SPY CLASSROOM

Specialized lessons for an impossible mission

Code name: Flower Garden

0. Cover
0. Insert
0. Title Page
0. Copyright
0. Prologue
0. Special Assignment
0. Chapter 1
0. Coercion
0. Chapter 2
0. Coordination
0. Chapter 3
0. Intel Gathering
0. Chapter 4
0. Lies and Retrieval
0. Epilogue
0. Loss and Rebirth
0. Afterword
0. Yen Newsletter

Guido stood in front of a room. He was the direct supervisor of the man inside, and both were members of the spy team Inferno working for the Din Republic.

Every member of Inferno was an oddball in some way or another, but that one marched to the beat of an especially unique drum. Guido, who possessed at least a semblance of common sense, had been tasked with getting in touch with him.

I guess you reap what you sow. Guido sighed.

He was the one who first took the man in. He had taken care of the young orphan and then raised him into an elite spy. However, he had never imagined that the boy would grow up to be such a handful.

His subordinate had been holed up in his room since morning. He hadn’t come out for breakfast, for lunch, or to even use the bathroom.

What the hell is he up to in there? Guido wondered in exasperation. He began knocking. After five seconds passed with no answer, he stopped knocking and just opened the door.

The state of the quarters filled him with horror.

The bedroom had been decorated with elegant white wallpaper and a beautiful red carpet—but now everything was drowned in crimson.

A liquid resembling fresh blood had been splattered across the room and covered everything from the bed to the clothing shelves. It was like a murder scene. Even Guido, who was no stranger to death, almost screamed. A room in this beautiful manor, Heat Haze Palace, had been reduced to a ghastly spectacle.

And in the center of it all stood a giant canvas with a man lingering before it. He was gazing at the painting, spellbound. “Magnificent.”

He swung his brush like a cudgel, sending paint flying across the canvas, the carpet, and eventually, Guido’s face. That was when the artist noticed Guido’s presence and turned around.

“Hmm? …Master, what are you doing in here?”

“What are you doing in here?”

“I was struck by a sudden urge to draw. And I’m running out of paint, so could you get me some more?”

“…What, you’re gonna use your mentor as your errand boy?” Guido shot back. “Cut the shitty jokes; I’m here about something serious.”

Although, given who he was talking to, there was a good chance that it hadn’t been a joke at all.

“You’ve got a special assignment. Starting tomorrow, you’re going to split off from the rest of the team and carry out a solo mission.”

“Special how…?”

Guido began laying out the mission. As his explanation progressed, his subordinate’s expression began to change. The mission was harsh enough that just hearing its particulars would have been enough to send any ordinary spy into a blustering rage. Even Guido, skilled as he was, would have rejected it on the spot. These might as well have been orders to go out and die a meaningless death.

“Odds of success will be sub–ten percent, even for you. Failure will mean death. Can you do it?”

The man gave his answer without hesitating. “If that’s the order, then I’ll see it done.”

Guido had fully expected a no; he stared in blank amazement.

The artist swept his brush across the canvas once more, smearing it red. “That should do it for today,” he murmured, then nodded and looked Guido in the eye.

“Master, in case I don’t make it, I want to leave you my last testament. Everything I am today is thanks to you. You took me in as an orphan and raised me to be a spy. I’ll be forever grateful to the boss for hiring me, and it’s no exaggeration to say I love each and every member of Inferno. I might not know my parents, but I think of you all as my family. And those family members all have friends, lovers, and relatives. And because those are the people who make up this nation, then I love this nation as well.”

“You’re not thinkin’ of just making a break for it?”

“Not even a little.”

Guido took a deep breath. Things would have been so much easier if the guy had simply refused. “What an idiot of a pupil I’ve raised. Look, when you finish your mission, I have a title for you to introduce yourself as.”

“What kind of spy goes around introducing himself?”

It was an oddly reasonable question coming from him, but Guido chose to ignore it.

“The Greatest Spy in the World.”

The moniker was downright childish—but the spy in question seemed to take quite a liking to it.

“Magnificent.”

Deciding to set out at once, the man cleaned up his painting utensils, changed into a new suit, and loaded it up with weapons. His wristwatch had wire inside for strangling people, his fountain pen had a built-in voice recorder, his collar had a razor blade hidden in it, and his sleeves were full of long needles.

After his subordinate finished prepping (in under five minutes), Guido gave him some parting words.

“Good luck out there.”

The man’s eyes widened, as if he were perplexed by the unusual pep talk.

After a brief pause, an embarrassed smile spread across his face.

“…See you when I get back.”

The world was awash in pain.

The war was simply called the Great War, a conflict on a scale never before seen, and it had left the world with bitter pain and unhealed scars. The Galgad Empire’s surrender had marked the end of the bloodshed, but even the victorious nations had lost tens of millions of their people. In a very real sense, it was a war with no true winners.

The Great War was also particular in that the majority of its casualties were civilians.

Gone was the era of bows and swords. This was the era of scientific progress, and the lethality of a single weapon put everything from olden times to shame. Submachine guns, poison gas, fighter jets, land mines… To put it frankly, it had become too easy to kill people. In the war’s final stages, when both sides had completely lost perspective, countless indiscriminate massacres had been carried out. Most of those targeted had been women and children with no means of defending themselves.

After seeing what the war had wrought, the world’s politicians came to a realization.

From a cost-benefit standpoint, war simply was not a feasible option.

And at the end of the day, it was only one of many possible measures they could take to resolve a conflict.

If they could achieve their ends through other means, then why not just do that?

There was no need to go to war over the right to drill for petroleum in a hostile nation. It was far more efficient to get that nation’s politicians to just sign a treaty allowing it, and there was no shortage of ways that could be achieved. They could kidnap their families, they could bribe them with money and asylum, or they could have women seduce them and gain control of them that way. And if a politician was getting in their way, they could fabricate scandals to remove them from office or simply assassinate them. Either would be far more efficient than starting a war that would cost millions of lives.

Even if peace was just a pretense, that was good enough.

In the wake of the Great War, the nations of the world signed various peace treaties and established an international organization dedicated to maintaining order around the globe. At that organization’s first summit, leaders from all across the world got together and shook hands while smiling radiantly.

That marked the end of wars fought in the light.

Now spies and information were the currency of conflict—of shadow wars.

“The hell’s that guy playing at?”

The commanding white-haired girl from before spoke again.

“I mean, rounding up a bunch of problem children to take on Impossible Missions? What gives?”

Lily’s eyes went wide when she heard that worrying morsel of information.

The white-haired girl nodded solemnly. “Yeah, you heard that right. The seven of us? We’re all washouts.”

Lily was so taken aback by it all that she couldn’t find anything to say.

The seven of them were just a group of young women.

Yet, they were going to work with a mysterious man they knew nothing about and take on an Impossible Mission.

The kind of mission so difficult it had a mortality rate of 90 percent.

“Except this poison doesn’t work on me.”

“…How do you mean?”

“My body’s got what they call a special trait.” Lily smiled like there was nothing to it.

Despite being surrounded by poison gas strong enough to render an adult male immobile, she was cool as a cucumber.

“So? Not even you can resist poison, right?”

The lake’s wind had dispersed the rest of the gas, but it had lingered long enough to lay Klaus low.

Still on his side, his body continued twitching.

Lily was so pleased with herself, she had to laugh. “Ah-ha-ha! I guess fooling an elite spy is easier than I expected, huh?”

Klaus jerked some more, his face pale. The poison had left him almost entirely incapacitated.

To get to this point, Lily had had to weave plans within plans.

First, she had to invite him out under the pretext of wanting to give him a change of pace, then she had to maneuver them both onto a rented boat while making it seem spontaneous. In the end, though, she managed to pull off her sneak attack perfectly without ever once uttering the word lake.

Not even an elite spy like him could break out of the trap she’d engineered. Victory was hers.

“Hee-hee. You feel coerced yet, Teach?”

“Don’t…screw with me…” Klaus glared at her. “What are you even after…?”

“I want you to make me a promise.”

“If you don’t need it in writing, I’m happy to say whatever you want me to.”

“C’mon, don’t give me that lip. I know my poisons are good, y’know,” she replied with sickening sweetness as she drew a new weapon from her pocket.

It was a needle, dripping with purple liquid.

“This poison’s a special concoction of mine. One prick, and even a grown man goes out like a light.”

“………”

“If you try to go against me, I will stab you.”

That was her way of ensuring he made good on his promise.

She brought the needle close to Klaus’s face. It was the same quick-acting poison she had used the day before to take down the purse snatcher.

Despite the peril literally before his eyes, Klaus didn’t move. Or rather, he couldn’t.

Lily gave him a smile. “I have two demands. First, I want Lamplight disbanded. And second, I want you to guarantee its members’ livelihoods.”

“………”

“I just don’t want us to die—especially not at the hands of a teacher who can’t even teach.”

Given the man’s skills, he must have had money and connections he could throw around at will. Using those was their only chance of surviving.

Klaus stared at her menacingly. “That’s enough joking around. If you come any closer, I will fight back.”

“Please, there’s no need to bluff. We both know you can’t move under the poison. And you don’t have any weapons anyway, right?”

“How do you…?”

“I checked. Earlier, when you caught me.”

His hollow threats wouldn’t work on her. She had prepared for that, too.

Klaus’s eyes went wide. “So you tripping back at Maple Lane was just an act?”

