Spy Classroom - Volume 1 - Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Coordination

It was their ninth day at Heat Haze Palace, and they were in a hallway on the second floor.

“A-are we really doing this…?”

The black-haired girl replied to Lily’s feeble complaint with a graceful rebuttal.

“Of course. It’s the only choice we have.”

Even in a situation as tense as theirs, her beauty remained utterly unblemished. In fact, between her faintly flush face, the sweat dripping down her neck, and the sight of her holding her breath, her attractiveness bordered on risqué.

Suddenly, Lily got word from one of the other girls.

“This is the roof lookout. No problems here… The target’s still bathing. I can’t see much through the steam, but he hasn’t gone anywhere…”

Lily relayed what she’d just been told.

The black-haired girl nodded, then gave the thumbs-up to their teammates standing by in the hallway.

“Are you ready, lights duty? Lock duty, do you have the combination lock ready to go?” After finishing the final checks, she brushed her hair back. “It’s time.”

Her gaze was focused forward—on the bathroom.

Heat Haze Palace had a large communal bath and a private bathroom, and the girls normally took their baths in the former. This time, though, they were headed somewhere different—the bathroom used by Heat Haze Palace’s sole male resident.

Inside, they could hear the shower running.

“At 0700 sharp, we all go.”

The black-haired girl laid out their plan one last time.

“Begin Operation: Attack Teach While He’s Bathing!”

The spy team Lamplight had been reborn.

At the moment, its boss and his subordinates were engaging in a most peculiar form of training…

It all started five days ago, on Lily and the others’ fourth day at Heat Haze Palace.

In the main hall, none of the Lamplight girls knew what to say.

In preparation for their so-called Impossible Mission, Klaus had given the girls a lecture—or rather, he’d tried to, but his dysfunctional teaching methods had left them at a standstill. He’d then called them together once more, only to scrawl DEFEAT ME across the blackboard before taking his leave. Baffling didn’t even begin to describe it.

The sole member who vaguely understood what he was getting at was Lily, who had met with him the day prior.

She was also the first to notice the change on the blackboard’s far end.

There were some new items under the Heat Haze Palace Communal Living Rules.

Rule  : Anyone who makes the boss say “I surrender” will receive a reward.

Rule  : The previous rule has no restrictions on time or method used.

Rule  : Aim to stage at least one attack every twelve hours.

One of the girls let out a dumbfounded cry.

“What’s up with that?”

The rest, still similarly unable to grasp the rules, blinked in rapid succession.

“I think it’s a sort of new lesson…”

The demure speaker was a girl whose red hair was in a distinctive bob.

She had a tall, slender build and was eighteen years old. Between her lovely frame without an ounce of excess fat and her calm, mild voice, she seemed almost ephemeral. She gave off an impression like an exquisite piece of glasswork, in that she seemed liable to break if not handled with care.

She explained her theory in great detail.

“With this, our practice will bear a close resemblance to actual fieldwork. Negotiation, coercion, seduction… We’ll have to create situations that allow us to manipulate our target. That’s an essential skill for spies…”

At that point, it became clear to the others that she was probably the clearest-spoken of the group.

“I must say, though, ‘no restrictions on time or method’?” The black-haired girl elegantly tilted her head to the side. “No matter how strong Teach is, I daresay he doesn’t stand a chance against us if we come at him seven on one. We could attack him while he’s asleep; we could slip poison into his food; we could dig up dirt on him and use it as blackmail material… The task seems altogether too easy.”

The redhead frowned. “I wouldn’t be so sure.”

“How do you mean?”

“Our opponent is an elite spy…which means he’ll know all the standard techniques inside and out…”

The black-haired girl licked her lips and smiled. “Well, well, well, now that’s an interesting thought.”

Most of the girls took Klaus’s proposal as a challenge. Given their smiles, they seemed eager to rush off and attack him at any moment.

However, not everyone was on board just yet.

“Wait, hold up. Why’re you all so excited about this?” the white-haired girl demanded in a commanding tone. “I get that the guy’s strong, but remember how shit he is at teaching? You’re seriously just gonna go do what he tells you? Me, I don’t trust him one bit. He hasn’t even explained what our actual goal is yet.”

“Then this works out perfectly, does it not?” the black-haired girl replied.

“Huh?”

“Once we’ve attacked him, tied him up, and tortured him into surrendering, we can make whatever demands we want. We could interrogate him until he gives up those details, or we could even make him step down and have a new boss appointed.”

“Oh, good point,” her white-haired companion agreed.

The brown-haired girl turned to her with a fainthearted look in her eyes. “No, no, no. I have serious reservations about using a training exercise as an excuse to threaten someone…”

“If you’ve got problems with that, you’re gonna have to take it up with Lily,” the white-haired girl shot back.

“With Lily?”

“She already tried to coerce him. And her thing wasn’t even for training.”

“Isn’t that just a crime?”

Lily scratched her cheek. “Hey, I only sprayed him with a little poison gas.”

“Are you serious?” the brown-haired girl replied with a look of horror on her face.

By the end of the discussion, though, the team had collectively settled on carrying out an attack.

As it currently stood, they only had a vague sense of how powerful Klaus really was, and they naturally wanted to test how fit he was to be their boss. If they didn’t think he was strong enough to take on an Impossible Mission, then the prudent thing to do would be to coerce him into disbanding Lamplight as Lily had.

The black-haired girl made a grand, rousing gesture as she summed up the group’s thoughts.

“We’re all in agreement, then. And this is a perfect opportunity. Teach is underestimating us. He thinks we’re a bunch of washouts! So let’s head on over and show him just what we’re made of!” She raised her fist in the air. “Our goal will be to finish it within ten seconds!”

With a triumphant “Yeah!” her accomplices raised their fists in turn.

Sure enough, it took less than ten seconds for the dust to settle on their first attack.

The moment Klaus stepped out into the hallway, the girls rushed him with their training knives. They leaped at him from the ceiling, dashed toward him on the ground, surrounded him—and all found their legs tangled up in wire.

Their foreheads smacked against the ground as they toppled to the floor in unison.

“…That didn’t even make for decent sport.”

Klaus stepped on the trainees’ backs as he continued down the hallway.

At that point, the voices questioning his new teaching method went silent.

As Lily reminisced on how they had gotten there, the corner of the black-haired girl’s eyes began to twitch. The telltale signs of exhaustion were beginning to overwhelm her elegance.

“Hmm-hmm, you’ve made a fool of me for the last time. Never again…”

“You’re really mad at him, huh?”

“When you make that many advances on a man and get spurned each time, you start to hold a bit of a grudge, yes.”

In the five days since their new training had begun, the girls had suffered one ignoble defeat after another.

Klaus was like a brick wall.

Even once he’d gone to bed, if they crept so much as a single step into his room, they’d find him wide-awake. When they tried to lay traps in the hallway for him, he disabled them without breaking a sweat. When they gave up on subterfuge and came at him head-on, it always ended with them in cuffs. When they tailed him to find weaknesses to exploit, he invariably gave them the slip. And when the black-haired girl seductively asked him “Say, Teach…want to have a good time in my bed tonight?” he showed up at her room with a chess set, pummeled the girls lying in ambush there, then trounced them on the chessboard for good measure.

At first, they were just attacking him for educational purposes, but each time he bested them, Klaus would say—

“That didn’t even make for decent sport.”

—and their frustration grew that much harder to bear.

Now the emotion they felt for him was sliding dangerously toward outright animosity.

Let’s make that pompous jerk eat his words!

Willing to put any and all options on the table, the girls ultimately decided to mount an assault on his bathroom.

Suddenly, Lily began to grow suspicious.

“Still, it seems awfully convenient. He’s in the bath right when we wanted him to be.”

The black-haired girl brushed back her lovely tresses. “Actually, I was carrying some coffee around earlier and ‘accidentally’ spilled it all over him.”

“Whoa, good job actually hitting him.”

“Mm-hmm, men are such simple creatures. Teach is probably at full mast in there with his head full of obscene fantasies about how he intends to punish me for my clumsiness. I bet he’s picturing me in a maid uniform, baring my chest as I fawn over him and whimper I’m so sorry, Master… How can I ever make up for this…?”

“Uh…okay? I don’t really follow, but your plan sounds a bit…mature.” Lily blinked, only having understood about half of what she’d just heard.

