Spy Classroom - Volume SS2 - Chapter 3.1

Chapter 3

Erna’s Case

The facts about the Eccletnuk luxury liner were as follows.

The Eccletnuk was a passenger ship registered with the Din Republic. It was built shortly after the Great War based on designs from the Bumal Kingdom. At 850 feet from bow to stern, with a top speed of twenty-three knots, and the ability to carry more than two thousand passengers at once, it was one of the finest ships in all the Republic. It could make the trip from Din to Mitario in the United States of Mouzaia in a single week, and with its crew numbering almost a thousand strong, each voyage it made was like moving an entire town across the ocean.

As far as the ship’s interior went, it was furnished with all sorts of things to keep its passengers from getting bored on long trips across the sea. It had facilities ranging from pool tables and a reading room to an entire dance hall, and its state-of-the-art galley offered everything from fresh-baked bread to gourmet food from around the world.

The ship’s one flaw was the steep price of its tickets, but thanks to the extensive newspaper ad campaign the operating company ran, they were always drowning in reservations. The middle class had carved out some financial leeway in the decade since the Great War’s end, and they were more than happy to enjoy spending their money seeing the globe while the world was still at peace. Whenever the Eccletnuk set out on one of its monthly voyages, it was always booked to capacity.

It was the sunniest departure day the ship had seen in several years, and on board, it had a number of peculiar passengers—namely, one man and eight girls. Now, their origins were as disparate as could be. Three of them worked for a furniture company, one was an aspiring jazz musician, one was a college student, another was an apprentice journalist, and the final three were a group of students off to visit a relative of theirs who lived in Mitario.

At a glance, the group appeared to have nothing in common. They were strangers, nothing more. They were staying in different cabins, they never chitchatted in the restaurant or the reading room, and they spent their afternoons separately studying languages or working out in the onboard gym. They didn’t give a single sign that they knew one another. When they passed each other by, though, they occasionally exchanged glances so furtively that no one around them noticed. Then, when night fell and the majority of passengers were asleep, they crept silently through the hallways and gathered in one of their rooms.

On the second day of the voyage, the whole group save the man joined up once more in one of the guest cabins. Under the cover of night, the eight of them sat in a circle on the cramped room’s floor. Then they all crossed their arms with serious looks on their faces. The air crackled with tension.

In the center of the room, there were five decks of playing cards.

A well-endowed girl with silver hair thrust her finger at the ceiling and shouted at the top of her lungs. “Let the first Mitario Concentration Quiz…begin!”

“““““““Yeahhhhh!!”””””””

The fact of the matter was, the group was Lamplight—a spy team heading to the site where a decisive showdown awaited them.

The big battle was finally upon them, and the girls were en route to Mitario. After finishing up their domestic missions, getting themselves prepared, and honing their teamwork, the girls left their motherland and set out for Serpent’s hideout in the United States of Mouzaia.

They knew there was a fierce foe waiting for them just around the corner, and they made sure not to slack off on the journey there. Being on a ship didn’t change the fact that they’d left their own borders, and they’d already boarded with false passports and begun using different backstories. As spies, they couldn’t afford to arouse suspicion. They needed to act with the utmost discretion.

On top of that, it was also important that they spend what little time they had left training. It was undeniable that their skills were, at best, lacking, so spending the weeklong voyage lazing around wasn’t an option. They needed to stock up on whatever intel they could about their mission site, they needed to work out their bodies, and they needed to train in whatever ways they could aboard the ship.

However, that wasn’t to say that they couldn’t have a little fun in the process.

First place: Monika and Erna—108 cards

Second place: Lily and Thea—82 cards

Third place: Grete and Sara—68 cards

Fourth place: Annette and Sybilla—2 cards

“I never want to team up with you again, Sis!”

“No, yeah, that was totally my bad. Seriously, I fucked up. I’ll buy you some ice cream from the kiosk to make it up to you, okay?”

As Annette pouted, Sybilla pressed her hands together and apologetically bowed over and over. They’d been playing a special variant of concentration in pairs, where some of the cards had questions about the laws and culture of their mission site and other cards had those questions’ answers. It was a game that tested both memory and judgment, and they’d split into teams by lottery and alternated drawing cards. At that point, it became evident that Sybilla couldn’t even read the language the questions were written in. She’d been reduced to having to play while holding a dictionary in one hand, and not even Annette’s exceptional memory had been enough to overcome her dead weight.

Monika was still giving her a scathing look. “What kind of spy doesn’t even learn the language of the nation they’re gonna be working in? You think this is some kind of joke?”

“N-nah, it’s not like that,” Sybilla said, scratching her head in embarrassment. “I’ve just been focusin’ on my aim and my CQC and my stealth lately, y’know? Hell, you were right there trainin’ with me.”

