The Dreamer Who Scatters Red Blood - 3
By day he was Lafayette Baron, 2nd Section Chief of the Audit Department. By night he lived as Charles Steiner, assistant history teacher. That was his life.
He only realized something was off the day the Department Chief got him out of the history research lab. Under ordinary circumstances, an operative worked undercover by day and conducted his inquiries by night. That was the standard way of doing things, wasn't it?
Opposite.
Astonishingly, the reverse was true: he ground himself into the dirt by day and operated under a false identity by night. Was that even right? In all his years with the 2nd Section, he had never experienced anything like it.
No matter how hard he thought, he couldn't recall a single precedent. Even in the pleasure districts, where the nocturnal crowd thrived and most undercover work happened after dark, they still ran their inquiries during the day.
"You can come back after dinner. There's no need to return too early."
"...Excuse me?"
That was what Christina had said not long ago.
It had taken him longer than he cared to admit to understand those words. Come back after dinner? Not leave before dinner—come back after it?
For a moment he wondered if it was some elaborate joke for the newcomer's benefit—but the smile on her face was soft and sunny, and the look in her eyes was utterly serious. No joke, then.
What the hell is an assistant teacher, exactly?
Just thinking about it still made his head spin. They showed up when everyone else showed up for work, and then, when everyone else went home, they only burned hotter.
Imperial bureaucrats lived that way often enough, true—but at least wealth and prestige came with it. They might never have the time to enjoy either, but there was compensation of a sort.
So what did an assistant teacher get?
I picked wrong.
A few days was all it took for him to be certain. Assistant teacher was a terrible undercover identity.
Fortunately, the history professor seemed to owe the Department Chief a favor, which left his days free. Without that connection, he would have been stuck in the lab during daylight hours as well. The world, he now understood, contained occupations this nightmarish.
...Could you even call this a job?
The darkness of academia runs deep.
How many assistant teachers had to die for a single full professor to be made? He was starting to wonder.
"Mr. Charles."
While he was still debating whether to ban the assistant-teacher cover from the 2nd Section's official guidelines, a quiet voice spoke from behind him.
"Ah—Mr. Eriko."
He turned with a work smile already in place. A neatly dressed man—Eriko Trian, one of the Academy faculty.
They had first met a few days earlier and had been seeing each other regularly since. Not long enough to call themselves friends, but enough for a comfortable acquaintance.
"What a coincidence, running into you here again."
"Haha. So it is."
Close enough, at least, that a chance meeting warranted a conversation.
Crazy bastard.
Outwardly he kept the smile; inwardly he clicked his tongue. Without the job, he would never have associated with this man. He would have killed him on sight.
Why on earth would he choose to meet a filthy traitor on a regular schedule? Coincidence? There was no such thing in this world. Every contact was deliberate.
Unfortunately, the man in front of him was someone he had to meet while pretending it was chance. He was the target of this operation.
Reactionary scum.
A Red Wave operative.
He forced down the instinctive wave of revulsion. Show even a flicker of hostility here, and this subversive might vanish.
He still couldn't understand it. A man with a family name—an Academy staff member, no less—why would he hold ideas like that? Had someone taken a sword to his skull?
What do I care?
He didn't need to know. A man about to die had no use for a backstory. Every traitor had some private tragedy of his own; the vast majority of imperial citizens simply had no interest in a traitor's meaningless sob story.
"It's lunchtime, as it happens. Would you care to join me for a meal, if you have no other plans?"
"Gladly."
He smiled at the reactionary who nodded so calmly in reply.
What was blue blood, and what was red?
In the past, when the first Emperor founded the Muno Empire—had anyone been born blue-blooded from the start? No. The Muno Empire was a great nation built by those called red-blooded, who gathered and forced the blue bloods of their age into submission.
In the past, when the Kpelleofen Empire was founded—had all five of the First-Class Meritorious Founders been blue-blooded? No. Among the ancestors of those who ruled as dukes today, there had been red blood as well.
In the past, in the achievements of the ruling class that preened over its blue blood—had red blood contributed nothing? Impossible. Their victories, their prosperity, had all been built on the sacrifices of the red-blooded.
In the end, everyone should be red-blooded.
In ages of upheaval, heroes rose not from stagnant, stagnating blue blood, but from red. The dominion of blue blood rested on the devotion of red. Trace any blue bloodline far enough, and red blood always appeared at its origin.
And yet those who still reigned were blue, and those who still bowed their heads were red.
Unacceptable.
Blue blood was not innately superior to red. If it were, the blue-blooded houses of the continent would have remained blue forever, and the red forever red.
Whenever red blood rose, the continent convulsed. That was precisely why the distinction between blue and red had to be erased. Hierarchy had to be abolished; all had to stand as equals.
Even if the method was radical—it was necessary.
