Inspector Evian of Edelfight. He was one of the few things Edelfight, a town on the Military State's fringes, could boast of.

After earning respectable marks at elementary civic school, he had entered a secondary military school far from home. There, at the fully residential school, he endured grueling examinations and, through hard work, managed to graduate with comparatively good grades.

Not good enough for an advanced military academy, but enough to become a soldier if he wished.

Yet Evian had deliberately chosen to join the police.

Police in name only, they were actually a subordinate branch of the military police. Becoming a policeman in the Military State amounted to blocking one's own path to advancement, but it offered one advantage military service could never match.

Rise high enough, and you could choose where you served.

Solely to return home and care for his mother, who had raised him alone, Inspector Evian had persevered through the hardships of police work. At last, his efforts had borne fruit.

At Edelfight's little police station, Inspector Evian was sorting his paperwork after another satisfying day's work.

『Inspector Evian of Edelfight.』

A voice reached his ears. Inspector Evian looked around.

"Who's there? We're closed."

『If you knew who I was, you would feel a terror you could not resist. Every breath you took would become hell, and you would long to hide in a hole like a frightened rat. Wouldn't you be happier not knowing?』

This was going too far for a prank. Inspector Evian frowned and sprang to his feet. The steel baton he had wielded for years was already in his hand.

"What? What kind of game are you playing?"

『A game? A game, you say. You would be fortunate if that were all it was. Heh heh. Inspector Evian. Starting tomorrow, you will taste hell. Look forward to it.』

"How dare you threaten a police officer!"

Furious, Inspector Evian burst through the door and looked around, but only a bleak street shrouded in darkness greeted him.

The ominous encounter had kept him from sleeping properly.

Evian had continued patrolling last night, searching every secluded nook and cranny. The town had been disappointingly peaceful. The only unusual sight that night was Inspector Evian voluntarily working overtime.

All he had accomplished that night was sending Ellie, the tomboy who was wandering about instead of going home, back to her house.

In other words, Ellie roaming around was nothing unusual. Her getting caught by Evian and sent home was the rarer occurrence.

Then what on earth had that been last night?

Evian was walking down the street, ruffling his hair, when he heard raised voices up ahead. He immediately ran toward them.

"Someone stole an automobile!"

"Don't make me laugh! The alchemical fabric we put in the storeroom yesterday is gone!"

The residents of Edelfight were quarreling in two opposing groups.

Edelfight had two major facilities.

One was a large inn, and the other an automobile repair shop.

Edelfight was fairly well situated. Had the utterly useless wasteland surrounding the bottomless pit not lain directly to its north, it would have become a transportation hub several times its current size.

In any case, the Military State had built an inn and a repair shop in this not-quite transportation hub.

Both facilities belonged to the Military State, and the townspeople were periodically called up to perform compulsory labor there.

At first, the residents resented these facilities for imposing compulsory labor on their already busy lives.

But the inn and repair shop looked too splendid for them to simply hate. Here on the frontier, the large facilities built by the Military State seemed like symbols of a new age. Over several years of labor, the residents gradually grew attached to them.

Taking pride in one's workplace was all well and good, but it had created a problem.

The inn stood in the center of town, while the repair shop stood alone on a distant road. They differed in both location and the skills they demanded. Consequently, residents gradually began working exclusively at one or the other. It was only natural that the two groups should separate like oil and water.

And so the people of Edelfight had split into two factions.

"What's going on?"

"Oh, Inspector Evian! Just in time! Put these scoundrels in their place!"

A resident from the inn faction welcomed him. Edelfight's sole policeman professed neutrality, but Evian had been born on the inn side.

He gave a perfunctory nod and looked over the crowd.

"Please give me a clear, orderly account of what happened."

"Those repair-shop bastards stole the alchemical fabric from the inn's storeroom!"

The repair-shop faction, who had been somewhat cowed by Evian's approach, protested again.

"What a baseless accusation! How could we steal your alchemical fabric when we don't even know where you keep it?"

"Look who's talking! You lot always act so superior because we can't even drive, so why come looking for your missing car here?"

It was utter chaos, but as a native of the town, Evian could more or less work out what had happened.

The differing natures of the inn and repair shop had changed the people who worked there as well.

Those who gained experience at the repair shop, where technical skill and dexterity were essential, had begun to look down on the inn workers without quite saying so. The inn faction, which initially included most of the residents, had scoffed, but the repair-shop workers' children really did often excel at civic school. Gradually, the inn faction began to suffer from feelings of inferiority. Despite outwardly looking down on the repair shop, they actively encouraged their children to play there rather than stopping them.

Lately, if not for Inspector Evian, Edelfight's pride and joy and a policeman born on the inn side, the repair-shop faction's arrogance would have known no bounds.

