Spy Classroom - Volume SS1 - Chapter 1.2

The incident in question took place shortly after Lamplight’s founding, just four days after Klaus instructed the girls to defeat him.

At first, the girls underestimated their assignment and thought it would be a piece of cake, but as time wore on, the sheer difficulty of the task before them finally began sinking in. Klaus didn’t just call himself the World’s Strongest, he had the skills to back up the claim, too. It didn’t take the girls long to realize just how real his talents were.

By day four, the raw gulf between his abilities and theirs was really starting to get them down.

They began doubting their entire training regimen and losing what little self-confidence they’d managed to retain.

Furthermore, some of them still didn’t fully trust Klaus yet—and thus, the stage was set.

Ten minutes after the attack…

“…Damn, I can’t believe he was able to dodge the chili bomb.”

“MUST BE NICE FOR HIM, HUH?!”

The girls were back in the main hall holding a post-mortem.

To make a long story short, their attack failed.

When the explosive pouch Lily was unwittingly carrying went off, it had filled the entire room with a special tear-inducing powder. The idea was to have it blind Lily and the target alike…but the target had reacted quickly enough to escape out the window. By the time the begoggled girls got to the storage room, the target had had enough time to come back with goggles of his own. It only took him a few seconds to completely wipe the floor with them.

In the end, Lily’s sacrifice ended up being in vain after all.

Tears and mucus streamed down her face as she confronted Sybilla. “You’re a monster! A thug! How can you not feel guilty about turning your own teammate into a bomb?!”

“I mean, I am sorry, but, like…,” Sybilla replied as she held Lily away from her throat. “This was our best shot, y’know? Our shitty acting’s never gonna fool him. If you’d known about the bomb ahead of time, he’d have seen through it even quicker.”

“Y-you’re not wrong, but still…”

“And plus, in a real battle, using stooges like that is fair game.”

It wasn’t cowardly. It was simply their trade.

There were no precepts that spies had to follow, nor did they have a code of chivalry. Seduction, assassination, disguises, blackmail, kidnapping, infiltration, and wiretapping were all on the table. For the girls, all that mattered was that they completed their mission.

In a sense, the conditions they trained under were about as close to actual fieldwork as you could get.

“I shoulda paid more attention to the staging, huh?” Sybilla said. She looked up at the ceiling and began muttering to herself. “What we need is the element of surprise. We could have Lily fistfight the target on a dried-up riverbed, then set off the bomb right as they go for a conciliatory handshake… Or we could have Lily confess her love to the target, then set off the bomb the moment they exchange a kiss… We could send Lily out in the dead of winter to look for a lost puppy, then set off the bomb when the target hugs her to warm up her frozen shoulders…”

“Why’s it always me getting blown up?” Lily retorted.

“C’mon, there’s no need to get mad. Here, to show you how sorry I am, I’ll even take over your cooking shift tonight.”

“And you’ll give me an extra-big portion?”

“Sure. I’ve got tons more chili powder I need to use up.”

“…You’re not sorry at all, are you?”

The argument started with just Sybilla and Lily, but the rest of the team quickly got dragged into it as well. After figuring out the spots where their last plan went wrong, they got to work putting together their next one.

That was what the girls did. They started with proposals, worked them into plans, carried out recon, put their plans into motion, screwed up, held postmortems, and started the whole process over again. The hope was that by doing so over and over, they would gradually end up honing their skills.

As the rest of the team started getting excited about their next scheme, Sybilla let out a frustrated murmur under her breath. “Damn, and I thought it was a pretty good idea…” However, none of the others heard her.

As the day wound to a close, Sybilla headed back to her room and lay sprawled out on her bed.

The strength drained from her body as she stared vacantly up at the ceiling.

“I’m wiped. Again…”

Each of the girls had a bedroom all to herself. The manor had rooms enough to spare, so the girls all lived and trained there together.

The bed was soft and fluffy, and Sybilla’s body sank readily into it. If she let her guard down, she’d be asleep before she knew it. It reminded her once again of how luxurious her new life was, but that in turn reminded her of what she was going to have to do to earn it, and it made her head feel heavy.

There was just one reason why Sybilla had gone to lengths as extreme as sacrificing her teammate to carry out her attack, and that reason was the Impossible Mission. That was the term for the type of mission that Lamplight had to look forward to, and having to undertake it was the price they were going to have to pay for their lavish manor lifestyle.

Impossible Missions were incredibly difficult. Their success rate was in the single digits, and 90 percent of agents who went on one didn’t come back alive. Sybilla didn’t know what specifically their mission was going to entail, but the fact it awaited them was why they were devoting every moment of free time they had to training. They were battling around the clock, day and night.

For all their efforts, though, all they’d been met with was a string of failures. Even with all of them working together, they couldn’t defeat a single lone spy.

That was why she was so anxious. Their deadline was only four weeks away, but she didn’t feel like she’d learned a thing.

“Are all elite spies seriously that strong…?”

They had been forced to acknowledge a cruel fact time and again over the course of their training: their target, Klaus, was a bona fide monster.

He was leagues ahead of them in every metric, from his athletic abilities to his quick thinking on his feet to the accuracy of his hunches. He turned the tables on them when they all rushed him down with knives at the ready, he saw through every booby trap they laid, and he didn’t bat an eye at their seduction attempts. There was no denying that Klaus’s skills were in a league of their own.

The problem was, what if their upcoming mission required them to go up against someone with skills on par with Klaus’s? They’d get annihilated, that was what.

Thinking about that possibility, and about the fact that it was getting closer every moment, sent a chill down Sybilla’s spine. She reached for the framed picture on her nightstand.

It was an unremarkable photograph of the ocean—but hidden behind it was the picture she really wanted to see. She disassembled the frame, pulled out the photo, and felt a flood of warmth fill her heart.

A few words spilled from her lips. “Your big sister’s doin’ her best…”

Nobody was supposed to have heard—but someone spoke up from behind her. “Whoa! I never knew you could sound so sisterly!”

“The hell?!” Sybilla leaped violently from her bed and looked in the direction the voice came from.

Lily froze midway through opening the door. “Ah, sorry. I knocked, but you didn’t say anything,” she mumbled by way of an excuse.

“Yeah, I was pretty out of it.”

Sybilla wanted to kick herself for being so careless. It wasn’t like anything bad would come of Lily seeing her, but it was embarrassing all the same.