“Yeah, ’cause I assumed you at least knew the damn language!”

“It’s fine—it’s not like I can’t hold a conversation. I’m just not great when it comes to readin’ and writin’, that’s all…”

“Isn’t your cover supposed to be that you’re a journalist?”

“I’m gonna make a machine that pumps her full of electricity to help her learn the language, yo.”

“That seems like a bridge too far!”

As Monika and Annette read Sybilla the riot act, another girl walked past them with a triumphant look on her face—namely, Erna, who’d won the concentration tournament alongside Monika.

I did it! I was able to pull my weight.

Getting to team up with someone as talented as Monika had played an enormous part in her victory, of course, but Erna had done her part contributing to the win as well. Thoroughly pleased with herself, she headed out into the ship’s hallway to buy herself a treat as a reward for a job well done.

During her time aboard the Eccletnuk luxury liner, Erna was going to end up bringing about a miracle.

At the time, though, she had no way of knowing that yet.

Erna drank her hot cocoa in the ship’s reading room and took a breather.

It was past midnight, but despite the late hour, it was still pretty crowded in there. Of the dozens of soft leather sofas that sat atop the room’s carpet, more than half of them were occupied. The ship’s sheer extravagance had people too excited to sleep. For some of them, this trip was going to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. There were people chatting excitedly as they pored over travel guides with beers in hand. The one thing they all had in common was the delighted looks on their faces.

Erna, in contrast, was just about ready to doze off.

Normally, she would have long since gone to sleep by that hour. Much as she wanted to curl up in bed, though, Monika, Annette, and Sybilla were still arguing in her cabin. She figured that the best thing to do would be to nestle herself into one of the reading room’s nooks and kill some time drinking cocoa.

I’m exhausted. It feels like I’ve been training all the time lately.

She let out a heavy sigh as the cocoa’s soft sweetness filled her mouth. She’d been even more driven than usual, what with their big mission coming up, and she’d started cutting into her own sleep time. Doing that put quite a strain on her body, and things were only going to get rougher once the mission started in earnest.

However, there was a good reason why she’d been driving herself to such lengths: Erna was an academy washout. She wasn’t good at communicating with others, and she had a shy streak a mile long. It went without saying that spy missions often required interpersonal skills, and that was an area in which Erna was sorely lacking. She got good grades on her written exams, but she had never been able to put up results on her field exams, and whenever there were situations that required coordinating with others, she inevitably held her partners back.

That was why, when she was training with Lamplight, she put extra effort into improving her teamwork. She tried her utmost to think of ways she could use her unique predisposition—her penchant for misfortune—to benefit the others, and she took proactive steps to consult with her teammates Annette and Sara.

Now her labor had finally borne fruit.

I really pushed myself, though, so I’m kind of sleepy…

It was the good kind of tired, the tired that came from having devoted one’s all to their training. She sank deep into the sofa, and just as she was starting to nod off—

“Oh, I just can’t. Why did I ever think I could pull this off?!”

—she heard a woman’s voice coming from right nearby.

“No way, no how. It doesn’t even make sense anymore. I can’t believe it came to this, after all that hard work I did… Oh, wait! I could just run away! Yeah, let’s do that! All I have to do is get out of here!”

It was quite the soliloquy the woman had launched into. She seemed to be lamenting something, and she was in enough of a tizzy that she was voicing every thought that went through her head. The fretfulness in her voice was intense enough to keep Erna from sleeping.

“Yeep…?”

When she opened her eyes and looked over at the sofa beside hers, she discovered that the woman was gone. She must have left.

What was she so worked up about? Erna wondered groggily. Then she spotted the makeup bag sitting on the sofa. “…Oh, did she leave that behind? Huh.”

The woman must have forgotten it when she left.

Erna went and grabbed it with plans to hand it over to one of the crew members. When she did, she discovered that it was oddly heavy. Erna recognized that weight. With a sense of foreboding looming over her, she took a quick peek at its contents.

Inside, there was a gun—a .38 revolver. It was hardly the kind of thing one would expect a civilian to be carrying around.

Something shady was going on.

Alongside the gun, there was a folded-up document written with exceedingly precise handwriting. Its title was as follows:

The Sun Attendant Order’s Plan to Seajack the Eccletnuk

Erna wasted no time in heading over to her boss, Klaus.

Klaus was a tall, beautiful man with long hair. He was so attractive, it was easy to mistake him for a woman. At the moment, he was playing poker in the rec room with some of the other passengers, taking great care neither to win too much nor lose too much as he surrounded himself with members of the upper class and gathered rumors about the mission site.

When Erna shot him the hand sign that signaled that there was an emergency, he immediately realized that danger was afoot. After smoothly excusing himself from the game, he assembled the girls on the passenger deck. The deck had plenty of dark spots at night, making it the perfect place for clandestine activities. The Lamplight members all gathered behind a massive flue.

