Tensions Rise as the Emperor's Return Nears
"Ugh."
Having arrived at the office early and spent the entire morning drafting reports, I stretched, gently rotating my stiff wrist.
As the long sleeves of the outfit I'd deliberately chosen rode up a little, my gaze flicked instinctively toward my wrist.
It's gotten a lot better, at least.
The bruise had been a vivid blue in the perfect shape of a hand, but now it had faded considerably, taking on a yellowish tint.
Good thing I didn't go to the temple.
It was my right wrist, so it had been inconvenient for a while, but time really was the best medicine.
The ointment is doing plenty on its own.
I pulled my sleeve back down and picked up my pen again.
Going to the temple for an injury like this?
That man really had no sense of practicality.
I shook my head vigorously, internally cursing out Everett Rohas.
No matter that it wasn't my money on the line, it was still an outrageous waste.
The temple charges the same donation for minor injuries and severe ones.
It was a system designed to stop lightly wounded patients—who could be treated perfectly well by herbalists or physicians—from using temple services. Or perhaps to squeeze extra gold from nobles who visited for even the smallest scrapes.
There's no way I could spend half my annual salary just to remove a bruise from my wrist.
A four-silver ointment applied for a few days would have been enough. Two hundred gold was simply excessive.
I nodded firmly to myself and readjusted my grip on the pen.
In truth, I didn't have the luxury of letting my mind wander like this. I needed to finish organizing eight years of tax records from seven different territories by the end of today.
It's already well past quitting time, and I still have about two left.
Even after that, more work was scheduled to come flooding in, and it looked like I'd be buried under an avalanche of tasks for the foreseeable future.
This was all because the Emperor—who had marched straight off to the battlefield right after his coronation—was finally returning after eight long years.
On top of that, he'd be receiving work reports from every department the moment he got back, so orders had already come down to prepare accordingly.
How many days were left until the Emperor's triumphal return, again?
Roughly three or four, I thought. But after overworking my brain for so long, even calculating the exact date felt like too much effort.
What kind of fresh hell is this?
No matter how much of a warmonger the Emperor was, no matter how he treated human lives like they were worth less than flies, there was no way his blade would reach all the way down to someone like me.
As a mere underling, all I had to do was keep my head down, hold my breath, and endure until the storm passed. The people higher up who actually had to face him, however, were clearly in a very different situation.
With all the scolding raining down from above because of their extreme tension.
Thanks to the superiors' foul moods, the entire imperial palace was on high alert. The Ministry of Finance was no exception.
They probably received reports diligently even while he was on the battlefield.
But reports sent to the Emperor were always polished and refined, which meant certain details got omitted. And naturally, when the master stayed away for too long, his subordinates tended to grow a bit lazy.
Even the current Emperor's fearsome reputation—earned by purging the previous Emperor and the collateral imperial family to seize the throne—couldn't help but fade after eight years.
Besides, most of the officials who had joined after he left for war had never even seen his face.
Well, rumors did circulate regularly: how he'd wiped out an entire country in the blink of an eye, or cleared out every last royal of some kingdom.
People never felt true terror toward things they couldn't see with their own eyes, so they treated those stories like mere gossip.
But now it was about to become visible.
How many people could stay calm knowing the Emperor planned to dig through everything that had happened during his absence?
Even I, who pride myself on having lived with integrity, get anxious wondering if there might be some tiny mistake when I look back.
He must be even worse off.
I glanced at Donovan, who was currently snapping at Connie, and let out a quiet sigh.
It had been like this nonstop ever since news of the Emperor's return had spread.
All the mid-to-high-ranking officials wore deathly expressions, but Donovan's was particularly severe.
Did he actually do something?
I shrugged my shoulders lightly to loosen my tense muscles. He looked exactly like a corrupt bureaucrat, but I'd been reminding myself not to suspect people without evidence.
Yet the more hysterical his reactions became, the more I wondered if there really was something.
He's the cornered-tyrant type—too timid to pull off anything major anyway.
Wouldn't rampaging around like that just make him more suspicious?
Well, the Emperor isn't exactly the type to carefully distinguish between "a little corruption" and "a lot of corruption" before cleaning house.
At least according to the original story.
Until he was influenced by the sunny heroine, the Emperor had been the classic competent tyrant found in romance fantasy novels.
Cruel to both commoners and nobles alike, regardless of status.
