A Day Off (2)
"A va...cation?"
At the utterly foreign word, I blinked.
Now, what was that again?
Ah, right. A day off.
It had been so long since I'd heard it that it slipped my mind for a second.
"It won't count against your benefits or your performance reviews, so take the rest."
"Now, just hold on a moment. A vacation? The Southern Border will fall apart!"
I cried out in desperation at the Minister, who seemed one breath away from settling the matter with breezy finality.
The only examiners left at the office were me and the Five Senses Officers. We were barely holding the line with five people, and he wanted me to take a vacation?
"This officer has already rested for three whole days. If I stay away any longer, the Five Senses Officers will die!"
I could see it plain as day—my subordinates, crushed beneath the workload and the endless stream of entrants, melting down in real time.
"Thanks to Erzena I've recovered, so I'll return to duty at once."
Any more of this and they wouldn't just be overworked—they might actually drop dead at their posts.
But the Minister shook his head and delivered an answer I hadn't expected at all.
"Don't worry. The Northern Border chief volunteered."
"The North... do you mean Senior Officer Dhin Askyrin?"
Dhin Askyrin. The first dragonewt I had ever come to know, and the calmest, most decisive immigration officer I'd ever met.
"Yes. While you're gone, she'll cover the South with the three examiners under her command. She says she felt the Dragon Word being proclaimed in the South."
"Oh..."
Come to think of it, of course the Intelligence Department would have reported the incident to the Minister.
Seeing my momentary bewilderment, he spat out his next words like they left a bad taste in his mouth.
"The Director of Intelligence went white as a sheet while reporting it, you know?"
"Pardon?"
"The whole Intelligence Department threw a fit thinking you were dead. It's been an age since I last saw that woman in such a panic."
"...Do you mean Melanie?"
"She's been locking down information through the agents on-site and sorting out the situation—hasn't gone home in three days."
"..."
This was all news to me.
All she'd done back then was mention Menassil to me in passing.
Deploying agents, and on top of that—suddenly, something she'd once said surfaced in my memory.
"Nothing comes free, darling."
That was what she'd said, and yet here she was, stepping up to help before anyone even asked.
I'd been racking up debts to her lately. A small smile tugged at my lips before I knew it.
I ought to pay her a proper thank-you visit sometime soon.
After all, I'd promised to drop by once the dust settled on the whole using-barbarians-to-fight-barbarians affair. And beyond her, I owed my respects to Margrave Reyes as well.
But that was a problem for later.
I wiped the smile away and spoke.
"Even so, I believe the Five Senses Officers should be sent on vacation first."
"Why?"
"They've suffered far more than this officer has. Besides, you still have to make good on the Zero-Accident reward you promised, don't you?"
It already felt like a lifetime ago, but the Minister and I had most definitely struck a deal: three days of paid leave. It was finally time to hand that back to my subordinates. I couldn't keep grinding them into the dirt forever.
"Ha. 'Zero accidents.'"
The Minister laughed, cold and sharp.
"Denying entry to a pilgrimage. Visiting the Royal Castle without authorization and defying the Queen's orders. An attempted bombing with an unregistered artifact. Executing dragon hunters. Rescuing and sheltering the master of the volcano. Proclaiming the Dragon Word."
The recent incidents rattled off his tongue, one after another.
"A truly immaculate zero-accident record, you damn brat. You pulled off how many catastrophic incidents in a single month, and you call it zero accidents?"
"..."
I had no rebuttal, so I did my best to casually look elsewhere. But the Minister's fury-fueled lecture was far from over.
"Wasn't the princess enough for you? A dragon? The master of a volcano, no less? Why does that sort of being keep coming to you? No—and as if that weren't enough, you went and used the Dragon Word? If that was even possible, why didn't you tell me!?"
"No, that wasn't something this officer did intentionally, it couldn't be helped—"
"What, you want near-accident privileges thrown in too, while you're at it? I told you you'd done well turning the pilgrims away, and now you've rebranded from zero accidents to near accidents? Are you trying to work me into the grave before my illness even gets the chance?"
"N-no... no, sir..."
