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The terrorist, pushed against the wall, looked up at me, gripping his neck with wide-open eyes.

The hand that held the trigger was desperately trying to block the ruptured carotid artery, igniting a will to live. The other hand, as if it were proof of his impending death, tried to grasp something to keep his collapsing body upright.

But the wall, having nowhere to hold, denied his grasp, and it seemed like this was the end for him; the strength in his fingers slowly faded away.

As blood pooled on the floor while the terrorist crashed to the ground, a deep groan accompanied the rapid decline of his rough breaths.

What he left behind were shabby clothes, a shotgun, a half-finished cigarette, and a long smear of red handprints.

I stood over the terrorist, gripping my bloodied knife, contemplating him for a moment. If he were to get up again, I’d make sure to put him down for good this time.

A fair bit of time passed.

“……”

There was no twist ending.

Episode 8 – Say Hello To My Little Friend

The immediate threat before me had dissipated, but the situation was still precarious.

The terrorists still occupied the department store. I knew neither their purpose, their affiliations, nor their numbers. I had no clue where they came from or who led them. I had even lost contact with the team I was supposed to protect.

Not a single thing was certain.

All I had was the fact that I was an Information Officer. A civil servant who collects and analyzes intelligence—my workplace was an Information Agency, and espionage was my job.

There were things that needed to be done.

I had to do them.

*

First, I approached the terrorist’s corpse and poked at his eyes. He was already dead, so it wasn’t necessary, but he might be just faking it. The guy could suddenly spring up and choke me. I had seen it happen a few times before.

Fortunately, as I jabbed my finger into his eye, he didn’t move an inch. It was certain he was dead. If he had somehow endured this, I’d have accepted death if he shot me in the head.

I brushed off the warm, squishy eye (whatever it had been) and spoke to Camila.

“He’s dead. Don’t worry.”

“……”

Camila didn’t respond. When I turned to glance, she was glaring at me, wide-eyed with her mouth covered.

“What’s wrong?”

She pointed at my hand with trembling fingers. I was about to say not to worry since I wasn’t hurt, but then I realized she was shocked by something other than my wound.

I hastily wiped the gory stuff from my fingers onto my clothes. Not mine, but the terrorist’s.

“Wha, what did you just do…?”

“I was checking if he was dead or alive.”

“By poking his eye…!?”

“That’s how it’s usually done. Sorry for the unwelcome sight.”

Camila shivered and plopped down on the floor. I hesitated to comfort her, but realized the urgency of the situation and decided to continue with the task at hand.

I flipped the terrorist’s body over so it lay flat. Then I stretched my palm wide and began to search his pockets, starting from his legs.

Camila asked me in a trembling voice, “Wh, what are you doing right now?”

“SSE.”

Sensitive Site Exploitation, SSE.

SSE is the act of collecting all the intelligence lying around when the threat has been neutralized. In movies, this is often depicted as special forces raiding a terrorist hideout, packing documents, photos, books, hard drives, SSDs, and USBs into bags with their tools.

What I was doing now was something similar.

I laid the terrorist’s belongings out on the ground and took off his jacket to hand it to Camila.

“It might be hard to look at, so use this to cover yourself. I wish I could tell you to stay back, but it’s dangerous to move away right now.”

I tried to block Camila’s view with the jacket, but she reached out and stopped me.

With ragged breaths, she stammered, “I-I’m fine. I’m okay…”

“Stop pretending to be brave and cover up. There’s no one around to see.”

“I’m fine… I’ve seen corpses a few times before…”

Camila insisted she was okay as she mentioned seeing dead bodies from conflict areas like Syria and Sudan. I was skeptical about her being fine, but she instead asked me to help her stand up.

I willingly lifted her up and resumed searching the terrorist’s body. She observed everything I did, like an investigator watching an autopsy.

After watching for a while, Camila asked, sounding somewhat brighter, “Did you find anything…?”

“Yes, I found quite a lot.”

After finishing the search, I bundled the items I had found in the terrorist’s outer garments and moved to a different spot. I didn’t care if a corpse was beside me, but Camila did. And I didn’t want the beastman that had disappeared earlier to sniff us out.

I turned a corner and set down the items, signaling Camila to come closer.