“This is bad,” Klaus concluded after speed-reading the document Erna had handed him. “This is a large-scale operation they’ve got planned out. If they actually have the heavy arms and personnel this plan suggests they do, they could very well succeed in taking over the ship.”

If that happened, people could die, and what’s more, it might adversely affect Lamplight’s mission.

Grete raised her hand. “I wonder what kind of group this Sun Attendant Order is…”

“This is only my second time hearing of them myself. I knew that they were a new religion, but I had no idea that they’d grown to the point where they had the resources to seize control of an entire luxury liner.” Klaus stared back down at the document. “It doesn’t look like we have much time left. It says here that they’re going to carry their plan out at dawn tomorrow.”

The girls gulped. That meant that the seajacking was a mere five hours away. They needed to thwart it as soon as possible, but all the plan had listed were the personnel and weapon counts and the time it was going to be put into motion. There were supposedly more than a hundred adherents lurking on the ship, but it was unclear which exact passengers were associated with the Sun Attendant Order. There were more than three thousand people on board the ship if you counted the crew, and Lamplight knew next to nothing about the religious order they were up against.

The air filled with tension at the gravity of the situation—

“Don’t you all worry.”

—yet there was one girl who faced their predicament with a smile that practically brimmed with confidence.

Namely, Lily.

“This is just what we needed, right? It’ll be like a warm-up for our actual mission. Let’s go put this thing to bed.”

“She has a point. It’s not like we can just let the situation stand,” Klaus replied with a nod. “This is an emergency mission. I’ll be taking part, too. Our job is to work together, inspect the ship, and put a stop to this seajacking attempt. I want this thing settled quietly, meaning no unnecessary mayhem. Go out and show me how much you’ve grown.”

As soon as he gave the order, the eight girls dispersed. Covertly gathering intel was their bread and butter. Their objective was to capture the ringleader and stop them from carrying out their scheme before the ship descended into chaos. It wasn’t going to be easy, but the girls were undaunted. Klaus’s words echoed within each of their hearts.

It was time for them to demonstrate just how far they’d come.

After all their domestic missions and training, they were about to embark on a big overseas spy operation. Just as Lily had pointed out, this was going to make for the perfect warm-up.

Once they’d divvied up their responsibilities, the girls got to work walking around the ship. When they met up next, it would be after they were done scooping up the necessary intel. As an expert pickpocket, Sybilla swiped a key off one of the crew members and snuck into the staff room. Sara could command a whole menagerie of animals, and she used her dog to try to sniff out any heavy arms she could find. Grete was a master of disguise, so she masqueraded as a crew member and started inspecting the passenger rooms. And Annette used her knack for inventions to plant listening devices disguised as wall piping all across the ship’s hallways.

As for Erna—well, Erna got kidnapped.

This time around, the team split into two main groups as they investigated the seajacking plot.

The first group was led by Klaus.

Of that group, the first person to put up results was the team’s boss, Klaus himself. As he and Lily walked down the hallway past the first-class cabins, he came to an abrupt stop.

It was late at night, and the area was all but empty. The first-class passengers staying on that floor no doubt preferred to enjoy their travels amid relative peace and quiet. The only other person in the oil painting–laden hallway was a single crew member pushing a serving cart full of beer. The man, who looked to be in his mid-thirties, gave Klaus and Lily a bow as he passed them by.

All of a sudden, Klaus reached out and grabbed the man by the neck. “Do you know anything about the seajacking?” he asked in a voice as cold as ice.

The crew member’s eyes went wide. “H-how did you know…?”

“I just did,” Klaus replied bluntly as he tightened his grip.

The man’s face contorted in pain. It would appear that he was a member of the Sun Attendant Order. “O-our bonds are unbreakable. I’ll never talk.”

“I see. And here I was, hoping I wouldn’t have to hurt anyone.”

Klaus reached into his pocket with his free hand and quietly pulled out a knife. It was little more than a threat, of course, but even just that was enough to scare any civilian senseless. The man arched his eyebrows. It looked like he was about to cry. “I—I would never do anything to sully X’s perfect plan…”

“X? Is that who’s behind this?”

“They’re one of the Quadrumvirate the High Priest has placed his full trust in. Threaten me all you like, but that’s the only thing you’ll get out of me. I don’t even know who X is. They’re a brilliant tactician, and they never show themselves around anyone. It’s all thanks to X that we were able to grow as large as we did…!”

After the man choked out the words, Klaus promptly released him. He sank to the floor, and Klaus gave him another cold look before turning to Lily. “Lily, put him to sleep.”

“You got it.”

“Then pass the intel along to the others. The ringleaders we’re looking for are some sort of high priest and an individual called X.”

