Even So, the Days Pass - 2
When the captain found me speechless at his words, guilt and self-loathing hit me at the same time. Guilt that I had never truly considered how to repay my master. Self-loathing that I had put myself first instead of him.
It was absurd. I could spend my entire life serving my master and still fall short, and yet I had been looking somewhere else. Instead of receiving grace from him and repaying it, I had fallen into the grotesque trap of repaying simply for the sake of repaying.
When did it start?
I bit my lip. How long had I been living a lie even to myself?
Of course, my loyalty and reverence for my master remained unshaken. Even if I had been looking in the wrong direction, that much had never changed. If that, too, had twisted, my eyes and ears might as well not have existed.
But as the captain said, I had sunk into self-satisfaction. And if that was true, how was I any different from a blind man or a deaf one?
"Repayment has to go in the direction the person receiving it wants. If the giver decides it, that isn't repayment—it's just showing off."
When I said nothing, the captain pressed on. Once he saw weakness, he never let up; he piled on without mercy. Truly Section 4 of him.
That he was flexing that Section 4 temperament on me was a bitter thing.
"Captain. If the Department Head wants it, can you do anything?"
"Of course. Even if it costs me my life."
At least to this question I could answer with confidence. Because of my master I had been given a new life; without him I would have been dead long ago, or living something worse than death.
So the life and the years he had given me—if he wanted them back, I would hand them over without hesitation.
"Then what about becoming a couple?"
"Th-that is…"
My confidence vanished again. I was ready for anything, but no matter how I turned it over, that felt impossible. Something far too grand for the likes of me.
I was content to be my master's shadow, a dog that drifted at his side. Draw any closer and I would only dirty that brilliant man.
"That wouldn't be for the Department Head. That would be for me—"
"The one who decides that is the Department Head."
He wasn't wrong.
"Even so, someone of common birth like me…"
"Is the Department Head the sort of man who wouldn't think of that?"
There was no way my master didn't already know what I knew.
In the end, under the captain's relentless assault, I quietly lowered my gaze.
I was caught. Whatever I said to argue back was useless. If I claimed it was too much for me, he would answer that the Department Head was the one who decided. If I named a reason it was impossible, he would ask whether the Department Head wouldn't already know that too.
"If the Department Head wants marriage, I'm willing to change my sex."
I flinched hard at that. Because of how destructive the captain's resolve was? No. Because it was irritating how casually he said something he would never have to do.
My master was never going to propose to the captain, so there would never be any need to change sexes; he was just talking. From the captain's point of view, all he had to do was persuade me.
"And yet I don't understand why you, Captain—who wouldn't even need to go to that trouble—are doing this."
"……."
After that the captain kept talking for a long while, and I only listened in silence.
Even after I finally escaped him, every agent I ran into started lecturing me as well.
…Maybe I should go on another deployment.
The thought crossed my mind for a moment. Even if not the North, there had to be somewhere I could go.
Having written a full panegyric for the Minister on the evaluation form and then seeing the man himself left me with a strange feeling. Something like what a child must feel upon realizing Santa Claus is Dad.
No—worse than that. At least from the child's point of view, Dad is still someone precious they want to see.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Just thinking you look healthy again today, sir."
It left a bitter taste. The hymn of praise I had put on that evaluation form wasn't simply a string of nice words. It was practically a work of art expressing my unconscious wish to have a superior like that.
Reality, however, was merciless. No amount of artistic activity changed the brutal facts.
If only he weren't my direct superior.
Never had I resented the post of Department Head as much as I did today. If I had been some lowly section chief or team leader, I might have gambled on the Minister gacha. Pull the Minister gacha now and I was a hundred percent guaranteed to be the next Minister.
Come to think of it, if the Crown Prince hadn't promoted me to Department Head, none of this would be happening. Fuck. Whenever something goes wrong with my life, half of it is the Crown Prince's fault. The other half is Kagan's.
"If you're here, sit down. Don't stand there cluttering up the place."
"Yes, sir."
The most cluttering thing in the room was the man working out in the middle of the office, but I did not say that out loud.
"Ah—did you submit the evaluation?"
The Minister tossed the dumbbell into a corner and asked as if he had only just remembered.
Unexpected. So even this man cared about other people's evaluations of him. The way he lived was so destructive I had assumed he never gave it a second thought.
"Don't worry, sir. I wrote you up like a saint the world will never see again."
I nodded and gave him a thumbs-up of reassurance and trust.
Even people who hated the Minister would look at that evaluation and reassess him—see him as a true superior who, contrary to appearances, loved his subordinates.
