Spy Classroom - Volume 7 - Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Glint 2

The first thing Monika did was to assess what exactly was wrong with her. Her temperature was up, as was her heart rate. She needed to understand why.

During Lamplight’s second Impossible Mission, the one where they rooted out the assassin Corpse, the team got split into two. Spending a whole month away from Lily gave Monika an opportunity to calmly analyze herself.

As soon as she became aware of the weird ways her body was acting, she began reading every romance novel she could get her hands on. The majority of them were about heterosexual love, but she was still able to find a number of descriptions of the characters undergoing physiological changes.

Once she had that, it was time to run some tests.

After Lily left Heat Haze Palace, Monika headed for Lily’s bedroom. The room was full of chemical vials, and the faint smell of herbs wafted through the air.

I feel like some sort of pervert.

The thought gave her a little twinge of self-loathing, but she needed to carry out her experiment. She shifted her gaze over the item of furniture sitting in the corner of the room.

That’s the bed Lily sleeps in.

She let out a small breath and lay down in it. Then, after laying her head on the pillow much the way she imagined the room’s owner did, she quietly closed her eyes.

She did a quick check on her body.

Sure enough, her heart was beating out of control, her face was flushed, and she felt unbearably embarrassed. The changes fit the description. If elevated temperature, perspiration, increased blood flow, and becoming feverish were all signs of being in love, then it looked like her hypothesis was right, and her feelings were indeed romantic. Given the preponderance of evidence, she would be naive not to admit it.

She was in love with Lily.

Monika was bewildered by the prospect, but at the same time, she had no choice but to accept it. She’d assumed she would go her whole life without dating a soul, but she never imagined she would go and fall in love with a woman, let alone such a carefree klutz. She’d had no idea she had such bad taste.

Then she heard footsteps coming from the hallway. She took out the notebook she’d kept nearby for just such an occasion and starting pretending to write in it.

The door swung upon, revealing Thea’s scowling face. Klaus was forcing them to complete a task before they would be allowed to participate in the Corpse mission, and Thea was none too pleased that Monika had skipped out on the strategy meeting.

“What, you need something?”

Thea glared at her in annoyance. “Well, for starters, what are you doing in Lily’s room?”

“Investigating,” Monika replied evasively. Technically, she wasn’t even lying.

After discovering that she was in love, Monika had just one thing to say about it.

This sucks. I figure my symptoms’ll go away on their own at some point, but I wish they’d hurry it up.

She decided to do everything in her power to keep her feelings hidden. She could think of plenty of reasons why.

For starters, there was the harsh stance the world at large had about homosexuality. In the modern era, loving someone of the same sex was treated as a crime and a mental illness. Monika had no idea whether her teammates would be repulsed by her, especially considering they had to live under the same roof as her.

Then there was the fact that, as a spy, it could be used against her. If an enemy spy found out, they would be able to blackmail her like that guy from her dad’s studio.

Third—and probably the biggest of all—was the way they had no chance of being realized. For that to happen, Lily would have to be gay as well. Considering her behavior, though, there were no signs that was the case.

I have to keep it a secret from everyone until this weirdness goes away…

With her mind made up, she continued going about her spy work.

Monika spent the time leading up to her reunion with Lily continuing to sort out her feelings.

Midway through, Thea managed to uncover a part of Monika’s love. It was when they were forced to make a decision about how to deal with Annette’s mother. Unable to see eye to eye, Monika and Thea ended up fighting it out. Thea ultimately managed to persuade Monika to lend her a hand by peering into her heart, but the experience taught Monika a hard-earned lesson about how difficult it was to keep a secret.

Then Monika discovered Annette’s brutal nature. Annette pretended to be pure and innocent, but deep down, she was pure evil and had manipulated the others into helping her assassinate her mother. Monika was the only one who realized what had happened and, in doing so, learned even more about what it meant to hide a part of yourself away.

