Spy Classroom - Volume SS3 - Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Lan’s Case

Up in the attic, a girl was trembling.

“Prithee, prithee, prithee, prithee, prithee, prithee, prithee, prithee, prithee, prithee, prithee, prithee, prithee, prithee, prithee, prithee, prithee, prithee, prithee, prithee!”

The girl had dark-red hair tied back behind her head and an intense, dignified look in her eyes. She was called “Cloud Drift” Lan, and she was one of Avian’s members. As of late, she’d started making regular visits to Heat Haze Palace so she could train with Klaus.

However, that had given rise to a big problem.

Namely, the fact that every time Lan stopped by, she nearly died at the hands of an ash-pink-haired demon.

“That knave hath a screw loose in her head. Wherefore doth Lamplight allow such a creature to roam free?”

The demon’s name was “Forgetter” Annette. Annette had all sorts of different inventions up her sleeve, and a souped-up chainsaw and a grip full of bombs were her weapons of choice as she chased Lan around.

It had all started way back in Longchon, when Lan had mocked Annette by calling her a runt. Doing so had brought Annette’s wrath down on her; she had flown into a rage and made relentless attempts on Lan’s life. Annette’s teammates had managed to talk her down and quell her fury for a time, but every time she ran into Lan, she would shout, “I’m gonna make you into a guinea pig for my inventions, yo!” and brandish all manner of deadly devices.

Today had been no different, and Lan had been forced to flee into hiding in the Heat Haze Palace attic.

She let out a long breath. “The rest of Lamplight hath stopped protecting me, too…”

Toward the beginning of the two teams’ cultural exchange, Lan had asked the rest of Lamplight to keep Annette in check for her. The majority of the girls had been reluctant, but they’d taken her up on her request.

Now, though, they’d started just giving her looks of annoyance. “You could just not come to Heat Haze Palace, you know,” they said.

Why were they giving her the cold shoulder?

“Heartless they are, I daresay! Should not they strive harder to defend my personage?! Have they no fear of their manor turning into a murder scene before their very eyes?!”

The Lamplight girls weren’t there to defend themselves, but Lan raged against them all the same as she stared up at the ceiling.

It was surprisingly pleasant up in the attic. It got decent airflow, and it wasn’t too terribly warm.

“Ugh, thou leavest me no choice but to laze here until my mission begins!”

One wrong move, and Annette was liable to find her.

Lan looked around, thinking perhaps a siesta was in order. Maybe there was something she could use as a pillow.

“Hmm?”

As she searched, she spotted something piled up in the corner.

She fished out a flashlight and turned it on.

Her eyes went wide. “What have we here…?”

After Lamplight and Avian began their honeymoon, the first week passed in the blink of an eye.

As the two groups got used to spending time around each other, they began mingling outside of just their spy work like missions and training. Their reactions to that were varied, from those who wanted to establish friendships to those who took interest in each other’s pasts. Differences began emerging in the girls’ approaches.

It was around that time that Lamplight’s local stuck-up tried reaching out to the Avian elites.

One of the rooms in Heat Haze Palace was a lounge.

The Lamplight girls didn’t go there very often. The manor was spacious, and it had plenty of rooms the girls simply had no use for. Anything they needed to do could generally be done in either the dining room, the main hall, their bedrooms, or the communal bath, and because of that, the lounge went largely unused. It was a comfy room outfitted with sofas and a fireplace, but it was a little too small to happily fit eight people.

Yet now—

“Ahh, you’re so cuuute. Hee-hee, Lamplight is the beeest. You’ve got good food, you’ve got cute girls, you’ve got soft couches… This is total bliss.”

—there was a woman there looking ecstatic.

That woman was “Feather” Pharma. Pharma had quickly begun integrating herself into Lamplight after the mixer mission, and part of that had involved taking over the lounge. She’d planted “Fool” Erna on her lap and was sniffing her hair with an oddly spellbound look on her face.

Erna looked none too pleased about the situation.

“Can I go now…?”

“Sorry, Ernaaa. By the way, I’m sleeping over tonight.”

“Yeep?!”

Erna’s expression froze. She tried to wriggle free, but Pharma just hugged her tighter.

“Meadow” Sara was there in the lounge, too, and she let out an awkward laugh as she watched them. “Do you have the day off of missions, Miss Pharma?”

“That’s riiight. I’ve got the day off.”

“When you say it like that, does that mean someone else—?”

“I think it’s Lan who’s on the clock today. I really wasn’t feeling this one, so I left it to her.”

Sara tilted her head in confusion. The idea of not “feeling” a mission struck her as odd, but a moment later, a sweet smell wafted through the lounge and interrupted her train of thought.

“Oh, the chiffon cake should be done soon.”

“Thaaanks!” Pharma exclaimed, overcome with emotion. “I feel bad for everyone who doesn’t have a little buddy who’s good at cooking.”

“Didn’t you just eat dinner, though? Be careful not to go to town and make yourself sick.”

“Yep, will dooo.”

“Also, I made extra, so feel free to share with the rest of your team.”

“Wow. You’re such a good girl, Sara.”

By that point, Sara and Pharma had settled into a friendly little-buddy–big-buddy relationship. But right as they were enjoying their friendly conversation in the lounge—

“Hey, it was Pharma, right? You got a sec?”

—a curt voice squashed the cheerful atmosphere they’d created.

There was a girl with cerulean hair standing in the doorway—“Glint” Monika. Monika had an asymmetrical hairdo, but aside from that, her build was so average it was like she’d intentionally removed anything distinctive about her appearance.

It was unclear why, but she had a grim look on her face as she stared Pharma down.

“Sara and Erna, you mind giving us the room?”

Monika’s voice was sterner than usual.

Pharma gave her a casual smile. “Awww, but I wanted to keep patting Erna for a bit longer…”

“……………”

Monika’s expression was stony.

Realizing how tense things had just grown, Erna and Sara hurriedly fled the scene. “W-we’ll give you two some space.” “Y-yeah, that sounds like a good idea.”

Pharma gave her a dejected look, like she’d just had all her fun spoiled. “What do you waaant, Monika?”

