We all kept looking for hints about the covenant for a few more days, but we had no luck. After all, it took a lot of time for the prince from the book too. There weren’t any details about the number of days, but it said that he had looked in a cave full of monsters, a dark forest, and more before finally finding it.
I briefly considered looking for the covenant in caves and forests ourselves, but when I thought about it, it didn’t really make sense. Why would you go there to look for a book? Wouldn’t you start with the library? But maybe he was able to find the covenant in the library exactly because he had suffered those failures in other places.
“Maybe we should go fighting tanuki in the forest…” I murmured while looking through a book.
“Stop talking nonsense and focus on looking for hints,” said Sora sternly.
That was my way of looking for hints, but seeing the face that Sora was making made me reconsider how good my tanuki idea was.
After a few days, thanks to the efforts of the talented Maria and Dewey, we finished looking through most of the old books. I had already finished looking through the story books since there weren’t that many to begin with.
All that was left to do was for Maria and Dewey to look through the remaining ancient-script books, while Sora and I read through those that, while also old, were written in our modern language.
Cyrus and Larna, in the meantime, kept working on their normal duties while interviewing people. (Larna, to be precise, was having her subordinates take care of her normal duties.)
However, no matter how many books we checked, none of them said anything about the covenant. Since Professor Hyde had found a new hint for us in so little time, I’d been expecting things to go more smoothly.
I was getting tired of spending day after day staring at letters, and I remembered nostalgically the manual labor and cleaning I’d done before that. I wondered how much longer it would take before our search was finished and I could get back to that.
“I can’t even focus my eyes anymore…”
I wasn’t used to reading difficult books. I had no problem with romance novels, but doing this kind of research for several days in a row was taking its toll on me.
“It’s going to be lunch break soon, so why don’t you go on ahead and rest? I’ll follow you as soon as I’m done with this book,” said Sora, seeing how exhausted I was.
I did as he said and left the library. I didn’t hate libraries, per se — in fact, I loved the libraries of my old world, full of all kinds of novels. But after all the reading I’d done in the past few days, just being there was enough to make me feel tired.
Breathing some fresh air instantly made me feel better. “I’ll have a nice lunch and then do my best again in the afternoon,” I said to myself.
“Katarina?” It was the voice of someone who I hadn’t expected to see here — Jeord.
“Prince Jeord? What are you doing here?”
“I have come to the Ministry for training. What a pleasant surprise to see you here,” he said with a smile.
After graduating from the academy, all of my friends had started working. The nobles mainly took after their parents’ duties, which is what Keith did. I’d heard that Jeord and Alan, as royalty, were now much busier with diplomatic work than they were last year. Last time I went to the castle, Jeord had mentioned that he’d just come back from something like that.
Despite being this busy, he was also training at the Ministry. I knew he was an overachiever, but that sounded like a bit too much.
“You’re training? Aren’t you tired?”
Jeord was usually smiling as if nothing could stop him. That made sense to me when I was playing the game and he was just a character, meant to be charming above all, but now he was a real person, who could get tired and even hurt. The problem was how good he was at hiding that.
“Thank you, but I am fine. You, on the other hand, seem quite exhausted. What is the matter?”
Does it show that much?
“I’ve been doing research for work, but with no results.” Of course I couldn’t disclose any details, but I figured that saying that much would be fine.
After thinking for a moment, Jeord replied. “It is often the case that when you cannot find something, it was right beside you all along.”
“Is that a quote?” I asked, intrigued.
“Yes. Mine.”
I dropped my jaw in surprise, and, while my mouth was still open, Jeord threw something inside it.
What?!
I was obviously surprised at first, but quickly realized that it was a piece of chocolate.
“Nothing quite like eating sweets when you need energy. Next time you are free, by all means, let us partake of some delicious dessert together,” he said while gently caressing my head.
Whether it was because of the sweet chocolate melting in my mouth or because I was being patted on the head, I started feeling warm inside.
Sora then came out of the library as well, and was as surprised as I was to see Jeord.
“I have heard that you are looking after my Katarina here at the Ministry. You have my gratitude,” the prince told him.
“Oh, no need to mention it,” Sora, somewhat taken aback, replied.
The bell signaling lunch break rang, and we were joined by Maria and Dewey. Jeord, after greeting the two, reminded me of his invitation and then left.
The four of us then went to the dining hall together. Along the way, I heard Sora murmur to himself, “Phew, that was scary. He was smiling, but his eyes were burning. Was he trying to threaten me or something?”
He sounded tired from all the reading as well, so I decided to give him a couple of good recommendations for lunch.
After recharging with a good meal, we went back to work. Once again, I was silently flipping through the pages of relatively ancient books together with Sora. I kept reading and reading, but found nothing useful. I let out a big sigh.
“You are working really hard,” I heard someone say from behind me. It was the smiling librarian, who had come to put some books back. She must have heard me sighing. I’d spent the last few days in the library, so she was getting used to seeing me.
“Yes… I’m looking for something, but I can’t find it no matter how much I search,” I said.
“That must be tough. I only wish I could help you somehow,” she replied, looking preoccupied as she saw my clearly exhausted face.
“Thank you, I really appreciate that.”
“If you are having that much trouble finding what you are looking for, perhaps it is back in the forbidden library?” she said with a laugh.
“Forbidden library? What is that?”
“You have never heard about it?”
“Not until now!”
“I see… Perhaps people outside my department do not hear about it as much,” she said, referring to the Library Department. As it turned out, the existence of this “forbidden library” was common knowledge there.
“It is a special section of the library that only a few select people can enter.”
“What?! That kind of thing exists?” I said, and she laughed again.
“Hahaha, of course not. There are a lot of rumors about it, but that is natural for a place as old as the Ministry. Every department has its own stories and myths.”
“Oh…” I said, disappointed, and she gave me a few words of encouragement before returning to the counter.
If there really is such a place as the forbidden library, the covenant just has to be in there. If this was a game, it’d be a given. You open the door and there it is, the shining covenant, waiting to be picked up.