“Don’t believe everything she says, Lily. Sounds like her views on men are pretty damn twisted.” The white-haired girl, who was on standby beside them, offered up a cool retort.

The black-haired girl cleared her throat. “If you have time to be saying things like that, then I take it you’ve done your job already?”

“Who do you think you’re talking to? I snatched it ages ago—right out of his pocket.” She proudly flashed them a key.

“Perfect.” The black-haired girl chuckled. “Oh, I’m looking forward to this. He’ll be right in the middle of his shower when all of a sudden the lights go out, the window gets blocked, and three members of the opposite sex come charging right at him. That should give him a good scare.”

It sounded like she was enjoying it all a little too much.

“…Ten seconds until go time.”

As she spoke, Lily and the other two members of the attack team closed their eyes and spent ten seconds acclimating themselves to the darkness. The moment they opened them back up, all the lights in the hallway and bathroom went out.

It was starting.

The three of them rushed into the bathroom as one.

Primed for the dark, they made it through the changing room with ease.

Then the white-haired girl reached the door to the bathroom proper. It was locked, but that was what the key she’d pilfered beforehand was for. She slid it into the lock.

“Huh?” Suddenly, her hands froze.

“Hurry it up!” the black-haired girl cried.

“It’s not opening. Huh. Did he slip me a dummy or something?”

“What?”

“Welp, no choice. Time to smash the door in.”

“So violent!”

The white-haired girl gave the door a mighty kick and sent it flying, lock and all. Choosing not to worry about how long it would take to fix later, the girls charged ahead.

All in all, the room was about a hundred square feet.

Inside, Lily spotted Klaus, who was standing up and holding a bar of soap. Luckily, it was too dark for her to get a decent view of his crotch.

She was a bit worried about the time they’d lost earlier, but Klaus’s eyes still shouldn’t have had time to adjust to the darkness yet.

All they had to do now was pin him down and tie him up. But just as Lily’s heart began to soar—

“Woof!”

—Klaus let out a booming shout.

The man was normally so quiet, the room was pitch-black, and the bathroom walls were incredibly echoey.

The girls flinched unexpectedly.

Klaus took advantage of that opening to hurl his bar of soap, which flew with unerring accuracy and slid right beneath Lily’s foot.

“I’m gonna”—Lily’s body tilted at an inopportune angle—“faaaall!” She tumbled to the ground, taking the others down with her.

Once they fell, they realized that the floor had shampoo streaked all across it. Friction was a luxury denied to them.

The three attackers slid across the bathroom tile, only stopping when they slammed into the wall. They tried to stand, but due to the darkness, they couldn’t see where the other two were and ended up tripping over one another’s legs and collapsing back onto the floor.

“St-stay calm!” the black-haired girl cried. “The target doesn’t have weapons. He doesn’t even have clothes! We still have a chance!”

“Magnificent.”

Klaus casually strolled over to the window. It was covered by the lid the girl on the roof had put over it, which Klaus smashed with the heel of his palm.

Sunlight streamed back in, clearing out the bathroom’s darkness.

“The persistence you’ve displayed is admirable. However, your scheme was still sorely lacking.”

Klaus stood up straight with the sunlight to his back.

He was still stark naked.

“Treat your target like a wild animal. Approach them as you would a buck galloping through a meadow, and observe them like you’re admiring a squirrel making preparations to hibernate. You aren’t ready to take on an Impossible Mission yet.”

“…First things first—put on a towel,” the white-haired girl demanded.

“Also, as you can see, a well-trained spy thinks nothing of being seen naked.”

“Put on a towel.”

“In turn, you all should be able to see me naked without a hint of emb—”

“Put on a towel.”

Klaus wrapped a towel around his waist. He looked almost bored, but perhaps that was just their imagination. “…As I was saying, there’s a lot of room for improvement, but all in all, it wasn’t a bad attempt. Make sure there’s another in the next twelve hours.”

The black-haired girl chuckled elegantly and flashed him a smile.

“Oh, you think you can run? The bathroom door might be broken, but the changing room has a combination lock on it.”

“I could just interrogate you three like usual”—Klaus strode past them and reached for the changing room door—“but luckily enough, I have a master key.”

The lock popped open.

Wait—combination locks weren’t even supposed to have master keys.

As the girls stared in him in shock, Klaus turned back around. “Right, and one other thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Attacking me as part of your training is fine, but let’s have this be the last time your impure motives spur you to attack me while I’m bathing.”

“WHAT IMPURE MOTIVES?!”

They didn’t know if he was serious or just joking, but either way, the humiliation they felt wasn’t something they’d soon forget.

And so, the long string of defeats grew.

“Arrrrrrrrgh! Why can’t we beat him?!”

“I saw Teach’s you-know-what… The horror…”

“Hey, lemme give the orders next time. We can get him. I know we can.”

“We should start by gathering intelligence. If we don’t find some weakness of his…I don’t think I like our odds…”

The girls were gathered around a table in the main hall, chattering among themselves and brainstorming about what kind of attack to launch and what they needed to improve. Their instructions were to attack once every twelve hours, so time was of the essence.

Klaus’s new teaching style was already paying dividends. By repeatedly battling against an elite spy, the girls were rapidly amassing experience.

“There’s one thing I don’t understand, though. What exactly happened back there? The lock on the changing room shouldn’t have opened like that.”

The black-haired girl gracefully tilted her head to the side, prompting a “Hmm?” from one of her teammates. “You’re not talking to me, are you?”

The speaker, a member of the team with messily tied-up silvery-cerulean hair, gave an insolent smile.

She was the kind of person it was difficult to get a read on. She was sixteen and had a medium build, but despite her reasonably good looks, she wasn’t the type of beauty who turned heads. Even her hairstyle, the one distinctive thing about her, was hard to properly put a name to. All in all, the impression she gave off was “aloof.”

“Don’t act like this doesn’t concern you. You were in charge of the lock, were you not?” the black-haired girl replied.

“Hey, I dunno what to tell you. I sealed the door with a combination lock, so unless he knew the six-digit code, it shouldn’t have opened.”

“…Look, just admit you made a mistake.”

“Excuse me? Hey, if we’re pointing fingers, the attack squad screwed up way worse.”

“………”

The cerulean-haired girl was skilled, but those skills came paired with an unfortunate arrogant streak. Incidentally, she was the sole member of the group who had succeeded in opening her padlock within the time limit on the second day.

Lily clapped her hands together before the argument could get any more heated. “All right, all right, let’s remember that the most important thing right now is teamwork—and the bonds we share. Let’s all just take a deep breath. Here, you can each have one of the super-fancy financiers I bought.”

“Oh my…this is sumptuous!” “Huh, that’s good.”

“Hee-hee, if you want another, all you have to do is bow down to your glorious leader!”

“Looks like someone’s gotten a big head.” One of her teammates good-naturedly heckled her, and the others joined in.

They were still a bit fuzzy on the details, but they had all come to accept Lily’s new title.

They had their doubts about it, to be sure, but after hearing how ecstatic Lily sounded when she said things like—

“Whew, no matter how many times I say it, it always has such an nice ring. Leader… It’s like the word itself is telling the world to watch out—golden girl Lily is on the stage, and this is where her legend begins. Hee-hee-hee…”

—they decided to let her have it.

After turning away from Lily, who looked like she was on top of the world, the others went back to brainstorming their plan of attack. No simple answer to their crisis seemed forthcoming, but their discussion was fervent all the same. Part of that was spurred by their resentment toward Klaus, but the bigger motivator was entirely rational.

One number was at the forefront of their minds—that 90 percent mortality rate.

Klaus had sworn he’d get them all back alive, but they couldn’t afford to blindly trust that promise.

“In any case, it seems our only option is to work on our coordination,” the black-haired girl concluded. “If we can’t defeat a single man, then I find it hard to imagine us succeeding at the Impossible Mission.”

“Hmph. Yeah, looks like that’s all we can do for now.”

The cerulean-haired girl scoffed arrogantly as she agreed. Then a thought occurred to her, and she looked over at her companion sitting on the couch a little ways from the table.

“Hey, you’ve been real quiet,” she said before addressing her by name. “You got anything to add, Erna?”

The blond looked up with a vexed expression.