“Uhhhh…yeah, that was definitely all part of my plan…”

It was not. Her original plan to check him for weapons had been something else entirely.

“A-anyway! Teach, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll do what I say.”

Lily proudly threw out her chest and inched the needle ever closer to Klaus’s motionless body.

She had used every ounce of talent she had and all the skills she’d been polishing, but she had taken down an elite operative all on her own.

It was over.

“…Looks like you have all your bases covered.”

At long last, her target stopped resisting.

With a large sigh, he gave her a look filled with resignation.

“The paralytic ran through me in moments, and all I can move are my tongue and my feet. That means swimming isn’t an option. I could try calling for help, but we’re in the middle of a lake. And I’m dealing with a trained apprentice spy, so hoping to randomly find a weapon I can use in this rented boat is a nonstarter as well. It would appear that this truly is—”

“—Checkout.”

“Checkmate, indeed.”

Fortunately, Klaus didn’t point out that she’d bungled her cool one-liner.

“There is one thing I don’t know, though,” he went on.

“…Hmm? It seems a bit late to be asking questions, but what?”

“Something that’s been bugging me for some time.”

“Like I said, what?”

“Lily, I have to ask…”

He gave her a profound look.

It was their ninth day at Heat Haze Palace, and they were in a hallway on the second floor.

“A-are we really doing this…?”

The black-haired girl replied to Lily’s feeble complaint with a graceful rebuttal.

“Of course. It’s the only choice we have.”

Even in a situation as tense as theirs, her beauty remained utterly unblemished. In fact, between her faintly flush face, the sweat dripping down her neck, and the sight of her holding her breath, her attractiveness bordered on risqué.

Suddenly, Lily got word from one of the other girls.

“This is the roof lookout. No problems here… The target’s still bathing. I can’t see much through the steam, but he hasn’t gone anywhere…”

Lily relayed what she’d just been told.

The black-haired girl nodded, then gave the thumbs-up to their teammates standing by in the hallway.

“Are you ready, lights duty? Lock duty, do you have the combination lock ready to go?” After finishing the final checks, she brushed her hair back. “It’s time.”

Her gaze was focused forward—on the bathroom.

Heat Haze Palace had a large communal bath and a private bathroom, and the girls normally took their baths in the former. This time, though, they were headed somewhere different—the bathroom used by Heat Haze Palace’s sole male resident.

Inside, they could hear the shower running.

“At 0700 sharp, we all go.”

The black-haired girl laid out their plan one last time.

“Begin Operation: Attack Teach While He’s Bathing!”

The spy team Lamplight had been reborn.

At the moment, its boss and his subordinates were engaging in a most peculiar form of training…

It all started five days ago, on Lily and the others’ fourth day at Heat Haze Palace.

In the main hall, none of the Lamplight girls knew what to say.

In preparation for their so-called Impossible Mission, Klaus had given the girls a lecture—or rather, he’d tried to, but his dysfunctional teaching methods had left them at a standstill. He’d then called them together once more, only to scrawl DEFEAT ME across the blackboard before taking his leave. Baffling didn’t even begin to describe it.

The sole member who vaguely understood what he was getting at was Lily, who had met with him the day prior.

She was also the first to notice the change on the blackboard’s far end.

There were some new items under the Heat Haze Palace Communal Living Rules.

“Next time, bring ones built for stopping dinosaurs.” Klaus cracked his joints, then turned his gaze to the girls. “You lot aren’t qualified to be my enemies.”

Erna closed her eyes. She didn’t need to look to know what would happen next.

All that reached her were the sounds.

From what she could tell, the rest of the team didn’t last twenty seconds before getting launched through the air.

It was well into the night, and they were all back in Heat Haze Palace’s main hall.

“How the hell did we go to such lengths and still not beat him?!”

“This is starting to bum me out, yo! Feels like all our plans end with us getting blasted one way or another!”

“I guess that’s our boss for you… We might even have to drag the police into it next time…”

The girls were deep into their now-regular post-mortem meeting. Tables were being slammed, and arguments were being had.

The plot they’d concocted this time around had been so ambitious, it had startled even Klaus, leaving them all but certain of their victory. They had even succeeded in capturing him. However, that victory had crumbled before their very eyes, and that fact made their discussion more heated than ever.

“We’ll need to reconsider our strategy from the ground up,” the black-haired girl gracefully declared. “Capturing our target doesn’t seem possible, and our attacks are useless. We need to find some secret or vulnerability of his and exploit it to coerce him.”

“Didn’t we already rule that option out?” The cerulean-haired girl shot her an arrogant scoff. “And we all know how your attempts at seduction went.”

“Rgh! That first time was just a fluke! There isn’t a man alive who can resist my—”

“Sounds like someone’s hankering for another late-night chess session.”

“The man defies all logic! A girl comes to his room late at night and says I can’t sleep, and he asks if she wants to play chess. She says Let’s do something really fun, so he takes out his chess set. And when she whispers Be gentle with me, he offers her piece odds! Who does that?!”

“Maybe he just really likes chess.”

“Fine, then how about we hear your big idea? As you may recall, we’re dealing with a man who broke through a combination lock and ripped through chains designed for big game hunting. How exactly do you intend to capture a—?”

“All right, all right, break it up!”

As the discussion threatened to get ugly again, Lily loudly clapped her hands. Before the other girls had a chance to say anything more, she stuffed their mouths with baked goods.

“Remember, the most important things right now are teamwork and the bonds we share. Here, have another deluxe financier.”

“So good…” “It really is sumptuous…”

“Heh. A leader’s work is never done.”

Having successfully cooled down the heated debate, Lily let out a pompous sigh.

Beside her, the redhead spoke softly.

“Hmm… At the moment, capturing him still looks to be our best option.”

“You’re not wrong, but…”

“It’s really worrying. If we can’t even capture a single man, then I don’t like our chances on the Impossible Mission.”

Hearing the situation in such unambiguous terms cast a heavy pall over the room.

Nobody had any rebuttals to that. Lily tried to cheer up the group, but without anything concrete to work with, her encouragement did little to lighten the mood.

Then—

“U-um…” Erna’s face went red as she raised her hand. “Wh-when he broke the chains, there was a trick to it!”

The words came out a good deal louder than she’d intended. Her lips quivered, and when she spoke next, her face was even redder than before. “…When we were captured, Teach spit out a jewel he’d kept hidden in his mouth and used it to bribe the guard into damaging the chains with his gun.”

“Oh!” the black-haired girl replied. “Now that you mention it, he said something similar back in the bathroom. About a squirrel making preparations to hibernate…”

Put more plainly, what Klaus had been trying to tell them was that many spies kept weapons and valuables hidden inside their bodies.

Klaus had used the jewel combined with his oratory skills to buy off the guard. Then, he intentionally provoked the ringleader into shooting him and further damaging the already-weakened chains. Even chains of that thickness would shatter after so many bullets.

Of course, Klaus had made sure to retrieve his gem on the way out.

“Jewels and riches—bribery. That’s the master key that can open any lock.”

“So that’s what he used…,” the cerulean-haired girl murmured.

Erna went on and offered her theory. “I think he opened our combination lock the same way. He must have bribed one of us ahead of time and had whoever it was tell him the password.”

“Y-you mean one of us is a spy?!” Lily cried. She recoiled and cast dubious gazes at the other Lamplight members.

“We’re all spies,” the white-haired girl pointed out coolly.

After that, though, the girls went quiet.

They had a new problem to deal with—and a pressing one to boot.

“Now that I think about it,” the black-haired girl said, “there was one person who always made sure to avoid letting fingers get pointed when we talked about the lock.”

“Yeah!” the pink-haired girl added in her innocent tone. “Someone who was always going on about trusting one another and the bonds we share, yo!”

Their cerulean-haired teammate agreed with that line of reasoning. A smug grin spread across her face.

“Hey, Lily. Got a question for you.”

“Hweh?”

“Where exactly did you say you got those financiers, again?”

Lily froze.

Sweat dripping down her brow, she let out a faint “Remember, the most important thing is the bonds we share…”

“““““““…………………”””””””

None of the others were interested in her platitudes.

Lily shrank backward to distance herself from her teammates, but she soon came up against a wall. Her lips quivered.

“I—I was just…uh, you know. Teach made it sound like such a good idea! He said it’d help me practice lying and help you all practice doubting your allies. And wow, we really learned a lot! After all, having one of your teammates double-cross you is the kind of thing that can totally happen out in the field! Good going, Teach! And good on me for going along with it! Sometimes a leader has to play the bad guy for the sake of the team! I—I definitely wasn’t just in it for the delicious, delicious sweets!”

“………”

“Also, all I ever told him were the combinations. We screwed up that bathroom attack all on our own! It’s not even worth getting mad over a betrayal that small!”

“………”

“And to quote one Ms. Erna: ‘If you believe in anyone, you lose. That’s what being a spy is all about.’ That’s all there was to it!”

The others shared a glance. They were all thinking the same thing.

This girl has no shame.

Now then, how best to punish the traitor…

“I’ve got an idea,” the cerulean-haired girl offered. “Lily can be useful to us, right? The target still thinks she’s on his side, so we can use that against him.”

“Y-yeah! I can be like a double agent! See, now this really feels like spy train—”

“And there’s no time like the present.”