Too bad we aren’t in a game. Wait, what? A game? Scratch that, we are in a game! And FL2 is set in the Ministry!
With that in mind, I realized that the forbidden library probably did exist. I looked at Sora, who was close enough to have heard the conversation between me and the librarian.
“Hey Sora, what do you think of that?”
“I think it’s worth a shot. We should probably tell the others about it,” he said after thinking for a while.
And so, we went to the corner of the library where Maria and Dewey were sitting.
“This word connects to this one, you see?”
“Oh, you’re right! Dewey, you’re so smart!”
The two were hunched together over a single book, with Dewey explaining something difficult to Maria. His face now looked red and very happy.
I can’t interrupt his moment of joy like this. Maybe I should wait, I thought to myself.
“I know what you’re thinking, but we have no time for that,” Sora told me before barging in. He could be so cold…
Since Sora’s entrance had disrupted any semblance of romance anyway, I followed him up to our two friends and explained what I’d heard from the librarian.
“I have never heard about this forbidden library…” said Dewey, looking thoughtful.
“Neither have I, but we are still newcomers, after all. Maybe Mister Lanchester or Miss Larna know something about it,” said Maria.
That made sense — even if we didn’t know about it, our bosses, who’d been working here for years, might.
“But the librarian said that it was only a rumor, right?” asked Dewey.
“Well, yes…” I said.
Of course, I couldn’t explain to him that it was likely to exist because we were living in a game. As I struggled for words, Sora came in to help.
“It may only be a rumor, but so what? The book we got from the professor is a fairy tale for kids, and we’re still using that as a hint,” he said. Both Dewey and I looked surprised. “What are you getting surprised about?” he asked me.
He probably thought I should have realized that from the beginning, which I had, but I hadn’t given it any deeper thought than that.
Sora looked at me with an expression between disappointment and despair and went on talking. “Just because it’s a rumor doesn’t mean there’s no truth behind it. The book we got from the professor is evidence of that. So the rumor about the forbidden library could also be based on a real place.”
Oh, that’s impressive. Sora wasn’t brainy in the same way as someone like, say, Dewey, but he was smart in his own way.
“I agree. We should ask Mister Lanchester about it,” said Maria, who, unlike me and Dewey, didn’t seem to be surprised by Sora’s words. She had a determined look on her face.
And so, we took a break from reading through the books and went to ask Cyrus about the forbidden library. Luckily he had just finished one of the tasks he was working on, and he happened to have the time to come with us to the meeting room to listen.
“Unfortunately, I’ve never heard about that,” he said, looking troubled, “I know that there are many strange rumors around the Ministry, but I don’t really involve myself in anything that isn’t directly related to my work, so…”
I’d forgotten about it after his confession on the vegetable field, but Cyrus wasn’t really the type to talk about things other than work. It was no surprise that he wouldn’t know about rumors.
“We would probably have better luck asking Larna Smith about it. I don’t know whether she’s there, but I’ll try going to the Magical Tool Laboratory,” he said as he made to leave.
But we couldn’t ask our boss to do that, especially considering how busy he was. Larna worked in the same department as Sora and me, so we offered to go look for her ourselves. With that, it was decided that I would be the one to go, so that Sora (who was better at that kind of thing) could report on our progress on the ancient books.
When I opened the door to my department’s office for the first time in a few days, I was met with the sight of my colleagues looking dangerously tired.
“…Are you people okay?” I asked while standing at the door. When they noticed me, one of them raised his voice until he was basically screaming.
“Lady Claes! Is your special mission finished?!”
“N-Not yet,” I stammered. Disappointed, he collapsed onto his desk.
I was still looking at him, trying to understand what was going on, when Laura walked towards me. She asked me the same question and, upon hearing my negative answer, reacted with just as much disappointment as her colleague.
“Excuse me, but what is happening here?” I asked her.
“Miss Larna disappeared again. And what do you know, just as she did that, we were hit by an avalanche of documents that need our attention. As a result, everyone is so overworked. If that special mission ended, Miss Larna wouldn’t leave the office as much…” she said, staring into the void.
My earlier hope — that Larna might learn to be responsible by seeing Cyrus’s example — was dashed.
Since I couldn’t find her, all I could do was go back and report that to Cyrus. A newcomer like me wouldn’t be able to help my colleagues with the paperwork anyway. I’d just be a nuisance.
“I’m sorry I can’t be of help. I’ll be going,” I apologized.
“Don’t worry, I know you have other duties to attend to. But why did you come here in the first place? Didn’t you need something?” Laura asked.
Despite being so tired from work, she was still thinking about me. I was lucky to have colleagues like her.
“I wanted to ask Miss Larna about one of the Ministry’s myths, but since she isn’t here, it doesn’t really matter.”
“The Ministry’s myths? You mean one of those rumors about the place?” she asked, surprised.
“Yes. Why, do you happen to know anything about those?”
“Not really. I don’t care much for myths. But I know someone who does,” she said, then told me the name and department of that person. “It’s not too late. You should be able to see her if you go right now.”
I thanked Laura for her help and hurried to the department she had told me about. The workday was almost over, but I wanted to ask her about the library today if I could. The sooner we found the covenant, the sooner Larna would be back at the office, and the sooner my colleagues would get some help with all of their work.
I was running so fast that I reached my goal in no time. I took a deep breath, looking at the plate on the door that read “Biomagic Research Department.” I’d visited this place a few times so far and regretted it every single time. If the director caught me, he probably wouldn’t let me go for quite a while.
I knocked very lightly on the door before opening it, hoping not to be found by either Delius or that wretched monkey. The serious-looking woman standing right next to the entrance looked at me with some surprise.
“Oh, you’re the girl from before…”
“Before?” I repeated. She looked somewhat familiar, but I couldn’t recall where I’d met her.
