Ch.390Episode 15 – Life is Beautiful

I sat in silence in the Overseas Division Director’s office.

Leoni sat across from me, staring with an expressionless face. An uncomfortable silence stretched on and on, but her expression never changed.

“What do you mean I can’t go on the business trip? What exactly are you saying?”

“Exactly what I said. I can’t approve it.”

Leoni put down the documents with a rather tired look in her eyes.

“Do you think this company is some neighborhood convenience store? Sending people on business trips whenever they ask.”

“I’m not going for fun.”

“I’m not joking either.”

The one-star general of Military Intelligence, the Overseas Intelligence Operations Director, absently scratched her prominent cheekbone.

“You want me to send you abroad to establish an intelligence network? And to a conflict zone, no less? Are you serious right now?”

“Deploying people to conflict zones isn’t exactly unprecedented, is it?”

“That’s precisely why I’m asking why you need to go to the field. It’s not like we don’t have other people who can go abroad.”

“It’s my job, so I should handle it personally. How could I entrust it to another employee?”

“You’re a military attaché.”

Leoni cut me off.

Ignoring the stares directed at her with an impassive face, Leoni adjusted her glasses and continued calmly.

“The four regions you’ve listed in your travel request. You know they’re all conflict zones, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then you must also know that both Imperial bastards and Sect bastards are running amok there.”

“……”

“Do you have any idea what would happen if you, known as the Abas military attaché, were caught operating as a civilian in a conflict zone?”

She meant I should act like a proper attaché. In other words, don’t overstep my bounds.

“With your experience, you should know better.”

Leoni picked up the documents she had put down and waved her hand dismissively.

“Let’s not waste energy when we both know how this works.”

“……”

“Go back to work. I’ll assign the task of finding your hero colleague to another department.”

Thinking about it carefully, she wasn’t wrong. There were grounds to reject my travel request, and there was sufficient personnel who could be deployed to the field in my place.

So it was a perfectly understandable decision.

“…I understand.”

With my head, at least.

Episode 15 – Life is Beautiful

I returned to my office after my travel request was rejected.

For intelligence officers disguised as military attachés, the Military Intelligence Bureau rarely required weekend work unless there was an urgent situation.

But even after being appointed as a military attaché, I still came to the office on weekends, claiming I needed to handle overtime work.

“Hey, everyone.”

“Yes, Section Chief.”

“How would one go abroad on a business trip?”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m asking if there’s a way to go overseas when the higher-ups have refused to send me.”

“Excuse me?”

“What? Why?”

“Uh, nothing…”

My subordinates peeked over the partition with faces like they’d seen a ghost.

Jake froze with a vitamin supplement halfway to his mouth, eyes wide, while Charnoi’s hand stopped mid-stack of a chocolate cube tower.

The nymph didn’t even notice when her mountain of stacked chocolates came crashing down, and Pippin’s non-question reached my ears.

“Why are you suddenly asking that?”

“Oh, just… it came to mind.”

Pippin, who had arrived with armfuls of documents, tilted her head.

“Section Chief, did you eat something bad? Or maybe something you shouldn’t have?”

“Hey. I’m not some junkie chewing on World Tree leaves…”

“You’re suddenly saying strange things. Usually, you’re singing about how you don’t want to work, but now this…”

She put down the documents she was holding, and I pulled them over and opened them.

The papers on the desk were overview reports on the international situation surrounding the Moritani continent, and analysis materials on civil war trends in various regions.

Despite their grandiose titles, they weren’t documents worth coming to the office on a weekend to review.

“……”

I began reading through the documents with a disinterested expression.

“There aren’t many safe areas on the Moritani continent. How did dozens of countries all get caught up in conflicts?”

“It’s all about competing interests.”

Jake, a former special forces team leader, spoke in a matter-of-fact tone.

“Even the Empire, with its vast territory, has incidents every day. So how could there be peace when various ethnic groups crowd into tight territories, trying to survive in a desert overrun with monsters?”

Jake added with a smirk:

“If they at least shared a common language, it might be different. But with populations of only a few million, more than a dozen tribes, and countries using three or four official languages, it would be strange if problems didn’t arise.”

“Oh. Is that the voice of experience? Your background knowledge is impressive.”

“Ah… I was just deployed there briefly, that’s all.”