“To ask you a question. Just to be sure, you’re the most skilled female spy on Avian, right?”

“I dunno about that. Qulle and Lan both got better grades on the graduation exam when we—”

“Cut the bullshit,” Monika snapped.

To her credit, Monika was right. Pharma had placed fifth on the graduation exam, but that was only because she hadn’t been taking it seriously. In terms of raw skill, Pharma put the rest of Avian’s women to shame. She hadn’t been trying her hardest during their battle in Longchon, either, and Monika had seen right through her.

“Well?” Pharma smiled. “What’s up?”

“Back at your academy, you must have participated in a special joint training exercise.” Monika sat herself down on the couch across from Pharma’s. “I wanna know who its examiner was. Do you have any idea?”

The special joint training exercise was where Monika had learned the cruel taste of defeat.

Once every two years, the spy academies got all their best students together and assigned them a single mission. The female students were given the simple task of stealing a code book from their one examiner. Monika had qualified for the exercise just two months into her academy career, and she’d gone into it in high spirits. The other participants’ competitive sides had been flaring as well, and the testing grounds had brimmed with tension.

However, that one examiner had utterly mopped the floor with all twenty of the girls.

“Wait, for real? This is what passes for top students? Sheesh, what a shocker. You kids are weak as hell!”

The examiner had smiled smugly as she stood in the dilapidated house the exercise was being held in. Monika had never forgotten the words she’d said while the rest of the examinees had lain unconscious.

“Remember this: In our world, people without fire in their hearts are nothing more than garbage.”

That failure had caused Monika to lose faith in her own abilities. She’d begun half-assing things at her academy, and before long, she’d gotten labeled as a washout.

That woman shattered my soul.

Monika’s teeth dug into her lip as she thought back to how painful that experience had been.

Monika had long since come to terms with it. She didn’t fully understand what it meant to have fire in her heart, but she’d come to see herself as a prodigy again, and she’d gone back to diligently training night and day.

However, the examiner’s identity still nagged at her. Just who was the woman who’d handed her that bitter defeat? She didn’t want a rematch per se, but that was roughly the headspace she was in.

That was why she wanted to track down other people who’d participated in the joint training exercise—so she could ask them if they knew anything.

Across from her, Pharma narrowed her eyes in nostalgia. “Yeah, I was there. So you were there, too? I had no ideeea.”

“Makes sense. We were banned from working together during the exercise, and there were plenty of people who thought of it as a competition to see who could take her down first.”

“But in the end, we aaall got wiped out.”

“I’d call it friendly fire…but that wasn’t quite it. There were a couple of people who just lost it as soon as they went into that run-down house she was waiting for us in. Then their panic spread like wildfire…”

“I don’t even remember what happened after that. I thiiink I heard someone playing the piano?”

“Yeah, we don’t even know how she did it.”

The examiner had outclassed them so badly, they had no idea what she’d even done to them. She’d looked pretty young, too. She had only been in her midtwenties or so. Monika couldn’t have been the only one who’d lost heart after seeing the raw gulf in their skills.

All Monika knew about the examiner was the brief glimpse she’d gotten of her appearance, with her skin so white it looked bleached and a pair of deep crimson eyes. She’d looked like a foreigner. It was possible she wasn’t originally from the Din Republic.

“She was amazing, huh? I dunno who she was, either.” Pharma took a big stretch, then gave Monika a mocking look. “Isn’t it pretty obvious who would, though?”

“………”

“I mean, I can toootally see why you wouldn’t want to ask him.”

“…Could you not pretend like you know me?”

Monika shot Pharma a glare. Pharma had hit her right where it hurt.

Naturally, she knew exactly who it was Pharma was referring to. Monika had considered broaching the subject with him on several occasions, but each time, she’d chickened out because she didn’t want to talk about her own failure. At the end of the day, she only had a passing interest in solving the mystery, and there was nothing in particular pushing her forward.

All of a sudden, Pharma rose to her feet. “Don’t worry, I’ll come with you.”

“Huh?”

Monika was surprised. She hadn’t expected Pharma to show such enthusiasm.

Pharma gave her a big nod. “I’ve been kind of curious, myself. Especially laaately.” She gave Monika a smile, one that hinted at secrets untold. “All righty! Let’s go find out about that woman who beat us up!”

In an odd display of excitement, she thrust a fist into the air.

The long and short of it was, they discovered the instructor’s identity with shocking ease. After gathering intel from the other Avian members, they went to the relevant party’s room and immediately got an answer.

“From your description, that has to have been Big Sis Heide.”

Lamplight’s boss, Klaus, gave them their answer with no resistance whatsoever.

He took a break from the document he was writing and described her.

“She was an Inferno member, code name Flamefanner. She was like an older sister to me. Her specialty was controlling people’s hearts through art. People who weren’t skilled enough would lose the moment they stepped into the same room as her.”

“That checks out,” Monika muttered in response to the big reveal. Everything about that made perfect sense.

Inferno had been the strongest spy team in the nation, though it had long since been destroyed. Klaus had loved them like they were his family.

Conflicting emotions raged within her as she let out a sigh. They’d inherited Heat Haze Palace itself from Inferno, meaning Monika had been living and working in the very same manor her examiner once had.

An uncharacteristically soft look crossed Klaus’s face. “The special joint training exercise, huh? That takes me back. Inferno started holding that once every two years to headhunt new members onto the team. I guess Big Sis Heide must have been in charge of the most recent girls’ academy exercise.”

Pharma’s eyes went wide. “Whoa, it was a recruitment test?! I had no ideeea that’s what was going on.”

“It was. I believe there was a rule where the participants weren’t allowed to work together. The team wanted to test people individually. The exercise was also there to train the students, but that was a side benefit.”

“Kinda cruel to make it so hard, though.”

Klaus crossed his arms in puzzlement. “You have a point. It seems a little childish to annihilate the students the moment the test begins.”

Monika agreed wholeheartedly. How were you supposed to headhunt anyone if all you did was mop the floor with them?

