"...I'm looking for someone."
He began to speak, haltingly.
"I don't expect a small guild like this to actually find her, but my situation has gotten desperate enough that I've been reduced to coming to a place like this."
"Please, go ahead. It may well be something we can handle."
"I'm searching for a woman."
At last, the story I'd been waiting for came out of his mouth.
"She had black hair and black eyes. There was a large scar on her neck — she'd supposedly injured her throat and couldn't speak. She claimed to be a maid from a noble house, but I don't think that was true. Her hands didn't have a single callus."
"I see. Please, go on."
"Thinking back on it now, the injured throat was probably a lie too — a way to hide her voice. The scar must have been faked."
"Where did you meet her?"
"...In the Alail Forest, on the outskirts of the capital. It was no place a person should have been, and yet she appeared out of nowhere."
Perfect. This was exactly the meeting between the heroine and the male lead that I'd read in the original novel. At that point in the story, the crown prince had fallen victim to the Temple's schemes and was dying of poison in that very forest — and it was the heroine who saved his life.
I could have identified the person he was looking for on the spot, but what mattered here was uncovering it naturally. I couldn't afford to look suspicious, after all.
"And when was this?"
"Mid-August of last year."
"Ah, I see...."
I twirled the pen in my hand. To connect this to the heroine smoothly, I needed to....
"You couldn't find her at any of the larger information guilds, I take it?"
"...I never visited any of them."
"Why not? Ours is a tiny outfit that mostly handles affair investigations."
"I have personal reasons. Don't ask."
"Understood, I'll respect that — GAH!"
Suddenly, something clicked in my head, and I let out a shriek. No way!
I'd read the original novel just to kill time and forgotten all about it, but now I remembered exactly what role Audrette played in the story!
"Hello, my name is Audrette. What can I help you with?"
"There's someone I'm looking for...."
"Understood, sir. I'll do my very best."
In the original novel, Audrette appeared as Extra Number One at the information guild the crown prince visits.
"Sir, I've brought you information I believe you can trust."
At first, Audrette dug up fairly useful intelligence for the crown prince. Thanks to that, he came to trust her and entrusted her with gathering information on his behalf.
But then....
"Something's wrong. Someone is leaking our information."
"Your Highness, allow me to set a trap this time. We'll feed everyone different information and see who the culprit is."
"What? That information guild was a Temple plant all along?"
"How sneaky of them to swallow even a guild that small — the entire information guild itself was a subcontractor for the Temple."
That was it. The Guild Master had called this bottom-tier information guild a "subcontractor" earlier — and the prime contractor handing us our work had been the Temple, this world's final boss and villain organization!
Damn it all! Of all the sides to be transmigrated into, I had to land on the Temple's?
In romance fantasy, a functioning Temple is the rare exception! They're all corrupt, evil organizations by definition!
If I'd actively participated in their villainy, I could at least feel I deserved it — but all I ever did was collect a salary and do the work I was assigned!
So what happened to Audrette Lavendel, the one who leaked information in the original....
"No, please, I had no choice...!"
Haha, if I remember correctly, didn't she get an ending where she rotted away in prison?
By the time I'd recalled that far, my face had gone white as a sheet. I could not go to prison over this.
Maybe I really should leave this guild?
No matter how much knowledge of the original plot I held, it meant nothing as long as I was on the payroll of this Global-Something-Or-Other Information Guild. Our guild itself was a subcontractor for the Temple — which meant that as long as I stayed here, I'd be filed under the villain faction.
And then, a brilliant idea lit up in my head.
What if I offered to work as a double agent — for the crown prince?
The crown prince was the male lead, destined to triumph over the Temple, our prime contractor. Wouldn't it be smarter to side with him?