Aided by what she’d been through on the mission, Monika was able to successfully conceal her feelings. The way she interacted with Lily was exactly the same as ever. When Lily screwed up, Monika continued reading her the riot act, and whenever Lily tried to pester her, Monika responded with violence. It helped her maintain some of the distance between them.

As a spy, she’d learned how to avoid letting her emotions show on her face, and by taking advantage of those skills, she managed to keep everyone aside from Klaus from finding out her secret.

Everyone, with one exception.

Grete constantly threw Monika’s emotions into disarray.

Of all the girls on Lamplight, Grete was by far the most proactive in her pursuit of love. Grete had feelings for Klaus, and it was for his sake that she fought so hard on her missions. Rather than hide her love, she made sure Klaus knew exactly where she stood.

It was all so admirable that Monika found her own heart filling up with gloom. She did an impeccable job keeping her feelings hidden during everyday conversations, but when those conversations overlapped with times her emotions were out of whack, she sometimes ended up letting the mask drop.

For example, there was the time the two of them were out shopping.

The team had just wrapped up the Corpse mission, and they were in the middle of getting ready for their next job in the United States of Mouzaia. Monika was in charge of cooking that day, so she and Grete went out to get ingredients.

While they were walking, Grete brought up a new topic. “You know, there’s something Lily mentioned while we were working on the Corpse mission.”

“Hmm?”

“She told me that you often ask her for massages. I got one myself, and I must say, her technique is really quite incredible. How did you discover that she had such talents?”

During the time she’d spent working undercover in the politician’s mansion, Grete had been run ragged. She’d been so sleep-deprived she hadn’t been able to think straight. The only thing that had saved her were Lily’s massages.

Upon this sudden mention of Lily, Monika replied “Dunno” and dodged the question. She’d asked for the massages as part of her quest to figure out if her feelings were really love, and being reminded of that threw her for a loop. She needed to quickly change the subject.

“Hey, Grete, you mind if I ask you a question back?” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. “What does it feel like, being so earnest about love?”

Grete opened her mouth in shock, and Monika found herself bewildered as well. The plan had been to change the subject to something completely unrelated, like work or the weather.

After a brief moment of astonishment, Grete quickly regained control of her face and returned her expression to its usual tranquility. “It feels very, very lovely.”

“…Is that so.”

“If there’s one thing I’m disappointed about, it’s that there’s little chance my feelings will ever be requited… But even so, my days with the boss have been full of so many little joys.”

Ever since the Corpse mission, Grete had started smiling contentedly a lot. Klaus had offered her a few kind words, no doubt.

The faint smile playing at Grete’s lips got Monika feeling all mixed up again. “Well, good for you. There wasn’t any deeper meaning to the question, by the way. It’s just…” Monika bit down on her lip. “…like I told you before, I can’t help but get jealous when I see someone else get so earnest about their love.”

Grete’s lips twitched. It looked as though she had something she was dying to say, but Monika had had just about enough of that conversation. She sped up her pace, practically fleeing from Grete as she speed-walked away.

After admitting to herself that she was in love, Monika began working even harder in her day-to-day training.

She’d assumed that her feelings were just temporary, but in the time she had waited, they refused to go away. Meanwhile, Lily had no intentions of retiring from spy work. Monika didn’t want her to die, so if Lily was going to stick with Lamplight and continue to put her life in danger, then Monika was going to need to temper herself like steel. That was also why she started tutoring Sara after they got home from their mission in Mouzaia—she was confident that Sara had room to grow, and she wanted to raise the entire team’s skill level.

On top of that, Monika started challenging Klaus more frequently herself.

Unsurprisingly, Klaus picked up on the difference.

“Did something inspire this change of heart?”

Out on the Heat Haze Palace lawn, Monika had just launched a rubber bullet surprise attack from behind on Klaus as he was getting back from a mission. In addition to the gunshots, she’d also woven in a series of strikes using rebounding rubber balls with iron cores.

Klaus dodged all her attacks without breaking a sweat.

“Nah.” Having failed spectacularly, Monika strode out in front of Klaus and grinned. “Not much has changed. I just figured it was high time I admitted to myself I was a prodigy, that’s all. Makes it pretty easy to get into my training.”