Seeing my confusion, she laughed dryly. “I’m sorry that our director and his monkey caused you so much trouble back then, and then again not much later.”
“Ah… You’re the one who came to visit me after I lost consciousness and then helped me a few days ago!”
She was the woman who’d dragged Delius to me to make him apologize! And then, she saved me when he was bothering me in front of his department!
She smiled and nodded, confirming my hypothesis.
“Thank you for all of your help, and also for your present when you visited me after I lost consciousness,” I said, referring to the snacks she had brought me while scolding Delius and the monkey.
“Don’t mention it! It was all our fault to begin with,” she said.
Seeing her apologize again made me feel for her. She wasn’t to blame for anything, yet she had to deal with all the problems caused by her director and his monkey…
Thinking about it, I got nervous at the idea that the monkey could appear again out of nowhere.
“Don’t worry,” she said, noticing that I was looking around, “the director is at a meeting today, and the monkey is in its cage.”
I let out a sigh of relief, which made her laugh.
“Anyway, can I help you with anything?” she asked.
I said that Laura had told me that a certain “Alice” from this department could help me with my search.
“Oh, that girl… Sure, I’ll call her here for you. Just wait,” she said with a troubled expression.
Why did she react like that? I’ve got a bad feeling about this…
She came back, followed by a girl so beautiful that she looked like a doll. Since she was probably older than me, I should have thought of her as a woman rather than a girl, but she was so short and cute that she looked younger.
Interestingly, her getup also made her look like a friend of Laura’s. She hadn’t changed her uniform drastically, but she had adorned it with several small ribbons, similar to the big one she had on her head. Her face was covered in meticulously applied makeup, and her nails were painted cute colors. She was treading the fine line between acceptable and unacceptable work attire (unlike Laura, who had crossed the line by so much that she’d probably lost sight of it).
“I’m Alice. What do you want?” she asked me as I was staring at her. Her voice was much colder than I’d expected from her lovely appearance.
“Oh, yes, I’m Katarina Claes from the Magical Tool Laboratory. Miss Laura told me that you were knowledgeable about the Ministry’s myths, and I wanted to ask some questions about them,” I said, and her eyes immediately started sparkling.
“Are you interested in the wonderful legends surrounding the Ministry?!”
“W-Well, I need to learn about them for work…”
“Oh, I see… work. So, what do you want to know? I’ll answer all your questions!” she said, still looking at me with sparkling eyes and completely forgetting that I had mentioned work. I was happy that she’d help me, but her eyes reminded me of Delius’s when he was talking about animals.
I told her that, rather than listening to her by myself, it’d be better if she could come to the meeting room and talk in front of everyone.
“Vice-director, my work for today is done, so I’ll go with this girl. She said she wants to learn about the Ministry’s myths, so I just have to help her,” she said to the woman I’d been talking to before, who I now realized was the vice-director of the Biomagic Research Department.
“Okay,” she said, looking concerned, “but try not to bother anyone.”
“Me? Bother anyone? I’m going to help them! They’re going to be grateful, if anything!” Alice replied, pouting.
The vice-director saw us off silently. Her expression told me that I was in for some trouble, but I was glad that I could at least find someone to ask about the forbidden library.
Everyone in the meeting room looked confused when I walked in with Alice, so I explained what had happened.
“You’ve got quite the dream team here…” Alice murmured to herself.
After all we had Cyrus, the director of the most popular department, and Maria and Dewey, who were known throughout the Ministry as two of the most promising newcomers.
“So,” Alice then said to all of us, her attitude unchanged despite being in front of Cyrus, “which myth do you want to hear about? I know around 30 of them.”
“There are that many?!”
I thought that there would be seven, like the stereotypical seven myths circulating in all the schools of my old world.
“Of course — the Ministry is large and has a long history. Some are similar to each other, though, like the ones about the screaming voices one can hear at night, which…”
“Thank you, but we don’t really care about that. What we want to know about is the library,” said Cyrus, stopping Alice before she could start her enthusiastic lecture.
She looked a bit displeased, as she obviously wanted to tell us about those stories. Nevertheless, she obliged.
“There’s the one about the cursed book that kills everybody who opens it after a few days, or the one about the invisible librarian who wanders through the library at night…”
That’s not quite it… I mean, those sound scary, but I don’t even like horror stories. That thing about the invisible librarian is enough to make me determined to never go to the library at night ever again…
Cyrus, unlike me, seemed completely unfazed. “That’s not what we’re looking for. We’re interested in something called the forbidden library. Do you know anything about that?”
“Oh, that one?” Alice replied, and her glaring expression changed to one of boredom.
“Don’t you know about it?” Cyrus asked, again completely unfazed.
Surely he’s noticed how her expression changed, right?
“Of course I do, but it’s very boring as far as stories go.”
Cyrus asked her to explain, and, despite being clearly disappointed, she did.
“It’s a story so boring, in fact, that most people outside the Library Department probably don’t even know about it. There’s a special library that only a few select people can enter… That’s it.”
“And does it really exist?” Cyrus asked, and Alice grinned.
“That I don’t know. It’s a very old story, so it could be true, but it could also just be a rumor.”
“I see. You said that the people in the Library Department know about this. Do you think there’s someone in there who could tell us more?”
“I doubt it. You’d probably only hear what I just told you. I like researching myths, even the boring ones, so I already asked all the librarians about it.”
She really was serious when it came to myths.
“So we can’t get any hints about it…” Cyrus said sadly.
“Well, maybe the Library Department Director could tell you something more,” Alice said after thinking for a while.
As everyone looked at her excitedly at hearing that, she started looking a bit troubled.
“I can’t make any promises though. When I went to ask about it, all the answers I got were so roundabout that I thought that there was something being hidden there. I didn’t learn anything new, though, so I just gave up. But maybe you’ll have more luck than I did.”
That was exactly what we wanted to hear, so we decided that the next day we’d be going to the director to ask about the forbidden library.
“Thank you for your help,” Cyrus told Alice.
