Spy Classroom - Volume 4 - Chapter Pr

Prologue

Purple Ant  

“My dear Spider, what would you say is the most human thing a person can do?”

The United States of Mouzaia was the largest superpower in the world.

Instead of participating in the Great War directly, its role had been confined to selling weapons and supplies to its allied nations. As the war dragged on, their economy gained a major boost, and with how much of the world was still recovering from their war scars nowadays, they had become the center of the global economy.

It was no exaggeration to say that the world revolved around the United States.

Over on its west coast, it had a city named Mitario filled with skyscrapers and people strolling its streets enjoying its prosperity. Cheering could be heard from the sports bars when the baseball relay broadcasts were on TV, and young people would frequently ride the subway to head to music halls and advance screenings of black-and-white films at luxury high-rises more than fifty stories tall.

A pair of peculiar men stood in Mitario.

They were up on the observation deck of the Westport Building, a skyscraper that sat right in the heart of the city. The observation deck was a tourist attraction on its forty-seventh floor, but it was closed for the day, so the two of them were the only ones there.

One of them, a man with a mushroom-shaped hairdo, let out an impressed sigh as he stared at the skyline full of high-rises. Even in his expensive suit, his easygoing expression and aggressively fungal hairstyle prevented him from giving any impression of dignity.

He was White Spider, a spy from the Galgad Empire.

The man beside him wore a cheery look on his face as he asked his question. After a few moments of silence, he offered his own answer. “It’s when they leave behind their dying words, you see. Humans are the only creatures who can picture what the world will look like after their death, and they’re the only ones who can leave their thoughts behind in the form of speech.”

“Man, those buildings are really something.”

“…Spider, are you even listening to me?”

“Sorry, it’s my first time here. I gotta say, Purple Ant, I’m pretty jealous that you get to work in such a nice—”

White Spider felt something graze his cheek.

A staticky noise buzzed out, and by the time White Spider reacted, his beloved hair was already singed.

He collapsed onto the floor with a yelp. “What the hell?! You nearly zapped me to death there!”

“Your reactions are just as spineless as ever, I see,” the man called Purple Ant replied, still holding his stun gun. “It’s your own fault for not paying attention. You deserve to die thrice over for that.”

The man had a distinct gentleness about him, and his face was so kindly, he looked suited for a job in a preschool or as a nurse. Unlike White Spider, he looked right at home in his double-breasted, navy-blue suit and his stylish hat. His eyes were constantly smiling beneath his long forelocks.

He was Purple Ant, another Galgad spy.

Just like White Spider, he was a member of the spy team Serpent making covert moves across the world.

“Your stories are always so long, though,” White Spider said unrepentantly. He stood back up and dusted off his clothes. “Anyway, I’m here about work.”

“Work? Oh, how boorish.”

“What’s so boorish about coming to a spy and talking shop?”

“Well, here I was, thinking you’d come to see me out of sheer love for an older teammate.”

“Yeah, no.”

White Spider scratched his head and looked down through the window at the lower floors.

“The Tolfa Economic Conference is going to start next month in the Westport Building and go on for half a year. They gave it a big, fancy name, but what it comes down to is a bunch of companies and bureaucrats from the Allies are getting together and duking it out over their rights. The whole continent of Tolfa’s been a mess ever since the war, and the Allies want to figure out how they’re going to divvy up the pie.”

“Nauseating, isn’t it?” Purple Ant muttered.

Tolfa was a continent that the developed countries had been controlling through colonial rule. Galgad had once had colonies there itself, but after losing the war, it had been forced to relinquish them to the Allies. A decade had passed since the war’s end, but the Allies were still squabbling among themselves over who had the rights to which parts of Tolfa.

Now they were holding an extended conference to discuss those very rights—and not a single Tolfan nation had been invited to the table.

Purple Ant sighed. “So you want me to manipulate the conference to serve the Empire’s ends?”

“No, I’m gonna handle that myself. I have a different job for you.” White Spider gave him a look. “Spies from all over the world are going to be there. The Fend Commonwealth’s CIM will dispatch their entire Retias team, and the Bumal Kingdom is sure to send Shadowseed and the Goosefoot Sisters. Mouzaia’s intelligence agency, the JJJ, will have their cream of the crop there as well, so you’ll need to take special care with the Giraffe and the Turtle. And we still don’t know who this ‘Ouka’ spy is, but with how big the conference is going to be, there’s no way they don’t drop by. We’re talking a full roster of international all-stars.”

