Ch.527Episode 19 – HELLDIVERS

The news that the youngest might actually be a criminal selling medicine brought quite a shock.

“How could this be…?”

“Hey! Aila! Say something!”

Jerry paced around, clutching his head. Adela raised her voice with a half-dazed expression.

Though I was the one who opened Pandora’s box, I wasn’t feeling particularly comfortable about it.

“Sigh…”

What the hell is this mess?

I just fidgeted with an unlit cigarette, clicking my tongue.

“Just tell us the truth. What exactly do you do for a living?”

“……”

Aila didn’t answer.

Unable to bear the sight any longer, I finally lit my lighter. What am I supposed to do with this kid?

At least she doesn’t show the typical signs of a drug user, so she’s probably not involved in consumption or manufacturing. The issue was what role she played in whatever company or organization she worked for.

I stared at Aila while suppressing my frustration with cigarette smoke. But something about her reaction seemed off.

“……”

There was none of the typical attitude you’d expect from a criminal. Instead, the kid just rolled her eyes around with an awkward expression.

“What’s with you? Seems like you’re hiding something.”

“N-no. I’m not.”

Aila offered what sounded like an excuse while scratching her eyebrow.

“That’s obviously a lie.”

I exhaled smoke and added bluntly.

“You always scratch your eyebrow when you lie. You know that?”

“……”

“What is it? Not just selling drugs but harvesting organs too?”

“That’s not it. Actually…”

After fidgeting nervously, Aila pulled something out of her wallet.

Episode 19 – HELLDIVERS

“Yes, I’ll handle it at my level, so you can rest assured.”

-‘I’m truly sorry, Director. Our employee has caused you trouble unintentionally.’

“Mistakes happen. Isn’t she a new recruit? Anyway, get back to work. I think we’ll have a visitor soon.”

-‘Yes, I’ll come see you soon.’

Click.

The General hung up and put down the receiver.

Complete darkness had long since penetrated through the glass windows and settled in the office.

Scattered light spilled into the corridor lined with offices secured by keypad locks. Some offices were as bright as day, while others only had small areas illuminated inside their partitions.

In the dimly lit office, the General gazed pensively at the capital city’s landscape she had been observing for decades.

Beyond the window, deep darkness intermingled with light, creating rippling patterns.

Suddenly, a commotion arose from the far end of the corridor.

‘You can’t go in.’

‘Move aside.’

‘If you have business, please come back tomorrow. The Director just left…’

‘I saw your ID at the checkpoint, so move.’

Hearing the disturbance behind her, the General pressed a button.

“Let them in.”

Soon after a sound like something being shaken off, someone walked in through the wooden door.

The man advanced to the desk.

Only after the footsteps stopped did she finally turn her chair around.

“…The person who supposedly went home yesterday after questioning is already back at work?”

Leoni pointed to the conference table with a gruff voice.

“Sit.”

*

Despite my barging into her office unannounced, Leoni didn’t seem particularly surprised.

As if she already knew everything, as she always did, she simply offered me a seat.

“Would you like some tea?”

“No, thank you.”

“You’re not beating around the bush.”

While the organizational structure of intelligence agencies is classified, even civilians know how difficult it is to earn stars in military intelligence. It really was.

In the military, promotion to general is a benchmark for successful soldiers.

If that’s true in the field, what does it mean to rise to general in a place where even promotion to field-grade officer is fiercely competitive? That’s why Leoni didn’t bother with small talk.

It meant skipping the introduction and going straight to the point.

“Are you here about your sister?”

“You knew?”

“I just got a call from them.”

I took a deep breath. My head felt heavy. So did my eyelids.

While we both knew the reason, making the conversation unnecessarily long seemed pointless, but now that I was here, I couldn’t find the words.

I needed time to gather my thoughts.

A period of waiting followed. Fortunately, Leoni didn’t rush me. She waited patiently for a long time, and only after I had thought things through did I finally begin to speak.

“…My sister is apparently an employee of the Royal Intelligence Service.”

Unlike my usual self, my words came out awkwardly. I moved my reluctant lips.

“She joined a few months ago, I’m told. I only found out today.”

Steam rose from the teacup.

Leoni paused as she was bringing the cup to her lips.

“How did you find out?”

There’s an internet rumor that intelligence agencies don’t issue ID cards, but that’s complete nonsense. What kind of civil servant doesn’t have an official ID?

Of course they have ID cards, and business cards too.

