Spy Classroom - Volume SS2 - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Annette’s Case

“I’m gonna get a job, yo,” Annette declared to the Heat Haze Palace dining room.

The audience for her statement was her seven teammates, who gawked at her in motionless shock like time itself had ground to a halt. Their mouths hung half-open from their sheer inability to comprehend what she was saying, and the forks they’d been holding tumbled to the floor.

Annette was going to get a job?

The word refused to sit right in their heads.

Thea spoke up and said what they were all thinking. “Ummm… Is this supposed to be some kind of joke?”

Annette hopped up and down. “I’m dead serious, yo.”

“May I ask why?”

“I need some cash.”

“Where were you thinking of working?”

“At a restaurant.”

“Did you get Teach’s permission?”

“Yup. I’m heading out to my interview later today.”

“I see…”

There was nothing Thea could do but nod.

Then she turned to the girl on her right and pinched her cheek. The pinched girl followed suit and pinched the girl on her right, who proceeded to do the same thing…until all seven girls aside from Annette had formed a big old cheek-pinching ring, at which point it finally became clear to them that they weren’t dreaming.

Huh. Apparently, this was the real world, and soon, Annette would be heading off to work at a restaurant…

“““““““Hold on just one dang second!”””””””

With that, the seven girls retorted as one.

Lamplight had just captured the assassin Corpse and dealt with the issue regarding Annette’s mother. The team had been through multiple ringers, and they’d just used the intel from Corpse, aka Roland, to settle on the United States of Mouzaia as the site of their next mission. Now they were hard at work preparing for their showdown against the Serpent member said to be lurking there. The Lamplight girls had spent the past month split into the chosen squad and the unchosen squad, so now that they were back together, their motivation going into the mission was high.

Let’s do this. Let’s head to the United States!

Let’s do this. Let’s take down Purple Ant!

After accepting the role of cheerleader, Lily got the whole team fired up.

As the girls decided on their infiltration sites, brushed up on the local language, and forged their ID papers, Klaus took care of all the team’s urgent domestic missions while making the necessary preparations for their long-term stay abroad. If they had to give that time a name, they probably would have called it the Mitario Showdown Prep Phase.

It was during that period that the whole to-do about Annette’s part-time job took place.

Ten hours prior…

Klaus took a seat on one of the couches in a very particular room. It had less furniture than one would expect for its size, with nothing on its dignified red carpet save for a table and a pair of sofas. The table was occupied by a few ordinary appliances like a coffeepot and a coffee mill paired with a single ashtray. It was a space designed for two people to have a conversation while facing each other. Thanks to how far the sofas were from the edges of the room, any listening devices planted in the walls would be unable to pick up the things said within.

“I see that this coffee of yours is still just as dreadful as always,” Klaus said, making no effort to hide his displeasure. Klaus was a tall, beautiful man with long hair. He sat atop the sofa with his legs crossed and sipped his coffee as overbearingly as he could.

The man sitting across from him had silver-gray hair and carried himself with an austere dignity. “You don’t mince your words, do you?”

Klaus’s counterpart went by the alias C. He was the person in charge—the so-called spymaster—of the Din Republic’s Foreign Intelligence Office and, at least technically, Klaus’s superior.

Klaus faced C from his seat in the Foreign Intelligence Office’s director’s office. “So?” he asked. “What is it?”

C had called for him rather suddenly. By and large, nothing good ever came of it when C gave him a new mission in person.

C shrugged. “You need to relax a bit. You haven’t taken a proper break in a while.”

“Because a certain someone keeps dropping more work into my lap.”

“We both know you’d keep on working whether or not I assigned you more missions.”

“I need to be able to devote time to training my subordinates. As I recall, this is the forty-fourth time I’ve brought this up.”

“Well, that’s news to me.”

Would I get in trouble if I kicked him across the room?

It was a tempting thought, but Klaus resisted the urge. The man was, at least technically, his superior.

“In any case, I have good news.” C gave him a gentle smile. “I’ve finally found a mission for you that lines up with your request.”

“My what?”

“Remember what you told me? You said you wanted a mission with little danger to life and limb but lots of opportunities for learning and growth.”

“Ah, that’s right.”

Klaus had once asked for missions that would serve as good training for his inexperienced students. He distinctly remembered that, back when he made the request, C had flatly told him that no such missions existed.

C handed him a file. “You should thank me for putting this together.”

Klaus flipped through its contents. Sure enough, it was just the right difficulty for his subordinates. There wasn’t much actual danger, but it was still going to be tense. It was perfect for people like the girls who were short on actual combat experience, and it would serve as an excellent training exercise before they set out for Mitario. However, there was one thing that caught his attention…

“This mission is basically just busywork.”

“………”

“Forget thanking you—you’re making us do your chores. Why would you specifically call me in here to give me an assignment that’s on par with a spy academy training drill?”

“………” C slowly raised his coffee cup to his lips. “So you’d owe me one.”

Klaus considered throwing his coffee in C’s face, but he just barely managed to exercise restraint.

From there, Klaus left the Foreign Intelligence Office headquarters and returned to Lamplight’s base.

It was a grand mansion, and it had been deliberately constructed to be inconspicuous. Upon reaching his bedroom-slash-study on the second floor, Klaus loosened his tie. After he had spent the morning training with the girls and the afternoon answering C’s summons, he felt his body fill with the fatigue of a productive day.

Well, I suppose there’s no denying that it was good news.

It was true that the task he’d been given had met his specifications to a T. Klaus himself was going to have to leave for a dangerous mission tomorrow, so this would be the perfect way for the girls to train in his absence.

The question is, who do I choose to take point?

Simple as the mission was, it still had its risks. He was going to need to select the best person for the job.

I’d like to give it to someone especially motivated…

He decided to mull it over while he made his dinner. He headed for the kitchen.

“Hmm?”

That was when he noticed something suspicious. He could sense someone in his room. He wasn’t alone.

That’s odd, though… Why didn’t I notice the intruder earlier?

Klaus’s room was furnished with a number of traps designed to let him know if anyone had come in. All in all, there were more than ten of them, from the strand of hair wedged in his door to the distinctive pile of dust on his carpet. None of his rudimentary sensors had been set off.