Lily’s expression froze. “Uh, umm… I’m pretty sure this is gonna end with Teach beating me up…”

“Good luck!”

“C’mooon, there’s gotta be a better way I can be of use. Look, I promise I won’t betray you guys anymore, okay?”

“Time’s a wastin’.”

“…Yes ma’am.” Lily’s shoulders slumped as she left the main hall.

A short while later, they heard her upstairs.

“Teach! I just stole this from the others, and you’re gonna want to see this! It has their plan all laid out; come take a look. There you go, closer, closer… Ha-ha! You’re wide open! Now, prepare to—GAH! You got paint all over my maidenly nose!”

It sounded like the traitor had learned her lesson.

The girls nodded in satisfaction.

“Yo, Erna!”

The pink-haired girl leaped up with a purehearted look in her eyes and rushed over to Erna. She squeezed Erna’s hand in delight and pressed her face right next to hers.

Erna shrank back from her innocent smile. “Y-yes…?”

“You’re amazing!”

For a moment, Erna stared at her in shock.

When she looked up, she discovered that the rest of the team was smiling warmly at her as well.

Erna resisted the urge to cry. “…Of course I am,” she replied in a show of false bravado.

Later, Erna paid a visit to Klaus’s room.

Lily had been tied up with string and left on the ground. Sure enough, Klaus had completely turned the tables on her.

“Erna.” Still facing his canvas, Klaus spoke. “Would you mind taking out the trash for me? She stirs up a fuss whenever I try to move her.”

Erna did as instructed and rolled Lily across the room.

Lily expressed her objections with a look of desperation on her face. “Teach, I’m begging you! I’ll do anything! If I can’t have your financiers anymore, I’m afraid I’m going to lose my—”

“You’re betraying us again?!” Erna cried.

Klaus shooed her away with his hand. “Get her out of here.”

Erna was glad to do so and rolled Lily all the way out of the room.

“You didn’t put drugs in those sweets, did you?”

“Of course not.” Klaus was holding out a plate to her.

The buttery financiers atop it gleamed like jewels.

“Would you like one? I happen to be in the market for a new master key.”

“No.”

“They’re freshly baked…”

He brought the dish right up to Erna’s nose. She could smell the financiers’ sugary aroma, and before she realized it, she had already stuffed one in her mouth. It crumbled on her tongue, filling her mouth with a full-bodied sweetness.

“My friends are dead to me.”

“I was kidding.” Klaus handed her the whole plate and told her to share with the others. “I can’t throw too many curveballs, or it’ll make for poor training.”

Klaus sometimes came off cold and robotic, so it was surprising to see he had so many hobbies. Between chess, cooking, and painting, he was a jack-of-all-trades.

Erna stepped closer to Klaus to get a look at the painting he was working on. He didn’t seem to be making any progress on his messy scrawl of red paint.

Down in the bottom right, she could see the word Family.

“Teach, aren’t you going to finish it…?”

“A fair question… I bought all this new paint, but my brush won’t seem to move.”

She could see the pathos in Klaus’s eyes.

She hadn’t known him for long, but over the course of their round-the-clock attacks and counterattacks, she had slowly developed a sense for the subtleties in his emotions.

“Was your family the ones who lived here before us…?”

Klaus’s breath caught in his throat. It was rare to see him so visibly surprised. “I didn’t think you’d figure it out so quickly.”

“There were all sorts of little clues.”

“How much were you able to deduce?” Klaus crossed his legs and turned his gaze straight toward her.

Erna explained her reasoning, breaking down her logic point by point. “There were people who lived at Heat Haze Palace before us. It stood to reason that you were a member of that spy team. But given that they aren’t here anymore, the team must have disbanded—or was possibly wiped out. If I had to guess, I imagine the Impossible Mission Lamplight is going on is—”

“Very well. That’s enough.” Klaus cut her off and nodded. “By and large, your assumptions were on the mark. But the time isn’t right for me to elaborate.”

“Hmm…?”

“Don’t worry. In twenty days, I’ll reveal everything. And when I do, I’m sure you will all understand.”

Why wait twenty days? As Erna began to wonder about that, though, Klaus went on, his tone firmer than ever.

“Then, it begins. Our long-awaited Impossible Mission.”

A girlish scream echoed through Heat Haze Palace.

That day, their attack had involved booby traps.

In fact, they’d packed the mansion to the brim with them. The idea was to have the target avoid the first trap, only to trigger the second, and then when he evaded that one, to trigger the third trap in turn. Imprisoned in a hellish labyrinth of unending wires, he would eventually fall—or at least, that was the plan. But Klaus hadn’t just avoided the traps, he’d turned them back against them. Things ultimately devolved into a trap battle between Klaus and the girls, and Klaus emerged the overwhelming victor.

The girls needed to be able to detect one another’s traps, so they left subtle ciphers around, but Klaus ended up rewriting all of them.

In the end, the members of Lamplight ended up in the main hall, bound head to toe in wire.

“Ahhhhhhh! Nothing works!”

The black-haired girl let out a hysterical cry at their unseemly defeat. She had come across as mature and elegant when they first arrived, but fatigue was taking a toll on her.

“Urgh, I never imagined I was this lacking… It’s like our skills haven’t grown a single bit!”

“That’s not true at all.” Klaus shook his head.

Normally, he would wound their pride by remarking “Your scheme was lacking,” then finish them off with “That didn’t even make for decent sport,” but today was different.

He crossed his arms, then closed his eyes in admiration. “You’ve become strong. We’re closing in on four weeks, and you’ve all shown dramatic growth since the day you arrived. The only reason you can’t see it is because I’m simply too strong.”

“…Really?”

“Really,” Klaus agreed emphatically. “You’ve grown enough for me to trust you, if nothing else.”

The girls looked at one another.

Klaus often called them magnificent during their attacks day in and day out, but to them, it came off as mockery. Although he doubtless meant it as a sincere compliment, those he was complimenting couldn’t accept that sincerity.

This was the first time he had ever properly praised them, and a sense of accomplishment was finally sinking in.

“Now, it’s high time I told you something.” Klaus took a seat. “Allow me to explain why Lamplight was founded—as well as the details of our Impossible Mission.”

“Not that I’m not super-curious about all that…” Lily cut him off. “But first, could you let us out of these wires?”

“Our job is to steal a sample of a bioweapon.” He wasn’t even listening.

When the girls pictured this all-important briefing, they hadn’t expected to be completely bound while attending.

After coming to terms with their surreal situation, they gave Klaus their full attention.

He had mentioned something about stealing a bioweapon.

The white-haired girl coolly cut in. “Wait, don’t international treaties ban the use of bioweapons?”

“Their use, yes, but not their development—or at least, that’s how the meatheads over in our army chose to interpret the law when they forged ahead with their research. However, a sample was stolen by a Galgad spy. Our scientists estimate it will take them another year to actually analyze its structure, but we can’t afford to be that optimistic. We need to retrieve that sample as soon as possible or, at the very least, destroy it.”

“Ah.” The girls sighed in understanding.

In this line of work, it was simply a fact of life that their country’s military and its intelligence agency would work out of step. Everyone knew the military’s top brass was spinning their wheels in a futile attempt to wash away the shame allowing their country to be invaded. The development of this bioweapon must have been one result of that.

No matter how skilled an intelligence agency was, it was impossible for them to know every little thing that went on inside their borders.

That was a weakness the Empire had exploited.

“B-by the way,” the brown-haired girl asked timidly. “What’s exactly is this bioweapon we’re supposed to steal?”

“Would you like to see a picture from the lab?” Klaus withdrew a photograph from his pocket.

When the girls looked at it, not a single one of them could stop themselves from screaming.

The corpse was in such a horrific state that words seemed hardly sufficient to describe it. Given that they were bound and unable to flee, the experience was akin to torture.

“It’s called Abyss Doll—a killer virus. It has a one-week incubation period during which it spreads through airborne droplets, and once symptoms show up, it kills within twelve hours. As a weapon, it’s pure evil. And now it’s fallen into the Empire’s hands. These are people who have no qualms about murdering innocent civilians while carrying out assassinations. If it’s ever used for subversive activities, Abyss Doll’s casualty count would number in the six or seven figures. And if the military uses it, the world will come to an end.”

Klaus gave his call to action.

“I trust you understand the responsibility we carry on our shoulders.”

Millions of casualties—and if anything, that estimate was conservative.

In the previous war, the Empire had butchered civilians by the thousands, and they stopped at nothing to achieve their ends. If they unleashed this new weapon, then the Din Republic would no doubt retaliate in kind. With both sides spreading killer viruses left and right, everything would descend into hell on Earth. The girls couldn’t even imagine the suffering that would ensue.

They gulped as it set in just how important their mission was.

“Now, this is a mission that was already attempted once before, by a team called Inferno.”

“Inferno…?” The name elicited a reaction from the black-haired girl. “I’ve heard about them!”

“Oh? I didn’t realize that information had leaked. Surprisingly sloppy of them.”

“Not at all! They’re the best spy team in the Republic!”

Her elegant, lilting manner of speech accelerated into a rapid-fire explanation of how Inferno was the ideal to which all spy teams in their nation aspired. How they had played a key role in protecting their country since even before the war. How the information they stole on the Imperial troops’ movements helped evacuate hundreds of thousands of civilians. And how the misinformation they spread helped end the war by convincing the Empire’s military leadership that victory was impossible.