After apprehending the man and shoving him into a storeroom, Klaus began hunting for the next adherent, and similar scenes played out all across the ship. Slowly but surely, Lamplight was working their way from the outside of the Sun Attendant Order inward.

Meanwhile, Erna carried the makeup case and wandered around the ship.

First things first, I need to look for the lady this belongs to.

Erna never got a clear look at her, but she did remember her voice. She clearly knew what was going on, so finding her would be the fastest way to resolve the situation. Erna knew that if she walked around while carrying the case, it was liable to earn some sort of reaction out of her target, so she held it conspicuously overhead as she wandered.

That was when she sensed misfortune approaching.

She tried to dodge to the side as soon as the intense smell hit her nose. However, it was futile. Five men sprang at her at once from the side of the hallway, and though her outstanding reflexes allowed her to react in time, the ship was too cramped for there to be anywhere for her to actually flee.

The men grabbed her and hoisted her aloft.

“Yeep? YEEEEEP?!” she shrieked, but there was nothing she could do.

Just like that, Erna got kidnapped.

She had no idea what was going on, and the group carried her all the way to the linen room, the area where the ship’s sheets and blankets and the like were stored. Once they got there, they delicately set her down atop a pile of fresh linens. It was soft and pleasant to the touch, and Erna could smell the scent of soap softly lingering on it.

The good news was, it didn’t seem like they were planning on attacking her.

The five men clad in their gray jackets lined up in front of her. “We apologize for the rudeness. We would have been a bit too conspicuous out there.”

“……?”

“You have the exact case you told us you would… Ah, it’s such an honor to finally meet you!” The men knelt, clearly overcome with emotion. For whatever reason, the corners of their eyes were swimming. Then they looked back at Erna—who still had no idea what was going on—and bowed reverently. “O magnificent X! Please lend the Sun Attendant Order your wisdom!”

“…Yeep?”

There appeared to be a serious case of mistaken identity going on.

With that, Erna began investigating the Sun Attendant Order from the inside.

After getting kidnapped by the brawny men, Erna began freaking out a bit.

It feels like things are totally off the rails…

The men believed unquestioningly that she was this “X” person, and they were so overjoyed at getting to meet their idol that they began excitedly babbling at her. Based on what they told her, she deduced that the situation was something akin to the following:

The Sun Attendant Order was a small religious group structured around an old man they called the High Priest. When an individual who called themselves X joined up, though, the group rapidly expanded. X was concerned about a military or police crackdown, so they never showed themselves to the group and instead sent orders to the cult via letter. X’s managerial skills were incredible, and they managed to bring the Sun Attendant Order to the point where they finally had the tools to see their dearest wish fulfilled. The seajacking was the last step in that plan, and X was scheduled to finally show themselves to the cultists. The makeup case was going to be their sign that they had the right person.

The cultists were talking a mile a minute. “I had no idea the mighty X was such a small woman. Oh, I’m so glad we were finally able to meet up with you. The High Priest isn’t in the best of health at the moment, and we’ve all been so worried…”

It was obvious that they had a huge amount of faith in X. Merely meeting up with her had filled them with a visible sense of relief.

All Erna could do was offer them a half-hearted nod. “Y-yeep…”

“Hmm?” One of the cultists gave her a puzzled look. “Is something the matter? Is it possible we’ve made a mistake…?”

It was probably Erna’s clouded expression that was causing him to second-guess himself. His voice rang with doubt and anxiety.

He was right; it was all one big misunderstanding…but right when Erna was about to explain that to him, she stopped herself.

No, wait! This could be a golden opportunity!

Sure, it had just been a coincidence, but the fact remained that she’d managed to make contact with the religious group they were investigating. It was too good a chance to pass up. By telling them that she was X, she could get her hands on all sorts of valuable intelligence.

As the information started falling into place, she arrived at a conclusion: that the real X had made a break for it. Erna vaguely recalled the woman with the makeup case shouting, “All I have to do is get out of here!” She must have gotten cold feet at the eleventh hour and abandoned her role. And if that was true, then Erna could take her place, and nobody would be any the wiser. She was a little worried about her dubious interpersonal communication abilities, but she decided to set those fears aside. Just as Klaus said, it was time for her to show just how much she’d grown and overcome her social anxiety.

I’m going to pull off the perfect infiltration!

Erna swelled with determination. “No, no, I’m X. I’m definitely X!”

“B-but of course! Now, um… I know it’s terribly impertinent of me to ask, but would you be so kind as to tell us your real name? It feels a little silly, calling you by your code name like this…”

“I’m Erina.”

“Then Ms. Erina it shall be. We’ll be arriving at our operational headquarters soon, and it would be our honor to invite you in.”

After giving them a fake name, Erna boldly puffed her chest. “Before that, where’s the High Priest?”

