My Name Is - 3
Time seemed to freeze for a moment. If not for the sound of her stifled sobs, I might have truly believed it had stopped.
What the hell is this...
I felt like I was going to lose my mind. The thought even crossed me that maybe I was drunk too—that my ears had simply gone on strike. I could not bring myself to believe what I had just heard.
The First Section Chief. Of all people, I had never imagined I would hear a confession from her. The three confessions that had already assaulted my mental state earlier were unimaginable enough, but she was on an entirely different level.
This was the First Section Chief with whom I had spent two full years enduring every kind of incident and accident imaginable, until both the ugly and the fond attachments had piled up thick as layers of paint. I had thought of her less as a member of the opposite sex and more as family.
So it was only me who felt that way.
Apparently I had been the only one treating this workplace like a family. No—she must have thought of us as family too. The problem was that the family she had in mind was not parent and child, but husband and wife (prospective).
I instinctively started to sigh and hastily bit my lip instead. Letting out a sigh in this situation would be no different from shredding her mental state to pieces.
I'm already in shreds myself.
A sudden sense of unfairness welled up. Honestly, I felt like I was about to lose my own mind—did I really need to be worrying about hers as well?
Of course I did. No matter how much of a spiteful, eccentric pain she was, she was still my subordinate. When I had first become department chief and the Audit Department was chaos inside and out, she had been one of the precious few who supported me from the very beginning.
Suppressing the tangled feelings in my chest, I looked at her. She said nothing at all, only let tears stream down her face while stifling sobs, trying to hold back the sound of her crying. That pitiful figure, staring up at me alone with tear-soaked eyes.
The silence was somehow more terrifying. I almost wished she would just scream the way she had a moment ago.
"I-I'm Erzebet... Erzebet! Not some name like First Section Chief—I'm Erzebet!"
Recalling that voice that had sounded as if she were pouring out a lifetime of resentment left a bitter taste, yet at least I could understand the grudge she had been carrying.
Right. A name. Names mattered. How heartbroken and sad must it feel when the man you love will not even call you by your name?
I had never imagined that the man in question was me, but I was the one who had caused it, at any rate.
I never thought it would turn out like this.
One trivial habit had led to a full-blown disaster. At the very least I should have called her by name in private settings.
I let out yet another silent sigh—I had lost count of how many—and pulled a handkerchief from my breast pocket. Looking at her now, her makeup was running and she was a complete mess.
I reached out carefully and wiped her face myself. A faint flicker of hope appeared in her eyes.
"I'm sorry."
An apology for the resentment she must have carried for two whole years over something as simple as a name—and for the fact that I had never realized it until my subordinate, under the influence of alcohol, finally let it explode.
But she seemed to take my apology in an entirely different sense. The hope vanished in an instant, replaced by despair.
"Ah... aah..."
As if my wiping had been for nothing, fresh tears began to spill from her eyes again.
"C-Chief...!"
"Hey, don't move all of a sudden!"
Trembling, she hastily tried to rise from her seat and promptly toppled over. Sitting for so long had left her legs weak, and with the alcohol on top of that, keeping her balance was clearly impossible.
Besides, the movement had been so abrupt I could not even catch her in time.
"...You okay?"
Watching her sprawled face-down on the ground, groaning, a sigh escaped me on its own. Why did she keep showing me nothing but these heart-wrenching scenes one after another?
But she paid no attention to my concern. Still with trembling hands she clutched the hem of my clothes and spoke with a desperate face.
"I-I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry... I-I was wrong..."
Repeating nothing but apologies out of nowhere, she gripped my hem even tighter—as if the moment she let go I would leave forever.
She had clearly misunderstood something. She had definitely taken the word "sorry" in a negative light.
But watching her repeat the same words like a broken radio left me momentarily speechless. I needed to clear things up quickly, yet I had already missed the timing.
"I-I'm sorry for being so cheeky all this time, sorry for never listening, sorry for always doing weird... things..."
And as my silence only deepened her terror, she began to babble so incoherently it was enough to make a listener's soul leave their body.
"I'm... sorry, I was wrong, I... I thought treating you casually, like family, was what you'd like better, Chief..."
Those words brought the past two years flooding back. She had followed the idea that we should be comfortable with each other better than anyone—far too well.
"I-I'm sorry for overstepping, sorry for being annoying...! Because I liked you so much, Chief... I did it that way because I thought if I didn't, you wouldn't even look at me...!"
Emotion seemed to overwhelm her even as she spoke; now her voice was mixed with sobs.
It was true that the more of a ruckus she caused, the more my eyes were drawn to her. Whether that was the kind of attention she had wanted, I had no idea.
Looking at her now, at least, it seemed I had failed to give her the result she desired.
"From now on, from now on I'll listen properly. I won't be cheeky, won't overstep... I won't...!"
The longer she talked, the less my mouth felt like opening.
This was a first. I had never seen her so desperate, so wretched. Even when she was nervous she would force a relaxed smile; no matter what happened she would laugh with that hee-hee—that was the First Section Chief I knew.
"So please, just once, just one more chance..."
One of the hands clutching my clothes like a lifeline rose pitifully. Her index finger unfurled with a tremor, and she offered a smile that looked as if it would shatter at the slightest touch.
"I-I, just once, really just once if you give me a chance I'll do well! I'll listen properly, do whatever you say, if you tell me to be quiet I'll be quiet..."
"Section Chief."
My mouth finally opened, but even now I called her by the title that had stuck to my tongue for two years.
"Really! I mean it! I'll do so well you'll be shocked! Super, super well! So, so..."
Because of that, the smile she had forced crumbled in an instant. And the expression that appeared on her face afterward was strangely familiar. Where had I seen that look before?