Her hair was dazzlingly yellow, and her skin was so fair, it was almost transparent. The frilly dress she was wearing only added to the image of a doll crafted by a master artisan. It wasn’t just her appearance, either. Her taciturn nature accentuated the artificial ambiance around her. Out of all the Lamplight members, she was by far the least talkative.

At fourteen years old, she was also the group’s youngest member.

She opened her mouth and reluctantly replied, “She’s wrong.”

Those were her first words of the meeting.

“What big sis Lily said. It’s been bothering me.”

“Hmm…?” Lily cocked her head to the side.

“All that talk about bonds is just pretty words. We’re spies. We can’t afford to trust one another so easily.”

That was certainly a cold way of putting things.

The other girls all turned and stared at her. They couldn’t understand why she would threaten to disrupt the team’s unity given their situation. Their gazes held a mixture of reproach and confusion.

“Ummm, how about a nice financier?” Lily could tell all too keenly just how tense the mood was.

“I don’t want it.” Erna stood, paying no heed to Lily’s blank expression. “…I’m going for a walk.”

She had no intention of participating in the discussion.

Her rejection split the group into two camps: those who responded with anger and those who could say nothing at all.

However, Erna ignored both parties alike as she strode away.

Lily called after her. “Come on, Erna, you have to at least trust us. That’s what being a team’s all about.”

Erna whirled around. “If you believe in anyone, you lose. That’s what being a spy is all about.”

Her gaze was as cold as ice.

A heavy silence descended on the main hall.

After leaving Heat Haze Palace, Erna walked through the twilit city.

With no particular destination in mind, she stood atop a bridge and watched a locomotive pass under it and bathe her in its steam. She then bought a crepe from a shop by the station and swayed side to side as she listened to the band performing in the main plaza. However, the church bells soon chimed six, and the noise startled her into dropping her crepe. She tried to take her mind off it by going over to a coin-operated music box, but when she put in her coin, it refused to start. After hitting it a few times, she gave up.

She really was just wandering.

Sometimes, the world could be divided into two groups of people.

For instance, there was the type who could leave an interaction with other people feeling satisfied with themselves versus the type who would invariably agonize over the things they’d done and said.

Erna was a prime example of the latter.

I went too far…, she thought, dejected and alone.

After leaving the station, she had aimlessly wandered down side roads.

All I wanted to do was remind them that spies need to remain vigilant and skeptical, so why did I have to say it like that…? I totally ruined the mood…

Streetlights were only installed in the larger roads, so the darkness on the side streets was especially thick. The sun hadn’t totally descended past the horizon yet, but even its light was scarce.

Erna walked through the shadows with her shoulders slumped.

At this rate, they’re going to abandon me during the mission…

She came off as aloof, but she was actually a very sensitive person. Yet, she also had a habit of exhibiting strange displays of pride, which only served to further isolate her from others.

For a spy, a bad relationship with one’s teammates was an easy way to get killed.

Intellectually, she knew that, but…

Then I got so overwhelmed by my own awkwardness that I just ran away…

The stroll was just an excuse.

Truth was, she had fled in fear from the entire conversation.

I have to get back so I can apologize… Play up how cute I am and say Big sis Lily, I’m sorry… But I can’t get too close to them, or they’ll get caught up in my situation…

She knew what she needed to do, but due to her poor communication skills, her thoughts began straying.

“How unlucky…” Erna hung her head sadly.

And right when she did—

“Hey, kid. Hold up a second.”

“Huh?”

—someone called out to her, and she stopped in her tracks.

When she looked up, she discovered two seedy-looking men covered in tattoos leering down at her. They strode toward her with wide gaits, cutting off all avenues of retreat.

Without noticing, she had wandered all the way over to the harbor, the area where the longshoremen lived. She had heard about how dangerous things were over there. The area was ripe with the stench of booze and raw garbage, and the brick buildings lining the street seemed liable to collapse at any minute.

A piece of information flitted back through her mind—that, around the harbor, there were men who’d gotten fed up with the backbreaking work on the docks and left to form groups that were decidedly less savory. The men before her were likely two such examples.

“Guessing from that nice outfit you’re with the bourgeois. Say, you wanna step into an alley with us for a minute?”

“No… Get away from me…”

She tried to step back but discovered yet another man behind her. There were more than just two of them.

She shouldn’t have been so careless.

She couldn’t believe she’d let herself get surrounded.

“Hey, no need for this to get ugly. We’re tryin’ to help you out here. Let’s all just be friends, what do you say?”

Friends?

Hearing that word, Erna replied in spite of herself. “I’ve got a question, mister… How are you supposed to make friends…?”

“Huh? You just make sure they know how strong you are.” The man pulled a knife out of his pocket. “See, now you wanna be my friend, right?”

He pointed the knife straight at her. The threat of a weapon would usually be enough to ensure someone’s cooperation.

“How unlucky…” Erna’s nose twitched ever so slightly.

“Huh?”

“You said you wanted an alley… Is this one okay?”

Erna obediently began walking, and a vulgar smile spread across the man’s face.

“See? Now you’re bein’ friendly, just like I said.”

“………”

Crass as he was, the man had a point.

People were naturally drawn to the powerful. They wanted them as trusted allies. They wanted them as partners they could put their faith in.

If she wanted to get along with the others, all she had to do was show them her strength.

Having now realized that, she was struck by how obvious it was.

The answer was right before her, plain as day—she just needed to succeed where they had failed so many times.

“So, kid, who’s your dad? Some sorta CEO? A politician? What say you introduce me to him sometime?”

“………”

“Don’t go clamming up on me, now. Not unless you want me to cut that pretty little dress right off you.”

The man approached her, interrupting her train of thought, and his companions moved to encircle her.

The alley was a dead end. There was nowhere to run.

“How unlucky…,” Erna quietly said. “Gee, Erna, it’s almost like that’s how your entire life has gone.”

She didn’t mean to give them her name, but fortunately, the men didn’t seem to notice. They looked at her, puzzled.

She kept talking. She needed to buy time until the moment struck.

Her nose twitched again.

“I always seemed to get myself involved in some kind of trouble. Day in, day out. Accidents, tragedies, disasters…”

“What are you mumbling about—?”

“But over time, I started to be able to tell. It was faint, but I could sense it. I could sense when and where the misfortune was coming.”

It was time.

Erna could smell it.

“I’m code name Fool—and it’s time to kill with everything.”

She looked overhead.

The men followed her lead and peered up in turn. They shuddered.

It was raining bricks.

Dozens of them were falling from the sky.

While the men gasped in shock, Erna was already on the move.

The block they were on had many antique brick buildings, and chunks from their outer walls would sometimes crumble and fall due to decades of exposure to the elements. But unlike Erna, who had noticed the signs in advance, the men were frozen stock-still.

After hurrying out of the danger zone, she turned, looked at the men being buried in the rain of bricks—

“Good-bye, misters.”

—and shot them a contemptuous look.

When Erna got back to Heat Haze Palace, Lily let out a shout.

“What happened to you?! You’re filthy!”

In the few hours since they’d last seen each other, Erna had managed to cover herself entirely in mud. The hem of her skirt was also torn, leaving her fair thighs bare and exposed. She didn’t seem injured, but she had clearly been through quite an ordeal.

In contrast to Lily’s overt display of shock, though, Erna gave her a blunt reply. “This happens all the time.”

“That’s no way to explain—”

Before Lily could finish, Erna quietly cut her off. “I’ll do the next attack.”

“What…?”

“And I want you all to back me up with everything you have.”

With that, Erna headed up the stairs.

All Lily could do was watch the lonely looking girl go.

“Is she really okay…?” she asked, more to herself than to anyone else.

Out of the blue, though—

“She really totally isn’t!”

—a loud voice boomed right in front of her.

“Bwah!” Lily cried as she leaned back and looked down.

A short girl was standing before her.

Pleased that her prank had worked, she gave Lily an innocent smile.

Her hair’s color could best be described as ash pink, and just like Erna, she was fourteen years old. She had a habit of shaking her long hair and swaying her short body side to side. No matter what was going on, she could always be found wearing the same cherubic smile, cute as an angel straight off a fresco.

“Erna and I went to the same academy for a while! So I know all the rumors, yo! They say she’s really unlucky.”

The pink-haired girl hopped up and down as she relayed the information, as if she was so excited to tell someone that she couldn’t even contain herself.