He scratched his head awkwardly.

I tapped cigarette ash into the ashtray and slowly reviewed the documents again. One cigarette became two, then three. By the time the empty ashtray had transformed into a small cactus…

Pippin, who had opened a window for ventilation, asked me with a worried expression:

“Section Chief, is something wrong?”

“Why are you suddenly asking that?”

“Well, you’ve been looking at those documents and smoking for hours. I was wondering if something happened.”

“……”

Charnoi, who was helping Pippin with the window, chimed in:

“Pippin-noi is right… smoking more than a pack in two hours is not normal even to Charnoi…!”

I noticed the cigarette pack sitting on one corner of my desk. The trash can was littered with crumpled cigarette packs among scraps of paper.

After staring at the trash can full of cigarettes, I checked the time. It must be evening in the Kien Empire by now.

I extinguished the cigarette that was down to just the filter, grabbed my personal phone, and stood up.

“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

*

“Is everything alright, senior?”

Clank. The sound of a teacup being set down echoed through the quiet office.

In high society, there’s debate about whether making noise when setting down a teacup is proper etiquette or not, but fortunately, this level of noise didn’t violate aristocratic manners or officer dining etiquette.

But etiquette is always relative. Normally it wouldn’t have been an issue, but the problem was the person across from her.

Whether by academy class or commissioning year, Leoni was clearly senior to someone who was several years her junior.

However, when a young junior wears the same rank insignia—and a single star at that—even a senior can’t treat them entirely as a subordinate.

“There was no problem until just now, but one has just arisen. Because you came looking for me.”

“Hey now. You’re being picky.”

Klevins, the Domestic Division Director of Military Intelligence, responded with a feigned hurt tone.

“Come on, no matter how busy you are, is that any way to treat your junior?”

“Just get to the point.”

“I hear you refused an overseas deployment?”

Leoni’s crooked gaze turned to Klevins.

“Where did you hear that?”

Klevins smiled lazily.

“Have you ever seen people in this company keep their mouths shut?”

“Damn them.”

It seemed the subordinates couldn’t keep quiet and had spread the word somewhere.

Of course, the rumors spread by people who didn’t know the specific details were just trivial gossip like “the major went into the director’s office and came out looking like he’d eaten shit,” but the important thing was that rumors were circulating, regardless of content.

Her junior from the same university grinned and threw out a joke disguised as a pleasantry.

“Senior, overseas operations are fine and all, but you should control your subordinates’ loose lips first. With the Inspection Director on high alert, such carelessness is dangerous.”

“Nam Director.”

What appeared to be casual banter on the surface had entirely different undertones.

“I heard your senior rejected your overseas deployment request?”

Initially, Klevins mentioned the rejected overseas deployment request.

“How did you know that? Are you monitoring me?”

Leoni asked about the source of the information.

“Monitoring? Don’t be ridiculous. Your adjutant was blabbing about it.”

“Ah, shit.”

“Get your people in line. It’ll be a headache if Inspection gets involved.”

“That’s my problem to handle. Why are you concerned about it? It’s courtesy not to interfere between departments. Since when did the Domestic Division care about Overseas Division business?”

Though roundabout, it was essentially the Overseas Director telling the Domestic Director he had no business ethics.

But Klevins didn’t bat an eye.

“He was my aide until last year. When I heard strange rumors around the office, I came to check.”

“I was wondering what you were going to say… Why are you concerned about the major’s deployment issue?”

“Well, after having him as my aide for over three years, I thought I might help resolve any problems that came up.”

“Seems counseling wasn’t enough.”

The Overseas Director’s barbed comment was immediately seized upon by the Domestic Director.

“Oh? How did you know about that?”

“How could I not know when you were talking so loudly on the phone?”

She was admitting to wiretapping.

While surveillance and wiretapping might be everyday business for the Domestic Division responsible for military security and counterintelligence, monitoring military units domestically isn’t the Overseas Division’s job. Especially not wiretapping the Domestic Director’s phone.

Yet Leoni was completely unapologetic.

Because the target of the surveillance wasn’t Klevins, but Frederick.

“The major’s security audit is Overseas Division business. Is there a problem with the audit team checking who he’s talking to?”