“I was so excited about being able to talk about the Ministry’s myths after so long, but you only asked me about one of them…” she said, puffing up her cheeks in disappointment.
“But we heard what we wanted, so that’s…” Cyrus started to say, confused.
“But I want to tell you more!” said Alice.
The bad feeling I’d got looking at the vice-director’s expression had now been justified. Alice was a very peculiar girl. I realized that she wouldn’t be satisfied until we listened to her, and I was the one who had brought her here, so I spoke up.
“Tell me more, then. I’ll listen,” I told her.
Cyrus looked disconcerted, but Alice was smiling enthusiastically.
The former went back to his department to finish his work, while the latter stayed with me, Maria, Dewey, and Sora to tell us more scary and mysterious stories about the Ministry.
Before long, I regretted offering to listen to her. She kept talking and talking well after our workday was over and until the sun had completely set. Eventually, Cyrus had to come back and rescue us.
Plus, for a few days after that, I couldn’t walk to the toilet alone at night.
The next day, the whole “covenant search party” met in the conference room. Even Larna, who had been MIA for a while, finally showed up at the Ministry and was dragged along by Cyrus. He filled her in about the forbidden library, since she wasn’t there to hear about it the day before.
“One of the Ministry’s myths? That could be an interesting lead,” she said after listening to Cyrus’s explanation.
“Are you knowledgeable about that kind of thing?” I asked her.
“Well, not as much as Miss Alice, but I do know about a couple of them. For example, there’s one about the screams that you can hear in the middle of the…”
“Please, we’ve heard more than enough about that,” I promptly interrupted her. After what had happened the previous day, any mention of the scary myths surrounding the Ministry gave me chills.
“Everyone knows how obsessed Miss Alice is with that kind of thing. She’s a weird one, isn’t she?” Larna said, grinning wryly.
“…Yes. She told us about a bunch of terrifying stories,” I said with a pained expression.
With that, Larna started telling us more about Alice. As it turned out, she was well-known throughout the Ministry for being obsessed with weird and terrifying stories, such as the Ministry’s myths. What’s more, she knew no greater happiness than retelling these tales to other people. In one word, she was weird.
If only I’d known about that, I could have avoided having to sit through her stories…
Larna noticed the sadness on my face, and in a backhanded attempt to comfort me, said, “Don’t beat yourself up though; all newcomers fall for it the first time.”
The conversation finally steered away from Alice. “Anyway, this is the first time I’ve heard about the forbidden library,” Larna said.
“It seems that, for the most part, only people in the Library Department know about it, and they generally consider it to be a baseless rumor,” Cyrus said.
“Of course they don’t care for myths and fables… Most people in that department are straight-laced realists,” Larna commented, and I remembered the librarian who had laughed at the idea of the forbidden library. She had been the one to mention it, and yet had quickly dismissed it as nothing more than a rumor.
“However,” Cyrus said, “it seems that the Library Department’s director tries to avoid questions about it, so it’s possible that there’s something more to find there.”
Larna’s pupils widened a little. “You expect me to believe that Daurand, that prissy coward, knows anything about myths? Please.”
It seemed that Daurand was the name of the Library Department’s director.
“That would definitely be unlike him,” Cyrus replied, “but I thought that it would still be worth the effort, so I went ahead and contacted him. He said he would be free in the afternoon today.”
Cyrus really worked fast.
“You really work fast, huh,” said Larna, apparently thinking the same thing as me. “If that’s the case, let’s go meet him later today,” she continued.
“What? You plan on coming too?” Cyrus asked, confused and clearly disappointed.
“Of course. You’re a talented guy, Cyrus Lanchester, but I’m better at getting information out of people,” Larna said, ignoring Cyrus’s clear chagrin.
“…Fine,” he said, restraining himself from saying anything else with what looked like a considerable effort.
Larna nodded, and then said, “Good. Then you, I, and Katarina will go.”
“Wait, why should I go?!” I asked. Surely Cyrus and Larna would be enough on their own?
“The fact that you’re Duke Claes’ daughter is known throughout the Ministry. We can leverage your rank’s influence to pressure Daurand into talking. Don’t worry, you won’t need to do anything. You can just sit there and listen.”
“Did you just say ‘pressure him into talking’?” I asked, feeling like I had just heard something pretty shady.
“If he doesn’t want to talk about it, then we need to compel him somehow, right? So we either need some information to offer him in return, some weakness of his to blackmail him with, or influence to coerce him,” she said, sounding like a much better villainess than I could ever aspire to be.
Much to my dismay, since I wanted to go back to delivering packages as soon as possible, it was decided that we would keep looking through books until the afternoon.
After several unsurprisingly fruitless hours of labor, it was time to meet with the Library Department’s director, and Cyrus and Larna made me follow them into an office where the director was already waiting for us.
I looked at him, with his business haircut, black-rimmed glasses, scrawny physique, and generally tense demeanor, and I felt that Larna’s assessment of him as a “prissy coward” was pretty apt.
“Thank you for having us,” Cyrus said.
“Why, I don’t mind at all,” Daurand replied, with an expression on his face that said that he did mind, and quite a lot at that.
After Cyrus and Larna, it was my turn to greet him and introduce myself, at which point Daurand was visibly shaken. Larna had already told me that he came from the family of a not particularly wealthy viscount, which made the title of duke all the more impressive to him. I’d already met several peculiar department directors at the Ministry, but none quite like him.
Larna, peculiar department director extraordinaire, started talking to Daurand, whose face had become even more tense.
“We want to know about the forbidden library,” she said without mercy.
“…Yes, I heard as much from Lanchester. I wonder why’d you go through the trouble of asking me about such a silly rumor,” he said, trying and failing to sound nonchalant.
“We’re on a special mission straight from the higher-ups. So, where’s the forbidden library?” Larna asked, speaking as if she knew that what she was looking for did indeed exist.
I was surprised by her boldness, but I just sat there in silence as instructed, waiting for the director’s answer.
