Special Tax Collector!
“That bastard of a Director. He sold me out?”
Back in the dust-choked office that might as well have been a storage closet, I dropped into the chair and flung the resignation letter still clenched in my hand across the desk.
I was trying to leave of my own free will. What exactly was the problem?
At this rate I was going to drop dead of sheer rage.
“After everything I crawled through in Intelligence—and they dump me in this shit-hole. Just wait till I get my hands on that Director.”
I hadn’t originally belonged to the Ministry of Finance at all. I’d been Intelligence.
In my previous life, I suppose you’d call it a black-ops agent for the national intelligence service.
Right after graduating from the Academy, I’d taken a recruitment offer and gone straight into Intelligence, bouncing all over the Empire on one mission after another. Battlefields, sure—but I’d also risked my neck infiltrating enemy nations as a spy.
And the reward for all of that was a transfer to Finance.
Fine. Call it civil service and I could swallow it a hundred times over. What I could not swallow was the utterly ridiculous, dogshit post they’d slapped on me: Special Tax Collector.
‘Oh, sure—sounds nice. A Grade-1 Management post reporting directly to the Minister. What it actually means is they’re dumping every leftover mess on me.’
Tax collectors already had the worst reputation in the Empire. A few corrupt ones taking bribes under the table didn’t help, but the real issue was simpler: these were the people who showed up and wrung money out of everyone—men, women, commoners, nobles—in the name of taxes. Who in the entire Empire was going to like them?
And now they wanted a former Intelligence operative to become one.
If it had at least been an ordinary tax collector, maybe. But the Tax Collection Bureau already existed under Finance. Instead they’d invented a brand-new post that had never existed before—Minister-direct Special Tax Collector—and parked me in it.
What that meant was obvious.
I was supposed to personally handle the malicious tax delinquents the regular bureau couldn’t touch. In plain language: I was the dumpster for the Tax Collection Bureau’s leftovers. A glorified shit-bucket.
And the “office” they’d given me was this warehouse of a room, with a staff of exactly one: me.
How was I supposed to not write a resignation letter?
“Rohan, don’t take it so hard. The Finance Minister begged me for help right in front of His Majesty. I didn’t have a choice.”
“That’s not my problem. Why me, of all people?”
“Because you’re the most capable agent we’ve got.”
“Then that’s exactly why you shouldn’t send me.”
“You said you wanted off field work. And you’ve got so many medals we have to promote you this year—there’s no open slot in Intelligence. Finance created a Grade-1 Management post just for you. Go suffer a little.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Ahem. Don’t get so angry. Finish the job and come back, and the next Director’s seat is yours.”
The Director’s face floated up in my mind—the way he’d clung to me and pleaded before I left. Ugh. I should have just let that man die on the northern front back when he was still in the field. I save his life and he repays me like this?
“Does anyone around here actually think?”
I propped my feet on the dust-caked desk, leaned back in the chair, and let out a long breath.
I’d already been here a full week. Every single day I’d marched into the Minister’s office and thrown my resignation at her. Every single day she’d refused it with some fresh excuse. She’d keep doing it, too.
“Haa. Why does collecting taxes require an Intelligence agent…?”
Not that I failed to understand the Minister’s position.
Finance was where money was gathered, spent, managed, and watched. In other words, the department that ran the Empire’s household—and doubled as the Emperor’s wallet. Which meant the single most important job they had was tax collection. Without revenue, nothing else happened.
And the Empire right now had just clawed its way out of a long, bloody war with the Kingdom Coalition and signed a peace treaty.
You’d think fewer holes for money to pour out of would be good news.
You’d be dead wrong.
War costs astronomical sums. Where does that money come from? Raise taxes higher? Not a chance. Try that and the Empire would have been fighting rebels long before it ever faced the Coalition. Print currency like mad and you get inflation—prices explode, the economy shatters.
So Finance’s answer had been War Bonds.
The state borrowed from its own people. Citizens bought the bonds, held them, and once the war ended they turned them back in for principal plus interest. The Imperial House sold them to everyone—nobles and commoners alike. Anyone who wanted could invest in the war.