She flopped back down on her bed.

Lily closed the door behind her, then jogged over to the bed and picked up the photo.

The picture was of three children, one of whom was a younger Sybilla. They were standing in front of a white building with big smiles on their faces.

“Is this your little brother and little sister?”

“Yeah,” Sybilla said from atop the bed. “We got it taken back when I was at the orphanage.”

“Oh, huh,” Lily replied casually as she took another look at the photo. Her mouth curled into a small grin. Sybilla assumed she was thinking about how much cuter her siblings were compared to her.

“This photo’s pretty old, isn’t it? You’re so teensy!”

“………I don’t get back there much these days.”

“Do they know you’re a spy?”

“Nah. When I left, I told ’em I was joining a detective agency out in the sticks.”

Spies generally didn’t tell their families about their jobs. If their families accidentally let any information slip, they could end up in serious danger before they could blink.

“I guess the rules are the rules,” Lily said sadly.

“Yup. Still, I think they figured somethin’ was up. Back when we split, we made a promise that once I got rich, we’d get back together and live happily ever after.”

“Aww, that’s nice.”

“’Course I’ve accomplished exactly jack and shit since then.”

Sybilla had been overeager to a fault during her academy days, and it had earned her a lot of pushback from her peers and instructors. Her poor teamwork during her practical exams meant her abilities plateaued, and to make matters worse, she caused so many other problems that before she knew it, she was on the verge of expulsion.

She had all the motivation in the world to want to get stronger, but that was precisely what made her failures sting so harshly.

“Honestly, I’m worried as hell.” Sybilla couldn’t believe how pathetic she sounded. “If things go on like this, we’re boned. The thing is, I dunno what I can do. It doesn’t feel like I’m gettin’ any stronger, so it’s like, what’s this training even good for? Hell, I don’t even know how much I believe in our teacher yet…”

She realized that she was saying too much.

Glancing over to the side, she discovered that Lily’s eyes were moist. Lily dabbed at them with a handkerchief. “Sybilla, you’re such a good kid…”

“Wh-what?”

“I had you pegged all wrong, and I’m super sorry. All this time, I thought you were just a rude, uncivilized orangutan.”

“You wanna walk that comment back, or am I gonna have to make you?”

“But now, I realize that you’re a really kind orangutan.”

“Yeah, see, that’s not the part I wanted you to take back!”

Despite Sybilla’s angry outburst, Lily was operating on a frequency all her own.

“It’s okay. You are getting stronger—we all are!” She smiled radiantly and took Sybilla by the hand. Her eyes were gleaming. “With how crazy strong Teach is, we’ve gotta be learning a bunch by fighting him so much. And we’re just gonna keep getting better and better. Then, we’re gonna complete that Impossible Mission and get a gigantic bonus!”

Sybilla found herself a little overwhelmed by the infectious enthusiasm. “I—I guess so…”

“And as step number one, we’re gonna give Teach what-for.” Lily released Sybilla’s hand and proudly threw out her ample chest. “Heh-heh-heh. And it just so happens that your magnificent leader Lily’s come up with a plan to do just that! Plus, the plan even comes with a free boxed lunch!”

“Sorry, a what?”

“Y’know, for moral support. After all, you’re gonna be the star of the show this time!”

That was probably what she’d come to tell Sybilla in the first place.

Lily’s voice rang with a touch too much confidence as she explained their next plan of attack.

The following morning, Sybilla quietly snuck out of Heat Haze Palace.

The manor sat in a port city in a small nation called the Din Republic. The port was the nation’s gateway to the rest of the world, and its presence had grown the city into the third most prosperous locale in the country. Between the traders gathering there to sell their imported goods and the throngs of immigrants who worked on the docks, the city was a melting pot of people of every socioeconomic status imaginable.

The girls’ cover story for living there was that they were students at a local seminary school.

Sybilla strode down the bustling holiday streets dressed as your average stylish schoolgirl.

“Annette’s wiretap worked like a charm.”

Lily had laid out the plan for her.

“Tomorrow, Teach is going into town to pick up some confidential documents. If you can steal the envelope they’re in, he’ll surrender right then and there. We can win without even having to fight him.”

She had a point. It was a good plan.

Whenever you were delivering highly sensitive information, it was important to do the handoff directly. Even though they were within their own borders, there was no knowing where enemy spies might be lurking, and sending the intel via mail or by phone ran the risk of interception. Soon, Klaus was going to head somewhere in the city so he could receive it in person.

Now, if that intel were to get stolen…

Sybilla tracked Klaus’s suit with her gaze. The air of intimidation he usually carried himself with was gone like it had never been there. He walked through the city as just another young man in the crowd.

Klaus stepped into a paint store as unsuspiciously as could be. When he did, the owner brought him a can of paint from the back of the shop.

The owner’s gait is too spry for how heavy that can should be.

It was an amateurish mistake, but most of their covert domestic collaborators weren’t exactly much to write home about.

Whatever was in that can, it definitely wasn’t paint.

So that’s where the documents are hidden…

Klaus paid, then immediately stashed the paint can away in his bag.

Always the thorough one, that Klaus. If Sybilla wanted to make off with the documents, she was going to have to steal his entire bag.

After Klaus left, he headed down the main road with brisk, unfaltering steps. From time to time, he would find a spot where traffic was especially dense and cross the street by smoothly weaving his way between the cars.

It was taking everything Sybilla had just to keep up with him.

She continued assiduously tailing her mark and tried to figure out when the perfect moment to strike would be.

Once he made it back to the manor, he would waste no time in opening the paint can, reading its contents, and disposing of them. If she wanted to steal those documents, she was going to have to do it while he was still out in public.

An opportunity presented itself when they reached the park in the heart of the city.

“Excuse me…would you like some juice?”

A girl called out, but not to her—to Klaus.

Sybilla clenched her fists. Looks like it’s my lucky day.

Klaus hadn’t gone straight home.

Instead, he’d stopped by the city’s large public green, sat down leisurely on the grass, and retrieved a wrapped-up hunk of bread from his bag. By the look of it, he wanted to enjoy a peaceful meal surrounded by greenery.

Klaus seemed to constantly be on the move, and it was rare for Sybilla to ever see him take a load off like this. Perhaps this was a secret vice of his.

Right as he took the first bite, a young girl came up to him.

“It’s…orange juice. Um…freshly…squeezed,” she stammered out.