“Childish isn’t even the haaalf of it!” Pharma cried in frustration. “Four years ago, there was this jacked old lady who took us all out with a long-range sniper rifle!”

Klaus grimaced. “…That’d be Granny G.”

By that, he meant “Firewalker” Gerde. As long as she didn’t run out of ammo, Gerde had been strong enough to put down an entire village without letting a single person get near her.

“And according to my teammates, the boys’ academy had to deal with some guy beating all the students black and blue with a katana two years ago.”

Klaus massaged his temple. “Master…”

That would be “Torchlight” Guido. The Lamplight girls had once fought him themselves after Guido betrayed the Republic, and in terms of raw combat prowess, his skills exceeded even Klaus’s.

“Was Inferno actually tyrannizing the academies that badly?”

Klaus’s voice trembled at the revelation. The news came as a great shock to him.

Pharma gave him a pained smile. “I mean, they were, like, taking the top students and smashing their pride to pieces. A lot of people took it pretty hard…” A hint of sadness crept into her voice, but her smile soon returned. “…But I think for me, it gave me the push I needed.”

“………”

Monika was in no position to say anything. She was one of the people who’d taken it hard and gotten her heart shattered.

She certainly had her misgivings, but at the end of the day, she had nothing against the special joint training exercise in and of itself. If she hadn’t met Flamefanner, she would have kept on being conceited all the way through graduation. There were some bitter pills it was important to swallow.

“That’s ‘Flamefanner’ Heide for you,” Klaus said with a satisfied nod. “She was a woman of many talents. She was an expert in covert ops, and with every mission, she picked up a new skill. If she needed to infiltrate a theater, she would become a master pianist; if she needed to become a governess, she would master the art of painting. There was a period where I was really into oil painting, and I have her influence to thank for that.”

He crossed his arms and nodded once more. He then mumbled to himself, so quietly they could barely hear it. “Then there was all that erotica she wrote… Hmm, where did we store those, again?”

Heide had clearly been a woman of considerable skill.

Pharma clapped her hands together. “Must be niiice, being that well-rounded.”

“To think that she and my mentor were taking things too far with their drills…” Klaus’s expression darkened again. He was having a hard time overlooking what had happened. “Crushing academy students like that was uncalled for. I mean, when it came to training, they were strict with me, too… And I know what they were looking for is important for a spy to have, but still…”

“You sound like you know something,” said Monika.

“Well, they mentioned that their criteria for passing someone was if their skills were at least on par with mine.”

Monika’s bloodcurdling cry echoed through the room. “So you’re saying it was all your fault?!”

The special joint training exercises were secretly a recruitment test for Inferno. Ultimately, though, Inferno never ended up actually pulling new members from the academies. They’d picked up Heide and Klaus shortly after the Great War’s end, but in the ten years that followed, their roster never once grew.

The person who decided how they were going to choose new members to keep themselves relevant in the generation to come was Inferno’s boss—“Hearth” Veronika.

“Well, these are people who’ll have to carry on Inferno’s legacy…”

She had hair like crimson fire and a résumé a mile long, and she hemmed and hawed before giving the decree to her teammates.

“At the bare minimum, we need them to be as strong as Klaus.”

That was how the top academy students began experiencing the taste of hell once every two years.

Monika scratched the back of her neck as she walked down the hallway.

Her emotions were all over the place. There was a definite sense of satisfaction in finding out who the source of her setback had been, as well as a self-justifying feeling that defeat was inevitable. Then there was the frustration mixed in with it all. The fact that Flamefanner hadn’t chosen to recruit her and the fact that she’d dealt such an emotional blow both irritated Monika to no end.

The fact that Flamefanner had been an artist annoyed her, too.

Monika had been born to a bloodline of artists. Her family adored art, but she’d failed to inherit those same feelings, and her joining a spy academy had been more or less her way of running away from home.

She let out a big sigh as her fretful emotions swirled within her.

“I mean, it’s not like knowing actually changes anything,” she muttered defensively.

There really hadn’t been anything more to it than idle curiosity. It wasn’t as though she’d been planning on going out and getting revenge on the examiner once she’d figured out her identity.

And besides, Heide is dead.

Monika forced herself to accept that and headed for her bedroom. It was already nine at night.

When she got there, she discovered a crowd gathered around her room.

It was unclear what the Lamplight girls were doing there. Their faces were as red as if they’d just gotten out of the bath, and they were holding something with great embarrassment.

“What’s going on over here?”

When Monika called over to them, they began stammering. “H-hey there, Monika…” “W-we, uh…we’re pretty sure it’s all bullshit, but, like…”

Lily and Sybilla pointed uneasily at Monika’s bedroom.

On the door, there was an unfamiliar note.

FOUND IN THE ATTIC ABOVE DAME MONIKA’S ROOM →

The handwriting was Lan’s.

At the end of the arrow, there was a massive stack of books. There were probably over thirty of them, and they definitely didn’t belong to Monika. She’d never even gone up to check the attic.

Finding it all a little strange, Monika picked up one of the books, flipped it open, and let out a groan upon reading the table of contents.

The books were erotica, featuring depictions of sensuous passion between men and women.

“L-look, we all know there’s no way.” “B-but are those actually yours?”

All eyes were on her.

Her teammates were giving her the awkward looks of a bunch of people who’d seen something they knew they shouldn’t have.

“Tee-hee, you’re a healthy young woman. You have nothing to be ashamed of,” said Thea. “I find it difficult to condone exposing someone’s private feelings like this,” said Grete. “I-I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to look, I promise!” said Sara. “I—I think I’m a little too young to be reading any of this!” cried Erna. “In that case, I’ll read ’em aloud for you. Yo, Monika, you got any of them in particular you recommend?” Annette asked.

It took a good long while for their boisterous comments to die down.

The Arranq National Museum of Art was a venerable institution with over a hundred years of history to its name. It had works not just from Din, but by artists from around the world, and it had more pieces on display than any other museum in the nation. It frequently borrowed paintings from the rich and powerful, and it rotated out its exhibitions so often that the port city’s residents could visit it time and time again and never grow bored. It was one of the foremost art museums in the entire world.