“These are the things I found on the terrorist.”

“Did you take everything…?”

“Yep.”

Camila, who had been feeling queasy, (remnants of seeing the corpse still present) looked at me with a somewhat improved expression. I draped the terrorist’s jacket over her shoulders and examined the items one by one.

A pack of cigarettes.

An empty matchbox.

Sealing coins from Abas.

A passport from the Principality of Ratuan.

A train ticket issued in the Northern Regions.

A civilian hunting shotgun and ammunition.

A civilian walkie-talkie that was busted due to external impact.

And a shabby jacket used as makeshift wrapping.

When I laid them out, the number of items was not that substantial. But extracting information from these was the skill of an Information Officer.

I wrapped my hand around Camila’s shoulder and tried to calm her down, then began to speak.

“Last time, when the information agent or a colleague was shot dead on site, didn’t I say that we need to extract intelligence on the spot? I’ll be doing something similar, so pay attention.”

Camila looked at me with a slight expression of disbelief.

“Are you seriously explaining that now…?”

“What’s it matter? No one is dying right now.”

I dismissed her remark in a short reply. There was no time to waste. It was urgent, just like Camila had said.

First, I handed her the shotgun and the walkie-talkie. The combination of the old, battered shotgun and the chipped paint walkie-talkie was strange.

“You know what these are, right?”

“A walkie-talkie… and a shotgun…”

“Abas, like the United States or the United Kingdom, doesn’t allow civilians to possess firearms. The only exception is for hunting firearms like these. Only those who are either residents of border areas, or those with verified identities and guarantors can own them.”

“That’s the same in the UK…”

Camila replied while tightening her jacket.

“I know because I have a gun… In the UK, when you apply for a gun license, you need permits from the local police, a recommendation from a host, proof of a legitimate reason, and even the purpose of use must be validated… Background checks, home visits, you name it…”

“What kind of gun do you have?”

“A rifle and a pistol…”

I was momentarily stunned. Wait, why does a university student have a gun at home?

“W-why on earth do you have a rifle…?”

“That’s not the important issue right now…!”

Camila shouted quietly, clutching her jacket tightly. Taken aback, I couldn’t say anything, and with her urging, I returned to the main topic.

“Anyway, it’s hard for anyone in Abas or surrounding countries to possess shotguns like these due to strict regulations. Firearms don’t easily circulate in the black market either. Yet these guys charged into the department store with this. You following so far?”

“…Yeah.”

“But look, it has a serial number.”

I flipped the shotgun over to show her the serial number. The dusty old shotgun bore a serial number that complied with Abas law. In other words, this item was made in Abas.

“Camila might not know, but the shotgun you’re holding was made in Abas, and so was the walkie-talkie. The only people carrying both these items within Abas are spies. As a spy, the shotgun is your lifeline, and the walkie-talkie is used for communication with fellow hunters and to call for rescue in emergencies.”

Camila nodded and looked at me, seeming to ask, so what now?

The important part is right here. I showed her the cigarettes the terrorist possessed.

“This cigarette is called Ahtonyak. It was produced by the Kien Empire Ministry of Defense and supplied to the military—it’s a commodity only issued for military use and is hard to obtain by civilians. In fact, the law changed ten years ago to provide rolling tobacco instead, so it was discontinued.”

In short, it’s the Empire’s version of Hwarang cigarettes. Discontinued just like that.

Camila examined the cigarette closely before turning and giving me a suspicious look.

“How do you know this…?”

“I had an information agent who was obsessed with this type. When offered intelligence fees, he’d go out of his way to find these discontinued ones, even paying over the odds.”

“A discontinued cigarette…?”

“Even if the production line was shut down, it is still produced underground. It was popular in the Empire, so it occasionally circulates in No Man’s Land.”

Anyway, that’s not the essential part.

What truly matters is that this is a discontinued Empire cigarette.

“Ahtonyak is an Empire cigarette and discontinued. Only an Empire citizen would smoke this since it has never been sold abroad.”

“But why would a terrorist have this…?”

“It means the terrorist is likely from the Empire.”

Yet the terrorist had a shotgun and walkie-talkie that were made in Abas.

This led Camila to propose a theory.