Perhaps she had some connection to them herself, as she seemed oddly well-informed.

“When I became a spy, it was because I wanted to join Inferno!” she announced, finishing her speech.

Despite her passion, however, Klaus was as collected as ever. “Unfortunately,” he replied coldly, “Inferno was wiped out.”

“Huh?”

“They all died during their mission to retrieve Abyss Doll.”

The black-haired girl’s lip quivered. “It can’t be…”

“To be more accurate, there was one survivor. The one person who was on a separate mission at the time—me.” Then, to make himself perfectly clear, Klaus added, “I used to be a member of Inferno.”

Now the girls knew who Klaus truly was.

He was a member of their country’s best and brightest spy team.

None of them were particularly surprised, given his skills.

“That concludes my explanation. Our mission is to take the fate of our nation on our shoulders and succeed where Inferno failed. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Klaus went silent. He had said all that needed saying.

None of the girls uttered a word. They certainly hadn’t been taking their training lightly, but now that they knew the stark reality of their situation, their limbs felt like ice.

A band of washouts had to take on a mission that a group of elite spies had failed.

Every instinct in their bodies was screaming in terror. That 90 percent mortality rate weighed on them heavier than ever.

But they couldn’t flee, either. The image of that grisly corpse had been seared into their brains. If they didn’t do this, countless innocent civilians would—

“If you want out, that’s fine,” Klaus said as their anxiety reached a fever pitch.

Their eyes went wide. That wasn’t what they’d been expecting.

“This isn’t your problem. Yes, I’m here for revenge, but even the lives of millions of your countrymen doesn’t mean you should have to risk yours. This is Din’s problem as well as mine. Of course, there is a reason I chose you all. I do want you to come. But you don’t have to. I can’t force you to undertake a mission this harsh merely for the sake of your country.”

Klaus looked at the girls.

“I’m giving you the day off. Use it to decide for yourselves if you’re coming.”

He waved his arm, and the wires binding the girls came undone. He turned, heading back toward his room. This discussion was over, for now.

The girls had enough to grapple with just taking it all in. They had been given a huge amount of information—the Impossible Mission’s details, Klaus’s identity, the demise of their nation’s best team—and they needed to process it. None of them moved. They simply blinked.

Then, one of them broke the silence.

“I’m in.”

It was Lily.

Klaus stopped in his tracks and turned back around. “Well, that’s a surprise. I wouldn’t have guessed you’d be the first to decide.”

“Eh, I figured I wouldn’t change my mind either way.” She bashfully rubbed the back of her neck. “What about you guys?”

When the girls all looked at one another, they broke into grins. Nobody voiced any objections.

Not a single one of them needed time to think it over.

“All seven of you will be participating, then?” Klaus asked once more.

The members of Lamplight nodded and met Klaus’s gaze with determination in their eyes.

Klaus replied with a small nod of his own. “Magnificent. Let’s make sure we all come back alive.”

Klaus sat in front of the canvas in his room.

“…………………………”

This was his routine.

Other than the time he spent working, training, and dealing with the girls, he had allotted his entire schedule to oil painting, yet he still hadn’t made a lick of progress. He would hold his brush aloft with every intention of painting yet be unable to lay down so much as a single stroke. Before he noticed, the brush’s tip would dry out.

The reason he’d fallen into a slump was plain as day.

When he first heard that Inferno had been wiped out, he lost something important to him.

And now he couldn’t make any progress on his painting.

There were two types of painters: those who painted on theory and those who painted on instinct. It went without saying that Klaus fell into the latter camp, and that meant he had few tools at his disposal for overcoming those setbacks. In fact, it was starting to throw him off in other areas of his life as well.

It was unusual for him to get so worked up—but that was a sign of just how much this mission meant to him.

This mission took my family from me…

He was an orphan. His earliest memories were of living in a poverty-stricken town. Shunned by even the other urchins, he was destined to fade away in solitude.

Then Guido met him and invited him to join Inferno.

“From now on, your name is Klaus. I’m gonna make you into a spy.”

When he closed his eyes, he could still hear the things Guido had said to him all those years ago.

“You’ll get a warm bed, three square meals, and hot baths. And most importantly—friends. The team and I will teach you every skill under the sun. Fair warning, some of ’em can be a bit rough. They’re all kinda oddballs, but they’re good folk. Someday, you’ll think of ’em as family.”

And Guido had been right.

To Klaus, the people he had lived with here at Heat Haze Palace were the only family he had.

I have to complete this mission, no matter what it takes…

He reminisced as though slowly flipping through a hefty tome of memories, getting more sentimental with each page he turned.

After a little while in that reverie, he heard a knock on his door.

Before he could reply, Lily popped her head in.

“Hey, Teach, Teach! You got our battle plan drawn up yet?”

“More importantly…” Klaus stepped back from his canvas. “Are you sure about this? When we first met, you made it abundantly clear how badly you want to avoid dying. I thought you would at least take more time to make up your mind.”

“Wait, now I’m the one getting questioned?”

An expression of shock crossed Lily’s face as she flopped down into a chair.

Lately, the girls had become more relaxed around Klaus. It was hard to stay stiff and proper around someone when you spent half your waking hours attacking him with a knife.

“Hmm… Y’know, I don’t know how well I can explain it, but…” Lily scratched her cheek. “…You promise not to be too surprised, Teach?”

“About what?”

“Well, the truth is: I’m actually a pretty self-centered person.”

“Sure, but what’s the surprise?”

“So back at school, I was all like I wanna do great! and I want everyone to think I’m awesome! but I never really thought through any of it. I didn’t have any real goals, y’know? And even here, I was super-psyched about getting to be the team’s leader, but at first, that was all there was to it.” Lily looked at the ceiling as her voice dropped to a murmur. “But lately, I’ve kinda started wanting to become a better leader for the sake of the team.”

“Oh?”

Now that was a surprise.

Klaus had made sure not to intrude on the girls’ personal lives any more than he had to, so her heart must have started to shift without him even noticing.

Before he could admire her too much, though, her whole body shivered.

“Man, whenever I spend more than thirty seconds talking seriously, I start feeling itchy all over.”

“That has concerning implications about your personality.”

“Anyway, I said I’m going, so that’s that. It’s a bit late to be asking me about it, honestly. And kinda insensitive.” Lily acted playfully embarrassed to try to change the subject—although the blush on her cheeks revealed that her embarrassment was genuine.

“…No, you’re right. What’s important now is the plan.”

His very first student was showing some admirable growth.

Klaus raised both his index fingers, then bent them one after the other as he spoke.

“You will all be infiltrating the research facility from the east. I’ll be doing the same from the west.”

“Aye, aye, captain.”

He avoided giving any details, instead choosing to outline the plan in broad strokes.

“In the days before the operation, we’ll be spending our time gathering intel. I’m counting on you, Leader.”

That was exactly what Lily had been hoping to hear.

She rushed out of the room, murmuring to herself with great delight. “It’s time for Wunderkind Lily’s big debut!”

One week later, all of Lamplight’s members left Heat Haze Palace.

In order to best infiltrate the Galgad Empire, the team split up into two groups. Klaus and several of the girls obtained work visas by posing as artists, and Lily and the rest got tourist visas as rich young ladies who were coming to enjoy the Empire’s performing arts. It went without saying that all their passports were fakes.

When they got to the customs stations, they were subjected to harsh questioning about the reasons for their visit and the places they intended to stay. Their opposition was twofold: the immigrations officers doing the actual questioning and the soldiers standing behind them keeping a watchful eye on the proceedings. The Empire had no desire to let spies into their borders. All of their luggage was thoroughly inspected as well, and without the fake backstories they’d practiced and practiced ahead of time, they would have gotten arrested on the spot.

Half a day later, though, they were all across the border, and everything after that went so smoothly, it was almost anticlimactic.

Nobody seemed to be tailing them, and they were able to purchase train tickets without any fuss. In fact, the attendant at the ticket window was downright friendly to them.

The girls thought back to Klaus’s lectures.

As far as what they were supposed to do after entering the country went—

“Just walk casually, and you won’t have anything to worry about.”

—his instruction had been perfunctory at best.

When the girls complained, he racked his brains to give them a proper explanation.

“The thing is: It’s trivial to blend in once you’re actually inside the country. You only need to worry after you start interacting with the relevant parties, so there’s no need to be on edge when you’re just traveling.”

“Why’s it so easy…?”

“You probably don’t realize it because you’re so entrenched in the world of espionage, but as far as most people are concerned, the war is long over. Many of them still bear hatred toward enemy nations, but they don’t think of themselves as currently being at war. After all, they have no way of knowing about all the battles happening in the spy world.”

“Huh. When you put it that way, it’s a little sad…”

“This is for the best. It’s the whole reason behind our shadow war.”

After crossing the border, the team boarded a train.

A family sat in the seats beside Lily’s, all dressed in black. Maybe they’d just come from a funeral. Two children who appeared to be brothers were staring out the window with their faces pressed right up against the glass and their eyes gleaming.

As far as they knew, the world was at peace.

They lived their lives blissfully unaware of the things their nation’s spies were doing. They had no idea that politicians were being bought off, gangs were being secretly funded, researchers were being threatened, and people were being murdered under the guise of accidents right under their noses.

In fact, they didn’t even know that the people sitting next to them were a group of enemy operatives.

What an odd world this is, Lily mused.

