The male lead nodded lightly.
“Sorry, I should have explained better. Sharp eye.”
“Ah, it’s nothing.”
“No, that’s a genuinely good instinct. Right, for this stack, the format you’ll want is—”
As he explained, I made a quiet vow to myself.
*Ugh, I am never asking a question again.*
I’d only asked this time because redoing work twice was such a pain.
But having a good eye for the job only ever meant more work landed on you.
While I was in the Black Spoon Division, I’d keep my head down and do exactly what I was told, nothing more.
Then, glancing away for a moment, something through the gap in the doorway caught my eye—
*Is that… a cot?*
Gaudy with gilding, true to this world’s aesthetic, but a cot all the same.
Anywhere inside a company, things like that were always the same thing under a different name.
I let my eyes slide back into place, quietly, only to find the male lead’s gaze already on me.
Neither of us said anything.
I stared into his eyes for a long moment.
*Care to explain yourself?*
What exactly is that hideous mattress doing back there?
The male lead looked away from my stare.
“It’s not something I use often.”
“Ah. I see.”
“Just occasionally, when things get really busy, it’s convenient to have.”
“I see…”
Wow. What a thing to be proud of.
Anyway — heroine, second lead, please.
Stick to the resolve you showed in the original story and get yourselves into the Black Spoon Division!
Carlyle, if he was being honest, had exactly zero expectations for the 218th class of new officials.
Why?
*Because they’ll all run off to somewhere easier the second they get the chance.*
The Black Spoon Division did pay the best of any department, that much was true.
But it was also infamous for being hell on earth, workload-wise.
So ever since its founding three years ago, every new hire had eventually slipped away to some other department…
*Though the bigger problem is that there’s barely any talent worth recruiting in the first place.*
Handling black magic required exceptional magical ability, full stop.
And on top of that, an unusually resilient mind.
Requirements no wide-eyed rookie could realistically meet.
…Which was why Carlyle was permanently overloaded, juggling fieldwork and paperwork simultaneously, every single day!
He ground his teeth at the Minister — Edgar Crowe — daily over it.
*[I don’t have the bandwidth to train new hires. Bring me someone experienced instead.]*
*[Give up on impossible dreams, Rupesk.]*
*[Then increase our headcount.]*
*[Also impossible. Two new hires a year is the ceiling, and that’s being generous.]*
Edgar founding the Black Spoon Division in the first place had been a fine idea. But so few people even passed the official exam that dragging even one talented recruit over was practically a bloodsport.
*[This year’s “top-and-bottom” group is coming to us first, apparently? Take your pick from them.]*
Who names a group that.
Either way, Carlyle’s first impression of the “top-and-bottom” group had been thoroughly unremarkable.
*None of the three have anything particularly special about them.*
The top-ranked one was wound far too tight. And the second-ranked one—
*He’s basically already gone, so no point pointing out the outfit.*
There was nothing to be gained from it besides a headache.
Which left the last-ranked one, Leila Rowell.
His first impression of her had been…
*Her eyes don’t have that fresh, green look the others have.*
Most new hires this early on had eyes practically glowing with pride and ambition.
But Leila Rowell’s, well.
*Lifeless. Is that why she came in dead last?*
And then her real worth revealed itself from the most unexpected direction.
*[What handwriting style are we standardizing on?]*
The moment he heard that question, Carlyle’s heart had nearly stopped.
Not a heart attack — he wasn’t that old yet — but a full, one-hundred-percent dose of pure, unfiltered admiration.
*A recruit who actually notices the details.*
What tormented a perfectionist like him most?
The mountain of paperwork?
The maddeningly elusive mastermind behind the black magic?
Those were bad enough, but—!
Sloppy, inconsistent documents were the true torment.
*New hires make the same mistakes no matter how many times you correct them.*
Not long after, Leila brought her finished stack over to him for a mid-check.
Sorted neatly by category, arranged for easy reading.