“Unlucky?” Lily quietly replied. “That doesn’t sound very scientific.”

“It’s true, yo! Someone I knew even got in an accident, and it was bad enough that they made Erna transfer!” Her glee as she recounted the awful story was disconcerting.

Maybe that was what had earned Erna the designation of problem child.

Lily knew all too well how easy it was for someone who couldn’t work with their teammates to end up washing out.

“Wow, that’s a really sad story…”

“It is?”

“W-wait, isn’t that why you told me?”

“No, c’mon, listen to this!”

The pink-haired girl leaped up and whispered in Lily’s ear.

“…Let’s say Erna leads someone somewhere and something nasty happens to them. People will treat it like an accidental death instead of a homicide, yo! It’s the ultimate assassination technique!”

Upon hearing this explanation, Lily’s eyes went wide. She couldn’t just laugh it off as unscientific anymore.

If someone could call forth misfortunate and distribute it to others…then that person could commit the perfect crime.

No weapon needed, no evidence to trace. They could take down their target and pass it all off as an accident.

Lily felt a chill run down her spine.

“If you need someone who specializes in accidents and disasters—then Erna’s your girl!”

That fact wasn’t just heartening, it was downright uncanny.

What exactly was she capable of if she used her powers to their fullest…?

One day, Klaus was out and about.

Thanks to the girls’ recon efforts, they had a pretty decent handle on Klaus’s daily routine. After waking up, he would go work up a sweat in the training room, then shower. After breakfast, he would spend the rest of the day reading through suspicious-looking documents and sending off telegrams to spy headquarters from his room. Once night fell, he would either head out or stay in his room and paint. When he did go out, it was probably to complete various solo missions, as his destination usually varied. As for meals, he cooked them all himself, preparing them in Heat Haze Palace’s kitchen and then taking them back to his quarters to eat. Every few days, he would also go out to buy ingredients and various other sundries.

On one such day, Erna tailed him to an art store, then called out to him.

“Oh, Teach, what a coincidence…”

“I suppose it is.” Klaus was holding a large, bulging paper bag. “Lily tripped over my paints last night and spilled them all, so I had to come buy more. Is it just you today?”

“It’s my turn to go shopping. All the others are busy training for the next attack.”

“Well, I’ll be sure to look forward to it.”

“I see…”

“……”

“……”

“……”

“……”

I need to keep up the conversation, or I won’t be able to lure him in…

Erna wasn’t great with words, and Klaus was taciturn by nature. Putting the two of them together wasn’t exactly a winning recipe for a scintillating conversation.

For her plan to work, Erna needed to invite him to stroll around town with her.

No matter how hard she tried, though, she couldn’t get the words Want to come shopping with me? out. The rest of her spy fundamentals were excellent, but her communication skills were sorely lacking.

If she didn’t get herself to talk, the target would end up just heading home. But right as Erna began to panic—

“So what’s on the shopping list?”

—Klaus spoke first.

“Huh?”

“What is it you’re buying?”

The question did the trick, and Erna’s tongue untied itself.

“G-groceries. And soap and an alarm clock. And my curtain got torn, so some fabric. And a new set of pajamas, if I find something cute.”

“That sounds like a lot for one person to carry. Why don’t I come along?”

She hadn’t expected the target to throw her a lifeline.

However, she wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. The two of them set off down a side street.

I’m sorry, Teach. This will only bring you misfortune.

She wasn’t thrilled about having to use his kindness against him, but it was what it was. They lived in a world of subterfuge; by their own standards, what she was doing was downright tame.

Erna sniffed the air, and before long, she caught the scent she was looking for.

She had been diagnosed with what her old psychiatrist had called a predisposition for unluckiness.

Ever since childhood, her life had been plagued with misfortune. Despite being born to a family of wealthy aristocrats, she had lost both her parents in a tragic mansion fire. Trains she took would derail, and paths she walked down would be beset by hoodlums. She had even been grazed by lightning once or twice.

If anything could be said to be lucky about her, it was that she had survived this long at all.

After so many brushes with misfortune, she had gained an acute sense for bad luck.

It had a certain smell.

It was unclear how her olfactory power worked, but she could generally figure out when and where tragedy would strike.

I’ll do what none of the others could and take down Teach. I’ll trounce him. Then they’ll all respect me, tell me how great I am, and gather around me; and this time, I’ll be able to get along with them—and fulfill my dream.

As she casually guided her target, Erna chuckled to herself.

I’m code name Fool—and it’s time to kill with everything.

It happened when they reached the main street.

The moment they got there, a shiny black vehicle came barreling toward them at full speed.

A runaway car.

Erna had smelled it coming, so she immediately leaped to the side. Even with fortune working against her, her spy training and preparedness allowed her to dodge it.

Just my luck…, Erna thought. I knew something would happen, but I didn’t realize it would be a runaway car. This is too much…

She could sense the signs but never knew what would happen until it actually did.

The car charged onto the sidewalk, not slowing down in the slightest.

Klaus, seemingly unable to react to the imminent tragedy, didn’t move an inch.

The other pedestrians screamed.

Erna fought back the urge to squeeze her eyes shut.

The car slammed into Klaus, and his body went flying through the air.

When it did, an odd popping noise rang out.

After hitting him, the runaway vehicle went into a spin, eventually coming to a stop just off the sidewalk. The tire tracks burned into the pavement made it terribly clear how violent the crash had been.

After soaring high into the air, Klaus’s body tumbled limply back down—

“Well, that was close.”

—yet his landing was a perfect ten.

What the heck?

Erna couldn’t believe her eyes.

How could a man who’d just been run over be so completely unscathed?

He wasn’t bleeding, had no visible wounds, and didn’t seem the slightest bit shaken.

Klaus dusted himself off, then walked over to her.

“Are you hurt?”

“T-Teach…no injuries?”

“I can’t say for sure, but nothing major, I think. I wouldn’t mind giving him a piece of my mind, but I’d best let the police handle that. We’ve drawn enough attention as it is.”

“Not the driver! You!”

“It’s as you can see.”

Klaus set off as calm as could be, as though to say that she was the odd one for even asking. Not only was he uninjured, his clothes weren’t even soiled.

He must have leaped off the car’s hood the moment it made contact—a feat requiring such precise timing that if he’d been a second early or late, it could have easily proven fatal.

Erna looked over at the motionless car.

What exactly had made it spin like that?

What exactly had been that popping noise?

“I punctured its tire.” Apparently sensing her confusion, Klaus explained what had happened. “If nobody stopped that car, someone might have died.”

“You did that in that tiny time…?”

“Would you like to know how?”

“No, that’s okay.”

“All you have to do is stab the tire with a knife.”

“…I expected as much.”

As they shared their silly little exchange, Erna pulled herself together.

The man beside her was a monster who operated in a different realm than normal people. Even getting hit by a car didn’t so much as slow him down.

B-but…the unlucky smell is still there…!

This was no time to start feeling guilty.

After all, there was a real danger that standard misfortune wouldn’t be enough to even put a dent in him…

Unfortunately, Erna’s prediction was right on the mark.

No matter where she led him, Klaus evaded her bad luck with ease.

At one point, they headed down a side street only to have a pot full to the brim with boiling water fall off a food truck and topple right toward them. It took everything Erna had to get out of the way, but Klaus didn’t even try to dodge. Instead, he caught the pot right out of the air and covered it with his leather coat.

He didn’t let so much as a single drop spill.

Then, in a residential area, they ran into a vicious hound.

Erna didn’t know what she had done to offend it, but the moment their eyes met, it bared its vicious-looking teeth and charged right at them. Its chain loose, the mad dog leaped at her so fast, no human could possibly get away, and yet—

“What a lively pup.”

—a light palm strike on the jaw from Klaus was all it took to settle the dog.

Meanwhile, Erna hadn’t tried to flee. Her knees simply rattled.

From there, they headed into an alleyway, and just like with the thugs the day before, a rain of bricks came toppling down on them.

When they did—

“Ah, crap,” Klaus said with some embarrassment. “A few of them cracked.”

—that embarrassment was prompted by something utterly trivial.

The extent of his failure had been that in catching the fourteen bricks out of the air, he had been unable to preserve them all in perfect condition. He’d even had time to comfort the young woman cowering nearby.

