A Dark Fantasy Spy

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The news that my youngest sibling might actually be a criminal posing as a street vendor came as quite a shock.

“How could this be…?”

“Hey! Ayla! Say something!”

Jerry was tearing at his hair as he paced back and forth. Adela raised her voice, her expression half-dazed.

Though I was the one who opened Pandora’s box, my heart wasn’t particularly at ease.

“Ugh…”

What a mess this is.

I shook my cigarette, which I couldn’t even light, while just tasting the air.

“Just tell us the truth. What on earth are you doing?”

“……”

Ayla didn’t respond.

Seeing her like that, I finally clicked my lighter. What the heck am I supposed to do with her?

Looking at her, there seemed to be no signs of her involvement with the local druggies, so it appeared unrelated to using or making. The problem was the role she was taking in whatever company or agency she was working for.

Suppressing my frustration with an expression, I stared at Ayla. But her reaction seemed off.

“……”

There was none of the typical demeanor you’d expect from a criminal; she just had a blank look, rolling her eyes aimlessly.

“What’s with you? You seem to be hiding something.”

“Uh, no. Not at all.”

Ayla scratched her eyebrow while mumbling excuses.

“Not at all, huh?”

I puffed out some smoke and added nonchalantly.

“Every time you lie, you always scratch your eyebrow. You know that?”

“……”

“What is it? Are you not just selling drugs but also peddling something else?”

“No, that’s not it. Actually…”

Ayla hesitantly pulled something out from her wallet.

—

Episode 19 – HELLDIVERS

—

“Alright. I’ll handle it at my level, so keep that in mind.”

-‘I’m really sorry, Director. It seems that one of our employees has caused some trouble unexpectedly.’

“It happens. They’re a new hire, right? Anyway, take care of things. It seems like a guest is coming.”

-‘Yes, I will be in touch soon.’

Click.

The general put down the receiver.

The total darkness had long since settled in the office, filling the space through the glass windows.

Sparse lights flickered along the hallways lined with office doors fitted with number locks. Some offices were bright as day, while others only shone within the confines of their partitioned spaces.

In the dim office, the general stared blankly at the familiar landscape of the capital he had seen for decades.

The darkness outside the window blended with the light, creating a flickering effect.

Suddenly, commotion erupted from down the hall.

‘You can’t go in!’

‘Get out of the way.’

‘If you have business, come back tomorrow. The director just left work…’

‘I saw your ID at the checkpoint, so get out of the way.’

Hearing the disturbance from behind him, the general pressed a button.

“Let them in.”

Then came a sound as if something was being shaken off, and one person entered through the wooden door.

The man walked straight to the desk.

Only when the sound of his footsteps ceased did she finally turn to face him.

“…Isn’t the person who was interrogated and sent home yesterday already back to work?”

Leoni pointed at the meeting table with a curt voice.

“Sit down.”

—

Upon barging into the office without warning, I realized that Leoni wasn’t too surprised by my presence.

As if she had already known, she simply offered me a seat.

“Would you like a cup of tea?”

“No, that’s fine.”

“You don’t even beat around the bush.”

While the agency’s protocols were top secret, it was a well-known fact that climbing the ranks in military intelligence was exceptionally difficult, even for civilians. And it was indeed a hard truth.

Promotion within the military is a strong indicator of a successful soldier.

If that held true in the field, it was even more so for the officers who were fighting tooth and nail for promotion.

The general continued, “I suspect your sister must have reported to the agency that her identity was revealed. And they haven’t been able to keep me updated yet, but what I just heard I can share, right?”

“…Yes, of course.”

“Then let’s leave it at that for this conversation.”

Leoni then asked, “What do you want?”

I answered without delay.

“I want you to pull her out of the field immediately.”

A question came back, wondering if there was any special reason for such a request.

I began to explain in a calm tone.

“When I saw her ID, I pressed her with all sorts of questions. What she did, where she had been dispatched, why she went there, and what she did there.”

“And?”

“Mauritania Continent.”

Ayla was boldly sticking her nose into the Royal Intelligence Department despite being clueless about what she was doing and was stationed there.

Considering she was freshly hired and had just completed training, she was more or less a total novice.

Mauritania was famous for being as chaotic as the African continent.

“That’s a place even active duty soldiers avoid.”

It wasn’t uncommon for new hires to get dispatched to rough areas, but at least in my view, Ayla wasn’t cut out for that kind of place.

But there she was, working in the field.

For reference, the drugs I caught her with were evidence seized from local criminal organizations. When I asked why she was carrying that, she said her team leader gave it to her while he was on leave, suggesting she check the domestic supply chains with people from other offices.

While it’s only natural for the intelligence agencies to keep a close eye on drugs, I couldn’t comprehend the team leader who entrusted Ayla with that task.

“She’d only blow the cover of her team members if she went to such a place. Or she’d just end up suffering all on her own.”

“So you want me to change her posting. Is that it?”

“Yes.”

“Hah. Good grief…”

Leoni scoffed, sounding incredulous.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

As her fingers drummed against the table, the Director’s voice started to lower.

“Listen. I understand your concern for family, but you should know your limits. Bring me a sensible alternative. How am I supposed to overturn something decided by another agency? Huh? These days, you can’t even go out for investigations without a warrant.”