“Larna… there is no such library. It’s just a fairytale,” he said after a short pause, visibly troubled. “As are most of the Ministry’s myths. You’re wasting your time.”
“That’s not the case,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Huh?!” Daurand and I said in unison. Cyrus remained silent, but he also looked surprised.
“There is no smoke without fire,” she said, sounding pleased at our surprise. “Even myths have a basis in reality. Take the one about the nightly screams as an example. Tired employees, forced to deal with piled-up work without pause day and night, scream their anguish in the hallways. That’s the truth that the myth is based upon.”
That was one of the stories that Alice had told us the previous day, and, while I was surprised to know that it was real, I was glad to know that the screams didn’t belong to ghosts or whatever.
“And that applies to most other stories in the Ministry,” she said, looking straight into Daurand’s eyes. “So, where’s the library?”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know anything about it,” he said, avoiding her stare.
“That’s a shame. In that case, give us permission to search the library on a day when it’s not open to the public,” she continued.
“Th-That’s…” he said, fumbling for words, and Larna grinned.
“What’s the problem? We’re just going to nose around a bit, especially directly under the library’s floor,” she said, making Daurand’s eyes twitch with worry. “Is anything the matter?” she asked with an even larger grin.
After staying silent for a while, the Library Department’s director sighed. “How much do you know?” he asked.
“Only as much as I just told you. We could break the entrance open, but it would probably be best for everyone if you just opened it for us.”
“Your information network is really impressive,” he said, sighing again. “Fine. I shall see you to the forbidden library.”
“Very well. It seems that I won’t even need to tell your wife that you secretly had lunch together with a young, pretty librarian,” Larna said, making Daurand’s face turn even more pale than it already was. In a perfect villainess move, she had also planned to blackmail him if necessary.
In the end, we got the power to enter the forbidden library without either me or Cyrus having to do anything. I had a feeling that with this, we were one step closer to getting the covenant.
Daurand told us that the other librarians didn’t know about the forbidden library, so he would show us the entrance after everyone had finished their work for the day.
“Miss Larna, how did you know that the forbidden library was underground?” I asked while we were walking back to the meeting room.
“Know? How would I know that? I just took a guess.”
“Whaaat?!” I screamed, shocked at her reply. Cyrus had frozen in place too.
“I looked at the floor plans for the library, and they matched the actual dimensions. Remember that the Ministry is full of smart people — if the plans were off, someone would notice. I figured that it could have stayed reasonably hidden all along if it were underground, so I just bluffed and pretended I knew all along. He was fooled so easily that I didn’t even need to use any of my other strategies to get him to talk. What a waste,” she said, disappointed.
Larna wasn’t very serious about her job, and she was often scolded by her subordinates, especially Raphael. But listening to her now, I thought that maybe she was more talented than she let on.
I also remembered that one of my department colleagues had told me that “Larna is easy on her allies, but merciless to her enemies.” Daurand wasn’t exactly an enemy, but I still felt bad for him.
We kept organizing all the information at our disposal until the workday was over, and then all six of us made for the library.
There was no need for all of us to go there, but, maybe because the forbidden library was too interesting to pass on a chance to see it (I, for one, was pretty excited about it), nobody offered to wait in the meeting room for the others to return.
Daurand was standing alone, looking grim, waiting for us. “I thought only the two directors would be going inside!” he said, sounding aghast. He obviously hadn’t expected six people to show up.
“Is that a problem?” Larna asked, and he was immediately cowed.
“Well, it’s a small room, so…”
“We’ll just go in one by one.”
“But it’s very dusty, so it’s not ideal for young boys or girls to go there…” he said, looking at Maria and Dewey.
“We would not mind,” the two said in synch, Maria looking fierce and Dewey looking offended.
I was also offended by the fact that I didn’t get so much as a glance when “girls” were mentioned, but Sora patted my shoulder and told me not to think too much about it.
“I see,” Daurand said with a defeated sigh. “Come along, then.”
We followed him to the ancient book corner, and then he stepped behind a bookcase, probably to press some kind of switch. We heard a click and, after a moment, the bookcase started moving slowly and loudly.
After almost a minute, the movement stopped and a staircase leading underground was revealed to us.
There sure are a lot of hidden rooms in this world. I wonder if it’s trendy or something. Back in that mansion we entered when I was still at the academy, we found what we were looking for after discovering the hidden room, so I’m sure the same will happen this time too. Covenant, here we come!
“This way,” Daurand said, stepping onto the staircase, and we followed him.
I wondered why he’d let us all come in at once despite saying that the room was small, but once we were inside, I realized that there was actually plenty of room.
The room was large, and full of shelves that were stacked with books. It was about as big as the library — we called it that even though it was basically just a room with several books in it — in the town where I used to live before I was reincarnated.
I also thought that there must have been some magic at work over the place, because, despite being underground, it was tidy and well-lit. It was incredible that such a place could be hidden under the library without anyone noticing.
“This is incredible,” said Maria, unable to contain her awe.
“They call it the forbidden library, but as you can see, it’s just a perfectly normal collection of books. Now that you’ve all seen it, we can go back,” Daurand said while we were still gazing at the room around us.
What? We just got here, and we still haven’t had time to look for the covenant! I thought, and Larna gave voice to my complaints.
“No, we still need to search it. We came here to look for a book, and we can’t leave until we know whether or not it’s in here,” she said.
“And what book would that be?” asked Daurand, with an annoyed expression on his face.
“I can’t tell you the details, but it’s a book about lost magic,” she replied, and he sighed yet again.
“You could have told me that earlier! There’s no book about lost magic in here. You’d better search elsewhere.”
“Wait,” said Larna. Now she was the one with a worried expression, for once. “You mean you know the content of all the books kept in here?”
“I haven’t read all of them, but I at least know what kind of books they are. So I can tell you that the book on lost magic that you’re looking for is not here.”