It didn’t take him long to deduce why that was.

“You must have memorized everything. You looked through the window to see the locations of every object in the room, then took all my anti-intruder traps and returned them to their original configurations.” Out of all the girls in Lamplight, only one of them could have pulled off a feat like that. “Magnificent. You’ve really sharpened your skills, Annette.”

Right then, his bed shook, and the girl buried in his blanket came leaping out. “You found me, yo!”

Sure enough, it was Annette. Her ash-pink hair was messily tied back, and she was wearing a large eye patch. She gave him a wide grin.

“What are you doing in here? Training?”

“Yup. I came to play with you, Bro.”

“I see.”

“But then I got sleepy while I was waiting for you, so I’m off it now.”

“…I see.”

She was an inscrutable one, that Annette. Everything she did was over-the-top, and whether or not she participated in their training routine depended entirely on her mood. Klaus put a lot of confidence in his powers of observation, but not even he could comprehend the way her mind worked. By all accounts, she seemed to be fond of him, but it was impossible to really tell.

“By the way, Bro,” Annette said, jumping on his bed.

Klaus doubted she would listen if he told her to knock it off, so instead, he simply replied, “Yes?”

“I want some spending money, yo.”

“Hmm?”

“I was trying to buy the parts for this machine I’m building, but I ran out.”

“…That’s a pretty substantial salary you’re getting paid, you know.” Klaus sighed. Spies got hefty bonuses for completing missions. Perhaps he needed to start managing her finances directly. “Unfortunately, I can’t give you any more money than you’re already making. If you want it that badly, though, you could always try taking it from me by force.”

“I’m gonna blow you to smithereens, yo!”

“…Not so much as a moment’s hesitation, huh?”

Annette immediately whipped out a bomb, so Klaus tied her up with the blanket and tossed her on the bed again. She kicked her legs back and forth in delight. “I lost!”

Klaus massaged the back of his neck.

Now, what to do about this problem child…?

He felt sympathy for her plight, but even if he gave her some pocket change, she would just spend up every last dent he gave her. However, she was liable to cause trouble if he left her to her own devices. She could easily end up trying to sell her gun or something.

Then a light bulb went off over his head—the undercover mission C had given him.

“Annette, what would you say to taking on a part-time job?” he asked.

And that brings us back to the beginning of our original story.

After Annette informed the others she was getting a job, the girls charged into Klaus’s room. They weren’t going to rest until they got an explanation for what the heck was going on.

“Teach! What’s this about Annette getting a job?!” Lily cried. As the girls’ leader, she stood at the head of the group and pressed their boss for answers.

“It’s a simple infiltration mission,” Klaus replied.

“Who the what now?”

“Two years ago, the Empire was conducting drug deals out of the restaurant she’ll be working at. The issue got resolved, but we still need to make sure that the restaurant’s gone back to being a fully legitimate establishment.” It was less of a mission and more of an errand. Galgad spies had once used the eatery as a fundraising site, and the owner had been involved, too. The restaurant had supposedly turned over a new leaf, but it was important that they made doubly sure of that. “Annette’s going to be working there for the next two weeks. When I told her she could keep the wages she earned there, she enthusiastically agreed.”

“I—I guess I get what’s going on now, but are you sure this is a good idea?” Lily asked, scrunching up her face in concern. “Forget working, Annette can’t even do regular housework right…”

The others chimed in to agree.

“When I told her to wash the windows the other day, she blew the whole damn frame off,” Sybilla said.

“…When I asked her to go buy some vegetables, she started planting rows of seeds,” Grete concurred.

“When she was supposed to do the laundry,” added Erna, “all my clothes ended up covered in sequins.”

“Mine got turned into nurse’s uniforms,” Monika grumbled.

“Goodness me,” Thea replied. “Mine got turned into nun’s habits.”

One after another, the girls gave examples of Annette’s odd behavior. There were too many to list. Given how uncontrollable she was, it was a wonder she hadn’t gotten expelled the moment she set foot in her academy. Even among the band of washouts that was Lamplight, Annette held a special spot in their roster.

In a nutshell, Annette was Lamplight’s biggest problem child.

The girls looked at one another and shared some worried predictions. “What if she mixes gunpowder into the food?” “I feel like she’s going to remodel the kitchen into an armory.” “My money says she won’t even pass the interview.”

Klaus exhaled. “I’m sure none of that is going to happen…” He rested his chin on his hand and sank into thought for a moment. “…But having two people keeping an eye on her would probably be for the best.”

“““““““Huh?”””””””

“By the way, I’ve got another mission to take care of, so I won’t be one of them.” Klaus tore a nearby piece of paper into seven pieces, drew circles on two of them with his pen, and handed the slips to the girls. “We’ll decide who’s going to go work with Annette via lottery.”

The girls all gulped. Two of those slips would be one-way tickets straight to hell. Please, God, they prayed as they drew crosses over their chests, summoning up every drop of piety they could muster as they reached for the papers with trembling fingers.

In the end, the two people who got chosen to watch over Annette—

“NOOOOOOOOOO!”

—were Lily, who crumpled to her knees the moment she drew her slip—

“YEEEEEEEEEEEP?”

—and Erna, who was uncannily disadvantaged when it came to matters of luck.

With that, Annette, Lily, and Erna began their dual-purpose part-time job and infiltration mission.

Five days later, a nightmare descended on Heat Haze Palace.

Two girls stood in the main hall, their faces sheet-white.

One of them was Sybilla, a white-haired girl with sharp eyes and a bracing dignity about her. She clutched at her shoulders and trembled. “What, uh, what the hell’s goin’ on here…?”

The other was Thea, who was cradling her knees atop her chair with tears in her eyes. “I don’t know… Nothing makes sense anymore.”

The source of their terror, unsurprisingly, had to do with Annette’s new job. The three job seekers, Annette included, had all successfully passed their interviews and started work the very same day. Their plan to infiltrate the job site as waitresses had gone off without a hitch.

Since then, four people had been driven to madness.