He really is a monster…

She scowled at him, but Klaus’s expression was as cool as always.

The more time passed, the more depressed Erna got.

Not only was her target doing as well as ever, it wasn’t even clear if he realized he was being subjected to ill fortune at all. He was the definition of cool and composed as he continued helping her shop. The bags of groceries should have weighed him down, but he had yet to voice a single complaint about Erna’s instructions.

Meanwhile, Erna was being reminded of something all over again.

Specifically, just how fearsome her power was.

I really am a dreadful child…

Normally, she would never follow the scent of misfortune so many times in a row. Usually, she headed straight in the opposite direction.

If he was anyone else, he probably would have gotten hurt really bad over and over…

Each time she brushed shoulders with misfortune, she always imagined a voice whispering in her ear.

This tragedy happened because of you, it would say.

The only reason things had turned out okay was because the person she was with defied all norms. But what if it had been a young girl, like her? What if it had been one of the other Lamplight members? Would they still be willing to be friends afterward? In fact, wouldn’t the man by her side want to leave her, too, if he found out about her power?

I should just give up on making friends with people…

Who was it who had first spread those rumors at her spy academy? she wondered.

“You’d be better off staying away from that girl.”

And how long would it be before the same thing happened at—?

“That’s everything you needed, right?”

As Erna sank into the mire of her own thoughts, she suddenly heard Klaus’s voice.

She came to her senses with a start.

They had successfully acquired all the items she’d listed off back at the start. They had just left the last store, and Klaus was cradling a box of detergent under his arm.

All that, and her target didn’t seem the slightest bit fatigued.

“Y-yeah, it is. But there’s still a few places I want to—”

“I think this farce has run its course.”

Klaus stopped in place.

When Erna turned her head to look at him, she found him staring down at her in turn with a calm gaze. A chill ran down her spine, and she began sweating all over.

Wha…?

He was calm but terrifying.

He opened his fingers, and the paper bag he was holding fell to the ground. He didn’t seem to be in any rush to pick it back up.

“To tell you the truth, the teachers at your academy told me about your ability. They called you the girl who attracts misfortune.”

“……!”

“Now I finally understand the truth behind that warning.”

He had known all along.

Everything he’d done had been an act. All of Erna’s attacks had been exposed from the start. He’d probably just accompanied her to test her powers.

Klaus turned toward Erna and reached for her.

The moment he did, she immediately remembered all the times he had hurled the Lamplight girls through the air.

Her eyes snapped shut.

There was no escape…

“People really misunderstand you, don’t they?”

However, it was the exact opposite of what she’d feared.

He gently rubbed her head.

“If anything, the unluckiest thing of all was that a girl with your talents never got properly praised for them.”

“Huh? Whaaaauh?” she yelped, unable to understand what was happening.

“You did good.” Klaus nodded affectionately. “And the way I see it? You’re the luckiest girl in the world.”

Erna could hardly comprehend what he was saying.

Beneath his hand’s warm weight, her former psychiatrist’s words flashed through her mind.

“All right, miss. Here’s the diagnosis.

“You have a predisposition for unluckiness…or at least, that what I’m calling it for the sake of convenience. Now, no condition that unscientific actually exists.

“Perhaps it would be more accurate to call it a desire for punishment.

“I remember reading about that mansion fire…and about the young girl who was its sole survivor.

“Because of that incident, you’ve become obsessed with the notion that your own survival is unfair. It causes you to subconsciously pursue punishment.

“The closest analogy would probably be to how suicidal individuals sometimes cut their wrists. Much like how such people make failed suicide attempts, you seek punishment—but not of the capital variety. At the end of the day, it’s a mechanism you use to regulate your emotions. That’s what drives you to seek punishment but not death.

“Because you survived, your dream is to save as many people as you can… Objectively speaking, that’s pretty darn intropunitive.

“You need to stop blaming yourself. When you do, it drives you to seek punishment all over again.

“Or at least, you need to try…though breaking that cycle will be easier said than done.”

As far as rational explanations for Erna’s powers went, that one probably hit the mark.

Erna was drawn to misfortune because she unknowingly sought it out. Though her conscious mind could suppress the urge, her unconscious mind was continuously finding circumstances to punish herself and was driving Erna toward them.

They told her not to blame herself, but how could she possibly not?

It would be one thing if the only person who got hurt was her, but her misfortune often dragged everyone around her into it as well—even people she cared about. People who were kind to her.

For ages, she had seen herself as wretched, disgusting, shameful.

Of course, she hadn’t made a single friend back at the academy.

So why was the man before her kindly praising someone so terrible…?

“Countless people were saved thanks to you. That runaway car could have crashed into some of the other pedestrians. That pot could have easily toppled over and splashed the people walking down that street. The mad dog could have bitten a child, and those bricks could have fallen on that woman.”

“Huh?” Erna let out a flustered cry.

He certainly had a point.

All the misfortunes she’d experienced that day had happened in places with other people around. If Klaus hadn’t been there to deal with them, they would have claimed other victims.

Guided by Erna’s hand, Klaus had saved them all.

Now that he mentioned it, there was some truth to that, but…

“Th-that was an accident, though!” Erna’s voice grew louder. “That wasn’t the point! I was guiding you around to try to hurt you! The plan was to wear you down and have everyone come and attack you. Helping those people was just a coincidence!”

Now she was giving up their entire plan. Even she didn’t know what had gotten her so agitated.

“I’m bad luck! An ill omen! People hate me! You can’t call me lucky—it just pisses me off! You don’t know what you’re talking about. And don’t go patting my head like a child, either! The person you’re talking to is a monster—a demon who drowns people in misfortune for her own twisted satisfaction!”

“Well, I haven’t been drowned in misfortune.”

“Th-that’s…”

“Don’t move; you have some dust in your hair.”

Still marching to the beat of his own drum, Klaus reached over and stroked Erna’s head again.

Why isn’t he scared to touch me…?

Panicking, Erna shook his hand off.

Why is he still looking out for me after I put him through so much?! How can he be so calm when he knows about my power and how I used it against him?! How could anyone possibly be so—?

“What’s wrong, Erna?” Klaus asked. “…Are you crying?”

“………I.”

“Hmm?”

“I!”

“You?”

“I-I’m not…crying…!”

“I see.” Klaus chose not to point out how obvious her lie was.

Erna couldn’t help but feel touched by his kindness. She even felt warm inside despite her efforts to resist.

“At any rate, your luck proved a great boon to the citizens of our nation today. I think that merits a reward. Is there anywhere you’d like me to take you?”

Erna shook her head. “How should I know something like that?”

“I promise it’s not a trick question.”

“It’s just…it’s the first time.” Erna wiped at the corners of her eyes. “The first time in my life anyone’s asked me on a date.”

“…I see. In that case, I supposed I’d best take the lead.”

Offering no resistance to the term date, Klaus slowly resumed walking.

By that point, Erna had completely forgotten she was supposed to be attacking him.

Klaus had assured her that the cheesecake was unrivaled across the entire Din Republic, and its flavor was just as exquisite as promised. The fact that the restaurant was both underground and members only had put Erna on edge, but the moment she bit into her dessert, all her fears melted away. Its texture was so smooth, it practically melted in her mouth. Despite being raised in an upper-class family, it put every other dessert she’d tasted in her life to shame. She cleaned her plate in the blink of an eye.

Klaus polished his slice off as well, then ordered seconds for both of them.

“My mentor took me here, back when I was a child. As a reward.”

It was rare for him to ever talk about his past. Apparently, even the mysterious man before her had once had a teacher himself.

Strangely pleased by the thought, Erna replied with a story of her own.

“You wouldn’t believe how rough I’ve had it! When I was first coming to Heat Haze Palace, my train got into an accident, and then the bus I was supposed to get on skipped my stop, and when another one finally came, its tires blew out!”

“I see your tongue’s loosened up a bit.”

“W-well, it’s embarrassing when you point it out…”

“No, I understand the feeling. When I’m around people I trust—around my family—I become a far bit more eloquent myself.”

“It’s the same for me!”

As their conversation went on, Erna suddenly felt a sharp sting in her nose.

It was the smell of misfortune. And it was fairly intense, too.

Klaus, eagle-eyed as ever, noticed her discomfort. “What’s wrong?”

“I-it’s nothing…” Erna hesitated.

