The Junior (3)
Ah! Could I be dreaming right now? Senior… you're so cool!
Marien could barely contain herself as she watched Rohan sit in his chair, brow furrowed, reading through the documents. Her heart hammered so wildly she thought it might burst from her chest. She wanted nothing more than to throw herself into his arms that very instant and breathe in his scent.
Senior's touch was electric. And those eyes, blazing with fury… they were truly…
Marien traced her fingers over the place on her throat where Rohan had seized her only moments before and let out a long, shaky breath.
"This doesn't sound like something Elena would come up with on her own. Did the Director put her up to it?"
At last Rohan set the papers down on the desk and asked the question in a tone thick with irritation.
Even when he's annoyed, Senior is so cool!
He had spoken to her first. Marien crowed with silent triumph. Still, she forced the giddy rush down and drew a steadying breath. She could not afford to look pathetic in front of him.
Once she had more or less composed herself, she opened her mouth with careful delicacy.
"I'm not sure I understand what you mean."
"Are you joking?"
"If I've offended you, I apologize."
"Haa. Forget all that. Where the hell is the Director?"
"Tsk. That, I'm afraid I don't really…"
But only for a moment. Overcome by a sudden, irresistible urge to taste even a fraction of the sigh Rohan had just exhaled, Marien deliberately drew in a deep breath before answering—then held it for a long time, unwilling to let a single scrap of the air he had breathed escape her lungs.
"Do you have asthma or something?"
"Khh—! N-no, I don't. I-I'm fine."
"More importantly, have we met somewhere before? Looking at you now, you seem familiar."
"F-five years ago, on the Northern Front… khh! Ghhk!"
"……"
"Pwah! Five years ago, on the Northern Front—I had the honor of meeting you once."
Rohan did not seem to remember her. But she remembered their meeting with perfect clarity. After all, he was the man who had saved her life.
"The Northern Front, huh…"
"B-back when I was still a rookie, my cover was blown and I ended up isolated. You came to rescue me, Senior."
Half hopeful, half anxious, Marien carefully brought up that day. Just as she had feared, however, Rohan only tilted his head with a blank expression.
"If it hadn't been for you, Senior, I would have been captured by the Coalition and suffered a terrible fate. Even now, I am truly grateful."
Her chest ached and felt ready to split open, but Marien forced a smile onto her face. Rohan, for his part, simply scowled and waved a dismissive hand.
"No need to thank me. I was only doing my job."
"Ah, th-that's… I…"
"We're short on time, so let's get to the point."
His manner was so cold that Marien could not bring herself to speak the true feelings still lodged in her heart.
From that day on, there has not been a single moment I have forgotten you, Senior…
What is with this girl. She's terrifying…
Marien had not taken her eyes off me once. At this point it had gone past awkward and straight into frightening.
How many rescue ops have I run? You think I can remember every single one of them one by one?
Well, from her perspective I was probably unforgettable. But when you've pulled that many agents out of the fire, remembering any particular one is a tall order.
And she claims she's still grateful to this day—yet the first thing she does is throw a punch? At her senior, no less?
Wow. The Intelligence Bureau is really firing on all cylinders. Really running a tight ship.
War's over, sure, but the place has gone completely to hell.
If she was a rookie five years ago, she's got to be at least a few dozen classes behind me. This is insane. Absolutely insane.
Insubordination didn't get much more insubordinate than this. Was this girl actually all right in the head? She seemed a little unhinged, and that made me nervous for no good reason.
And to think she'd pull something like this just because I wasn't doing anything…
Pushing the worry aside, I folded my arms and stared up at the ceiling for a moment. I had half expected it, but I never thought she'd go scampering off to the Emperor and come back with an official seal. None of them were in their right minds.
Days of mental discipline might as well have never happened. Irritation and a splitting headache came crashing in together, as if grit had been ground into my brain. But what choice did I have? An imperial decree was an imperial decree.
An imperial order is still an imperial order. All I can do is grind through whatever they throw at me…
I picked the documents back up and bit down hard on my lip. The Ministry of Finance—that damned ant-lion pit you could enter but never leave. The root of all this was almost certainly the empire's fiscal mess.
"Every name on that list is a usurer who makes a living off money-lending."
While I glared holes through Elena's and the Emperor's seals stamped on the papers and swallowed a string of curses, Marien, seated across from me, began her explanation.