The first ones to snap were Annette’s babysitters, Lily and Erna. As soon as they first got back from the restaurant—

“Bluhhhhhhhh…”

“Yeeeeeeeeeep…”

—they collapsed onto their beds while groaning like their souls had just escaped from their bodies.

The following day, their gazes were just as unfocused—

“Bluhhhhhhhh…”

“Yeeeeeeeeeep…”

—and they headed to the restaurant with unsteady footsteps.

It was like something straight out of a horror movie. Beside them, Annette gave the others a wave and announced, “I’m off to work, yo!” with a cheery smile, which only served to make the whole thing even more unsettling.

Something was going on at that restaurant!

And whatever it was, it was seriously no bueno!

Sybilla and Thea went pale. Their curiosity was far outweighed by their terror, and they made up their minds never to go near that restaurant. Their lives were too valuable. They also vowed not to let any of the others make that mistake, either, until—

“All right, I’m gonna go heckle Annette while she’s at work.”

“…I think I’ll head over as well.”

—three days into the mission, two of their teammates got some ideas in their heads. The teammates in question were Monika and Grete, the latter of whom was a redhead with slender limbs and an ephemeral quality to her not unlike a glass sculpture. The two of them intended to bravely set out for the restaurant.

Naturally, Sybilla tried to stop them. “I—I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Do you want your soul going bluhhhhhhhh, too?!”

Monika laughed proudly without paying her a bit of heed. “Think of how funny it’ll be, though. Seeing Annette terrorizing a restaurant will be enough to keep me smiling for the next few days.”

Grete nodded in agreement. “…Simple or not, the boss entrusted us with this mission. We can’t afford to slack off.”

With that, they ignored Sybilla’s warning and sallied forth.

The good news was, there was one sliver of hope to be had. Out of all the girls, Monika was the strongest and most talented of the bunch. Given her outstanding composure, she would be able to handle whatever the situation threw at her. Meanwhile, Grete was the smartest person on the team, and thanks to the intense love she harbored for Klaus, she was able to put up with just about anything if it was for his sake.

There was promise. Surely, the two of them would make it back with valuable intel!

“Gahhhhhhhhh…”

“Urrrrrrrrrrrrgh…”

However, the results were unsurprising.

The two girls returned with hollow eyes, like their souls had been drained from their bodies. They headed directly to their beds, collapsed, and didn’t get back up.

One after another, Lily, Erna, Monika, and Grete had all suffered mental breakdowns. Every single one of them had made it through death-defying missions, but now, each of them had been brought low in a single blow.

Thus, Sybilla and Thea were consumed by fear of the unknown.

“What exactly is going on over there?!” Thea cried, unable to contain herself. “It’s just a regular old restaurant, right? It’s not as though it’s some gathering of dark sorcerers!”

“…I dunno. It’s all one big question mark,” Sybilla replied with a shake of the head. “But Annette’s gotta be behind this. I’m sure of it.”

“Has she been trashing the restaurant or something?”

“If so, then why hasn’t she been fired yet?”

“That’s a good point. She seemed to be in high spirits when she headed out this morning.”

The biggest mystery was the fact that the three of them all still appeared to have their jobs despite whatever it was that was going on. The only logical conclusion was that they’d found a way to blackmail the manager or something. It was the kind of thing Annette seemed liable to do.

“…I guess we’ll have to check it out ourselves,” Sybilla concluded.

“No way!” Thea yelped. “I know better than to peer into the abyss! It’ll suck us right in!”

“I—I mean, you say that, but otherwise, we’ll never know.”

“I have no desire to end up moaning or groaning or going gluhhhhhhhhh at everyone!”

“C’mon, nobody’s gone gluhhhhhhhhh yet.”

Thea groaned at Sybilla’s suggestion, but the fact of the matter was, they weren’t going to get anywhere if all they did was sit around cowering. They were technically on a mission, and failing to perform their professional duties was a nonstarter. They couldn’t let the three people conducting the infiltration be the only ones pulling their weight.

After steeling their resolves, the two of them went down to the port where the restaurant was. Four times on their way there, they were seized by a desire to flee, but they fought it back each time. In the end, they did something very out of character and held hands the rest of the way. It was something they never would have done under normal circumstances, but they did it half to steady their nerves and half to keep their partner in crime from making a break for it on their own.

“I-it’s just around this corner, yeah?” Sybilla asked.

“…That’s right,” Thea replied. “We’ll take one minute to brace ourselves, then go.”

“Got it. Let’s give it two minutes, though.”

“Good call. I was actually just thinking about upping it to three.”

After spending twenty minutes working up their nerve, they took that final step, squeezing one another’s hands as they turned their gazes toward the restaurant.

It was an unpretentious establishment with a spacious open floor plan. There was nothing but a series of posts separating the indoor and outdoor seating areas, so a single glance was all it took for them to observe the restaurant in its entirety. The shop had a number of round wooden tables, and the waitresses hurried to and fro around them. Perhaps due to how close they were to the port, many of the male patrons were brawny and loud, and the portion sizes of the menu items on offer were pretty substantial.

And there, among it all, stood an angel.

“Have you decided on your order?”

The very first thing that caught Sybilla’s and Thea’s attention was the ash-pink-haired waitress serving her customers with an adorably cherubic smile. Without exception, every customer she waited on walked away with a happy smile.

“Chef, table two’s gonna have a chickpea salad with no pepper, a garlic toast, a large sirloin pasta, and they asked to get their free coffee once they’re done with their entrees. Also, table four and table twenty-two still need their tomato soup and their cheesecake.”

Not only was she reciting off long orders in a single go, she’d even memorized what each of her tables had ordered and how long they’d been waiting for it.

On top of that—

“Manager, I fixed the tap that wasn’t working right.”

—she helped out behind the scenes when there weren’t many customers to wait on—

“I used my special sprayer to clean up the graffiti in the bathroom.”

—used her inventions to great effect—

“Hello there, mister, welcome back. I didn’t see you come in yesterday. Would you like the usual?”

—and remembered the faces of every person who came in the door.

