How Rude—I "Borrowed" It
Lupin is, as a rule, kind to her elders.
It was the result of growing up with the orphanage director stamping Korea's culture of rank and pecking order into her skull, press after firm press. She had hated it herself, but it had proved quite useful at the company too.
Perhaps that halo was something adults could see. Or perhaps it was simply that she had a gentle face. Back before the possession, stand around waiting for the bus that came once every twenty minutes and at least three elderly strangers would ask her about routes she didn't even know.
After she became Lupin, though, maybe it was because her face had taken on a somewhat fiercer cast. It had been the same with Tasili, and the same with Maze Rat. Everyone started by looking at Lupin as if she were suspicious.
She hadn't even done anything!
"...Master?"
It was the same now. She had sidled up ever so sweetly, and yet the way the two of them were eyeing her was anything but ordinary.
What. Did I do something wrong?
All she had done was show a little friendliness toward her master, so what was this atmosphere, as if she had committed some enormous crime? When Lupin shrank in on herself like a suspect hauled in for questioning, Dmitri finally opened his mouth.
"This child? The one said to have done the most in subduing Maze Rat."
"That's correct. Lupin, this is His Excellency Grand Duke Rurikovich, Speaker of the National Assembly of the Rostov Republic. Offer your greetings."
Just as a new hire at a major corporation cannot suddenly barge into the president's office for a cup of coffee, aristocratic society works much the same way. Lupin was a bumpkin among bumpkins, without a single title to her name. At best, because Tasili held a high post in the Association, she was at the level where managing one greeting through a single degree of separation was already a blessing. Under ordinary circumstances she wouldn't even be permitted to stand beside Dmitri. No wonder Tasili had gone stiff a moment ago and lost the power of speech.
Not that any such knowledge could possibly have been sitting in Lupin's head. He seemed like someone important, but she had no idea how important, so she simply folded herself in half at the waist and boomed out a greeting, the way she had the first time she met the company president after getting hired.
"Hello!!! Your Excellency the Grand Duke!!!"
Lupin's hair had been a ponytail ever since the possession. She had never once had cause to face someone and bow this deeply, though, and she had no idea that ducking her head that hard would send the flying horsetail of her hair smacking into a person.
Whap. A pink wave swept across Dmitri's face. The color drained completely from Tasili's.
It wasn't that the bucket of etiquette had too many holes. There was simply no bucket of etiquette at all.
But it wasn't as if Lupin had done it out of any bad intent, either. Watching her haul the corners of her mouth upward, desperate to make a good impression no matter what, even Dmitri couldn't help but laugh.
"Kahahaha!"
"Ack."
Dmitri laughed heartily and thumped Lupin across the back. She had been reading the room and letting all the strength out of her body, so she went tottering straight over and ended up standing beside Tasili.
"I like the honesty. I can't even remember the last time I saw a soul this pure."
"I'm merely grateful that you look kindly on my lacking disciple."
"By the way, Lupin. The entrance ought to have been sealed. How did you get up here?"
"Ah, that. Everyone looked so busy, so I just slipped... hehe."
Had Tasili not been there, she would have become a righteous thief on the spot. Even so, because it was in front of her master, Lupin was hastily scraping together manners she didn't possess. And to Tasili, that couldn't have been more endearing. A walking disaster, yes, but at least she was trying to contort herself into something that fit a social shape. If the disciple was making an effort, how could the master stand idle?
Tasili immediately stepped in to shield her.
"Your Excellency, I beg you to generously forgive the discourtesy. It seems her heart was simply too impatient at the thought of seeing her master after so long. Lupin. From now on, call a servant at the entrance and have them come find me. Understood?"
"Yes, ma'am!!!"
And who was Dmitri? A man who knew aristocratic society better than anyone, and knew aristocrats better than anyone. Before a man who had lived among a society full of vipers and foxes, a single peeping chick had suddenly appeared. She was a woman mature enough to debut in high society at once, and yet at the same time she left the striking impression of a ten-year-old who had only just begun to grasp social consensus. Untainted purity, just as Tasili had said. The judgment that she was closer to a wild beast of the mountains than to a human being fit perfectly.
Polish her well, and she'll be reborn as a splendid talent.
Someone who showed no interest in useless things and faithfully did only what she was told. A child perfectly suited to become an ideal ally. The sort of person who, once she swore loyalty, would never betray you. To a noble, an exceedingly precious talent. There was no need to make an enemy of her, to talk down to her past a certain point, or to mock her.
"As it happens, Lord Maksimov told me your martial skill is exceptional—that you can subdue criminals in a single stroke. Might I ask one favor of you?"
"A favor? What kind of favor?"
"A mission to eliminate some dangerous fellows who wish for the overthrow of our house."
Dmitri said it while pointing at the Jade of Spontaneous Life swaying at Lupin's waist.
"Succeed, and I shall give you the Jade of Spontaneous Life as a gift."
