Chapter 425

“Na—”

“How do I look?”

Where Narke should have been standing, there was now an Old Human girl. He lightly lifted the navy hat decorated with flowers and smiled. The gesture was less bright and carefree than it was precise, like something a person who had spent years living among the Papal Army might naturally do. Still, the student before me carried it out without hesitation.

I felt the world go dark in broad daylight on a spring day and shouted.

“Narke—. Konrad! What are you doing? Have you lost your mind?”

“You can just call me normally. I just called you by your name, too.”

“Oh.”

Only then did I become aware of the soundproofing spell surrounding us and grabbed his shoulder. Or rather, I tried to. My hand stopped in midair.

“Narke…! What are you thinking? You’re going to go around like this?”

“What’s wrong with it? You’ve disguised yourself plenty of times, Lukas.”

“…….”

“If we weren’t able to borrow the power of divine power, playing an Old Human female would have been impossible in the first place. That was the only reason we never did it. Now that we can borrow divine power, why shouldn’t we?”

There was no particular reason we shouldn’t. I was only surprised that he had come up with a method I had never even considered. Besides, the Old Human before me had nothing in common with Narke except that his facial muscles moved exactly like Narke’s. He looked more or less like any other Old Human—in other words, he had the distinctive appearance common among Old Human Europeans, yet ironically, he was also the sort of person whose face didn’t leave much of an impression. My professional instincts were already analyzing his role. He was trying to play an ordinary, inconspicuous person.

The Old Human student—Narke—smiled confidently and said, “Use everything you have at your disposal. That’s the basics of disguise, Lukas.”

“Have you done this a lot before?”

“No, haha. That’s what makes this the perfect time to try out a new role.”

A role, huh. Narke had always been like this, but he seemed to enjoy acting. And he was actually quite good at it.

Narke looked straight at me and continued, “Now, listen. You of all people should already know why I chose this appearance. What does that ‘male students’ we heard earlier mean for us?”

“I’m not sure we actually qualify as male students, but either way, that choice of words was very Old Human of him.”

“That’s true. But I mean something else.”

I stared at Narke for a moment before speaking quietly.

“It interferes with the investigation. We’re already being watched. They must have been bothered by the question of why there were two people who looked like foreign male students here in the first place.”

If we were here as foreign students, they might be a little less suspicious of us, but we decided not to make up such a specific excuse. Suppose we said we had come to Vienna to study at the University of Vienna. If someone became suspicious, they could detain us and check with the university, only to find out that neither the professors nor the students there had ever seen us in any department.

On top of that, only a very limited number of people in Germany know that we were planted in Austria-Hungary—typical diplomatic missions—and the Austrian police aren’t cooperating with us on this matter.

The important thing is this: that local resident earlier called us Student. In English, Student simply means a student, but in German, Student refers specifically to a male university student. In other words, he didn’t see us as middle or high school students. And that’s where the problem lies. Because our height and other features make us look like adults, we’re even more likely to become objects of hostility in their eyes.

I rubbed my chin and asked, “So, if we can’t do anything about being foreigners, you’re planning to fix the fact that we look like male students?”

“Exactly. Let’s use the Old Humans’ prejudice to our advantage.”

“My head already hurts…”

I let out a dry laugh, and Narke laughed along with me.

It was a good choice. Their assumption that we were males was, in its own way, another Old Human prejudice. What other option did we have?

In fact, we could mix in mental manipulation magic and make our speech sound unmistakably Austrian to anyone who talked to us. But it’s better to save a good tool until the very end. For example, if we continue posing as foreigners and only resort to the method of ‘becoming Austrian through divine power’ when we’re caught at a crucial moment and forced to flee, they have no information that we can use divine power. That means the number and variety of countermeasures they can deploy will remain within a range we can handle.

Narke snapped his fingers almost immediately.

“There are three things that caused us trouble. Foreigners, Old Human men, and the fact that there are two of us. It was the combination of all three that made us a problem. If only one of us had been walking around, they might’ve been a little less hostile. But it’s not like we can go our separate ways.”

Right. The investigation was already becoming difficult because of the Prime Minister, who had probably had a nine-in-ten chance of dying from Atropos. I gave him a tired smile, and Narke laughed.