“I see.”

“That’s on your head, for the record. You’re the guy who had to go and call me magnificent.”

Monika drew her knife and twirled it around in her hand. She had lost faith in her abilities when Flamefanner shattered her pride, but the more she watched Lily and the others give it their all, the sillier she felt for having lost her nerve. Surely, she was more sensible than that band of washouts.

“…You’re a magnificent prodigy, too, Monika!”

Those happy-go-lucky words were still ringing in her ears.

Klaus squinted at her, looking a little pleased. “Magnificent. That change will serve you well.”

Before he had a chance to open his eyes all the way back up, Monika moved quick as a whip and thrust her knife at his collarbone. She had to be prepared to seriously injure him if she wanted to stand a chance at actually taking him down.

Her knife froze in midair.

Klaus had caught it between his thumb and index finger.

“But you’re still a long way from being able to beat me.”

After snatching away the knife and leaving her unarmed, he tossed it by her feet and strode into the manor.

Wanting to improve meant having to hit wall after wall.

Those walls didn’t just come in her training with Klaus, but during the time she spent interacting with Avian, too.

After their mission in Longchon, Avian spent just about every day at Heat Haze Palace during their proverbial honeymoon period.

The time they spent together was raucous and rowdy, but behind the scenes, there was an agenda at play. In exchange for training up Avian, Klaus was having them give pointers to Lamplight in turn. Avian’s behavior seemed obnoxious at first glance, but the truth was, they were actually helping the Lamplight girls shore up their sorely lacking fundamentals.

Klaus had gone and devised a whole new sort of classroom—one where he didn’t just train them directly, but where the students could teach each other skills and push each other to grow.

Monika immediately figured out what he was up to, and the afternoon Avian all showed up, she stood on the Heat Haze Palace roof and observed the other spy team down in the courtyard. As she watched, she started picking up on what each of their assignments seemed to be. “Lander” Vics’s job was to train Sybilla in hand-to-hand combat, “Feather” Pharma’s job was to hone Thea’s and Grete’s negotiation abilities, “South Wind” Queneau’s job was to teach Lily and Erna how to conceal themselves, and “Cloud Drift” Lan’s job was to show Annette how to restrain people.

A taunting grin spread across Monika’s face.

“Wonder who I’m gonna get?”

“That would be me, blue girl.”

The reply came from behind her.

She turned around to see a brown-haired man with sharp eyes. He must have just used his body’s bizarre springlike flexibility to scale the building by kicking his way up the wall’s protrusions. He strode toward her with a cold, condescending expression.

That was “Flock” Vindo—the man who’d once held the top grades out of the entire academy student body and was currently serving as Avian’s boss.

“No one else was qualified to keep up with you,” he said, positively radiating arrogance.

“Makes sense. That’s probably the right call.”

Even among Avian’s members, Vindo was in a league of his own—so much so that Klaus had appointed him as boss of the entire team. Despite his age, he was already one of the top spies in the entire Republic.

He stood before Monika, not a hint of warmth in his gaze. “As a fellow operative working to protect the Republic, I’m going to get you up to snuff. Consider it an honor.”

“Huh?”

Monika crossed her arms and cocked her head in annoyance.

Vindo paid her no heed. “You’ve got a fair bit of potential. You’re, what, sixteen? If you do as I say and train a bit harder, you’ll be a decent spy in no—”

Monika cut him off. “Hold the fucking phone, smug boy.” Vindo’s expression froze. She’d caught him completely off-guard. “Where do you get off, acting all high-and-mighty? You clearly think you’re better than me, but I don’t recall ever agreeing.”

Monika had a good reason for being so combative. Back in Longchon, she and Vindo had only fought head-to-head for a brief moment right at the very end. Together with Erna, Sara, and Sybilla, Monika had successfully detained him in a four-on-one offensive. In short, she’d never gotten a chance to gauge his actual strength.

