A Dark Fantasy Spy

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The week-long dispatch has concluded.

Although the plan was somewhat derailed, the Military Intelligence Agency managed to apprehend a spy who had been wreaking havoc at the Advanced Military Magic Research Institute.

Presumably, as soon as dawn breaks, a letter condemning the spy activities that compromised military and state secrets will be sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the Magic Tower. They may even choose to conceal the arrest and initiate counter-operations.

I have no idea what will unfold next. In fact, I don’t particularly want to know.

For now, I’m satisfied that we captured the spy without any harm to our side, and that Camila Lowell is unharmed. The Counterintelligence Department will probably handle any secondary issues like investigations or legal battles.

After saying goodbye to the Counterintelligence Investigators I had become acquainted with over the week, I left the institute.

And then,

“You can take about a fortnight off before returning to work. Good job.”

Finally, I got my vacation.

Episode 4 – Why Me?

In reality, it’s quite a challenge for a soldier to take leave whenever they want. This applies not only to active-duty soldiers but also to officers and NCOs.

If someone is commuting from off-base, taking leave may lose some of its meaning, but for those stationed in the remote mountainous areas or on the front lines, time off is desperately needed.

I was in a position where I really needed a break.

There wasn’t a special reason for it.

While my frequent overseas deployments played a part, the most significant reason was the brutal workload at the Information Agency.

Regardless of where you are in the world, Information Agencies are notorious for their overtime work being the norm, and night shifts practically a hobby. The personnel are few, but the work is plentiful, and there are relatively few positions available for promotion. Colleagues and juniors competing against each other have stellar qualifications, and the difficulty of the tasks is as high as a radar site perched atop a mountain peak.

If you want to continue working at a place like this, you have no choice but to work yourself to the bone—or marry paperwork. Either way, the commonality remains that personal time is scarce, leading to dwindling leisure hours.

Still, now that I was working in a capital city with the Military Intelligence Agency Headquarters and some reasonably livable foreign metropolis, my situation was somewhat better. Had I been deployed to a deserted island or a mountain valley, I would have lost my mind.

Of course, just because I worked in the city didn’t mean my quality of life was high.

I had returned to the overseas department.

And in the overseas department, employees going on foreign deployments could not take vacation at all.

Whether you were an information agent or an operations officer, if you were dispatched abroad, you could not take time off. Those working at diplomatic missions like the White would have it a bit easier, but those like Black had to be extra careful about when they could rest. Moreover, the volume and difficulty of the work were grueling. You might not know when you’d be captured, and a single misstep could lead to serious trouble. Naturally, the quality of life would plummet.

Thus, during overseas assignments, you could only manage a day or two of downtime for a short rest. Even that was impossible if personnel were lacking or if workloads piled up. I hadn’t been able to take a break during those two months filled with work alongside Pippin and Jake, had I? I might have been the most taxed, though.

In any case, despite the numerous complaints and challenges, I absolutely deserved some time to relax.

Two months of overseas dispatch.
A week of domestic duty.
And even the subordinates returning from their own vacations.

“Yippee!”

Nothing could hold me back now!

As soon as I got my fifteen-day leave, the first thing I did was sleep. Perhaps due to the overwork that had lasted more than two months, even though I went to bed early, I finally managed to wake up only after the sun reached its zenith.

What a robust and lively morning.

I immediately stormed into the bathroom, groggily removing the sleep from my eyes, and bolted to the hospital. I had undergone several health examinations while at the cult, but now I had to go for additional testing as directed by Clevenz.

To be honest, thanks to Veronica and Lucia healing me, I felt fine aside from being fatigued, so I was inclined to refuse. However, I was coerced by threats of being told just to take a brief rest and return if I was completely fine, so I had no choice but to head to the hospital.

Fortunately, the examination was over in a flash. It transpired that since I couldn’t use magic and was a complete dud, we skipped a few tests like magic fluctuation and mental contamination measurements, allowing for a quicker check-up.