“Haha. If that were the case, getting around would’ve been much easier. But the Prime Minister’s death gave us a lead to investigate, didn’t it? Either way, in our current appearances, we’re foreigners on top of everything else, which makes us people to keep an eye on. Back there, they saw us as people who might be willing to do something that could harm this country—and who might actually be capable of carrying it out.”

“You read that with Insight?”

“Of course. You felt it too, didn’t you? But what if we stay like this?”

“…….”

For a moment, I—a 21st century person—was taken aback. Then I narrowed my eyes and asked, “Why can’t we conduct espionage as females?”

This was something that became obvious once you studied the history of espionage.

Using members of groups people don’t suspect as spies was a tactic with a long history. Most of the examples I knew had really come into their own during World War II, but I obviously couldn’t explain that to Narke, so I said nothing. Perhaps understanding what I meant, Narke nodded and said, “Of course, from our perspective, the way Old Humans are almost pathologically obsessed with sex is strange. But they’re a different species, in an area beyond our understanding. So forget our common sense for a moment and think from their perspective. Old Humans are much more accepting of a male and a female traveling together than two males. Why do you think that is? The reasons and the way it plays out are completely different, but even so, they aren’t particularly accepting of two females traveling together either.”

“…….”

It was an interesting question. I liked it a lot, but it was still a strange question to hear at first. I thought about it carefully, rubbing my chin.

“……Crime rate…… no. Because they’d expect a romance.”

“Hahaha!”

Narke burst into hearty laughter, then grinned.

“Exactly. Now, more than anything, we look ordinary. Not that we didn’t look ordinary before. We were sitting in that restaurant like perfectly ordinary people, but they had no way of knowing what our purpose was. We could suddenly get up and shout, ‘Long live Hungarian independence!’ or ‘Death to Österreich-Este!’ We could even, as Prussian intellectuals, take pleasure in Austria’s suffering and decline. Or perhaps, since we aren’t Austrian, we might side with the Hungarians suffering under Austrian oppression, whether we were Germans or Italians. In that sense, we were completely ‘unknown others,’ potential threats with every possibility of damaging their noble community.”

I smiled and nodded in agreement. Narke didn’t stop there. He stepped closer.

“But why are they so accepting of a male and a female being together?”

“……Because we—”

The words slipped out before I even realized it. I quietly met Narke’s eyes, then told him, in a low voice, something I had never been able to understand in my entire life.

“Because it looks like we’re sharing a kind of happiness they can universally understand.”

“Exactly. See, Lukas? You knew it too. We need to become people who pose absolutely no threat in their eyes. We didn’t come to Austria carrying even the slightest possibility of harming them. We came here for our happiness, our memories, our youth.”

“…….”

“There’s no better choice than this.”

Narke smiled as he gazed at the residential district in the distance.

His Insight and Precognition must have been giving him certainty by now.

And at the same time, all the memories and realizations I had accumulated over my lifetime told me that his Insight wasn’t wrong. Perhaps I couldn’t confidently say he was right, because my entire life had been an extreme experience that most people could never relate to—having to portray something I didn’t even understand, being in love, and present it to the public as though it were real…

But perhaps that was exactly why I could understand Narke’s choice in this situation. Narke looked around with a relaxed expression, then held out his hand to me.

“Or should we test it?”

Forget it. What was there left to test?

I was convinced. Hadn’t I felt their rejection firsthand at the restaurant? I didn’t have the luxury of putting up with any more of that. Narke’s way of solving problems was quite different from mine. I would consider countless possibilities in my head first, then choose the path that minimized unnecessary risks in reality. He was the type to say, “Let’s try this and that and see what works,” while I was the type to say, “Let’s only take the path with the highest chance of success in the end.”

At least he had Insight. That was a relief.

I smiled at the thought, then reconsidered.

No. Perhaps his Insight was exactly why Narke had come to prefer throwing himself into all sorts of situations firsthand. Maybe his Insight and Precognition had taken away all the enjoyment and exhilaration that came from uncertainty.

I looked into the distance. Fallen leaves drifted away with the wind.

If that was true, then perhaps I didn’t have to suppress the strange sense of kinship that had suddenly welled up inside me.

But whatever the case, this wasn’t a vacation. It was an operation to seize a poison capable of killing millions, so I couldn’t let my guard down completely. Come to think of it…

Truth be told, I still hadn’t gotten used to the complete stranger walking in stride right next to me.