“Flock” Vindo was Avian’s boss, and if you excluded Klaus, he was a strong candidate for the best spy of their generation. Meanwhile, “Glint” Monika was Lamplight’s star player who’d been integral to their many successful Impossible Missions. The question was, which of them was a better spy? The answer had yet to be determined.

“I’d show some respect if I were you. I’m a generous gal, so if you do, I don’t mind showing you a thing or two.”

Vindo furrowed his brow in annoyance at Monika’s taunt. “…This is insipid.”

He quietly clenched a pair of knives in one hand and began giving off an almost bloodthirsty sort of pressure. There was no need for them to exchange any further words. What they needed was a simple yet definitive way to fight, and that meant that there was just one option on the table—using any methods they had at their disposal to get the other side to say two little words: I surrender.

“Come at me,” Vindo said. “I’ll show you just how far beneath me you are.”

The arena was the Heat Haze Palace roof. The time was 2:12 PM. The skies were clear. There was a slight breeze. Seven feet separated them.

The battle began in a flash.

Monika recognized that she would be at a disadvantage in close quarters. As she put some distance between them, she took five mirrors and hurled them across the roof, where they found purchase and stood upright. Vindo ignored them and rushed her down, but Monika’s attack was far, far faster than his knife. She threw one of her rubber balls both to keep Vindo at bay and to ever so slightly shift his gaze.

“I’m code name Glint—now, let’s harbor love for as long as we can.”

The flash on the camera she had hidden in her hand flared, then bounced across the mirrors to ambush Vindo. Her attack quite literally came at the speed of light.

“_____?!”

Vindo was blinded, and Monika slipped by his side and hurled another of her metal-cored rubber balls. It bounced off the roof’s chimney and struck Vindo in the side of the head.

She moved to launch a follow-up attack, then froze. Vindo had already regained his footing. With an impressed expression, he rubbed the spot where the ball had hit him, then shot Monika a cool glance. “Light? No, a creep shot.” He seemed to be none the worse for wear. He must have used some technique to mitigate the blow. “That’s a good trick. Being able to observe a target from any angle is the perfect skill for a spy to have.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

“Problem is, it’s not suited for combat. Once someone finds out about it, it’s a useless gimmick.”

With that, Vindo did something unthinkable. He closed his eyes. Monika was facing him with a weapon in her hand, yet he willingly chose to deprive himself of his vision.

She let out a silent groan. Gah! You’re telling me he can fight like that?!

It didn’t take long for her to get her answer.

Vindo launched himself forward, and before Monika knew it, he was right in front of her. He’d moved so fast it was like magic. There was no time for her to react.

“Your mediocre technique isn’t going to work on me.”

Vindo’s attacks came hard and fast, and Monika’s dodges were far too slow.

After their fifth clash, Monika fell off the roof.

The good news was that she hit a tree on her way down, and the numerous branches she broke served to keep the damage to a minimum. However, the landing still knocked the wind out of her. She tried to get back to her feet, but she couldn’t muster the strength.

Sara happened to be out in the yard at the time. “Miss Monika?!” she cried, then rushed on over.

Monika exhaled. It wasn’t exactly her finest moment.

She’d been well and truly bested.

Vindo had only been using the flats of his knives, but that hadn’t stopped him from packing a hell of a lot of power into his hits. Monika wasn’t the heaviest person around, and the force from the blows had lifted her straight off her feet and sent her careering ignobly across the roof. After shutting down Monika’s technique, Vindo been able to go on the offensive unopposed.

On the fifth such hit, Monika had toppled all the way off the roof. She was out of bounds. “I surrender,” she groaned. “What the hell were those moves…?”

It shouldn’t have been possible for someone to move so nimbly. It wasn’t even his top speed that was the problem, it was how quickly he could switch between accelerating and decelerating. One moment, he was stationary, the next, he was barreling forward at full speed. Monika had been completely unable to keep up with the sharp tempo of his movement.

Vindo descended and calmly looked down at her. “It’s a technique I learned from ‘Firewalker’ Gerde. She was my teacher.”

