Chapter 11
‘Do I smell or something?’
She subtly brought her nose to her shoulder, but as expected, there was no scent at all. Relieved, Leoni took the opportunity while Henricks’s gaze was averted to narrow her eyes at him.
‘Even if I did smell, isn’t it polite to pretend I don’t?’
He was a man who got on her nerves, and from the work assignments to things like this, there wasn’t a single thing she liked about him.
After cursing him thoroughly in her mind, she took a step back, and only then did Henricks’s expression soften.
After a few short, dry coughs, Henricks asked.
“Did you happen to meet anyone yesterday?”
“Pardon? Who? I didn’t meet anyone.”
Startled by his own question, Leoni blurted out the words like a machine gun.
If Henricks were to find out that she had met a dragon, he might just have a seizure. The nagging that would follow all morning would be an added bonus.
However, as if unsatisfied with her answer, Henricks did not retract his suspicious gaze. He asked again.
“Is that really true?”
“Of course. What on earth are you talking about, coming here so suddenly……. Is there some kind of trouble with the cooperative nations?”
To ensure her movements didn’t look awkward, Leoni finished putting the documents she had been organizing onto the bookshelf.
“……It’s nothing. Don’t mind me and continue with your work.”
After staring at her feigning ignorance for a long while, Henricks abruptly ended the conversation by himself.
‘Whew.’
“Ah, and I’m telling you this just in case.”
Just as she let out a sigh of relief, thinking it was all over, Henricks added another stern remark.
“You, you’d do well to be aware of your own constitution. Don’t go snooping around places where useless mythical creatures are likely to be roaming.”
‘I was wondering what he was going on about.’
Fortunately, it was the same old nagging as usual.
Seeing him act so irritating to the very end, it seemed he hadn’t found out she met Claude and wasn’t interrogating her about it.
Leoni silently gave a perfunctory nod.
Henricks responded by raising an eyebrow, then quickly approached another employee and began assigning tasks.
Her heart pounding, Leoni pretended to be unfazed and returned to her seat.
As she familiarly pushed the items on her messy desk to one side, the problems immediately before her came to mind.
‘Let’s not worry about it. I should be using this time to think about how to solve the magic circle.’
Claude would soon be assigned an officer. If possible, she wanted to solve it before then.
The moment an officer was assigned, the cooperative nations would know his every move, and if that happened, Leoni wouldn’t be able to hide the fact that she met Claude because of the treasure.
She didn’t want to add theft to the list of crimes Theo had committed by letting such a fact become known.
It was just as Leoni was making a plan to find Claude’s belongings.
“Ms. Leoni Winkelheit?”
A strange voice called her name. Startled, Leoni turned her head.
“Officer Leoni Winkelheit, is that you?”
“Yes……. That’s me?”
It was an employee she had never seen before. But she could roughly guess who it was.
A black uniform. On it, three white star-shaped brooches.
They belonged to the audit team, which monitored corruption within the cooperative nations.
“What? What’s the audit team doing all the way out here?”
The surroundings instantly became noisy. A direct visit from the audit team was no ordinary event. Her eyes wide with surprise, Leoni stood up from her seat without knowing what was going on.
“What is the matter?”
Henricks, frowning, approached her desk. With him joining the conversation, all eyes were naturally drawn to them.
“We’re from the audit team. We are escorting individuals sequentially for an investigation.”
The audit team employee replied with a stiff, hardened face. Then, he approached Henricks and whispered something in his ear.
‘What is it?’
Her curiosity was brief; the longer the audit team member spoke, the more Henricks’s face crumpled by the second.
“……I understand. Take her.”
Finishing the whisper, the audit team member turned his head toward Leoni.
“In that case, Ms. Leoni Winkelheit, we will need your cooperation with the investigation.”
⊹ ࣪🍰˚⊹♡
The audit team employee who started walking ahead entered the opposite building via the central staircase. Leoni, who was following him, tilted her head.
“Excuse me, the investigation room isn’t this way.”
“We will be going directly to the Director’s office.”