She looked like she was about eight, and her face was bright red. Given the dingy state of her pale, yellow dress, it wasn’t hard to figure out how impoverished she was.

Sybilla eavesdropped on their conversation from behind a nearby tree.

“………”

She couldn’t make out what Klaus had said, but it looked like he was taking the girl up on her offer. He took his wallet out of his bag and handed her some coins before stashing his wallet away again.

An innocent smile spread across the girl’s face like a flower coming into bloom. She pulled a glass that couldn’t possibly have been clean out of her pocket, then began filling it with juice from her canteen.

“Oop—” Sybilla heard an alarmed yelp.

The girl had just tipped her cup too far and splashed juice all over Klaus’s shoes.

“I-I’m so sorry…,” she said, squatting down by Klaus’s feet with tears in her eyes.

“………”

Klaus’s full attention was on the girl who’d just spilled juice on him. His bag was sitting behind him, and from the look of it, it was the last thing on his mind.

Sybilla was never going to get a better opening. What she had was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and if she was going to steal the bag, then now was the time to do it.

She slipped out from behind the tree, silently approached Klaus from behind, stealthily reached for his bag—

“Wha—” “Huh?”

—and felt her fingers meet someone else’s.

Sybilla’s hand and the juice girl’s hand smacked right into each other.

For a moment, it felt like time itself had stopped.

Sybilla froze up. Her gaze met the girl’s.

“Wait, you—”

The moment she opened her mouth to talk, though, she felt someone flick her in the forehead.

It was little more than a light tap, yet it threw her off-balance as though by magic and sent her sprawling on her rump.

It went without saying who she had to thank, of course.

A deep, heart-stirring voice sounded out.

“Magnificent.”

There was a beautiful man standing before her.

He was tall and skinny, and at first glance, it was easy to mistake him for a woman. Many of his lovely features were hidden behind his shoulder-length hair. It was Lamplight’s boss—Klaus.

“That was some excellent work back there.” He looked down at Sybilla with an expression of utmost pride. “You made sure to never stray too far or come too close when you were tailing me, and though your efforts ended in failure, your movements during the theft itself were nothing short of fantastic. You hid your presence completely and didn’t make a single sound. A captivating performance all around,” he said matter-of-factly as he offered his hand to Sybilla down in the grass.

Sybilla sighed and let him help her up. “…If you’re praising me for all that, it means you already knew I was tailing you.”

“Since the moment I left Heat Haze Palace, yes.”

“That’s the whole goddamn time!”

In the end, Klaus had seen through her from the start. No amount of compliments would be enough to wash that bad taste out of her mouth.

Klaus crossed his arms and closed his eyes. “Here, why don’t I tell you the trick to tailing someone?”

“Nah, I’m good.”

“All you have to do is make like you’re doting on a butterfly as it flutters.”

“Why’re your lessons always so useless?!”

“Hmm. What if I told you to place the balls of your feet correctly?”

“What makes you think I’d be able to get anything from that?”

That was it, right there. That was the reason she and the others weren’t able to train normally.

The fact of the matter was Klaus was soul-crushingly bad at teaching.

There was no denying how talented of a spy he was. The girls didn’t have a great grasp on the full extent of his abilities yet, but he both called himself the World’s Strongest and had the skills to back that claim up. However, that was precisely where the problem lay.

His intuition was simply too far beyond the average person’s.

Most people would have difficulty explaining how exactly to put on a shirt or to button a button, and Klaus’s inability to teach spy techniques stemmed from the same source. He could certainly try, but in the end, all his explanations devolved into crude “just do it”s and “somehow or other”s.

As a result, Lamplight had been forced into their current regimen of mock battles.

“In any case, you’re on the right track. All you need to do now is be as fast as a thrust needle,” Klaus said to sum it all up.

“Again, this advice is just not helpful…”

Sybilla was a little bit fed up with Klaus. She wanted to click her tongue at him, but she suppressed the urge.

Is this guy really gonna be able to help me get stronger…?

It was pretty clear by now that their plan had failed.

They hadn’t just lost; they’d been utterly trounced. The target had known she was there the whole time, so there was no way she would have ever been able to get her hands on those documents.

Feels like my skills haven’t grown a single inch.

Lily had claimed that they were all getting stronger, but that was probably just wishful thinking. The tables were getting turned on them over and over in an endless loop, and Sybilla doubted they would ever break free.

She could feel the frustration building up within her like a fire scorching her insides.

However, there was something more pressing on her mind.

First things first, about that kid who was selling juice…

Sybilla looked down at the bewildered girl.

The kid appeared to have a habit of staring at the ground, and her body was so scrawny that she seemed ready to collapse with every breath. Sybilla and Klaus’s conversation had gone completely over her head, so she was just standing there in a daze.

“Hey, kid, are you—”

“A-ahhh!” the girl screamed.

It was clear how freaked out she was. She was clutching the hem of her dress like her life depended on it.

“C’mon, you don’t gotta be so scared…” It made Sybilla feel like she was being a bully. She reached out to pat the girl’s head.

“Eek!”

When she did, the girl shrieked and leaped at Klaus to get away from her hand.

The moment she did, there was a loud crunch as something got flattened. The girl had crushed Klaus’s bread underfoot. “Ah—” she squeaked hoarsely. Tears started dripping from her eyes.

“H-hey, no, c’mon…”

The girl paid no heed to Sybilla’s hurried plea and began crying in earnest. She curled up into a ball and wailed.

Klaus gave Sybilla a cold glance from his position beside her. “Look, you made her cry.”

“Wait, this is my fault?!”

“Don’t worry, your actions were kind. But they weren’t enough to make up for how scary your face is.”

“…Thanks, now I feel even shittier.”

Klaus gave a small nod, then stooped down on one knee.

“Do you like cats, young lady?” he asked. His voice usually had an almost mechanical emotionlessness to it, but now, it carried an undertone of kindness.

The girl looked up.

Sybilla was honestly a little surprised. She had no idea he even could sound like that.

Still down on one knee, Klaus inspected the hem of the girl’s dress. Upon closer inspection, it was terribly frayed. She had worn it out pretty thoroughly. In his other hand, he was holding a needle and thread.

The girl stared at Klaus’s fingers in rapt attention.

From there, it all happened in a flash as Klaus sewed up the threadbare dress at an incredible speed. His movements were smooth and flowing, and in the blink of an eye, he finished embroidering the dress’s hem with an adorable little cat.