Anyway, the examination itself was swift, and the process wasn’t too bad. Since it was a military hospital established for personnel welfare, no one interrogated me about where I got hurt, and, most importantly, the processing was very efficient. Walking out of the hospital in a good mood, I texted Clevenz (or rather, his substitute advisor who filled in for me) that I was done with the tests.

There was nothing left to do.

I am free!

“Huf- ha.”

The air was particularly clear today. The sunlight was warm, and the breeze was cool, making it a perfect day to go out for lunch. Sure enough, it seemed to become lunchtime, as Military Intelligence Agency employees who had tossed aside their service uniforms were rushing out of the building.

Were they off to a company dinner? As the team leader led the way, the employees following looked grim as they hurried to align themselves behind him. There were also people walking alongside their close colleagues, bantering and laughing as they headed out for lunch, and one worker, trying to evade them, hurried to scoop up a file that had dropped, wedging it under his arm as he made a tactical retreat back into the building.

A typical day-to-day life. Everyone seemed to be living earnestly.

As I mixed into the crowd leaving the Intelligence Agency, I suddenly spotted familiar yellow and black hair.

“Hmm?”

“…Still have no idea where you are, huh?”

“C’mon, how would I know? I reached out to my colleagues and senior, but no one has seen him.”

“Shouldn’t you ask over in overseas instead of analyzing?”

“I don’t know anyone over there. They have so few positions available and a separate building. You usually only go there if you have a reason.”

Easily identifiable, troublemaker Jake stood out, and the much shorter Pippin looked even more diminutive than the sun itself.

I glided over to them just as Pippin and Jake were head-to-head, tossing around theorizing thoughts.

“This sudden disappearance gives me the creeps…”

“Could it be that something went wrong—”

“Are you saying he’s dead?”

“Eh?”

The subordinates suddenly turned their heads. Their eyes widened, and their mouths opened like fish gulping for air.

“Why is Colonel here?”

“Exactly. Why are you guys wandering about without a guardian?”

“Why would I need a guardian, I’m a grown adult…?”

I figured that saying I was a new guy who just returned from a short deployment would bruise my pride, so I danced around it a bit.

“Well, you all are just rookies, aren’t you?”

“Excuse me? I didn’t catch that?”

“You heard me perfectly.”

As Jake stood there dumbfounded, Pippin came to talk to me.

“Where on earth have you been?”

“I was on a short business trip. For about a week?”

“Wow. So you’ve been on a business trip since returning?”

“I returned yesterday, but yeah, pretty much.”

Suddenly talking about work made my head hurt.

I waved my hands to brush the conversation aside and draped my arm over their shoulders.

“Enough work talk. Let’s go eat.”

“We were thinking of eating at the cafeteria…”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“Where shall we go?”

*

“So we ended up here again?”

“If you don’t like it, go to the cafeteria.”

“…….”

This was the first time I had been back to the restaurant in two months and a week.

We had arrived at our go-to burger joint, beloved by the overworked staff of the Military Intelligence Agency, which had once solved our lunch woes.

“Can’t we skip the burgers just this once? We’ve been eating them for years, and now just the smell makes me feel overly full.”

“With the export restrictions, the price of raw materials has skyrocketed, ruining the real economy. Are you willing to foot the bill for dining out?”

“Saying that to someone who earns more than I do is just a bit rude…”

Burgers are delicious, so why are they complaining?

I said, sprinkling salt inside the burger.

“It must be busy for you, so let’s eat quickly. This is the only thing we can eat fast.”

“Even with us working, no one gives us any tasks.”

“What? Why not?”

“The superior is not present, and there isn’t an assigned office, so there’s no work to be done.”

“Oh.”

Right. I’m the team leader now, not the sub-team leader.

No wonder it felt like I had so much more to handle.

“So, since you clocked in, where have you been until now?”

“Well, a certain division chief or some section chief told us to stay put in the accommodation, so I’ve been there all this time.”

What in the world? They clocked in and then went back to their lodgings? That’s even better than clocking in overtime to leave work!

“Lucky you.”

“Is that a good thing…?”

“If that’s the case, Jake, you can run business trips instead of me.”

“Wh-what?”

“Go.”

“I think I’ll just stay hidden in the lodge.”