And what odd creatures spies were…

As the thoughts quietly swam through her head, one of the boys from the next seat over peeled himself from the window and came running toward them.

“Hey, miss! Where are you all going?”

“Hmm? My friends and I are here to see a musical. I hear it’s the talk of the Empire.”

“Wow, cool! Where are you staying?”

“Hee-hee, aren’t you a precocious little guy. You know, it’s bad manners to ask a girl something like that.”

As Lily sidestepped the boy’s question, another thought crossed her mind.

It’d be nice to go on a trip with friends like this for real someday.

How great would it be if they could forget about the shadow war like this kid and just have a good time?

After they got to their station, Lily pretended to get lost and sat down on a bench.

As she and the other girls unfurled a map, a man sat down on the bench back-to-back with theirs.

“From here on, we’ll be operating separately,” he said without turning around. “Proceed according to plan. Do you have anything you need to say?”

“We’ll have all the time in the world to chat next time we see each other,” Lily replied.

“Very well.”

The man left.

Lily and the others did the same and headed to their prearranged hotel.

With that, the Impossible Mission had well and truly begun.

The Endy Laboratory stood on the very edge of the Galgad Empire’s capital.

As befitted a global metropolis, the Galgad capital was packed to the brim with high-rises. The tallest building in the Din Republic was their parliament at eight stories tall, while the Galgad capital was full of structures that casually dwarfed it. One peculiarity of Imperial architecture was that all their high-rises were steepled; the rows of black spires jutting into the sky evoked both awe and unease.

The city had served as the Empire’s capital since the medieval era and had flourished ever since. The sea and mountains flanking it provided a great defense against invaders, and its tall steeples allowed the city to best make use of its limited real estate.

A thousand years of force and violence had enabled this pincushion of a city to prosper greatly, and the Endy Laboratory had been built on a cliff overlooking all of it.

The good news was that it was hard to miss.

The bad news was that the number of infiltration routes was limited.

This was the building Lamplight needed to infiltrate.

“The sample is somewhere in the Endy Laboratory. That was where our transmitters cut out, and there’s no sign it’s been moved.”

They had held their strategy meeting in advance.

“Our objective is to sneak in and steal it.”

“…Security will be tight, won’t it?”

“It will. Although it’s officially a branch laboratory for a legitimate pharmaceutical company, the facility’s actual purpose is to develop cutting-edge weaponry, and they have military personnel stationed on-site as permanent guards. Our success or failure will be determined by how much intel we can gather ahead of time.”

“Does it have any vulnerabilities…?”

“Of course. Anytime humans are running the show, there are going to be weaknesses. No matter who they are, everyone has to eat, everyone has to shit, everyone has to bathe, everyone needs time off, and everyone likes to get laid sometimes. We aren’t machines.”

Then Klaus made his announcement to the girls.

“For this mission, I’ve divided you into three squads.”

“I’ll provide overarching direction and check-in regularly, but I’m leaving the specifics in your hands.”

“Are…are you sure?”

“You’re ready, aren’t you? It’s what you’ve been doing for the past month.”

His words were meant to spur them into action—and they achieved just that.

The team glanced at one another, and an elegant smile spread across the black-haired girl’s face.

“Don’t you worry about a thing. We’ll come up with a plan so perfect it will knock your socks off.”

“Magnificent.”

That was their signal. The girls spread a map out across the table.

How were they going to deceive their foes? Who should be the ones to approach each target?

Whenever one of the girls offered up an idea, another one would find a hole in it, a third would come up with an amended proposal, and a fourth would argue with that. The most common retort offered was “That didn’t work against Teach.” Many of the initial proposals suggested were ones that had already failed against Klaus, so they all worked together to make them craftier.

They were driven by a single goal—come up with plans good enough to fool Teach!

That was the fruit of their month of labor.

One night, as Klaus sat in his hotel room reading the newspaper, he heard a knock.

“I have the wine you ordered.”

He opened the door. One of the hotel’s bellhops stood outside.

He invited the bellhop in and turned on the room’s record player. That would prevent any potential listening devices from being able to make out their conversation.

The bellhop let out a deep sigh, then reached up and appeared to tear his face off, although it was just a mask. Underneath were a pair of gentle eyes and a face that seemed somehow transient. They belonged to the red-haired girl, who was a member of the Intel squad.

“It’s an excellent disguise,” Klaus said as he took the wine from her, “but there really was no need for you to take off the mask, was there?”

“But I don’t like cross-dressing around you, Boss…”

“…I’m not complaining; I’m just saying.”

He got the feeling that the girl might hold an unusual amount of affection toward him.

Rather than investigate the matter further, though, he simply told her not to call him Boss.

He peeled the wine’s label off and looked at the coded message on its backside. It contained the intel the girls had managed to dig up. One glance was enough to tell him just how hard they were working.

The red-haired girl gave him a modest bow.

“We’ve confirmed that Abyss Doll is still in the laboratory, but…infiltrating it is going to be a challenge. It’s out in the middle of nowhere, and its surroundings are under constant surveillance. Also, only a small number of people hold the keys to the deepest parts of the lab, so we won’t be able to get into those areas even if we use disguises to sneak into the building. Our only option is to break in, but we need more time to—”

“No. If we take any more time, the Empire will finish analyzing the sample. We can’t put this off.”

“But…”

“I haven’t been slacking, either, you know.” Klaus lifted up the room’s bed.

A huge quantity of documents and IDs had been sewn to its underside. There were enough of them to cover the whole mattress, and they included everything from criminal records of laboratory personnel, details on their families, blueprints from when the lab’s buildings were first constructed, lists of politicians who had ties to the facility, military personnel records, and even the Galgad Ministry of Finance’s budget documents on the lab.

“You did all this on your own…?”

The red-haired girl blinked. After quickly skimming through the documents, she let out a deep sigh and looked at Klaus with eyes full of wonder.

“This is amazing. It’s so heartening, watching an expert work.”

“An expert, huh…? I suppose so. As the Greatest Spy in the World, this was child’s play, but—”

Klaus paused. He looked at the ceiling, then closed his eyes.

“—would you mind giving me a moment?”

The red-haired girl blinked again.

They were beside the laboratory’s western storehouse, at the storage site for the facility’s gas tanks.

The bomb Guido threw hadn’t been particularly powerful; the surrounding tanks prevented him from using anything stronger.

Still, the force from the blast sent tingles across Lily’s skin. She fled between the pipes, wincing all the while and eventually taking cover behind a water tank.

From there, she calmly analyzed the situation. Perhaps the bomb’s true purpose had been to make noise. Guido must have wanted to let someone know a battle had broken out, though she didn’t know who that could be.

The pipes running between the tanks extended out every which way like branches on trees—or even a forest of trees. As far as he could tell, the rest of the team had taken shelter among the plumbing as well.

Guido waited a little ways off from the tanks. He made no efforts to pursue them.

“What’s the plan?” Lily heard the white-haired girl’s brisk voice come from somewhere. “Guns and grenades are gonna be off the table if he follows us in here, right?”

The cerulean-haired girl haughtily replied. “No duh. We don’t know how thick these tanks are. If they’re full of gasoline or flammable gas, we could all go up in smoke.”

“So we use knives, or we make a run for it. But…”

“Yeah, neither option seems great. I mean, he might look like a poser, but this is Teach’s teacher we’re talking about.”

The one moment they had spent interacting with him had been enough for them all to realize just how skilled a spy their foe was. It was hard to envision a future in which they beat him, especially not in close-quarters combat.

Lily went silent, unsure of how best to respond.

She was good at bolstering the group’s spirits—with or without evidence—but coming up with actual plans lay outside her area of expertise.

Then, she heard a calm voice coming from the other side of the water tank. It belonged to the red-haired girl.

“If we flee, he’ll just run us down one by one. We’ll have better chances fighting him together…”

Nobody disagreed.

They steeled themselves for a fight. If they tried to use the darkness to escape, there was a fair possibility that some of them would survive, but the odds that they would all make it were slim to none. Call it naive, but they had no intention of leaving anyone behind.

Guido could sense this.

“Seven on one, huh.” He flashed them a strangely excited smile.

“You’re goin’ down one by one. Three minutes from now, I’ll have you all on the ground.”

Three minutes.

Lily had been afraid that they wouldn’t last five, but she realized now that even that estimate had been generous.

Guido reached behind his back and drew a sword. It was an odd tool for a spy, but it seemed to be his weapon of choice nonetheless.

One of the girls audibly gulped.

Guido squared off, lowering his center of gravity.

There were forty feet between him and the gas tanks the girls were hiding behind. With his speed, he could close that gap in an instant.

For a few seconds, all was still.

Then, a whistle broke the silence.

The girls rushed from their hiding places in unison and fired off shots.

“Don’t let him get close!” the black-haired girl shouted. “If he makes it to the pipes, our guns will be useless!”

All seven guns unloaded on him without mercy or hesitation. The girls knew that if they held back, they were the ones who’d end up dead.

Their barrage would have turned any normal person into Swiss cheese.

If only Guido were a normal person.

He zigzagged toward them, occasionally swatting bullets out of the air with his blade. He didn’t look scared in the slightest. If anything, he was enjoying himself.

In what seemed like no time at all, he reached the area thick with piping, and the girls stopped shooting. Guns would do them no good now.