Granted, given the nature of the workplace, it’s difficult to show these IDs freely. Nevertheless, intelligence officers are issued their own identification. I had one myself, as did Pippin, Jake, and Charnoi.

…And so did Aila.

“She had drugs among her belongings, and when I confronted her, she showed me her ID.”

I still remember it. Aila nervously glancing around before reluctantly presenting her ID.

The blue card emblazoned with the Royal Intelligence Service emblem looked identical to what I’d seen throughout my years working for the company.

I placed one hand on the table and closed my eyes briefly.

“My sister joining the Royal Intelligence Service. Perhaps…”

“I didn’t know.”

Leoni took a sip of tea and continued in a monotone voice.

“How would I know when we’re in different agencies? It’s been almost a year since I returned from my assignment.”

That made sense.

According to Aila, she joined this year. Leoni had returned to her post late last year. I couldn’t have missed that fact. After all, she was the one who directed the defection operation from the Kiyen Empire.

By law, Aila would have applied and taken the exam last year, but typically new intelligence officers undergo training at an educational institution immediately after passing, so Leoni wouldn’t have had time to meet my sister.

Besides, high-ranking intelligence officers are never idle enough to take interest in recruits in training. Those commanding hundreds of field operatives barely had enough hours in a day.

Some even put office phones in their bathrooms to take calls while shaving. Who had time for such concerns?

The Director of Foreign Intelligence at the Military Intelligence Agency rubbed her temple as if newly surprised.

“Your sister seems to have reported to her agency that her identity was exposed. They haven’t given me many details yet as they’re still assessing the situation, but I suppose it’s fine to report what I just heard?”

“…Yes, that’s fine.”

“Then let’s leave it at that.”

Leoni asked.

“What do you want?”

I answered without hesitation.

“Get her out of the field right now.”

She asked if there was any special reason why that had to happen.

To which I began explaining in a calm tone.

“As soon as I saw her ID, I started questioning her about everything. What she did at the Royal Intelligence Service, where she was deployed, why she went there, and what she did—everything.”

“And?”

“She said the Moritani continent.”

Whatever drugs she was on, the fearless Aila who had recklessly thrust her head into the Royal Intelligence Service had been assigned to the Moritani continent.

Considering that she had just completed her training and entered practical work as a newly recruited intelligence officer, Aila was literally as good as a rookie who knew nothing.

The Moritani continent was a region infamous for being as chaotic as Earth’s Africa.

“That’s a post even active officers avoid, isn’t it?”

It wasn’t unheard of for new recruits to be assigned to dangerous regions, but at least in my view, Aila wasn’t cut out for such places.

Yet Aila said she was working in the field there.

For reference, the drugs I caught her with were evidence seized from a local criminal organization. When I asked why she was carrying them, she said her team leader gave them to her while on home leave, telling her to probe distribution networks with other office staff domestically.

While drugs are certainly a funding source for international criminal organizations and paramilitary groups (warlords), making them a prime target for intelligence agencies, I couldn’t understand the unnamed team leader who entrusted this task to Aila.

“She’s the type who will either drive her teammates crazy or suffer terribly herself in such a place.”

“So you want her assignment changed. Is that it?”

“Yes.”

“Huh. I can’t believe this…”

Leoni let out an exclamation as if she found it absurd.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

As her finger drummed on the table, the Director’s voice began to spread softly.

“Look. I understand your concern for family, but be reasonable. Bring me a realistic alternative. How am I supposed to overturn a decision made by another agency? Hmm? Even investigators can’t do anything without a warrant in this world.”

She added with a sigh that they were short-staffed too.

“Even if we could transfer her, it’s problematic. That region is already understaffed and in poor condition, so what happens if we pull a rookie out? All the other teams are busy training their new recruits—are you saying those employees should just twiddle their thumbs until another rookie arrives?”

That was a fact.

Even the team I managed only got Charnoi and that was it. According to the original structure, we should have been a five-person team including myself.

I went all the way to the personnel department and practically begged for a new recruit, but nothing changed. There were other employees before me who couldn’t get new recruits either. There was even a team that had been reduced to just two people—a major and a sergeant—after one of their three members transferred to another department.

I rubbed my forehead.

“At least transfer her to an embassy.”

“Do you think embassies are corner stores? Even when positions open up, they’re filled through selection.”

“Don’t new recruits usually go to embassies first during their training period? Everyone does that for language acquisition and experience during local adaptation.”

