The Eminence in Shadow

Chapter 5

Sneaking Around in Japan, Just Like the Old Days!!

After that, Akane and her squad find the three knights’ bodies and return to Nishino University.

The gate to the base is locked tight.

Night is when the guards are at their most alert.

After all, that’s when the beasts are active.

The bulwark’s perimeter is illuminated by bright lights, and keen-eyed knights patrol atop it all through the night. The purpose of the tall walls is twofold: to stop beasts from getting in, and to make it easy to sound the alarm if any draw near.

This day, though, what the guards find isn’t a beast—it’s Akane and her squad.

“And that’s all you have to report?”

The first one to come meet her is her brother, Akira Nishino. He’s wearing glasses and a lab coat and has an anxious, puckered-up look on his face.

“Yes. I take full responsibility for what happened.”

Akane’s just finished handing over her wounded squadmates to the medical team and telling her brother what went down.

She’s the one who took a bunch of knights off-base at night without permission. She still thinks her brother was in the wrong, but she has no intention of trying to avoid the consequences for what she’s done.

“That’s not for you to decide.”

“The others were only following my orders.”

“

Really?

”

“Really.”

Akira gives her answer a twisted grin. “I’m going to all the others next and asking them what happened, too. It’ll be interesting to see how they remember it—whether they were obeying your orders, or acting on their own volition.”

“………”

Akane didn’t give her squadmates a single order. To the contrary, she’d been planning on going in solo. They were the ones who forced her to let them come along.

“Giving me false testimony isn’t going to do you any favors, you know.”

Akane hangs her head.

“Still, I’m not a monster. I hear you brought back two refugees, and that one of them was an Awakened.”

“…That’s right.”

“Where are they? Take me to them.”

“They’re unconscious. We should wait for them to wake up and get their bearings before we—”

“Take me to them, now.”

“…Yes, sir.”

Akane left the two refugees in the infirmary in the base’s residential area.

Like every base, their residential area is wildly overcrowded. Even in this section, where Akane’s room is, there are people conspicuously sleeping in the hallways.

“They’re in here,” Akane says.

When she enters the room, she’s greeted by a chipper voice from within. “Akane, is that you? Perfect timing. One of the kids just—”

A woman comes over wearing a lab coat and a friendly smile.

When she spots Akira standing behind Akane, though, the words get caught in her throat.