The Saintess?
Around seven… or was it eight?
My senses felt a bit off.
Sirin spent a long while at the front door failing to put her shoes on properly. Her legs trembled in a strange, shuddering way before she braced a hand against the wall.
"…Are you feeling sick somewhere?"
"I'm perfectly fine."
"You don't look fine."
"……"
Tremble, tremble.
Sirin smiled as she got her shoes on, then trailed after me like a duckling.
When she tried to lock the front door, the key in her hand kept missing the keyhole — tap, tap — fumbling again and again.
I'd fallen asleep the moment my head hit the pillow last night, so I had absolutely no idea what had happened.
Aside from my lower half, soaked from a strange dream, there was nothing I could hold up as evidence!
Why had the girl who'd been all over me like she was about to pounce turned so timid overnight?
"…You're really okay, right?"
"Yeees…"
"……"
I took Sirin by the wrist and draped her arm over the back of my neck. For support. That's all! Purely for support! I have zero personal motives here!
"Let's just go. We'll miss the bus."
"Yeees…"
And so I dragged Sirin all the way to the bus stop, and even after we boarded, she kept up an air of unusual quiet.
Not leaning on my shoulder, not touching my thigh… just gazing quietly out the window, and whenever our eyes met in the glass's reflection, she'd hurriedly duck her head.
'Timid Sirin?'
Yeah. If I had to put a label on it, it was like she'd become a different person entirely.
A split personality?
Ever since the Black Gate incident, I'd met plenty of people who'd developed second personalities… but it was a sensitive question, so I couldn't just ask. How frustrating.
The girl who'd strut right up to my face until yesterday was suddenly acting bashful — of course something was off.
Did she make some kind of mistake while I was asleep? Asking probably wouldn't get me a straight answer anyway, but eh, whatever — should I just ask?
I deliberated right up until we passed through the main gate of the 4th Containment Facility… and decided not to ask.
As the work hour approached, the crowd began to bottleneck.
Among the white lab coats streaming toward the research wing, the Facility Director in his white suit caught my eye.
He'd been standing in the middle of the lobby since the early hours, a single sheet of A4 paper in one hand. He looked like a man waiting for someone.
Ah… damn it all!
The Facility Director made eye contact with me!
"There you are."
"…Yes. Good morning."
"How's the body holding up?"
"Fine. So, is there something you needed…?"
"Do we need a reason to exchange pleasantries between us?"
The Facility Director shot me a pointed glance.
Then he began staring, long and hard, at Sirin clinging to my arm.
"……"
"Researcher Lee Sirin."
"Yes?"
"I have something to discuss with Seolrin alone, so would you excuse us for a moment?"
Sirin looked the Facility Director dead in the eye.
Her star-shaped pupils glittered for a brief moment — then dimmed.
"The Facility Director is…"
"What is it?"
"Ah — no. Nothing at all."
Sirin pressed her eyes shut and pinched the bridge of her temple. It looked like a migraine had struck her out of nowhere.
She turned to me and spoke.
"I'll, I'll go on ahead to the office."
"Sure. Check over the paperwork backlog from yesterday."
"Yes, ma'am!"
That wasn't like her.
The Sirin of the old days wouldn't have left my side, even if she had to throw a small tantrum about it.
I knew this because during her training period, when she'd trailed me everywhere, I'd learned a few things about her personality.
Judging by the way she pouted her lips and vanished beyond the corner with excruciating slowness, her personality hadn't suddenly changed… so why did she give up?
"Anyway, what did you need to say that required sending her off?"
"Let's change the venue."
Holding the A4 paper, the Facility Director headed for the counseling room beside the lobby.
It was always empty, filled only with the poor souls who died before they ever got to receive their PTSD counseling.
A small room. One table, two chairs.
The Director closed the door, and every sound from outside was instantly sealed away.
"You needed full security for this…?"
"I needed a quiet space."
"Is this about Team Leader 3?"
Team Leader 3, 4, 5… or don't tell me it's Team Leader 2, recovered from his injuries. Damned bastards! I can't guess at all! Who caused an incident?!
"None of them, I'm afraid."
"Really?"
"Mm."
"If you called me here over my Cube repair bill, I'm filing an appeal first thing. That was combat damage. Incurred in defense."
"That's not the reason either."
The Director gestured for me to take the chair across from him.
He set the A4 paper down in front of me.
The paper's color shifted to black.