If I tell him, he might leave…

She couldn’t predict misfortune down to its exact particulars.

All she could do was guess based on its smell. After all, that ability to sense a small portion of some bad luck that might befall her wasn’t sufficient to tell her any specifics.

However, the scent she smelled now was acrid enough that she would normally have stayed away from it at all costs.

But…Teach will be able to handle it, right…?

She wanted to test him. She wanted to see if this man would stay by her side, no matter what.

It was an arrogant, childish way of thinking, and she knew that fact full well.

However, her desire to find out if Klaus was someone she could believe in won out.

In the end, he might end up leaving her, too.

But if he didn’t, she wanted to see it with her own eyes.

Erna boldly leaned forward.

“Teach, I want you to come with me.”

Their destination was a deserted alleyway sitting by a row of harbor warehouses.

It was late enough that the market had long since closed, and the streets were empty and still. They could hear the sound of waves lapping against the wharf. The sea off the harbor was a dark indigo even in the middle of the day, and at night, its hue seemed all the more ominous. Countless shipping containers waiting to be loaded into the warehouses were piled high, casting shadows like those of a humongous castle.

Erna clamped both hands over her nose.

The area was blanketed in an aroma so thick it was almost choking. It was the scent of misfortune that only she could sense, burning into her nasal cavity.

Her heart felt like it was going to burst out of her chest.

Normally, she didn’t plunge herself into harm’s way like this unless it was absolutely necessary.

She couldn’t even begin to imagine what awaited them.

As she held her breath, Klaus came to an abrupt stop.

“Erna, I take it you’ve noticed,” he said. “But we’re surrounded.”

She hadn’t.

Suddenly, men came pouring out from behind the warehouses, one after another. There were eight assailants, and they moved to surround Klaus and Erna with guns in hand. Given their menacing expressions, it was fair to assume that they were on the wrong side of the law.

Klaus frowned. “Who are you?”

One of them, a man with a facial tattoo, barked out a threat. “Don’t move. We’ve got a hostage.”

“Excuse me?”

“We know who you are. Councilman’s daughter and her bodyguard, right?”

Klaus cocked his head to the side. “Who? I’m afraid you have us mistaken for someone else.”

“Heh, I figured you’d say that. But see, we did our research.”

The men surrounding them were grinning mockingly.

“Councilman’s daughter’s not gonna run away and leave a constituent to die, is she? And it’s no use playin’ dumb. We know all about who you two are.”

Evidently the “constituent” referred to the hostage they’d taken.

Erna couldn’t make any sense of what was happening. “What’s going on?” she whispered to Klaus.

“I don’t know. It seems they’re laboring under a misunderstanding, but…I think we can assume they’re not interested in listening to reason.”

The men appeared to be confident in their information.

Erna huddled next to Klaus. “…Teach, are you going to take them down?”

“………”

“Teach?”

Klaus let out a sigh. “No point.”

“Huh?”

“They’re telling the truth about the hostage. We have no choice but to do as they say.” Klaus’s voice was as cold as ice.

Erna lost all hope. This was beyond her expectations. This misfortune was too great.

She had no ability to deal with it herself, and Klaus raised his hands in a show of nonresistance.

“Get the chains,” the tattooed man spat. “Tie ’em up, then stick a lock on and seal the keyhole with wax. Make sure not even an elephant could get out.”

Klaus let out a faint sigh—a fact that didn’t escape Erna’s ears.

The chains the men used were almost half an inch thick. Trying to break them would be a fool’s errand. And the padlock fastened to them was coated in wax, so trying to pick it wasn’t an option, either.

Even if just by coincidence, the men had come up with the perfect countermeasure against Klaus.

How unlucky, Erna moaned to the heavens.

Erna and Klaus had their bags taken from them and were then forced into a car. After riding for two hours, they finally arrived at a cabin on the edge of town. That must have been the ruffians’ hideout. They could scream all they liked, but nobody would be able to hear them.

Erna kept a watchful eye on the ever-dependable Klaus, but he showed no signs of trying to resist.

“Wait here until the boss shows up.”

The thugs shoved them into the cabin’s shed, then locked it from the outside.

The shed was so small that just the two of them sitting was enough to make it feel cramped. It was also damp, not to mention dark due to the lack of proper windows.

Beside her, Klaus wriggled and squirmed.

That earned him a sharp “Move any more, and I’ll shoot!” from their guard.

The man glared at them through the shed’s one small slit.

“Opening the lock was a nonstarter,” Klaus whispered. “We can’t move, there are no windows large enough to escape through, and there’s an armed guard. I assume they’re communists who fancy themselves revolutionaries, but they shouldn’t be this competent. Just who are these people?”

He must have already tried picking the lock—and failed.

“What about the other girls? The plan was to wear me down and have them attack me, wasn’t it?” Erna softly shook her head. “They took my transmitter. I don’t have a way to send them our location.”

“Well, that’s unfortunate.”

“I’m sorry, Teach,” she finally said. “This is my fault… This is all because I led you there…”

“It isn’t. The only ones to blame are those men.”

“I always bring bad luck to people. I get them wrapped up in things and hurt them… That’s why I always wanted to save loads of people someday. But I could never work with others…”

“……”

“I guess it’d be better if I just stayed away from people…”

Klaus had been dragged into this because of her. A test for the sake of her own shallow insecurity.

Erna bit down on her lip.

In that moment, she would have been willing to take any punishment necessary if it meant Klaus’s life would be spared.

“………”

Klaus remained silent.

She peered at him from the side, but his face was so expressionless, she had no idea what was on his mind. “You’re really too hard on yourself. Looks like I’d best get us out of here.”

“…You have a plan?”

“Something like that. But there are still a lot of things we don’t know about our foes.” Klaus sucked in a deep breath. “Time to break out the master key.” With a lighthearted murmur (“After all, it’s not like they pose us any real threat”), he got to work.

A little while later, someone opened the shed door.

From there, they were taken to the cabin proper. Ten sketchy-looking men were waiting for them in its living room. One of them, ostensibly their boss, was sitting in the group’s center and being attended by the others.

“Hey there, kid. Remember me?”

Erna recognized his face. “From yesterday…”

It was the man who’d approached her in the alley the day prior. He was covered in bandages, but although he’d suffered serious injuries, it would seem they hadn’t been fatal.

How unlucky…

Erna had assumed he was just a small-time thug. She never imagined he was the leader of a group ten-people strong.

“So I hear your dad’s a councilman, huh? See, I just wanted to run you over, but then I found out I’d be better off abductin’ you instead of killin’ you. So change of plans.”

“You mean that runaway car was—?”

“Yeah, I’m the one who put a hit on that cheeky little ass of yours. But hey, don’t worry. Once I heard the good news, I decided to kidnap you instead. Your ransom money’ll be put to good use in our revolution.”

His injuries looked painful, and he winced as he stood up. Despite his claim that he no longer planned on killing her, his eyes burned with a hunger for vengeance.

Erna’s knees went weak.

When the man stepped forward and reached toward her, Klaus spoke. “Don’t touch her.”

Despite having his entire body bound in chains, Klaus’s tone was the same as ever. The man was unshakable. He continued without a shred of trepidation in his voice.

“This isn’t necessary. Set us free this moment, and I’m prepared to overlook all this.”

He let out an exasperated sigh.

“Your group is so minor, the police aren’t even keeping tabs on you, right? You aren’t worth my time.”

That dismissiveness only stoked the man’s rage.

“You think you’re so tough, huh?!” he roared, then socked Klaus in the face.

Klaus groaned and collapsed to the ground. To Erna, it had looked like he’d turned his head to absorb the blow, but she couldn’t be certain one way or the other.

“I know all about you, too. Some hotshot bodyguard, right? But with those chains and that keyhole blocked, you’re just a big ol’ punching bag.”

The man gave Klaus a sharp kick.

“I almost feel bad for ya, but you brought this shit on yourself. Bet you’ve been livin’ pretty good as the kid’s bodyguard, huh? Filthy bourgeois lapdog!”

As the man finished his speech, he kicked Klaus right in the face.

A moan of pain escaped Klaus’s lips, and it sounded genuine.

The ringleader stomped on Klaus over and over, and the spy gritted his teeth each time.

“You just sit there and stay quiet. You gimme any more lip, and it’ll be the last thing you do.”

