A dark room, lit only by the glow of a desk lamp.
Beyond the mountains of documents piled high enough to obscure the windows, an almost full moon shone in the night sky.
Two figures hunched over the cluttered desk, so absorbed in their work that they had failed to notice when darkness settled outside. Their hands moved busily across the pages, jotting down figures and notes.
Apart from the large desk and a chair, the room was practically buried in paper. The stale scent of dust hung heavily in the air.
Whether through neglect or simple lack of organization, the documents had been thrown together in such disorder that their dates were impossible to distinguish without examining each one individually.
But after hours of painstaking work, that chaos was finally gone.
“With this, we’re finally done with last month’s records too.”
Sarah murmured as she set down the final document and rubbed her aching eyes.
After spending the entire day staring at numbers, copying them down, calculating, erasing, and rewriting, her once-pristine hands were streaked with ink.
“Wow, Sarah. You’re really fast….”
Leniss looked up at the mountain of documents she had processed, openly impressed.
“Maybe you were some kind of genius before you lost your memory?”
Clasping his hands together, he praised her without reservation.
And frankly, Sarah thought she deserved it.
She had only been exaggerating a little when she worked as though she would die if she failed to finish everything that day.
“Thanks to you, I’m saved. If I’d had to do all this alone, I wouldn’t have slept for a month or two.”
Leniss thanked her warmly for working as though the task were her own.
He was smiling, but the workload had clearly taken its toll. The dark circles beneath his eyes looked even worse than they had that morning.
“I wish we could work together every day….”
He gazed dreamily over the neatly organized documents they had sorted together.
After spending an entire day working toward the same goal, the two had grown close surprisingly quickly.
Despite his gloomy, somber appearance, Leniss was remarkably easy to talk to.
They shared a dislike of people, a preference for results over process, and, above all, a mutual distaste for Enoch’s maddeningly lazy attitude.
Once Leniss learned that Sarah disliked Enoch too, he began pouring out all the grievances he had been keeping to himself, as though he had finally found someone he could confide in.
“If the Captain were even half as diligent as you, Sarah….”
Most of it was gossip about Enoch, which was music to Sarah’s ears.
She had nearly given Leniss a standing ovation when he confessed that Enoch had irritated him so badly on occasion that he had seriously considered poisoning him.
“What are you talking about? This is the least friends can do for each other.”
And so Leniss, whom she had already found agreeable, became even more likable in Sarah’s eyes.
“Friends….”
Leniss repeated the word as though savoring it.
A faint blush colored his face as he handed Sarah a freshly poured glass of water.
Parched, she accepted it gratefully and drank.
“You must be exhausted. When you get back, ask the Captain to give you a kiss.”
“Pfft!”
The very next instant, Sarah sprayed the water from her mouth.
“Cough! Cough—w-what did you just say?”
Still coughing violently, she stared at him in disbelief.
Had Leniss really just said something about Enoch and a kiss?
“Go give the Captain a kiss.”
But Leniss did not take it back.
If anything, he sounded even more matter-of-fact.
“No! Why would I?!”
Sarah slammed both hands against the desk with a bang and shouted in protest.
Leniss tilted his head, seemingly unable to understand her reaction.
“It helps with fatigue, you know?”
“…?”
At that completely unexpected explanation, Sarah tilted her head as well.
Apparently amused to find them mirroring each other, Leniss blinked playfully before continuing in his usual gloomy tone.
“Sometimes, when I feel like I’m about to die from overwork, I even beg the Captain for a kiss on the cheek.”
“…?!”
Sarah stared at him in shock.
He actually lets you?
“Of course, the Captain refuses. He says he doesn’t even want to brush fingers with anyone who isn’t a woman.”
“Phew….”
Sarah immediately sighed in relief.
“That’s so unfair.”
“….”
In the end, she could think of nothing to say.
Leniss shook his head, sincerely aggrieved by the injustice of it.
Watching him speak of Enoch as though he were some kind of restorative tonic, Sarah could not help thinking:
Aren’t you the unreasonable one here?
She wisely kept that thought to herself rather than spoil Leniss’s mood.
“Yeah, that is unfair. So he wouldn’t help a man even if he were seriously injured?”
Instead, she played along.
If doing so might shorten her sentence, agreeing with him was effortless.
