Senior - 3
The Audit Department Chief heading to the Minister's office to collect the section chief. Just hearing that sentence was enough to shave years off a man's mental fortitude. Was this bastard getting cocky now that he was related to the Minister by marriage, even if only by a few steps removed?
If so, he was a truly vicious piece of work. Using connections before he was even married? If he was going to lean on connections, then I would have no choice but to pull out my own connection card in return.
"I'm here."
"Ah, you're here."
I suppressed the complicated tangle of feelings in my chest, knocked quickly, and entered just as fast. Connection wars or whatever else—first I needed to collect this insane subordinate of mine and think later.
The moment I stepped into the Minister's office I swept the interior with a glance and found Section Chief Two using the sofa like a bed.
Crazy bastard.
This guy was sleeping. In the office of a superior so far above him it was practically another planet.
I stared blankly down at Section Chief Two—or rather, the dog who used to be called that—with pure irritation in my eyes. The Minister spoke in a low voice.
"He did drink quite a lot. Still, a young man with a weaker constitution for liquor than me… honestly."
And in that voice I caught the faintest hint of awkwardness.
…You're letting this slide?
The Minister's words finally got my brain turning again.
Come to think of it, this was strange. This was the same Minister who hated the idea of blood relatives riding his coattails. And while it was true he doted on his wife's niece, that affection was for the niece herself—not for the man who had gone and plundered her. That plunderer sleeping peacefully in his office? The Minister would never tolerate it. In the time it took him to call me, he would have neatly folded the section chief's spine in half and hurled him into the Chief's office.
"Why is he here?"
So I asked the fundamental question. Why had he reported for duty at the Minister's office instead of the Audit Department? Why, for that matter, was he sprawled out and snoring in the Minister's office at all?
"We had a drink together last night."
"A drink?"
"A whole crate of them."
I looked at Section Chief Two again. His face was still flushed red, and his body twitched intermittently.
Yeah. This bastard was properly wasted.
"It was his last holiday before the wedding, wasn't it? So we drank a moderate amount… and he still hasn't managed to get up."
He added "pathetic weakling" under his breath, but I couldn't bring myself to agree. Section Chief Two's alcohol tolerance was actually pretty solid. If even he had been reduced to a near-corpse, how much had they actually put away?
The Minister himself had used the word "crate," so the man had almost certainly drunk more liquid than his body normally contained. Stick him with a needle and liquor would come out instead of blood.
He got force-marched to work, huh.
Once I pieced the timeline together, the twitching section chief started looking a little pitiful.
He hadn't fled to the Minister's office of his own free will. He had been forced into an alcohol battle with the Minister, lost spectacularly, and because he still hadn't woken up he had been dragged here like luggage and dumped on the floor. Not a voluntary commute—an involuntary one…
"Now that you're here, take him away already. He reeks of booze."
"Hey, whose fault is that, exactly?"
The perpetrator's cold-blooded remark made my teeth grind, but I still obediently propped up the sprawled section chief.
It was tragic that he was in this state first thing in the morning, but the celebration party still had to go on. If he had lost consciousness, then we would simply celebrate while he was unconscious. No excuse on earth was going to stop our congratulations.
"Grrrk…"
While I was hauling Section Chief Two back toward the Chief's office, a gurgling sound came from beside me.
"You awake?"
"Yuhhh…"
He mumbled in a bizarre voice. Still, it seemed his mind had returned, which was a relief.
"You're probably the first person who's ever slept in the Minister's office. We're heading to the Chief's office, so hang on a little longer."
"Yesssss…"
The answer came a little more clearly this time. The guy was apparently happy to be going somewhere as familiar as home—the Chief's office—instead of the alien territory of the Minister's suite.
Of course, he was going to be even happier once he heard the next part. I was sure of it.
"We prepared a wedding celebration party for you. Time to go drink some hair-of-the-dog."
"……."
See? I knew he would be delighted. He was so moved he couldn't even open his mouth.
This was the bond of the Audit Department, and it warmed my heart.
Two days after we held a wild celebration party with Section Chief Two specially installed in the Chief's chair, the day finally arrived when the capital's Casanova would be joined to the grave of his life—no, the partner of his life.
It was an overwhelmingly moving day. Dear sister-in-law, please never release this Casanova bastard back into the wild. Live together for a hundred years. You have single-handedly saved countless young ladies…
"I told you sending the gift money was enough and you didn't have to show up in person. Don't you have work to do?"
Hearing the Minister spew that kind of garbage at a guest who had gone out of his way to attend, I felt every last drop of emotion evaporate on the spot.
"If I don't even show my face at a subordinate's wedding, people will talk."
"Then you'll be seeing me six times."
Son of a bitch. I hadn't thought of that.
My body stiffened for a moment under the unexpected catastrophe. He was right. If there were six weddings, then every guest who knew me would be free to attend all six.
For a split second I imagined a future in which not only the Minister but the Crown Prince himself attended every single one.
Whoa.
I shut the imagination down immediately. I had momentarily forgotten that there are things in this world you should not even imagine.
"…I put a generous amount in."
I calmed my slightly depressed heart and handed the Minister the pouch of gift money.
I wasn't just saying it—I really had put a generous amount. I knew the groom, Section Chief Two, and I also knew the bride, Christina. Giving only to one side felt awkward, so I had put in roughly double the appropriate amount.