She sighed, adding that the shortage of personnel was echoed on their end as well.

“Even if we could relocate her, it poses a problem. Given that it’s a hard area with already stringent circumstances, do you expect us to tell the other teams to sit and twiddle their thumbs until we find a new hire? That’s absurd!”

It was a fact.

My team was struggling to get a new member, and I too, had seen more cases of teams short-staffed after someone transferred out.

I rubbed my forehead.

“Then just send her to the embassy.”

“Do you think the embassy is a convenience store? Even if a position opens, there’s a selection process there.”

“New hires usually go to the embassy first on their training, right? For local adaptation, acquiring language skills, and gaining experience, that’s how it’s done.”

“Your love for family is moving.”

Leoni shook her head, mumbling the words.

And I found myself asking.

“…Excuse me? What do you mean by that?”

I looked at her, bewildered, feeling as if I’d just heard something utterly nonsensical.

—

Now I see that Leoni assumed I was acting this way because I loved my little sister. A very naïve and reasonable assumption.

But the reality was a bit, no, a lot different.

I wasn’t here to protect Ayla from danger, but to stop her from making a blunder.

“That’s not it! She shouldn’t be an intelligence officer at all!”

What kind of person was Ayla, you ask?

The reckless troublemaker of the Nostrim family. A magician with a knack for turning norms upside down. The kind of adult who seems to have twisted their thoughts eight rotations.

She was all over the place. If Camila was a Duke’s secret weapon, then Ayla was my ticking time bomb.

Although considerably smaller in scale than Camila, Ayla was nonetheless embarrassingly clueless. (This was a fact acknowledged by our parents and noted in the textbook of Goguryeo.)

I’m not joking; this is real.

Just looking at her getting caught with contraband while living a double life was enough proof.

“During a family meal, she brought her bag with God knows what inside and got nabbed by me without even a clue. Who the heck was responsible for picking her? I want to know who chose such a child and stuck her in a special unit.”

From the perspective of me, an experienced person in the field for over ten years, this would definitely qualify as a massive liability.

No new hire is perfect, but come on, this is pushing it a bit, don’t you think?

Carrying company items around in her bag while coming and going? That can happen. Everyone puts their laptops, wallets, and documents in one bag during commutes, and that’s understandable. But such a bag should be treated with care or its contents pre-emptively removed.

How can you walk out with company property inside and not realize it?

Even though she’s my sister, this was a level of recklessness that I could not cover up.

“How sloppy was the selection process to have someone like her picked? There must be sharper candidates out there. Surely there are many bright students who studied foreign languages and lived abroad?”

Who knows what the future holds, but sending her abroad now would have an astronomical chance of her making a blunder. I could bet my retirement on that.

Because Ayla wasn’t the only clueless person around.

When someone stumbles, everyone brushes it off saying, ‘It happens,’ but every year there are always one or two idiots who snowball their blunders into team catastrophes.

“She is not right for this. It looks like your HR department made a serious mistake, and that needs to be reviewed.”

I had to stop this.

Before my one incompetent little sister becomes a troll that catches someone in her mess, I absolutely had to intervene. This wasn’t just for family; it was for the comrades I don’t even know.

“At this rate, she might really cause someone’s death. It’s glaringly obvious she’ll screw up and trigger a massive incident later. It’d be better to keep her in the office than send her out. Why would you send someone who could forget important evidence in their bag abroad? What the hell are people thinking?”

“…Do you dislike your sister that much?”

“I’m merely stating objective truths, Director.”

With how fiercely I was denouncing my sister, Leoni wore a perplexed expression as if she had seen something utterly bizarre.

But no matter what, I genuinely wanted to stop Ayla from being sent abroad.

I’d rather just retire than watch her blow up a team.

But it seemed Leoni thought differently.

As if she was suddenly brought back to reality after listening calmly, she paused for thought before beginning what resembled an argument.

“I understand where you’re coming from. But it’s not possible to overturn something decided by the Royal Intelligence Department. Besides, as you already know, the process of selecting regional managers is competitive, right?”

“Yes.”

“Getting selected there means your sister has at least the minimum qualities the agency demands. The fact that she was better than other applicants is why she got sent overseas.”

“No way…!”

I was so dumbfounded. I’d never heard such nonsense in my life.

The kid who blew all the money I saved for a car on gambling? Showing ‘qualities?’ No way! This country must be doomed!

This was truly unbelievable. I never anticipated it would be this hopeless.

I internally wept while trying to find a way to jump off this hell-bound train. But given that I wasn’t a regular soldier and was specifically from the intelligence unit, the odds were almost impossibly high that I’d be flagged or hindered if I tried to immigrate.

Ultimately, I had no choice but to grumble and accept staying here.

Damn it. If I had known it would turn out like this, I might have just become a civil servant like my brother or sister…

“…….”

I racked my brain, trying to figure out how to save the Royal Intelligence employees from the biggest liability ever spawned from the Nostrim family and prevent Ayla’s impending disaster.

And finally…

An idea struck me!

“Then could I take her place?”

If time travel were possible, I’d have pounded my forehead in disappointment every 0.24 seconds over that suggestion.