“Shut up.”

Teeeng-.

The lieutenant serving under the colonel looked dejected as they picked up the sauce.

But why did they get to go on leave while I was sent for a business trip? I am two ranks higher than them. It still doesn’t make sense.

Well, they must have their reasons.

“Let’s just eat.”

I dipped a handful of fries into the ketchup and shoved them into my mouth. The salty crunch of the fries combined fantastically with the rich sauce. Pippin, eyes squinting in disgust at the fries she smelled, looked over, and Jake, meticulously applying mustard to his piece of chicken, started to speak.

“To be honest, it’s tough going from eating beef and pork every day to chicken now.”

“Why? Chicken is delicious, right?”

“I mean, you need to eat something tasty for a day or two to feel good. How long have I been eating this? It makes my mouth smell like rotten chicken, man!”

“We’re stuck with whatever the military buys with the avian flu mess.”

“Oh, right. And there’s been another protest.”

As I was suppressing Jake, who was unreasonably smashing his chicken, Pippin suddenly brought up the subject of the protest.

“What protest? Did the Elves smash factories for environmental degradation?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then are the Orcs and Beastmen protesting to get their overdue salaries?”

“They’re protesting about livestock. They want imports of cows, pigs, and chickens to stop.”

Ah, so it’s just a mundane protest. I doubt there’s any urgent reason for the Intelligence Agency to be alarmed about this.

“What’s the source?”

“The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries.”

Hmm.

I pondered while plunging fries into the sauce.

It was quite unexpected for Pippin, an analyst in the Military Intelligence Agency, to be aware of the livestock farmers’ protests, but it wasn’t anything too special.

The protest news likely reached them from domestic information agents covering the Agriculture Ministry, who got it through intelligence sources, and it probably made its way into Pippin’s ears during the analysis and verification processes.

Of course, none of this mattered to us.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s a domestic issue anyway. If you know about it, the police probably do too. They’ll dispatch plainclothes officers soon.”

“Yeah.”

“Right.”

By brushing aside a non-work-related issue, I searched for a new topic of conversation.

“By the way, have you two run into any particular incidents lately?”

“Any particular incidents?”

“No, just curious. Did anything odd happen while you were on leave or something?”

“I didn’t have any.”

“Nor I.”

“…Alright then. That’s a relief. Nothing happened at the headquarters, right?”

“Well, there wasn’t anything noteworthy… Ah, speaking of which, I heard a few people from the diocese visited the headquarters.”

Jake chimed in, lowering his voice.

“The Inquisition branch chief and two senior intelligence officers.”

“Do you know why they came?”

“I haven’t received any specific messages. It might be a security issue, but we’re not exactly sure…”

“When did they come?”

“I heard it was last night. One of our colleagues was on guard duty at the main gate, so they must’ve arrived quite late at night.”

By “colleague,” he meant the staff who entered the Intelligence Agency alongside Pippin and Jake.

According to the regulations within the Military Intelligence Agency, all personnel, including employees and external visitors, are required to keep identification at the front gate station, so they would have been able to verify their identities while leaving.

While I contemplated this while busying myself with fries and sauce, I thought about the Inquisition branch chief, along with the two senior intelligence officers accompanying him, who had come unannounced at such an hour.

There seemed to be something vaguely concerning about it, but I didn’t feel the need to voice it.

It wasn’t my business anymore.

“Never mind that; let’s eat.”

Just as I was clearing my head and trying to finish up lunch—

-Brrring!

My phone rang.

Wiping the grease off my hands with a napkin, I answered the call.

“Yes, Colonel Frederick Nostrim here.”

-‘Oh, Frederick. I heard you’re on leave?’

It was Clevenz.

“Yes, that’s right, Colonel.”

‘Where are you right now?’

“I’m having lunch at a nearby restaurant.”

-‘Is it close to the Intelligence Agency?’

“Yes.”

-‘Perfect timing. Can you come here for a moment?’

“Excuse me?”

-‘Just briefly.’

“Excuse me?”

-‘Hurry up and come.’

“……”

This is truly insane…