I’m an Immigration Officer!

How much time had passed?
“...”
“...”
Outside the meeting room, the Sensory Officer and I stood in silence, watching as divine energy glowed faintly from within.

—Creeeak.
Only after quite a while did Erzena emerge through the door, wrapped in a golden light, her expression rigid.
“How is she?”

“Hannah is okay. Fortunately, there were no major injuries. Everything’s been healed. But…”
Erzena turned her eyes back inside, her expression weighed down.
“She looks like she hasn’t slept for at least two days. So I had her lie down and rest for now.”

“At least that’s something. Thank you, Erzena.”
A breath of relief.
Hannah.

The girl who had entered the Bureau with wounds all over her body had handed a scrap of a letter to the Olfactory Officer—
Then collapsed.
Only one sentence.

[Please help my friend.]
Words that only I could truly understand.
‘Friend.’

That word never meant much to me.
I never had anyone I’d call that.
But lately, someone had started sending me letters, claiming she wanted to be my friend.
‘Elaine Castor…’

A bad feeling.
A twisting sensation deep in my gut.
That’s when the Olfactory Officer finally stood from his seat and spoke.

“…Then I suppose it’s time we heard what this is all about.”
He placed what he’d been holding onto the desk.
What appeared was once a letter—but it had been torn to shreds, barely a fragment of paper remaining.

[From your friend.]
I looked down at it, a mix of feelings welling up inside.
Bad premonitions always turned out disgustingly accurate.

A torn-up letter meant someone very much didn’t want it to be seen.
‘Or she destroyed it herself… to keep it from being discovered.’
Either way, it was clear all of Elaine’s letters had been sent in secret—without anyone’s permission.

And it wasn’t hard to guess who that “someone” was.
‘The Queen…’
Helena Castor.

That stubborn, rotten tie had shown up again.
“Chief Officer. What kind of situation makes a kid like that go without sleep for two nights just to get here?”
The Olfactory Officer asked, barely suppressing his frustration and anger.

“Who’s the friend she’s talking about?”
Elaine Castor. The girl who’d started writing me letters after the day we met at the royal tomb.
My mind screamed the answer.

But my mouth said something else.
“…I can’t say.”
There was no way Hannah had come all this way for something trivial.

For her to end up in that state, to travel nonstop from the capital to the southern border for two days—
There had to be a serious reason.
Most likely, something had happened to Princess Elaine.

It weighed on me.
‘I want to say it. Right now. Everything.’
This feeling, this sense of dread, this moment—I wanted to let it out.

But the other party was the Queen.
Which meant the royal family.
“This isn’t something you can just pretend you don’t know, sir.”

“...”
Right now, the Sensory Officers and Erzena didn’t even know who I’d been exchanging letters with all this time.
If I said it here—that I was involved with the royal family—then even they could be dragged into it.

Back during the last hearing, the only reason I was summoned alone was because the Sensory Officers hadn’t known anything.
I couldn’t let them be roped in this time, too.
All I could say was:

“I can’t tell you.”
That was it.
“Goddammit, Chief. You saw the kid’s face. What kind of sick bastard does that to a child!?”

The Olfactory Officer shouted, fists clenched in frustration.
I understood.
Weredogs and werewolves like him—pack-bonded, protective by nature—view children as something to guard at all costs.

Given his temperament, too, it made sense he was this furious even though it wasn’t his business.
That’s when the Tactile Officer stepped forward.
“There must be a reason the Chief Officer isn’t saying. Now’s not the time to act on emotion.”

“Come on, Tactile Officer!”
“I understand how you feel. A child shows up in that condition after coming all this way—of course we’re angry. And she came looking for the Chief directly, so this clearly isn’t just some small incident.”
She looked upset too—her feelers twitching and slamming into the floor.

“Olfactory Officer. Do you know?”
“What?”
She pointed to the meeting room and spoke firmly.

“That uniform the girl was wearing. That’s what the royal maids in the capital wear.”
Silence.
“...”
“...”