“Wow!” the girl said. A smile spread across her face before their eyes.

Now adorned in her newly decorated dress, she flashed a toothy grin of delight. No more tears spilled from her eyes.

Sybilla was astounded at the feat Klaus had just pulled off. “Where’d you get the needle from?”

“I always carry some hidden in my sleeve. And I unraveled my handkerchief for the thread.”

He turned his suit’s cuffs toward Sybilla and slid a number of needles of varying lengths in and out of them.

As it turned out, Klaus could do a perfectly fine job explaining what he did.

“The trick to embroidery is to make like you’re doting on the entire world.”

He just couldn’t explain the methods or logic behind how he did it.

Sometimes, it was hard to tell if he was an idiot or a genius.

“Thanks for the save…”

At any rate, she knew she needed to thank him. If she’d been on her own, she wouldn’t have known how to pacify the crying child.

Sybilla took another look over at the girl. Her smile really was adorable, especially with her missing baby teeth. The sight gently stirred up Sybilla’s memories.

“I’m gonna walk the kid home,” she said.

“How civic-minded of you,” Klaus replied.

“…Yeah, she looks kinda like my sister.”

“Sorry, what was that? I didn’t quite catch it.”

“Nah, it’s nothing. I just said I’m not gonna leave some kid out on her own. Wouldn’t sit right with me.”

Klaus shot a quiet stare at the girl. Between his still eyes and his level expression, it was impossible to tell what he was thinking.

Eventually, he nodded as though in satisfaction, though it was anyone’s guess as to why.

“…No, I suppose not. I’ll come along, too.”

Sybilla hadn’t seen that one coming, but before she had a chance to ask Klaus why, he was already gently chatting with the girl.

Apparently, the juice peddler’s name was Finé.

Once you talked to her, it became clear that she was a cheerful young girl just like any other. She was afraid of Sybilla at first, but after Sybilla talked to her a bit and told her some jokes, Finé started smiling at her, too. By the time all was said and done, she was holding both their hands and walking down the main road looking as happy as could be.

In particular, she really seemed to take a shine to Sybilla. Finé bombarded her with question after question, and Sybilla deftly answered them all, smiling gently as she watched Finé’s gaze dart every which way.

“Well, would you look at that,” Klaus said admiringly. “It seems I didn’t need to butt in after all. The two of you are getting along like a house on fire.”

“Yeah, I’ve been practicin’ since I was a kid.” Sybilla used to have to look after her two younger siblings, so she was well versed in dealing with children. “You can head on back, if you want,” she offered. “I’ll make sure she gets home safe.”

“No, no, it’s fine. I’ll see this through with you.”

“Y-your call…”

It was a little awkward, that was all.

The three of them were holding hands with Finé in the middle, and it was making Sybilla feel a bit self-conscious. The fact that she still had her reservations about Klaus was part of it, but something else was bothering her more.

We totally look like a couple…

She was pretty sure that back at the park, she had seen loads of parent-child trios that looked just like them. With the way Finé was sandwiched between them, did the people passing them on the street think that they were a family, too?

“If people see us as a family, that actually works in our favor,” Klaus told her over Finé’s head. “It’ll help us draw less attention.”

Apparently, he had figured her out.

Sybilla gave him a dubious glance. “You sure about that?”

“Go on, honey. Try calling me ‘sweetie.’”

“Okay, that one’s definitely a bridge too far…”

“This is part of your training, too.”

“………”

When he put it like that, it was hard to argue. There were times in a spy’s life when they needed to be prepared to pretend like they were married.

She could feel her face growing hotter as she parted her quivering lips. “…S-swee—”

“I was joking.”

“Oh, you’re so dead!” she bellowed, blushing up a storm.

Once her head cooled off, she realized that she was wearing her fake seminary uniform. There was no way anyone would have actually mistaken them for a couple.

Seriously, how’d I get stuck with this jackass as my boss?

Sybilla shot Klaus a scathing glare, which caused Finé to erupt into laughter. She might not have understood what they were talking about, but she still found their bickering endlessly amusing.

“Do you two not get along, miss?” she asked.

“Nope,” Sybilla replied without a moment’s hesitation. “I try to beat him up every day, and every day, he beats me up first. He’s merciless.”

“I’ve been plenty merciful. Lately, I’ve started only using one hand.”

Sybilla gave Klaus another glare. “Yeah, and that pisses me off even more…”

When she did, Finé gave Sybilla’s hand a little squeeze and smiled. “That’s just like at my house, then.”

“What?”

“My daddy always says that when you get mad at someone, it’s because of how much you love them.”

“In our case, I don’t think it’s anything nearly so heartwarming.” Sybilla paused for a moment. That made it sound a bit too harsh. “I mean, forget love, I barely know the first thing about this guy.”

“But then why’s your hand getting so warm, miss?”

“………”

That shut Sybilla up good.

It wasn’t like she seriously had feelings for Klaus or anything, it was just that all this talk about love and stuff was kind of embarrassing. Still, she could feel her face go redder by the moment.

“You’re a cheeky little rascal, you know that?!”

With a jokey grin, Sybilla let go of Finé’s hand and began ruffling up her hair. “Eek, that tickles!” Finé cried with delight as she tried to shake free.

“So, where exactly is it you live?” Sybilla asked. “The two of us’ll help you apologize to your folks for spilling the juice, but you gotta let us know where it is we’re goin’.”

“We’re almost there.”

Finé broke free from Sybilla’s hand, then took a turn off the main road and headed down a side alley. Sybilla and Klaus followed along after her.

Eventually, Finé stopped somewhere wholly unexpected—a dead end. And there didn’t appear to be any houses nearby, either.

“Miss White-Haired Lady, Mr. Stitching Guy…”

Finé’s voice was barely a whisper.

“…I’m sorry.”

Something moved in the shadows.

“Huh?” Sybilla said, dumbfounded.

All of a sudden, there was a giant standing before them. The man was well over six feet tall and covered in muscle. He was huge. Plus, he was nearly as broad as he was tall. It was like looking at a wall.

Sybilla started to react, but Klaus tapped her lightly on the arm.

A moment later, the man’s boulder-like fists sent the two of them crashing into a wall.

