A Brief Commotion - 1
For all the Twilight Cult's infamous reputation and the sheer number of people who ground their teeth at the mere mention of them, the suppression itself went remarkably smoothly. Even a heretical order that had rampaged for centuries could collapse in an instant, it seemed.
In truth, once Enen had sealed his religious victory, the fall of any cult that worshipped another god had already been written. Only the Twilight Cult had refused to accept that future and clung on until now. With that kind of ability and effort they could have succeeded at anything—yet what they chose to be was fanatics.
"We've captured the cult leader alive. We should be able to put him to good use."
The cult leader—who had been dangling from the former legion commander's spear shaft while getting thoroughly teabagged—was collected by the Mukgwangdae unit commander and dumped at the Ministry of Special Affairs. Still, the man held the title of cult leader, so if they squeezed him hard enough he would spit out a fair amount of information.
And if he had simply died on the field, there was a chance his name would have lingered as a martyr. Whether anyone would actually regard a heretical scrap like him as a martyr was questionable, but the fact that those heretical scraps had somehow endured for centuries meant a little caution was warranted.
"You've done well, Audit Department Chief."
"Thank you."
Not long after I returned to the Imperial Capital, the Minister of Special Affairs contacted me. With those words of thanks, the suppression operation was officially over.
"They did have one card hidden away. Even that failed, though."
"Some things simply aren't meant to work, no matter what you try."
"Agreed."
In celebration of the cult leader's new residency at the Ministry of Special Affairs, they gently encouraged him to start talking—and some rather salty information came pouring out at once. These people had actually had a plan of their own.
Deliberately leak word that they intended to assassinate the next Saint residing in the Imperial Capital, draw the aggro, then—while every eye was fixed on them—detonate a spectacular suicide attack to maximize the casualties. That way, neither the Empire nor the Holy Kingdom would ever be able to bury the Twilight Cult's name.
If their only goals were the cult's continued survival and sticking it to both nations, it was a reasonably plausible plan. Right up until they got their faces smashed in.
Did Enen put a curse on them?
If soldiers had died or been wounded, rumors of the Twilight Cult would have spread inevitably—so being intercepted wouldn't have mattered.
But the soldiers never fell, thanks to the wide-area recovery field. There was no chance to slip away from the battlefield and terrorize somewhere else. And even the cult leader's final suicide detonation fizzled out under Tanian's holy arts. Things could twist this thoroughly?
But what could they do? If it bothered them that much, they should have converted. Choosing the right side is a skill in itself.
"The heretics will be handed over to the Ministry of Justice after interrogation. The result will be execution either way."
As a bonus, the Minister of Special Affairs informed me that whatever remained of the bodies after the executions would be cremated. I nodded. An empire under Enen's protection had no particular need to respect a heretic's burial customs.
"I'm busy with one thing and another, so I'll leave it there. Well done."
"Yes, Your Excellency."
Having delivered exactly the information he needed to, the Minister of Special Affairs cut the call cleanly. The Twilight Cult suppression was finished—but both he and I still had work left to do.
I let my gaze drift down. A single sheet of paper lay on the desk. And at the very top of that sheet, one word.
Disciplinary Report
Fuck.
The pressure radiating from those two words alone was no joke. The field operators' mission was over, but the planner's responsibility was very much ongoing.
The results had been good. By deploying Tanian to the front, there had been no casualties, and no disturbance had broken out in the Imperial Capital. We had wiped out the Twilight Cult without once offending the Emperor's sensibilities—calling it a complete success would not have been an overstatement.
The problem was that the fact of "deploying Tanian to the front" itself was an obvious overreach that could never be papered over.
"The Holy Kingdom contacted us with such fervent enthusiasm that it almost brought back fond memories of my youth. I used to be quite popular back then."
While I had been away, the Minister of Foreign Affairs had apparently been showered with scorching protests. He had been tormented so thoroughly that he had reached some kind of singularity and attained enlightenment.
Fortunately, the counterargument of "Wasn't the problem that your next Saint was in the Imperial Capital in the first place?" had existed, and Tanian had come through without so much as a scratch, so the matter never ballooned into a real crisis. The successful eradication of the Twilight Cult made further protest awkward as well.
Even so, the Empire still had to make a show of expressing regret over the whole affair. Which was why I was sitting here now. I was the one who had first suggested bringing Tanian in. By this point, the Ministers of Special Affairs and Foreign Affairs would be writing disciplinary reports of their own.
Regarding… this matter… I offer my deepest… reflections… and…
With a wretched heart, I scratched out the disciplinary report line by line.
Although the present incident concluded without misfortune, going forward I will ensure that such regrettable circumstances do not… re… re… recur… re… re…
You bastards, you were at fault too. Why is all the screaming directed at me?
Ah.
Writing whatever came to mind, I had suddenly broken out in a rash of complaints. The ink would be hard to erase—maybe I should just submit it as is.
Without thinking, I turned my eyes to the window behind me. In contrast to the gloom inside my head, a clear blue sky stretched beyond the glass. Somewhere under that sky, I ought to have the right to play in peace as well.
Today was another day when retirement felt desperately necessary. On the way to submit the disciplinary report, I might as well drop off my resignation too.
