2. Corydalis’s Fateful Encounter

Seven whole years had passed in the blink of an eye since I’d been assigned to the Special Ops Division. During that time, Cercis and I had worked our way up through the ranks to the positions of commander and lieutenant commander, respectively.

The first thing I had to do after getting back from a long business trip was to write up an insane amount of reports. Or more precisely, I had to compile all the reports we’d already sent from our destination and present a conclusion.

I’d already gone over said conclusion with the commander, so the only thing left to do was put it down on paper. Still, considering I’d take exercise over deskwork any day, even that was pure torture for me.

The commander had already up and ditched me.

“I’ve been away from the manor for too long,” he’d mentioned offhandedly, only to disappear the moment his work was done.

Damn, that guy knows how to make a quick exit. Newsflash, Cercis: we’ve ALL been away from home for a while!

I hadn’t the slightest clue whether it was his wife or his mistress he was hurrying home to, but I’d gone ahead and said, “You’ve got a cute wife waiting for you at home and all! Man, I’m jealous!”

“What are you going on about? Calendula is the one waiting for me.”

“My mistake.”

Well, there you have it—it’s his mistress. That poor, poor little wife of his. What’s it like to be living with both your wife and your mistress, anyway? Do you get a new catfight every day? Yikes, I’m shuddering at the very thought.

Now that he’d already taken his leave with that proud declaration about keeping his mistress waiting, griping wasn’t going to get me anywhere, so I opted to just do my job. (I hate my life.)

You’ll pay for this. Tomorrow there’s gonna be a fresh pile of paperwork waiting on your desk.

But anyway, I’d have to save my revenge for later.

I hadn’t slept for something like two or three days before arriving back at the royal capital, only to have this stupid report waiting at the finish line. You’d think someone had it out for me or something. I was about as tired as you’d expect, so all I wanted was to finish up and head home to sleep.

I wrote up the report as fast as I possibly could.

“This is bad. I’m hitting my limit.”

At that moment, I was walking through the halls of the royal palace, on my way to submit my report to one of the higher-ups.

We’d gotten back from our trip yesterday evening. I’d then met with the commander to formulate our conclusions about the mission, so it wasn’t until late into the night that I’d gotten started on the actual draft.

Morning had rolled around. Though I’d gotten a short nap in, that was more or less just me dozing off at my desk, so it would be hard to claim that my body was fully rested.

I was mostly managing to walk in a straight line, but with the way I was fighting to keep myself awake, I kept stumbling over my own feet. My drowsiness and fatigue had reached their peak.

“Once this is done, I’m hitting the bath! Once this is done, I’m hitting the bed! Once this is done—whoa!”

“Eep!”

As I was walking down the corridor in my bleary-eyed daze, I rounded a corner and smacked right into someone coming from the other direction.

The girl I had bumped into was a lady-in-waiting from the royal palace. I managed to catch her in my arms as she stumbled, which kept her from getting hurt—but this came at the cost of sending all the important documents in my hands flying everywhere. Oh well. She’s okay, and that’s what really matters here.

“I’m sorry! Are you all right?” I helped her back to her feet, ignoring the scattered documents for the moment.

“Yes, I’m just fine—thanks to you, I should say. Really, I’m the one who should be apologizing; I wasn’t watching where I was going. Forgive me,” she responded, dipping her head in a bow.

“No, it wasn’t your fault at all. Please don’t apologize!”

That one was one hundred percent on me. I’d been walking around in a daze. I was the one who hadn’t been watching where I was going.

“Oh, but I must. Just look at what happened to all those important documents of yours.”

“Yeah...well, I’ll pick ’em back up in a moment here, so don’t worry about it.” I shrugged it off with a laugh, hoping she wouldn’t realize that these were some pretty vital papers I’d just dropped. Ergo, I did my best to pretend like it was all just trivial paperwork.

Of course, as soon as she turned to leave with a quick bow, I started gathering up the papers without missing a beat.

But then...a slender, dainty hand entered my view.

She had picked up a paper that had landed a good distance away and come to hand it over to me.

Every gesture of hers was so graceful that I couldn’t help but gawk. As I crouched there spacing out, she gave a curious tilt of her head. Seeing as I had yet to move a muscle, she went ahead and slipped the paper into my hands herself.

“Are you sure everything’s all right? I’ll go ahead and gather the papers that landed over there,” she said, kneeling next to me and extending a hand to pick up more of the scattered documents.

Crap! That’s a really important one!

When I saw her reaching for the paper on which I’d recorded our conclusion, I snapped out of my reverie and started panicking.

“No, please! I’ll handle these myself!”

“Oh, dear me—I have terrible eyesight, so I haven’t the faintest idea what this says.”