The man shoved burlap sacks over their heads to obscure their vision, then dragged them off. After cuffing their hands behind their backs, he shoved them into a car and drove off. Sybilla was still dizzy from the blow she’d suffered to the head, but lying on her side for a bit helped her collect herself. Based on the scents she picked up through the sack, they were heading away from the ocean.

When the car stopped and their captor forced them out, Sybilla noticed that the light from the sun was gone. They must have been indoors. Their captor pushed them against a wall, then kicked their legs to force them to sit.

She heard a deep male voice. “Don’t move. Just wait there.” It was probably the same guy who’d punched them. A pair of footsteps receded away.

Once the man was gone, Sybilla reached up with her legs to rip the sack off her head.

The building they were in was made of wood and had clearly seen better days. Unlike the plaster and wallpaper coverings most of the city’s buildings boasted, the lumber walls there were left raw and exposed. She and Klaus were down on the first floor, but thanks to the two-story ceiling, she had a decent view of the entire building. There were what appeared to be hammocks hanging all around, and the air was ripe with the distinctive smell of musty cloth.

The handcuffs are fixed around a pillar, huh?

She tried moving her wrists, but all she got for her troubles was a metallic rattling noise. She couldn’t undo her restraints.

Once she finished surveying their situation, she called over to Klaus. “Where are we?”

“Deep in the slums, I imagine.”

“I wonder what the hell was up with that golem-looking dude. Was he some friend of Finé’s?”

Klaus didn’t look shaken in the slightest. He began dispassionately laying out the facts. “This is a port city. Tourists and merchants have been stopping here for ages, and whenever you have a city like that, it’s easy for the social fabric to fray. One of the most acute issues is the philanderers. Once they’ve had their way with the local women, they head back to wherever it is they came from. When the women give birth, they often don’t have the means to raise the children, so they end up abandoning them.”

He gestured up at the second floor with his chin.

“And when they do, those children end up getting taken in by crime syndicates in the slums.”

“………” Sybilla gulped.

She could see the eyes.

Up on the second floor, there was a gaggle of children peeking down at them. At a glance, Sybilla counted about twenty. The hammocks must have been where they slept, and now, they were using the swaths of cloth as hiding spots as they tracked Sybilla and Klaus with their nervous gazes.

All of them were just like Finé. Their bodies were scrawny, and their clothes were tattered and worn out.

“………”

Sybilla unconsciously started grinding her teeth. She could feel a fire rising up inside her.

“Sounds like someone knows a whole damn lot about us.” The enormous “golem-looking dude” was back.

Now that she could really see him, he looked more like a towering wall than ever. He wore his muscle like a suit of armor, and each of his arms were thick as one of Sybilla’s thighs and threatening to burst out of his clothes. The light shone menacingly off his leather jacket as he strode up to them like he owned the place.

“We’re just your average Joes with an ear for rumors,” Klaus replied unconcernedly.

The man nodded. “That checks out. You didn’t have guns on you, so you’re no plainclothes cops. Just some idiots with more curiosity than sense, huh?”

Sybilla had wanted to blend in as much as possible, so she’d left all her weapons back at the manor. Apparently, Klaus had been thinking the same thing.

“…So, I take it you’re the leader of the gang of pickpockets that’s been making the rounds lately?” Klaus asked.

The question earned him a suspicious look from the man. “See, now you’re sounding like some sorta gumshoe.”

“Again, we’re just a pair of average Joes. I just happened to catch word about a certain garbage human who’s been making a living by forcing children to steal for him.”

“Hey, whoa, you make me sound like some sorta monster.” The man shrugged with apparently genuine offense. “All I’m doing is taking in kids who’ve got nowhere else to go. These guys don’t have parents to look out for ’em, and I’m here teaching them a trade, putting clothes on their backs, and keeping them fed. If you think about it, I’m basically a social worker.”

“And you really believe that.”

“Damn straight I do. There’re some real scumbags in this world, but I ain’t one of ’em. As soon as you promise to keep quiet about Finé’s pickpocketing, y’all can be on your merry way.”

So, that was why he’d kidnapped the two of them—to ensure their silence.

To sum it all up, Finé had been a thief all along. That juice she was selling was nothing more than a prop to let her get close to Klaus so she could steal the wallet out of his bag. Once she realized that Sybilla and Klaus were onto her, she and the man had exchanged a look, and she led the two of them into a secluded alley so he could attack them.

“………”

They’d been played.

The smart thing to do would be to just do what the man said and turn a blind eye to the whole thing. Any crime they accused him of would leave Finé and the other children homeless. If they could lead peaceful lives under the man’s protection, then perhaps that was for the best.

But first, there was one question that needed answering.

“…Finé cried.”

“Huh?” the man said, confused.

Sybilla looked up and shot him an indominable glare. “All I did was reach toward her, and she started bawlin’ like the world was gonna end.”

Sybilla had merely been trying to pat her head, yet she’d immediately recoiled.

It was like she was afraid she was about to get hit. Like the instinctive fear welling up inside her had been too much to bear.

A telltale sign of abuse.

Sybilla clenched her fists tight. “Every time you hit these kids, you tell ’em the same damn thing, don’t you? ‘I’m only getting mad ’cause of how much I love you,’ you say. You call that shit love!”

The man let out a low, strangled groan.

Sybilla looked up at the children hiding on the second floor. “Hey, Finé! What the hell’s your daddy been doin’ to you?”

Finé was the only one she’d directed the question at.

However, there wasn’t a child upstairs who didn’t react. Some of their faces froze as fear filled their minds, some of them curled into balls as their shoulders trembled, and others instinctively clutched at their heads—but all of them knew exactly what she was talking about.

Sybilla could even spot the big, blotchy bruises on some of their faces.

“Shaddap, you!” the enormous man roared. “Don’t go talkin’ shit about my teaching methods!” He charged at Sybilla, who was still bound, and raised his massive fist in a practiced motion.

Klaus hurled himself between them and took the punch in her place.

“Rgh…”

Sybilla thought she saw him blunt the blow by catching it on his shoulder, but still, Klaus grunted in pain.

“Are you okay…?” she blurted out.

If he really had taken that punch head-on, then he wasn’t walking away without at least a broken bone or two. That was no amateur’s punch. The man had rotated his leg and waist to send his full power down his arm and into his fist. It made for a deadly attack—one that clearly had some training behind it.

“You little brat. You’ve got a rebellious look in your eyes…”

Sybilla glared at him, and the man grinned.