“…But we do not know much about the book that we are looking for. Please let us check, even just for a bit,” said Maria with a determined look in her eyes.
When asked by a pretty young girl, Daurand couldn’t just refuse her as coldly as he had Larna. “Well, but…” he said, blushing and mumbling. While he was still coming up with an appropriate response, our trusty Larna had already walked to the shelves and was now flipping through the pages of a book.
“Oh, would you look at this…” she said to herself, sounding interested.
Daurand, upon hearing that, ran over to her and snatched the book out of her hands. “Y-You’ve seen it, right? All the books in here are of the same kind as this one. So now you know that the book you’re looking for is not in here,” he said, sounding extremely nervous and looking dangerously red in the face.
“What do you mean?” Cyrus asked.
Larna, grinning, took another book and handed it to him, telling him to take a look.
As soon as he opened the book, Cyrus blushed.
“Daurand, explain this! Why are books such as this kept inside the sacred library of the Ministry?!” he asked with the book still in his hand.
“That’s why I keep them hidden in here!” Daurand replied, pulling at his own hair.
“I see… but why are you keeping them in the first place? And you don’t mean to tell me that all of these books are like this one, do you?!”
“They are,” he replied, grimacing. “Every last one of them.”
“…This is unbelievable. But why? Who would do this?”
“Generations of library directors have collected them, little by little, as cultural artifacts.”
“…There’s something wrong with the Library Department…”
“I, myself, was shocked at first! The previous director brought me here and showed me these books, saying that they’d been passed down from one director to the next. What could I do?”
Cyrus and Daurand were talking fervently, but I still had no idea what was going on. I looked at Larna for an explanation.
“The only thing these books tell us is what fetishes the library directors of old were into. These are erotic books,” she said casually.
“Larna, please, couldn’t you choose your words better?” asked Daurand, who was gnashing his teeth.
“Erotic books?! All of them?!” I blurted out loudly in surprise.
“That’s not something a noble lady should say out loud,” Sora commented, but how could I help it? Who wouldn’t be surprised at this huge room being completely full of erotic books?
Larna laughed at my surprise. “At least that’s what Daurand says, and all the ones I’ve seen so far fall into that category. Some of them with just text, some with illustrations, some about love affairs, some about stealing lovers, and oh… this one’s about two men,” she said after looking at one of the books near her.
There are even Boys’ Love books?! Sophia would be thrilled. Lately, she’s been getting bored with normal romance and has started getting interested in that genre.
I was listening to Larna with utmost interest, but Cyrus, as strict as always, scolded her.
“Larna, mind what you say around women! A place so full of despicable materials is bound to be bad for the body and the spirit. Maria, Katarina, get out of here.”
I didn’t see how it could be bad for the body, but he sounded dead serious.
I’d read a lot of romance novels in my time, but nothing that was straight-out erotic. Dewey, considering his age and upbringing, probably hadn’t either. Sora, our most respectable older colleague, probably had first-hand, non-fictional experience with that kind of stuff. But as for Maria, I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t even know about the existence of books like these. All in all, it was probably better for us to leave.
“But the covenant could be hidden among these other books!” Maria said, refusing to go.
It was an unexpected comment from the most unexpected source.
“But Maria, the books in here are not appropriate for you…” Cyrus said, looking worried as he tried to convince her, but she looked like she wasn’t going to give in any time soon.
Had Sora said the same thing, I’d have thought that he just wanted to look at the naughty books, but it was obvious that Maria had no such ulterior motive. She really wanted to find the covenant.
When I had first heard about the forbidden library, I had gotten a weird, inexplicable feeling that the covenant would be hidden here. Maybe Maria had felt something similar, which was why she was so intent on searching the place before giving up.
One would think that a place called the “forbidden library” would hold valuable ancient magic books or tomes full of dangerous spells, but… erotic books? I could see why they’d want to hide them, but why go through the trouble of building this underground room? Was the idea born out of the same instincts that compelled boys to hide adult magazines under their beds?
And anyway, why was this place so big? I couldn’t believe that they’d have built this room specifically for erotic books. I mean, if they really had, that would be impressive in its own right.
Larna, who had been thinking something similar, spoke up. “When was this place even built? I doubt that it was conceived as an erotic library to begin with.”
“I’m afraid that it was built specifically as an erotic library, right alongside the main library. The wife of the first library director was a very jealous woman, who wouldn’t forgive her husband if he kept as much as a single erotic book. She told him to throw away all the ones that he had collected before marriage, but he only pretended to do so, and hid them inside his mansion. However, she eventually found them, and the director, who had no better place to hide them, had this room added to the library, which was then under construction. This is what I’ve been told,” Daurand explained slowly, as if he were narrating an epic tale, probably unaware of the fact that he had just called it an “erotic library” himself.
“That’s incredible,” said Larna, stupefied. “But does this mean that all of the books here were his? That would be a ridiculous amount for a single person, and some of them are more recent than others.”
“Some of them are, but several of the men who succeeded him added their own so that their wives wouldn’t find them. Some directors even added to the collection after they retired, which is why there are so many,” he explained, looking extremely tired. This great erotic collection must have come with great responsibility.
“That explains it, but that would also mean that the books just keep piling up.”
“Indeed. Which is why every once in a while I throw out ones that have become too old or worn out. I mix them in with other trash from the Ministry so nobody finds out.”
Having to do that while also making sure that nobody sees these books must have been a tiresome task… Hm? I can’t put my finger on it, but something sounded off just now.
“That must be tough,” said Larna, sympathizing with Daurand as he let out a deep sigh.
“It is. It’s a very troublesome duty,” he said. Then, looking at all of us, he continued, “So please keep this a secret. If those strict colleagues of mine knew that I was looking after this place, they’d all start looking down on me. And my wife, while lovely, can’t stand this kind of thing. She could even divorce me if she found me going in and out of a place like this. Please, please don’t tell anyone about it.”
He looked so intense in his plea that we all nodded gravely.
“…Thank you,” he said with tears in his eyes.
