Spy Classroom - Volume 5 - Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Fool

“…What is this, a mob? How much of your team did you plan on sending at me?” Vindo quite reasonably grumbled after getting captured.

The moment he’d gone limp, Monika had wasted no time in tying him up with wires and tightly binding his wrists together. He was officially out of the fight.

Meanwhile, Sybilla and Sara kept watch over the perimeter. The commotion had woken up a number of the locals, and Sybilla and Sara had to feed them some lies while also stamping out the last bits of Erna’s fire. Thanks to their efforts, the incident ended as nothing more than a minor fire scare. Erna had taken some basic precautions, but still, letting the fire get out of hand would have been bad news for everyone.

Erna watched them handle the cleanup, feeling rather surreal about the whole thing. The fierce battle had taken her all over the Longchon Walled City, but in the end, she’d successfully struck down the top-ranked student in all the academies.

By that point, it had been over two hours since it all began.

“I can’t believe I actually lost,” Vindo muttered lifelessly.

He stared up at the ceiling.

“…………………………”

Then he turned his attention elsewhere.

He was surrounded by four Lamplight members: Erna, Sara, Monika, and Sybilla. When you considered the fact that he’d also taken down Grete and Lily, it meant that, all in all, he’d fought six different people. He hadn’t been kidding about the mob thing. They’d basically just thrown sheer numbers at him until he went down.

Vindo let out a big sigh. “What are the others even doing?”

“That’s a good question,” Monika said with a nod. “Sybilla, Sara, what’re you two doing here? I thought you were supposed to be fighting that Lander guy. You take him out already?”

Sybilla and Sara twitched in unison. ““______!!””

“…Yeep?”

Erna didn’t like where this was going.

Monika gave the duo a vicious glare, and the two of them began sweating bullets.

“Y-yeah, uh, about that…,” Sybilla falteringly replied, waving her hands to and fro. “His name was Vics, right? The guy was tough as nails… I had him pretty much dead to rights, but he got away. We figured there was nothin’ for it, so we might as well join up with Erna…”

A buzzing sound rang out from Vindo’s pocket. He was getting a call on his wireless radio.

Eventually, a pleased-sounding male voice came through.

“Hey, hey, hey! ♪ Lander here. I just picked up the classified document. Mission’s all done. ♪”

“““““………………………………………………………………”””””

It went without saying, but the whole contest had been about who could steal the classified document first. All their fighting had simply been a means, not an end in and of itself. Taking that logic to its extremes, the battle would end the moment anyone got their hands on the document, even if that person hadn’t defeated a single one of their opponents.

In other words…

“WE LOOOOOOOOOOOST?!” Erna screamed.

The battle between Lamplight and Avian was over, and Avian had emerged victorious.

The first thing both teams did was leave the Longchon Walled City. They hadn’t paid the mafia much heed during the battle, but it was technically a stronghold of theirs. There was no sense getting into any more fights with them than necessary.

As they left, Monika read Sybilla the riot act. “I swear to God, you two need to get your shit together!”

“Shaddap! What about the people Vindo took out solo, huh?”

At this point, they were all trying to foist off the blame. Whenever they lost, things tended to get ugly quick.

However, the truth of the matter was that the reason Lamplight lost was because they weren’t strong enough. It wasn’t any one person’s fault. They lacked the raw firepower to deal with Avian’s two big heavy hitters, Vindo and Vics, and no matter how they’d allocated their resources, it wouldn’t have been enough to close that gap.

“Hey, Blue,” Vindo said, cutting into their verbal battle. “What about you? Did you really manage to drive off Lan, Pharma, and Queneau that quickly? I thought I told them to do whatever it took to keep you pinned down.”

The question was directed at Monika. She’d been boxed in by three elites. How had she broken through their ranks?

“Hmm? Oh, I only took out two of them. The ‘thou’ chick disappeared midway through. Once their formation fell apart, crushing them was easy,” she replied coolly.

“Wait, Lan disappeared?”

“Yeah, I think Annette captured her and dragged her off somewhere.”

The non-Monika Lamplight members looked at her quizzically. “““She did?”””

Annette had been in charge of expanding their radio network, but Thea had gotten knocked out pretty early on, and none of them knew where Annette had gone after that or what she’d been doing.

“Now that you mention it,” Erna said, “she got really mad after that Lan lady called her a runt the other day.”

“Ah,” Vindo replied. “In that case, the two of them might still be fighting. Someone should go let them know that—”

He trailed off midsentence.

A shriek had just split the night air. Everyone strained their ears.

When they arrived at the Walled City’s northern border, they discovered where the scream had come from.

