Chapter 10 (1/2)

| | 11: Girls’ Talk/Heavy Conversation

Raws:

Author’s Notes

Aira and Pal

“Yes”

The frivolous man raised his hand with a flippancy that clashed with the room’s solemnity No surprise there What, couldn’t he read the mood?

“What, Rupert?”

Leopard’s expression had ‘What, you again?’ stamped all over it

It’s always like that, I bet Yeah, I can totally see that

“Well, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t make such a face Ian iht in my head”

“I get it already So what is it?”

Even Rupert’s tone was flippant Looking fed up, Leopard stopped his frivolous request in its tracks That said, he didn’t dismiss the comment out of hand

Rupert’s request ht not have been ic to it

It was probably only his tone that sounded bored Leopard and Rupert The names were similar, but their personalities couldn’t be etting along

Like they understood but irritated each other

Paying no particular attention to the exasperated Leopard, Rupert lazily leaned back in his chair with a creaking sound

“I was just thinking, if you already know this much, shouldn’t you make a o they’re being loaded with”

Tone and attitude aside, it was a relatively sensible opinion

It was certainly like he said I was stuck on it too If the estate wouldn’t work, then they should just search the shi+ps

However, since Rupert and I had thought things out that far, there was no way this gloouy hadn’t already

If he wasn’t doing it, then there had to be some kind of reason behind it

“Regarding that, I have so to add”

As I thought, or rather, Regnu

“While the Telaberan harbor sees a considerable nu in and out, most of them are bound for domestic destinations The inspection of all these vessels has been completed, and they have subsequently been cleared In other words, the culprit is an ocean-going shi+p”

Cutting off his words here, Regnum pulled a piece of paper from his breast pocket and stuck it to one of the blackboards

On it was a six-row list labelled [Date] and [Name] Beside those were [Lu… there was the name of the country

A them, the first and last entries bore the same name

“This is the record of all inbound and outbound foreign vessels for the last five months As you can see, there are six such vessels The bottom two are currently docked — in other words, the question is which of the to our analysis, it’s this one”

Taking a pen out of his breast pocket, Regnum circled the first and last entries

“Belgars Nationality, the Holy Kingdouilty party”

“Well, if I’ it so far — ”

Rupert cut in again Leopard stopped him: ‘Shut up and listen’

But it was true that Rupert’s question hadn’t been answered yet

Actually, Aira and Palmira looked like they couldn’t follow at all Which parts and how much, I didn’t know

But I had a general idea of the answer

The Holy Kingdodom

Secretly, I grit my teeth so hard they creaked That was a naled up with a second time

“Then shall I explain?”

It was Leon, who had been sitting in patient silence until that point, who spoke

Leisurely leaning forward in his chair, he planted both elbows on the table and linked his fingers together, looking around at everyone in the room

“In essence, the problem here is that this shi+p’s destination and nationality are both the Holy Kingdom We haven’t conducted a compulsory search of the estate for a sis to another country, it’s a government vessel That makes it even nastier to approach”

Ending there, he turned his gaze to Rupert, then each of us, in turn

Apparently ere the only ones who didn’t know

“If we don’t turn up anything at the end of the search, at worst it dom and us Of course, that’s inevitable, but as the Empire, ant to avoid a conflict of that appearance if possible”

A light shi+ver ran through me when Leon casually dropped the word ‘inevitable’

But considering the gap between the two countries’ power, it ht be a natural remark to make The Empire, one of the world’s three superpowers, and the saldi In terms of national and nitude

“Of course, it’s a prediction that there ht be war However, in this case, we have the initiative There’s a huge discrepancy between us To put it bluntly, we can choose to do as we please Right”

Leon grinned broadly

Unlike the gentle s ferocity

“Like whether or not to send them all to hell”

When his speech took a turn for the vulgar, I felt the air instantly freeze

Aira, who took it at basically point-blank range, had gone coid Palmira looked a little pale too

So the man wasn’t lax after all He wasn’t, but conversely, I felt relieved

Until now, it was because of his ever-gentle expression that I harbored a distrust toward hih

For that very reason, seeing Leon show a new side of himself put me at ease

Our upco mission to return to slavery would be extremely brutal At its heart was the fundamental premise that we depended on our collaborators, that we trusted them

Even though I didn’t knohether everything was out in the open, still, I felt that Leon deserved to be trusted after revealing a different side of himself to us

“Any more questions?”

–

–

Seeing as no one had any outstanding questions, the discussion of strategy began in earnest

Or rather, I would have been amazed if anyone had raised another question in that atmosphere

Anyway, it was mostly Leopard who explained the plan