“Could he be a spy…?”

“Unlikely.”

I shook my head and picked up the jacket that the terrorist was wearing.

“If you look at the collar of the jacket, you’ll see there’s no label.”

It wasn’t just torn off; rather…

No. There’s not even a trace of a label. It means it’s handmade clothing.

“Sometimes, information officers engaged in covert operations wear clothes with the labels removed, but this is not factory-made; it’s handmade. So they’re definitely not information officers.”

“Why is that…?”

“Why would they wear handmade clothes? It’s much easier to track than factory-made ones. Besides, an information officer has no reason to carry around a worn-out shotgun like this. If they run into military police with something like this, they’re guaranteed to die.”

If I were a Quasi-Military Operative, even if I were tossed a dilapidated shotgun like this from above, I would have grumbled all sorts of curses under my breath and spent my operational funds to acquire proper firearms from the black market.

“Above all, those who manage to smuggle firearms from abroad and remove labels from their clothes wouldn’t be carrying around cigarettes that are hard to obtain, not only from Abas but also from the Empire.”

If they were imperial spies, the whole point of their disguise would be lost. They probably don’t belong to the Imperial Guard HQ or the Reconnaissance Command.

Of course, the same goes for any information agency from a third country.

“It would be strange to intentionally bring cigarettes that have been discontinued in the Empire. Why would they do that? They could just enter as Abas or use an identity of an Empire citizen.”

“……”

“Crawling into No Man’s Land just to get a single pack of cigarettes is not something an information agency would do. Companies don’t operate like that.”

I finally opened the Ratuan passport that the terrorist had. As I scratched the photo with my nail, it peeled away, and when I rubbed my finger over the signature, the ink smudged.

“This is a fake passport. And it’s been made quite poorly.”

Information agencies never produce identification like this. They have specialized departments for forgery, so there’s no way it would come out with such a shoddy quality.

Regardless of where they came from, it’s clear they do not belong to an information agency. That much is for sure.

So what remains is just one conclusion.

“Wearing handmade clothes. Carrying things likely owned by a spy moving between borders and No Man’s Land. Arriving from the Northern Regions near the border. Needing a forged passport but carrying such a shoddy item.”

“……”

“Crucially, someone who smokes cigarettes that are only produced and distributed in No Man’s Land.”

People without homes or nations.

The dispossessed—exiles, prisoners escaping, rebels, free people, boat people, slaves, refugees, second-class citizens.

Dispersed populations.

“These people came from No Man’s Land. They are part of the diaspora.”

“Like the Jews…?”

“These people are more desperate than Jews. The Jews at least had Israel, but most of these people genuinely have nowhere to return to. They’re actually in a much worse position. At least in Jerusalem, there’s an army to fend off rockets shot by Hamas. In No Man’s Land, there’s nothing like that.”

“Why are such people here…?”

“I’m not in charge of counter-terrorism, so I can’t say for sure, but I have a few hunches.”

Demands for survival guarantees or the release of comrades who ended up in prison. They might be holding hostages and negotiating with the government about it.

But thank goodness. At least they’re not like Daesh, cutting off hostages’ heads.

I got up, brushing myself off, and grabbed the shotgun. The only things to take from this guy were the shotgun and ammunition.

“Are you feeling better now? Alright, let’s go.”

“Where to…?”

“We need to pick up Lucia and Francesca. While we’re at it, we’ll look for a way to contact the outside.”

I dropped a handful of bullets into my pocket and smiled to ease the tension.

“I’ll handle the navigation.”

Our destination was the third floor.

The shop where Lucia and Francesca were.

*

Inside the shop, soft music flowed. The bright lights made the products stand out, and the mannequins, shaped ideally, accentuated the clothing even more. And the friendly attitude of the staff.

Francesca lifted her head slightly, glancing at her reflection in the full-length mirror.

“I like this. What do you think?”

“It suits you.”

Lucia replied with a smile to Francesca’s question. Since her title was a high priestess, her smile was kind, but considering she was in casual clothes, the expression seemed more innocent than heavenly.

However, Francesca contorted her face in dissatisfaction, taking off the outerwear with a quiet sigh.

“Hmm…”

“Is something wrong? Do you not like the outfit?”

