Eyes (5)
Late evening that day.
"Hmm..."
Sitting in my chair, I sank deep into thought.
What was this feeling?
The auditor I'd left behind kept nagging at the back of my mind.
"Hmmm-mmm."
But why did it bother me so much? Nothing clicked into place with any real certainty.
Just as I was chewing over this inexplicable restlessness for the umpteenth time—
"Honey, what are you thinking about?"
A familiar voice called out to me. I looked up to find Melanie sitting across from me, spinning her wine glass between her fingertips as she watched me.
"This is the dinner we promised ages ago. No getting distracted."
The people seated around us kept glancing our way. Or rather, at Melanie, who—supposedly here on temporary assignment—was wearing a dress fit for a royal banquet.
Only then did I remember where I actually was. A cozy, atmospheric bar, sharing a casual drink with her. We were finally making good on the promise to have dinner together as a thank-you for the success of the Using Barbarians to Fight Barbarians operation.
I quickly dragged my mind back to the real world.
"My apologies. Something was on my mind for a moment there..."
"I'll forgive you. But if you daydream while I'm sitting right in front of you again, my feelings will be hurt."
Even as she said it, a satisfied smile flickered across Melanie's face. The goodwill radiating off her was unmistakable. Perhaps something more.
I gently steered the conversation elsewhere. "Eight applicants passed on the first day of interviews. Not the worst outcome, all things considered."
"Still talking shop, even here. You're hopeless."
"Honestly, it's only gone so smoothly because you were here with me. If I'd been alone, I'd probably still be stuck at the Immigration Office right now."
"Sweet talker. Living with three women has made you quite the flatterer."
"Ugh."
Light banter traded back and forth. Mercifully, she gave me only a mild scolding before following my lead into the topic.
"So you'll be placing them at the same rank as the Five Senses Officers?"
"The Five Senses Officers stay as they are. The newly added auditors will be designated as Trainee Examiners and put through on-site training."
"In other words, you're promoting those kids into senior positions."
"Yes."
Put charitably, a promotion; put cynically, a heavier burden of responsibility.
"Even if the new hires arrived tomorrow, the gap in experience would be substantial. If they held equal rank, there'd inevitably be friction."
"Don't tell me you're planning to name them after body parts too?"
"...I'm still considering it."
I had no desire to break with Southern Border tradition. But assigning nicknames to all thirty of them would create problems of its own.
Then Melanie lobbed a pointed question my way.
"So who are you giving the Vision Officer seat to? Do you have a candidate in mind?"
That, at least, was something I couldn't answer easily. The weight of that name was simply too heavy.
"..."
Staring down at my half-empty glass, I held my silence for a long while.
"...Renee was an extraordinary talent in every respect. True to her title, she could see the flow of mana that no one else could. And beyond that, she possessed a character that refused to bow to injustice or corruption, no matter what—as an examiner."
Choosing someone to fill her place would not be easy. Years of vacancy. The longer a seat sat empty, the more its expectations swelled. And Renee Ilia had fulfilled her duties, her obligations, to the utmost—making it all the more so.
It would be better to have not just me but the Five Senses Officers' agreement as well.
The names 'Five Senses Officers' and 'Central Officer' were no longer mere labels. With bonds now as tightly interwoven as sensory organs linked to a central nervous system, filling the seat by executive decision alone would obviously breed resentment.
If some random person walked into that seat...
Professionally, personally, and frankly, the entire Southern Border wouldn't stand for it.
Thankfully, instead of disturbing my reverie, Melanie quietly laid her hand over mine.
"I understand. That's why I'm here, remember? To help you."
"...Thank you."
With Erzena away, Melanie's presence was proving an enormous help. Not just with the interviews—she'd also run a full sweep of the office before the auditor ever arrived.
Truth be told, she'd been extending me favor after favor—no, favors laced with affection—for a long time now.
"Thank you."
"You don't have to say it twice. I do all this because I want to."
I gazed for a moment at the hand resting on mine, then gently withdrew my own and changed the subject.
"Come to think of it, I wonder whether the auditor has gone home yet."
"Ah. Yes, you two had quite the eventful first meeting this morning, didn't you?"
"Will she be all right, on her own?"
"Wrong question. It's not 'will she be all right'—it's 'who is she?'"
"I'm sorry?"
Melanie said something strange out of nowhere.
— Snap.
She flicked her fingers lightly.
— Thud. Thud.
At once, a large man who'd been nursing a drink alone in the corner rose and strode toward us.
"Director."
"You looked into it?"
An Intelligence Department agent. He handed her a single sheet of paper without a word and returned to his seat as if nothing had happened.
"...Since when has there been an agent posted here?"