"It's heavy."
Fortunately the weight met even the Minister's standards; he gave a light nod and dropped it into the gift box.
Of course it should satisfy him. I had followed the Golden Duke's advice that if money ever made someone hesitate, the sum was simply too small. As expected, living life the Golden Duke way got you at least halfway there.
"…By the way, where is Madam?"
I looked around belatedly and felt a sense of wrongness. Why was the Minister standing alone in the reception line for guests?
No—where had House Ailas gone in the first place, leaving the uncle by marriage to greet people? If the Minister's wife had at least been present I could have thought, Ah, husband and wife working together—
"It's a rare gathering of relatives, so I sent her off to go talk with them. Doesn't matter who stands here, right?"
The Minister's words made my common sense feel like it was crumbling. No, it mattered a hell of a lot, didn't it? This wasn't some random event—it was a wedding.
But I couldn't exactly order someone who had already been sent away to come back, so I just nodded. Besides, having the sitting Minister of Finance greet the guests was certainly more impressive. The guests would feel well treated too.
"I'll go see the groom, then."
"Don't block the path. Get going."
Leaving the Minister's half-hearted wave behind me, I headed for wherever the groom was waiting.
Already the corners of my mouth were twitching. This was bad. The second I saw Section Chief Two in wedding formalwear I was not going to be able to hold the laughter in.
I sat in the waiting room and kept a smile fixed on my face. My father's delighted voice declaring that his son had finally graduated from bastard to human being, and my mother's relief that at least he had managed to marry before thirty, filled the room—but honestly none of it was really reaching my ears.
The feeling was complicated. It didn't feel real. It wasn't that I disliked marriage or anything like that; simply being in this place felt awkward and subtle. I didn't even know how to put it into words.
It felt like the moment I was transforming into some existence other than the me I had always been. Like I was stepping into an entirely different world from the one I had lived in until now. Or was that too exaggerated? Still, I couldn't think of any more fitting description…
"What's with that face? Did you even sleep properly?"
While I was trying to sort out the chaos in my chest, the Chief approached from the entrance, wearing a smile he made absolutely no effort to hide.
"Chief of the Audit Department."
"Ah, it's been a long time. How fortunate that we meet again on such a happy occasion."
The moment Father spotted the Chief he offered greetings first; the Chief bowed his head in return and held out his hand for a handshake.
Watching Father laugh and say it was all thanks to the Audit Department Chief made a hollow chuckle want to escape me. What role had the Chief played in my marriage that it was "thanks to him"? If anyone had pulled off a starring performance it was the Minister.
…Though I suppose I did benefit from him.
But when I thought about how I had first met Miss Christina, the claim wasn't entirely wrong.
If the Chief hadn't been at the Academy, if I hadn't gone to the Academy to support him, I never would have met Miss Christina at all. In a way he could be called the starting point of everything.
At any rate, after finishing greetings with Father and then Mother, the Chief turned his gaze toward me.
"Congratulations. Honestly, I thought you'd stay single your whole life."
"I thought so too."
Mother's face crumpled as if the ground had fallen out from under her, but I figured it would be fine since I had ended up marrying after all. If I had said that while still single it would have been pure unfilial piety.
The Chief seemed to share the same thought; he let out a short laugh and patted my shoulder.
"Now you'll have to produce an heir to carry on the Lafayette line. I have no intention of touching your honeymoon leave, so rest well and come back."
"Is an immediate superior even allowed to apply that kind of pressure?"
The heir-pressure that should have come from my father was instead coming from my boss. And from someone younger than me who was still unmarried, no less—the world felt like it was spinning the wrong way.
"If you don't like it, get promoted."
But the moment that all-purpose sentence dropped, I couldn't even argue. I could only laugh.
My parents seemed shocked by how rough the Audit Department Chief's remarks were, but the Chief had always been this kind of person. The most aristocratic of aristocrats, yet inside he was basically a commoner.
Which is exactly why we get along like this.
A rigid, authoritarian superior was exhausting. The previous Audit Department Chief alone had been a genuinely annoying, irritating man.
But the current Chief was different. He was a pure-blooded noble just like his predecessor, yet the way he treated us was completely different. Maybe it was because he had once lived alongside the Six Swords, or maybe he had simply always been that way.
Which is why I had no doubt he would gladly accept the small gift I had prepared.
I've been congratulated, so I should congratulate him in return.
One precious flower carefully tucked into my inner pocket. A bloom I had plucked from the bouquet prepared for Miss Christina.
The guest who catches the bouquet the bride throws will be the next to marry.
Thinking of that custom that sat somewhere between tradition and superstition made the corners of my mouth lift. Of course I had no intention of stealing a gift meant for the other guests. I had simply prepared a small present behind the large one.
Once the ceremony was over I would approach the Chief and give him this flower. Something that had once been part of the bridal bouquet, handed to the man who would soon be married himself.
He would definitely be happy.
There was no subordinate like me in the whole world. Absolutely none.
This flower-like little bastard.
"It's a flower from the bouquet. Since you'll be getting married soon, you ought to receive at least one bloom."
The moment the wedding ended, Section Chief Two came walking toward me. And then he held out a flower while spouting complete nonsense.
For a second the saying that you shouldn't even hit someone with a flower flashed through my head—but today, I felt like I could absolutely thrash someone with a flower.