"Opportunity should be broader, don't you think? For the commoners who make up the majority of the Empire to simply remain where they are is a loss, is it not?"
And those who agreed with that ideal had already spread in secret.
Charles Steiner, was it? An excellent young man. Yes—for the red-blooded majority to be bound by a stigma of birth and never leave their place was a loss for the continent, for humanity itself.
He still seemed to be at the stage of being deceived by the hypocrisy of those called blue-blooded, but still.
Breadth alone is not enough.
Every opportunity had to be opened. They could not depend on the scraps thrown down like alms by those who crushed red blood underfoot and ruled. They had to seize it themselves, and share it themselves.
Even so, that he had arrived on his own at the conclusion that opportunity must be broader was encouraging. Was he not already questioning the present reality and calling for change?
A young man like this, given a comrade to guide him onto the proper path, could go far enough.
"I agree with your thinking, Mr. Charles. But to overcome a stagnant society and the poverty of the many, we cannot remain bound by the limits of the system."
And that comrade, by rights, had to be him.
Those at the Academy are people who have already blossomed their own talents. Guiding even one of them onto the correct path is Mr. Eriko's mission.
He remembered the words of the comrade who had led him to the Red Wave.
Yes. His mission. To open eyes sealed shut from birth—that was the mission he would fulfill even if it meant scattering his own blood.
"The limits of the system, you say?"
He nodded at Charles's puzzled echo.
"Exactly so. The system is what created our present situation. To move into the future, we must cast the system off."
Away from the obsolete institution of status—into a new age.
The reactionary only vanished after delivering a speech long enough to exhaust anyone listening. Lafayette had not expected him to fill the entire lunch hour.
"A memorable conversation, Mr. Eriko."
"The pleasure was mine. A truly profitable hour."
Lafayette looked down at the hand he had just shaken, then wiped it carefully with a handkerchief.
Idiot.
He had already known, but the conversation confirmed it all over again. The man was a complete idiot.
How did every single sentence reek so thickly of red? Give him a few agreeable nods and he lit up and started monologuing.
Same as ever.
Finding where the Red Wave was hiding had always been the hard part. Once you had a location, identifying who was who was simple.
The ideology showed in their speech and conduct, and if you prodded them just a little—as he had just done—they poured it all out. With them this easy to spot, what the hell had the previous Department Chief been doing, wiping out entire villages?
Sounds fine if you filter it.
Strip Eriko's words of the worst of the rhetoric and they were almost reasonable. In the end, wasn't he saying that leaving commoners where they were simply because they were commoners was a waste?
The Empire knew that, which was why capable commoners were absorbed into the nobility. Conversely, nobles judged too incompetent and corrupt to be of any value were erased at the family level.
And that still wasn't enough? They had to abolish the distinction between blue blood and red blood entirely?
"What absolute nonsense."
He muttered it under his breath, incredulous. Equal standing, equal opportunity, equal rights—those only worked on the premise of equal ability. Hand indiscriminate rights to commoners who had never received a proper education, and did anyone seriously expect society to remain intact?
Then again, a head capable of thinking that far would never have been contaminated by this ideology in the first place.
Listening to the 2nd Section Chief's report, Karl let out a hollow laugh.
"How is it those people never evolve?"
"Indeed, sir."
The ones who ranted about casting off obsolete systems and ushering in a new age were, themselves, the ones who never changed. That line of theirs had been the same for decades—centuries, even.
If anything, the Empire was more actively progressive than the Red Wave. Having toppled Apels, which had treated commoners like dogs, Kpelleofen had needed to present a somewhat different face.
Hence free cities, markets, a parliament, pathways for commoners to become nobility... and so on.
"We're still looking for other spies, but at present Eriko Trian appears to be the only one."
"Good. Fewer lunatics in the Empire."
"I couldn't agree more."
Karl smirked at the way the 2nd Section Chief actually shuddered, as if he meant it from the heart.
Of all the senior officers, the 2nd Section Chief hated the Red Wave with a special venom—probably because he had collided with them so many times.
Only one.
Karl stopped smiling and rubbed his chin. If the 2nd Section Chief said there was only one, there was only one.
A genuine relief. Proof that the proportion of sane people in the Empire was overwhelmingly high.
Obvious, really.
The Red Wave was a radical ideology with a fairly long history—and a proportional amount of bungling. They had once even founded a republic on the frontier, but all that had happened was that blue bloods rebranded themselves as revolutionaries. The commoners' lot hadn't changed at all.
That they were still prattling about republicanism after that was almost impressive.
"Good work. Contact me the moment anything happens."
"Understood."
Karl spoke after letting the Red Wave's colorful history drift through his mind for a moment.
What was the point of re-confirming that they were idiots? He was going to drag them all down to the basement anyway.
Almost over.
The most troublesome part—rooting out the plant—had succeeded. He could finally rest easy.