It’s an open secret within the Military Intelligence Bureau that the audit team monitors the communications of department staff. Security checks were standard practice in any intelligence agency.

While it was a reasonable and understandable measure, being investigated was never pleasant. Klevins frowned and stared at Leoni with narrowed eyes.

“Well, well… Weren’t you the one who disliked inspections from the Inspection Office, yet here you are wiretapping your junior’s phone?”

“When I do it, it’s romantic. When others do it, it’s adultery.”

“Hmph.”

Of course, this was something Frederick was aware of.

That’s why he always used communication methods not reported to the company when having private conversations with Camilla and other acquaintances.

In other words, he generally used company-reported phones when talking with Klevins. More precisely, only when discussing matters that wouldn’t matter if the company knew.

So Klevins had a vague idea that Frederick possessed communication devices not reported to the company. And he understood it. He had done the same in his younger days.

That’s exactly what irritated Leoni.

“These young ones treat regulations like they’re nothing but suggestions.”

“That’s your problem, senior. A company isn’t a place where machines work. It’s where people work.”

“Regulations exist to be followed.”

Seeing Leoni invoke regulations, Klevins shook his head as if giving up.

Leoni’s tone wasn’t particularly serious. The listener took it that way, and the speaker intended it that way.

No matter how strained their relationship, they had been working at the same company for 20 years. The junior cadet who once slipped past regulations like a snake and the senior cadet who chased after him both now wore stars on their shoulders.

So they could set aside old feelings for a moment and engage in light conversation.

“For someone so concerned with regulations, you’ve been abroad? Oh my…”

But wasn’t the situation amusing?

It was funny that a commander responsible for security and counterintelligence was being scolded to follow regulations, and it was truly ironic that the person saying this was Leoni, who had violated all sorts of laws while conducting operations abroad.

So Klevins could only smile with a sigh, like an old person lamenting the passage of time.

“In my opinion, you chose the wrong department. You should have gone into counterintelligence, and I should have gone abroad in your place.”

The two seated in the office exchanged light banter.

“Are Imperial bastards still causing trouble domestically these days?”

“Not since they got a harsh lesson while lurking around the Nostrum family. No other issues except that other countries have filled that vacuum.”

“A consul stationed in the Northeastern Federation sent a telegram yesterday. Their informant successfully approached Charles Nostrum.”

“The Finance Ministry’s Director? Well, the Finance Ministry is certainly more vulnerable to security breaches than the royal family.”

“Except for the father, there are no security issues?”

“The royal family is protected by the Interior Ministry and Intelligence Department, so there’s hardly any room for spies to infiltrate. If we had to identify vulnerable points, it would be the brother and sister, but those two are handling themselves well…”

Of course, this was “small talk” by company standards.

“How’s the atmosphere on the Moritani continent these days?”

“Same as always.”

“A complete mess, in other words.”

In response to the Domestic Director’s muttering, the Overseas Director spoke up.

“Military men blow up the presidential palace with magic, claiming they’ll overthrow an incompetent government, then another tribal warlord stages a counter-coup to drive out the coup government.”

“What about armed groups?”

“Paramilitary organizations are predictable. Goblins waving red flags in rural areas, orcs cultivating opium from tree spirit sap harvested in the jungle, dwarves claiming to fight for racial liberation while raiding civilian homes as they chase after ivory towers…”

Klevins closed his eyes with a composed face.

“And that’s not even including humans, yet it’s still a complete disaster.”

“Tribal conflicts, independence movements, social revolutions, religious conflicts. Add criminal organizations and terrorist groups, and it’s endless.”

“Must be quite a headache for you, senior.”

“Like you’re any better. Compared to Investigation/Counter-terrorism/Counterintelligence, overseas intelligence is paradise.”

“Damn. I can’t argue with that.”

Klevins, whose head was actually starting to hurt, rubbed his forehead. It wasn’t just a figure of speech—his head really did hurt.

“Have you ever thought about coming to the domestic side, senior? We have many openings in counter-terrorism.”

“Enough nonsense.”

Leoni cut off the thread of trivial jokes.

“What do you want?”

Only then did Klevins lower the hand that had been rubbing his forehead.

Shedding a layer of playfulness, he got to the point with a rather serious voice.

“Major Frederick’s request for overseas deployment. I’d like to ask for your approval.”