““……………………””

Annette was the very model of a perfect part-time waitress. Her customers watched her go like they were gazing at their own daughter, and many of them quietly slipped her tips. They couldn’t help but want to give her a little spending money. Once they were done paying their tabs, they left the restaurant with big smiles. “Feels like the place has gotten fifty percent more crowded since she started working there,” one customer remarked as their group passed by Sybilla and Thea.

For the two girls, the sight defied everything they knew about the nature of reality. They knew that if they kept watching, their minds would shatter.

They raced home as quickly as their legs would carry them. ““WE NEED TO SPEAK TO HER GUARDIAAAAAN!”” they shouted, rushing over to a specific individual.

“Eek! Wh-what’s wrong?”

That person was “Meadow” Sara, a girl with timid eyes like those of a woodland creature peeking out from beneath brown hair. When it came to dealing with Annette, she was the best person to go to.

At the moment, Sara was feeding her pets over in the animal shed beside Heat Haze Palace. She’d been busy remodeling the shed for the past few days, so she hadn’t been taking part in the mission.

“D-did something happen? What’s going on?” Sara asked with her eyes wide.

Sybilla cut right to the chase. “Four people have been reduced to bluhhhhhhhhs.”

“What does that even mean?!”

“It was a close call. We almost ended up as bluhhhhhhhhs, too.”

“Is there some sort of new infection going around?!”

Sara pressed them for a more specific explanation, so Sybilla and Thea told her about what it was they’d just witnessed—the bizarre fact that Annette had risen to the occasion and was doing an outstanding job at her restaurant gig.

“Ah, I see,” Sara replied with a nod once they were done laying it all out. “That’s well within Miss Annette’s capabilities, you know.”

Sybilla cocked her head in puzzlement. “Huh? Whaddaya mean?”

“Hmm…,” Sara said, pausing for a moment. “…It’s a little hard to explain, but it’s really just a matter of how motivated she is.”

“How so?”

“She’s bursting with potential, really. Her memory is excellent, she’s good with her hands, and she’s an expert at dealing with machines. She just doesn’t put those talents to use very often, that’s all.”

In other words, the situation was this: Annette was incredibly talented, possessing both smarts and flexibility in spades. However, the problem was in her disposition and in the fact that she lacked any strong motivation when it came to being a spy. Furthermore, she had no particular desire to better her station in life. As a result, all her competence simply remained dormant, and she turned it to bear only on things that caught her attention.

Thea and Sybilla clutched at their heads.

“So all that talent is just wasted on her…”

“And she’s choosing to use it on her waitressing job…”

Sara smiled, perhaps not realizing the full depths of their exasperation. “You know that if you know how to ask, she does housework just fine, right? She has a thing about her height, so she loves it when you give her dairy products as a reward.”

“Ah, that’s right,” Thea said. “She did seem kind of torn up about how she wasn’t getting taller…”

“Isn’t it adorable?” Sara said delightedly. “I’m planning on heading to the restaurant myself later.”

“…Pretty sure you’re the only one who sees it that way,” Sybilla quipped with a sigh.

Sara wasn’t sure what to make of that. “…?”

The fact of the matter was, Sara the rearing specialist was far more talented than she gave herself credit for.

That evening, Sybilla and Thea went back to the restaurant with Sara in tow and munched on shrimp fritters as they observed the hardworking staff.

No matter how long they watched, Annette’s waitressing remained unimpeachable. She memorized her tables’ orders down to the word and relayed them to the kitchen, then confirmed them with the chef. She was practically carrying the restaurant on her back. Plus, the customers loved her as well, and by the looks of it, she had a huge number of fans among their ranks. When they chatted with her, she always gave them big, innocent smiles. She was probably responsible for a fair bit of the eatery’s foot traffic.

The sight still felt utterly unreal, but after having heard Sara’s explanation, Sybilla and Thea were at least able to maintain their sanity.

“I gotta say, this was a shocker. I never knew Annette had it in her,” Sybilla said as she chowed down on some cheesecake.

Thea took a sip of her raspberry juice and nodded. “Neither did I. It makes me realize just how shallow I’ve been.”

“I guess we all misjudged her, huh.”

“That we did.”

As they spoke, Annette came over. “Here’s your check,” she said, not letting on in the slightest that she knew them. She was even doing a perfect job staying undercover.

When she left, Sybilla and Thea watched her walk away. By that point, their evaluation was one of utmost praise.

Then one of the other customers called her over. “You there,” a man wearing red-rimmed glasses shouted. He was sitting alone and unhappily drinking some rum. There was something decidedly pompous about him.

Annette turned toward him and smiled. “What can I help you with?”

The moment she did, the man dashed his rum against her face.

Sybilla’s eyes went wide. “Wh—?”

“This glass is dirty,” the man said, showing Annette the cup in question with a sullen expression. “Get me a new one.”

“………”

Drops of rum dripped from Annette’s hair as she stood there in a daze.

“That four-eyed piece of shit!” Sybilla rose to her feet. “That’s no reason to dump it out on her.” She started heading over to give the man a piece of her mind, but Thea grabbed her arm. “Hold on, Sybilla. Let’s have some faith in Annette.”

“But, like…”

The two of them observed the explosive situation before them with Annette and the man both staring at each other.

“………”

“………”

The tension in the air was palpable. The man’s domineering gaze was fixed straight on Annette, and Annette was frozen with a smile still plastered on her face.

The first one to blink was Annette. “…I’ll get you that replacement right away. We’re terribly sorry for the inconvenience.”

With a modest bow, she headed to the back of the restaurant.

The man scoffed and curtly righted his posture. The other customers glared at him. “There was no need to bully her,” they tutted.

By the look of things, the incident was resolved.

“Damn, she even knows how to handle problem customers,” Sybilla said with a sigh of relief.

“That’s just a sad reality of the service industry,” Thea remarked. “No matter how excellently you do your job, there’s really just no pleasing some people.”

“Still, I’m impressed she was able to be so professional about it. I woulda just punched the fucker.”

Before long, Annette returned to the dining area and very admirably brought the rude man a fresh glass of rum.

“Question is, why’s she want money so bad?” Sybilla asked out of the blue. “Hey, Sara, have you heard anything on that front?”