It was currently eleven at night. The museum closed at seven, and all the staff had long since gone home. With the guard only patrolling once every two hours, the building was largely silent.

Ah, how exhilarating.

Lan strutted around feeling quite pleased with herself. Right before she’d left, she’d planted a stash of erotic novels in front of Monika’s room.

I daresay Dame Monika is in a panic right now. All I need do is wait till she’s been thoroughly teased, then approach her with my deal. “Should you wish for me to unveil the truth, all you need do is protect me from Dame Annette.”

Lan had technically found the books in the attic above Sara’s room, but she doubted they actually belonged to her, so she’d decided to use them to blackmail someone else. Monika could definitely take Annette in a fight, so Lan had chosen her.

’Tis a brilliant plan, if I do say so myself!

After nodding happily, Lan looked up.

The reason she’d sneaked into an art museum after hours had to do with an Avian mission. Her target was one of the curators who worked there. The woman was under suspicion of a very particular crime, and Lan’s job was to confirm the evidence and apprehend the suspect.

First things first, I need to complete my mission…

As she psyched herself back up, she heard footsteps from the other end of the passageway.

At the moment, she was in a long, narrow exhibition hall with walls covered with oil paintings both foreign and domestic. Someone was coming toward her from the sculpture display booth over at its far end. The sound of their shoes echoed loudly through the empty museum. They were far removed from the guard’s patrol route.

“Ah, so thou makest thy appearance.”

Lan crouched down and prepared herself for combat.

However, the person who emerged wasn’t who she had been expecting—it was Monika. The strongest girl on Lamplight was striding toward her with an icy look on her face. For some reason, she wasn’t saying a word.

Lan tilted her head in confusion. She didn’t recall ever telling Monika where she was.

As she watched warily, Monika’s lips moved.

“Die.”

In her hand was a gun.

“Wait, wait, wait! Hold on!”

Lan scurried backward.

It would appear her erotica plan had driven Monika into a rage.

“P-prithee, calm down. I’m on a mission at present, and this is hardly the time for this. L-look, uh, there will be time aplenty to discuss this later, so if you could lower thy gun—”

“Die.”

“To think that negotiations would fail so utterly.”

Lan decided to turn on her heel and flee. Talking things out clearly wasn’t an option. She needed to make a run for it while she still had a head start.

Monika must have dragged her location out of Pharma. Considering how faithful Pharma was to her desires, that wouldn’t have been hard. She was the kind of person who would sell out her teammates for a single slice of toast with jam.

The good news was, Lan was on favorable ground. She’d memorized where all the museum’s staff-only passages were in preparation for her mission.

She raced down one such corridor and escaped to a storeroom piled high with display frames and cases.

I had no idea ’twould inspire such wrath!

Lan hid behind a sculpture stand and took a moment to catch her breath. She’d been prepared to take a tongue-lashing for what she’d done, but at no point had she expected to get physically attacked before the day was even over.

However, stealth is my forte. She shan’t find me.

There in the darkened storeroom, she let out a sigh of relief.

Lan’s faith in her stealth techniques was rock-solid. They’d gotten her out of more than a few life-or-death situations before. Even if Monika came into the storeroom, Lan could simply move from one bit of cover to another to avoid ever getting spotted.

She prided herself on being able to hide from anyone, even elite spies—

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

—but the moment the storeroom lights flicked on, something went whirling overhead.

Someone had just thrown a set of mirrors from the room’s entrance. Light bounced off them as they spun through the air. Three reflections deep, they revealed Monika’s face.

If Lan could see Monika’s face, it meant Monika could see hers.

“HOOOOW?”

Monika called her special ability “creepshot,” and it allowed her to perceive everything that existed within a fixed space. No matter where Lan tried to hide, there was no escape.

Monika dashed across the shelving piled up in the storeroom and made a beeline for Lan.

“Hurk!”

Then she used the force of her charge to drop-kick Lan across the room and send her smashing into the wall. When Lan hit her head and crumpled to the floor, Monika planted a foot on her chest and took aim with her gun.

“All right, Lan, what’s it gonna be? You wanna die now, or you wanna die horribly?”

“Thy two options are in truth but one.”

Sweat cascaded down Lan’s face as she raised her hands in surrender. She didn’t know why Monika was so mad, but if she didn’t defuse the situation, her life was in very real danger.

“L-look, ’twas but a harmless prank. What say we all take a deep breath?”

“Any other final words?”

“Thou hast a paucity of mercy, I see. Ha-ha, ’tis not as though you harbor feelings for any on Lamplight, surely. A misunderstanding over a smutty book or two shouldn’t cause you any real—”

An explosion went off before her eyes.

The noise and the impact made her briefly think her nerves were on the fritz. A moment later, though, she realized what she’d seen was a gunshot, and she looked fearfully to her right.

There was a bullet embedded in the wall.

“Y-you actually fired?”

Lan had gone and poked at a sore spot.

She could tell that much, but she had no idea what that sore spot was. At the moment, she was less concerned with figuring out what it might be than she was with getting her bladder back under control. At the risk of sounding indelicate, she may or may not have wet herself a little.

Then she heard the sound of someone running outside the storeroom.

“______!”

She quickly shifted her attention, pushing Monika aside and standing back up.

“I’m on a mission right now! Thou may have tipped off my target!”

Hearing the gunshot had spurred them to action. If Lan didn’t give chase now, there was a danger they might escape.

Monika was unconcerned. “I got the lowdown from Pharma. This isn’t some Galgad spy you’re dealing with. They’re just a regular curator who’s been stealing works of art. Civvy like that, they’ll go down like a sack of—”

“They’re no mere civilian!” Lan shouted.

When Monika stared at her, dumbfounded, Lan realized Monika had been laboring under a misapprehension.

“Sister Pharma failed to give thee all the details, I take it.” Lan let out an exhale. “A group exists called the Discourse on Decadence. My target numbers among their ranks.”

“Who are they?”

“’Tis true they’re no spies. They are, to be precise, those who failed to become spies.”

The information was confidential, but Monika was in the middle of things now, and Lan decided she needed to know.