“Hey, Snowflake. You grew up in the slums yourself, didn’t you?”

“………”

He’d seen right through her.

Sybilla went silent, and that was all the confirmation he needed.

“When you’ve put in the time that I have, you can tell these things.” He scoffed proudly. “I’ve broken in plenty of mouthy shits like you. With these two fists.”

He jabbed twice in the air. The blows were sharp, and Sybilla could hear the air whizzing by as he fired each one off.

The onlooking children yelped in fear.

“Let’s see how many punches you can take. Few dozen, at least. You can scream all you want, but it won’t do you any good. No one will hear.”

“………” Sybilla knew this world.

It was a world where little girls sobbed and cried, but nobody lent them an ear.

Sybilla had grown up in a different city, but it was all the same world. Up until when they went to the orphanage, she’d spent her entire youth trying to protect her siblings from a city drenched in violence and poverty.

She understood that pain in her very bones.

Wanting to change that world was what drove her to become a spy.

To Sybilla, it felt like Finé’s eyes were screaming for help.

She bit down hard on her lip.

Beside her, Klaus’s head was still drooping. “What was that you said…?” he rasped. “No one would hear us scream?”

The man’s nostrils flared. “’Course not. In a dump like this, no one gives a rat’s ass about a little scream or two.”

“…So if someone screams, no one will come to help?”

“That’s what I just said, ain’t it?”

“You’re certain about that? No one will care, even if we make a huge racket?”

“How many times do I gotta—”

“Understood. Oh, and by the way—”

Klaus’s voice dropped an octave.

“—how much longer should I keep playing along with this game?”

Kerchunk.

A metallic noise rang out.

Klaus’s handcuffs toppled to the floor.

In his hand, he was holding a needle—one of the ones from his sleeve. He tossed it over to Sybilla, and she caught it behind her back and quickly unfastened her cuffs as well.

The man reeled backward. “Wh—”

As Sybilla massaged her newly freed wrists, she launched into a tirade. “I swear, it’s like fuckin’ amateur hour over here. I mean, attackin’ us right by the main road like that? It’s like you don’t even give a shit about keeping a low profile.”

“Thank you for playing along,” Klaus told her. “I wanted to find out where his hideout was.”

The moment before the man punched her back in the alley, Klaus had tapped Sybilla on the arm. It was a signal that meant “don’t resist.” Sybilla had been reluctant, but she refrained from putting up a fight and intentionally took the blow.

The two of them rose to their feet in unison and glared at their foe side by side.

“The handcuffs broke…?”

The man didn’t quite understand what was going on. He seemed to think that their restraints had merely malfunctioned.

“Two against one, huh?” However, his composure remained unbroken, and he shifted to an oblique stance and began taking rhythmic steps. He was clearly a trained martial artist. “No problem. Bring it. I’ll have you know I was in the army.” He gave them a hollow smile. Sybilla knew he was jacked, but she hadn’t known he was actually a soldier. “And in case you forgot, I just knocked y’all on your sorry asses. You come at me two at a time, and I’ll still mop the—”

“Nah.” Sybilla took a step forward. “I’ll be fine solo.”

“What’d you say?”

“When it comes to scum like you, I’m not gonna be able to sleep tonight unless I pummel you myself!” Sybilla squeezed the handcuffs she was holding and roared. “I’m code name Pandemonium—and it’s time I cleaned you out.”

She took a running start and charged straight at the giant. She had no proper weapons to speak of, but she brandished her handcuffs and rushed down the man twice her size all the same.

“Talk shit, get hit, kid!” the man bellowed, then launched a series of jabs at Sybilla’s face. She dodged them by the slimmest of margins, then swung her handcuffs at the side of his head.

However, her foe was far faster. His huge frame belied his raw agility, and he pulled back before firing off his next jab. Sybilla tried to block his attack, but the blow had too much force behind it. She nearly got mowed down, but she slid to the side at the last second and grabbed at her opponent’s waist.

“________”

A moment later, his foot slammed into her thigh. He wasn’t winding up for any of his attacks, so he never left her any openings, but because of the sheer difference in their weights, his blows still packed a massive punch.

Sybilla got sent flying like a ragdoll and tumbled across the floor.

“Ha,” the man scoffed in amusement. “There’s no way a little girlie like you’s ever gonna beat me.”

When it came to combat, that much was just common sense.

In fights to the death, larger people were stronger. Heavier people were stronger. Men had the advantage. And the small and the weak were helpless before the tyranny of the mighty.

At least in the past.

Sybilla held up a revolver. “Even if she’s got a gun?”

The man’s smile froze on his face. “Where the hell did you—”

“What, this? I just nicked it.” Sybilla laughed proudly. “Compared to him, you practically left yourself wide open.”

The man clutched at his waist in shock.

Sybilla had stolen it in the blink of an eye.

That was the true talent of the girl who bore the name Pandemonium—picking pockets.

The man’s excessive levels of confidence had told her that he had a concealed weapon of some sort, and once he was kind enough to let her know he used to be a soldier, it wasn’t hard for her to figure out where he was keeping it.

’Course, I dunno whether or not I was actually “as fast as a thrust needle,” but hey, it’s somethin’, she thought self-effacingly as she leveled the barrel at the man.

He broke out in a cold sweat, but his composed expression had yet to break.

“C-c’mon, there’s no way a kid like you actually knows how to use a—”

A gunshot split the air.

Sybilla didn’t flinch at all as she pulled the trigger; the bullet grazed the man’s ear and slammed into one of the wooden house’s pillars.

The man went weak at the knees and sank to the floor. When Sybilla informed him that “that’s the only warning shot you get,” his massive body began trembling uncontrollably.

“Who are you people…?”

“Just a couple of concerned citizens.”

Sybilla continued training the gun on him with her right hand and flashed him the handcuffs in her left.

“You’re finished. Have fun in the slammer.”

The man dragged his butt along the ground as he scuttled backward, now more louse than golem. His face was frozen in fear, but a moment later, something dawned on him. He looked up. “T-turning me in to the cops won’t do you any good, you know…”

“Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

“I’ve got a buddy on the force… I’ll be out of there before you know it… So why bother turning me in at all? You could save us all some time.”

“…Would you rather I shot you dead?”

“If you do that, it’ll be you two who end up getting arrested!” the man shouted. He was getting his fight back. “There’s no way you kill me and get off scot-free. Are you really brave enough to pull that trigger when you’ve got your whole life on the line?”

