Ch.526Episode 19 – HELLDIVERS

I tend to be quite observant of others’ reactions.

What I mean is, even though I might act bold and confident on the outside, the inside was a completely different story.

This habit developed because of my profession. As an intelligence officer, my job involves constantly observing people, guessing their true intentions, and crunching numbers. Moreover, since my work required frequent interaction with people, I had to be even more attentive to subtle cues.

My particularly mischievous junior colleague liked to call me a “human scanner” because of this.

But for me, working at an intelligence agency where reading people was how we earned our living—this profession as an intelligence officer—was always troublesome.

My mother had desperately tried to dissuade me from this path.

Perhaps that’s why.

Since becoming an intelligence officer, I’ve become someone who’s extremely observant.

“Aila.”

And my perceptiveness has improved somewhat.

“What exactly have you been up to?”

Episode 19 – HELLDIVERS

Late afternoon.

The wind blew steadily and monotonously. Moving slowly but quietly, it swept away the layers of fallen leaves, carrying away the withered foliage from the gray sky.

In an alley lined with small, clustered buildings. Amid the mournful meowing of a cat.

Under the dim streetlight by that wall, a young girl stood.

*

“Why are you suddenly asking about what I’ve been doing? That’s so random.”

Aila responded with a blank expression.

“…Just answer the question.”

“What are you talking about?”

“While I’m still asking nicely, confess willingly. Turn yourself in and find salvation.”

“Why do you keep saying such nonsensical things?”

She raised her eyebrows and looked at her bag with disapproval.

“I was already about to throw everything away, and now you’re acting like this too. Seriously.”

Perhaps because she had been half-dragged out without time to gather her belongings, Aila wore an expression that seemed to ask what kind of situation this was.

Jeri and Adela’s expressions weren’t much different. The two siblings, who had followed along without knowing what was happening, were just looking around.

“What’s going on? Why did we come out here?”

“Leave it, Jeri. They’re probably fighting about something weird again.”

“Adela, you…”

The eldest brother stopped mid-sentence as he was about to scold his sister. The eldest sister’s giggling, which had been poking at her brother, ceased a moment later.

The alley, where laughter had just faded, suddenly felt empty.

The youngest also remained quiet, perhaps sensing the atmosphere. I didn’t even look at her face and waited silently.

A single question broke the awkward silence.

“…What do you want to know?”

As the wind passed under the dim streetlight, Aila awkwardly rubbed the back of her neck and began to speak.

“I asked what you’ve been doing lately.”

“I’m working, of course. Since I have a job.”

“What kind of job?”

“A trading company. I told you before. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten already?”

“What do you do there?”

Her eyelids opened and closed in slow motion. After blinking once, she parted her lips slightly and pulled her lower lip inward a bit.

“Sales. I’m in the overseas sales department as a regular employee. I mainly handle import and export work, and I recently went on a business trip. Well… that’s about it.”

“Why don’t you tell me more about this import-export thing or whatever it is.”

“It’s nothing special.”

Aila put her hands in her pockets and continued her explanation. Her tone suggested it wasn’t something to overthink.

“You know the ingredients for mana potions? We import the raw materials, manufacture them into potions domestically, and then distribute them overseas. That’s what our company does, and my job is handling the overseas distribution part.”

“So your company handles both manufacturing and exporting? Hmm, okay. Since you’re a new employee, you must only be doing assistant work?”

“I’m in the learning phase.”

I nodded while staring at the ground.

“Administrative work, marketing, market research—you must have done all that at a trading company. Who do you mainly contact?”

“I communicate with various parties from suppliers to overseas buyers and sellers. Since they’re all foreigners, I handle the Kiyenese language side when managing business relationships.”

“What about the consignor?”

“…What kind of ‘nor’?”

I had been scraping the ground with my shoe, but now I looked up at the distant sky.

“…Never mind if you don’t know.”

I waved my hand dismissively. Ignoring Aila’s puzzled look, I continued with my questions.

“You said you went on overseas business trips.”

“Yes.”

“I heard you’ve been to various places. Where exactly?”

“Well, lots of places.”

Her voice became somewhat animated, suggesting her overseas experiences provided by her workplace weren’t too bad.

Latuan Principality, Toltipoca Federation, Ripuyo, Enruwana, and so on. The names that came from Aila’s mouth were numerous and included many countries I had never visited.

“I mostly just followed the executives around without doing much myself. But I did attend several exhibitions and trade shows. They were interesting to see.”

“Exhibitions and trade shows.”

“Yeah.”