Instead, the seven of them sprang into action, laying wire traps around the pipes as they raced through the shadows. Luckily for them, the forest of tanks and pipes provided ample spots where they could hide.

Guido ignored the other girls and made straight for Lily.

She felt like a rabbit being chased by a lion. She ran atop the pipes as fast as her legs would carry her, but Guido was still faster.

He was going to catch her.

But right when that realization struck, she heard someone whistle.

That was the signal they used when setting traps.

Precisely two seconds after she heard it, Lily took a massive leap.

“Sorry!” Lily shouted. “But we’ve had plenty of practice being outmatched!”

All their training had given them a remarkable ability to rework plans on the fly and coordinate to make snap decisions.

As she somersaulted forward through the air, Lily shot a glance backward.

Guido was still holding his sword and coming after her, but he suddenly stopped in his tracks.

His right foot was caught in a tangled web of wires.

Someone must have laid a booby trap.

When Lily landed and looked up, she saw the cerulean-haired girl flipping Guido the bird.

With Guido rendered immobile, the other girls hurled knives at him, and their ash-pink-haired companion charged him from behind with a stun gun.

Thanks to their impeccable coordination, Guido was in serious trouble. With his leg trapped, there was no way he could dodge the knives hurtling toward him from every direction.

“What are you guys, dumb or somethin’?” he asked with a derisive laugh.

Lily stared in blank shock.

It happened in a flash.

All of a sudden, Guido’s ensnared foot ripped through the wires holding it in place and slammed straight into the ash-pink-haired girl’s gut; he evaded the knives with ease.

“Remember which country you learned about that trap in?”

He then swung his leg and dashed the ash-pink-haired girl against a gas tank. She let out a wordless moan, then crumpled to the ground.

“The Republic’s tricks won’t work on me,” he said in a cool, level voice.

The young spy he’d kicked lay prone by his feet. She didn’t get up.

“Six left.”

The girls understood exactly what that meant.

Their pink-haired comrade, always the innocent, purehearted life of the party—Annette—was down for the count.

The Galgad Empire had a number of covert operatives stationed at the Endy Laboratory.

Considering the bioweapon they had stored there, they would have preferred having more, but they’d made so many enemies around the globe that they lacked the spare personnel. Besides, guarding facilities wasn’t exactly under their intelligence agency’s purview. That was supposed to be the military’s job.

As far as the Empire’s spies were concerned, the Din Republic was already dead.

Not only had their one real threat, Inferno, been annihilated, but the Empire had also gotten its hands on a list of all the Republic’s collaborators within their borders. The only thing left to worry about was Inferno’s sole survivor. That was why they had laid a trap for him at the laboratory and were waiting for him with waves of soldiers. Once he was out of the picture, the Republic was as good as theirs.

In the laboratory’s admin building, one of the Empire’s covert operatives—Eve—let out a yawn.

“Hey, are those Republic shmucks dead yet?”

Eve was a spy in her midtwenties. Her short brown hair gave her a young and girlish look, and her job centered around counterintelligence. Essentially, she was a member of the secret police tasked with tracking down enemy agents.

She was waiting in the communications room with a group of soldiers. Her nonchalant attitude earned her several frowns, but she just smiled and ignored them. Like in any country, the Empire’s soldiers had a bit of a hard-on for order and discipline. Seeing her suck on her lollipop as she waited for news probably caused them no end of annoyance.

Still, they held their tongues.

The Empire’s intelligence agency was completely independent of its Department of Defense, and as a consequence, there was no official hierarchy between the two institutions. Over time, though, the intelligence agency had unearthed a number of the army’s scandals, and before they knew it, the spies could say “Jump!” and the military would have no choice but to ask “How high?”

A young male soldier promptly replied. “It appears that Bluebottle has engaged a spy or group of spies near the western storehouse. Another unit has also reported that they caught the trail of an infiltrator by the eastern gate. They’re in the middle of tracking the intruder now.”

“Heh. Then it’s just like our intel said.” Eve sat back down and planted her feet atop the desk.

The soldiers around her knit their brows in disapproval.

“Um…a question, if I may?” the young man asked.

“Hmm?”

“What chances do you think the Din Republic rats have of succeeding?”

“Hmm…,” Eve replied. “None, I imagine.”

“Surely it can’t be that easy…”

Eve let out a derisive scoff. “The moment Guido…well, Bluebottle now, I suppose… The moment he betrayed them, we learned everything about all the Republic’s spies. We know our enemy’s techniques, their strengths, their weakness—even the plan they’re using tonight.”

“And that’s going to be enough…?”

“See, Bluebottle planted bugs throughout his old home, and our foes have been living there completely blind to that fact. We know about every spy they sent to this compound, and they came here with bad intel, not even aware that we let them come.” Eve snapped her fingers. “All we have to do now is swat a few loose flies.”

Furthermore, they had installed traps and soldiers in every spot to which the Republic operatives were likely to flee. All that awaited them was ruin.

The young man didn’t seem totally convinced. “But Mr. Bluebottle said there was a man we needed to watch out for.”

“What, their boss? Nah, he won’t be a problem, either. Bluebottle taught him everything he knows.”

“Really…?”

“Apparently, they’ve sparred hundreds of times. But Bluebottle never lost once. As long as we leave him to Bluebottle, we’ll be fine.”

Everything she’d said had come straight from the horse’s mouth. According to Bluebottle, he knew every aspect of their foe’s fighting style, having raised him from early childhood.

“After all, we set up this plan to make sure we could kill him. They’ve been dancing in the palm of our hand this whole time. Now it’s just a matter of time until we finish slaughtering them.”

At last, the young man let out a deep sigh.

“It almost makes you feel bad for them.”

“Hearing it all aloud…it does, doesn’t it?”

Then, Eve happened upon an idea.

“Maybe I should put them out of their misery myself.”

The soldiers flew into a panic. “Ma’am, you have orders to stay here.”

“Excuse me? Don’t you look at me like that. You think you can disobey me?”

“But…”

“Well?” Eve gave the soldiers a harsh glare.

The soldiers had gotten tired of this woman’s smug superiority, and the young man took a resolute step forward.

“With all due respect, this laboratory is under the military’s jurisdiction. If you need someone to fight the spies you lured in here, we’re far more qualified to—”

However, he wasn’t able to finish his sentence.

The thread wrapped around his thick neck snapped tight, and he let out a sad, frog-like croak.

The other end of the string was on Eve’s fingertip.

She pulled it tighter, then sneered at the writhing soldier. “Sorry… What was that about fighting?”

Even though he had a much larger physique than her, his eyes were wide with fear.

She gave his head a kick.

“Listen, I don’t care how much of a hotshot you are in the army; soldiers are a thing of the past. We don’t need a bunch of apes who only know how to point a gun. With modern technology, war is simply too risky, too costly, and too wasteful. Am I making myself clear?”

That was why they needed spies. Anyone who could take over a country without jets or missiles was worth their weight in gold.

Eve kicked the man some more to drive her point home.

“You put so much work into training your body, and for what? You think your enemies are just going to walk up and fight you head-on? They’ll shoot you from behind. They’ll fight with deception, with poison. Without a decent mind to protect yourself, how do you plan on surviving in this new world?”

The moment the soldier looked like he was about to pass out, Eve let her string go slack.

“Now then, I have some spies to kill.”

After catching his breath, the young man rushed to stop her.

“P-please, you have to wait! If the enemy is an elite spy, too, then you—”

“They can be whoever they please. I’m not about to get laid low by some surprise attack from the darkness. In my time with the secret police, dozens of enemy agents met their ends by my string.” Eve flashed him her palm and the strings coiled around it. “I’ll be sure to bring his head back for Bluebottle.”

Just as she laughed, a message arrived in the communications room. The intruder had been spotted at the building that housed the main lab.

Perfect. Time to put him down.

As flippant as her attitude was, Eve was all business on the inside. She squeezed her gun tight, ready to act if she heard even the slightest sound. She advanced with hushed footsteps as she probed for signs of the enemy.

The lab’s interior was cold and artificial. Its flooring was state-of-the-art linoleum—hygienic but not hard enough for footsteps to be too loud.

Eve silently let out her string to expand her web. The weapon was silent, of course, and thanks to the dim light, spotting it wouldn’t be possible, either.

Now all she had to do was wait for the butterfly to drift into her spiderweb.

She felt a light twinge on one of her fingertips.

Got you… That’s the weight of an adult man.

She reeled in her string and bound up her foe. Just as she thought, this guy was no big deal.

Eve chuckled to herself, then followed the threat so she could gun down her prey—

“Gack.”

A strange sound escaped her throat.

She didn’t know when he had gotten there, but there was a man behind her.

He wiped the blood off his knife with an annoyed look on his face.

Eve didn’t understand what had happened. Her throat felt warm, and when she reached up to touch it, a torrent of blood spilled from the slit.

“Just some nobody, then?” he murmured. His voice sounded almost listless.

Eve couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Her web had caught someone—she was certain of it.

Now, though, her strings were in tatters, and the one being attacked was her.

“The Empire must really be shorthanded if these are the only operatives they can spare to guard this place.”

The man caught Eve’s body before she could hit the ground, then rummaged through her clothes. After determining she had nothing worth taking, he dumped her.

“I’m in a hurry. I don’t have time to waste on the likes of you.” He didn’t even deliver the coup de grâce.

