Chapter 60
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Translator: Ebonarch
Chapter: 60
Chapter Title: Friend (3)
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How much time had passed?
"..."
"..."
Having stepped out of the conference room, the Sensory Officers stood in silence, watching the holy power radiating light from within.
- Creak.
It was only after a long while that Erzena emerged, her expression stern, enveloped in a golden glow.
"How is she?"
"Hanna's fine. Thankfully, it wasn't life-threatening, and all her wounds have been healed. But..."
Erzena turned a troubled gaze back toward the room.
"It looks like she hasn't slept for at least two days straight. For now, I've let her get some rest."
"At least that's one worry off our chests. Thank you, Erzena."
I let out a sigh of relief.
Hanna.
The girl who had staggered into the Immigration Office covered in wounds handed a crumpled scrap of paper to the Olfactory Officer before collapsing.
A single phrase.
[Help my friend.]
A message only I could decipher.
'Friend.'
That word wasn't familiar to me.
I'd never had anyone worth calling that.
But lately, someone had taken it upon herself to declare herself my friend, sending me letters.
'Princess Elaine Castor...'
An ominous feeling.
A twisting in my gut.
At that moment, the Olfactory Officer finally rose from his seat and spoke.
"...So now, it's time you explained what this is."
He placed on the desk what he'd been clutching in his massive hand.
What appeared was a tattered remnant of what had once been a letter, barely holding together in scraps.
[From your friend.]
I stared down at it, a tangle of emotions churning inside me.
Ominous hunches always hit with infuriating accuracy.
The fact that the letter had been torn apart was proof someone had taken great issue with it.
'Or perhaps they destroyed it first to avoid getting caught.'
Either way, it was clear the princess's letters had been sent without anyone's permission.
And the identity of that 'anyone' was easy to guess.
'The Queen...'
Helena Castor.
Our tenacious bad blood had reared its head again.
"Central Officer. What the hell happened to make a kid like that trek here without sleep for two nights?"
The Olfactory Officer demanded, his voice thick with frustration and anger.
"Who's this 'friend' written here?"
Elaine Castor. The girl I'd met in the royal crypt, who had been sending letters ever since.
My mind screamed the answer.
But my mouth said something else.
"...I can't say."
Hanna hadn't come here for some trivial reason.
Being beaten to a pulp like that, traveling nonstop from the palace to the southern border in two days—there had to be a grave cause.
The possibility that something had happened to Princess Elaine.
It gnawed at me.
'I want to tell them right now.'
Spill this feeling, this sense, this situation.
But the other party was the queen.
The royal family itself.
"This isn't something you can just play dumb about."
"..."
The Sensory Officers and Erzena still had no idea who the sender of the letters I'd been exchanging was.
If I admitted now that it involved the royals, even they could get dragged into trouble.
The reason only I had been summoned to the last trial was because the Sensory Officers knew nothing.
I couldn't give anyone leverage this time either.
So all I could say was,
"I can't say."
"Damn it, Central Officer. You saw the kid's face. What kind of bastards do that to a child?!"
The Olfactory Officer shouted in exasperation.
I understood.
To a werewolf, whose familial bonds and pack instincts ran deep, children were sacrosanct, in need of absolute protection.
And with his personality to boot, it made sense he'd be this furious even though it wasn't his direct business.
Then the Tactile Officer stepped in.
"There must be a reason the Central Officer isn't saying. We can't get emotional about this."
"Hey, Tactile!"
"I get it. A kid gets beaten like that by someone and comes all this way—who wouldn't be pissed? And since she came straight to the Central Officer, it's clearly no small matter."
She looked just as upset, her tentacles twisting and slamming against the floor nonstop.
"Olfactory Officer. Do you know what this is?"
"What?"
She pointed calmly at the conference room and stated firmly,
"The clothes that girl was wearing. They're the uniform of palace maids."
Silence.
"..."
"..."
Just those two words made everyone in the office grasp the implication.
"...Fuck. So this is what the palace calls justice?"
"I can't confirm it for sure. But even so, it's not our place to intervene."
I spoke the icy reality.
"There's only one reason a maid in the palace gets punished that harshly. Defiance."
"That girl crossed someone. Someone high up."
She nailed the situation spot-on.
The Tactile Officer slowly turned to look at me.
"And the person she calls her 'friend' is probably in dire straits right now. Right, Central Officer?"
Even without me telling the truth, she'd pieced together a clue close to it.
Our eyes met, and she gave the slightest nod.
A small gesture of consideration.
Don't say the name outright. Just confirm enough for us to guess.
"...Yes. In my judgment, this... friend is likely being oppressed."
Given the queen's temperament, she was surely heaping verbal abuse and twisted words on the princess again.
At my words, the Olfactory Officer shot to his feet.
"Then let's head to the palace right now!"
"No."
"Why not!?"
The werewolf barked irritably at the flat refusal.
The Tactile Officer's calm voice replied.
"On what grounds do immigration officers barge into the palace on such short notice? What could we even do?"
"To rescue her friend, obviously..."
"Is that justification enough to neglect our immigration duties?"
"..."
She drove the point home like a wedge.
"We need a pretext, Olfactory Officer. The word of a banished maid isn't enough. Besides, this is the Central Officer's business. It's not for us to meddle."
A brutally harsh truth.
She was right.
Those who worked at the border had to stay at the border.
Unless it was something extraordinary, venturing to the palace was to be avoided.
And no matter how angry we were, it wasn't the Sensory Officers' place to step in.
Erzena, unable to stand it any longer, spoke up.
"Then let me go check on her. I'm not an immigration officer, so there won't be any responsibility on that front."
This time, I raised my hand.