“PRITHEE, FORGIVE MEEEEEEEE!”

Lan was half naked and apologizing.

Her legs were folded under her, and she was scraping her forehead against the ground. It was a stance known in one of the Far East’s isles as dogeza. Tears gushed from her eyes as she repeated her cry. “Prithee, forgive me!” Her outfit was burned onto her skin, leaving much of her body bare in the most unsightly way imaginable.

“You can plead all you like…”

Annette was standing triumphantly before her and wearing a radiant smile.

“…but it’s falling on deaf ears, yo.”

“I retract it all! ’Tis I who am the runt! So please, stop this! I beg of thee clemency! Actually, maybe I should cool it with the thees and the thous… Did it make it sound like I was being insincere? Because I promise, I wasn’t. It’s just a persona I was doing. Oh, I can’t believe I ever said that. I know better now. Seriously, I’m so, so sorry. You’re so tall, Annette. Taller than me! And you know what?! I bet you’re just going to keep on growing! Heh, heh…”

She was talking a mile a minute and abasing herself with every word.

It was unclear what exactly had happened, but by all accounts, Annette had completely crushed her.

Then Lan spotted Erna and the rest of the onlooking spies. She ran over to Erna as fast as her legs would carry her and clung to her ankles. “I—I beseech thee, save me! That girl intends to k…to ki… Death would be preferable to what I’ve endured… She’s a demon. A demon in human flesh… She took her electric drill and put it…put it in—”

“Yo!” Annette shouted.

Lan’s entire body trembled.

“I’m feeling kind of thirsty all of a sudden.”

“I shall purchase thee some tea posthaaaaaaaste!” Lan dashed off at full speed and vanished from sight.

The others dazedly watched her go.

“Annette…what did you do to her?” Erna asked.

Annette looked as pleased as punch. She laid her index finger over her mouth. “That’s a secret, yo!”

In any case, the full breakdown of the Longchon Walled City battle was now clear.

LAMPLIGHT: Grete defeated Qulle.

AVIAN: Vics defeated Thea.

AVIAN: Vindo defeated Grete.

LAMPLIGHT: Sybilla fought Vics and forced him to beat a tactical retreat.

AVIAN: Vindo defeated Lily.

LAMPLIGHT: Annette trounced Lan. Completely gave her what for.

LAMPLIGHT: Monika defeated Queneau and Pharma.

LAMPLIGHT: Erna, along with three others, defeated Vindo.

AVIAN: Vics acquired the classified document and ended the match.

All the members of Lamplight and Avian who took part in the battle gathered together and were told the results once more.

Lamplight’s members were despondent.

Lily’s shoulders slumped, and Sybilla clenched her fists in frustration. Grete closed her eyes in pain, and Sara tried to console her. Monika and Thea were stone-faced. Erna and Annette stood motionless.

Over on Avian’s side, everyone but Qulle exchanged high fives. It was a rare display, coming from them. Qulle looked none too happy about having been the first one to get knocked out.

“………………”

Meanwhile, Vindo appeared to be brooding over something.

The morning after the battle in the Longchon Walled City, Klaus got to work writing up his report. The classified document Vics retrieved had contained a list of all the perpetrators involved in the Din embassy leaks, and once Klaus passed that along to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, they could handle the rest. Before long, the Longchon police would be on their way to arrest those responsible. None of the list’s contents were particularly shocking, but it was that kind of straightforward intelligence and counterintelligence work that allowed their nation to thrive.

With that, their mission in Longchon was complete, and they’d helped Longchon by dealing a major blow to their local mafia groups to boot. The only thing left to do now was head home.

Klaus turned his gaze to the morning light streaming into his room and sighed. “…I can’t believe we lost.”

Saying it aloud made it feel terribly real.

Klaus felt conflicted about his subordinates’ defeat. The girls themselves did all they could. In his eyes, the blame lay solely on him for his poor leadership skills.

It’s frustrating. I can’t help but wonder what more I could have done.

It was an odd feeling. In all his days, he’d never felt this specific sort of pain before. He hadn’t been directly participating this time around, so it wasn’t like anyone had defeated him personally, yet a dull ache rose up in his chest all the same.

As the Greatest Spy in the World, it had been a good long while since he’d felt such a stinging loss. He quietly clenched his fists.

Assuming he held true to his word, he was going to have to leave Lamplight and become Avian’s boss now. He wasn’t going to be the girls’ boss anymore.

“………”

It wasn’t going to be good-bye forever, not by any stretch of the imagination, but even so, the thought caused an indescribable sadness to well up inside him.