…When managing anomalies and Objects, we typically classify them by the color of the paper.
White, yellow, red, black.
Each facility uses its own grading scheme.
That weird three-letter English acronym facility used something like Sephirot or Qliphah as units… Keter? Euclid?
"So something else came in."
"Yes. I called you here to make a proposal."
"May I decline?"
"Hear me out first—"
"No thank you. I decline."
"The anomalies assigned to Research Team 1 have been comparatively easy lately. Who do you suppose was smoothing the path for you?"
Silence.
Aside from clearing the tentacles out of Research Team 2, there hadn't been a single accident on our watch recently.
At a black-employer hellhole like this, going accident-free was extremely rare. And if there were no accidents? That meant someone was greasing the wheels for us.
The reason the Facility Director had been cutting Team 1 slack, feeding us relatively easy anomalies all this time — it was all to hand us this one.
Ha.
I let out a long sigh.
Sighing in front of your superior was madness, but in a facility where most researchers had thrown etiquette to the wind, someone like me counted as the reasonable one.
The mutant-origin staff were all a breed that had flushed their manners and social graces down the toilet, so by contrast, an ordinary, capability-less mutant like me came off as remarkably normal.
"W-well, could you cut me a little slack for cleaning up after Team 2's experiment fiasco?"
"Which is why I restored part of Research Team 1's budget, didn't I?"
"And it all went straight back out the door as repair costs…"
The Director didn't answer. He simply drummed his fingers against the black paper — tap, tap — which meant: you have no choice here, so just take it.
"A difficult anomaly. Take it."
"You've barely been discharged, and you're already up and about like this—"
"I judged there to be no problem with returning to work, hence the discharge. Am I wrong?"
"……"
"Then savor the karma of ignoring your doctor's orders."
Ha.
No argument there.
"Is there, uh, compensation? You've always thrown in personnel or budget whenever I took on a hard anomaly."
"If you accept, I'll expedite the repair queue for your damaged Cube. And I'll restore the slashed budget."
A tempting offer.
One of the Cube's six faces was cracked, and its output had dropped because of it — so this was a blessing.
Team Leaders 3, 4, and 5 had also broken their Objects; I'd assumed they'd be waiting ages for their own repairs.
But still! If I rolled over meekly here, the title of Team Leader would weep!
I attempted negotiation.
"Let's negotiate."
"…?"
"Raise next year's budget."
And how, pray tell, does a mere Team Leader negotiate budget with the Facility Director?
Ordinarily, for a Team Leader to petition the Facility Director for budget negotiations, one must endure an extremely tedious and pedantic process.
First, assess the financial situation and budget scale, state a clear and explicit objective, then arrange graphs and figures into a complicated, dizzying layout that sucks the very soul out of the Facility Director…!
Put yourself in our shoes, please! Budget constraints are crushing us! This isn't an expense — it's an investment? An investment in the future! Weigh the losses of an incident against the gains of budget allocation!
—after that appeal, seize the chance at a supplemental appropriation, or fine-tune bit by bit from the full request (less money because money's tight vs. please, have mercy), write up the paperwork, and done.
Why is all of that tedious, pedantic process compressed into nothing?
Why do Team Leaders hold budget negotiation authority — and the right to talk back to the Facility Director at all?
'…Simple. Because if we don't respond immediately, people die.'
In the early days, this place ran with all the dithering inefficiency of hell itself — but once roughly half the National Assembly members, every chaebol magnate, and the various high-and-mighty had died, the Facility's policies and budgets were suddenly settled with astonishing speed and efficiency.
Every country's the same, really… the people at the top are there because they're smart. They just never bother pointing that fine brain toward making the country better.
"Fine. I'll raise it."
"Yesss."
"……"
Whew.
Deep breath.
"Now, the anomaly briefing, please."
"Hazard classification is Black, abilities unmeasurable, zero casualties and zero injuries."
"I'm sorry, what?"
"Hm. Well, it's, er, a mental-contamination anomaly taking the form of an adult woman, but—"
"……"
"The first seven to make contact immediately dropped to their knees and began worshipping the subject. Those who dared lay 'profane' hands upon her body bit off their own tongues in attempted suicide, and the transport personnel who contained her insisted on the spot that the 'Saintess' had to be released at once."
A saintess.
I see. So that's the anomaly's name.
Also, since when do suicide attempts no longer count as injuries around here?
Good grief.
"Understood. For now."
"Be careful."