Instead, he raced off as though he’d lost interest, eventually vanishing from her sight altogether.

“Six left.”

Guido’s voice echoed coldly through the dark laboratory compound.

“Annette…”

What had once been a mere theory was now a certainty in Lily’s mind.

It was all true. Guido’s fighting skills were on par with Klaus’s. He might even be stronger.

The way he had moved when overcoming their traps even resembled their teacher. There was no doubt he had once been Klaus’s mentor.

As Lily hid, she felt like someone was squeezing down on her heart.

The man they were up against was on par with the one they’d fought for a month without securing a single victory. To make matters worse, they were already down a member.

Lily strained her eyes at the pink-haired girl Guido had struck.

She was lying on the ground, and her chest was rising and lowering ever so slightly. She was breathing.

“Thank goodness, she’s still—”

“Killing is for amateurs.”

Chains rattled as Guido dropped them by his feet.

After binding the pink-haired girl’s arms and legs, Guido spoke again.

“You have ten seconds to get out of there. Each second beyond that, I break one of her fingers.”

Lily gritted her teeth.

In the world of spies, taking hostages was fair game—in fact, everything was fair game.

To them, foul play was a way of life. If anything, his willingness to take a hostage was something to be praised.

With each passing moment, more sweat dripped down Lily’s cheek.

She and her teammates exchanged glances as they stayed hidden in the shadows.

“Teach isn’t here now…” Lily’s gaze darted around. “Saving her is up to us. There’s no other way.”

She steeled her nerves.

Then, she slowly stepped out from behind the pipes and faced their menacing foe head-on.

Guido let out an impressed sigh. “Looks like someone made up her mind fast.”

“Thanks for the compliment.”

That was also the only nice thing he was saying about her, but better to not think too hard about that.

Behind her, she could hear the black-haired girl whispering.

“We have to come up with a plan while Lily buys us time.”

Lily stretched her shoulders to feign composure.

So her job was to divert Guido’s attention. She could roll with that.

“But you screwed up.” Her foe didn’t seem to be in any rush, either. “You shoulda ditched her and made a run for it. Once someone gets captured, it’s their job to kill themselves as quickly as possible. You won’t survive in this world long playin’ buddy-buddy.”

“Sorry, but the only thing we learned was that hostages are like injured swans.”

“That damn kid. After all the work I put into teaching him properly…” Guido rubbed the back of his neck.

Lily clenched her fists and stared down her foe. “We made a promise that we’d all make it back alive.”

Leaving a friend behind? That had never been an option.

“Without Teach and seven cuties like me, Lamplight wouldn’t be Lamplight. I mean, a rainbow’s got seven colors, and there are seven deadly sins… It’s the perfect number. We’ve got Thea for lust, Sybilla for wrath, me for greed… Anyway, you get the idea.”

The white-haired girl shot a retort from the darkness. “Who you calling wrath?!”

Even in their current predicament, her voice was as brisk and dignified as ever.

Cheered on by that fact, Lily’s deflated expression softened a bit. “Six or eight just wouldn’t be right. It has to be all seven of us going back with Teach.”

“And I’m tellin’ you that’s naive.”

The time for small talk was over. Guido switched his sword to a backhand grip and pointed its tip at his hostage. The bound, pink-haired Annette let out a weak moan.

“Bring it.”

The implication behind his words was clear.

Drag this out any longer, and the girl dies.

“If you’re as good as Klaus—”

Lily exchanged a glance with the other girls.

“—then I guess it’s time for us to surpass him.”

This was what they’d been doing for the past month.

A bunch of weaklings, working together to take down a Goliath.

In her heart, she knew—it was time to show the fruits of their labor.

They had never once succeeded, but they knew how it could be done.

“…Use deception to take them down.”

By piling lies on top of lies, it was possible to make someone mistake a zero for a one—or a one for a five. And that would give them an opening.

The red-haired girl walked up to Lily and quietly whispered the plan in her ear. Lily gave her a wink in lieu of a verbal confirmation.

Then, the battle commenced with one of the girls hurling a bomb at Guido.

A cloud of smoke billowed up. White fumes spread through the darkness, then faded.

Guido didn’t move a muscle. He didn’t so much as flinch. He just stayed by his hostage.

By the time the smoke screen cleared, the girls had already finished getting into position.

Two of them leaped out—the white-haired and cerulean-haired girls.

They were armed with gloves and a knife respectively, and they rushed at Guido from opposite sides. When it came to combat prowess, those two were the best in the group. Guido casually fended off their attacks with his blade, and the pair only barely managed to evade his counterattacks.

The white-haired girl had set her backpack down before diving into the fray. Newly unencumbered, she used her steel-plated gloves to block Guido’s sword, and her cerulean-haired partner used the openings that created to level deft knife strikes at their foe.

However, Guido eventually put a stop to that, too.

His expression hadn’t changed one bit during the entire skirmish, and he was even enjoying himself. Little by little, though, the girls found themselves completely on the defensive.

“Urk—”

When the white-haired girl groaned, her black-haired backup rushed in to lend them a hand with another smoke screen.

Smoke filled the air once more, and the white- and cerulean-haired girls used that opportunity to fall back.

They heard an annoyed murmur. “Enough of this shit.”

Guido dashed away from his hostage. He had a new target—the black-haired girl.

She frantically tried to flee atop the pipes, but Guido wove through the snaking mess of metal without slowing down for a moment and quickly gained on her.

Suddenly, her foot slipped.

“Oh no…,” she lamented as she toppled to the ground.

Down below, Guido was waiting for her with his sword at the ready. “You ain’t getting away this time.”

“Stay back…”

The black-haired girl choked the words out, her eyes dripping with tears. She scrambled pathetically backward with her butt still planted on the ground. The way she was twisting her body to the side and cowering accentuated her natural curves.

To make matters worse, her clothes caught on something while she was fleeing. They tore, leaving her buttocks fully bare.

The more she scooted backward, the more they ripped, and the more her seductive legs came into view.

“No… Don’t come any closer…” Her voice came out frail and feminine, a far cry from her usual courageous tone.

“………”

Guido’s response was as cold as ice.

“You’ve got the eyes of a vixen trying to lure in her prey. You tryin’ to stir up my sadistic side or something?”

The girl immediately stopped her fake crying. “Maybe, but you’re out of time.”

A web of piano wires surrounded Guido and swooped toward him. He had already stumbled into their spiderweb of a trap.

Given his skills, he could cut himself free before they sliced him up, but—

“Magnificent.”

—there was a follow-up ready for him, too.

Appearing from the dead of night, the man attacked from overhead, plunging a knife through the sole opening in the piano wire web.

That man was the one person Guido couldn’t afford to ignore.

“This is checkmate for you, Guido—”

“You really think that’s gonna work on me?”

But Guido didn’t offer them the slightest opening.

Without so much as flinching at the fake Klaus’s arrival, he sliced through the piano wire, coolly blocked the knife strike—which was miles slower than the real Klaus’s would have been—and grabbed the imposter by the arm.

“Agh…” The girl let out a moan.

“The disguise ain’t bad. Problem is, he always calls me Master.” Guido hurled the fake Klaus with all his might.

As she flew through the air, her head skidded against the ground, and her mask came free. After rolling to a stop, she tried to lift herself up, but her arms quickly gave out.

The gentle red-haired girl who polished Lamplight’s plans and strategies until they shone—Grete—was down for the count.

“Five left.”

Guido tied up the red-haired disguise artist.

It only took him a scant few seconds. The black-haired girl didn’t even have time to escape.

As she tried to scurry backward, Guido struck her jaw with the flat of his sword. The blow didn’t look that hard, but she slumped to the ground all the same.

The beautiful, mature black-haired vixen who always brought the team together so elegantly—Thea—was down for the count.

“Four left.”

At that point, the white- and cerulean-haired combatants finally caught up with him.

Guido evaded their attacks, then raced up a gas tank and looked around for his next prey.

Lily had been hiding and surveying the situation. Their eyes met.

“Y’know, your two buddies have been chasin’ me around for a while.”

He pointed his sword at her.

“You talked a pretty big game earlier—what’ve you been bringin’ to the table?”

“………”

As Lily ran away, she cocked her head to the side.

As things stood, she was leaving planning, commanding, and fighting—pretty much everything—to the others.

“…Moral support?”

“Well, ain’t that just peachy?”

Everyone had things they were good at and things they weren’t. And that’s just the way the world works.

As much as Lily wanted to defend her honor, though, she sadly didn’t have time.

Guido had chosen her as his next target. He bolted toward her so fast, he seemed like lightning from the heavens.

There was no way she could dodge. His dropkick, so efficient it bordered on beautiful, smashed into her shoulder—

“That and grit!”

—and with willpower alone, she grabbed his leg.

Moral support wasn’t the only thing she was good for. She had a weapon that was hers and hers alone.

The poisonous fumes, bursting from all over her body!

“Gas…?” Guido’s eyes went wide for an instant. He quickly clamped his mouth shut.

“Do it!” she shouted, still holding his leg.

He immediately shook her off, but the damage was already done.

Guido staggered.

The team’s two combat specialists launched what was now their third attack. “Fuckin’ die already!” the white-haired girl cried briskly as she leaped, and her cerulean-haired cohort grinned haughtily as she thrust her knife at him.

The battle was over in an instant.