“They’re spy academy dropouts.”

A feeling of emptiness racked her.

“They were taught how to deceive, but when their dreams lay broken, they turned against our nation.”

When people enrolled in the spy academies, they were given a simple rule: Never use the skills taught here for evil.

It might have seemed obvious, but it was important enough that it needed to be made explicit. All the skills necessary to be a spy—shooting, deception, cajoling and coercing, inciting, lockpicking, assassinating—were talents that could also be used to commit crimes. The academies even taught their students how to trick the police if they got arrested and how to frame other people for the things they’d done. If one of the students ever went rogue, they would become a master criminal the likes of which ordinary law enforcement would be helpless against.

To prevent that, the academies threatened their students: If you ever use your skills for evil, the Executioners will put you down.

The Executioners were a group of ruthless agents who specialized in putting down their own. They were the ones in charge of killing double agents, as well, and the academies made sure the students knew there was no escaping from the Executioners.

The good news was, none of the academies’ previous dropouts had turned to crime. Perhaps they were afraid of the Executioners, but whatever the case, people who left the academies tended to live quiet lives.

Now, though, that streak was finally broken. A criminal organization had emerged made up entirely of spy academy failures.

It was one of the Foreign Intelligence Office’s counterintelligence teams that had first discovered them. During the interrogation of a captured Galgad spy, they had found out there was a group called the Discourse on Decadence that had been selling state secrets to fund their operations. They’d quickly captured a member of the group and tortured them into revealing their secrets.

The Discourse on Decadence was a group of academy dropouts who’d taken the spy skills they’d learned and turned them to selfish ends, and they numbered at least twenty strong.

Now Avian had been tasked with assisting the Executioners and apprehending the group’s members. That was what Pharma’s mission from the other day had been about, too.

After Lan had laid the whole thing out for her, Monika nodded in understanding. “So they’re shitters.”

Lan gave her an exasperated look. “Were thou actually listening?”

Even after hearing Lan’s story, Monika wasn’t particularly concerned. The majority of academy students never made it to graduation, and it made perfect sense some of them might have decided to run afoul of the law. The idea of having to fight someone she’d once lived and trained alongside didn’t exactly fill her with joy, but still.

The two of them raced down the museum hallway as they shared their whispered conversation. The target had disappeared after hearing the gunshot, but there were no signs they’d left the building yet. Lan had sealed off the entrances and exits in advance.

Monika was under no obligation to stick with her, but it was her fault the target had gotten spooked. She would have felt bad leaving Lan to clean up her mess.

As they searched the premises for their hidden foe, Lan continued her explanation. “If naught else, they’re no amateurs. If thou doth underestimate them, thou’rt likely to regret it.”

“But they failed, right? They didn’t make it to the graduation exam.”

If these were academy dropouts, then that meant they had either failed one of their regular exams, or they hadn’t been able to handle the training and had dropped out voluntarily.

Lan pursed her lips. “Bold words coming from a former washout.”

“Hmm…”

“I mean no disrespect to Lamplight’s skills. Academy grades are but one way of measuring talent, nothing more. Lamplight hath proved that in full.”

Lan’s voice rang with certainty, and Monika had seen the same thing herself. Her teammates had been branded as washouts due to how lopsided and specialized their skill sets were, but in situations where things lined up for them, they were capable of incredible things.

“Therein lies the reason for my concern. Some of these dropouts may well be as strong as Lamplight, if not stronger still.”

“You’re so right about that.”

Lan’s comment earned her a response.

They were in an exhibition hall filled with massive sculptures. The pieces were designed to be viewed from all angles, so they’d been installed in a wide space with plenty of room to move around in. None of the main lights were on, so all they had for lighting were the dim night-lights.

There, standing at the center of the ten stone statues depicting evil gods, was a girl.

The girl was on the taller side. Grete was the tallest person on Lamplight, and the girl looked to be taller still. Her arms and legs were long and straight, and her long face, big eyes, and firmly pursed lips made her come across as hostile.

Monika grasped her gun tight. “Didn’t expect you to show yourself so brazenly.”

“If anyone’s surprised here, it’s me. I always knew the Executioners might eventually track me down, but I never expected a couple of kids from my own generation to come after me.” The girl shrugged. “My name’s Shao Li. I dropped out of my academy last year.”

“Criminals these days are awfully polite,” Monika replied. “Nice of you to introduce yourself.”

Lan had given her the details.

The crime Shao Li was guilty of was art theft. The National Art Museum had pieces on loan from countless different wealthy individuals. Whenever she returned one of them, she would replace it with a high-quality counterfeit and sell the original piece on the black market. Her academy had taught her how to forge documents, and now she was using that knowledge to break the law.

The money she made went straight into the Discourse on Decadence’s budget. She was the group’s top breadwinner.

The hostility faded from Shao Li’s expression, and she gave them a warm smile. “I want to invite you to join us.”

“Huh?”

“We’re, like, basically the same age. I’m one of the group’s lieutenants, so I’m sure I can get you in on a recommendation. What do you say, you two? Care to join the Discourse on Decadence?”

Monika scoffed and turned to her side. “Well, Lan? Should we accept her invitation so we can surveil them from within?”

“Saying that aloud doth defeat the whole point…,” Lan quipped half-heartedly.

Monika had no intention whatsoever of infiltrating the group. That sounded like a lot of work, and it would be far faster to just capture the target standing before them and interrogate her.

“C’mon, just quit it with that spy stuff. You’re only gonna get yourself killed.” Shao Li laughed mockingly. “The way I see it, you’ve gotta look out for number one. What kind of loser goes and gets themselves killed for their country? I’m telling you, you all are brainwashed. That patriotism garbage gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

“Thine argument is lacking.”

This time, it was Lan who replied.

“You say you cannot lay down your life for your nation? So be it. ’Tis your right. Live as you please. Just run not afoul of the law. ’Tis that simple.”

“…Ugh. Spare me the sermon.”

“Turn thyself in. We hail from different schools, but we bear the bond of academy fellowship nonetheless. I shan’t kill you.”