"Before you think of your subordinates, how about some gratitude for the superior cleaning up your messes? What a thoroughly ungrateful brat."
Yeesh. My ears.
"...I'm sorrrry, sir."
"Good enough."
Watching me crumple in real time, the Minister finally eased his expression.
"This incident is big enough to turn the entire international situation upside down. You get that?"
"The Dragon Word has that kind of reach?"
"That's the point. Nobody knows yet. But the Dragon Word you proclaimed will soon ripple through the world—and the dragonewts will have felt it more vividly than anyone."
So that was why Senior Officer Dhin Askyrin had offered to come south. Now it all made sense.
"There are two reasons you're going on this vacation."
He held up a finger.
"One. Working a man the moment he's back from the dead is just poor form."
Since when was our office such a warm-hearted workplace? A brief doubt surfaced. Come to think of it, maybe it was only the Southern Border that was hell—the other borders seemed fine.
"I don't know how brutal the Dragon Word's backlash was, but one look at you tells me you truly did come back from the dead. Even a miraculous survival, though, tells us nothing about when, where, or how it might strike again."
"But—"
"Absolute rest. That's what you need most right now, not a return to duty. If you go down on me, I can't answer for the people over there."
Cutting my protest off without appeal, the Minister unfolded a second finger.
"Two. I need to keep you hidden for a while—from His Majesty, and from the world."
The second reason was far more serious than I'd anticipated.
"H-His Majesty, you say?"
"I'll be reporting this incident to His Majesty today at the earliest, tomorrow at the latest. And then you'll be summoned to the Royal Castle, no way around it."
"..."
"And what do you suppose happens if you show up before His Majesty dripping with divine holy power?"
He made a short slashing motion across his own throat.
No explanation was needed for what that meant. We all knew full well how King Rio felt about divine holy power and the gods.
"The only reason you have until tomorrow at all is that the King's proxy delayed the report. Otherwise it would have gone up long ago."
"Ironically, your brush with death over this incident is a stroke of luck. Say you're away on convalescent leave, and we buy ourselves time."
"What's more, there's now a real chance every dragonewt on the continent comes flooding south. The volcano collapsed and the dragon vanished less than a month ago, and now the Dragon Word has been proclaimed a second time—they'll all come to see it with their own eyes, every last one of them."
Every pretext was bulletproof. He delivered the conclusion, crisp and absolute.
"You have one week. Don't you dare come anywhere near the Immigration Office before then. Come back fully restored. If I so much as glimpse a single hair on your head around here, I'll treat it as insubordination. Am I clear?"
Caught between the cold calculation and the unmistakable concern on the Minister's face, I could only give one answer.
"...Yessir."
"End of transmission."
And that was that.
A vacation. My first in years.
So... what was I supposed to do with it?
Seven days. 168 hours, free of duty.
The countdown had begun.
"Well then. Let's see if I can't put them to good use."
Good use, my ass.
Afternoon, day two of the vacation. I sat at the table, staring blankly at the clock, and muttered:
"119 hours, 28 minutes, 31 seconds remaining... 30... 29..."
48 hours, 31 minutes, and 31 seconds spent without work. Every passing second registered with painful vividness.
Tick... tock...
In the silence, the second hand rang out in time with my bloodshot stare.
I was going crazy. Time simply refused to move.
Why was I home at this hour? Why was I sitting here doing nothing at all? Who even was I?
Under normal circumstances, I'd have greeted the day's 108th entrant by now and be working through the documents winging in from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Instead, I was in my own home. Even the clothes on my back weren't an examiner's uniform, just a comfortable shirt and trousers.
"..."
Everything felt wrong. The air, the clothes, the place, the hour—even my own self. Wrong enough to drive me mad. Like the very meaning of my existence had been erased from the world.
Then, someone called to me from across the table.
"Um... Nathan?"
"Are you an entrant?"
At the answer that leapt out of me on pure reflex, Erzena laughed an awkward ahaha.
"C-could you pass me the salt?"
"The salt? What do you... Ah."
I came back to myself to find I was pressing the salt shaker down onto my plate like an entry stamp.