“Your family devotion is touching.”

Leoni shook her head and muttered.

And I responded:

“What? What are you talking about?”

I looked at her with an expression that suggested she was talking nonsense.

*

Now I realized Leoni thought I was doing this because I loved my sister. A very naive and rational assumption.

However, the reality was a little—no, very—different.

I wasn’t doing this because I was worried about Aila getting into trouble.

I was trying to prevent her from causing trouble.

“That’s not it. She’s just not cut out to be an intelligence officer!”

Who is Aila?

The troublemaker of the Nostrim family. A magician who turns people’s composure inside out. An adult with mental screws loosened about eight turns.

Impulsive and reckless. If the Grand Duke had Camilla, I had Aila as my bomb.

Although she was much more modest in scale than Camilla, Aila was indeed an embarrassingly incompetent person. (This is a fact acknowledged by our parents and documented in the Goguryeo Watermelon Diagram)

No joke, really.

The circumstances of Aila’s arrest while living her double life proved it.

“She came out to have dinner with her family, not even knowing she had evidence in her bag, and got caught by me. Who the hell was in charge of selection? I’d like to know which idiot recruited someone like her and stuck them in a special region.”

As a human detector with over ten years of experience as an intelligence officer, I could confidently say this was a complete failure. While no rookie is mistake-free, this was honestly too much.

Carrying company items in a commuter bag? That can happen. Everyone puts laptops, wallets, and documents all in one bag when commuting, so I understand. But if you have such a bag, you should either store it carefully or remove the contents before going out.

How could she not even know company property was in there and carry it out as is?

Though she was my sister, this was an irredeemable level of carelessness. I could usually cover for most things, but this was beyond me.

“How poorly was the selection process conducted that someone like her got recruited? There must be many other smart kids out there. You know, language majors or perceptive kids who’ve lived abroad.”

While her future was uncertain, sending her overseas now had an astronomically high probability of causing incidents. I could stake my pension on that.

Because she wasn’t the only scatterbrained person of her kind.

While small mistakes might be forgiven with a “these things happen,” every year there were always one or two people who started with small errors that snowballed into team-destroying disasters.

“She’s not it. Someone in their personnel department made a serious mistake that needs to be reconsidered. Really.”

I had to stop this.

I had to prevent my incompetent little sister from ruining someone’s life with her trolling before it was too late. This wasn’t family love—it was camaraderie for civil servants I’d never even met.

“She’ll end up killing someone with her mistakes. It’s obvious she’ll cause a major incident through carelessness. She’d be better off in an office. Sending someone who absentmindedly carries important evidence in her bag overseas? Come on. Someone must be hell-bent on getting people killed.”

“…Do you perhaps strongly dislike your sister?”

“I’m just stating completely objective facts, Director.”

Seeing my fervent criticism of my sister, Leoni began to look as if she was witnessing something strange.

Whether she believed me or not, I sincerely wanted to prevent Aila’s overseas deployment.

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

But Leoni seemed to think differently.

Suddenly regaining her composure after listening carefully, she pondered briefly before opening with what wasn’t quite a defense:

“I understand what you’re saying. However, we can’t overturn a decision already made by the Royal Intelligence Service. And as you know, the selection process for regional officers is competitive, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“The fact that she was selected through that competition proves that your sister possesses at least the minimum qualifications required by the company. It means she was deemed a better human resource than other applicants, which is why she was sent overseas.”

“No, what…!”

This is ridiculous. That was the most nonsensical thing I’d ever heard.

The kid who gambled away the money I’d saved to buy a car has what? Qualifications? Fuck. This country has finally gone to hell!

This was truly unacceptable. I never imagined things would be this hopeless.

Inwardly wailing, I began looking for a way to jump off this hell-bound train. But I wasn’t just an ordinary soldier—I was from an intelligence unit again, which meant that even if I emigrated, the chances of being blacklisted or marked were extremely high.

In the end, I had no choice but to stay here, however reluctantly.

Damn it. If I’d known it would come to this, I should have become a civil servant like my older brother or sister…

“……”

I wracked my brain to overcome the obstacle before me.

I needed a plan to save the Royal Intelligence Service employees from the biggest failure the Nostrim family had ever produced (probably) and prevent the incidents and accidents Aila would cause.

And finally!

A good idea came to mind:

“Then could I go in her place?”

If time travel were possible, my future self would have smacked me on the head at 0.24-second intervals for coming up with such an idea.