The Jade of Spontaneous Life was both a family treasure of House Rurikovich and a token of loyalty bestowed on martial artists who devoted themselves to the house. The knight order occupied that place now, so it wasn't a situation in which he particularly needed the jade returned. It was simply too precious an object to give away for nothing, and Dmitri, in his own way, meant to quietly hook a fishing line into Lupin. It was that peculiar aristocratic habit of laying a debt, so that someday he might suggest, "I've extended you all manner of conveniences—would you consider working under me?"
Of course, Lupin knew nothing.
"But this is already mine...."
Tasili watched the mood with her heart in her throat. If Dmitri so much as showed his temper here, all the effort she had piled up could turn to foam in an instant. Fortunately, Dmitri laughed with generous indulgence.
"So that's how you express your confidence that you could never fail the mission? Young people these days are truly hard to understand."
Tasili was quick to catch the thread again.
"Haha. Of course. The child's skill, if nothing else, is truly outstanding. You may entrust it to her with confidence. Isn't that right?"
Poke. Tasili's elbow prodded Lupin toward whatever she said next.
"Huh? Oh. Th-that's right! So who do I need to get rid of?"
It was the moment when weeks of Tasili's unpaid labor finally bore fruit. The master set the ball with goodwill, and the disciple spiked it home with ignorance. A truly perfect combination.
In the meantime Tasili had noticed Lupin's body listing farther and farther, and was thinking she had better send the girl off to hunt a treasure chest or whatever it was. In truth, Lupin was bored.
This conversation is dragging....
This is why I hate getting dragged into old people's conversations....
Pressing a hand to the back of Lupin's head and forcing it down into a bow, Tasili removed her from the conversation for the time being.
"Perhaps the details might be discussed again whenever it is convenient for Your Excellency."
"Let us do so."
"Then I shall dismiss my disciple first. Off you go, Lupin."
"Yes!! Thank you!!"
Having let Tasili know she meant to visit a tailor in the city, Lupin vanished like a shot.
A moment later the two of them spoke at once, as if they had planned it.
"About Lupin."
"About my disciple."
"Please, speak first."
"No. Your Excellency first."
"You have my thanks, then."
"Once I've seen the results of her first mission, if I judge her a decent child, I'd like to bring her into the Rurik Knight Order. What do you think, my lord? The child is so pure and eager to please that she's rather taken my fancy."
"It would be a true honor. However, as I have said many times, the child is still very young. Her own thoughts and instincts run ahead of the rules of people and society. Shamefully, even I am not yet able to properly control her."
"Ho ho. Surely that is something one can gradually change with the proper education and care."
Had Lupin heard it, she would have snorted. The only thing capable of controlling Lupin was a treasure chest.
Having made a dignified exit from the elders' conversation, Lupin was already passing along the inner corridor of the National Assembly's basement. She had come through doors locked in layer upon layer. However many locks there were, to Lupin—Lockpicking Rank X—they amounted to nothing but a simple minigame. And so, before she knew it, she arrived at the document archive set in the deepest place of all.
Countless papers, packed into cardboard boxes, rose into towers together with the dust. Vaulting over a few boxes that caught at her feet and pressing deeper inside, she found a safe popping into view, hidden behind the neatly stacked document boxes.
"Ooh. Found it!"
Without a moment's hesitation—krrrik, krrrrrik. Lupin turned the nodes this way and that, cracked the safe door, and crouched.
"...Huh?"
What had been waiting for her inside was a sheaf of documents bound up with string.
"It's not like they're taking me for a fool. How is this a treasure?"
It was a mercy the Secret Chest count had gone up. If even the count had stayed put, she would have judged it a fake treasure chest on the spot, and then someone would have gotten a taste of Parmenia's special poison. Lupin clicked her tongue, regretting how close a historic first test subject had come to being born.
"There's no way meaningless paper would be kept in a safe this pointlessly secret."
Right. There has to be a reason.
Lupin settled herself on the floor and began flipping through the pages, rustle after rustle. Her concentration was spent before even ten minutes had passed. The intruder, having forgotten her own situation so completely it might as well have been pitch black, flopped flat on her back.
"Is this a member list?"
People's names. Numbers. And proper nouns she didn't really know. More than a hundred pages, every last one of them laid out the same way. Unfortunately, she was absolute trash at anything that required using her head. But she had a smart, useful friend who held down the position of common sense.
Yegor might actually figure something out!
Lupin ripped the very last page of the file clean off. The paper, folded with care and tucked into a small pocket of her harness, was delivered a little later to Yegor, who had been waiting at the tailor's. For some reason, once he had looked the document over, his color was not good.
"No matter how I look at this, it's a record of bribes."
"Bribes?"
"Where in the world did you get this?"
"From a treasure chest in the basement of the National Assembly."
Yegor felt as if he was only now beginning to understand what the treasure chests Lupin kept talking about actually were.
"Don't tell me... you robbed the Assembly's safe?"
Lupin drew her eyebrows inward and barked.