That aside, though, he needed to get some breakfast. He left the study.

The eight girls were waiting out in the hallway.

“Teach…”

He’d assumed that they would have all gone to sleep after their big battle, but clearly that wasn’t the case.

The girls looked at him sadly with Lily leading their vanguard. Klaus could see guilt flickering in their eyes. As far as he was concerned, though, they had nothing to feel sorry about.

“Good morning, everyone,” Klaus said in the gentlest voice he could muster. “That was some good work you did last night. For now you should give some serious thought as to what you’re—”

“Here’s your stuff, Teach.”

Lily handed him a large briefcase. All his personal effects were shoved inside.

“Hmm?”

“Now c’mon, it’s time for you to make a break for it! Before Avian shows up!”

Lily raised her fist in the air, and the rest of the girls all cheered. ““““Yeah!””””

“Once we get you outta here, we’ll be golden!” said Sybilla.

Grete nodded. “…I already have your trip booked, Boss.”

“Then we can just tell Avian you ran off,” Thea added.

“Look, I’m not happy about it,” Monika said.

“I’m not giving you away to nobody, Bro!” Annette chirped.

“Me neither,” agreed Erna.

“I—I…I feel the same way,” said Sara.

One after another, they all urged him to flee.

“You people are shameless,” Klaus coolly noted.

“Hey, sometimes you gotta get out while the gettin’s good,” Lily replied. That hardheaded determination was so very like her.

Clearly, none of them had any intention of honoring their deal with Avian. Klaus wished he could say he was surprised.

“…Sounds like someone’s gotten some interesting ideas into their heads.”

Not a moment later, a terse voice came from behind them.

The girls’ shoulders twitched. “______!”

All six members of Avian were standing by the entrance, with Vindo leading the group.

“S-so uh…,” Lily stammered, breaking out into a cold sweat. “I—I guess we’re still on for that promise, after all?”

Vindo gave her an exasperated look. “Forget learning how to be decent spies; you need to worry about being decent people.”

The girls began slumping their shoulders. At the end of the day, none of them had actually been planning on getting away with it. They may have been spies, but they did have some dignity.

“Hey, Teach.” After biting her lip in anguish, Lily fixed her gaze straight on Klaus. “Wait for us, you hear? We’re gonna get stronger, and someday, we’re gonna steal you right back from—”

“Nah,” Vindo interjected. “What do you say we just call the whole thing null and void?”

“Whaaat?”

“Our primary objective is looking out for our nation’s interests,” Vindo replied. “The team talked it over, and we decided that having Bonfire stay as Lamplight’s boss is probably the right call.”

The girls blinked in confusion, unable to process the unexpected turn of events.

Vindo went on in a decisive tone. “We admit it—you people are strong.”

Behind him, the rest of Avian nodded in agreement.

“We may have won, but you took out more of us than vice versa, and a couple of us even lost one-on-one. We’d be lying to ourselves if we pretended those results proved we were better than you.”

“I—I mean, sure, but…,” Sybilla rebutted. “What’re you guys gonna do? You’re still out a boss, right? You got some other idea for how to fill those shoes?”

“What, you’re actually worried about us?”

“Shaddap. Look, it sucks, but the facts are the facts. You all won, and you’ve got a right to take our boss. Why give that up?”

The corners of Vindo’s mouth curled upward at Sybilla’s question in an almost self-mocking way. He looked over at Klaus. “Go on, Bonfire. You tell them.”

“Are you sure?”

“It was basically your idea, no?”

“Fair enough,” Klaus said with a nod. “You beat us. I’m the Greatest Spy in the World, and you took my subordinates and ran circles around them to complete your mission. As you are now, your talents are already some of the best our nation has.”

He gestured at Vindo.

“Code name Flock, I’m assigning you to be Avian’s new boss.”

“Very well. I accept the position.”

The girls’ jaws dropped.

Vindo stuck his hands in his pockets and gave them a haughty look. “This is the best option for our nation. Now Lamplight and Avian can protect Din on two fronts.”

Klaus had been considering this outcome since the moment he first saw Vindo’s raw skill. Vindo was the kind of man who should be leading a team. He had talent that could make him a world-class spy someday, and working under Klaus’s command might well have hindered his growth. Just as Vindo had said, this was the option that would do the most good for the Republic.

“Together, we’re going to turn this world on its head. Try to keep up with us, ladies of Lamplight.”

The other Avian members spoke up in agreement.

“Ooh, this is going to be fun. ♪ We’ll be the two pillars of a new era. ♪” “The Empire shan’t know what hit it.” “Yeah, let’s do this together.” “Lamplight’s so strooong. Watching you all moved me.” “…Aye.”

