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Tap, tap. I intentionally made noise with my footsteps and my presence as I approached Lampades.Normally, people said I lacked presence. If I appeared suddenly in front of him, he would be startled.
Even though we were friends, we hadn't been in contact for years, so he might not even remember my face clearly.
Hearing the sound, Lampades turned his head. Somehow, his slow and unnatural neck movement looked like he had muscle pain.
No, his face was pale, and he was sweating. This was tension.
Was he nervous about the certification exam?
Well, he had said it was his lifelong dream, so it was understandable. What words of encouragement would be best in this situation?
After a moment of thought, I decided to go with words that would always work.
"Hey, it's great to see you. You've achieved your dream!"
***
Tap.
It was strange.
The foot traffic in Elysion was world-class. It would be unusual not to hear any footsteps.
But the footsteps I heard now were particularly distinct. Unlike other non-directional noises, these steps seemed to be heading solely towards Lampades.
Tap.
The second step. Closer now.
Lampades' breath quickened. No, it couldn't be. The dark elf who loved machines slowly surveyed his surroundings.
That slow movement seemed less like caution and more like a desperate attempt to delay inevitable doom.
Like a child who senses a parent's anger and knows they'll be punished but still tries to hide their mistake.
Lampades turned off the gathering function of his antenna. The range of his hearing sensors, which could pick up distant whispers of lovers, narrowed instantly.
Tap.
Yet, the footsteps didn't disappear.
They came from the direction he was turning his head. He couldn't avoid it.
Eventually, Lampades turned his head.
He saw that blurred face. That ominous smile was the same as in the past.
"Hey, it's great to see you."
Lampades couldn't speak. You. You.
"You've achieved your dream!"
You're not dead?
Lampades' response wasn't the result of any logic or thought process; it was more like a social reflex.
"It's hard to say I've achieved it yet. I just passed the document…"
This was the limit of Lampades' reflexes. Fortunately, the augmented reality display in his field of vision provided suggested greetings from his assistant spirit intelligence.
"─review. The practical exam is the biggest hurdle, right?"
"Oh, come on. If your magic tower passed the document review, you'll surely pass the practical too. It's as good as done."
"Thanks for the encouragement."
Lampades' vision was filled with dozens of suggested casual conversation phrases from the spirit intelligence. But he couldn't choose any of those. What he truly needed to know wasn't there.
"You… I heard you died?"
"Aha. I've never experienced death."
***
No wonder his face looked pale when he saw me earlier.
Well, Lampades had a reason to misunderstand. During the mission where I met Carisia, everyone except me died because of our employer's betrayal, and I had to disappear with Carisia.
The other colleagues from that mission probably didn't even leave behind bodies, so the public must have thought we were simply missing in action.
In the mercenary and fixer industry, 'missing in action' was synonymous with 'died, but the body wasn't found.'
Thinking from Lampades' perspective, a friend he thought had been dead for years suddenly appeared. It's like the beginning of a horror or mystery novel.
To ease Lampades' tension, I approached him closer.
"Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. Look here."
I spread my hands in front of his eyes.
"I'm perfectly alive, aren't I?"
***
This can't be happening.
Lampades kept repeating that to himself.
After the incident where only he and Orthes survived out of the ten fixers, he had desperately gathered funds to start a magic tower. The moment he barely met the minimum capital required, he retired.
Even while building up achievements for the certification review, he spent his days in constant fear that Orthes might suddenly show up again.
He feared Orthes might appear saying something like, 'The time for the grace I gave you has expired.'
And then he heard the news. Missing in action.
Lampades operated in a notorious area at the front line of the extra-dimension.
A place ordinary people would never hear about, and even those at the bottom of society would rather sell their organs than go there.
The fixers gathered in such a place were, in reality, the top-tier professionals in the industry.
It was a daily war against extra-dimensional erosion entities.
Orthes' last mission was a special operation selecting five of the top fixers from among those elite ranks.
The details of the mission were not disclosed. Only the fact that five fixers vanished simultaneously and were declared missing.
Top-tier fixers failing to complete a mission and dying was a common occurrence on the extra-dimensional front line.
But Lampades never believed Orthes was dead. He had a history of surviving missions under unnatural circumstances, often returning alone.
Lampades waited years before pursuing the certification review, always wary that Orthes might appear before him at any moment.
Orthes had clearly said:
'I support your dream. I'll visit you once you achieve it.'
Despite the evidence suggesting Orthes' death, Lampades lived in constant anxiety, fearing he might hear that Orthes had survived.
At the certification review he finally attended after years of hesitation, Lampades faced Orthes.
'Ah…'
The faceless Orthes had returned.
***
"How have you been?"
"Well, I've been busy gathering the achievements needed to pass the document review…"
Lampades' gaze shifted. It seemed there were people from Lampades' magic tower over there.
"Oh. Are those your tower members? Should I introduce myself─"
"No! No. That's not necessary. It's their first time in Elysion in a while, so I gave them some free time. It'd be awkward if the tower master joined them, right?"
Lampades hurriedly spilled out words. It felt like he was considerate of his members.
"Wow, your tower members are lucky. They have a leader who's a class apart from our company's president."
"President?"
"Oh, sorry. I forgot to mention it."
I handed Lampades a business card with simple information like an Ether Network email address.
Carisia had prepared the business card for external activities when I was getting ready to come to Elysion. The title had been changed to Chief of Staff to avoid revealing my role as head of the Divine Investigation Office.
It was amusing to have a Chief of Staff in a secretarial office with only one member. The Divine Investigation Office also technically had only me as its member.
'But soon, Kine will have her name listed as an intern or something.'
Lampades' expression twisted bizarrely as he read the business card before returning to normal.
"You working for a company? I can't imagine it."
Aha.
"When I was a fixer, I operated independently, without affiliation. But as I told you before, it was all a misunderstanding. Everyone pushed me away, so I had no choice but to work alone."
***
"I'm not as socially inept as you think."
Despite saying this with a smile, Orthes' impression was still faint.
If passersby were asked to describe Orthes' features, they wouldn't remember and would only say, 'He was smiling.'
Lampades was no exception. He could recall more than passersby, but only a faint smile and thinly opened eyes. Without a clear face, only the smile remained in memory.
Hence, Orthes was called the faceless Orthes.
Lampades recalled the ghost stories about Orthes. 'Always the sole survivor,' 'Consumes others' faces to act as them.'
He had never experienced the second story himself. Lampades almost became the victim of the first story.
He could easily read Orthes' implications.
A president 'on a different level.' Lampades had survived Orthes and witnessed his true nature. If this president was different, there were two possibilities.
Did it mean they were a monster like Orthes? Or were they so naive that they didn't know Orthes' true nature?
"Oh. There they are."
Lampades followed Orthes' outstretched hand.
White hair that seemed untouched by darkness. Golden eyes that sparkled like stars.
It couldn't be someone like Orthes.
"The person I owe a great debt to after my last mission. I now serve as their chief of staff."
'Ah…'
Unaware of the truth, they had fallen into Orthes' clutches!
______________
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