The Beaming Fair - 2
Her pure white long hair fluttered with the breeze, and her ruby-red eyes sparkled clear as crystal. The smile that never left her face was a defining trait as well, if one could call it that. Stop any passerby and ask, and ninety-nine out of a hundred would pronounce her beautiful.
The last one left out of those ninety-nine was me. Knowing the truth sealed inside that shell, I could never give her a good review.
Why the hell is that bitch here.
One of the Division Chief Trio who would absolutely make it into my will if I ever wrote one on the brink of dying from stress-induced rage, and the creature who pulled off malice-free trolling with a smiling face until I clutched the back of my neck. The 1st Division Chief of the Audit Department, who had no business being here, had appeared.
I glared at the lightly stepping Division Chief as if I meant to chew her up and spit her out. She must have felt my gaze, because she turned my way. The moment our eyes met, she grinned, and the sight grated on me something fierce.
"Chief~!"
She juggled the food in her arms into a new arrangement, then raised one arm and waved it with violent enthusiasm. Watching that sunnily smiling face made me sigh automatically. Don't raise your voice—people are staring. It's a little embarrassing.
"I'll be right back."
Leaving my club members' stares behind me, I walked over toward the 1st Division Chief. There was no telling what this girl would say if I let her come all the way to the booth and talk in front of the others. The scariest thing in the world was an unpredictable troll.
"It's been so long, Chief! Have you been well?"
"I was doing fine until just a moment ago."
Now that I've seen you, I'm not so sure I'll keep doing fine, though.
"Hehe, that's a relief."
Whether I meant it or not, the 1st Division Chief just kept grinning away. The only reason I held back was that if I hit her wrong she might never get up again; there were still times I wanted to sock her just once. But I restrained myself. If the 1st Division Chief vanished, finding a replacement would be a nightmare.
More important right now was confirming why she was here in the first place. I refused to believe she had dared come play in the place where her Department Head was working.
"So what business brings you here?"
"Huh? Didn't the Minister tell you?"
She tilted her head as if my question puzzled her more than anything. The Minister? What had that man said?
Ah.
—A few people from the Administration will stop by as well, so don't be surprised.
The Minister had said something like that during the video report a while back. Oh, for fuck's sake—that was supposed to mean she was coming? I had taken it as a heads-up that a few folks from the Administration would drop by for social reasons to see my face.
My expression twisted at the unexpected situation, but the 1st Division Chief paid it no mind and kept talking.
"The Minister said that if I came here, there would be work for me to do?"
"Work for you?"
I rolled her words around in my head for a moment and the rough outline clicked into place. If there was something the 1st Division Chief had to come all the way here to do, I had a pretty good idea what it was.
"He said a corpse would show up soon, and that people from the Ministry of Special Affairs would be coming too, so I should just wait. But what does 'a corpse will show up' mean? Is he talking about undead?"
"I'll tell you when the time comes. Don't worry about it."
"Hiiing…"
Undead, my ass. The Dawn Church had long since risen to power and wiped every last undead off the continent ages ago. I shot a sidelong glance at the 1st Division Chief as she pouted and organized my thoughts.
It is the perfect timing to smash something at the Academy, though.
One of the organizations of interest, the Apels restorationist force known as Third Glory, had been slapped with the code name "Corpse," loaded with the Intelligence Director's personal feelings.
That a corpse would appear soon meant Third Glory planned to launch an attack under cover of the chaos during the fair period, and I simply had to wait for the suppression force the Ministry of Special Affairs would dispatch, just as the Intelligence Director had said before. I had half-wondered, but they really were targeting the fair.
Their intelligence is something else.
An obvious destination, an obvious time. When it was this easy to see coming, I almost worried it might be a reverse operation. Then again, that was exactly the level of intelligence that would make someone throw a fit about rebuilding a country that fell three hundred years ago.
While I was sorting that out, the 1st Division Chief's voice came from beside me.
"By the way, Chief. This is the confectionery booth, right?"
"Yeah. It is. Why?"
"Between the bread and the cookies, which one's better?"
My gaze drifted unconsciously to the food cradled in her arms. She already had more than enough for a full meal and then some—and she wanted to buy more to eat? Noticing my look, the 1st Division Chief thrust out her chest and declared with pride,
"I have a separate dessert stomach!"
It wasn't a particularly understandable statement, but if she said so, then so it was. Anyway—bread or cookies, which tasted better?
"The bread's decent."
"Then I'll get the cookies."
I stared wordlessly at the 1st Division Chief as she chose the other option without a moment's hesitation. She stuck out her tongue with a giggle.
"I already know your taste is weird, Chief. Cookies are definitely better than bread."
And with that she practically flew toward the booth. That insolent Division Chief had reached the point of using her Department Head simply because they had spent so much time together. A subordinate climbing onto her superior's head—was there any greater sign of the end times?
Not that it matters.
That was why I had deliberately said the bread was better, not the cookies. Amateur. You still have a long way to go. I strolled leisurely back to the booth and found the 1st Division Chief with a cookie in her mouth, making a tearful face.
As expected, the 1st Division Chief looked prettier crying than smiling. This was so much more soothing.
Ignoring the Division Chief's eyes, which were full of betrayal, I went into the booth and came back out holding an apron.
"You don't have anything to do, right?"
At that, the 1st Division Chief rolled her eyes around for a bit before opening her mouth awkwardly.
"I was going to go see some of the juniors from my club…"
"So you don't."
I hung the apron around the neck of the 1st Division Chief, whose hands were sealed by the food she was carrying. She twisted her head this way and that in refusal, but it was a futile rebellion.