“Wh-who, me?” Sara said, looking up with a start from the parfait she was stuffing her cheeks with. “A-actually, now that you mention it, she asked my advice the other day… She wanted to know what kind of present Teach might like.”

“Wait, so she wants to buy him a gift?” Sybilla looked back over at Annette. “Never thought that’d be why she was workin’ her ass off…”

“What a surprise,” Thea remarked. “I’m learning all sorts of things about her today.”

The drops of sweat beading up on Annette’s brow as she scurried around the restaurant served as beautiful proof of how diligently she was working.

“…Also, is it just me, or are the lookouts not gettin’ stuff done for shit?”

In contrast, the two people who’d been assigned to look after Annette were in sorry shape.

“Goddamn it, you silver-haired dunce! You got our order wrong again!”

Tears welled up in Lily’s eyes as her customers berated her. “Eeeek! I’m sorry!”

“Manager, the blond kid went and tripped again!”

A scream rose up from the kitchen and, moaning “How unlucky…,” Erna collapsed onto the floor.

Between Lily’s clumsiness and Erna’s penchant for misfortune, you couldn’t have picked a worse pair of waitresses if you tried.

Meanwhile, the rest of the mission was proceeding apace.

“I completely forgot about the actual point of this,” admitted Thea.

The fact of the matter was, the waitressing job was simply one element of the infiltration mission. The primary objective was to look into the restaurant’s legitimacy, a fact that had slipped the entire team’s minds. Upon remembering what their job was, they got to work and started their investigation. During the day, they split into the employee team and the regular customers team and kept a watchful eye on the shop, and once night fell, they gathered in the main hall and took turns listing out anything they noticed that seemed sketchy.

That night, Erna was the first to raise her hand during the debriefing. “The one suspicious thing I’ve noticed is how hard it’s been lately to get my body to do what I want. I tripped a whole lot today.”

The others all chose to ignore that particular comment. Erna being beset by misfortune was pretty much par for the course.

“Suspicious stuff, huh?” Lily was the next to speak up. “Well, someone covered the bathroom in graffiti again. And Annette just cleaned the last set off, too.”

Now that was notable. “I’ve got it all memorized, yo,” Annette chimed in. She wrote down a list of the aforementioned scribblings. All the phrases seemed kind of similar. “Hardened Tower.” “Dangling Hero.” “My Long-Range-Missile Cannon.” “Bulging Doohickey.”

Lily tilted her head to the side. “Hmm, what a mysterious bunch of words.” She stared at the list and crossed her arms. “‘Hardened Tower,’ ‘Dangling Hero’… Could they be some sort of religious symbols? And the long-range-missile cannon and the bulging doohickey could be some sort of top secret weapons they’re—”

“It’s slang,” Thea informed her. “They’re all referring to male genitals.”

Lily went beet-red. “And you waited until I said them all out LOUD to tell me that?!”

Many of the restaurant’s patrons were male longshoremen, and dirty jokes and comments about sex work were common topics of conversation. It was no surprise that a shop like that would end up with graffiti…

…but what was odd was that so much of it had shown up immediately after the last batch got erased.

“Could it be some sort of code?” Thea suggested.

The regular customer team promptly got to work.

Together, Thea, Sybilla, and Sara made frequent stops at the restaurant to try to figure out when the code was being written. Posing as customers, they enjoyed some pasta and strained their ears to eavesdrop on the other patrons’ conversations.

Sara, who’d snuck her puppy in under her newsboy cap, was the first to produce results.

“I found this in one of the toilet’s tanks.”

Thanks to her puppy’s nose, she’d managed to locate a bag full of dried cannabis. Weed was illegal in the Republic, meaning that their hunch about the bathroom being suspicious had been right on the money.

“Put the bag back where you found it,” Thea instructed her, “but before you do, hide a transmitter in it.”

Sara nodded and did just that.

An hour later, Thea’s radio buzzed.

“I tracked down the guy who took the bag, so I picked him up and interrogated him.” It was a report from Monika. “Like we thought, they’re using the bathroom to make drug deals. On the weekend, they write the amount they’ve got and the price on the door, and the buyers graffiti how much they want and leave behind the money. A ‘hardened tower’ is one bag, a ‘dangling hero’ is two bags… You get the idea. Later, someone comes and stashes the pot inside the toilet tanks.”

“Splendid work. Did he see your face?”

“’Course not. I’ve got a master of disguise with me.”

She was referring to Grete, no doubt. The two of them must have captured the suspect as a team.

“Now, just for the record, is there really no way I can talk you into coming to the restau—?”

“No can do. Brain’ll break.”

The line went dead. The fear had been etched deep within them.

In any case, though, the girls had the necessary intel. What they needed to keep an eye out for was someone who used the bathroom a lot. If they found that, then they’d have their dealer.

“H-how are we going to proceed from here?” Sara asked with a tilt of the head. “I feel like this next part is going to be really—”

“There are two patrons I’m suspicious of, Sybilla,” Thea declared. “I’ll handle the man on the patio. You’re in charge of the man by the wall.”

Sybilla flashed her a dauntless smile. “On it.”

As the two of them left their seats in unison, their lips twitched ever so slightly.

“I’m code name Pandemonium—and it’s time I cleaned ’im out.”

“I’m code name Dreamspeaker—and it’s time to lure them to their ruin.”

They moved through the restaurant as smoothly as flowing water, and before so much as a single minute had passed, they’d both returned to their table.

“No dice,” Sybilla said with a shrug. “I went through his bag, but there was nothin’ in it. He’s not our guy.”

“Same here.” Thea fiddled with her hair. “I leaned against him and gazed into his heart, but I didn’t sense any dastardly desires.”

Sara stared in awe at the two girls who’d finished their investigations in the blink of an eye. “Th-that was incredible…”

With that, they were now certain that the dealer wasn’t one of the patrons. Whoever it was who was planting the weed in the toilets, it had to be someone else.

Sybilla glared over at the kitchen. “It’s the staff we need to be focusin’ on.”

Next up, it was the employee team’s turn.

At the time, Lily was making a cocktail. As it turned out, she was surprisingly adept at anything that involved mixing things together.

Erna, who was washing dishes beside her, let out a yelp. “A mouse!”

