Spy Classroom - Volume SS3 - Chapter 1.1

Flashback ①

The Avian Ecosystem

Lily chased Pharma for a full twenty minutes after getting her juice stolen, but she eventually ran out of steam without ever managing to catch her prey. It was unclear how it kept happening, but on five separate occasions, Lily had seen Pharma make a move, hesitated upon realizing she needed to be careful, and immediately stumbled into a trap Pharma set off. The gap in their skills was all too plain to see.

As Lily lay sprawled on the ground, Sara came in and smiled as she handed her a new bottle of juice. “I went and bought you a replacement,” she said, so Lily decided to let Pharma off the hook.

Pharma, the one who’d instigated the whole incident, was moved. “Thaaanks,” she said in that carefree tone of hers, and they all relocated to the main hall to enjoy their drinks.

“You all have been stopping by a lot recently, huh?” Lily said as she poured juice down her parched throat. “Where does Avian usually stay?”

“Hmm. Over in Lieditz, I guess,” Pharma drawled.

Lieditz was the capital of the Din Republic. By car, it took an hour or two to get there from the port city of Arranq where they were. Big cities like those were where the majority of the Din Republic’s counterintelligence missions took place.

“Back when we first got together, we all had our own apartments, but we have so many missions abroad and out in the countryside that we never got to use them, so now we just have two that we share.”

“Oh, wow.”

“It’s really nice, getting to relax in a big fancy manor for a change.”

Pharma kicked off her shoes and flopped onto a couch. “I’m putting on weiiight again,” she groaned quietly, but in spite of that, she showed no signs of budging. When she wasn’t working, she was lazy through and through.

Sara’s eyes went wide. “Th-that’s incredible… Six people of mixed genders in just two apartments?” she gasped.

“Yup. And we use one of them as a storeroom, so really, we just live in the one.”

“Six people in one apartment? Oh gosh, that must be so cramped… Does no one ever complain?”

“Nah, of couuurse not. We get along too well for that to ever—”

“Oh, I’ve got some complaints, all right!”

A loud cry butted into their conversation from the back of the hall.

Everyone turned to look and saw a girl with glasses and a ponytail—“Glide” Qulle—standing there with her shoulders square. She stomped her way over to Pharma.

“I think you’re leaving out a lot of details there! As I recall, you all just turned my apartment into our meeting spot without my permission! And sorry, what? Are you telling me that everyone else broke their leases?! Why is this the first I’m hearing about it?!”

“Look, one thing led to anooother.”

“Yeah, ‘one thing’ was the rest of you getting plastered, and ‘another’ was you deciding to start using my place as a hotel!”

As the two of them began bickering, Sara found herself taken aback. She timidly raised her hand and interrupted. “Wait, what? So everyone just stays at your apartment, Miss Qulle?”

“That’s right. I mean, Vics usually stays with the women he picks up, and Queneau doesn’t come by very often, but other than that, yeah.” Qulle shook her head and let out a deep sigh. “I swear, the whole situation is a mess. ‘Your place is so big,’ they said, and ‘it’s so convenient to hold meetings there,’ and then they went and brought chessboards and decks of cards in, and now I can’t get them to leave. Vindo will sleep the day away there, and they keep rummaging through my fridge for snacks and booze.”

“I think it’s real nice. It’s so fun when we all bring food and play poker all night.”

A vein on Qulle’s temple throbbed. “That’s because you all keep colluding to take my money!”

She clearly had a lot of pent-up rage. However, the person she was directing it at feigned ignorance. “This juice is so taaasty,” Pharma said with a soft smile.

Qulle clutched at her head. “You know, this all started that time Adi showed up crying and telling me she’d lost her purse and didn’t have any way to get home.”

Sara looked at her in confusion. “Who’s Adi?”

“…Ah, right, you don’t know. She used to be Avian’s boss.”

“Oh,” Sara mumbled.

When Avian was first founded, the team had been made up of an experienced boss paired with six academy elites. That boss had died during their mission in Longchon, and apparently, her name had been Adi.

“Hmm, how do I put this?” Lily crossed her arms and summed it all up. “Avian kinda reminds me of a bunch of lazy college students.”

“Better that than being a teenage after-school club like Lamplight,” Pharma shot back.