And so, since the director insisted that there were only erotic books in the library, and since Larna, Cyrus, and Sora all checked for themselves and found the same thing, we all went back upstairs.
I had been positive that we would find the covenant in the underground library, but now we were back to square one. We’d also already checked most of the ancient books in the library, which made me think that maybe the covenant wasn’t in the Ministry at all. Which was weird, considering that this was, without a doubt, the largest library in the kingdom…
Wait a second… What was that thing that sounded so off before?
“Isn’t there any place in the Ministry, besides the library, where ancient books are kept?” Maria asked Daurand while I was still thinking to myself.
“I’m sorry, but there isn’t, at least not that I know of.”
That was inevitable. If it wasn’t among the other ancient books, it couldn’t be anywhere else. Earlier, he’d also said that the old erotic books were being thrown out, so… Wait! Of course!
“Mister Daurand! You said that you throw out those erotic books when they’re too old and can’t be read anymore, but does that also apply to the other books in the library?” I asked so enthusiastically that he was surprised.
“Yes. We see if they can be repaired, and if they cannot, and it is judged that they do not hold particular value, we get rid of them.”
This meant that even if the covenant really had been here, it could have been thrown away because it was too worn out! That hadn’t occurred to me at all until then.
“And what do you do when you throw them out? Burn them?” I asked, fearing the worst.
“I don’t actually know. We throw them away, but other people take care of it from there.”
“And who are these other people?”
“The Magical Tool Laboratory,” he said, and I turned back to look at Larna, who was grinning.
“When we get the books to be thrown out, we don’t get rid of them straight away, just in case there’s a useful one amongst them. Except for the ones that were given to us a long time ago, they should all still be in a warehouse within the Ministry.”
So there was another place besides the library where we could look for books! I looked at Maria, who looked back at me and nodded.
“Miss Larna, please show us that warehouse!” I said.
“Yes, please!” Maria echoed.
“Since this all started in a garden that’s kept tidy by magic, I assumed that the book would stay in mint condition as well, so I didn’t even consider looking at the discarded books. It might be worth our while to check though,” Larna mused. Then she smiled at the enthusiastic Maria. “I’d tell you to wait until tomorrow, but you don’t seem able to wait any longer. I’ll show you the place, but you’re not allowed to keep searching until late at night,” she said, and then guided us to the warehouse.
The covenant, which I had almost given up on finding, now seemed to be within reach again, even if the chance of actually finding it was still minuscule. I really hoped that it would be somewhere in that warehouse.
The large warehouse, used for storing things that didn’t immediately need to be on hand, wasn’t far from the Magical Tool Laboratory office.
Larna unlocked the door and we all entered. The place was a bit dusty, possibly because people didn’t go there often — after all, nothing that people would normally want was stored here. It looked huge from the outside, but when we went inside, I saw that it was so full of stuff that it actually had very little free space left.
“Hm, I think books were over here…” said Larna, starting to walk forward. If she hadn’t been there with us, finding the place where the books were being kept would have been a feat all on its own.
“Oh, here they are,” she said pointing to a bunch of books. Literally a bunch, since they weren’t neatly stacked on shelves like in the library, but just lying around in piles on the floor. There were so many that they could fill a small library room.
“Looking through these won’t be easy,” I said to myself.
“Of course,” said Larna, who had heard me. “They’re all piled up at random, and you need to move all the ones on top before you can even see the ones on the bottom. This will take a while, so let’s start after the weekend.”
We had the next two days off, so it made sense to rest and start searching on Monday. I was nodding at Larna when I noticed Maria walking towards the books by herself and then stopping in front of them.
“Maria?”
She removed a few books from a pile and then took one of them in her hands. This was so sudden that we were all staring at her in confusion.
“Maria? What are you doing?” I asked her.
“I have finally found it,” she said with a smile.
“Found it? You can’t possibly mean…”
I stared at the book she was holding. It was a dusty, old book with a cover which had lost almost all of its original color.
“Yes. This is the covenant,” she said, shocking everyone.
What?! The covenant?! For real?! How can she even tell?!
“Maria, how can you be sure that that is the covenant? And why did you go straight for that one in the first place?”
It was Larna who asked this, but everyone else was probably thinking the exact same questions.
“I am not sure of the reason, but I just realized it as soon as I saw that pile of books. This is the one that I have been looking for,” she replied, with a stare so intense that nobody could doubt her words. Regardless, anyone who knew her also knew that she never lied anyway.
“The protagonist of that fairy tale was able to tell that he had found the covenant as soon as he saw it, but could such a thing really work in reality? Do you mind showing that book to me?” Larna asked.
She took the book from Maria’s hands and opened it. “This is…” she said, staring at the book’s contents.
What is it?! Is it a book on incredible, unmatched magic powers?! I was leaning forward, hanging on Larna’s every word.
“…an introductory book on basic magic.”
“Whaaaat?! But why?” I found myself screaming. The whole thing made no sense anymore.
“How am I supposed to know why? I’m just telling you what I see. Look for yourself,” Larna said, handing me the book, which was full of… ancient script, of course.
“I’m sorry, I can’t read this…” I said, giving up immediately.
“Oh, right,” Larna said, and then explained that it described very basic magic that academy students learned at the start of their first year.
Since all the other people around could read the book — unlike me — they all took turns looking at it and then asking Maria the same kinds of questions.
“Are you sure that this is the covenant?”
“Yes. I am positive.”
“But why does it only talk about basic magic?”
“That could be on purpose, so that people cannot tell what it is really about.”
“It’s no wonder that they wanted to throw it out, since it only describes basic stuff and it’s this battered.”
Once again, I felt sad about being left out of the conversation because of my ignorance. Maybe I should go back to studying ancient script. Like, right now, I thought to myself, and took the top book from the pile closest to me. It looked as worn-out as the one that Maria had found, and inside it were tons of difficult letters which I didn’t understand.