Sure enough, a little mouse scurried past their feet. That wasn’t an uncommon occurrence in and of itself, but Lily quickly noticed something unusual. With a “whoop,” she caught it and quickly released it. When she did, the mouse fled out the window.

That had been one of Sara’s pets, and it had had a letter strapped to its body.

Lily scanned over the encoded message, which contained the results of the regular customer team’s investigation. Now it was their time to shine.

“Sorry, Manager,” Lily said, “but could we take our breaks now?”

The middle-aged woman glared at her. “No.”

“What…?”

“You can take breaks after you’ve learned to do your actual jobs properly!”

“Whaaaaat?”

“Don’t give me that! Do you have any idea how many plates you’ve broken between the two of you?!”

Lily floundered, but looking at the downward slant of her manager’s eyebrows, she could sense that pressing the issue wasn’t going to be an option.

Right then, Annette returned from the dining area. “Manager, the floor’s pretty dead right now, so I’m gonna go double-check our inventory!”

Just like that, the manager’s expression softened. “My, what a lovely idea. Go ahead and take these two to help you.”

“Yes, ma’am! On it!” Annette chirped.

“Th-the way she treats us, it’s like night and day…,” grumbled Lily.

Led by Annette, who’d become the employee team’s anchor, the girls headed into the storehouse out back. It was a building about the size of a small house. That was where the restaurant kept their spare cookware and the ingredients their suppliers brought them each morning. On top of that, it was also where the employees stored their personal effects.

“All right, gang, let’s go through everyone’s stuff,” Lily cheered. “I bet we’ll find the permanent marker for the graffiti in there.”

“Yeah!” Erna agreed as the two of them began rifling through the bags.

Annette cocked her head in puzzlement. “Huh? I just wanted to check the inventory, yo.”

“How are you so diligent all of a sudden?!”

Immediately after cracking a joke about Annette’s priorities, Lily chanced upon a strange locker. Its bottom was ever so slightly loose. When she dug around, she found loads and loads of cannabis packed beneath it. “Jackpot!” she cried before checking the name on the locker. Whoever it was who owned the locker, that was the dealer they were looking for.

Over by the storehouse’s entrance, Erna let out a scream. “Yeep?”

Lily whirled around and saw a young man standing there looking as pale as a sheet. “Y-you…f-found it…?”

It was one of the chefs—a colleague of theirs who worked in the kitchen, who’d helped show them the ropes and who always had the gentlest look on his face. He was the one who owned the locker in which they’d found the drugs.

In his hand, he was clutching a butcher’s knife.

“I-I’m done for… You’re going to r-report the weed to the police, aren’t you? Y-you’re going to t-tell them that I’ve been dealing…” His voice was trembling so terribly, they almost felt bad for him. “I—I—I have to kill you… I’m so sorry about this… I’ll make sure it doesn’t hurt…”

The man was desperate. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he pointed his knife at the girls. He looked liable to charge at any moment.

“C-c’mon, take it easy,” Lily said, trying to talk him down. “If you kill us, that’ll make your crime so much more serious! If you turn yourself in, you might be able to get a suspended sentence.”

“Qu-quit lying. I-I-I’m not gonna let you trick me just because you want to live…”

“I’m telling you the truth, though. Please, you have to listen to me.”

“Unghhhhh… G-g-gotta kill you… I—I have to k-kill you…”

He didn’t seem to be in a listening sort of mood. Lily bit down on her lip.

Well, this is a problem. I’m a little short on weapons at the moment…

She wasn’t about to lose to some civilian. Academy washout or not, she had trained for this exact kind of thing. She was sure she could take him if push came to shove—

The thing is, people get unpredictable when they start panicking…

—but she ran the risk of walking away with an unforeseen injury.

Lily was at her waitressing job at the moment, so she didn’t have a gun or any knives on her. All she had for self-defense was a single poison needle, and she was going to have to fight while simultaneously protecting Erna and Annette.

What to do; what to do?

The situation reached its conclusion at the last moment anyone would have expected. While Erna was inching backward, her foot got caught on something. “Yeep!” she yelped as she lost her balance and crashed into the nearby shelf. When she did, the force of the impact unseated the wooden crate full of ingredients sitting atop it.

“Wh—?”

Erna and the young man stared aghast as a wooden crate and a deluge of onions came tumbling down on them. What’s more, the shock caused a chain reaction, and more and more crates began falling on them as well.

Once all the crates had finished crashing down, a silence descended upon the storehouse.

“………”

Lily was struck speechless at what she’d just witnessed.

“Ooh,” Annette said, her eye gleaming with delight. “Yo, is Erna dead?”

“I’m not dead!” Erna’s head popped out of the pile of vegetables. “See, I told you it’s been hard to get my body to move right lately,” she moaned pitifully. Not a moment later, one last onion came and conked her on the head. “…How unlucky,” she said as she went limp.

Beside her, the young man had collapsed face down as well. He’d been caught smack-dab in the middle of the disaster.

Lily quickly went over and snatched away his knife. Now he posed no more threat to their lives.

“N-nooooooooooooooo,” the youth wailed bitterly upon losing his weapon. He curled up into a ball and began weeping in resignation. “I just needed some money…,” he mumbled. “Ma couldn’t pay for her surgery… Then someone told me that all I had to do was deal weed, and it wasn’t like I could say no, so I applied for a job at this restaurant…”

Lily immediately picked up on what had happened. The man had been targeted by a foreign spy who saw that he was in a bind and used him to finance their covert activities. “Do you know who put you up to this?” she asked.

The young man shook his head. “I—I have no idea. We only ever communicated on the phone or with letters…” In short, he was nothing more than a pawn destined to take the fall. “I’m done for…”

“………”

Lily knew that the guy had a good heart. Despite her and Erna’s constant screwups, he’d often treated them to sumptuous meals, and when they were closing up shop together, he always talked warmly about his mother.

“Still, there are some lines you just can’t cross.”

There was nothing else to say. It pained her, but the fact remained that he’d broken the law. She had no choice but to turn him in to the authorities. He would probably be able to get it knocked down to a misdemeanor, but even that would have a serious impact on the course the rest of his life took.