She must have figured out what was up when I began freaking out all of a sudden; with a sweet smile on her face, she shut her eyes and started gathering up whatever papers her hands landed on.

Talk about considerate!

Seeing her close her eyes with such a gentle look on her features made my heart skip a beat.

Wait, this is all well and good, but...

I brought myself back to reality just as I was getting carried away. No matter how nice she appeared, there was always the chance that she was really a spy. Besides, she seemed almost a little too tactful.

Anyone with enough smarts would be able to deduce from both my uniform and my behavior that these were some key documents. Once I was out of hot water, I was gonna have to give myself a stern talking-to for getting so visibly flustered.

I suspected her extra hard, just to balance out how charmed I’d been just seconds ago.

She kept her eyes shut, and I stared long and hard at her. The fact that she couldn’t see meant she wasn’t at her most efficient, but she helped me however she could as quickly as possible.

Then, she said, “Is that all of them? I’m afraid the pages are all out of order now, but this is as much as I can do.”

She tapped the stack of papers against the floor to straighten it out, then handed it over to me.

Nothing suspicious so far. It’s too early to jump to any conclusions, though.

“Thanks. You really helped me out here. I can take care of the rest myself.”

I smiled back at her, grateful.

Aw, great. Now I have to go back to the office and sort these out. If I hand these over to my superior all jumbled up, he’s going to be pissed. I can’t believe I have to do this all over again... Dammit! Next time I’d better get myself together before I go to turn it in! Guess I’ll just splash some cold water on my face and try again.

I turned on my heel, planning to head back to the office.

“I beg your pardon, but you seem awfully tired,” came the maid’s demure voice from behind me.

Oh, what’s this? Is she thinking, “Now that I’ve got a chance, I might as well leave an impression”?

Though I wasn’t anywhere near the commander’s level, I was pretty popular with the ladies too—as tacky as it is to say that about myself.

Girls working in the royal palace would try to strike up conversations with me on the regular. I didn’t have time to worry about a relationship these days, however, so I’d always let them down right away. If anything, wasting time flirting was just going to get in the way of my work.

If you can tell I’m tired, don’t make me stick around even longer!

And here I’d been a little charmed for a second there. It didn’t take long for my opinion of her to drop.

My drowsiness, exhaustion, and the stress of having to redo all my hard work came together to put me in a snappish mood. “I’m fine.”

“Really? You’re quite pale.”

“I’m just sleep-deprived. I’ve been pulling all-nighters for a few days in a row now.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear it’s nothing serious...but here, have this.”

“Hm?”

I heard her rummaging around for something, so I reluctantly turned back around, only to witness her taking a small wrapped candy out of a pocket of her maid uniform.

“This is a caramel my father made for me. He always says that a sweet treat is the best remedy when you’re feeling worn down. It’s quite tasty, as long as you don’t mind sweets.”

“Ah... Nah, I like ’em just fine.”

Everyone knows you’re not supposed to take candy from strangers, though.

What if it was poisoned or something? I was the third son of a marquis, believe it or not, so I’d been taught to watch out for tricks like this ever since I was little. I’d gotten the same lesson drilled into me after joining the chivalric order too.

When she noticed I was hesitant to accept it, the maid said, “Oh, my apologies.”

With that, she plucked the caramel out of my hand and popped it into her own mouth.

“There aren’t any questionable ingredients in it, I promise,” she reassured me, smiling with an indulgent sigh.

Now that she’d gone to the effort of taste-testing it for me, I had no choice but to accept it.

“Don’t mind if I do, then.”

She produced another piece of candy from her pocket, which I then took off her hands.

After that, we went off in different directions for real this time, with me returning to the office.

I studied the caramel intently, but as far as I could tell, it didn’t look any different from the one she had eaten. It didn’t smell weird either. Quite the contrary—it had a sweet, pleasant aroma.

More importantly, I just don’t think she’s the type to do something like that... Well, I say that now, but I guess I did suspect her of being a spy not too long ago.

I knew the commander and the rest of my subordinates would scold me for my carelessness if they found out, but I was too tired to use my better judgment. I figured I might as well eat the caramel, consequences be damned.

Let me rephrase that: I was dying to eat it.

I peeled off the wrapper, then popped it into my mouth just like she had earlier. A sugary fragrance and a mellow sweetness flooded my mouth.

“It’s delish!” It was so good that I mumbled my internal monologue out loud.

The taste of it sent all of my fatigue out the window, dispelling any lingering doubts about her along with it.

* * *

“‘Dispelling any lingering doubts’? Oh, come off it! What you really mean is ‘I fell head over heels’!”

“She’s right!”

“No need for the posturing, Lieutenant Commander!”

“Can it already, Chamomile! Angelica! Alkanna!”

“Tee hee!” they all squealed in unison.