I had considered whether it was safe to leave this girl who might say anything in the booth, but if she was going to stay at the Academy rather than just drop by for a visit, it was better to keep her close and supervise her. Better that I be a little annoyed than have her roaming the Academy outside my line of sight.
"Luise. If you need an extra pair of hands, put her to work."
"Ah, yes, Brother."
Luise looked awkwardly at the 1st Division Chief, who wore the gloomy expression of someone captured by slave hunters and sold off, then turned her gaze to me.
"But Brother, who is this person?"
"She's my subordinate, so you can treat her casually."
"This is a disaster…"
Shut it.
I gave the grumbling 1st Division Chief's shoulder a light squeeze with a bit of force, and she twisted her whole body and sank to the ground.
Ainter quietly watched Karl tussling with the woman he had called his subordinate.
"The Torture Master gets along with his subordinates without ceremony more than I expected."
"Indeed. Truly unexpected."
Ryutis's voice, laced with laughter, came from beside him. Ainter answered appropriately and closed his mouth again.
Ryutis was too busy focusing on the woman sitting on the ground and whining to pay Ainter much attention. To someone who knew nothing, she would look like nothing more than a spoiled young lady complaining.
The 1st Division Chief, is it.
Karl had not said who she was, but a female subordinate with white hair could only be the 1st Division Chief. Having confirmed the woman's identity as the 1st Division Chief, Ainter's expression darkened a little.
The divisions under the Audit Department sometimes performed shared duties, but each still had a specialized field. Among them, the 1st Division specialized in interrogation—more bluntly, in torture.
It was so infamous that people said dying was a mercy compared to being dragged to the 1st Division, a factory for living corpses from which no one ever walked out on their own two feet. There was even a joke that the number-one cause of retirement among Audit Department officials assigned to the 1st Division was the trauma of watching every kind of torture imaginable.
Whether that was truly just a joke was hard to guarantee, but it was certain that whatever floor of hell one imagined, something worse than that was playing out in the 1st Division.
The disconnect is severe.
And yet the woman before his eyes was supposedly the Division Chief who led that 1st Division. He knew the average age of the current Audit Department executives was quite young, but he had never expected her to be someone so lighthearted in private.
A witch. A seductress who bathed in blood. Or a woman whose hobby was personally applying torture whenever she was bored and listening to the screams of the prisoners. That was the public rumor about Ersebet Masalo, 1st Division Chief of the Audit Department.
Of course, thanks to the Audit Department's notoriety and the fact that one almost never met them in peacetime, every sort of bizarre rumor clung to its executives, so one had to take them with a grain of salt.
"Chief! I bought that!"
"Thanks. Having a good Division Chief sure makes eating convenient."
"Aaaah! Don't eat it!"
"Luise, want some too?"
"Aaaahng!"
Even so, that sight was truly unexpected. Even if one discarded every rumor, the fact that the 1st Division specialized in torture remained true. Decades ago it had even been called the Premier 1st Division and stood above the others.
Maybe things have changed these days.
News about the Audit Department was inevitably slow to update. It was a department that kept itself so tightly sealed. Even if they had switched to work other than torture now, there was no way to know unless the Audit Department itself revealed it. Especially not for a powerless imperial prince like him.
Ainter's thoughts had stretched that far when his gaze happened to meet the 1st Division Chief's.
…Never mind.
Changed, my foot.
The moment he met those red eyes that had reminded him of rubies, the beautiful crimson instantly looked like viscous blood. The 1st Division Chief swept her gaze over Ainter so quickly that no one who was not the direct recipient of it would have noticed, then looked away as if nothing had happened.
Ainter barely held back the hollow laugh that tried to escape. He found himself absurd for ever thinking the Audit Department might have changed from its former reputation. The look in the 1st Division Chief's eyes just now had been all too familiar—and utterly terrible—to Ainter.
The look of someone deciding how to dispose of you.
The same look he had received from the Crown Prince after the succession struggle, from the Second Prince at the height of his power when he held the upper hand in that struggle, and from Karl two years ago.
Perhaps the 1st Division Chief's visit to the Academy had something to do with him. Reaching that conclusion made Ainter feel as if his blood were drying up.
"Chief, Chief."
"What."
The 1st Division Chief, who had been fretting to the point of almost sobbing, suddenly whispered in my ear.
"Are you thinking of disposing of His Highness the Third Prince, by any chance?"
At those words I urgently yanked the 1st Division Chief's ear.
"Ow, that hurts!"
"Absolutely not, so don't go around giving off that kind of atmosphere anywhere."
It was bad enough coming from anyone, but hearing that kind of talk from the 1st Division Chief made my skin crawl. Two years ago she had also said things like "When are you going to deal with the Second Prince?" and made it clear she wanted to put her hands on him.
At first I had let it slide, but she kept bringing it up more and more blatantly until I nearly had a heart attack. I had gone through hell rushing the Second Prince's assassination (no eyewitness reports, at any rate) before a mega-incident of an imperial prince being tortured could explode.
"You have your own job to do, so stay put and behave."
"Yeees…"
When I finished the whisper and let her go, she rubbed her ear. Looking only at the outside, this girl really did seem perfectly normal.
I had to keep her with me for the entire duration of the fair? In an Academy with open access on every side and crowds pouring in?
I'm going to lose my mind.
If a Division Chief had to come anyway, the 5th Division Chief would have been the best by far—but of course torture was what the 1st Division Chief did best.
I miss you, 5th Division Chief…