I quickly realized that kind of study wasn’t for me — looking at difficult script made me sleepy. I wished that Larna would build a magical tool to automatically translate books.
“Well, it seems we achieved our goal here, so let’s go home. It’s quite late already,” Larna said, and only then did I realize how late it had gotten.
“Let’s get out of this dusty warehouse,” she said, and I quickly followed her, amused by the fact that she also thought it was dusty.
Once we were all out of the warehouse and ready to go home for the day, Larna said, “As soon as the weekend is over, let’s bring that covenant to the garden.”
“Actually, I would like to go tomorrow. I can go by myself, if you give me permission,” Maria said timidly.
“Maria, we know next to nothing about this lost magic, and we can’t tell what could happen. We can’t have you go there by yourself,” Larna replied, and Maria nodded sadly.
“But I get that you want to try out that magic as soon as possible. If it were me, I’d go right now. But I wasn’t able to get inside the rock by myself,” Larna continued.
“Larna, when did you even try that?” asked Cyrus, suspicious.
“As soon as I heard about the garden. How could I resist trying out a type of magic as rare as that? But unfortunately, it didn’t work. Judging from what Maria and Katarina said, and what was written in that fairy tale, I think that only Light Magic users can enter the rock.”
Cyrus put a hand on his forehead. The fact that Larna had tried to enter the secret dimension inside the rock wasn’t really surprising.
“So, as I said, I understand why you’d want to try it out as soon as possible. Tomorrow we have no work, and I’m free… So free, in fact, that I may just so happen to take a stroll through the Ministry to kill the time,” she said, grinning like a child, and Maria’s face instantly lit up with happiness.
“Thank you!” she said with a bow.
What are they talking about? I think I’m missing something here, I thought, and I looked at Sora, hoping for an explanation.
“What she means is that she can’t do it officially, but she can go with Maria to try out the covenant as long as they keep it a private thing,” Sora, who had immediately realized what I wanted to ask him, whispered.
So tomorrow Maria is going to go back to that dimension with the covenant?
“I’m also free tomorrow! Please let me come,” I said. I’d been helping Maria in her search all along, so I wanted to see Maria as she got her new awesome Light Magic upgrade.
“Larna, if Maria and Miss Katarina are going then I’ll go too, just to be safe,” Cyrus said, and was soon followed by Dewey and Sora. Eventually, it was decided that, on the next day, we would all go to the lost magic garden together.
After we decided on a time to meet, the workday was finally over, and I went home.
“We finally found it,” I said to myself while stretching my tired body on my bed. “But I never thought it’d be in one of the Magical Tool Laboratory warehouses all along.”
After all the trouble we’d been through, it was inside a place owned by my department… It had been right under our noses the whole time.
I remembered what Jeord had said a few days ago, and realized that he was right. My fiancé was really incredible.
I took off my uniform and threw my bag onto the desk — if Anne were there, she would have scolded me for not walking to the desk and gently placing it there, but I was alone, so it didn’t matter.
The bag landed perfectly where I wanted it to, thanks to years of practicing the art of throwing toy snakes. Unfortunately, however, the bag opened and all of its contents spilled out.
I should have walked to the desk like a good girl, I thought while picking up my stuff from the floor, and… Wait, what’s this?
It was the book I had tried to read in the warehouse. Larna had hurried us out of the place, so I had mindlessly put it in my bag and ended up bringing it home.
Ah, why did I do that…?
At least it was a book from the warehouse, so it wasn’t like anyone was going to need it anytime soon. I could just put it in my bag and bring it back to the Ministry the next day.
I heard a light knock on the door, and when I asked who it was, Keith replied.
“Oh, you aren’t sleeping yet today. May I talk to you for a while?”
“Of course. Come in,” I said. He opened the door a crack and peeked his head inside, but he just shook his head while looking preoccupied.
“No, not this late at night. I see you still aren’t heeding my warnings… not that it surprises me,” he said sadly. “But anyway, you have work off tomorrow. Do you want to go out somewhere together?” As he asked me this, every trace of sadness on his face disappeared.
Unfortunately, I had to go to the Ministry tomorrow despite the fact that I had no work. I explained that to him, and he started looking slightly irritated.
“Weren’t you supposed to only work a few days each week, and only a few hours each day? Father doesn’t seem to care, but I think that you’re working too much for a girl of your lineage.”
Indeed, I’d meant to join the Ministry part-time at first, but since I was having trouble learning about everything I needed to do, I realized that I needed to work more hours if I didn’t want to be left behind. That was why I had personally asked to work as much as the other newcomers.
Mother agreed with me, saying, “You would probably make less trouble working by yourself than by becoming someone’s wife,” so I was now working full-time. Furthermore, because of the search for the covenant, I’d been coming home late for the past few days.
I looked at Keith and his irritated face, with the cheeks slightly puffed up. He looked manlier than he had when we’d first met, but he still reminded me of his young, childish self.
“Big Sister, Prince Jeord will be here tomorrow. Let’s leave before he does,” he would tell me, puffing up his cheeks like he was doing now.
Now that I thought about it, I hadn’t given Keith any attention lately. I stretched my hand and put it on his head as he was still standing right outside my room. I used to be able to stroke his flaxen hair so easily, but now he had become so tall that it took some effort.
“I’ll be back home early tomorrow, so let’s go out to play together when I get back,” I said, running my hand over his head.
“…You’re always so…” he murmured, but his voice was so feeble that I didn’t hear.
“What?” I asked, stepping closer to him, but he stepped away from me.
“…Thank you. Goodnight,” he said, practically running away and leaving me no chance to say him goodnight back.
As he was walking away, I heard him chant a sort of prayer: “Restraint! Restraint! Restraint!”
I wonder what that’s supposed to mean.
It was also then that I remembered that Jeord had invited me for sweets on my next day off, and that I would need to tell Keith about that. But as soon as he left, I immediately got sleepy and quickly departed for the wonderful world of dreams, forgetting all about it.