“The High Priest is at our headquarters as well. However, his health is failing him, so he’s resting at the moment…”

“I thought this might happen, so I just got in touch with a talented doctor,” Erna replied. “He’s a man named Klaus staying in cabin 2903. Go call for him at once.”

“You never fail to impress! Then I take it the reason our rendezvous was delayed—”

“—Was because I was recruiting more allies aboard the ship. And I gathered loads of them. If the need arises, I can summon up a master poisoner or an expert inventor with a single phone call.”

“Oh, Ms. Erina, you’re amazing!!”

“Very good, keep praising me.”

By taking advantage of the situation, Erna had laid the groundwork to bring her teammates into the inner fold alongside her. Now, all she had to do was bide her time until Klaus got to the cult’s headquarters. When he did, he would surely compliment her for her meritorious deeds. And the cultists adored her so much, they didn’t suspect a thing. She was doing a fantastic job with this whole infiltration thing, if she did say so herself.

As long as she stayed with the cultists, they would lead her right to their headquarters. She continued down the hallway, thoroughly pleased with herself, and followed her escorts along a corridor that was designed for staff members only. It would appear that there were cultists among the ship’s crew. Unlike the hallways meant for passengers, this one was lined with movable shelving. Down at the end of it, there was a large room labeled MAIN STOREROOM. Erna could hear people talking behind its metal door.

Ah, she thought. That must be where the Sun Attendant Order’s headquarters were. When she took a big step forward, one of the cultists called out to her. “All right, Ms. Erina.”

“Yeep?”

“Please dance the dance of entry. You may be Ms. Erina, but the rules are the rules.”

“………”

What the heck was that? She froze up as soon as she heard mention of the bizarre rite. “Wh-who came up with that obnoxious system…?”

“Wasn’t it you, Ms. Erina?”

The cultist gave her a confused look. She worried he was starting to get suspicious.

This is bad… I have no idea what they want me to do.

The question was, why had X come up with that inane rule? Whatever the case was, Erna had nowhere to run.

No, I have to think! I need to figure out what dance would make the most sense here!

As a spy, she’d honed her powers of observation and stockpiled all sorts of information. If she took advantage of that, it should lead her to the correct answer.

The cultists are wearing casual jackets…so it can’t be anything that needs a special outfit. The corridor is narrow, so that rules out anything that involves moving back and forth too much, and it can’t require music, either. Plus, the ship is headed to Mouzaia… And the fact that they targeted a luxury liner means they’re probably acting out against the upper class…

Her thoughts turned, and the solution presented itself to her. There was a style of dance descended from step dancing that had been born among slaves in the United States who weren’t allowed to own instruments—tap dancing!

Erna clicked her heels against the ground and began taking soaring steps and beating out a jaunty tune. Tap-ta-tap, ta-tap-tap. Occasionally, she accentuated the noise by clapping her hands together, and she ended her performance with a big, showy spin—

“Ms. Erina, all you have to do for the entry dance is wave your index finger in a cross shape.”

“You could have told me that earlier!” Erna cried. A little bit flustered at how readily he had revealed that to her, she loudly cleared her throat. “I—I just forgot, that’s all…”

“Ah, that makes sense. You don’t usually attend our gatherings, after all,” the cultist said with an apologetic bow. “Now, next up is the entry song—”

“Why are there so many rituals?”

The man presented her with a piece of paper. “Here’s the sheet music.”

The song was two whole verses of lyrics long. It looked like they weren’t going to let her into the headquarters until she sang it in its entirety. She steeled her resolve and sucked in a deep breath. “Ohhh, our glorious skyyybound flame. ♪ Quiiivering with rage and burning up our seaaa of hope. ♪ Like a spiiinning ball. ♪ Of courage. ♪ Courage. ♪ Of cour—”

“Ms. Erina, you can just sing it silently to yourself.”

“Why didn’t you stop me earlier?!”

Erna threw the sheet music on the ground. What sort of thoughts had been going through their heads as they watched her sing her heart out? Her face was bright red, and her knees were shaking.

“A-are you all right? Please, come on in. Everyone’s been eagerly anticipating your arrival.”

The cultists cast sympathetic looks her way, but that wasn’t Erna’s top priority at the moment. “M-more importantly, what about the doctor…?”

“Huh?”

“Every second counts here! Go over to room 2903 and call for Dr. Klaus at once!”

Erna had no confidence in her ability to pull off the infiltration solo. Her limit was fast approaching, her story was coming apart at the seams, and most importantly, she wanted to get away from this cult and its bizarre rules as quickly as possible.

“Worry not. We just sent a messenger over.”

“Then let’s wait until they get here!”

“That isn’t an option. We need you to join the strategy meeting as soon as possible.”

