Every road must come to an end.

Even on the meta-conveyor belt endlessly circling the Military State, the moment comes when you have to get off. Aimless wandering has no destination. Perhaps, in the end, we walk a road only to reach a moment when we can go no farther.

This was the Amitengrad terminal. The city with the largest population in the Military State, and an insult to the old kingdom's capital.

When I lifted my head, the city before me looked like an enormous bomb frozen in the moment of explosion. Gray and black concrete grew into vast, disorderly masses. In every direction, simply to fill the empty spaces. Concrete clung here and there, steadily swelling in size.

Meanwhile, everything that failed to keep pace with the Military State sank and was pushed aside. Buildings, people, equipment, rubbish—all piled up on the outskirts like debris from an explosion.

They were debris, in fact. Components shattered and flung aside by the explosion called the Military State.

Ah, Military State. You goddamned country.

The magician has returned.

I was indulging in a fresh wave of sentiment.

Having finished the formalities, the captain followed me. Drivers standing outside a line of motor carriages glanced at us as we stepped off at the terminal. A few of the more enterprising ones even approached us.

"Welcome, Captain. It's quite a distance from here to Amitengrad. Would you happen to need a carriage?"

Before the captain could say anything, I held up my fingers.

"Can you take four?"

"Of course! Shall I bring it around?"

"Quickly."

The delighted driver led us toward his motor carriage. The other drivers looked disappointed and waited for other passengers, while a few left to load cargo instead of people.

Looking at the mother and son who had disembarked with us, the captain asked,

"Four? Do you intend to take them as well?"

"Yes. Since we've gotten to know one another, why not share a ride?"

I made the offer to the mother and son. The mother was a little wary, but after looking at her child, exhausted from the long journey, she gratefully accepted.

We boarded the motor carriage the excited driver brought over. Through the window, I could see enormous cranes and laborers brought in to work, all busily moving about. Some were convict laborers arrested by the Military State, while the rest had signed up for hard labor to earn their daily bread. The terminal was always short of hands.

As soon as we boarded the smooth, quiet motor carriage, the boy collapsed into sleep. His mother rested his head on her lap and brushed back his hair. A tender smile played about her lips, as though she had set all her cares and worries aside for a moment.

With the child asleep, the captain and I ended up sitting side by side.

The motor carriage swayed gently as it followed the neatly paved road. As the distant cityscape drew close enough to take in at a glance, the captain stole a sideways look at me.

Then, when the motor carriage reached my destination,

"Oh! Let me off here!"

I raised a hand to call to the driver. The motor carriage stopped, and the driver, looking slightly disgruntled at having to drop me off so soon, poked his head out from his seat.

"Are you sure? This is District 15. It's a long way from the center."

"That's fine. I've got business here."

"Then, about the fare..."

"Oh, everyone else is staying on. I'll leave it to you, Captain Bee!"

The last person to get off pays the fare. That's why you need the good sense to read the room and get off early.

I had cheerfully left responsibility for the bill to those behind me and was about to turn away.

"Wait!"

As I raised my hand to wave goodbye, the captain suddenly caught my sleeve. I feigned ignorance.

"Huh? What is it, Captain Bee?"

She hesitated briefly before speaking.

"... Well. You are still under suspicion."

"That doesn't mean I'm going to march into military police headquarters of my own free will, does it? Surely you weren't expecting that?"

"Urk."

"We only agreed to travel together as far as Amitengrad, remember? You and the Military State might refuse to recognize it, but I faithfully completed my labor sentence. If you want to lock me up any longer, get a warrant."

"B-but!"

"What, is there some other reason?"

*'I must dispose of you. Or be disposed of myself. I cannot allow someone who knows my identity to roam free. But...'

"... That is classified."

"Huh? What's this? Do you want to stay with me?"

"...! Negative! Why would I! As I have said before, if I could, I would erase every memory of meeting you!"

"Then wouldn't it be better to part ways here?"

"Nngh...!"

'But I do not want to die. I do not want to kill. I just want to live an ordinary life, pretending not to know. If only, like in that prison... we had only encountered each other occasionally through a golem. That would have been nice.'

"... That is classified!"

What was I going to do with this diligent model student?

Hmm. No choice, then.

There's an old saying: Stay near ink, and you'll be stained black. Spend time with bad friends, and their bad habits rub off on you. That's why you should choose good friends.

So blame yourself for making a bad friend like me, Captain. I'll corrupt you.

If we're both going to live, you've got no choice but to become bad enough to lie with a straight face.

"Well, it can't be helped. I'm an easy man. I can't just ignore an invitation like that."

"When did I ever make you an invitation!"

"If refusing to let me go isn't an invitation, what is it? You have a week's grace anyway, right? Enjoy a little vacation until then. Come on, this way."

I tugged the captain's arm and led her toward the exit. That left only the mother and child.

Thrifty as I was, I couldn't make people with no money pay the bill. That would be fraud.

I took an alchemical gold coin from my pocket and held it out to the driver.

"Driver! I'll pay in advance, so take them wherever they want to go!"

"Oh, certainly. Leave it to me."

With a tip added to his fare, the driver was delighted. As I led the captain out of the motor carriage, the mother, still inside with her son, bowed at the waist to thank me.