At any rate, trouble had struck these two facilities, each of which blamed the other for everything wrong in the world.

The inn's alchemical fabric had vanished.

An automobile undergoing repairs had vanished.

And each side suspected the other.

Naturally, as Inspector Evian listened, the mysterious voice from last night came to mind.

"Couldn't an outsider have done it?"

"But only one person arrived at the inn yesterday! She's still staying there!"

"If there's an outsider, we should suspect her first. She may have sneaked into town beforehand!"

The inn resident scratched his chin as he answered.

"Well, she was someone quite important... A captain, I think. She said she was heading to the capital after completing her mission."

"Forget what I just said. Every last word!"

They might call them their inn and their repair shop, but both were actually Military State property. A captain could take the automobile and alchemical fabric as though they were her own. Even a captain would be punished for embezzlement, but all the residents of this town combined lacked the authority to do anything about it.

Besides, she could also kick Evian's ass for suspecting her. Evian did not want a kick from a captain.

"Then are you saying the alchemical fabric and automobile vanished all on their own? With no one coming or going?"

"Well... about that."

As the residents awkwardly averted their eyes, someone beckoned to Evian.

"Evian, come here a moment."

Bern, the representative of the inn faction, had called him over. Summoned with a gesture, Evian answered with a hint of displeasure.

"Mr. Bern. Please show a minimum of respect. I am the inspector responsible for keeping the peace here."

"I need to show respect just to call my own nephew over?"

Bern's reply was somewhat pompous.

After Evian's father had run out of town years ago, Bern, his father's younger brother, had become his guardian and looked after him. Already the town's headman in all but name, Bern had seen his standing grow by the day since his nephew returned as an inspector.

Evian himself found the man unsettling, but he could hardly punish him when he had done nothing wrong. Evian was a policeman.

"Of cour—hah. Never mind. What is it?"

When Evian approached, Bern lowered his voice.

"Ellie and Dev are missing."

"What?"

Ellie was the inn's foremost tomboy, and Dev was the repair shop's eccentric. Raised amid the town's feuding, the two teenagers were at each other's throats whenever they met.

And now they had both vanished at once?

"Both sides are worried. Either Ellie accidentally strangled Dev, stole the alchemical fabric, and ran, or Dev beat Ellie with a wrench and fled in a panic. It has to be one or the other."

"How would Ellie drive, and how would Dev get the alchemical fabric... Oh, wait."

"Exactly. Haven't they always sneaked into each other's facilities to play hide-and-seek? Unlike us, they know all about the other side. Like scouts investigating the enemy. It's not impossible."

That was why Evian pressed a hand to his forehead. It was entirely possible.

They had the motive, sufficient malice, and a history of making trouble for the residents. Those two really might have torn each other apart.

"They were both still in town last night! I sent them home myself!"

"Then I suppose they didn't go home. Their families say they haven't seen them since yesterday evening."

"Damn it. Then neither of them can have gotten far! Wait here!"

"Are you going after them?"

"Of course! I just hope they're both alive!"

Evian strode through the crowd. Alongside a curious sense of expectation toward their policeman, the residents trembled with anxiety that the child from their side might have done something terrible.

He came face-to-face with the facility administrators, who had been waiting for him.

"Inspector Evian. Sergeant Beruo, administrative supply officer. Alchemical fabric may not be expensive, but it is a major supply item. We cannot simply keep quiet about its disappearance."

"Sergeant Challe, technical officer. Automobiles are expensive. I expect you to resolve this promptly. If this is reported to the authorities, the entire town will be sentenced to punitive labor."

"An officer happens to be staying at the inn. She is recuperating from an injury, but if she should hear of this..."

The officers in charge of the two facilities pressed Evian politely. Had he not outranked them, those sharp words would likely not have been the end of it.

Evian snapped irritably.

"It'll be fine as long as everything's back before this afternoon's inventory, won't it? Just wait! Oh, and Challe! Is there a car I can use?"

"We have one left."

"I'm borrowing it for official police business! Agreed?"

"Approved."

Evian started the automobile and made a wide sweep around the town. There were two fresh sets of wheel tracks: one from the captain's arrival, and another leading away from town.

Thankfully, they were easy to distinguish. Evian followed the departing car's tracks.

The wasteland surrounding the bottomless pit was vast. If the pair had blundered over the hills and into it, Evian would have no choice but to give up, return to Edelfight, and await the authorities' verdict.

Fortunately, however, he found the automobile stopped not far away. He parked nearby, got out immediately, and strode toward it. His eyes held nothing but anger toward the brats responsible for this foolishness.

"Sob... sob..."