Lan gave her right arm a gentle flick. There were lines of light visible from her fingertips. Those lines were string, the signature weapon of the girl who bore the code name Cloud Drift—string designed for binding.

Her specialty was Detainment, and that made her the perfect person for the mission.

“Yeesh, seriously? That’s the exact kind of stick-in-the-mud mindset I can’t stand!”

Before their eyes, Shao Li spread her long arms wide in irritation.

“I’m code name Molt—and it’s time you got fastened and filled!”

In each hand, she was holding a pistol. She was a dual-wielder.

She fired, and Monika and Lan immediately took cover behind a pillar.

They heard a popping noise from down by their feet. It was a spot Shao Li shouldn’t have been able to hit from the angle she was at. The sound of bullets slamming into things filled the entire exhibition hall.

It was then Monika realized she was using rebounds.

By firing rubber bullets and bouncing them off the walls and ceiling, Shao Li was able to attack her foes from their blind spots. That was an advanced technique. If nothing else, few—if any—academy students would have been able to pull it off.

That said, I could do that with my eyes closed.

Shao Li hid behind a pillar of her own and used her ricochets to try to take Monika and Lan down. Her bullets went flying off the walls and exploded on the ground around Lan and Monika. By firing her two guns one after another, Shao Li was able to keep up an incessant barrage of ammunition.

Gunshots continued to echo through the hall.

Monika was hoping to make things quick.

We need to act fast. Things could get ugly if they go on like this.

It was too dark in the exhibition hall for sight to be much use. Guided by the sounds of the pistols firing and the bullets striking the walls, Monika charged out from behind the pillar. Her plan was to close in on Shao Li and knock her out with throwing weapons.

“…Huh?”

However, she quickly noticed something was off.

The noises were wrong.

The twin pistols had been firing without pause and echoing incessantly through the hall, so it had taken Monika a moment to realize what was going on—the ricochets were coming too soon after the gunshots.

Shao Li was using special guns—guns designed with silencers to mask their real gunshots so they could wait a little bit after firing to give off their noise.

“Got you,” Monika heard Shao Li murmur.

By obfuscating the sound in the dark, Shao Li could throw off her opponent’s timing.

Monika knew about a technique where a person blended lies together with their special talent to bring their foes down. It was the ultimate lesson the academies taught, one only top students on the verge of graduation were able to master—liecraft.

When she drew closer, she saw the smug look on Shao Li’s face.

She could hear Lan calling out her name.

Ricochet × Time Lag = Invisible Bullets.

The rubber bullet she’d failed to perceive smashed into the side of her head.

A memory flashed through Monika’s head of being in that dilapidated house from the special joint training exercise just after “Flamefanner” Heide left.

All that remained was a group of honors students who’d just had their pride shattered. They didn’t understand what it was that had been done to them, and they didn’t understand what it was they’d done. The wounds on their bodies were one thing, but the damage to their hearts was far greater.

What had all the hard work they’d put in even been for? They’d climbed to the tops of their classes, yet their talents had completely and utterly failed them.

That was the moment when all the skills they’d slaved away at their academies to learn had been proved worthless.

The first ones to recover were the ones who’d been through a special joint training exercise before, the ones who’d already had their pride trampled by “Firewalker” Gerde. With bitter looks on their faces, they walked out of that run-down building. That was the group Pharma was in.

Then there were the first-timers too shocked to even move.

Monika was in the latter group. She’d been invited to the exercise in a record speed of just two months, and the confidence boost that invitation had given her meant it took that much longer for her to recover from losing it.

Now she couldn’t even remember. How had she risen back to her feet?

At the moment of impact, Monika twisted her head to blunt the blow.

Luckily for her, the bullets Shao Li was using were coated in bouncy rubber. It made them better at ricocheting but far less lethal. Monika nearly blacked out, but she pulled herself together.

Lan fired a couple of warning shots at Shao Li as she rushed on over. “Art thou okay, Dame Monika?”

“Yeah. Peachy.”

Her head hurt, but she could still fight just fine.

Shao Li clicked her tongue and quickly broke away from Monika, moving to another pillar. She must have run out of bullets, as Monika could hear her reloading. One option was to wait for her next reload and strike then, but this was a person who’d modded her pistols to give off the sound of firing and nothing else. Monika didn’t put it past her to fake the number of bullets in her magazines.

Lan was impressed. “’Tis no small feat, landing a blow on thee, Dame Monika.”

Monika shook her head. The only reason she had failed to avoid the shot was because there had been something else on her mind.

“Feels like fate’s pulling some strings today,” she said, combing back her hair.

“Hmm?”

“I think that lanky chick and I have met before,” said Monika. Lan looked surprised, and Monika clapped her on the shoulder. “Yeah, you mind if I handle her solo for now? I’ve got something else for you to do.”

Monika quickly told her the plan. As she did, Lan scrunched up her face. “I beg thy pardon?” She looked skeptical the whole way through, but she ultimately agreed.

While Lan got her preparations underway, Monika jumped out from behind her cover.

“You’re pretty strong!” she shouted into the darkness. “Tell me, were you at that joint training exercise two years ago?”

“………………Yeah, I was.”

She got a reply.

Considering Shao Li knew liecraft, she had to have gotten pretty close to graduating. It made sense that she would’ve gotten invited to the top student-only joint training exercise, too.

Monika could hear Shao Li’s voice coming from behind a distant pillar. “What, were you there, too? Then you should know exactly how I feel.”

“………”

“Shit like that crushes your soul!!” Shao Li roared.

Her heartfelt bellow echoed off the walls.

“That day made me certain. I can’t compete! If I went into a world with monsters like that waiting for me, I’d just be walking to my death!! There was no way I could win. I knew the only smart move was to drop out before I got myself killed.”

“………”

Monika nodded internally.

Yeah, I do get how you feel.

It had taken Monika herself a long time to recover after “Flamefanner” had crushed her. Had she ever thought about dropping out? Of course. Up until she’d gotten recruited onto Lamplight and narrowly managed to nurse the last of her pride back to health, she’d spent her time at her academy full of apathy.