Just those few words—and everyone in the Bureau understood what it meant.
“...No fucking way. That’s what the capital’s doing now?”
“We can’t say for sure. But either way, it’s not something we’re supposed to get involved in.”

She laid out the cold, bitter truth.
“There’s only one reason a maid would be punished that severely in the capital. Disobedience.”
“That girl defied someone. Someone powerful.”

An accurate read of the situation.
She slowly turned her head to look at me.
“And the person she called ‘friend’… is probably in serious trouble right now. Right, Chief Officer?”

Even without the truth being spoken aloud, the Tactile Officer had gotten close.
Our eyes met. She gave a small nod.
A quiet kindness.

Don’t say who it is—but let us guess and let us understand.
“…Correct. In my judgment, this… friend is likely being suppressed right now.”
Knowing the Queen’s nature, she’d be tearing into the Princess again, with verbal abuse and who knows what else.

At my words, the Olfactory Officer suddenly sprang from his seat.
“Then let’s go to the capital. Right now!”
“You can’t.”

“Why not!?”
He shouted, agitated, at the immediate rejection.
The Tactile Officer answered calmly.

“What grounds would an Immigration Inspector have to go to the capital so urgently? What could you even do there?”
“Well, to rescue—”
“And is that reason enough to abandon your post as an inspector?”

“...”
She drove the point home.
“We need justification, Olfactory Officer. A dismissed maid’s plea isn’t enough. And this is the Chief Officer’s matter—not ours.”

Brutally honest.
But true.
Those who work at the border must stay at the border.

Unless there's a special reason, heading to the capital is out of the question.
No matter how furious they were, the Sensory Officers had no place to step in.
Erzena couldn’t stay silent anymore.

“Then I’ll go. I’m not an Immigration Inspector, so I’m not bound to the same duties.”
This time, I raised my hand.
“No. You’re currently in asylum. And the Church still doesn’t know where you are.”

“But—”
“And if you appear in the capital now, the Queen’s faction will pass that information straight to the Pontiff.”
Backed into a corner, the Pontiff would move immediately to weaken her remaining influence as a former Saintess.

We hadn’t even confirmed whether Mohaim or the Holy Crusaders had arrived yet. We couldn’t risk exposing her.
“...”
“...”
Silence returned.

No justification.
No grounds to go to the capital.
Even if we did go—what could we say?

The Taste Officer muttered under her breath, almost like a sigh.
“Just when we thought there were no more incidents… something like this happens…”
Incidents.

That word dug into my brain.
“Incident…”
An accident.

A familiar word.
And at the same time, I recalled someone’s voice from a distant memory.
[If this mission succeeds, I’ll count it as Day 297. Sound good?]
[I’ll have the Saintess shipped to the North in one day flat.]

That conversation with the Director.
“…There is one justification.”
“What? There is?”

A promise so buried in chaos that I’d forgotten it completely.
I said the one thing everyone had overlooked.
“Zero-incident policy.”

“Zero-incident? What does that—”
The Sensory Officers repeated the word like they were hearing it for the first time.
Soon, they realized what it meant.

“Ah…!”
“Right, the zero-incident policy!”
“Miss Erzena, how long has it been since you arrived here?”

“Huh? Uh, I think… It’s been almost a week now?”
Erzena answered, caught off guard, and the Sensory Officers immediately began calculating.
“And it’s been more than three days since the Holy Crusaders left the border. No incidents during that time!”

“We made that promise with the Foreign Affairs Minister, so it’s not some minor excuse.”
“But… can we really call this ‘incident-free’? There were tons of problems after that denied entry.”
Everyone frowned at that last remark.

“Well, yes, but…”
I answered.
“That doesn’t matter.”

“Huh?”
“Whether it was truly incident-free or not is up to the Minister to decide. All we need to do is show up and claim it.”
Whether the record holds up or not wasn’t the important part right now.

What mattered was that I had to claim the bonus for reaching 300 incident-free days.
And for something like that—anything tied to a financial award—you had to submit the paperwork in person at the capital.
Matters involving money could never be done via remote communication or proxy.