If this had been an incident confined to the Ministry of Finance, I could have scribbled something half-hearted and smoothed it over without ever writing a formal report. Unfortunately, other departments—and a foreign nation—were tangled up in it, so I had to go all the way to the Ministry of the Interior.
"You're here again?"
"Yes. It turned out that way."
And the very first greeting I received the moment I stepped into the Disciplinary Chief's office left a sting in my chest. That look that said, Why the hell are you back? It wasn't as if I kept coming here because I enjoyed it.
I held up the disciplinary report with an awkward smile. The Disciplinary Chief gave a hollow laugh and rose from his seat. With this, I had once again achieved the magnificent feat of submitting my ninth disciplinary report. Damn it all.
"Ordinarily, even section chiefs rarely have cause to write these. Yet somehow the Audit Department Chief seems to write them more often after his promotion."
"I never needed to write any when I was a team leader. Maybe I'm just catching up now."
"Haha. You really don't need to save them up like that."
The Disciplinary Chief gave a light shake of his head, took the report I offered, and skimmed the contents at speed. Checking disciplinary reports was part of his job, true—but reading one right in front of the person who wrote it was still humiliating.
"Your penmanship seems to improve by the day."
He even left a review. Please don't do this to me.
Watching me squirm under a rising tide of shame, the Disciplinary Chief let out a soft snort of laughter and set the report on his desk. Thankfully, he didn't reject it and order a rewrite. The first few times I had written these, they had been sent back more than once.
"From what I've heard, His Majesty the Emperor is not particularly angry. We do need to put on the appearance of having administered punishment—but we can hardly hand the Audit Department Chief over to the Ministry of Justice, can we?"
"I am overwhelmed by His Majesty's grace."
A disciplinary report was, without question, an extremely mild form of punishment. In fact, even calling it punishment felt embarrassing—the kind of range where the only real damage was the shame and irritation you felt while writing it.
If anything, being made to write a report over this incident was a positive signal. At the very least, it meant they had no intention of using the affair as a pretext to purge me. Leaving the matter unpunished and buried would have been far more terrifying.
A silver lining, then. I didn't especially want to dress it up as "fortunate," but that was how it stood.
"I'll be heading ba—"
Knock knock.
"It's the Minister of Special Affairs."
"Ah."
"Oh no."
My crime of not fleeing the instant I submitted the report had now doomed me to run into a superior who had just finished writing one of his own.
How could even the absolute final moment be this mortifying? Was this the Twilight Cult's parting curse?
After an agonizingly awkward exchange of glances with the Minister of Special Affairs, I fled to the Audit Department office. If I had lingered any longer, I had the distinct feeling I would have run into the Minister of Foreign Affairs as well. Ominous premonitions like that were almost never wrong.
"Chief? Wait—how are you already back?"
And the section chief who greeted his hard-won return had the nerve to say something like that.
"Weren't you going to submit a disciplinary report?"
"I submitted it and came back. You just hand it in and leave. Why the fuss?"
At those words, the Third Section Chief's gaze snapped toward the First Section Chief standing beside him—a look that clearly said, That's not what you told us. So it was the First Section Chief again. With the Second Section Chief gone, he was single-handedly handling all the trouble those two used to cause together.
But the First Section Chief only tilted his head over and over, looking genuinely puzzled.
"Doesn't ten disciplinary reports mean house arrest? I thought you'd gone home to your estate."
This little bastard.
"Half the reports I've written were because of you lot, and you still have the face to say that?"
And the fact that he had been counting them—didn't that mean he had been hoping, deep down, that I would get put under house arrest? Feeling thoroughly spiteful, I pinched the First Section Chief's lip and tugged. I had been holding myself back lately because I did it too often, but this I could not let slide.
Besides, the one I had just submitted was the ninth. I still had one life left before house arrest.
Fuck.
The moment that concrete number—one—floated into my mind, I squeezed my eyes shut. I wasn't collecting chicken restaurant coupons. What kind of department chief racked up disciplinary reports until he landed under house arrest?
I had at least been relieved that I wouldn't need to write any during my Academy secondment—only for one to materialize the instant I returned, as if by magic. At this rate, I might genuinely end up under house arrest by winter.
"And if you get house arrest three times, the next step is detention, isn't it?"
"That's right."
I nodded at the Third Section Chief's carefully offered remark. Yes—having already gone through house arrest three times, another such disposition would evolve from house arrest into detention at the Ministry of Justice. The duration would only be a few days at most, but the symbolism was enormous.
I had been through house arrest twice. If I wrote one more disciplinary report and ate another house arrest, there would be nowhere left to retreat.
I used to laugh so hard at him.
The Minister had already been detained several times. The first time I heard that, I had wondered what on earth a person had to do to end up that way—and now detention was staring me in the face.
At least the Minister had a long career as a civil servant behind him. I had only been at this for four years. Even the Minister hadn't been detained within his first four years.
This snowball has gotten pretty huge.
The price of granting Tanian's request had rolled and rolled until detention now shimmered right before my eyes. I had steeled myself for the consequences, but it still hurt.
Which was why I decided to ignore the First Section Chief frantically patting my arm.