"Since yesterday, when you asked your subordinates if there were any decent restaurants or bars nearby."
Oh, wonderful. She'd known that all along, too.
"Let's see. Rike Nirweber... hmm. Definitely Finance Ministry."
I cried out, startled. "Y-you investigated the auditor's personal records?"
"Someone coming to raid our department—of course we need to know who they are. All the way down to the bedrock, too."
Delight glinted in her vertical, slit-pupiled eyes. It dawned on me all over again that she wasn't just any lamia or department head—she had originally been an information broker of the underworld.
"Rike Nirweber. Age twenty-five. Served as Chief Auditor of the Finance Ministry for two years and four months, and before that worked as a tax accountant for a large clothing retailer. Hence the chief position."
She read steadily down the page.
"Her parents are tailors near the kingdom's north—commoners. No criminal record, though the occasional complaint comes in. Reports of intimidating conduct and complaints about her appearance. I didn't get that impression at all."
Truly terrifying, the Intelligence Department. If a casual once-over turned up this much, a serious investigation would probably unearth her sleeping habits too.
Melanie, who had just recited Rike's career, background, and even her three measurements in one unbroken breath, suddenly tilted her head.
"Hm. That's odd, though. The person who was supposed to come here wasn't this woman, was it?"
"I'm sorry—what did you say?"
"Three people were scheduled to come: Stephan, Norris, and Mary. But the assignment changed right before the audit."
This was decidedly out of the ordinary. I ventured an opinion carefully.
"Could it be an administrative error?"
Melanie shook her head.
"If an error cropped up in an internal audit, the Inspectorate would carve the Finance Ministry to ribbons. This is absolutely not a mistake."
She spoke with total conviction. And if this wasn't a mistake... it meant it was deliberate.
"Surely you're not suggesting the Finance Minister changed it on purpose?"
"She holds the appointment authority, so that's the most likely explanation."
"But why?"
However you looked at it, this made no sense. Audit schedules weren't changed lightly. Personnel rotations weren't made for trivial reasons either—not when the job was tracking the flow of national finances and catching tax evaders.
"What does it look like? Ostracism."
"Os-ostracism? Workplace bullying?"
Melanie flicked the document with her fingertip.
"Mary Hazra. From the Hazra baronial house. She and Rike joined the Finance Ministry in the same cohort, but her performance has ranked near the bottom since day one."
"..."
"Meanwhile, her cohort-mate Rike is the Chief Auditor. And you know how much the Finance Ministry loves its company dinners? Well... Rike has attended exactly one."
Hearing just that much, I could piece together exactly how things had unfolded.
"...Ha. Good heavens."
"There's always that type, isn't there? The ones with mediocre talent or nothing but pedigree who still crave attention and praise. And the hangers-on beneath them scraping up the crumbs. You can see it coming a mile away, can't you?"
Melanie brushed off her hands, having read my thoughts.
"A pack always needs an enemy. And the Finance Ministry is ninety percent human. Any other race mixed in would look like easy prey."
"But surely there was no justification for the personnel change."
"Justification can be manufactured a hundred times over. Look here. 'Experimental personnel measure for streamlining the audit process.' Ha. Such pretty words."
Ostracism—inside a bureaucracy that was supposed to run on system and rigor. How did anyone justify letting private spite leak into official work?
"Still, she's impressive, in a way. Flip it around, and she came here to do alone what takes three auditors working together."
Something about her had kept drawing my eye from that very first meeting. The professional's mindset visible in her attire, for one. The way her eight eyes swept every document at once, and the sheer efficiency with which she put all her limbs to work. And then her insistence on seeing her own work through to the end before ever leaving her desk.
"She certainly looked capable."
I agreed a hundred percent over. That was why she'd declared she would begin the audit without a shred of timidity, even after being thrown here alone.
But at the same time, it was heartbreaking. To be ostracized for being competent. What manner of mindset did those people have to have?
Normally, when someone works well, you latch onto them, don't you?
Even at our own Southern Border, we had leaned heavily on the capable Erzena and Elaine.
And it wasn't as if there was anything outwardly off-putting about her. Arachnes were a rare race, but hardly one that inspired revulsion. If anything, their refined, precise bodies earned them master-craftsman status in countless fields. Rike was quite beautiful, too—she'd probably be popular.
"You were just thinking about Rike, honey."
"I was not."
Figures the Intelligence Department would read people faster than anyone.
Then I let myself drift toward a slightly more... dangerous thought.
What if Rike had actually come to interview?
It would have been a windfall rolling straight into my lap, vines and all. The eight who passed today were by no means incompetents, but each carried some small flaw. What Rike had shown, on the other hand, was one near-perfect score after another. Even her first impression had already won me over.