“I can’t! I’m beside myself with worry!”

“I’m afraid we can’t wait any longer. Come along, Ms. Erina. You came this far already, and we need your help, even if we have to tie you up to get it. We’ll pay whatever cost we need to in order to see our greatest wish fulfilled.”

“But I don’t want tooooo!”

Unmoved by Erna’s scream, the suddenly headstrong cultists hoisted her into the air again. Before anyone outside had a chance to hear her cries for help, they carried her into the Sun Attendant Order headquarters.

Meanwhile, over with Klaus and the girls he was leading…

Klaus managed to root out and interrogate several more cultists, but none of them knew any of the specifics of the plan. X had been keeping a tight lid on who had what information so as to avoid the risk of any leaks. This was proving harder than expected. Deciding that perhaps one of the girls had tracked down a lead, Klaus headed back to his room for the time being.

In front of his door, there was an unconscious man in a gray jacket. Sybilla was scratching her head beside him with a conflicted look on her face. “Ah, I fucked up… This guy was hangin’ around room 2903, so I moved to capture him, but then he freaked out on me. I ended up havin’ to knock him out.”

“Room 2903…as in, my room?”

“I think he was sayin’ something about a doctor?”

Lily was there, too, and all three of them tilted their heads in confusion.

It was unfortunate that they hadn’t been able to gather any intel, but Sybilla had probably been right to immediately neutralize the potential threat. Klaus looked down at the collapsed man and sank into thought.

This is odd… Conducting a seajacking operation this major would require huge amounts of firepower and a group of highly trained operatives…and that’s where things don’t line up. And if anything, it’s odd that I never picked up on what they were planning until now.

If he had to go off first impressions, then…

…it’s as if they’re working off a perfect plan, but their execution is all over the place.

Perhaps he had the wrong idea about the Sun Attendant Order. Even if he did, though, he still needed to put a stop to their seajacking plan to prevent the worst-case scenario from coming to pass.

As Klaus was still thinking, two more of the girls returned.

“Hey there. We caught someone who seems like she might know something.” “G-good work out there, everyone.”

Monika and Sara were dragging a woman along, each girl holding an arm.

The woman was wearing glasses and had bobbed hair and a mature air about her. She looked to be in her late thirties, and she was clutching a handkerchief and trembling.

“Sara’s puppy sniffed her out. That makeup case was hers,” Monika declared dispassionately. The black dog in question was riding atop the woman’s head and happily wagging his tail.

Klaus recognized her face. “…You’re the former military staff warrant officer Pauline.”

Pauline’s eyes went wide. “Y-you know who I am?”

“I remember you, yes. I heard that despite your low rank, you were very successful during our evacuations in the war. Ah, yes. As I recall, you later got fired for adultery.”

“Who are you people…?”

Klaus was under no obligation to answer that question. Instead, he rummaged through his memories. Pauline Carrack was a talented soldier during her time in the service, and she had a bright future ahead of her. She’d been in charge of everything related to supplies, from procurement to conveyance.

Klaus nodded. “I see. So that makes you X.”

“Agh! I-I’m just—” Pauline’s expression contorted in distress. Still clutching her handkerchief, she gave Klaus a fierce glare. “I gave that position up. L-look, I got scared. I’m not X anymore, and I’m not part of the Sun Attendant Order leadership. I don’t want anything to do with those people.”

“That’s a very convenient excuse.”

“I—I was just hanging out with them for kicks, that’s all. I was pissed when I got booted out of the army, so when I ran into this tiny religion, I thought it’d be a fun game to see how big I could turn it! They showered me with praise for every tiny thing I did for them, and it felt nice, so I kept doing it, until…” She averted her gaze from Klaus before spitting out her next few words. “Those fanatics over there are touched in the head. They’re just a bunch of losers, huddled together like idiots…”

Behind Pauline, Sybilla clicked her tongue, and that displeasure of hers was shared by everyone present. From the sound of it, the only reason that tiny cult had grown large enough to attempt a seajacking at all was because of a passing whim of Pauline’s. For all her talent, her personality was rotten. She’d concealed her identity so she could cut and run whenever she wanted to, and she’d been planning to simply watch the ship descend into chaos from the sidelines. It was incredibly irresponsible.

Klaus gave Pauline a look. “And? What’s the Sun Attendant Order’s objective?”

“I could tell you, but you wouldn’t believe me. That’s how inane it is.” She let out a contemptuous laugh. “They want to commit mass suicide.”

The storeroom that had been repurposed into an operational headquarters was respectably spacious. It had originally been designed to carry emergency rations and life jackets, but while there were signs that the room had once stored exactly that, it had all been cleared out. The storeroom was lit by a large, solitary light fixture dangling from the ceiling.