Annette stared at the man with a contemplative look in her eye. “…I just learned a whole lot.”

“Hmm? What about?”

“Making money is hard work, yo.”

With that, she turned and went back to the restaurant.

In the end, they turned the young man in to the police. The restaurant had to close down for the day, and Annette and the others earned high praise from their manager for finding proof of the marijuana trafficking that had been running rampant there. It was Erna’s misfortune that ended up coming in clutch. In addition to letting them catch their foe without anyone getting hurt, it meant that none of the other employees had any reason to suspect the girls’ true nature. Any poison or bombs Lily or Annette had tried to use would have left behind evidence that would have been difficult to explain away.

That evening, the girls assembled in the main hall and shared their final debriefing.

“In other words, here’s where we stand,” Thea said, clapping her hands together as she summed it all up. “Not everything that happened left a good taste in our mouths, but the investigation is finished. We completed the mission!”

The others cheered. They’d carried out their duty with flying colors. Not only had they discovered that there was still drug trafficking going on at the restaurant, but they’d even caught the perpetrator. Now their work was finished.

“Yeah, but, like,” Sybilla said, crossing her arms, “we never managed to root out the enemy spy. Feels like we left things half-cocked.”

Monika agreed. “Yeah, that wasn’t cathartic at all. The real villain just took advantage of someone’s weakness and spent the whole time safely hidden away. It makes me sick.”

With that, the girls started arguing about the mastermind behind the incident. Whoever they were, they’d raked in the dough by taking advantage of a naive young man and pushing drugs out into the city. Now they were doubtless going to use that money to fund Imperial covert activities. What they’d done was abominable, and yet…

“I understand how you feel, but this is the point where we need to pull out,” Thea replied. “From here onward, it’s another team’s job to handle. They’ll put a specialist unit on it in no time, so let’s just trust our fellow operatives. Our work here is done.”

“…Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Sybilla said with a satisfied grin.

Beside her, Lily puffed herself up with pride. “Dang, that was easy as pie! By day, she’s an adorable waitress, but by night, she’s a secret agent who cracks down on dope peddlers! There goes Lily, the Republic’s greatest asset!”

“You sound even more full of yourself than usual,” Sybilla remarked.

“Yeah,” Erna agreed. “It hurts to admit, but this time around, she was our star player.”

At that, all the girls’ gazes gathered on one person.

“Wait, yo, are you talking about me?” Annette asked as she stuffed her face with leftover cake from the restaurant. She tilted her head in befuddlement.

She was, without a doubt, the mission’s MVP. Setting aside the mental damage she had caused to some of her teammates, Annette had more than pulled her weight in several regards. Without her, they never could have achieved the rousing success that they did.

“I’m sorry. I misjudged you.” Thea gave her a smile. “You’re a fantastic spy. I think we’re all a little bit jealous of how talented you are.”

Annette’s eyes went wide in astonishment.

Seeing her reaction brought warmth to the hearts of each and every one of her teammates.

Thanks to Annette’s valiant efforts, the mission ended in success.

That evening, the girls encoded their reports and sent them over to the Foreign Intelligence Office headquarters. Then, after a slightly extravagant victory banquet, they peacefully went to bed.

That night, the girls slept soundly, swaddled in the pleasant feeling of a job well done.

So soundly, in fact, that they didn’t notice one of their members quietly sneaking out of the manor.

The thing was, they didn’t know about the girl’s other side.

The girl hummed herself a little song.

The way she was happily skipping down the night-covered street, it was like she was a kid looking forward to Christmas. And the girl was, in fact, in an excellent mood. She’d finished her job just the way she drew it up, and it wouldn’t be long before her wages came in. She didn’t really know what had been happening with the spy mission stuff, but apparently, that had gone well, too. Plus, her teammates had even complimented her. Her heart was full to brimming with positive emotions, and her step had a definite spring in it. She didn’t have a single bit of apprehension about what it was she was about to do.

It was two AM, and the city was fast asleep. The girl continued down a quiet alleyway lined with residential buildings. There was nobody else around, and the only thing lighting up the darkness was a single dim streetlight.

The girl came to a stop just before the light. Then she posed as though standing at attention and went still.

The streetlight flickered. Click, click, click, the white light blinked. Each time it flashed, it illuminated the girl’s visage against the gloom. There was a smile etched upon her face.

A good long while passed, and the girl stood frozen at attention for all of it.

Then a man came walking down the other end of the alleyway. He was wearing a suit and a pair of red-rimmed glasses. There was something a little petty about the way he carried himself, and given his faintly flushed cheeks, he’d clearly been drinking.

“Huh, that streetlight’s practically dead. Looks like the government’s been dragging its feet on that one,” the man muttered in annoyance as he continued down the lane. “This country is such a joke, it really… Huh?”

Then he came to a stop. When he saw the girl standing before him, his expression froze for a moment. However, he soon regained his composure and clicked his tongue. “What’s this, then? I was wondering who you might be, but it turns out you’re just the waitress from before. I thought you were a ghost or something. So? What’s a girl like you doing out this late?”

“………”

“What, are you mad about that rum I threw at you? Maybe you brought one of your tough-guy friends along?”

“………”

“I mean, no matter who you bring, it’s not like they can actually beat me or anything.”

“………”

“Hey, are you ever planning on talking?”

Despite the man’s question, the girl said nothing. Instead, she lifted her skirt a bit and gave it a shake. A folding umbrella toppled out and landed by her feet. She picked it up and popped it open.

“What, you going to hit me with that?”

“………”

The girl stood motionless with her umbrella splayed.

The streetlight kept on flickering and click-click-clicking at regular intervals right above the man’s head.

“If you want to come at me, then by all means, be my guest. I’ll put you on the ground before you can even blink.”

“………”

Click, click. The flickering continued.

“Luckily, no one’s around, and I’m pissed off. Maybe I’ll use that body of yours to blow off some steam.”

“………”

Click, click, click. The flickering continued.

“Look, I’ve got my reasons. I’m mad because you erased that graffiti. I needed that to keep the cash flowing.”

“………”

Click-click-click-click-click-click-click. The streetlight started flickering even more rapidly.