Monika and Shao Li had been in almost the exact same position.

“But here’s the thing,” Monika muttered. “You were a little quick to give up, don’t you think?”

Her voice rang with confidence.

That was the difference between her and Shao Li—the fact that she’d stayed at her academy and hadn’t been able to throw in the towel.

“For someone dressed up as a museum curator, you’re not very refined.”

Monika shot a glance at the rows of sculptures and scoffed.

“This here is an exhibition of talent—pieces from the darlings of their eras. See, in the world of art, there are all sorts of masters who weren’t discovered for some time. Some of them didn’t have their craft recognized for decades, and others had to change mediums entirely before they made their way into the limelight.”

Monika took a step forward.

“How could you let anyone ‘prove’ to you that you’re not a genius?”

“Shut up…”

“But hey, maybe you would’ve ended up mediocre anyways. Seems likely, the way you wimped out and ditched your academy.”

Monika pulled a wallet out of her pocket and gave it a light shake. Three rubber balls tumbled out. They were throwing weapons she’d had specially made with metal cores.

“Now make like a good little loser and bow before the talented.”

“______!”

The jeer struck a nerve. Shao Li began firing blindly with both pistols from behind her pillar. Monika was defenseless, and the bullets came raining down on her as they bounded off the walls.

So she does have some pride left, Monika mused pityingly as she evaded the rubber onslaught.

The barrage continued, and a delay started emerging between the bullets and the gunshots. The timing to dodge the attacks got all messed up. That was Shao Li’s liecraft, a skill that by all rights, she should have been honing to defend her nation.

Monika couldn’t get anywhere near her.

She could hear Shao Li crowing in triumph. “Shut up! If anyone’s mediocre, it’s the person I just riddled with bulle—”

“All set, Dame Monika.”

That was when she caught Lan’s voice.

Lan moved in and took cover in Monika’s shadow. Countless threads extended from her hands. They were wound around every sculpture in the hall.

Shao Li immediately drew back and put some distance between herself and the string. However, Lan wasn’t there to detain her.

“I swear, Dame Monika, thy confidence is something else,” Lan said in exasperation. “To think that in a fight to the death, thou wouldst take such care to avoid letting her ricochets strike the statues. I do cede that there was a danger of them toppling depending on where the rubber bullets struck them, but my point doth stand all the same.”

“Art deserves to be respected,” Monika replied, then added, “I am technically an artist’s daughter.”

“’Tis news to me,” Lan said softly, then brandished both her arms.

“I’m code name Cloud Drift—and ’tis time we birthed fetters.”

Her Detainment strings wriggled like living animals and coiled their way around the ten statues.

Now Monika could move around without restraint. She didn’t have to worry about their bullets knocking the stone sculptures over anymore. She charged straight at Shao Li.

“______?!”

Shao Li immediately responded by opening fire, and Monika swatted her rubber bullets away with a knife. With the bullets flying straight at her, she could parry them without breaking a sweat.

What’s more, she could account for every single bullet coming from her blind spots, too.

Now that all she needed to worry about protecting was herself, she could math it all out. By calculating the angles the bullets would bounce and throwing metal balls in those directions, she could alter the bullets’ trajectories with ease.

Nothing could get close enough to stop her.

Shao Li went pale. “No…”

Monika smashed the back of her knife into Shao Li’s neck. It hurtled in a tight arc, and by the time she’d finished her swing, the fight was over. At no point had she given her foe a big enough opening to dodge.

“This is nothing new,” Monika declared as Shao Li crumpled. “You got crushed, unable to even fight back—just like we all did that day.”

Lan handed Shao Li off to another team.

Monika intentionally avoided asking for too many details, but she assumed that team was the Executioners. It was unclear if Shao Li had any future now that she’d used her spy skills for evil. Lan had promised not to kill her, so perhaps there was hope for her yet.

Monika wasn’t overly curious.

That said, the connections between herself and Shao Li did give her something to chew on.

Fate’s a fickle beast…

Shao Li had once been a top academy student. Then, at the special joint training exercise, she’d run into Flamefanner and learned the taste of defeat. She and Monika had all that in common.

However, that was where their paths had diverged.

Monika hadn’t been able to bring herself to give up completely and had gotten scouted by Klaus, whereas Shao Li had dropped out of her academy and fallen in with the Discourse on Decadence criminal organization.

What was it that separated them?

That was the question that dominated Monika’s thoughts on her way back from the art museum.

Midnight was just about rolling around.

Lan had decided to spend the night at Heat Haze Palace. Monika wanted to chase her off, but Klaus had already given her permission.

There were an awful lot of clouds over the night road where Monika and Lan shared their simple conversation.

“Dame Monika, Dame Monika.”

“What?”

“I was there too, you know. At the special joint training exercise.”

“Huh. I don’t remember you at all.”

“I blame thee not. We were both on edge at the time. I do recall Sister Pharma, mind you. I could tell from her aura that she was cut of different cloth.”

“Wanna trade her for our useless slut?”

“Thou shouldst not sell out thy teammates so readily.”

“Worst-case scenario, I’m willing to just give her away for free.”

“Changing the subject… Thou would do well to take more of an interest in me.”

“Name one interesting thing about you.”

“Back during the exercise, I spoke in the manner of the provincials.”

“That’s the single biggest nonissue in all of human history.”

“I follow not thy point, but I take thy comment for an insult.”

“So…what’d you think?”

“Of?”

“The examiner. Word is, she was an Inferno member called Flamefanner.”

“Is that so?”

“How’d you feel after going up against a world-class spy? Did it break you?”

“Oh, I felt naught but moved. Ah, I thought, what wonders the world doth hold.”

“…Are you serious?”

“Indeed I am. ’Twas admiration I felt, plain and simple. Everything about her seemed different from me. My heart pounded at the notion that I might reach such heights someday.”

“…………………………”

“…What holds thy tongue?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Hmm?”

“I just realized how completely pathetic I am, that’s all.”

When they reached the Heat Haze Palace entrance, Lan timidly turned to Monika. “B-by the way…”

Monika shot her a look, unsure what she was on about.