“Wasn’t she on Inferno?”

Vindo nodded and recounted his encounter with Gerde. He told her about the old woman he ran into in the Fend Commonwealth who left her brawny muscles exposed for the world to see. He told her about how the old woman had taken him to the wooden apartment building she used as her hideout and how she’d spent several days training him in the basement. And he told her about how, hellish as they’d been, those days had allowed him to inherit some of the old woman’s skills.

Beside them, Sara’s eyes were as wide as dinner plates.

“…So you knew Inferno, too, huh?” Monika muttered.

“That’s right,” Vindo replied with a small nod. “And Gerde gave me an order. She told me to back up Klaus. That’s why I’m here.”

“Seems like a lot of work to go to for some random old lady.”

“I owe her a lot. And besides, we come from the same roots. Me, Gerde, and Klaus, too. We’re all headed to the same destination,” he declared. “Revenge against the Galgad Empire—and against the world.”

The raw hostility he was giving off caused Sara to inhale sharply.

Vindo gave Monika an intense stare, then went on in a voice dripping with disdain. “We’re fighting on a whole different level than you are.”

Monika’s life had been filled with setbacks.

Despite being blessed with talent, not even she had been able to avoid defeat. After meeting failure after failure in the world of art, she practically fled to the world of espionage, but once she got there, she ran into Heide, then Klaus, then Guido, then Vindo, and got bested by them at every turn. She didn’t feel triumphant all the time, not by a long shot. There were plenty of nights she spent quivering in frustration.

She made sure not to let her teammates realize it, but she spent huge amounts of time trying to find a way to be able to stand up to the strong.

I’ve got to revamp my fighting style from the ground up. I can leave stuff like infiltration and negotiation to the others. What they need from me is for me to never lose a fight.

Day in and day out, she devoted herself diligently to her studies.

How can I catch up with the powerful? What can I do to enter their world?

Her heart didn’t break like it had back at her academy, and Lily’s presence played a huge part in that. Monika wanted to continue showing off her own genius around her, and over time, she gradually stopped believing that her feelings were going to fade.

By staying with Lamplight, Monika could keep on protecting her. She’d made up her mind never to tell Lily how she felt, but that was how she expressed her love.

When news of Avian’s deaths came in, Monika felt empty inside.

This was her first encounter with the deaths of people she was close to. An intense feeling of loss pierced her chest. It was overwhelming, being reminded that even spies stronger than her could perish in the line of duty.

After all that arrogant stuff they said, they went and got taken out like it was nothing, she thought irreverently as they headed for the Fend Commonwealth.

When they met up with Lan in the admin cabin, she saw her own future reflected in the sobbing girl’s figure. She wondered how she would react if she lost her team like that.

As she fell into contemplation, Lily did something she never would have expected. With an inexplicable cry of “I wanna see some smiles!” she forced the whole team to link hands together. Then she got serious.

“We need to make an oath. I don’t want anyone else to die here. We’re all gonna make it back to Heat Haze Palace, and we’re all gonna make it back alive. I need everyone to promise me that.”

It initially came across as childish, but that promise was an important one.

She never changes, not even at times like these.

Monika wasn’t certain, but there was a chance a smile crept across her face. Lily had the mental fortitude to fix her sights clearly on the future, even when her back was against the wall.

It was that very strength that had made Monika fall for her.

After that, she spent a lot of time working alongside Lan.

Lan was badly injured and couldn’t operate at her full capacity, but even so, they were going to need her help if they were going to uncover the mysterious group that attacked Avian. Any time she had to go out into the broader Fend Commonwealth, Monika always went along as her bodyguard. Lan would tell her that she had somewhere she wanted to go, and they would quietly slip out at night so as to remain unseen and ride double atop a large motorcycle.

At one point, Monika asked her if she was all right to be moving around so much with her injuries. Lan gave her a laugh from the back seat. “Bit by bit, my body doth heal. I’m a long way from being the picture of health, but I daresay I’ve recovered enough to be able to lend a hand. Heh-heh. The moment of my comeback is nigh. Like the undying phoenix, the symbol of Avian and Lamplight’s unity, so too shall I rise from the ashes.”