I was probably one of only two mages in the Empire capable of changing their appearance with an illusion—Narke and me—but even among the two of us, Narke’s skill at maintaining an illusion was on an entirely different level from mine. He had even given this unfamiliar face a name in no time. And because he was trying so hard not to draw attention, he had chosen the most ordinary name he could think of: Johanna.

As we walked toward the train station, I muttered, “…Your divine power reserve is incredible.”

“Haha. It’s not that I have a lot. It’s just a matter of efficiency.”

“Efficiency?”

“Yeah. If I use ten units of power on an illusion, while you need a hundred, it only makes it seem like I have more mana than you.”

“Hm. I suppose that makes sense. You’ve been using it your whole life, after all.”

“But, Lukas.”

“Yeah?”

Trying not to feel strange about this complete stranger calling me by name, I lowered my head as much as I could, met his brown eyes, and answered him in a friendly tone.

“Do you realize you’re looking at my neck when you talk to me? Haha.”

“…….”

I let out an awkward laugh and turned my head away. Of course. Narke’s actual line of sight wasn’t very different from mine. This ‘Johanna’ appearance was nothing more than an illusion. What I and everyone else were seeing was simply a false image layered over Narke’s real appearance.

An idea suddenly occurred to me, and I cautiously reached my hand toward the empty space above his hat. Just as one would expect from an ‘illusion,’ all I felt was the movement of air against my hand. I didn’t touch anything else, but Narke staggered with a startled gasp.

“You almost poked me in the eye.”

“…Sorry. So there really is something there.”

“Yeah. My face. Should I make myself taller…?”

“No. Just keep holding the parasol.”

Considering the average height around here, making himself any taller would only make him stand out.

As expected, even getting into the train station wasn’t going to be easy. The moment we opened the doors and entered, I saw someone in a Police Department uniform stopping people for inspection. The officer grabbed the citizen walking ahead of us and said, “We are right by the border, so I am going to conduct a brief inspection. Are you Austrian?”

“Yes, I am.”

Despite the answer, the officer stared at him for a moment before signaling to his colleague.

“Search him.”

At that, the citizen looked around with a bewildered expression. Even after answering that he was Austrian, he was still subjected to a search. So much for bluffing our way through. The police were judging whether someone was a local by their appearance and clothing, and even if they really were Austrian, they would search them anyway if anything about them seemed suspicious by their own judgment. The officer soon came over to me and asked the same question.

“Austrian?”

“No. German.”

“Your passport, please.”

I showed him the forged passport. Since a transformation spell had been applied to it as well, I had to be careful about which passport it was currently showing. Narke did the same. He, however, was also subtly using a mental manipulation magic on the officer as he read the passport.

I glanced at Narke’s photo in his suit and swallowed before meeting the officer’s eyes. He quickly handed our passports back and asked, “Where are the two of you headed?”

“Vienna.”

The officer raised an eyebrow.

“Why are you going to Vienna?”

So now foreigners had to explain why they were going to the capital, too? I had expected this, but this was getting difficult. If they were this hostile toward foreigners… I couldn’t help thinking that if we had claimed to be Hungarian, they probably wouldn’t have even let us into the station.

Keeping my expression calm, I said, “For a trip. The timing has unfortunately turned out to be rather unfortunate, but we had already set the dates in advance.”

I turned toward ‘Johanna’ as I finished speaking. Meeting my eyes, Johanna smiled and held out a hand. As people of this era would normally do, I took her hand and kissed the back of it before smiling. Personally, whenever I saw couples lost in their own little world, regardless of the era, I usually felt nothing in particular. Sometimes, I looked upon them happily, just as I had been socially conditioned to do. And sometimes…

For a moment, my vision went hazy, and I swallowed. In any case, pretending to be that kind of couple wasn’t difficult. My entire life had been spent living in different guises after all. The officer gave us a look that was somewhere between pitying and incredulous, then nodded as if telling us to move along.

“Given the circumstances, I hope the two of you have an enjoyable trip. Now, since this is right next to the border, we will be conducting inspections. Austrian…”

He immediately turned to the person behind us.

If I had been traveling with Narke in his real appearance and told them we were going on a trip, they probably wouldn’t have stopped us from passing through. But at the very least, we would have had to leave our passports with the police here and write up a document that served as both a travel permit and a written statement. At least, that was how I had been trained when I received police training in Germany. It was one of those areas where individual officials were given a certain amount of discretion, much like the Austrian citizen who had been searched earlier. Of course, that also meant they had to take responsibility for their decisions.