"Thank you. I don't know how I can repay your kindness..."

"Oh, there's no need to thank me. It's fine."

I waved away her thanks and smiled at the mother, so pleased by her good fortune.

"Just think of it as the balance you were owed. Your plans fell through because they didn't pay you in full, after all."

For a moment, the mother failed to follow my meaning and repeated blankly,

"... What?"

"Oops, look at me. I'm blocking the way! We'll get out now! Have a safe trip!"

I closed the motor carriage door. Belatedly realizing that a secret she should have taken to her grave had been exposed, the mother immediately tried to follow me out. But the heaviest weight in the world happened to be sleeping peacefully on her lap. To her, it probably weighed more than Earth's Ripple.

Unable to do anything, she leaned out of the window and cried,

"Wait...! Please, I'm sorry! Forgive me...!"

Regardless, the motor carriage pulled away without mercy. The mother's desperate cries faded into the distance.

The captain, who hadn't grasped the situation, was bewildered.

"Query. What did you mean by the balance?"

"Nothing much. That woman was actually an accomplice of the Resistance."

I stated the fact calmly. The captain started and looked toward the receding motor carriage.

"Query. How can you prove that is true?"

I couldn't. I'd only read her mind, after all.

But I could cobble together an explanation. Walking along at a leisurely pace, I explained as though I were the greatest detective of the century.

"The containers loaded onto the meta-conveyor belt come in three sizes, but they're all the same design. They have to be, so the cranes can lift them."

"Affirmative. I am already well aware of that information."

"Then how did the Resistance know which cargo to rob when they jumped off a cliff on ropes? What if they landed in the wrong place?"

The problem with boarding the belt by swinging down from a cliff on ropes: land in the wrong place, and the whole thing was a bust.

They couldn't exactly take up the novel exercise routine of running against the meta-conveyor belt, either. The Resistance needed a way to identify their target cargo precisely.

Which raised a question. How had they identified their target? Had they used a communications officer? Or had they run ahead faster than the meta-conveyor belt?

Not a chance.

Realizing what I meant, the captain's mouth fell open.

"... An accomplice. Did that mother and son signal them from beside the cargo?"

"Just the mother, to be precise. The signal was probably the lamp."

Make a lamp run wild in a certain way, and it gives off a red light visible from far away. The Resistance had probably taught the mother how. They would use that light as their signal to attack.

Having learned the truth, the captain spoke in dismay.

"But they said they had lost their lamp..."

"They didn't lose it. She left the lamp on the target cargo. She originally intended to stay beside it, but it seems the child was struggling too much, so she took shelter behind the windbreak."

They could borrow the warmth of a lamp, but they couldn't get hold of a windbreak.

Whatever else she might be, the captain was still a communications officer. The links between the pieces of information steadily connected in her head. As she silently organized them, she suddenly discovered a gap and asked,

"... That makes no sense. Then why did the Resistance attack our location?"

Ahahaha, well, about that.

Actually, after reading her mind, I'd made my own lamp run wild. Then I'd placed it a little way away from the windbreak.

So the Resistance, waiting somewhere out there, would have a good view of it.

I hadn't expected them to come down from the mountain, though!

But explaining was a bother, so I gave her an innocent smile.

"It's a secret."

"Tell me!"

"Don't want to. I don't like to sing my own praises."

Ah, dear mother. Your concern for your son was admirable.

But a lamp simply set down on top of something wasn't going to stay upright through all that wind and shaking.

If things had continued that way, the Resistance would certainly have retaliated against her. Taking the money and running was bad enough, but there would have been a strong possibility she'd informed the Military State.

When you thought about it, I'd helped her.

The ten Resistance members had ended up dead, but that was just how things had turned out. Try to understand, all right? That really was your bad luck. Without the Peerless Spear there, you might have succeeded.

Realizing she had been sitting beside a Resistance accomplice until moments ago, the captain clenched her fists and glared at me.

"You just referred to it as the balance. Does that mean you provided financial support to a Resistance accomplice?"

"Then what are you going to do? If you get into a motor carriage and follow them now, you can catch one Resistance accomplice. Are you going to?"

"That is the law and the rules. Rules must be obeyed. Punishment for breaking the law and sanctions for breaking the rules are the covenant that keeps a nation upright."

She spoke as stiffly as the Military State's regulation lettering printed in a manual.

"The same applies to you. Financial support for an accomplice. The moment it is established that you knowingly accepted that risk, you too will be punished!"

"Then what happens to the child?"

For the briefest moment, the captain faltered. The face of the child sleeping without a care in the world rose in her mind. Pain and guilt flashed across her face.

This must have been why they needed the Windowless Room. Face people in person... and a communications officer, nearly pure white, might become tainted.

But the captain was accustomed to enduring pain. Enduring even the ache in her own heart, she spoke coldly.

"There is no problem. The Military State operates orphanages for children without guardians."

Orphanages that put children to work from the age of six under the pretext of vocational education. I knew them well.

And Captain AB knew it too. That was why she kept her mouth shut, unable to say anything more.

Back in my hometown, I made my way through the familiar streets. Lost in thought, the captain followed me in silence.