However, not in the way Lily had anticipated…

If Guido had seen them with his own two eyes, it would have been obvious in an instant that there were eight of them, but distinguishing between eight girls by just their voices was no easy feat.

“Just how deep…did the lying go…?”

Klaus’s first meeting with the team had been a lie, the oath he swore to them was a lie, their games of cat and mouse had been a lie, their daily lives had been a lie, Lily’s posturing had been a lie, and her poison foam had been a lie—all to mask that single attack.

Guido finally realized the truth.

The girls had never harbored any illusions about being able to beat him.

They had traded a month of their lives, just to land a single blow.

However, that realization came too late.

A spurt of blood gushed from his back.

As she watched Guido collapse, Lily squeezed her fists tight.

Elation filled every inch of her body.

It worked…!

That was the grand trap Klaus had set—having the eight girls live as though there were only seven of them.

Heat Haze Palace Communal Living Rule : Work as seven to live together.

When the girls first read the rule, they didn’t understand why it was there. After all, when Lily arrived and when Klaus first appeared, there actually were only seven of them. The rule came across as childish.

But on the second evening, it all became clear.

That was when Erna, who had been delayed by a series of vehicular mishaps, finally showed up.

The eight of them were being told to work as seven.

As such, at least one of them made sure not to talk whenever all eight of them were together.

Also, they did their absolute best to avoid calling one another by name.

Selling the lie had taken a coordinated effort by the entire team. Together, they had set a trap and used their foes’ bugs against them.

Of course, we still only barely pulled it off…

Lily chuckled to herself, then got back to work.

Erna reached into Guido’s pocket and pulled out a key.

Lily took it from her, then began releasing the girls Guido had tied up. None of them were seriously injured. That came as a big relief, but more than anything, she was again impressed at the precision of Guido’s technique. For a spy, being able to hurt a foe without leaving any wounds or injuries was an invaluable skill—especially when trying to threaten them into giving up information.

“C’mon, let’s get out of here! Teach can handle the rest!”

As Lily scurried around freeing the others, Erna gave her a disappointed look.

“So much for that attitude from earlier…”

“Oh yeah, no, we’re all damsels in distress, and we definitely need saving!”

“Why would he make a whole team of damsels in distress?!”

If they ran into a traitor from Inferno, the girls’ job was just to keep them busy. Meanwhile, Klaus would handle everything related to actually securing the bioweapon. All grandstanding and posturing aside, the thing Lily wanted most was to get as far away from this terrifying place as possible.

After quickly freeing all the others, Lily finally reached her white-haired teammate. Then, right as she got the brilliant idea of doodling on her face—

“Behind you!”

—she heard Erna scream.

Lily was able to dodge the sword flying at her head, but only by the slimmest of margins. One of her hair ribbons was shredded to pieces.

Erna’s sensitivity to danger was really something else. Developing it must have taken a truly unfortunate life indeed.

In any case, though, Lily really wished she wasn’t seeing what she was seeing.

Guido got to his feet. He was breathing hard, and his eyes had a feral gleam to them.

“I stabbed you, though, I’m sure of it…”

“Yeah, but I shifted to catch the blow between a muscle and a bone.” He wiped away the blood trickling from his mouth. “Still passed out for a bit, though. Gotta admit, it’s been a while since the last time that happened.”

Erna bit her lip as she stood by Lily’s side. However, nobody could possibly blame her for what had happened. Seeing through an elite spy’s trickery was far easier said than done.

“This guy’s seriously a monster…”

Guido combed back his hair with his hand, leaving a rusty streak thanks to the blood. He stared the girls down as the wind gradually dried his newly blood-caked hairdo.

“Ruuun!” On Lily’s signal, Lamplight fled.

Her reasoning was simple: Guido was seriously wounded, so there was no way he’d be able to give chase.

He was acting tough, sure, but it had to just be an act. And her reasoning was dead wrong.

“Ah—”

Guido’s speed didn’t seem to have suffered in the slightest.

By the time they saw him leap, he was already springing from pipe to pipe, almost dashing through the air. It was no more than a blink of an eye before he was directly over the fleeing girls’ heads. He launched something at them.

Blood.

With a big swing of his right arm, he hurled a handful of blood at them like a shotgun blast. The fluid was so sticky, they couldn’t get it out of their eyes, and it slowed them down just the way he wanted.

His target was Lily, and his kick whizzed through the air and made straight for her face. At the last moment, the white-haired spy blocked the blow. However, his foot continued on unabated, sending Sybilla crashing into Lily. They both went flying and slammed into the two girls behind them. They all tumbled to the ground.

One kick had laid four of them low.

They were no match for him.

Guido was a wounded beast now.

The girls were utterly helpless.

“A tenth of a second.” Guido raised a finger. “That’s how much you slowed me down. Congratulations.”

That was little more than a rounding error.

They had thrown every scheme they had at him, and that was all it had accomplished.

Guido looked down at the still-prone spies and pointed his gun at them. He wasn’t worried about the gas tanks behind them. He knew he wouldn’t miss.

All the emotion left Guido’s expression as he placed his finger on the trigger.

A week had passed since the completion of the mission.

The Lamplight girls were gathered in the main hall, and all were carrying suitcases. A couple of them were restlessly checking the contents of their bags, and several of the others were yawning sleepily. They had been up late partying, so none of them was exactly well rested. There were also some members of the team who hadn’t managed to finish packing yet.

Chief among that group was Lily. She had tried to cram all her clothes in her bag, then started dragging everything out again once she realized there was no way in hell it would fit. She’d loaded in too many nonessentials. Upon retrieving the pistol she had haphazardly stuffed inside, a pleased grin spread across her face.

“Man, when I look at my spy tools, it brings me right back to when I played Guido for a fool… And in that moment, Lily the Great Pretender was born.”

The white-haired girl, who had long since finished her packing, offered a brisk rebuttal.

“I dunno, sounded to me like you were talking out of your ass back there. I mean, divvying up the seven deadly sins?”

“Nobody asked you, Wrath.”

“Just to ask before I clock you, which sin are you?”

“Oh, I’m greed. And envy. And gluttony. And sloth. And pride.”

“Wait, you’re not even divvying them up!”

Back when they listened to Lily’s conversation with Guido, all the girls had silently thought the same thing.

Tricking Guido might have been part of their plan, but Lily had been spouting off some pretty random nonsense.

At the end of the day, though, it had worked, so it was hard to blame her for reveling in the victory.

However, one member of the group poured cold water on her enthusiasm.

“And besides…,” Erna said. “We barely even did anything…”

“Wh-what are you talking about?!”

Erna took a seat atop her suitcase, which was almost as tall as her, and idly kicked at the air. “All we did was sneak into a corner of the laboratory, get in a single hit on a single enemy, and then run away…”

“Yeah! Pretty impressive, right?”

“And in the same time, Teach knocked out a dozen guards, disguised himself as a soldier, snuck in, snatched a key, opened three safes, blackmailed a researcher, stole the bioweapon, destroyed their research results, killed four enemy spies, and also took down the enemy who we could barely touch.”

“………………………………”

Lily took a good long while to mull over the stark truth with which she’d just been presented. She then opened her eyes wide, strode right over to Erna—

“Take that! Cheek pokes!”

“Hwuh?”

—and offered a carefully considered counterargument.

“Divine punishment for being a buzzkill!”

“Sh-shtooop!”

“Oh wow, your skin is so soft. I guess you really do exist.”

“Of coursh I do!”

“It’s just—your presence felt so faint during the mission, it was like…did she dissolve into thin air or something?”

“You’re horrible!”

Lily prodded both of Erna’s cheeks simultaneously as though to make sure she hadn’t turned incorporeal in the last two seconds.

As she kept going, Erna’s expression grew more and more pained, eventually causing the rest of Lamplight to leap at Lily. “Quit bullying her!”

Lily responded by obstinately continuing to poke Erna’s cheeks, while the others tried to pry her off. As Erna was shaken back and forth, she let out an alarmed cry.

“Y-you really should be careful around me, or—”

“Ah! The floor!”

Lily’s foot slipped.

She had tripped over a bump in the carpet, and when she fell, she took the rest down with her. The latch on the suitcase Erna had been sitting on came undone, and its contents poured out all over the main hall. “How unlucky…,” Erna moaned.

Lily lay faceup with the other girls pinned beneath her.

Instead of listening to their demands that she get off them, though, she instead just gazed at the ceiling.

“Ahhh…”

Her voice sounded almost like a sigh.

It’s nice to meet you. I’m Takemachi, Grand Prize winner of the 32nd Fantasia Taisho awards.

I submitted this under the title The Spy’s Sweet Temptations—All the Other Students Are Beautiful Girls. From there, the book went through a number of revisions, and now it’s in the form you see today.

Incidentally, the reason the actual book’s synopsis turned out so different from my submission’s is because of conversations I had with my editor. After analyzing the story’s strengths and weaknesses, I rewrote it to better live up to the expectations that winning the Grand Prize carries. And if anyone bought this book hoping to use it as a reference for their own future Fantasia Taisho submissions, don’t worry. Anything you may have heard about the editorial department poisoning me or blackmailing me into making changes is a lie. All they did was offer me delicious coffee and win me over through gentle persuasion.

If anyone’s curious about the original synopsis, please feel free to check it out on the Fantasia Taisho website. If you do, you’ll be able to see just how much work went into the revisions—mostly on my editor’s part.