"As you well know, Senior, nobles—unlike commoners—are exempt from most taxes aside from a few specific ones. And even those specific taxes can be waived at the discretion of the Ministry of Finance or the Imperial Household."
"Hmm. Right. I've heard that nobles hoping for an exemption undergo regular tax audits by the Ministry or the Household to verify their assets."
"Yes. Because the criterion for that judgment is precisely the noble's wealth. If their circumstances are so poor they cannot afford to pay, they are granted a temporary exemption."
"I see."
Was this the Intelligence agent in her coming out? The moment the conversation turned to actual work, Marien's tone and voice transformed as if she had become a different person. Fair enough—after five years of eating bureau rations, she ought to be able to manage at least this much.
But what was I supposed to do about it? I felt a little bad for her, yet from the very beginning I had never intended to work with her.
"Understood. I'll look into the rest myself. You can go."
Having gotten the general picture, I nodded and pointed toward the office door. Marien stammered in obvious panic, then abruptly flushed scarlet.
"H-how cold of you."
As if that weren't enough, she twisted her body like a snake again and let out a strange little nasal whine.
"S-Senior, even so, th-this assignment is one I've been handling for a long t-time, so—ngh…!"
That was an illness. A full-blown illness. Something wrong with her head, or maybe asthma, or rhinitis. Judging by the way she kept squirming in her seat, maybe a boil on her backside. I made a mental note to ask Rhea who that famous healing mage she'd mentioned last time was.
"Hnnngh! C-couldn't you at least tell me w-why…?"
Was she seriously asking because she didn't know?
Stop making those weird noises and throwing a tantrum!
Her shameless attitude left me so speechless I couldn't even form a reply. I pulled myself together and, this time in a sharper tone, cut her off clean and simple.
"Get out."
Why in the world had they sent a girl like this to the Ministry of Finance? The second I got my hands on that Director bastard…
Haa. So now they're dragging the Emperor into it too?
Alone in the office, I clutched my forehead and ground my teeth. The law was the Emperor, and the Emperor was the law. I had no choice but to swallow this assignment like bitter medicine.
But the first time is always the hardest; the second is easy. Elena would absolutely pull the same stunt again later. Of course, she couldn't lean on the Emperor-cheat too often—she wasn't an idiot—so she would prepare some suitably enormous case that justified reporting all the way up to the throne.
Should I just play along for a while?
My head hurt so badly I must have dropped the reins of my sanity, because for a moment I genuinely considered giving it my all this time. The reason Elena was clinging to me, and the reason the Emperor—who never had a spare second—had gotten involved at all, was the same: the empire was broke.
So if I flipped the logic—if I actually did the job properly and filled the imperial coffers—then there would be no reason left for me to stay here. On the other hand, one wrong move and I could end up chained to the Ministry of Finance until the day I retired. I shelved the idea.
Haa. What am I supposed to do about this.
First I need to figure out exactly what we're dealing with.
Right. When nothing useful came to mind, the usual approach was best: start by grasping the facts on the ground.
The Emperor and Elena want money. The names on this document are loan sharks. Add Marien's explanation about noble taxes, and…
No matter how hard I turned the pieces over in my head, the puzzle refused to fit. They had handed the job to me, so it clearly had something to do with taxes—that much I understood. But what did a pack of usurers have to do with noble tax exemptions?
I spent the whole night flipping through every book I could find, wringing my brain dry, and still came up empty.
If I'd known it would go like this, maybe I should have let Marien finish explaining…
For a second I considered calling her back. Pride aside, though, that really didn't feel like the right move. More importantly, if Marien had already known the whole picture, the Intelligence Bureau would have handled it themselves long ago. Roughing up a few loan sharks was nothing to them.
The fact that they had escalated things this far meant the bureau, just like me, had failed to find a solid connecting thread. No hard evidence, and even the circumstantial case was shaky. That was why the whole mess had landed on my desk.
So there's only one answer left.
A problem neither the Intelligence Bureau nor I could solve. But there was no need to worry. I still had a secret weapon.
And that weapon was—
"Alright! Let's give it our all again today! Huh? Tax Collector, sir, why are you here so early? Don't tell me you slept here?"
Yes. Speak of the tiger and it appears. Here she came—my ultimate weapon. My sleeping dragon and my young phoenix!
Top of the written exams. The walking encyclopedia who could memorize entire books cover to cover. The hyper-competent 4th Grade Senior Secretariat, Rhea!
I'm counting on you.