The man had worn himself down and was breathing heavily. After giving Klaus one last kick, he turned back toward Erna.

Now it was her turn.

Tears began welling up in the corners of her eyes.

The moment he approached her, though, a determined voice rang through the room once more.

“You get one more warning.” Klaus, visibly pained, rose to his feet. “Don’t you touch her—you filth.”

The ringleader returned his attention to Klaus. “You have any idea what sorta position you’re in, bud?” His tone was thick with annoyance. “Change of plans. They said not to kill you ’cause you’d make for a good bargaining chip, but eh, fuck ’em.”

“…Amusing—but false. Where exactly did you get that information?”

“None of your business!”

As the man shouted, he drew his gun.

His underlings immediately shouted “Boss!” to try to stop him.

However, their leader was undeterred. He leveled his gun straight at Klaus.

Even staring down its muzzle, though, Klaus’s composure never broke. “Was it, by any chance…a young girl?”

“……” For a brief moment, the man looked shaken, but then he placed his finger on the trigger. “Just die!”

“Teach!” Erna screamed.

A gunshot echoed through the air.

Klaus’s body twitched ever so slightly.

The men around them reeled back.

“Magnificent.”

Klaus had used the chains wrapped around his body to block the bullet.

Still bound, he rose to his feet.

Their captors froze, their mouths agape. None of them had realized Klaus possessed such talents.

“Oh, this is getting to me. I don’t even remember how long it’s been since the last time I felt this elated.” Yet, despite his words, Klaus’s expression was as level as always.

“It was too well orchestrated to be a mere coincidence. You had us mistaken for someone else, yet the countermeasures you used against me were all but flawless.”

The group’s boss fired off a second shot, then a third. It was like he was trying to erase the sight before him.

Klaus blocked them all with his chains.

Eventually, when his foe exhausted the last of his bullets, Klaus continued speaking.

“Let me guess. After failing to run the girl over, you ran into another girl with…silver hair, I’d imagine. Then, under the pretense of idle gossip, she fed you a number of lies about us. Believing them, you decided to kidnap us. As for the hostage, I imagine you picked a dark-haired girl you just happened to run into? And it was a white-haired girl who told you where we were headed. Am I on the right track?”

“How could you possibly…?”

The boss’s eyes went wide. Klaus must have been right on the money.

Klaus exhaled. “I must say, I’m impressed. In just ten short days, they’ve come farther than I could have possibly dreamed.” Then, his voice grew quiet. Low enough to be more of a whisper only Erna could hear. “Goodness, though. They really went this far? Just for a lesson—just to catch me—you manipulated an entire criminal posse? It’s no wonder I didn’t notice. Those men took their hostage in earnest, and when they threatened us, they meant every word. Brilliantly played.”

He then returned to his normal volume.

“Those girls are filled with boundless potential. I knew I chose well.”

Unable to hold it in any longer, the ringleader let out a furious bellow.

“Quit your mumbling! You’re a dead man!” Since shooting Klaus hadn’t worked, the man drew a knife.

“There’s just one thing I want to know.” Klaus gazed at his captor in abject boredom. “How much longer should I keep playing along with this game?”

With this question, all hell broke loose.

Every one of the cabin’s windows shattered simultaneously.

The criminals cried out in shock at the intruders—who just so happened to be the rest of Lamplight’s members.

With an arrogant smirk, the cerulean-haired girl smashed her fists into the lackeys’ jaws, one after another, and Lily followed up by stabbing them with poisoned needles and putting them to sleep.

Meanwhile, the redhead deftly wove her way through the mayhem and made for Erna and Klaus.

“I’m sorry, Erna…” Her voice was calm and quiet. As she spoke, she withdrew a large pair of shears and cut through Erna’s chains and Erna’s alone. “You gave us more luck than we bargained for, so after the first accident, we had to quickly amend the plan…”

Lily and the cerulean-haired girl added their own comments.

“Hey, I was against it, for the record!” Lily said. “I told the others I didn’t want to put you through all that!”

“Trying to cover your own ass, huh?” the cerulean-haired girl shot back.

Klaus looked down in apparent exasperation. “First things first—deal with the men. I expect you to take less than two minutes.”

With those words to motivate them, the young spies swept through the room at a record pace.

The cerulean-haired girl used her overwhelming speed to mow down foe after foe, and Lily used her sleeping poison to keep them down. It sounded like the other girls were outside, as a number of gunshots and men’s screams rang out, but both noises soon died down.

Erna simply stared as she watched her teammates work.

“I see I’ve assembled quite the formidable team.” Beside her, Klaus shrugged. “Erna, these are people you can work with.”

“Huh?”

“Lamplight is the same as me—the kind of misfortune you bring isn’t enough to kill us by half.”

By the time the designated two minutes were up, all the criminals were unconscious and bound.

The pink-haired girl held up a large bag. “Yo, I found illegal drugs down in the basement!” That would give the police more than enough to arrest the whole gang once they handed them over.

There was just one more thing that needed settling.

The girls moved to surround Klaus’s chained body.

At their center, Lily puffed up her chest with pride.

“Give it up, Teach! We got you this time!”

“I never imagined you’d go to such extremes. I could have been killed.”

“It’d take more than a couple bullets to kill you, wouldn’t it?”

The full scope of their plan was now clear.

When Erna almost got run over, the girls had realized the criminal group was after Erna’s life, leading them to revise their initial plan. Their new scheme was to let the brigands bind Klaus, then swoop in afterward and take them out.

The plan had come dangerously close to crossing a moral line but had ultimately brought them success.

Their target, Klaus, was trussed up in thick chains and unable to move.

“All right, Teach. The cops’ll be here in the next five minutes.”

“You already made the call? Clever.”

“Tee-hee. Y’know, Teach, you’re gonna end up getting arrested, too, at this rate. And I gotta say, it’s pretty lame for a spy to end up getting interrogated by his own country’s police. Of course, I could be convinced to let you go if you surrender, then lick my boots while calling me Lily the Gr—”

“Now, then.”

Suddenly, they heard a cracking sound, like a cookie being snapped in half.

“Huh?” the girls all said in unison.

Klaus gave his body a light shake, and his chains toppled to the ground. Just like that, he was free.

Lily delicately picked up one of the broken chains. Despite being half an inch thick, it had been ripped clear through.

“B-but these chains… They were designed for tying up wild game…”

“Next time, bring ones built for stopping dinosaurs.” Klaus cracked his joints, then turned his gaze to the girls. “You lot aren’t qualified to be my enemies.”

Erna closed her eyes. She didn’t need to look to know what would happen next.

All that reached her were the sounds.

From what she could tell, the rest of the team didn’t last twenty seconds before getting launched through the air.

It was well into the night, and they were all back in Heat Haze Palace’s main hall.

“How the hell did we go to such lengths and still not beat him?!”

“This is starting to bum me out, yo! Feels like all our plans end with us getting blasted one way or another!”

“I guess that’s our boss for you… We might even have to drag the police into it next time…”

The girls were deep into their now-regular post-mortem meeting. Tables were being slammed, and arguments were being had.

The plot they’d concocted this time around had been so ambitious, it had startled even Klaus, leaving them all but certain of their victory. They had even succeeded in capturing him. However, that victory had crumbled before their very eyes, and that fact made their discussion more heated than ever.

“We’ll need to reconsider our strategy from the ground up,” the black-haired girl gracefully declared. “Capturing our target doesn’t seem possible, and our attacks are useless. We need to find some secret or vulnerability of his and exploit it to coerce him.”

“Didn’t we already rule that option out?” The cerulean-haired girl shot her an arrogant scoff. “And we all know how your attempts at seduction went.”

“Rgh! That first time was just a fluke! There isn’t a man alive who can resist my—”

“Sounds like someone’s hankering for another late-night chess session.”

“The man defies all logic! A girl comes to his room late at night and says I can’t sleep, and he asks if she wants to play chess. She says Let’s do something really fun, so he takes out his chess set. And when she whispers Be gentle with me, he offers her piece odds! Who does that?!”

“Maybe he just really likes chess.”

“Fine, then how about we hear your big idea? As you may recall, we’re dealing with a man who broke through a combination lock and ripped through chains designed for big game hunting. How exactly do you intend to capture a—?”