But as Ellie's sobbing reached him, Evian grew frightened. Had Ellie inadvertently killed Dev and run away? What was he supposed to do then?

Had Evian come from another town, he would have arrested Ellie without mercy and proudly added another achievement to his record. But he was from here, and he wanted the town to remain peaceful if at all possible. A tomboy belonged at her liveliest in town, not in prison.

Swallowing hard, Evian lunged forward and flung open the driver's door. His eyes met those of the person in the driver's seat.

"E-eek! Evian!"

"Dev?"

Dev sat behind the wheel, while Ellie sniffled in the passenger seat. Having confirmed that both were unharmed, Evian felt a surge of indignation. He seized Dev by the ear and hauled him out.

"You little shit. Who told you to steal an automobile?"

"N-no! I didn't steal it! It's a test drive! Mr. Challe said we had to check whether it was fully repaired! I just thought I'd drive it around and check!"

"Did you tell Challe before you left?"

"No? I wanted to surprise him. Ow, ow!"

Evian shook Dev's ear back and forth as he shouted.

"Then you should've gone alone! At least we'd have suspected less! Why did you drag Ellie into this?"

"I didn't drag her anywhere! She sneaked in herself! And then she started crying and carrying on about not wanting to go back to town. I didn't know what to do!"

His indignant protests did not sound like lies. Evian, who had been about to slap Dev across the face, sighed and addressed Ellie instead.

"Ellie, I don't know what happened, but how could you run away without telling anyone? Your mother's waiting. Come back—"

"Sob... I can't... go back...! I'll die!"

"What do you mean, die? Who's going to kill you with a policeman like me here?"

"No! I really might die...! I found...!"

Still tearful, Ellie squeezed her eyes shut and shouted.

"... A body!"

Evian's eyes widened at this unexpected report.

"What?!"

There were two cars and two people who could drive. With Ellie riding beside him, Evian heard the full story.

Ellie had been about to get up to her usual mischief when she discovered some strange writing. Following it from place to place, she had uncovered a horrifying trace of something hidden in this peaceful frontier town... buried fragments of bone...

Evian asked her a question.

"Wait. There shouldn't be any bones. Everyone who's died recently was cremated."

"Sob...!"

Evian clicked his tongue. Pressuring a panicked child would get him nowhere.

He was a policeman, not one of those heartless military police.

"If you found a body, you should have told me. Why did you keep quiet?"

"But, Mr. Evian, you're..."

Ellie clamped her mouth shut again. Frustrated, Evian pressed her.

"Don't you trust me? Ellie, I didn't win my inspector's rank at a gambling table! To get promoted to inspector, you have to work under those supposedly heartless military police and be uncannily good at putting criminals away. It's not something to scoff at!"

In the Military State, military administration governed everything.

All medical treatment took place in military hospitals, the engineering corps handled all civil construction, and the military police conducted investigations.

Administrative soldiers managed civilian affairs, and even factories operated under the Bureau of Technological Development.

It was a country of soldiers, where not only the military and police but even businesses were inseparable from the military regime.

Apart from a handful of very special exceptions, everything belonged to the Military State.

"People in Edelfight don't really understand this, but just holding a rank in the commissioned grades is an achievement! It's only because the Military State deliberately keeps our chains of command separate!"

To prevent the person responsible for a town's public order from becoming corrupt, the Military State placed that person in a separate chain of command. Thus, Evian held little authority relative to his experience and rank.

Put another way, his status was high compared with the authority he wielded.

"... Sob."

But perhaps Evian was simply too familiar a figure. Ellie refused to say a word. After glaring at her, he sighed.

"Phew. If you still don't trust me, there's a captain at the inn. Tell her instead. She's so far above me that even you ought to be satisfied."

Ellie recoiled in horror.

"N-not the inn. I'll die if I go there...!"

"Why? Did you find the body at the inn or something?"

"Eek!"

"... Don't ever try committing a crime. Seriously."

Then a thought struck him.

Why had Ellie kept silent? Why had she protested that she couldn't tell Evian?

Could it be...?

"Where did you find it? At Mr. Bern's?"

"Eeeek!"

The representative of the populous inn faction, and practically the headman of the town.

Evian's uncle Bern, whose authority had only grown since Evian's arrival.

A body had turned up in his house.

Part of Evian had actually wished Bern would do something wrong. He thought it might be good to punish him and bring his authority down a notch.

But he had not wished for a body. A murder case was another matter entirely.

"... Don't worry."

But Evian was a policeman, responsible for keeping the peace in this town. He could not simply ignore a lead in a murder case.

For that matter, ignoring such a serious crime might get him punished by the Military State. The entire town could face severe penalties as well.

He had to prevent that.

"I will find the culprit. I promise."

Evian made his firm resolve.