Only then did it register: it was lunchtime. While everyone sat around the table eating together, I alone had been staring vacantly at the clock, soul gone wandering.
"..."
"..."
"..."
Three women gazed at me with undisguised pity.
I scrambled to explain.
"I was merely verifying the clock's accuracy. This officer is perfectly fine."
"No, you are not. You've done nothing but stare at that clock for two days straight."
"Ugh."
"So the Dragon Word's aftereffects afflict the human mind as well, it seems."
One sentence, denied three times over.
But what could I say? There's nothing to do.
I was learning for the first time just how large a share of a person's life their daily routine truly occupies. Stop cold something you've done every single day for four years, and your mind simply refuses to turn over. The mere sight of a blank sheet of paper sent the urge to write down name, origin, and reason for entry raging through me like a fever.
And then—
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
Someone hammered on the front door hard enough to break it down.
That was odd. Thanks to the protective magic I'd re-cast, anyone who hadn't visited before shouldn't have been able to come anywhere close.
But the voice that rang out erased my suspicion in a heartbeat.
"Big brother!!!! Open the door!!!!"
It was Noa.
"Noa? Oof—"
The instant I opened the door, she seized my cheeks and turned my head this way and that, inspecting me.
"Are you okay!? All your limbs still attached? Eyes, nose, mouth—all present and accounted for!?"
What an appallingly violent way to say hello.
I barely managed to pry her hands away, then asked,
"What about your business? Weren't you off west riding the gold rush?"
"Sold it all off and pulled out ages ago!"
And she wasn't lying, either—Noa's outfit was even flashier than the last time I'd seen her.
But instead of boasting about her merchant instincts as she usually would, she grabbed my cheeks again, face tight with worry, and cried,
"You almost died! The Saint— Lady Erzena sent me a letter! Do you have any idea how hard that hit me!?"
Now that was an answer I never saw coming.
I turned to look at Erzena.
"...Erzena. You sent her a letter?"
"She's your family, after all. You were drifting between life and death—I thought someone ought to tell her..."
I hurried over to her and lowered my voice.
"How much exactly did you tell her?"
"Only that you'd been badly hurt by some terrorist and were recovering."
At least she hadn't told her everything. In that case, there was no problem. As far as my sister knew, I was currently nothing more than a man laid up with serious injuries.
I eased my expression and shrugged like it was nothing.
"It's nothing. Just the kind of thing that happens now and then when you're stamping entries. I'll be back at work before you know it."
I'd rested more than enough, anyway. Couldn't she see how my left hand already ached for the hourglass, my right for the entry stamp?
But Noa wasn't gullible enough to swallow that.
"Really?"
"Really."
"Truly?"
"Truly."
Eyes narrowed to slits, she circled me once. And then—
"How about this?"
Poke.
Her finger found the internal injury with surgical precision.
"GRKAAAAH!"
A violent surge of pain shot straight up my spine.
Peering down at me where I lay crumpled on the floor, that brat of a sister of mine flashed a smug grin.
"See? As if I wouldn't know my own big brother is a weakling. You can play healthy all you want—I see right through you."
"Why... you... little...!"
Noa hauled me back upright as I glared up at her with pure resentment. She gave Elaine and Menassil a quick round of greetings, then abruptly popped the question.
"By the way—aren't you going anywhere for your vacation?"
"Where would I even go? Honestly, nowhere really fits."
At that, Noa pounced like she'd been waiting her whole life for the opening.
"Big brother, let's go home!"
"...Home?"
I tilted my head for a moment.
"Oh, you mean spend the vacation here? Already doing exactly that."
"No, not that. When it comes to recuperating, nothing beats your hometown."
Noa frowned as if I'd said something ridiculous, then pointed past the door.
"Let's go back to the family home."
The words I least wanted to hear had just left her mouth.
"It's been ages since you've seen Mom and Dad."
And then came the words I wanted to hear even less.
"No. Do I look insane to—"
But Noa wasn't finished.
"Your sisters are coming too!"
And with that, she held out her hand to Erzena, Elaine, and Menassil as well.
"Sis...ters?"
"...Huh?"
"Oh ho."
All three women's eyes began to sparkle.