Prologue: The Accidental Hire
Alright. You can do this. You can do this!
Rhea exhaled in a steady rhythm, fighting to keep her racing heart under control. Today was the day everything she had clawed her way toward would finally be put to the test.
Stay calm. Stick to the plan. Do not mess this up.
From the moment she had set foot in the Academy to the day she graduated at the top of her class, she had carried a single, unshakable goal: become an Imperial civil servant.
The reason was simple. For a commoner born into grinding poverty, it was the only path that led anywhere near success.
So Rhea had thrown herself at the Imperial civil service exam from her very first semester, studying as if her life depended on it—because it did. While everyone else soaked up Academy life, she buried herself in the library from dawn until the lamps went out. Romance? Clubs? Festivals? She never even let herself want them.
That relentless grind had carried her through the written exam the moment she graduated, and now it had brought her all the way to the final interview.
Choosing the Treasury was the smartest decision I ever made!
She glanced at the empty seats beside her and allowed herself a small, private smile. From the start, the institution she had set her sights on was the Imperial Treasury—the organ that managed the Empire’s entire household. Competition there ran lower than at the other ministries, so she had listed it as her first choice without a second’s hesitation.
Even as the top scorer on the written exam, a commoner could still be cut at the interview stage. Applying somewhere with thinner ranks was simply a way to shrink the variables.
And the result? She was the only person sitting in the Treasury’s final interview waiting room. She had won the war of nerves before a single question was asked.
Heaven helps those who help themselves—and today, it finally helped me!
All that remained was to leave a good impression on the interviewers. As long as she walked in, kept her eyes from rolling back into her skull, and didn’t start screaming about revolution, her odds were solid.
She pressed a hand to her trembling chest and began silently rehearsing her prepared answers—when a man’s voice exploded through the door beside her, thick with curses.
“Are you out of your damn mind?! Is this some kind of joke to you?!”
Rhea turned, half-convinced she had misheard, and checked the nameplate above the door.
— Minister’s Office.
Ah. She had definitely misheard. Hallucinations. She must have been more nervous than she thought. No sane person would be screaming obscenities inside the Minister’s office.
She let out a quiet snort and tried to settle her startled nerves. The thought had barely formed when a crash of furniture answered her, followed by another roar.
“This is beyond the pale! At least give me some people before you dump work on me! You know what? Forget it. Consider my resignation filed—I won’t be coming in tomorrow!”
Bang!!
The firmly shut door flew open hard enough to threaten its hinges, and a man in uniform stormed out, black hair, black eyes, seething with every step.
H-handsome?!
A solid build, a tall frame, a face cut like sculpture. Anyone with eyes would have called him beautiful. Rhea felt heat rush into her cheeks—and then a second figure came barreling after him.
“No, please, just listen to me! You can’t just walk out like this! Huh?! I was wrong, all right? Let’s talk this through. Talk!”
A striking woman in the same uniform lunged after him and latched onto his pant leg, nearly in tears. Her long silver hair, pale as moonlight, spilled around her as she clung to him.
Does the Treasury hire for looks?
No—focus. What on earth was going on?
Ah. She had heard the rumors: interviewers these days staged all kinds of chaos to rattle applicants—disguising themselves as janitors, that sort of thing. Could this be part of the interview?
Fine. Then she would not flinch.
“Good morning! Applicant Number One, Rhea! I hereby dedicate this life to the Treasury and the Empire!”
She delivered the line she had practiced a thousand times, voice ringing clear and loud. The two people in front of her turned as one—and both sucked in a breath of pure, unfiltered disbelief.
It lasted only a second.
“Applicant Number One? Oh! That means you topped the written exam! Perfect—you’re hired!”
The silver-haired beauty scrambled up from her knees, beaming, and declared Rhea’s acceptance on the spot.
“Heh! There! Take this one and put her to work! Manpower problem: solved!”
Then she bolted back through the door, slamming it shut in the face of the man whose complexion had gone from red to purple.
Click!
She locked it for good measure.
“Uh… um…”
While Rhea stood frozen under the sudden weight of a job offer she had not expected for another hour, the man who looked ready to chew her into pieces finally spoke.
“That bit about dedicating your life to the Treasury and the Empire. Did you mean it?”
“…Ah. Yes, sir! Absolutely!”
“What a bumper crop of bullshit.”
It was the most inventive curse she had ever heard in her life. Rhea’s thoughts simply stopped.
The man sighed, brushed past her, and kept walking. The door cracked open again at once. The silver-haired woman poked her head out and murmured, almost gently,
“What are you waiting for? Go after him.”
Only then did Rhea understand that something had gone wrong—catastrophically, irrevocably wrong.
Ah. So that’s why the Treasury’s competition rate was…