Her voice rang with good cheer. Monika got the sense she was putting up a brave front, but she chose not to say that part out loud. “And? Where’re we going?” she asked, to which Lan replied, “Verily, Sir Klaus hath given me a task.”

The destination Lan led them to was a small village called Immiran to the southeast of Hurough.

“Brother Vindo said something before his death. He said he found Gerde’s legacy.”

“What’s that?”

“I know not. We were attacked just before he was to brief us.”

There was a hint of sadness in Lan’s voice.

“Firewalker” Gerde had gone missing there in Fend, and Avian’s mission was to discover the truth about her final days. What had she been investigating, and why had she been killed?

“What I do know is where he had just been. He was at Dame Gerde’s hideout, the one where she once trained him. Brother Vindo spent just about every day visiting it to search for clues.”

While the rest of the team had been trying to track down eyewitness accounts and records of Gerde’s activity, Vindo had spent several days identifying where her apartment was so he could look through her belongings.

The spot Gerde had been using was in a four-story apartment building built out of shabby, run-down wood. The walls inside were moldy, and their wood grain was untreated and exposed. There were three units per floor, but the building had quite a few vacancies, and light was only visible from two or three windows total. Gerde had paid several years’ worth of rent in advance, so her unit had yet to be cleared out.

When the two of them went to the apartment up on the third floor, they found both the living room and the bedroom absolutely littered with beer bottles and cigarette butts. Vindo had clearly searched the place from top to bottom, as the floor and wallpaper were in tatters.

“Brother Vindo found something… But perhaps he took it with him?”

“What did Klaus say?”

“‘Granny G was bad at hiding classified documents. It won’t be hard to find.’”

“That’s not a great look for a spy.”

Monika and Lan glanced around the room.

“It’s not here.” “I tend to concur.”

Nothing was jumping out at them. They thought about checking the other units, but they hadn’t prepped for that, so it would be trouble if any of the other residents caught them. They decided to come back another day disguised as contractors and left.

Losing Avian was a tragedy, but aside from that, their scheme in Fend was just another mission for Monika. None of the details changed what she needed to do—keep a cool head, use her talents to their fullest, and keep Lily safe. She continued making the best moves she could find that would prevent her teammates from getting wounded.

That was supposed to be all there was to it.

However, she soon learned that she’d been too optimistic.

By the end of their search, they’d identified the group that attacked Avian as a team called Belias.

After laying a series of traps, Klaus announced that he and Sybilla were going to go infiltrate Belias and investigate them from within. The rest of the team’s job was to back them up.

While Klaus and the others headed for the dance party being held at Heron Manor, Monika was stationed alone over at Belias’s base, the Kashard Doll Workshop. Thea was being held hostage inside, and the plan was that she would send Monika a distress signal if she got into hot water.

Up on the roof of a nearby building, Monika surrendered herself to the passing of time.

Then she sensed someone’s presence on the corner of the roof; they must have jumped from the next building over. The person landed nimbly, with visible confidence.

“Who’s there?”

Monika already had her gun at the ready. If she wanted to, it would take her a fraction of a second to pull the trigger.

By the look of it, the interloper was a girl whose age wasn’t far from Monika’s. It was too dark to make out all her features, but her pointed teeth gleaming in the night’s faint light suggested cruelty, like she reveled in mocking others.

“Gee-hee-hee,” her counterpart laughed gratingly. “So we finally meet.”

“I asked for your name, you moron.”

“Green Butterfly.” The girl grinned. “That’s my code name.”

At that point, Monika still had no idea who she was dealing with. However, every instinct she had was picking up on the unsettling malevolence she carried herself with.

Green Butterfly extended her index finger Monika’s way and smiled sadistically. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Monika. I’m here from Serpent to bring you a flawless little slice of despair.”

That moment marked the beginning of Monika’s nightmare.