The tense atmosphere from the restaurant, sharp enough to make me uncomfortable, and the dozens of eyes fixed on us were nowhere to be found here. The people standing around here showed a surprising lack of interest in us as foreigners, and they let us through with surprisingly simple answers. All that had changed was the outward appearance of one of us and the relationship of our two fake identities.

“…….”

I felt sick. For some reason, my stomach was churning.

I kept my eyes forward as I walked out through the entrance lined with police officers.

We bought our tickets and returned to the platform. Looking around, I saw that the newspapers were practically all black. There were more people at the station than I had expected, but perhaps because of the incident, it was deathly quiet. The atmosphere was even worse because the Prime Minister had been well-liked by the Austrian people. Some were even wiping at their eyes with handkerchiefs.

I picked up a newspaper from one of the seats. The entire back page was black, while the front page was covered in thick blackletter type.

[Prime Minister Rudolf Trapp Passed Away]

[Official Statement from Österreich-Este: “Our deepest condolences to Prime Minister Trapp, a loyal pillar of Austria and the voice of its subjects.”]

[Vienna: Mourning Processions Continue]

[Vienna Police: “We Cannot Rule Out the Possibility of an Assassination. A Thorough Investigation Will Be Conducted.”]

I hoped, inwardly, that he had gone somewhere good. At least, I thought I did. Though there was no reason for that, exhaustion kept washing over me, making my consciousness flicker.

We waited another 30 minutes after that. Waiting for the train felt like sitting on a bed of needles. If we talked, the fact that we were foreigners would become obvious—thanks to those damn “subtle” differences in accent and word choice—and yet I couldn’t casually cast a soundproofing spell out in the open. Not unless I only put it up briefly.

After waiting a little longer, I realized that the waiting room and the platform were closer together than I’d thought, so the station occasionally grew noisy. Even then, most people were talking about the Hungarians and the dead Prime Minister.

“…It was a Hungarian who poisoned him. They say there have always been plenty of people in Hungary who believed in witchcraft. Someone must have used magic to disguise themselves and slipped the poison into his food.”

“But didn’t they already test everything the Prime Minister had eaten since dinner? There was no poison.”

It had only been three hours since the Prime Minister’s death, so there was still very little information available. Most of what they were saying was nothing more than rumor.

“Then how did he die? There’s no other explanation. It must have been the work of people who consort with Satan.”

The occult, huh…

With nothing concrete to go on, people were jumping to topics like this. Still, I had to listen. In the 19th century, without social media, there were only so many ways to gauge public opinion. I could go into a restaurant like before, wander around a crowded park, or listen in on people talking at a train station like this. Sometimes, if you were lucky, someone would climb onto a platform or some other elevated spot and loudly proclaim their thoughts, drawing a crowd that would cheer them on.

“Theo.”

At that moment, ‘Johanna’ whispered to me. Theo was the alias I was using. Narke whispered as he idly flipped through the newspaper I had torn off.

“They say no poison was detected in the Prime Minister’s body.”

“Old Human poison?”

“Right. Things like belladonna or cyanide.”

“What about a magic potion?”

We were on our way to find a magic potion, after all. The Prime Minister had been poisoned by Atropos. That was our leading hypothesis.

Narke thought for a moment before whispering quietly.

“They probably can’t tell anymore because the body has started to decay.”

“…Decay? Is that mentioned anywhere?”

“No.”

“…….”

Had he figured that out using his ability? It had been a long time since I’d seen Narke’s abilities work this well.

More importantly, now that we considered poisoning by Atropos a strong possibility, the most important question was where the Prime Minister had been and what he had been doing recently.

According to the information we had obtained from the government, he had been working himself to the bone as Easter drew nearer. He had attended meetings until yesterday evening, left work at midnight, then returned to the Prime Minister’s official residence early this morning. At ten in the morning, he suddenly collapsed while drinking water at the residence, and his secretary did not find him until thirty minutes later. That was everything we knew.

So now, the key was figuring out what he had done during the early morning hours, when he had been off duty. The materials the government had provided earlier included a list of the clubs the Prime Minister belonged to. There were only three: an equestrian club, a hunting club, and a wine club.