Sybilla’s hand shook a little as she held the revolver.

The man was probably just bluffing, but on the off-chance he wasn’t, that was a big problem. Given they were spies trying to use the city as a base for their covert operations, getting involved with the police was the last thing they wanted to do. There were a lot of things that could go wrong if the cops started digging into their backgrounds or asking them to explain themselves.

The man picked up on Sybilla’s inner turmoil. He grinned victoriously. “Now, put down that gun! Otherwise, I’ll have my cop friend arrest you for attempted mur—”

“You’re referring to Inspector Angerer, yes? I believe the Military Intelligence Department is taking him in on espionage charges as we speak.”

The voice was Klaus’s.

When they turned to look at him, they found him examining a single sheet of paper. There was a paint can lying at his feet, and its lid was open. The paper must have been the confidential document he just picked up.

“What?” The man’s mouth hung agape.

Apparently, Klaus was right.

Klaus struck a match and lit the document on fire. It was clearly made of some sort of special paper, as it burned away into nothing in the blink of an eye. It didn’t even leave ash behind.

“What a pathetic man. He got into bed with an imperial spy over truly paltry sums of money. We’ve been rooting out his support network one by one, but it turns out they’re all just low-level scumbags like you. What a letdown.” A look of genuine disappointment crossed Klaus’s eyes. “The police can handle the rest. I’ll pull some strings and make sure the children find their way into proper institutions.”

“What the hell are you on about…?”

“That paper had information about you, too, ex-captain Frisé. It said that despite your substantial frame you were a small-minded nobody, and that you got subjected to disciplinary measures for starting a bar fight. You’re the very model of a petty crook.”

“YOU SHUT YOUR GODDAMN MOUTH!”

Perhaps it was shock at the scorn in Klaus’s voice, or perhaps it was the panic from having his last lifeline wrenched from him—either way, the man let out a roar loud enough to shake the entire house and lunged at Klaus without giving a moment’s thought to Sybilla’s gun. His eyes were completely bloodshot.

Sybilla immediately went to pull the trigger, but when she saw the boredom in Klaus’s eyes, she thought better of it. There was no sense shooting a man when she didn’t have to.

She knew all too well how powerful Klaus was.

Klaus shot a frosty look at the giant rushing him down. “I’m sorry to inform you, but…people like you aren’t qualified to be my enemy.”

Then he gave his assailant a quick smack on the forehead with the back of his hand. It didn’t look like he’d even put that much power into the hit, but it was enough to make the man’s head violently shake.

He ended up with a concussion, and he crumpled to the ground like a marionette with its strings cut.

After making sure the man was well and truly unconscious, Sybilla snapped her handcuffs around his meaty wrists. When the police came later, they’d be able to piece together what had happened.

The hiding children stared at them with their mouths hanging open in awestruck shock.

Sybilla started to try to explain what was going on to them, but she ultimately decided against it. Better to just leave as a pair of average civilians.

She and Klaus headed for the exit.

“Miss…”

Someone called out from behind them.

It was Finé. Her voice was choked with tears.

“…thank you.”

She seemed a little embarrassed, probably because she felt guilty for having tricked them.

Sybilla put on her most assertive grin to cheer her up. “Anytime!”

Sure enough, Sybilla and Klaus had been taken all the way to the slums. The moment they stepped outside, they discovered that the “wooden house” they’d been in was a dilapidated barrack that barely even qualified as a building. The whole area was filled with similarly run-down wooden shacks. It had only been a decade since the war, and there were still a lot of places where the government’s eyes had yet to reach.

They doubted they would find any phones nearby, so they headed briskly back toward the center of the city.

As they walked, Sybilla shot Klaus a question. “So you planned this all out?”

From the way he’d been acting, it was like he’d seen the whole thing coming.

“Not really,” he replied. “I’d just heard that there was a pickpocketing ring that used children, so I figured that if I waited in the park, there was a good chance I could get them to come to me. The rest was just luck.”

Ah, Sybilla thought. That made total sense.

Now that she thought about it, it had always been a little odd that a man as busy as Klaus was going out for a leisurely lunch in the park. However, it had all been calculated. He probably realized that Finé was a pickpocket the moment she called out to him.

Then he went and saved her and the other kids.

It had probably been nothing more than an afterthought in his investigation of the spy lurking within their borders. In general, catching low-level criminals like that was below their pay grade. However, the fact remained that he’d saved those children from being abused.

Another question came to her, and she blurted it out. “Say, if we clear this Impossible Mission, is it gonna save a bunch of kids?”

In less than a month, they were going to take on an incredibly difficult assignment.

Klaus hadn’t told them the specifics, but Sybilla had to know—was it going to help make sure kids like Finé would get to keep on smiling?

“That should go without saying,” Klaus replied gently.

Sybilla nodded.

Surely, the fate of the nation would be resting on their mission. Even if it didn’t have any direct link to the nation’s youth, it would still play an indirect role in securing their futures.

And if that’s the case, then I gotta get stronger…

As Sybilla renewed her resolve, she noticed that Klaus was gazing gently at her. “There’s no need to get yourself so worked up,” he said.

“Huh?”

“Don’t you get it, after the way you manhandled that giant? Getting a little stronger here or there is hardly worth a thing. The first thing a spy should seek is a strong heart, not a strong body,” Klaus declared. “And that’s something you have in spades. Eventually, the day will come when the children of your homeland find themselves in your debt.”

It was almost like he’d seen right through her.

In fact, perhaps that was exactly what those tranquil eyes of his had done.

Oh hey, he is lookin’ out for us…

Sybilla felt her face go warm at the unexpected realization.

She waved him off. “Don’t you worry ’bout me, I’m all good. Especially after I just got to experience how much stronger I am now.”

It was thanks to her training that she’d been able to take down the large man. After facing off against Klaus, she knew guys like that were nothing to be afraid of.

“Y’know, I read you all wrong. I guess you make a decent teacher after all.”

“Of course I am,” Klaus muttered, looking rather content with himself. “I’m going to lead you to success, or my name isn’t the Greatest Spy in the World.”

From there, they continued walking side by side down the road. Their conversation meandered, and though there were plenty of moments where Klaus was on a different wavelength than her and plenty others where she found herself on the receiving end of his airheaded nonsense, it didn’t piss her off the way it had a few hours ago.