“This is what you get for ruining my mood. Now, let’s get you out of those clothes. This might come as a surprise, but girls like you are just my type—”

The streetlight exploded.

The bulb shattered, causing glass to cascade down on the man like a shower, ripping his clothes and slicing his skin and lodging into his flesh. After the hail of glass, the heat from the explosion seared his skin.

Thanks to her umbrella, the girl emerged unscathed. It must have been made from some special material, as it shrugged off the glass like it was nothing.

“Rgh… You little shit…”

As blood gushed from his body, the man finally realized what was happening. In truth, the girl standing before him was…

“You’re in the same business as I am! Dammit, if I could only see…” Some of the glass had gotten into the man’s eyes. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a gun, but with his vision obstructed, he couldn’t draw a decent bead on her. His bullets flew off in random directions. “…Why?” He clicked his tongue. “Look, I get the idea! The only time we ran into each other was the restaurant. You must have stuck a tracking device on me, watched where I went, and became certain I was a spy! But it doesn’t make sense. I didn’t do anything suspicious back there! I wouldn’t make that kind of rookie mistake!” he shouted with his vision full of darkness and his heart full of fear. “How did you know to put that tracker on me?!”

At long last, the girl spoke. “I did it…”

“Hmm?”

“…because you annoyed me, yo.”

The man gasped. “What?” He crumpled to his knees as though all the strength had drained from his legs. “You planted the tracker…because you were mad I threw my booze at you? You’re saying that it had nothing to do with me being a spy?”

“………”

“So, what, you plant trackers on all your problem customers so you’ll be able to kill them whenever it suits you?”

“………”

“That’s deranged… You’re deranged! Everything about you is messed up!”

The girl gave her skirt another shake, and a new tool fell onto the ground. The man couldn’t see it, but it was a stun gun that had been modified to produce many times its original voltage.

“Where are you? Where’d you go?!”

The girl quietly circled behind the terrified man and raised her stun gun to the nape of his neck as undetectably as could be. She gave off no hostility. But then again, of course she didn’t. For her to give off hostility, she would have needed to care about whether he lived or died.

Tears rolled down the man’s cheeks as he felt his death approaching.

Then, right as the stun gun brushed against his neck—

“That’s enough.”

—Klaus appeared out of nowhere and grabbed the girl’s arm. The stun gun toppled from her hand, and the man passed out from sheer fright.

Klaus sighed. “…Well, this is certainly something. What do your two lookouts think they’re doing?”

The girl said nothing. “………”

Klaus gave her a gentle look. “…I hesitate to ask, but are you doing this to protect the restaurant?”

“Yup. The place had to close down for the day because of him,” the girl replied cheerily.

Klaus spent a good long time trying to figure out what to say to that, but eventually, he settled on sighing again. “Just so you know, eliminating problem customers isn’t included in the waitress job description.”

The girl’s eyes went wide. “I had no idea, yo.”

Not even Klaus could guess whether she was telling the truth or not.

A week later, Lily held up an envelope in the Heat Haze Palace main hall with a wide grin on her face. “My wages from that restaurant gig came in! Yippee! All my hard work is finally paying off.”

It was a comparatively paltry sum compared to the completion bonuses they got for their spy missions, but there was something uniquely satisfying about getting the money they’d earned from waitressing. There was even a little extra added in as a sort of severance payment.

“Yeep!” Erna cried loudly from beside her. “I finally get it!”

“What’s up?” Sybilla asked.

To which Erna happily replied, “I figured out why I’ve been tripping so much!”

“Hmm? Oh yeah, you did fall over a lot while you were working…”

“It’s because I got taller! That’s why it’s been so hard to make my body move right. My clothes were too tight on me.” Erna stood on her tiptoes as though to emphasize the way she’d grown. Now that she mentioned it, she was a bit taller. The fact she hadn’t noticed and had been wearing clothes a size too small had made it hard for her to move around. “I’m finally hitting my growth spurt,” she declared as she struck a triumphant pose.

The others gave her a round of applause. “Congrats!” There was a hint of melancholy to the news, as they did love to dote on their petite friend, but given how happy she looked, it seemed only proper to rejoice. A celebratory mood filled the room.

However, it didn’t last long.

Moments later, a mechanical VRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR buzzed out.

The girls exchanged confused looks. “Huh?”

The noise was coming from Annette’s room, and they quickly made their way over. In the hallway, they ran into Klaus, who looked just as puzzled, and all of Lamplight headed to Annette’s room together.

Annette always left her door open, so all they had to do was approach it to get a clear view inside. Enshrined at the room’s center, there was a large chair with a machine spinning an oversize metal file affixed to its top. Its design resembled that of an electric chair, and it was replete with straps to restrain whoever was sitting in it.

“I spent the money I earned to put the finishing touches on it, yo,” Annette said as she hopped up and down in the middle of the room. “I call it the Erna Shaving Apparatus! I’m gonna use it to file down her skull!”

““““““““……………””””””””

The entire team was left speechless.

As they stood there, Annette whirled around. “Oh, hey, Bro.” She produced a knife from within her skirt and handed it to Klaus. “I got you a present, yo.”

“Can I ask why?”

“It’s a bribe. I’m gonna need you to pretend this never happened.”

“………”

Not even the mighty Klaus could come up with anything to say to that.

Annette then turned her gaze on Erna, who was trembling at the back of the group. “C’mon over, Erna! We’re gonna use my machine to take off that new height of yours!”

“I—I don’t think she’s joking!” Erna yelped.

“Don’t worry. All I want is to bring you back to my level! Three-quarters of an inch, that’s all!” That would be more than enough to prove lethal, and Erna screamed and fled. Annette brandished her weapons and gave chase. “Get back here! You aren’t allowed to leave me behind and have a growth spurt all on your own!”

“How is this supposed to be at all fair?!”

“Prepare yourself. This is what I decided to earn all that money for, yo.”

The two girls ran out of the room at top speed, and the remaining members all sighed in unison.

As it turned out, there was no need for them to revise their assessments after all.

Sure enough, “Forgetter” Annette was the biggest problem child in Lamplight.