Startled by the voice that came from behind her, Leoni turned her head. Henricks was following her at some point.
“Is Henricks coming along too?”
He did not reply.
In an uncomfortable silence, Leoni soon found herself facing the door to the Director’s office, which she had visited only once before.
When the audit team employee who had led the way stepped aside, Henricks, with a hardened expression, opened the door for her first.
As she took a step inside, the heavy air of the Director’s office touched her skin.
In contrast to that atmosphere, a faint smile played on the lips of Director Grace, who was seated on the sofa.
“This way, come and sit beside me.”
Looking around the room, she saw that someone was already seated on the sofa.
‘What, it’s Jax?’
What’s going on? Leoni tilted her head and sat down quietly in a seat a little distance away.
Jax’s knees, on which his tightly clenched fists rested, were trembling. It seemed he was the only one unaware of how abnormally anxious he looked.
“Officer Jax.”
Director Grace, who had been looking back and forth between Leoni’s and Jax’s faces, finally spoke.
“Congratulations. I’m sure you’ve already heard, but you’ve been selected as the new dragon officer.”
“Ah……. Thank you…….”
‘So it was decided to be Jax after all.’
She had heard his entrance exam scores were quite good. His name had been mentioned in meetings, so it was within the range of her expectations. What was strange, rather, was why on earth Leoni was in this place.
Grace, smiling benevolently, opened her mouth.
“It is the most honorable, and also the most dangerous, job in the Empire.”
“……”
“Due to the unfortunate incident that occurred before, the dragon officer is naturally subjected to a thorough inspection of their abilities and qualifications. However….”
Thud.
A single document was tossed down in front of them. Leoni’s and Jax’s gazes naturally fell to the desk.
“Jax, we received an anonymous tip that you paid someone money to do your work for you.”
‘Damn it.’
Leoni closed her eyes. The document on the desk was the one she had filled out last Friday.
“Do you happen to know anything about this? Jax, and Officer Leoni?”
“I do not.”
“Uh, I do not.”
Unlike the composed Leoni, Jax, who answered a beat later and even stuttered, looked suspicious to anyone.
‘In times like these, the answer is to be shameless.’
It seemed he had the courage to crumple and throw a banknote, but lacked the courage to deny the suspicion.
‘But the audit team was dispatched for something as trivial as this?’
No matter how important the qualification verification for the dragon officer was, wasn’t this too excessive?
In a place where superiors who passed their own work onto their subordinates existed, being called into the Director’s office just because a bit of money was exchanged between employees.
“……”
For a moment, Leoni’s and Grace’s eyes met.
As if she had read Leoni’s mind, she smiled gently.
At a glance, she had a generous impression, but she was a person who had held the position of Director of the cooperative nations for many long years. She was by no means an easy person to deal with.
“In that case, may I ask a question?”
The next person to speak was none other than Henricks.
“Jax, I found the ‘Stein Region Mythical Creature Tourism Recommendation Course’ document you submitted to be very interesting.”
“……”
“Stein is a good tourist destination, but… there would have been better places to recommend for mythical creatures. Well, that’s not what’s important.”
He flipped through the document and pointed to a section with his finger. A voice that had grown even colder asked.
“There is an error on this page. Can you find it?”
The page Henricks pointed to was written entirely in an ancient language. As it was not far, Leoni caught a glimpse and recognized the problem.
‘There was a typo.’
Such a picky person. If there was a misspelled word, he could have just corrected it himself once or twice, but he always had to find fault and make people feel embarrassed.
‘But was I called here just because of this? Or for paying someone to do my work?’
Even if there was a monetary transaction between Leoni and Jax, at worst, it would end with a warning.
“Th-that is……”
Jax just trembled like a leaf in the wind and could not answer the question. Leoni, who at first thought he was just too nervous, also tilted her head.
Of course, the ancient language was tricky, but the part Henricks pointed out was within a range that could be found with just a little attention.
No way.
At that moment, an ominous hypothesis brushed past Leoni’s mind.