"No. You're currently under temporary asylum, and the Church hasn't pinpointed your location yet."
"But..."
"If you go to the palace and reveal yourself, the queen's people will report it straight to the Pope."
Then the cornered Pope would move to diminish her influence as former saintess.
We hadn't heard yet that Mohaim and the Crusader Army had arrived, so I couldn't risk exposing her carelessly.
"..."
"..."
Silence descended once more.
No pretext.
No justification to go to the palace.
Even if we did, what could we say there?
The Gustatory Officer murmured in lament.
"I thought we were accident-free, but who knew something this awful would happen..."
Accident-free.
That phrase burrowed into my mind.
"Accident-free..."
Accident.
A familiar term.
And with it, a voice from distant memory surfaced.
[If we pull this off, I'll count it as 297 days. How's that?]
[I'll grab the saintess by the scruff and ship her north in a day.]
It was the conversation I'd had with the Minister.
"...There's one. We do have a pretext."
"What? We do?"
A promise I'd forgotten amid the chaos.
I succinctly reminded them of what everyone had overlooked.
"Accident-free."
"Accident-free? What's that got to..."
The Sensory Officers parroted the unfamiliar term.
Then realization dawned.
"Ah...!"
"Right... we had the accident-free streak!"
"Erzena, how long have you been here?"
"Huh? Oh, well... it's almost been a week?"
The Sensory Officers immediately started calculating at Erzena's flustered response.
"And it's been over three days since the Crusaders left the border, with no incidents since!"
"It's a promise with the Foreign Affairs Minister—no small thing."
"But can we call this accident-free? There were tons of issues after the entry denial."
Everyone frowned at the last remark.
"True, but..."
I answered.
"That doesn't matter."
"Huh?"
"Whether it's truly accident-free is up to the Minister. We just need to go see him."
The truth of the accident-free claim wasn't the point right now.
What mattered was that I could claim the 300-day accident-free bonus.
And matters involving bonuses required a personal visit to the palace with paperwork.
No remote comms or proxy payments for money matters.
In person. I had to go to the palace myself.
We had our pretext.
Realizing this, the Sensory Officers finally relaxed.
"I'll try to meet the pr... friend during that time."
"What will you do once you're there?"
I fell silent at the question.
What would I do once I got there?
I didn't know.
But the phrase she always ended her letters with lingered in my mind.
[From your friend.]
I bit my lip hard without thinking.
"Something. I have to do something."
I grabbed my overcoat.
"Wake Hanna. She can sleep in the carriage."
There was no time to hesitate.
- Crackle, crackle.
In the quiet room, the occasional pop of the fireplace echoed.
In the warm darkness, Elaine sat motionless, knees drawn to her chest, staring at the flames dancing over the logs.
The room had changed beyond recognition from just days ago.
Hundreds, thousands of sheets of letter paper—gone. Pen and paper on the desk—confiscated.
All that remained were the chair, desk, and bed.
And empty space enveloping Princess Elaine.
How much time had passed?
'Is it day? Night? Or am I even alive?'
She didn't know.
Since Hanna and the letter paper vanished, Elaine had simply stared at the fireplace, surrendering to endless silence.
Then.
- Creak.
"Your Highness, it's time for your meal."
A new maid entered, placing an elegant tray of food on the desk one dish at a time.
- Clink, clink.
Without stirring, Elaine ignored her completely, eyes fixed on the fire.
The maid, as if not expecting a reply, bowed politely and shut the door.
- Creak, thud.
Silence returned.
In it, the princess recalled her mother's words from days before.
[Central Officer...? Friend?]
Unlike the warmth she'd felt reading it in writing, hearing those words from the queen's lips had been utterly cold.
Her gaze drifted to her arm.
There, myriad blessing inscriptions drawn with brushes gleamed in the firelight.
[In Your Highness's case, intense emotions seem to directly manifest as uncontrollable power.]
[Above all, what you need now is to suppress those emotions. Calming down alone won't suffice.]
[We'll apply blessings of tranquility. With multiple layers, you'll maintain composure no matter what happens for the time being.]
The priests' words, spoken alongside her mother that day.
'It's all my fault.'
She remembered.
Hanna's slender wrist gripped by the priests as they dragged her away.
Crying out to let her go, that it was her fault—but this damned mouth only breathed.
'It's all my fault.'
She rubbed her arm with her hand.
Harder.
Even harder.
Until the skin swelled red and pain bloomed.
Forcibly erasing these loathsome, repulsive blessing inscriptions.
'It's all... my fault.'
Everyone had said so.
Except Hanna.
'It's all my fault.'
Everyone had looked at her that way.
Except Central Officer Nathan Kell.
'It's all my fault.'
What about her brother?
Did he think so too?
I don't know.
I don't know!
She wailed inwardly.
Calling her brother's name, Nathan's name, Hanna's name, searching for answers.
"Ah...!! Urghhh....!!!"
But mercilessly, no words came.
And grief suppressed and crushed festers, transforming into something else.
For the first time, a new emotion took root in the princess's heart.
'It's all...'
- Grip.
Strength entered the hand clutching her inflamed arm.
'...their fault for dying.'
Her green eyes fixed straight on the small flame dancing in the hearth.
Fierce flames like King Leo's began to flicker to life within her heart.
One grown from sorrow and pain could only see the world through sorrow and pain.
With even letters—her sole means of connection—stripped away, violence was all she had left to face the world.
- Rumble rumble rumble.
The entire room began to shake, ever so slightly, bit by bit.
This was no divine blessing.
Just a curse-like power bent on destruction.
'And if this is my power and my curse...'
Why should I endure this sorrow?
The fireplace answered.
- Whoosh.
In flames roaring atop the logs.