Of course, if the Empire lost, those bonds became worthless scrap. But nobody doubted victory, so the bonds sold like wildfire.
‘No wonder the Finance Minister is losing her mind.’
Now that the war was over, the Imperial House owed every single bondholder. On top of that came postwar reconstruction costs. If the Empire had actually won and wrung massive reparations out of the Coalition, maybe it would have been manageable. Instead they’d settled for something that felt like a draw. The Minister’s sanity never stood a chance.
“Waaah! I really thought we were going to win! Hic!”
I could still see her on my first day—drunk, sobbing into her sleeves. Fair enough. Day after day the Imperial Army’s commanders had swaggered around promising victory. She couldn’t have seen this coming either.
Cornered, the Minister had racked her brains for a way out and finally turned her eyes on the malicious delinquents. The plan was simple: crush the hard cases the Tax Collection Bureau had left sitting like cold unsolved crimes, and plug the budget hole with whatever they squeezed out.
And the hunting dog chosen for the job was me—former Intelligence.
Goddamn it.
“What a filthy hand life dealt me.”
I folded my arms and stared at the ceiling.
The Minister was desperate enough that no amount of resignation letters would ever get accepted. Her situation was pitiable, sure—but it had nothing to do with me. What was I, some water ghost dragging people under? If she wanted to die, she could die alone. Why drag me down with her?
Why did I have to be the punching bag? Why did I have to clean up the shit the Tax Collection Bureau left behind?
The war was over. All I’d wanted was a quiet desk job in Intelligence, coast on a salary, and retire. Was that too much to ask?
‘Fine. You want to play it that way? I’ve got options too.’
After a long stretch of silent self-pity, I steadied myself and sat up straight.
All right. If this was how it was going to be, I’d make her have no choice but to throw me out. She clearly had enormous expectations of me. So I’d botch every job so thoroughly those expectations crumbled to dust. Then she’d be the one begging me to leave.
‘I could just do nothing at all—but then I’d be the one who bleeds for it…’
Decision made, I looked at the mountain of documents piled on the desk. Every last one was a file on malicious delinquents the Tax Collection Bureau had dumped and run.
Those bastards. Scare them a couple of times and this is what they do—sneak the paperwork in the moment I leave for the day. Couldn’t even tidy up while they were at it.
“Let’s see. Who do I rough up first?”
Clicking my tongue, I started flipping through the stack.
Sure enough, the list had every kind of scum imaginable—nobles, commoners, no discrimination. There were even non-humans on it: elves, dwarves, beastkin, orcs, the whole menagerie this world lumped together as other races.
“Next they’ll be taxing the neighborhood stray dogs.”
Looking closer, a lot of these barely even qualified as “malicious.” Plenty of cases the regular bureau could have handled themselves—they’d just shoved them onto me. I’d have to sort the pile before I could even start working.
“I’m going to need people for this.”
The volume alone made it impossible to handle solo from top to bottom. The Minister really was a disaster at the details. If the workload was this heavy, she should have staffed the office before dragging me in as Special Tax Collector. What kind of Minister just dumps a job like this on someone cold?
She could think big-picture just fine. It was always the small, practical pieces where a screw came loose.
“My motivation’s already dead and we haven’t even started.”
I set the papers down and was shaking my head when—
Creeeak.
“Ah—h-hello…”
The office door opened. The interview candidate from earlier—Rhea, was it?—edged inside, reading the room like it might bite her.
“O-oh. I’m Rhea. I’ll be working under the Special Tax Collector starting today…”
Ah. You’ve got to be kidding.
Watching her trail off, cold sweat beading on her forehead, I pressed a hand to my brow and squeezed my eyes shut.
They were already throwing a rookie at the malicious delinquents the Tax Collection Bureau itself couldn’t handle?
Had there ever been a more insane Minister?
‘Haa. Is she doing this on purpose?’
I bent down and picked the crumpled resignation letter back up off the floor.