Despite his subordinate's sincerity, the Minister frowned.
"For once, just write half of what you say to my face on a normal day."
"Have I gone insane?"
It was so absurd I answered flatly.
I had not the slightest intention of doing anything with my own hands that would benefit the Minister even a little. I could not stand the thought of him retiring even one second before me. If I was stuck as Department Head, then he was stuck as Minister for life.
"You absolute bastard."
In the end the Minister delivered the highest praise and sat down.
He hadn't been serious to begin with. Both of us had long since passed the stage of fretting over whether a single evaluation form would get our heads cut off. We were just clinging to a faint, maybe-this-time hope.
"So what did you call me for, sir?"
As soon as he sat, I carefully opened my mouth.
I had already given my regular report by communicator not long ago, and there was nothing particularly important going on this season. The Minister also wasn't the type for cozy little "let's just see each other's faces" gestures.
"I called you about the North."
At that I leaned forward from where I had been reclining against the chair back.
"Did something turn up?"
The unexpected remark drew my interest at once. From what the Section 4 Chief had said, they had returned without much to show for it—but if the Minister was bringing it up, something must have come of it.
"No. Nothing."
?
You son of a bitch.
Then why the hell did you call me.
"There's so little that it's actually strange. The Ministry of Special Affairs poured everything into searching and found nothing."
The words that followed, though, cooled my anger.
Finding nothing and achieving nothing were separate problems. Even when you failed to obtain critical intelligence, you usually found traces at least. That even those weren't turning up was not a normal situation.
"The North is vast, but environments where people can live are limited. Unless the remnant of the Heaven-Defier is holed up in some eternal snow mountain somewhere."
"That bastard isn't the type to go into seclusion."
"Exactly. That's the problem."
The remnant of the Heaven-Defier—Udesr Dorgon, the sole survivor among Kagan's Eight Steeds.
Because that bastard had clawed his way out of the final battle and fled, the Ministry of Special Affairs was still grinding itself to dust across the North. The idea that a man who had clung to life that hard would give up on revenge and go into retirement simply did not compute.
"I will return! On the day the warriors of the steppe cast off the leash of deceit you fastened on them and roar toward the heavens! On the day we become wolves instead of dogs! I will return!"
He had left those words behind when he vanished. Diving off the map after that was almost funny. A MacGuffin who planted a legendary plot hook and then disappeared. A legend in more ways than one.
"It's certain he has tribes cooperating with him. And not just one or two."
"That's grim."
If he wasn't in seclusion and still left no trail, that meant there was a force grinding every trace out of existence and hiding him. Evading the Empire's pursuit was not something an individual could manage alone.
We had been braced for it from the moment Section Chief 2 encountered the Chaujid tribe, but it seemed the Minister was right—this was well beyond one or two tribes.
They're not leeches.
In frustration I scrubbed my dry face with both hands.
The tribes most violently anti-Empire had already boarded the one-way train to the afterlife with Kagan. And there were still people cooperating with Kagan's son? Did these bastards respawn or something?
"Still, nothing will break out right away. Even the natives can barely endure a Northern winter. The Ministry's judgment is that the earliest we'd see any movement is summer."
That, at least, was good news, so I nodded.
Even during the Great Subjugation War, winter had been an unspoken ceasefire. Kagan himself had stayed dug into his main camp and never moved. Wander around without knowing better and the North's blade-winds would shred you to pieces.
"Well. I called you so you'd know."
"Thank you, sir."
"And this is the important part—"
Saying that, the Minister drew something from his coat.
The important part?
Watching him, I felt my whole body go rigid. Something more important than Dorgon's whereabouts? Had some deranged corpse-fancier resurrected Kagan or something?
No—Kagan's body had already been burned. There was nothing left to raise.
"It's a wedding invitation."
"…Yes, sir."
Something far too cute and dainty to have come out of the Minister's coat. The appearance of an object I had never imagined drained the strength right out of me.
Damn it. Don't mess with people like that.
"You don't have to show up in person, but send a heavy congratulatory gift."
"Wait—don't people usually at least ask you to show your face?"
"A man wearing five rings showing up at a new bride's wedding? Wouldn't that bring bad luck?"
At the Minister's dry remark I found myself looking at my left hand without thinking.
Five rings blazing brilliantly. At a glance it looked like someone was promoting polygamy.
Fuck.
He had a point. That was not a look you wanted at the wedding of Section Chief 2, who had once been famous as the Capital's Casanova. If the man got inspired and took a second wife before he had even enjoyed his honeymoon, I would have nothing to say for myself.
If I did attend the wedding, maybe I should put gloves on over the rings…