“That’s not it. The color is a bit off for me.”

As Francesca mumbled, the staff, quick-witted, brought out a similar design in a different color. Francesca tried on the new piece handed to her, nodding with a satisfied face.

“Hmm.”

“Do you like it, ma’am?”

“Yes. I love it.”

In response to the staff’s question, Francesca answered, casting a glance at the staff reflected in the mirror. The observant staff bowed politely and left, stating he would be there if needed.

Once the staff moved away to a distance, Francesca turned to Lucia with a relaxed expression.

“Don’t you need any clothes, Saint?”

“Oh, are you talking about me?”

Francesca nodded with a slight smile.

Unable to call each other by their rightful titles like “Saint” or “Hero” in front of others, they always ended up addressing each other in awkward ways like “Um…”.

Of course, it was inappropriate to address someone of a higher status by their name. The social hierarchy was still very much alive. And neither a saint nor an administrative officer of the Secretariat would be something anyone would disregard.

However, if someone were to call out titles like “Saint” publicly, it could put everyone in an awkward position. Formally, they had never set foot in Abas.

The reason they addressed each other in such uncomfortable ways was purely a diplomatic issue, but there was no denying that it made conversations awkward.

Thus, the moments when Lucia and Francesca could talk without looking over their shoulders was only during times like this, away from everyone’s gaze.

The administrator from the Magic Tower Secretariat asked the Saint of the Cult.

“You came to a department store but seem uninterested in clothes.”

To which the Saint replied.

“I suppose having devoted myself to the convent for so long, I’m not used to such things.”

“Oh, I see.”

She was saying that after spending decades locked in a monastery polishing her spiritual practice, she was utterly ignorant of worldly fashion. And that was undoubtedly true.

Lucia grew up under the care of nuns in the convent and became a priestess shortly after she turned into a saint. She even went directly to serve as a healing priest in conflict zones right after her ordination. Thus, it was only natural that Lucia wasn’t familiar with secular culture.

However, nobody knows why Lucia grew up in a convent. Who her parents were. Why her cult awarded her the priesthood as soon as she became a saint remains a mystery. Nothing has been revealed.

Of course, Francesca didn’t pay attention to such matters. She had enough mischief in her life without being curious about someone else’s life story.

She thought to herself how she couldn’t possibly dedicate her life to a life of abstinence through religion, and smiled gently. After all, it wasn’t her life. Was there a need for her to care?

However, what she was curious about was…

“What’s your relationship with the Colonel?”

Whether the Saint belonged to the same category as her. If Lucia, like Veronica, was a Diplomat pretending to be an information officer, she had to be careful about what she could and couldn’t say.

So, Francesca discreetly poked at the Saint for a reaction.

To which Lucia responded.

“What sort of relationship are you referring to?”

“……”

“Surely you’re not referring to what’s been written in magazines…?”

Lucia hurriedly shook her hands in denial.

“W-We’re not in that kind of relationship…!”

Lucia stammered slightly, her face showing a hint of redness. She might not be aware, but at this moment, Lucia’s face was quite flushed.

Francesca tilted her head, staring intently at Lucia’s face, and soon softened her eyes with a smile.

“I know it’s not like that. But I’m curious. Was it inappropriate to ask?”

“Well, not exactly….”

At that moment…

“AHHHHHH-!!”

A piercing scream echoed from far outside the store.

Lucia instinctively got to her feet, and both she and Francesca turned their heads simultaneously. Almost as quickly as a meerkat spotting a predator.

People outside were screaming and running somewhere while security guards banged on their radios, rushing in the opposite direction.

Neither knew the details, but both sensed that something was up.

“Saint.”

“I’ll go check it out.”

Lucia, with military experience, strode out of the store confidently and nonchalantly.

As Francesca watched Lucia’s back walking resolutely, she quietly shifted her gaze to a nearby shop. At the end of that gaze was a store designed with thick bars that descended, unlike others.

“Hmm.”

Francesca briefly set her clothes aside and fiddled with her card as she left the store.

*

The fox’s ears perked up, and its swaying tail abruptly halted.

The beastman, holding a sword, stood frozen in place, as if nailed there.

“……”

There’s a smell.

The smell of blood.

 

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