Vindo strode over to the girls and whispered in Erna’s ear. “Hey, Blondie.”

Erna’s eyes went wide. “Yeep?”

“Don’t worry too much about that stuff I said back in the Walled City. I’ll be expecting big things from you.”

Erna could feel her throat tremble. “………”

Having finished what he set out to do, Vindo offered them a final “…Once we get back to Din, we’ll at least stick around for some of your training. Make sure you get those skills of yours up to snuff,” and turned to go.

““““““““……………………””””””””

The girls were still dumbstruck.

Avian was on a whole different level than they were, and they’d made sure to demonstrate it through to the very end. They were decisive, strong, and most of all, badass—the very picture of the elites Lamplight’s members had envied for so long.

At the same time, though, the girls were satisfied with that. If they were going to look up to anyone, then those were the kind of people they wanted it to be.

“Hey, Avian!” Lily called out to the departing team.

The rest of the girls figured out what she was getting at, and they all gave Avian a thumbs-up. Their voices rang out in spontaneous unison.

““““““““Magnificent.””””””””

Vindo laughed. “That should go without saying.”

Now that the mission was over, the girls had no reason to stay in Longchon. After booking boat tickets home, they spent the rest of their time there enjoying themselves.

They started out by getting ready to vacate their base, but once they’d finished packing up all their luggage, they made sure to go see all the sights they didn’t get a chance to check out during the mission. Lily stocked up on foodstuffs like mooncakes and jiàng, Thea stocked up on cosmetics containing oils made from flowers that only grew in the Far East, and Monika went around taking photos. Meanwhile, Sybilla took Grete along as she handed out candy to the local children she’d been forging fast friendships with. Whenever the girls had downtime, they always made sure to live it up.

As for Erna, she went along with Sara and Annette to the local market. However, it didn’t take long before Annette said “I’m gonna go buy some fun junk, yo!” and vanished into the hustle and bustle of the crowd, leaving Erna and Sara alone together.

“So, Big Sis Sara,” Erna asked quietly. “You knew that some of my accidents were my own fault…?”

“Hmm? Yeah, I did.”

“…And you don’t hate me?”

“Why would I? I mean, there are a lot of times when you get into accidents for real, right? It’s hard to tell the difference, so I usually just accept it all at face value…,” Sara replied like it was really no big deal.

She did have a point—not all the misfortune Erna ran into was of her own creation. There was the misfortune she was subconsciously drawn to, there was the misfortune she noticed and actively avoided, there was the misfortune that was just honest bad luck, and there was the misfortune she deliberately caused. Plus, Erna’s heart was unstable enough that the lines between the various categories got blurred.

Sara’s friendly smile didn’t falter. “Sometimes, it’s really cute when you go rushing headlong into Miss Annette’s traps and come crying to me afterward. I’m like, ‘Oh, she wants me to dote on her.’”

“I-it’s embarrassing to have you spell it all out like that…”

“On some level, I’m sure the others have all realized it, too. So don’t worry. We could never hate you, Miss Erna,” Sara said gently. Then she hurriedly backpedaled a bit. “Oh, but you have to promise not to put yourself in too much danger, okay? That’s a big no-no.”

She squeezed Erna’s hand.

It was like the way one would comfort a child, and Erna offered her a mumbled “Thank you.”

Then she heard Annette noisily shouting for them off in the distance. Apparently, she’d stumbled on an interesting find. “You don’t have to be so loud,” Erna shot back, then headed over Annette’s way.

On the night of their final day in Longchon, Klaus came to Erna. “Would you care to join me on a little excursion?”

She had no particular reason to turn him down, so the two of them headed out.

The destination Klaus had in mind was the night market on the Longchon mainland. There were over a hundred stalls, each billowing with steam. The smell of fish-based spices wafted through the air, and standing before the stalls offering all manner of fish-paste delicacies caused Erna’s stomach to start rumbling.

As far as she could tell, Klaus taking her there had nothing to do with work. On his invitation, she enjoyed the Longchon night to its fullest by helping herself to some fried shumai, then buying a glistening yellow egg tart for dessert.

Once they were done at the market, they walked a bit and came to the sea. They sat down on one of the benches that had been put there for people to watch the night skyline from and gazed at the city’s lights.

“The accident at the cotton mill and your fall on Longchon Island.”

“Hmm?”

“I take it you engineered both of those?” Klaus calmly asked. Upon hearing the slight hesitation in his voice, Erna realized that that was what he’d invited her out to talk about.

“I did,” she admitted. “I burned myself on purpose and screwed up the mission.”