White Spider grinned.

“I want them all dead.”

Purple Ant rubbed the back of his neck. “That’s a little grisly, don’t you think?”

Theirs was an era of spies operating behind the scenes. With a conference that long and with that much on the line, it was impossible to say just how many spies would end up attending it. If you counted the ones from Mouzaia’s intelligence agency, the number would probably break four digits.

Purple Ant’s instructions were as simple as they were cruel—get rid of everyone who stood in their way as quickly as possible.

“Massacring people is such inelegant work,” Purple Ant went on. “I thought our trade was supposed to be about controlling people, not killing them.”

“Maybe, but taking people alive is hardly your specialty.”

“………”

“I can count on you, right? Word is, you might have to deal with that rising star from Din’s Foreign Intelligence Office, too—Bonfire.”

“Ah.” Purple Ant nodded.

The Din Republic had been dealing bitter defeats to the Galgad Empire for years, and by the sound of it, the Republic would be joining the fray as well. Despite their status as a minor rural nation, the influence they held over world affairs made their attendance all but inevitable. And as rumor had it, the man in question—Bonfire—was a monster the likes of which were rarely seen.

Purple Ant beamed and lashed out with his stun gun.

White Spider dodged at the last moment and let out a pathetic shriek. “Again with this shit! You gotta stop trying to zap me for no reason, man!”

“Your tone was pompous. You deserve to die thrice over for that.”

“…I’m pretty sure I was just talking normally.”

“By my standards, it was pompous.” Purple Ant took the stun gun he was holding directly in front of White Spider’s face and squeezed it until it broke. “Don’t you worry about me. Here in Mitario, I’m the king.”

White Spider’s expression was still frozen, and Purple Ant gave him a big smile.

“Hard to believe it’s already been a month since we had that conversation. Oh, how time flies.”

Purple Ant let out a long exhale as he sat in his base of operations, a members-only underground bar. It was a quiet little room with dim, indirect lighting and a modest bar counter. Only a few people in all of Mitario knew about it.

He took a sip of his cola. He didn’t care much for alcohol.

He had spent the past month carrying out countless assassinations. Between spies and secret policemen, he was already responsible for forty-eight kills, and not a single person had any idea about his special talent. Nobody would ever be able to find him.

Plus, he’d accomplished something else that day, as well.

“Can I get you anything, miss? A beer, maybe?”

He turned to the individual he’d forced to sit in the seat beside him.

She writhed in pain.

“Oh, that’s right.” Purple Ant offered her a bow. “You have that hole in your chest. I’m so sorry for making such a thoughtless offer to a lady such as yourself. I like to consider myself a gentleman, you know.”

The expression of his “companion” was one of agony. Sweat streamed down her face, and if looks could kill, the hateful glare she gave him from beneath her disheveled hair would have done just that. Blood trickled from the hole in her side as she pressed down on it.

“You’re a spy from the Din Republic, aren’t you? I must say, you’re a lot younger than I expected you to be. Can I ask your name?”

“……………”

“Hrmm, that’s quite a problem. I would think you could at least introduce yourself.”

He groaned. He considered listening to people’s dying words to be his life’s work, but he so rarely managed to capture people alive. It would’ve been a damn shame to kill her without listening to what she had to say.

“Are you waiting for someone to come save you, perhaps?”

“……………”

“It’s Bonfire you’re waiting for, isn’t it? Ah, but I suppose you and your friends call him ‘Klaus.’ Oh, no, it’s quite all right. I was actually hoping he’d come here as well.”

“……………”

“Let’s have a little chat while we wait for him. We can reminisce on this whole thing from start to finish—from when you and your friends first took me on to the moment of your ignoble defeat.”

Purple Ant gave his captive a smile.

“And then, when we’re done…we’ll see if I can guess your name.”

There wasn’t so much as a sliver of hope to be found in that process. Only despair.

“Now then,” Purple Ant said, “let’s start with how you all got to Mouzaia.”