Contrary to all appearances, he was actually a pretty good boss. Or if nothing else, Sybilla had had enough of a change of heart to see him as one.

“I’m feeling a little peckish, so I might stop off somewhere for lunch. What about you?”

So when he posed his question—

“H-hey, uh…”

—her mouth moved faster than her thoughts.

“Yes?”

“I-I’ve got this boxed lunch, see…”

She showed him the aluminum lunchbox she’d been keeping stashed away.

Klaus gave her a look. “And you’re offering it to me?”

Sybilla could feel her heart beating a mile a minute. “The whole reason Finé crushed your bread was ’cause I startled her, right…? I’m pretty sorry about that, so, uh…y-you wanna split it? I didn’t make it myself or anything, I actually got it from Lily, but, like, still…”

Excuses and pieces of irrelevant information spilled out of her mouth one after another.

Why do I feel so nervous…?

Tormented by emotions she didn’t quite understand, she waited for Klaus’s reply.

“Actually, I think I’ll take you up on that offer.”

“…A-all right, then halfsies it is.”

His answer filled her heart with warmth and relief.

“We can eat while we walk,” she suggested with a smile.

Klaus gave her a wordless nod.

Sybilla bit her lip to prevent her expression from turning too sappy. An oddly familiar spicy aroma wafted by her nose. She lifted up the aluminum lid—

—and the lunchbox exploded.

That night, at Heat Haze Palace…

“GET YOUR ASS BACK HERE!” “Eeeek! Put down the knife!” “I’ll do what I damn well please!” “A-and besides, it was all Monika’s idea!” “Oh yeah?!” “Nah, that was all Lily.” “YOU TRIED TO TRICK ME!” “Dang it, my Wunderkind Lily intelligence tactics failed me!”

The halls were filled with the cries of the damned.

This time, Klaus had nothing to do with it. To the contrary, he was holed up in his room trying to work on his oil painting. He sank deep in his bedroom’s chair and stared intently at his canvas with brush in hand. However, the environment was hardly conducive to concentration. Screams constantly split the air from downstairs and in the hallway.

“What are they doing out there…?” he muttered in exasperation.

Right then, Lily came charging into his room. “Teach, you gotta let me hide here!”

She was panting, and she’d clearly been fleeing with all her might. Her knees rattled in abject terror.

“No. Get out,” Klaus replied coldly.

“At least hear me out! There’s an orangutan going on a rampage out in the hallway!”

“I’m pretty sure the manor doesn’t have one of those.”

“No, we do! It’s got white hair and everything!”

“See, now I definitely know you’re in the wrong here.”

Klaus sighed. He could hear a pair of footsteps thundering toward them.

“THERE YOU ARE, YOU LITTLE RAT!” Sybilla bellowed as she kicked in the door. She was holding a chair and her eyes shined a fiery shade of red. Probably on account of the chili powder.

Lily let out a pathetic-sounding “Eeeek!” and hid behind Klaus. She and Sybilla squared off with Klaus stuck between them.

“C-c’mon, Sybilla, we can talk this out! We’re friends, right?”

“How ’bout you let me get in one good hit, then we go from there.”

“She says, holding up a chair!”

“Quit yelling at each other through me,” Klaus said, sounding utterly fed up.

“A-and besides, this isn’t fair! You said it yourself, remember?” Lily asked Sybilla. “You were going on all smug-like about how using stooges was fair game in a real battle and how we needed the element of surprise. I was just doing everything I could to beat Teach, that’s all! Hem-hem! If anything, you should be complimenting me!”

Lily thrust out her chest with pride. Sybilla’s eyebrow twitched.

That was the backstory behind the explosion—it was Operation: Collateral Damage Redux.

The boxed lunch that Sybilla offered Klaus—that is, the one Lily gave her ahead of time—had been a tear bomb filled with the same chili powder as the night prior. Furthermore, it had been furnished with a transmitter that the rest of the team had used to tail Sybilla. After waiting for Klaus and Sybilla to deepen their relationship and let down their guards, Lily had cried, “Now!” and gleefully detonated the bomb.

However, Klaus managed to dodge just ahead of time, and in the end, the only person who fell victim to the chili powder was Sybilla.

“Man, just a little closer, and we’d have blown up Teach, too. What a shame.”

By that point, it was pretty well established just how determined Lily was.

“I’ll never forgive you… The others, maybe, but never you…”

Then there was Sybilla, who was still steaming with rage. She hadn’t been able to wash all the chili powder out of her beautiful white hair yet, and much of it was still stained red here and there. Combined with how red her eyes were, she looked downright demonic.

Lily stooped down and used Klaus as a shield. “Th-that’s not fair, though. Why’re you so mad when all I did was the same thing you did to me…?”

“Shut up…”

“Wait, is it ’cause we bugged your conversations with Teach?”

“Rgh!”

“I gotta say, I never knew you could pull off ‘swooning girl’ so well. With all that ‘I’ve got this boxed lunch, see…’ stuff, you sounded like an innocent little lovebird. When we heard that, the whole team got some big grins out of—”

“AAAAAAAAAARGH! I’ll just hit you ’til you forget! C’mere!”

“Please take this anywhere other than my room.” Klaus looked as irritated as he’d ever been. “…I can see we’ve got a long road ahead of us before the Impossible Mission.”

He said the last part quietly enough that it was unclear if either of the girls heard him.

As the two of them continued violently panting, Klaus went on. “Apropos of nothing, I have something I’d like to say. As was made eminently clear today, hostile foreign spies can infiltrate anything from our parliament to our police forces to our army and rot them from within. The only ones who can protect our people are spies like us.”

It went without saying that has-been soldiers and corrupt cops were far from the only threats running rampant within their institutions. There were probably people far more evil than that waiting for their moment to strike—just as Din’s spies were infiltrating their enemy nations’ institutions in turn.

That was what the shadow war was—a battle between spies with no holds barred.

“Go on. Lie to each other, fool each other, and improve each other—until you’re strong enough to take me down.” Klaus softly rose from his chair. “And until you get there, then fighting amongst yourselves from time to time…can be magnificent, too.”

Once Klaus moved, there was nothing standing between Sybilla and Lily anymore. Sybilla descended on Lily with a feral roar, and Lily fled with tears in her eyes.

There were four weeks left before the Impossible Mission, and the girls’ training was only going to get harsher from there.