Ah, I see, Erna thought. People would normally have no reason to visit the storeroom that held the emergency rations. Furthermore, the three thousand people the Eccletnuk had on board meant that it needed a pretty sizable space to carry enough food for everyone. There were fifty cultists gathered there, and there was room for plenty more. There were no windows on account of their proximity to the ship’s bilge. The cultists were huddled around blueprints of the ship and arguing beneath the light fixture.

When she saw them, there was something that immediately jumped out at Erna.

Huh… This isn’t really the vibe I was anticipating.

Given that they were planning to take over the ship by force, she’d been expecting them to be a group of rugged militants. In truth, though, nearly half of the people there were women, several of whom were either old enough to be grandmothers or women carrying babies. There were men there, too, but none of them looked particularly dependable. Some of them were using crutches, and others were just boys feebly drooping their heads. It was hard to imagine any of them being able to hold their own in a fight. And while there were some firearms piled up in the back, as far as Erna could tell, there were only about thirty of them, and all of them were practically antiques.

There’s no way these people could seajack a ship!

This wasn’t what the document had described at all. With no shotguns or machine guns, their odds of successfully pulling off their takeover were nonexistent. The Eccletnuk had armed guards, and the would-be seajackers would find themselves trounced and arrested in no time.

As Erna stared at them in shock, one of the cultists called over to her. “Ms. Erina, please. The High Priest is asking for you.”

“Yeep.”

She never imagined it would be so easy to get a face-to-face. However, she had no reason to refuse, and she decided to meet with him. She was a little nervous, but perhaps seeing the High Priest would help clear up some of the incongruities.

There was a screen partitioning off a corner of the storeroom, and when Erna went through it, she found a large bed surrounded by worried cultists with their hands clasped together in prayer. By the look of it, the High Priest’s condition was pretty serious.

As soon as she approached the bed, a hoarse voice rose up from it. “Ah, so you’re X… Or rather, Ms. Erina.”

The voice belonged to an elderly man, who sat up atop the bed. He certainly didn’t look the part of a cult leader. The limbs stretching out from his gray gown were as spindly as withered branches, and while there was a kind look about his wrinkled face, it was all but devoid of life.

That was the High Priest, no doubt. He gave Erna a warm smile. “I do apologize for my sorry state. Thank you so much for coming such a long way to meet me. It was all thanks to you that our tiny group was able to grow to the size it is today.”

“N-not at all. You shouldn’t sell yourself short, High Priest.”

Erna couldn’t bring herself to tell him that the real X had hightailed it, and the High Priest was none the wiser to her lie. “No, no, I was just as surprised as anyone,” he said with great reverence. “I had no idea we would be able to bring so many like-minded people together. I suppose suicide really is the hope of the modern era.”

“Yeep?”

That wasn’t a word she’d been expecting to hear.

Suicide?

Not noticing Erna’s shock, the High Priest went on. “It’s strange to think about how few of us there were at the start. We were just a tiny group of people who supported one another after we lost our families in the war. But word got around, and our numbers grew and grew. We had wives who’d lost their husbands to gang violence in the postwar chaos, boys who’d gone blind from chemical-weapon attacks, heartbroken soldiers who’d dutifully served their nation but returned home to blame and criticism, women whose hometowns had been shredded by gunfire… People lost hope for all sorts of reasons, from the tragedies of the postwar era to getting betrayed by people they trusted, and they all came together to achieve a common goal.”

“………”

“We have but one objective: to escape this world and its despair and die gloriously beneath the Sun’s light.” The High Priest took Erna’s hands and squeezed them in his. “We want to hold a mass suicide at the South Pole, and thanks to you, Ms. Erina, our wish is going to be granted. I can never thank you enough.”

“………”

At long last, she finally understood what the Sun Attendant Order was really after, as well as why they were trying to carry out a seajacking that had no chance of actually working. They’d long since given up on life, and they couldn’t see reality for what it was. Plus, they didn’t really care if their attempt ended in failure.

The world was awash in pain.

Many of the war’s scars had started to heal in the ten years since the conflict’s end, but there were still plenty of people who’d failed to get back on their feet from the damage they’d suffered either during the war or in the upheaval that followed it. What they had here were people who’d suffered so much that they’d grown weary of life itself, and for people who’d fallen into despair and given up on life, their one remaining hope was to at least have a beautiful death.

That was the true nature of the Sun Attendant Order.

“I can’t take it anymore!” a man shouted from behind Erna. “Please, just let me die already! I want to end my life, High Priest, and I want to end it nowwwww!”

The screaming man had fresh scars from self-harm. He, too, had probably suffered grave psychological damage from his time in the war.

“Please, young Thomas,” the High Priest said. He winced in pain as he rose to his feet. “Just wait a little bit longer. Ms. Erina is about to tell us her secret plan for taking over the ship.”