I had no idea whether he had even had the energy for club activities with such a heavy workloads… Still, New Humans rarely died from overwork no matter how hard they were pushed, and someone in their fifties was still in the prime of their life by New Human standards. For now, our plan was to visit every one of these places as soon as we reached Vienna.

I was looking through the personal advertisements in the newspaper when I leaned toward Narke’s ear. Just then, someone behind us spoke to us with a laugh.

“What are you two whispering about so intently?”

“Hm?”

I turned around with an awkward smile. An old man was pointing at me and ‘Johanna’ as he spoke.

“I was just wondering what you young people were talking about, whispering like that.”

“Oh.”

I let out a short sigh before continuing.

“With everything that’s happened, the mood isn’t exactly pleasant. It felt wrong to speak too loudly.”

“Germans?”

“…….”

He could tell just from me speaking a little longer than usual? These people were something else. At the same time, my back stiffened. My eyes instinctively swept over my surroundings. The people who had been buried in their newspapers were now looking straight at us.

What had their looks been like back at the restaurant? No one had stepped forward to say anything, but whenever their eyes flicked toward us, there had been a faint trace of hostility or suspicion. Again, there had been no direct trouble at the restaurant. It was only that the unpleasant ‘look’ usually directed at Prussians had become just a little more blatant now that the Prime Minister’s death had stirred up hostility toward foreigners. Along with the strong sense of in-group belonging that was characteristic of this era. It might not seem like much to an outsider, but being on the receiving end of wary looks, even for a short while, was hardly comfortable. However…

“Why did you come to Austria? The Prime Minister dies right as you arrive. Couldn’t have picked a worse time.”

“We came here to travel together. We just recently got engaged, you see.”

Things were different now.

I gently took ‘Johanna’s’ hand and lifted it with a smile. Even then, my attention remained fixed on the ‘Austrians’ sitting around us. The uneasiness I had felt in front of the police earlier hadn’t been imagined. The Austrians quickly looked away with expressions of disinterest. A few children were watching us curiously. They thought the person sitting beside me was my lover. Exactly as we had intended. Perfectly. If things continued like this, even if a secret police approached us on the street, we would be far less likely to get detained and waste time than before. Things were going smoothly.

And yet I felt like I was going to throw up. My stomach churned even more violently than before. It wasn’t because I was pretending to be lovers with a friend. I had acted alongside friends plenty of times. It wasn’t even the first time I’d had to kiss a friend playing the opposite role. So acting itself was nothing to me. My stomach simply felt awful.

Maybe I knew why. But I couldn’t figure it out now.

I could feel Narke looking at me, momentarily flustered.

“Oh, I figured as much. Then you two are—”

The old man tried to keep talking to us, but I didn’t have the room for it. I instinctively cut him off, giving him a gentle smile as I asked, “Sir, have you read German Love by Max Müller?”

It took me a moment to realize that this was a conversation I had once had with someone, sometime in the 21st century. But I had neither the time nor the state of mind to take the question back. The old man assumed I had simply brought up a new topic and cheerfully went along with it.

“I have! You know that book? Wasn’t the author’s father famous as a poet? I—”

“What did you think of the ending?”

“It’s a shame they never got married before she died!”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. If Müller hadn’t had Marie die of her illness, it would have been a wonderful ending…”

[The train to Vienna will be arriving shortly!]

Outside, a station attendant rang a bell and called out loudly. If I’d had the presence of mind to check the time, I probably wouldn’t have asked that pointless question just to cut the old man off. But I would have asked it anyway.

I took Narke’s hand and rose from my seat, finishing the conversation.

“Indeed. We were actually talking about that just now, too. It was a pleasure hearing your thoughts.”

Then I quickly walked away from the old man, who was still trying to continue the conversation. A hidden obstacle. I’d made it so we could move around freely, only for a problem to arise with me—of all people, right in front of Narke. It had nothing to do with the mission. And though he might have already seen through me, I didn’t want to expose memories to him that I had no reason to reveal. I didn’t want to sort through what I was thinking, either. I simply didn’t want to be in front of him.

The moment we boarded the train, I headed straight for the restroom. Heat rose beneath my chin. With every carriage I crossed, my pace grew faster.

“Wait.”

Someone grabbed my arm from behind with considerable force. Narke had already dispelled the illusion. He was looking at me calmly.

“Wait a second.”