“All right, all right, break it up!”

As the discussion threatened to get ugly again, Lily loudly clapped her hands. Before the other girls had a chance to say anything more, she stuffed their mouths with baked goods.

“Remember, the most important things right now are teamwork and the bonds we share. Here, have another deluxe financier.”

“So good…” “It really is sumptuous…”

“Heh. A leader’s work is never done.”

Having successfully cooled down the heated debate, Lily let out a pompous sigh.

Beside her, the redhead spoke softly.

“Hmm… At the moment, capturing him still looks to be our best option.”

“You’re not wrong, but…”

“It’s really worrying. If we can’t even capture a single man, then I don’t like our chances on the Impossible Mission.”

Hearing the situation in such unambiguous terms cast a heavy pall over the room.

Nobody had any rebuttals to that. Lily tried to cheer up the group, but without anything concrete to work with, her encouragement did little to lighten the mood.

Then—

“U-um…” Erna’s face went red as she raised her hand. “Wh-when he broke the chains, there was a trick to it!”

The words came out a good deal louder than she’d intended. Her lips quivered, and when she spoke next, her face was even redder than before. “…When we were captured, Teach spit out a jewel he’d kept hidden in his mouth and used it to bribe the guard into damaging the chains with his gun.”

“Oh!” the black-haired girl replied. “Now that you mention it, he said something similar back in the bathroom. About a squirrel making preparations to hibernate…”

Put more plainly, what Klaus had been trying to tell them was that many spies kept weapons and valuables hidden inside their bodies.

Klaus had used the jewel combined with his oratory skills to buy off the guard. Then, he intentionally provoked the ringleader into shooting him and further damaging the already-weakened chains. Even chains of that thickness would shatter after so many bullets.

Of course, Klaus had made sure to retrieve his gem on the way out.

“Jewels and riches—bribery. That’s the master key that can open any lock.”

“So that’s what he used…,” the cerulean-haired girl murmured.

Erna went on and offered her theory. “I think he opened our combination lock the same way. He must have bribed one of us ahead of time and had whoever it was tell him the password.”

“Y-you mean one of us is a spy?!” Lily cried. She recoiled and cast dubious gazes at the other Lamplight members.

“We’re all spies,” the white-haired girl pointed out coolly.

After that, though, the girls went quiet.

They had a new problem to deal with—and a pressing one to boot.

“Now that I think about it,” the black-haired girl said, “there was one person who always made sure to avoid letting fingers get pointed when we talked about the lock.”

“Yeah!” the pink-haired girl added in her innocent tone. “Someone who was always going on about trusting one another and the bonds we share, yo!”

Their cerulean-haired teammate agreed with that line of reasoning. A smug grin spread across her face.

“Hey, Lily. Got a question for you.”

“Hweh?”

“Where exactly did you say you got those financiers, again?”

Lily froze.

Sweat dripping down her brow, she let out a faint “Remember, the most important thing is the bonds we share…”

“““““““…………………”””””””

None of the others were interested in her platitudes.

Lily shrank backward to distance herself from her teammates, but she soon came up against a wall. Her lips quivered.

“I—I was just…uh, you know. Teach made it sound like such a good idea! He said it’d help me practice lying and help you all practice doubting your allies. And wow, we really learned a lot! After all, having one of your teammates double-cross you is the kind of thing that can totally happen out in the field! Good going, Teach! And good on me for going along with it! Sometimes a leader has to play the bad guy for the sake of the team! I—I definitely wasn’t just in it for the delicious, delicious sweets!”

“………”

“Also, all I ever told him were the combinations. We screwed up that bathroom attack all on our own! It’s not even worth getting mad over a betrayal that small!”

“………”

“And to quote one Ms. Erna: ‘If you believe in anyone, you lose. That’s what being a spy is all about.’ That’s all there was to it!”

The others shared a glance. They were all thinking the same thing.

This girl has no shame.

Now then, how best to punish the traitor…

“I’ve got an idea,” the cerulean-haired girl offered. “Lily can be useful to us, right? The target still thinks she’s on his side, so we can use that against him.”

“Y-yeah! I can be like a double agent! See, now this really feels like spy train—”

“And there’s no time like the present.”

Lily’s expression froze. “Uh, umm… I’m pretty sure this is gonna end with Teach beating me up…”

“Good luck!”

“C’mooon, there’s gotta be a better way I can be of use. Look, I promise I won’t betray you guys anymore, okay?”

“Time’s a wastin’.”

“…Yes ma’am.” Lily’s shoulders slumped as she left the main hall.

A short while later, they heard her upstairs.

“Teach! I just stole this from the others, and you’re gonna want to see this! It has their plan all laid out; come take a look. There you go, closer, closer… Ha-ha! You’re wide open! Now, prepare to—GAH! You got paint all over my maidenly nose!”

It sounded like the traitor had learned her lesson.

The girls nodded in satisfaction.

“Yo, Erna!”

The pink-haired girl leaped up with a purehearted look in her eyes and rushed over to Erna. She squeezed Erna’s hand in delight and pressed her face right next to hers.

Erna shrank back from her innocent smile. “Y-yes…?”

“You’re amazing!”

For a moment, Erna stared at her in shock.

When she looked up, she discovered that the rest of the team was smiling warmly at her as well.

Erna resisted the urge to cry. “…Of course I am,” she replied in a show of false bravado.

Later, Erna paid a visit to Klaus’s room.

Lily had been tied up with string and left on the ground. Sure enough, Klaus had completely turned the tables on her.

“Erna.” Still facing his canvas, Klaus spoke. “Would you mind taking out the trash for me? She stirs up a fuss whenever I try to move her.”

Erna did as instructed and rolled Lily across the room.

Lily expressed her objections with a look of desperation on her face. “Teach, I’m begging you! I’ll do anything! If I can’t have your financiers anymore, I’m afraid I’m going to lose my—”

“You’re betraying us again?!” Erna cried.

Klaus shooed her away with his hand. “Get her out of here.”

Erna was glad to do so and rolled Lily all the way out of the room.

“You didn’t put drugs in those sweets, did you?”

“Of course not.” Klaus was holding out a plate to her.

The buttery financiers atop it gleamed like jewels.

“Would you like one? I happen to be in the market for a new master key.”

“No.”

“They’re freshly baked…”

He brought the dish right up to Erna’s nose. She could smell the financiers’ sugary aroma, and before she realized it, she had already stuffed one in her mouth. It crumbled on her tongue, filling her mouth with a full-bodied sweetness.

“My friends are dead to me.”

“I was kidding.” Klaus handed her the whole plate and told her to share with the others. “I can’t throw too many curveballs, or it’ll make for poor training.”

Klaus sometimes came off cold and robotic, so it was surprising to see he had so many hobbies. Between chess, cooking, and painting, he was a jack-of-all-trades.

Erna stepped closer to Klaus to get a look at the painting he was working on. He didn’t seem to be making any progress on his messy scrawl of red paint.

Down in the bottom right, she could see the word Family.

“Teach, aren’t you going to finish it…?”

“A fair question… I bought all this new paint, but my brush won’t seem to move.”

She could see the pathos in Klaus’s eyes.

She hadn’t known him for long, but over the course of their round-the-clock attacks and counterattacks, she had slowly developed a sense for the subtleties in his emotions.

“Was your family the ones who lived here before us…?”

Klaus’s breath caught in his throat. It was rare to see him so visibly surprised. “I didn’t think you’d figure it out so quickly.”

“There were all sorts of little clues.”

“How much were you able to deduce?” Klaus crossed his legs and turned his gaze straight toward her.

Erna explained her reasoning, breaking down her logic point by point. “There were people who lived at Heat Haze Palace before us. It stood to reason that you were a member of that spy team. But given that they aren’t here anymore, the team must have disbanded—or was possibly wiped out. If I had to guess, I imagine the Impossible Mission Lamplight is going on is—”

“Very well. That’s enough.” Klaus cut her off and nodded. “By and large, your assumptions were on the mark. But the time isn’t right for me to elaborate.”

“Hmm…?”

“Don’t worry. In twenty days, I’ll reveal everything. And when I do, I’m sure you will all understand.”

Why wait twenty days? As Erna began to wonder about that, though, Klaus went on, his tone firmer than ever.

“Then, it begins. Our long-awaited Impossible Mission.”