“How long did you stay?”

“Abroad? I’m not sure since I haven’t calculated it specifically… I think I was there for about three months.”

“Three months, you say.”

Three months.

Standing quietly, I gestured for the others to come over. Jeri and Adela.

The two siblings carefully positioned themselves between us.

“Jeri.”

“Umm… what is it?”

“Trading companies participate in a lot of consortiums, right?”

At this abruptly thrown question, the Treasury Department civil servant seemed to ponder for a moment before nodding and beginning to speak.

“That’s right. International exhibitions are essentially stages for trading companies, so the event can’t be held without the main players.”

“Who usually organizes these events?”

“While commerce and industry fall under the Treasury Department’s jurisdiction, international fields are also handled by the Foreign Ministry.”

I shifted my gaze to look at Adela. She returned my gaze curtly, as if asking why I was staring at her.

“What?”

“How long do exhibitions and trade shows usually last?”

“Hmm… about 5 days? Sometimes they end in as little as 2 days. There are cases with more generous timeframes, but I believe they don’t go beyond 5 days.”

“Never on a weekly basis?”

“What do you think this is, a world expo? Who has time to run these for weeks?”

The active diplomat grumbled but still provided a helpful explanation.

“Did you hear that?”

As soon as she finished speaking, I turned toward Aila. She remained quiet, just standing still.

“Five days. That’s the longest duration a consortium can be held at once.”

“……”

“Even if you multiply this by all the countries you visited, it barely reaches a month. But you said three months?”

What is this, some kind of gambling game where you multiply as you go?

“If you’re going to lie, at least think it through. Did you forget basic arithmetic?”

“Hey, why are you treating the youngest like that?”

Sensing the strange atmosphere, Jeri intervened in the conversation.

The moment he grabbed my shoulder, I rotated my joint to remove his hand and sidestepped him in one motion.

Despite using minimal force, he fell away on his own. The eldest sister, who was supporting her stumbling brother, shouted “Hey!” loudly.

And then I threw an envelope in front of the two of them.

“Huh?”

“What’s this?”

Adela, who had helped Jeri to his feet, picked up the envelope that had fallen to the ground. The transparent envelope was filled with small white granules.

“Is it medicine…?”

Confused by the unfamiliar item, the two looked back and forth between me and Aila. Upon seeing the envelope in their hands, Aila licked her lips for a split second.

I pointed at the envelope with a tired expression and sighed.

“It’s drugs.”

“What?”

“Methamphetamine.”

The diplomat suddenly raised her head. The Treasury official reached out to touch the envelope with a dumbfounded expression, then quickly withdrew his hand as if burned.

“What are you suddenly talking about? Drugs?”

“Wait, how do you even know what it is? Can you tell just by looking…?”

Jeri and Adela started rambling in stunned voices. However, it didn’t take long for their rambling to stop.

“Why wouldn’t I know?”

How many years have I been making a living as a spy now?

“Ephedrine, iodine, red phosphorus, phenyl-2—separate these and you get meth, people.”

For reference, ephedrine is a common ingredient in cold medicine. This is why meth addicts look for people to buy cold medicine for them and suppliers to sell it through back channels. People who buy large amounts of cold medicine end up on investigation agencies’ radar.

I rubbed my wrist and began speaking in a calm tone.

“Usually, they mix ephedrine with other chemicals. They put this mixture in something like gasoline, apply intense heat to crystallize it, and that’s exactly what you have there.”

“There’s also a recipe using the Birch reduction method with hoses and straws, but that’s what broke meth heads use to make small batches for personal consumption. They’re too poor to afford lab equipment, so they use collected plastic bottles, making both hygiene and quality absolutely terrible. With such a messed-up process, they don’t have the sense to follow safety rules, so they explode and burn while making it…”

“Rotting teeth and abscesses are common too. Some drug makers skip equipment and directly inhale the vapor, destroying all their organs. There are standards, but even with standards, neighborhood dealers end up just boiling it in a pot.”

“But unlike these amateur producers, the real drug dealers are on another level. Even drugs have brands, you know. They use good equipment and stoves, have proper ventilation, procedures for handling the stench produced during manufacturing, waste disposal protocols… Of course, they use high-quality raw materials too.”

“Products made by such operators come out as beautiful, transparent crystals.”

Just like the drugs right there.

I close my eyes briefly and let out a long sigh.

“A trading company, you say? Do they count selling meth as trade these days?”

“……”

“…You decide.”

I said.

“Do you want to tell the truth now, or should I call people in to raid your company?”