Right. Before the transmigration. The expression of a child searching for their mother at the orphanage had been exactly like that. The look of someone who knew they had been abandoned, who knew they would never see that person again, yet still searched with desperate longing.
Fuck.
Why did I have to see that expression again here?
"I don't care how many times... just please don't say you're sorry, don't say you don't want me..."
Having said that, she hung her head low and her shoulders alone began to shake.
Then came the sound of her crying. No longer able to hold it back, a childlike wail rang out.
"...Erzebet."
I draped the coat I was wearing over her back as I spoke.
Thankfully this time I managed to call her by name. If I had said "Section Chief" again, one of us would probably have died.
At my call she hastily lifted her head.
"Can we talk for a bit?"
First things first—clear up this ridiculous misunderstanding.
There had been a period when my habit of addressing bureaucrats only by their titles was something of a jinx.
After sending those people off in the North, after Hecate left my side as well, I had grown reluctant to call any bureaucrats by name. Every single person I had called by name and grown close to had vanished, after all.
So from then on I used only titles. Whether the setting was public or private, whether they were close or complete strangers—always titles.
Yes, that was definitely how it had been. And yet—
"Not anymore."
It was a jinx that no longer existed, for all practical purposes. I was only maintaining it out of inertia.
And the habit of not using names because I was afraid they would die? I was not the Grim Reaper; that was not a jinx that could last forever.
If they really died every time, I would only ever say the Crown Prince's name.
Gilbert, Gilbert, Gilbert, Gilbert. That yellow mutt of mine, Gilbert. I could shout it thirty times a day.
"B-but, Chief, you always use titles..."
"That's just what stuck to my tongue."
Whether my mental fortitude was stronger than I thought or I had simply achieved enlightenment, I could not say—but the jinx had faded quickly.
Especially after I poured everything out to Margareta, it was practically gone. Some people supposedly carried such things their whole lives, but two years was short enough.
The reason I still stuck to titles was simple. It was just familiar and comfortable.
"In the first place there was no one around to call by name."
Right after the war ended, when I had just become Audit Department Chief. There simply were no bureaucrats nearby whom I could address by name.
The Minister? What kind of lunatic called his direct superior—who was old enough to be his father at the very least—by his given name?
The other department chiefs? They were all far older than me as well. We were not close enough to casually use first names in the first place.
As for the rest of the bureaucrats, that went without saying. If the Audit Department Chief suddenly started calling them by name they might even freeze up thinking, Why the hell is that bastard using my name?—like a child hearing their full name from their parents on report-card day.
"Then... why us..."
Looking at the First Section Chief still asking with eyes brimming with tears, I could only scratch my head. There was no special reason for that either. It was simply more convenient.
Erzebet was five syllables, Lafayette four. Whereas First Section Chief and Second Section Chief were only three. Besides, did it not feel a little awkward when a superior used your real name?
I always felt uneasy whenever the Minister called me "Karl" instead of "you bastard" or "you son of a bitch."
"I'm sorry. I should have started calling you by name a long time ago."
"……."
Even after my heartfelt apology she kept her lips pressed tightly shut.
Understanding how she must feel, I waited quietly. After mistaking my apology for rejection and sobbing alone, she must want to run away this very second.
But after opening and closing her mouth a few times, she nodded and turned her gaze to me.
"Th-then... I haven't been rejected yet, right...?"
"Right."
At those words she burst into tears all over again.
I was going to lose my mind.
My eyes opened to a throbbing headache.
And then the dazzling memories of the previous night came crashing over me like a storm.
"I-I'm Erzebet... Erzebet! Not some name like First Section Chief—I'm Erzebet!"
Ah.
"But still, still... do you have any idea how sad it is... not being able to have your name called by the man you love?"
Aah...
"I-I, just once, really just once if you give me a chance I'll do well! I'll listen properly, do whatever you say, if you tell me to be quiet I'll be quiet..."
Aaaah...
"I don't care how many times... just please don't say you're sorry, don't say you don't want me..."
Aaaaaah!
I've lost it!
Under the weight of memories I could not possibly handle, my hands and feet trembled and my whole body curled in on itself.
I had gone insane. Completely insane from the alcohol. I had poured out everything without distinguishing between things that were fine to say and things that should never leave one's mouth for a lifetime.
"But I can't give you an answer right away. I haven't even answered the people who confessed before you."
And at the Chief's words that followed in my memory, my thrashing body went still.
"Like you said, you've been cheeky, never listened, and done all sorts of weird things—"
"Hnn..."
"But I've grown quite fond of you. I'll think about it seriously."
That day, I touched the shoulder the Chief had patted.
Seriously...
The corners of my mouth curled up in a foolish grin. The Chief had said he would seriously consider a relationship with me. That he would seriously examine my confession.
Then the result was obvious, was it not? As if the Chief would ever reject a perfect woman like me.
"I don't care how many times... just please don't say you're sorry, don't say you don't want me..."
Just as my confidence was about to swell, the memory of that pathetic display rose unbidden and I thrashed around on the bed again.
It was over. My confidence and dignity as a woman had collapsed that day. From now on I would have no choice but to live as the absolute underdog in front of the Chief.
While I was kicking off the blankets and starting my vigorous morning that way, the communication orb I had set beside me lit up.
"...Who is it?"
Hoping it might be the Chief, I answered with trembling hands.
"It's me."
Unfortunately it was not the Chief, but my senior.
Perfect timing, though. I needed to tell her I had successfully confessed as well.
...The killing intent filling her eyes was a little terrifying, but she had helped me a great deal, after all.
"Senior. Perfect, I had something to tell you."
"Your last will? You should give that to your family, not me."
"I confessed to the Chief."
At those words, my senior's eyes went perfectly round.