“Don’t be an idiot! There’s no way that kid is the real X!” Thomas yelled.

When he did, the other cultists all turned and looked at Erna. The way the blood drained from their faces, it was like they’d all just snapped out of a dream. It was starting to dawn on them that Erna wasn’t actually X. Gloom descended upon the storeroom.

“X must have swapped places with this child and abandoned us!” Thomas bellowed. “We never even stood a chance. As soon as we started our takeover, we were just gonna get captured and sent to die in jail without even being able to kill ourselves!” He pulled out a gun. “If it’s between this and that, then I’d rather just kill as many people as I can and go out on my own terrrrrrms!”

Thomas had completely fallen into despair. He pointed his gun at the High Priest. Erna swiftly yanked the High Priest’s gown, and the two of them collapsed onto the ground. After missing the High Priest, the bullet ricocheted off the wall and slammed into the light on the ceiling. The sound of screeching metal grated at their ears.

As the cultists screamed and started to run around in terror, Erna charged at Thomas. He hadn’t been expecting her to rush him head-on, and he fired another shot. However, his bullet flew off in the wrong direction. Daunted by Erna’s willingness to run straight into certain death, Thomas began retreating backward in a panic.

After driving Thomas back to the exact spot she wanted him, Erna let out a quiet whisper. “I’m code name Fool—and it’s time to kill with everything.”

The light fixture fell from the ceiling directly over their heads.

Erna had a special ability—the ability to attack people by using her penchant for misfortune to its fullest. By dragging other people into her accidents, she could defeat them without having to use a single tool. It was the perfect assassination technique.

The light fixture continued to fall. It needed to be large enough to illuminate the entirety of the massive storeroom, so it was as large as a human head. Erna managed to dodge it by the skin of her teeth, but Thomas wasn’t so lucky.

The sound of the fixture hitting the ground boomed out deep and loud.

All it had done to Thomas was graze his collarbone, but that was plenty to sap him of his will to fight. “Arrrgh, I blew it again…” He dropped his gun and sank to the floor. “Why? Why is it always like this for me?! Every time I try to do anything, I always run into a string of bad luck, and nothing ends up going my way…! Everyone thinks I’m a joke. Dammit… Dammit… DAMN IT ALLLLLLLLL!!”

He slammed his fists against the ground in anguish. A series of vividly muffled whams echoed through the room. The cultists watched Thomas with tears in their eyes and teeth digging into their lips. All of them shared in his grief.

Eventually, the skin on Thomas’s hands tore, and blood began trickling off them. However, he made no move to stop hitting the ground. It was like that punching motion was the only thing keeping him tethered to life.

In the end, the person who grabbed his hands and forced him to stop hurting himself was none other than Erna.

“I get it.” Not even she herself understood why her body had moved. However, the words came to her like it was the most natural thing in the world. “I’m the same way. I lost my family, and I constantly have bad luck, and it makes me want to cry… But then, one day, I found relief. Every time something dangerous happens to me, it makes me feel like it’s not my fault that my life wasn’t going well. But the thing is, I hate that about myself, and it makes me depressed.”

Erna talked about her penchant for misfortune, but in truth, the term was somewhat inaccurate. According to the psychiatrist who had diagnosed her, it was actually a desire for punishment. After losing her family in a fire, she’d become fixated on the notion that it wasn’t fair that only she got to survive and keep on living. She subconsciously sought her own destruction, and feeling like a heroine right out of a tragedy was the only thing that set her heart at ease.

As a result, she understood how the cultists felt painfully well. After all, heading into ruin carried with it a huge sense of relief. It let people renounce all their responsibilities, avoid facing reality’s cold truths, and cast off the role life had assigned for them.

The thing was, there were people in the world who desired annihilation.

Most people couldn’t comprehend them, but that didn’t make them any less real. Scant few were able to empathize with them, but Erna knew their plight. She knew full well how the vicious cycle of self-hatred could drive someone step by step to the edge.

And because of that, there was something she knew she had to put into words.

“But the thing is, I’m still here,” she said. “It might sound trite, but I believe that as long as I keep on living, then someday, I’ll be happy again. Until then, it doesn’t matter what a fool I make of myself or how many times I screw up. I’m going to keep surviving.”

That was why she’d thrown herself headfirst into the world of espionage. She’d found a single ray of hope amid her desire for punishment, and she’d made up her mind to help people. When she did, she found loving teammates and a boss who accepted her. She’d even gotten a provisional graduation from her friendless academy life and come one step closer to achieving her goal.

“And so…”

…I want you to stop trying to kill yourselves.

Before Erna could get out the words, the screams of the cultists behind her cut her off. They were anguished, like the cries of someone on their deathbed.

“It’s the High Priest! He’s in bad shape!”