“Thy rage hath subsided now, I take it?” Lan asked, her face as pale as death. “About the books?”

“Huh? I’m still gonna kill you later.”

“Hast thou no mercy?!”

“Eh, I guess I can let you off the hook just this once. I did kind of muck up your mission, after all.”

If she were honest, Monika had forgotten all about it until Lan had reminded her. However, she couldn’t work up the energy to be mad about it anymore. Flamefanner had been a master of many talents, and she had doubtless been the one who’d written that smut. Monika had heard she had a side job as an author alongside her spy work. Getting Klaus to explain that to the others would be enough to clear the air.

“A-ahhh, what a relief.” The tension drained from Lan’s shoulders, and she let out a deep exhalation. “By the way, I would also ask that thou convince Dame Annette to cease her attempts on my person.”

“See, now you’re just being greedy.”

“’Tis hardly greed when my life is in jeopardy.”

“Can’t you just ask someone else? Annette and I aren’t exactly what you’d call close.”

Lan had come to Monika because Monika touted herself as the strongest girl on Lamplight, but when it came to Annette, there was little help Monika could offer. The only ones who could stop her rampages were Sara and Klaus.

Lan frowned. “As of late, the rest of Lamplight hath been rather cold toward me…”

“Really? They have?”

That was news to Monika.

The Lamplight girls were still chanting, “Go home!” on the regular, but they’d stopped meaning it, and the two teams were starting to get along. Now the chanting was their way of hiding how much they actually liked Avian. As far as Monika knew, there wasn’t anyone on the team who was legitimately annoyed by Avian’s presence anymore.

“’Tis the strangest thing. And after I try so hard to be friendly, no less.”

Right as Lan crossed her arms, one of the other girls just happened to show up in the doorway.

Lan gave her a smile. “Ah, Dame Sybilla.”

It was a girl with white hair, a physique as toned as a wild predator, and a piercing look in her eye—“Pandemonium” Sybilla.

“Thou’rt looking as regal as ever, I see. Why, the intensity of thy gaze puts any gangster’s to shame! It makes me wonder what thy father must do for a living!”

“…Okay, look. I don’t know if you’re jokin’ or what, but that shit ain’t funny,” Sybilla replied, making no effort to hide her disdain as she strode away.

Sybilla had some baggage about her origins. Monika didn’t know the details, but what she did know was Sybilla hated gangsters with a passion.

As Sybilla disappeared from view, another girl came by.

Lan gave her a big wave. “Ah, Dame Lily.”

Alongside her silver hair, this girl’s—“Flower Garden” Lily’s—distinctive features included her sizable bust and adorable face.

“Ha-ha, thou’rt looking as curvaceous as ever! If thou turned thy grand bosom to the art of seduction, ’twould surely make thee a spy to be reckoned with!”

“I-I’ll have you know I’m planning on blooming into a great spy without having to resort to methods like that!”

Lily’s face went bright red, and she scurried off.

Lily was no fan of talking about sensuality, and it made her uncomfortable when people called attention to her physical features.

Lan’s shoulders slumped in dejection. “See how curt they are with me?”

Monika thought back to the way Lan had called Annette a runt almost immediately after meeting her. Then there was the way she’d gone and poked at Monika’s secret affections.

She gave Lan a look of contempt. The only conclusion she could draw was…

“…You’re a master at stepping on people’s sore spots, huh?”

Lan gave her a quizzical look. “Huh?”

Two years ago, “Flamefanner” Heide gave a wave from a dilapidated house deep in the mountains.

“All right, I have to get going. My dear baby brother is waiting for me with dinner at the ready!” she said, sounding oddly proud of the fact. “This is good-bye for us. And hey, if this was too much for you, quitting school is always an option.”

At no point did Flamefanner offer them a shred of mercy.

She was an egotist through and through, and she headed home without sparing the least bit of care for the academy students. The only things in her head were thoughts of dinner and the question of how she was going to get away with missing the deadline she’d set with her publisher.

There was no kindness, no malice, and no hidden message in any of what she’d done. She honestly didn’t care one bit about amateur spies, and her only goal had been to carry out the mission assigned to her by her boss.

She’d cast all trivial emotions aside. In a sense, she was the perfect spy.

Many of the students she’d beaten were devastated, but not all of them.

So that’s one o’ them elite spies, huh?

Lan was fifteen at the time, and when she regained consciousness, she lay on the floor with eyes aglitter.

She had me licked well and proper. I say, she’s got a gift!

That woman’s skills put even their instructors to shame. Lan felt like she’d just gotten to watch an extraordinary show. Her heart was pounding, and her blood burned hot in her veins.

She wanted to get back to her dorm so she could train at once.

As she rose to her feet with that thought at the forefront of her mind, the cerulean-haired girl crouched beside her caught her attention. The girl was staring at the ground with her head hung. Lan was looking at her from behind, so she couldn’t see the girl’s face or expression.

“You good there, missy?” Lan asked her. “You need some water?”

“……………”

“Ignoring me, eh? Well, I can’t rightly say I blame ya.”

“……………”

“I’m gonna head on out, if that’s all right with you. The exercise is over, you know.”

The cerulean-haired girl simply crouched there, not moving a muscle. She looked pretty depressed.

Lan let out an exhale, then laid a hand on the girl’s shoulder as she left. “You did damn well back there. That was you still standing at the end, weren’t it? I say, you’ve got a gift.”

Those words left a hole in the cerulean-haired girl’s—Monika’s—heart. It riled her up just how off base Lan was. Monika’s talents had just gotten done failing her.

Without looking up, she slapped away Lan’s hand. “…Shut up.”

“If you’ve got the strength to talk back, then I say you’ll be right as rain.”

Lan smiled and stepped away from Monika. The two of them never ended up seeing each other’s faces, and in time, they both forgot about the interaction entirely.

Soon afterward, Monika stood back up.

She mustered some strength in her legs and, after some staggering, rose to her feet. She raised her head. Then, after letting out the faintest of groans, she began walking once more. She bit her lip in frustration, but eventually, her stride grew more determined.