Leverage
"Team Lead Susanna! What was that just now?"
"N-nothing! I thought I saw a bug crawl by! And come to think of it, I must have confused it with another case! This one was entirely Team Lead Audrette's work, yes sir!"
"Really? Then why did you change your story?"
"Heheh, I got mixed up, sir. So sorry, sir…"
When Susanna dipped her head in a deep bow, the guild master clicked his tongue at me all the same.
"There! See? You can do it when you actually try. So why haven't you been doing it all along?"
"Haha, I'll work harder from now on…"
"Good grief, kids these days. Nothing but slacking off, all day long."
After the guild master tossed out yet another crusty old-timer remark and stalked off, I exchanged a secret glance with Susanna. It meant, roughly, follow me outside.
Unlike the confidence she wore around me like armor, Susanna now looked terrified, as if I'd caught her red-handed with something incriminating. Well, she had, in fact, been caught red-handed.
One look at her face and I knew. That's the face of someone about to film a vlog with wireless earbuds in, right there at her desk.
Granted, no such thing as a vlog existed in this world. Still, relying purely on my gut instinct, I had done a little digging of my own — and at last, I found exactly what I was looking for.
There it is!
Susanna had written an essay. She'd leaked confidential client information from an intelligence guild — every last page of it — and published it in an essay that went like this:
I May Be the Lowest-Rung Team Lead at an Intelligence Guild, But I'm Still the Protagonist of My Own Life!
And inside it, the private lives of clients we had handled to date were partially exposed for anyone to read.
No matter how much the guild master favored Susanna, sweeping this under the rug would not be easy. If a client filed a formal complaint, he would be the one left holding the bag.
"Team Lead Susanna. Do you have something to say to me?"
"Uh, uhh…"
For once, she looked genuinely flustered.
"That essay of yours sold quite well, I hear? Must have made you a tidy little profit?"
The essay Susanna had published under a pen name had, astonishingly, clawed its way onto the bestseller lists. Lucky for her the guild master, who couldn't care less about books, had no idea.
No, seriously — why do people keep writing essays? Even the CEO of the X-so company I used to work for, a Mr. Park Geoseong, wrote an essay about his own life. It was mostly lies, but even within those lies, he couldn't hide his insufferable old-guard sensibilities.
What was it called again — Park Geoseong: Beginning a Glorious Second Act of Life? Even the title was a joke.
While I was reminiscing about Mr. Park's absurd little memoir, Susanna visibly wilted.
"W-well, you see…"
"Don't even think about denying it's you, Team Lead Susanna. I am, after all, a team lead at an intelligence guild myself. I have more than enough evidence to prove the author is you."
"T-Team Lead Audrette! I was wrong!"
Having finally grasped the situation, Susanna clasped her hands together and began groveling in earnest.
"Please, please don't tell the guild master! You know what happens if he finds out…!"
"Done wrong, this could go all the way to a lawsuit."
"Th-that's exactly why…!"
"But if you hide this, I might end up paying the price for it later too."
"B-but we joined the guild the same year!"
"Oh, right. Same cohort."
I briefly considered cutting Susanna loose entirely, but throwing away a person you hold leverage over is a waste.
Far better to let her keep working here for a long, long time — under my thumb.
I flashed her my brightest smile.
"Fine. Since we're cohort-mates, I'll grant Susanna's little 'request.'"
"Really?"
"In exchange, Susanna grants one of mine. That's only fair, don't you think?"
"And what request would that be…"
Susanna rolled her eyes, clearly still sizing up the situation. I shrugged and continued.
"It's simple. From now on, you empty the trash in the morning."
"What? Why would I do that, though?"
"Fine, I'll do it then."
"No, no… that's not it. We're office workers, aren't we? Not janitors?"
"So you think the trash can empties itself by magic when nobody takes it out? Empty the trash from now on, please."
"Uh… yes…"
Susanna wore the blank stare of someone who had genuinely never once considered where the trash went. Ugh, this coworker of mine has zero workplace instincts!
"Oh, and refill the snacks and tea bags for me too."
"Can't we just bill the guild master for those later…?"
"Nope. Where in this guild would you find such a budget? Obviously we stock them out of our own pockets."