Donovan, who had been at the Ministry of Finance even before the coronation, would know the Emperor's temperament well.
That's why he's losing it like this.
I had now completely shifted to believing that Donovan had something to feel guilty about.
His voice was so loud that the other employees kept shooting him irritated glances every time their concentration broke.
"Didn't I tell you multiple times that this was urgent? Is it still not finished?"
He dumped a week's worth of work on her just yesterday.
No matter how much one rushed, there was a limit to how much time could be shortened.
"It'll be done soon."
Connie answered Donovan in a tightly suppressed tone. Her early businesslike smiles and social grace had finally reached their limit.
If he hadn't come over to hound her every single hour, she probably would have finished faster.
"How many times are you going to say 'soon'? Tsk."
Donovan kept nagging Connie until the very last moment before finally leaving.
The instant he was completely out of the office, Connie collapsed into her chair. No sound came out, but the shape of her lips made the meaning perfectly clear to any native speaker. Donovan's name was sprinkled liberally among some very colorful vocabulary.
Everyone in the office silently allowed Connie her moment of venting with tired eyes. For the past several days, the now-hysterical Donovan had made Connie his primary target.
I approached carefully and placed a hand on her shoulder. When I jerked my chin toward the door, she followed me outside with a sullen expression.
To give her time to cool off, I quietly led us behind the Ministry of Finance building.
Once she felt a little better after hitting rock bottom, Connie started grumbling. The same repertoire as before came out this time with actual sound.
I listened attentively, offering occasional reactions.
After a while, Connie—whose face had turned nearly the same shade as her carrot-colored hair—sighed and leaned her head on my shoulder.
"That Donovan guy was always nasty, but he's gotten even nastier lately."
"Yeah. Ever since the news that His Majesty is returning, he's been like that nonstop."
Connie wrinkled her nose as if her mouth itched, then whispered that this was just between us.
"Donovan was thrilled about getting on Duke Camelot's line, remember?"
Duke Camelot was the leader of the noble faction. One of Donovan's distant relatives served as the Duke's vassal, and through that connection he'd apparently met the man a couple of times.
And bragged about it to anyone who would listen.
That much was common knowledge.
"But it looks like the moment His Majesty returns, he's planning to strike Duke Camelot down."
Oh.
I pursed my lips slightly and drew in a breath.
"They say he and Duke Camelot never got along, even before the coronation. I don't know why he let it slide eight years ago, though."
Connie laughed, saying that with so many names on his purge list, he might have simply overlooked the Duke.
For whatever reason, Duke Camelot—who had survived the bloody purges of the early coronation days—had worked hard to expand his influence while the Emperor was away. He was clearly trying to survive even after the Emperor's return.
But the Emperor, who had overlooked internal affairs because external matters were more pressing, seemed ready to begin cleaning house the moment the war ended.
"Actually, everyone who matters already knows. It's not exactly something you say out loud, though."
Connie, who had been leaning on my shoulder until then, straightened up and winked.
"The wyvern who played king while the dragon was away from its lair is finally finished."
She added that she hoped the orcs would get swept away along with the wyvern while they were at it.
Even though Connie was only a low-level palace official, the fact that word had reached her ears meant the Emperor was openly keeping Duke Camelot in check...
"But is Duke Camelot just sitting back and watching all this?"
To my half-muttered question, Connie gave an ambiguous reply that we'd have to wait and see.
After that, we chatted lightly about trivial things for a while.
Once her mood had fully recovered, Connie spoke with obvious reluctance.
"Shouldn't we head back in now?"
"I suppose we should."
I knew that even while standing here, our precious sleeping time was steadily shrinking. Still, returning to an office piled high with work felt genuinely painful.
We walked back extremely slowly.
Donovan didn't return while we processed the overdue tasks at our desks. Around midnight, the other employees began disappearing one by one with zombie-like faces.
It was around then that I finally finished organizing the tax records for the last remaining territory.
I approached Connie, who still had a massive pile of work left, and asked.
"Want me to help a bit?"
Connie, who had been making a tearful face while crushed under a mountain of paperwork that showed no sign of ending, brightened immediately.
After a very brief internal negotiation with her conscience, she cautiously asked for my assistance.
"Then I'll ask for just this part. Thank you so much."
I took the documents she handed me.
And habitually scanned the front page.
Huh?
Even after blinking my blurry eyes and checking again, the words didn't change.
The question slipped out before I could stop it.
"Connie, what are you doing?"