He hated how moved he was, but there was nothing to be done about it.
*Last year’s trainees turned their work in as one jumbled mess.*
Which meant Carlyle had wasted his precious time sorting through it all over again, one sheet at a time.
Leila watched him with a wary, appraising look.
“How does it look?”
“Hm. Give me a moment—”
Carlyle turned the pages one by one, slowly.
*Right, there’ll be mistakes. There have to be.*
Don’t get your hopes up.
That way there’s nothing to be disappointed about.
But with every page he turned, his throat went drier.
His heart pounded harder with a swell of something dangerously close to emotion.
“…Perfect.”
“Thank you.”
Leila Rowell went right back to her remaining work like it was nothing.
Julianna Crosswell, who’d watched the exchange, leaned over and whispered to her.
“Leila. Can you check this for me…?”
“Hm? Sure. Julianna, your letter spacing’s off.”
“Huh? What’s that mean?”
“The gaps between letters. If they’re inconsistent, the document looks messy.”
“Oh no — I’ll fix it right away!”
“Also, this kind of document reads better on a single page.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. So the recipient doesn’t have to flip to a second page. Try trimming the wording down a little.”
“Wow, got it!”
Even correcting her fellow trainee’s mistakes on the spot.
Was this last-place recruit some kind of gift sent down from the heavens to save him from paperwork hell?
*No. Too early to judge from one instance.*
Still, Carlyle quietly shut the door that gave a view of the cot.
*It’s only a week of training, but…*
He found himself thinking it might be worth paying a little extra attention this time.
And so it went, until the trainee group’s final day touring the Black Spoon Division — a Friday, late afternoon.
Carlyle clicked his tongue sharply at the order that had just landed on his desk.
“Something troublesome from up top.”
The Emperor’s command was brief.
*Confirm the trend in black-magic-artifact incidents over the past three months, by tonight.*
*Should I stage a rebellion?*
The Imperial family of Arpelt had lost its real authority three hundred years ago.
*The mad emperor who murdered the Saintess.*
The empire had once balanced three powers — the throne, the Temple, and the nobility.
But three hundred years ago, an emperor had committed the single maddest act imaginable, and killed the Saintess.
With the empire’s sole purifier of black magic gone, the realm had spiraled toward collapse.
In the end, the nobility had no choice but to take drastic measures.
The throne would remain in name only, while actual governance passed to the Prime Minister.
*And every so often, he seems to want to remind everyone he’s still there.*
The Emperor liked to throw around inconvenient little orders like this now and then.
“Ughhh…”
An order from the Emperor meant everyone in the department had to drop everything.
Still, Carlyle looked down at the assignment, bracing himself to take the brunt of it alone.
*A report with no clear purpose. Like the three of them are going to be much help.*
Even if they helped a little, he’d end up reviewing it all from scratch anyway.
“All three of you. I have to apologize about something today.”
At Carlyle’s voice, the three of them turned to look at him at once.
“Normally we wouldn’t ask trainees to stay for overtime, but… an urgent request just came in.”
The first to speak up, in response, was Leila Rowell.
“Overtime, sir?”
“Ugh — yes. I’ll try to send you home before myself, but I’ll likely need all three of you. Wanted to give you a heads-up.”
Julianna, the top scorer, chirped gamely.
“Yes sir! That’s fine!”
The second-ranked one just stared at Carlyle with a flat, indifferent expression.
And Leila Rowell…
*That is unmistakably murderous intent.*
It was four in the afternoon.
Carlyle hurried to give the three of them their instructions.
“All three of you — go through the case files from the past three months. Tally the incident counts by severity, grade one through three, and note anything unusual for each.”
But before the three of them could bury their heads in the documents—
“Lord Rupesk.”
Leila Rowell raised her hand.
“Hm?”
“Are we only looking at the past three months? Don’t we need something to compare it against — last year, or the previous quarter?”
“…!”
For a moment, his heart pounded, hard.