"Th-then can't we just… not refill them?"
"The assistant manager says they must be stocked."
"Still, though…"
"How much did you make off that book again, Susanna…?"
"AAGH! Fine, I'll do it!"
"Good. Thank you for honoring my request."
Once I'd dumped every last annoying chore from my workload onto her plate, I allowed myself a smile of victory.
Excellent. Escaped — at last — from the very bottom of the X-so guild's totem pole.
"Oh, by the way — why do you keep working at this guild anyway, Susanna? Didn't you make a pile of money off that book?"
"W-well, I've got a contract for my next book… and breaking it means a huge penalty, you see…"
"Ahh. Then I suppose you'll be working here for a long, long time."
"Yes! So please, please keep it secret from the guild master!"
"Ah, then there's one more favor I'd like. Emptying the trash was the guild master's order, and stocking the snacks and tea bags was the assistant manager's order. So shouldn't you honor one more request of mine?"
"Now what could you possibly…"
I had survived two years at an X-so company. A human forged by X-so itself. Time to show her exactly how deep that swamp goes.
"Tsk, Susanna. I noticed the other day you were pecking away at a calculator while doing the account ledgers."
"Yes…?"
"From now on, do your calculations by hand. No calculator. It could be malfunctioning, after all. How can you trust a machine?"
"Excuse me, what are you even…"
"No calculators going forward. I find them deeply irritating."
"I— ugh, fine, yes…"
And so Susanna nodded, watching my face carefully the whole while.
It may have looked absurd, but for the time being, it was a measure absolutely necessary to whip Susanna's discipline into shape. Mr. Park Geoseong, thank you for teaching me every possible way to nitpick a subordinate.
"Let's do good work together from now on."
"Y-yes, ma'am!"
The look Susanna kept sneaking at me said she was staring at a lunatic, but I paid it no mind. That's simply the price of survival at an X-so company — to become an X-so person yourself.
***
"How very strange…"
Inside a pristine office, a man's gray eyes emerged from beneath jet-black hair. His gaze was fixed on a document he had received some days prior.
The man was none other than the Crown Prince of the Empire, Cedrian Elbaron. At the moment, a single thought had him thoroughly obsessed.
How on earth did she find that information in a guild that tiny?
He had placed no hope whatsoever in the 'Global-something-or-other' guild. He'd gone there purely in the spirit of a drowning man clutching at a rope — the large guilds had been out of the question for a request like his.
The employee who had attended him there was a young woman who looked barely more than a bottom-rung clerk at an intelligence guild.
Dark black hair and violet eyes gave her a gloomy, funereal air; objectively speaking her face was beautiful, but the dark circles under her eyes were so heavy and her expression so melancholy that her looks hardly registered at all.
The price she'd demanded for finding his information had been strange, too. Build me a bathroom? Who goes their whole life expecting to receive such a bizarre request?
And yet that woman had genuinely succeeded in uncovering the information he sought.
If the person who aided him that day was indeed the Duchess of Caliard, everything fell neatly into place. Recalling their conversation in the forest only deepened his conviction.
He had identified the Duchess of Caliard as his benefactor — the rest was now his own problem to solve.
Still, one thing about that intelligence guild continued to nag at him.
Cedrian's gaze dropped to the document in his hands. At the very top, in small print, was its title.
That is exactly the Temple's titling convention.
An ordinary citizen would never have noticed, but Cedrian — who had spent years keeping the Temple in check and quietly collecting intelligence on them — recognized it at a glance.
Something was off about that place. Cedrian resolved to dig into the guild's background.
"Eric. Global… what was it — I can't even remember the name. Regardless. Look into that guild for me."
He issued the order to his chief aide, and a few days later, the Crown Prince received information that shook him.
"Your Highness, that guild appears to be connected to the Temple in some capacity. To put it in perspective… they seem to be, for all intents and purposes, the Temple's subcontractor."
"The Temple's subcontractor?"
Cedrian's eyes gleamed.
Just recently, he had been searching for a way to reach deeper into the Temple's affairs — and here was this guild, so clumsy and so easily approached.
Handled carefully, it might just allow him to pull the Temple's own secrets right out from under them.