Sarah felt rather proud of how hard she was working to survive.
“If it were that serious, whether they were a man or a woman wouldn’t matter.”
Sarah had meant it as a joke.
But Leniss answered in an even gloomier voice.
“Touching the Captain can relieve fatigue or heal minor wounds because of the Holy Sword’s power, but it can’t cure serious illnesses or major injuries….”
That’s all it does. Nothing dramatic. But he still won’t do it for me. It’s unfair.
Leniss continued muttering his accumulated complaints under his breath.
“Hmm….”
Sarah nodded awkwardly.
She could hardly say, I know. I’ve healed my own wounds that way too.
“More importantly, look at this.”
Without ever truly stopping his work, Leniss tapped the documents he had been sorting with one finger.
“If we add up all the missing funds, it comes to 3,750 gold. That’s enough to establish a respectable merchant guild and still have money left over.”
“What?! Where did they even hide that much money?”
The scale of the embezzlement was far worse than Sarah had imagined, and her jaw dropped.
It was not even her problem, but news of disappearing money was enough to stir anyone’s blood, no matter the era.
“They probably hid it somewhere ordinary. Our guild deals in high-denomination currency, so that amount wouldn’t take up much space.”
That little?
Sarah had not actually been asking a serious question, but Leniss answered as though she had.
“Wow. That’s… very… useful information.”
Barely managing a response, Sarah looked down at the documents with a grave expression.
“…Can we catch whoever did it?”
“There are a few people I suspect.”
Apparently, Leniss had already had certain individuals in mind and merely lacked evidence.
Without hesitation, he began writing down a list of names.
“First, I’ll visit them under some other pretext and see how they react.”
Once the list was complete, he stared down at it as though already plotting his next steps.
“You’re going now, right? I’ll come with you. Let’s get this finished quickly.”
Sarah volunteered at once.
“Really? I’d be grateful if you helped!”
Leniss, who had apparently been hoping she would offer, accepted with a delighted expression.
“But Sarah, why have you been shaking your leg for a while now?”
He tilted his head, puzzled.
“Right. Three days. Let’s finish everything in three days. That would be best.”
Thud, thud, thud, thud.
Even after Leniss pointed it out, Sarah’s leg continued bouncing.
Perched on the very edge of her chair as though she might spring to her feet at any moment, biting at her nails, she looked like someone with an urgent problem weighing on her mind.
At the oddly specific and extremely tight deadline, Leniss glanced down at the list he had just made.
The page was crowded with names.
There was clearly no way to finish that much work in only three days.
“Isn’t that too soon? We’d need at least a week.”
“…No. It has to be finished by then.”
Leniss tried to suggest, as gently as possible, that the schedule was unreasonable.
Sarah remained adamant.
She shifted even farther toward the edge of the chair, nearly sliding off.
“Absolutely. No matter what. We have to finish within three days, before the full moon rises.”
“Is there some reason it has to be three days?”
As Sarah grew increasingly insistent, Leniss finally asked why.
“Just… the sooner, the better.”
So you can rest too.
Despite her obsessive fixation on the three-day deadline, her reasoning was painfully practical.
“All right. I’ll do my best. W-we’re friends, after all.”
He could easily have refused and gone straight to bed, yet the ever-reliable worker ant that was Leniss smiled and accepted the deadline.
For him, the smile was unusually gentle and bright.
“Yeah. Let’s work hard.”
No. Don’t work hard. Absolutely not. Never. Ever. Ever.
Even as they agreed to work together, Sarah was thinking the exact opposite.
She lowered her gaze from Leniss and slowly turned her head toward the chair beneath her.
To Leniss, she merely looked as though she were sitting awkwardly on its edge.
But reflected in Sarah’s star-filled eyes was something vivid that he could not see.
A quill rolling across the floor.
An overturned ink bottle.
Documents scattered everywhere.
A long-haired man collapsed on top of them.
And Enoch Soser standing over him.
With the bright full moon behind him, Enoch looked down at the motionless figure.
“Oh, I didn’t mean for you to literally work yourself to death….”
Watching the chilling scene unfold, Sarah murmured words she could not bring herself to say aloud.
We have to finish everything in three days.
Otherwise, you’ll die.
From overwork…