What a waste.
That was my conclusion. What a waste. Such a terrible waste.
If only she weren't from another agency. If only she weren't an auditor—I'd have tried to poach her on the spot.
Just as I was about to heave a sigh of regret—
"Honey."
"Yes?"
The Intelligence Director—no, the underworld information broker—propped her chin on her hand and gazed steadily at me.
"Want to... poach the auditor?"
".......I'm sorry?"
The next morning.
— Creeeak.
Shouldering the same stubborn fatigue as any other day, I opened the door of the Immigration Office.
"Good morn— whoa."
But before I could even finish the greeting, I froze in sheer shock.
The first thing to catch my eye was a dense web of spider silk stretched across the entire ceiling, with thousands of documents dangling from it, suspended in midair. The second thing to hit me was the thick, heavy scent of coffee.
A spider with six more dark circles under her eyes than I had greeted me from within the chaos.
"Good morning, Central Officer."
A calm voice—but one somewhere on the verge of death. Beside her desk, a mountain of coffee cups towered up, looking like they'd been bought from the teahouse down the street.
"...Did you, by any chance, not go home last night?"
I asked, half hoping I was wrong. Rike shifted one small eye toward me and murmured,
"I just finished verifying the errors. I ran the review three times, and it came back remarkably clean. I was surprised."
"..."
In other words, she'd been here all day and all night.
"Well then, once you finish that, you really must rest. That's beyond overtime—you practically pulled night duty..."
But Rike shook her head firmly.
"No. The first audit is complete, so now comes the second phase: the on-site inspection."
Even alive this long, I'd never seen anyone pull a twenty-four-hour shift before. Had such a dream employee actually existed?
Then it happened.
"Ah. Central Officer. Might I ask you one thing?"
Rike stopped me as I turned to head back to my desk.
"Of course. Go ahead."
"Ordinarily, as an auditor, I shouldn't be saying this..."
Her voice carried a faint hesitation.
"Looking at the third-quarter financial statements, your expenditure listings are plentiful, yet your balance is a full thirty-three percent higher than the average across other agencies. I simply cannot work out how you managed it, no matter how I look. Might you tell me?"
Oho. A request for financial feedback. Hearing actual merchant business for the first time in ages, I answered right away.
"Last year's third quarter saw the Centennial Harvest, a great bumper crop in the southern Mahalan Kingdom. Thanks to that, supply doubled overnight, so I deliberately bought up cheap goods and sold them to merchant guilds headed west, using the proceeds for our equipment purchases."
The Merchant Secret Techniques: buy cheap when goods are plentiful, sell dear to those who need them. I was already employing the very method Noah had used at the Immigration Office.
"Ah, so there was such a method. Rather than purchasing equipment at fixed price outright, you buy other goods cheaply and trade them for equipment."
Rike clapped her hands together in admiration.
"Granted, the use of funds is unconventional, but since the goods fall within regulation, there's no issue at all. Splendid. Why didn't I ever think of that?"
All eight of her eyes were sparkling with curiosity. An awkward laugh escaped me.
"Ha."
In that moment, I knew for certain.
I want that woman. I want her for myself.
Why did my gaze keep drifting to her? Why, despite having known her for barely a single day, did she pull at me this intensely?
Is this love?
No. No, it wasn't. This was something of a different texture entirely. There was none of the tenderness or longing I felt when I looked at Erzena.
Something rawer than that. Something greedier.
It was desire aimed at the person herself.
The most essential instinct of any merchant was desire. And that instinct was shaking me. Whispering to me.
— Take her, Nathan Kell. Take her.
A raw gem lying in the gutter. A prize rolling straight to my doorstep, vines and all. Who on earth could refuse?
Ah—no. I can't do this.
Just before instinct devoured reason entirely, I wrenched my head back and forth.
She was no ordinary civilian. She was a government official. Worse, an auditor dispatched from another government agency—here, of all things, to conduct an internal audit.
This would be morally wrong.
It wouldn't even be proper headhunting. It would be plain abduction.
Then it happened.
"Central Officer."
"...Uh—yes. Yes?"
"The on-site audit will run continuously from the start of today's business hours until end of day. I will conduct myself discreetly in the background so as not to disturb your operations. I would be grateful if you would show me the financial vault first."
Rike's considerate words drove the wedge in deep.
Want to... poach the auditor?
The seed of temptation Melanie had whispered into me began to writhe and squirm.
I stared at the arachne standing there blankly, eyes burning.
Ah, I can't stand this.
And in the end, I smacked my lips.
"...Schlurp."
Just how was I going to win her over?
For the first time in his career as an Immigration Officer, the merchant's instinct in Nathan Kell overpowered the civil servant's soul.