I had to go to the capital. Myself.
I had my justification.
Realizing this, the Sensory Officers finally looked visibly relieved.

“During that time, I’ll find a way to meet… the friend.”
“What will you do when you get there?”
At that, I fell silent for a moment.

What would I actually do?
I didn’t know.
But the phrase she always wrote at the end of her letters wouldn’t leave my mind.

[From your friend.]
I found myself biting down hard on my lip.
“…Something. Anything.”

I grabbed my coat.
“Wake Miss Hannah. She can sleep in the carriage.”
There was no room for hesitation.

 
****
Crackle. Crackle.

The quiet pops of the fireplace echoed gently through the still room.
Bathed in a warm darkness, Elaine sat motionless, knees drawn to her chest, staring at the flames dancing over the logs.
The room had changed drastically in just a few days.

The hundreds—thousands—of sheets of letter paper were gone, and the pens and paper on her desk had all been confiscated.
All that remained was the chair, the desk, and the bed.
Aside from that, nothing but emptiness surrounded Elaine now.

How much time had passed?
‘Is it day? Night? Or am I even alive?’
She didn’t know.

Since Hannah and the letter paper disappeared, Elaine had done nothing but stare at the fire, hurling herself into an endless silence.
Then—
Creeeeak.

“Princess, your meal.”
An unfamiliar maid opened the door and began laying out fine dishes on the desk.
Clink. Clatter.

Elaine didn’t move an inch. She just kept staring into the fire, ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) ignoring the maid entirely.
The maid, clearly not expecting any response, gave a polite bow and quietly closed the door.
Creeeeak. Thud.

Silence returned.
Within it, the princess recalled the words her mother had said to her days ago.
[Chief Officer…? A friend?]

Strangely, the word that had felt so warm when written in a letter sounded utterly cold when spoken from the Queen’s lips.
Her gaze dropped to her forearm.
There, all kinds of blessing inscriptions—painted on with priestly brushes—gleamed under the firelight.

[In the princess’s case, Talent Emergence seems to manifest as uncontrollable power triggered by intense emotions.]
[What she needs most right now is the elimination of emotion. Calming down isn’t enough.]
[We will bestow the Blessings of Peace. If we layer several of them, she will be able to maintain composure no matter what occurs.]

That’s what the priests had said on the day they came with her mother.
‘It’s all my fault.’
She remembered.

Hannah’s thin wrists being seized by priests and dragged away.
She had screamed, please don’t, it’s my fault, but her wretched mouth could produce only breath—not words.
‘It’s all my fault.’

She rubbed at her forearm.
Harder.
Harder still.

Until the skin turned red and the pain kicked in.
She tried to forcibly erase the revolting, sickening blessing inscriptions.
‘All of it… is my fault.’

Everyone had said so.
Everyone except Hannah.
‘All of it… is my fault.’

Everyone had looked at her that way.
Everyone except Chief Officer Nathan Kell.
‘All of it… is my fault.’

Did her brother think so too?
She didn’t know.
She didn’t know.

She screamed the question inside her heart.
Calling her brother’s name, Nathan’s name, Hannah’s name—desperately searching for an answer.
“Ah…!! Uuuuuh…!!!”

But cruelly, not a single word came out.
And when sorrow is smothered and suppressed for too long, it always festers into something else.
For the first time, something new took root in the princess’s heart.

All of it…
CRACK.
She clenched her hand around her reddened, swollen arm.

…I wish they’d just all die.
Her green eyes stared unblinking into the tiny flame dancing in the hearth.
A flame just like the one King Rio once conjured burned quietly into life inside her chest.

Those who grow up in sorrow and pain can only see the world through sorrow and pain.
With even her last means of connection—her letters—stripped from her, the only thing left to her now was this.
Rrrrrumble…

The room began to shake. Bit by bit. Trembling slowly.
This was no blessing from the divine.
This was a force closer to a curse. A power that only destroyed.

And if this is my power… my curse…
Why—why must she be the one to endure such grief?
The fireplace answered her.

Fwoooosh.
With the blaze rising off the burning logs.