“Before I ask why, would you mind if I told you a story?”

“…Okay.”

“A woman named Gerde once taught me that just barely getting by was the most dangerous thing you could do. Now I know just how brutally true that is. For a while there, Lamplight was messing up missions one after another, but Monika and I had been picking up the slack and forcibly dragging us across the finish lines. It wasn’t ideal, but things certainly could have been worse. So I decided to wait and see how things would play out, and I kept letting you all fail.”

“………”

“Furthermore—and it was Grete who taught me this—Lamplight’s bonds of camaraderie are strong, for better or for worse. When it looked like you were going to lose one of your own, that feeling of uneasiness drove you to rapidly improve your skills. When your battle against Avian was right around the corner, and you had every reason to be nervous, it hardened you all up like nothing else.”

Then he put those two concepts together.

“You put yourself in harm’s way to instill a sense of urgency in your teammates. Am I wrong?”

“…That’s right.”

Erna gave him a small nod. Back at the cotton mill, she’d been terrified that if Lamplight kept screwing up their missions, somebody on the team was going to die. After that, her body had more or less moved on its own. After adjusting the goldfish bowl to create a burning lens, she waited for the alarm to ring, pretended to panic, and charged into the room and let the backdraft effect she set up burn her.

“I figured that if I got hurt, the others would take things more seriously…”

A thought had crossed her mind.

At this rate, an unspeakable tragedy is going to take place.

If the alternative is someone dying, then I should get myself hurt right away.

“And I figured that if I got hurt, the others would get really mad on my behalf…”

What she’d done was about as far from cool as it got, but as soon as Sara had told her that a person’s liecraft was a mirror of who they were, she knew she had to accept it. That was the way Erna fought.

I’ll do whatever it takes to protect Lamplight.

She was willing to throw herself into a fire.

She was willing to dive off a cliff.

She was willing to put herself through whatever misfortune it took to protect the place she called home.

Even that second accident, the fall, had been designed to raise morale by firing up her teammates’ rage.

“In other words, you engineered this incident from start to finish,” Klaus said matter-of-factly. “Your screwup at the cotton mill kicked it all off, and the Avian threat forced Lamplight to rapidly get stronger. Then, right before the showdown, you injured yourself again to turn the others against Avian even more. And finally, by the end of the battle, Lamplight had improved enough to earn Avian’s respect. That was a hell of a job you did.”

“…That’s all just hindsight. I had no way of knowing we would run into Avian like that. That was just actual bad luck.”

“No, no. What I’m saying is, this entire mess was my fault.”

That wasn’t what Erna had been expecting at all. “N-not at all,” she hurriedly disagreed, but Klaus was undeterred. “By all rights, that was supposed to be my job. If I’d been more proactive about pushing you all to improve, none of this would have happened. As your teacher, I failed you.” He gently placed a hand on Erna’s head. “It’s not just you all; I need to improve as a teacher, too. I see that now. I’m sorry, Erna. I promise I’ll never put you in a position where you have to make that call again.”

She could feel his warmth through her hair. It was a wonderfully comfortable feeling, and she softly closed her eyes a smidge. “……………You’re right.”

“Hmm?”

“I’m bad. I’m weird, and foolish, and I charge headlong into danger.”

“That you do.”

“So you’ll need to keep a real close eye on me.”

“No problem,” Klaus replied. “I wouldn’t be much of a teacher if I couldn’t handle a single problem child.”

Erna slowly smiled and rested her head against his body. It felt so nice, having him call her a “problem child” in that gentle tone of his.

Erna hadn’t been able to live up to her ideals as a spy. She was simply too great a fool. Even if their positions had been reversed, she doubted she could ever have become as badass a spy as Vindo. The only way she knew how to operate was cowardly and uncool. She farmed sympathy from her allies, appalled her opponents, and sacrificed herself. She loved failure more than success, tragedies more than comedies, and misfortune more than fortune, and in realizing that, she found a way to fight—a liecraft—perfect for a washout like herself.

Dad, Mom, Big Bro, Big Sis…can this be good enough?

She thought back to the family who would have wanted her to live on in their absence.

It wasn’t anything to be proud of, but she was living her life as best she knew how.

On the day the girl gave up on her ideals, she had a thought.

I can call myself Fool.

She would never stop being stupid, and her broken, twisted heart was never going to heal. With that being the case, it would be best for her to pick a name that would make people want to avoid her. Then nobody would have to get hurt.

Plus, if people accepted her in spite of it, she could cherish them dearly. It would mean she had a place she truly belonged—a place more full of light and good fortune than any other.