My mouth hung open over the last scene I’d just seen.
Huh? Why is the male lead crying?
Wait, hold on, a romance-fantasy male lead, crying?
Wasn’t there only one situation, across the entire genre, where the male lead cried?
When the heroine’s in absolutely mortal danger!
Or, worst case scenario…?
Right before the heroine dies! …But did anything like that ever happen to Julianna?
The heroine had been made of glass early on as a new hire, sure, but once she settled in, nothing that dangerous ever happened to her again.
I chewed on the root, racking my brain over it.
What’s going on? Did I parboil this wrong or something?
But the mandrake’s effect had already run out, and no more scenes surfaced after that.
“What even was that…”
Had there been some development like that buried in the parts I’d skimmed through with half-shut eyes?
Did I miss it while I was too busy complaining about the pace being disgustingly slow?
Beyond the Golden Gate really did hold the record for the single most brutally slow-moving romance I’d ever read.
Black hair, red eyes — Carlyle had to be the real male lead, and yet they hadn’t even managed a first kiss. Honestly.
A little unsettling, sure, but the rest of what I’d seen from the original story had come through crystal clear.
I hurried to sort through what I’d actually gotten.
【”…It really was such a shame. This happened while you were still in training.”
Carlyle recalled the old memory in a low voice.
Julianna listened closely to an incident from before her own official assignment.
Her senior had always been a composed man, but she’d never seen him look this despondent before.
“That was our best chance to take him alive. It was my fault — I got to the scene too late.”
“Senior…”
“If we’d only found the child a little earlier, that day…”
“It wasn’t your fault, senior!”
Julianna shook her head, meaning every word of it.
The capital’s 20th district is a fairly busy area, though.
There was a park there that stayed lit late into the night…
Who would ever imagine a kidnapping happening in a place like that?
And in the early evening, no less!】
It was a conversation about an incident that had happened right before the heroine’s official assignment began.
Which meant — this exact window of time, since I’d joined a little earlier than she originally had!
“…! Perfect.”
The capital’s 20th district. Even the location had narrowed down perfectly.
Now, how do I feed this to the male lead and Seamus without it looking suspicious?
The “eye that sees a core of black magic” could pass as some Black Spoon Division-exclusive skill, fine.
But “I think I might have gained the power of foresight, too!”?
Even if the Black Spoon Division collapses after that, I’d end up haunting this palace as a ghost for the rest of my life.
So I needed to shut up and find some other way to let the two of them know.
“Hmm…”
A solution simpler than I’d expected occurred to me, and I grinned.
I might be the lowest rung on this company’s ladder right now, but let’s not forget one thing.
Every single research report still gets written by me, in the end!
Regardless of industry, what’s a new hire’s number one job in any organization?
Not booking the restaurant reservation — writing the report.
And not just any report — gathering the raw material at the very base of it! Pulling all-nighters combing through every source imaginable! Formatting it all to the company’s exact template!
And then having your boss take all the credit for it, on top of everything!
That’s the entire virtue of being a new hire, damn it.
“Rowell, what’s this?”
And so, “voluntarily offering research up to your senior” was set into motion.
“It’s something I looked into on my own, senior, regarding the kidnapping case.”
A few days had passed since I ate the mandrake.
Carefully, I held out a fifteen-page report to the male lead.
Ostensibly, it was a summary of the locations across the capital most likely to see a kidnapping.
…That was the framing, sure, but I’d written it with the top pick spelled out shamelessly in plain sight.
The capital’s 20th district! Just go check there already!
But naturally, no senior takes a junior’s guess seriously without any evidence behind it.
“But Rowell, the areas you’ve ranked highest still have people coming and going even in the evening.”
“Still, senior, wouldn’t that make them easier to exploit exactly because people let their guard down there?”
And this was the moment for shameless confidence, honed through years of actual work experience, to shine.
“Take a look at this!”
Riding the wave of the male lead’s confusion, I pointed to a dazzling pie chart in front of him.
“I looked into five years’ worth of statistics on where kidnappings are most likely to happen. It’s not limited to children specifically, but among the elderly and women, twenty-four percent of abductions happen near the victim’s own residence, and an average of fifty-six point four percent occur in broad daylight.”
I shoved the pie chart at him without pausing to breathe, and the male lead looked thoroughly taken aback.
“Rowell. When did you have time to look into all this…?”
“I requested the data from the Capital Security Team under the Mage Knights’ Division — the one you introduced me to!”
Hadn’t the Mage Knights’ Division’s own Artifact Crafting Team just gotten thoroughly torn apart? And by a fellow noble’s own report, no less!
Heh. I bet everyone over there gets it now.
That if you don’t sit up straight and behave yourself these days, you’re liable to get screwed…
Thanks to that, my requests for urgent data — coming from a lowly commoner official — got surprisingly fast turnaround.
Nice to see other people not slacking off, while I’m out here working myself to the bone.
But more than anything, there was a real reason I was handing over this cover-story of a report.
The male lead actually listens to his junior more than I expected…?
I’d assumed at first he’d be the strict, by-the-book type of mentor, but he never got irritated over me spending effort on something that seemed beside the point.
“When did you even find time for this…”
“I worked on it whenever I had a spare moment.”
Since I’d rather die than pull an all-nighter, I’d done it after rushing through lunch, and by coming in early instead.
While the male lead quietly read through the report, I studied his face.
That pale, statue-like face, set off by that strange, striking black hair.
The atmosphere really is something else.
Even wearing down from the overtime, somehow it only made him look more decadently attractive, and it suited him perfectly.
And underneath those black lashes, those shadowed red eyes…
【”…I.”
“No matter what it takes, I’ll find you again…”】
Remembering that scene of tears spilling from those very eyes left me feeling strangely unsettled.
Very, very unsettled, actually.
Him… crying?
And right at that moment, wouldn’t you know it, the male lead pressed a hand to his brow.
“Rowell, you really are…”
“Ah, senior. Are you all right?”
“…Mm, I’m fine.”
His voice sounded like it was trembling, though. Was he really?
A moment later, he cleared his throat and nodded.
Was it just me, or had the corners of his eyes gone a little red…?
“Ahem… I’ll look this report over more closely and reinforce the investigation team. Seems like you’re right that we’ve missed a few things.”
“…! Thank you so much!”
“You really did put in the work here. Thank you, Rowell.”
Ha, thanks, my foot.
Just go catch the kidnapper out in the field, senior.
Let’s hurry up and catch whoever’s behind this, so we can both get out of this department already.
And honestly, deep down, I felt reassured.
The orphanage is in the 15th district, so it should be fine.
The 20th district was quite a distance away, after all.
More than that, I’d shoved this much of a hint in their faces — surely the male lead and Seamus would handle it just fine. Of course they would.
…After handing my report over to the male lead.
For several days after that, there was no clocking out on time at the Black Spoon Division.
But finally, on Friday evening, at exactly six o’clock, I got to clock out right on the dot.
The sky was still bright, the breeze pleasantly cool — genuinely perfect weather.
Hmm. Maybe I’ll take a bath and enjoy the view from the balcony after.
Yeah, let’s crack open a can of beer (salary deduction: 0.3 marks).
I’ll pick one up at the staff cafeteria!
But the moment I got back to the dormitory, the staff member who’d once scanned my barcode came rushing over to me.
Something about her expression sent an unwelcome chill straight through my chest.
“Miss Rowell! There’s an urgent call from outside for you, right now.”
“Sorry? For me?”
“Yes, right away! Please come to the office immediately.”
