IMDCA 6

Chapter 6

What’s Scarier Than the Monster Duke?

“Was the morning air always this crisp?”

Head Clerk Oscar stepped through the door of the Bureau with an unusually light and brisk stride. Thanks to the new clerk who seemed bold and dedicated to her work, today’s morning sunlight seemed to shine especially brilliantly. It was the moment he was humming and about to sit down at his desk.

“Aaah! You startled me!!”

In a corner of the office untouched by the light stood René, looking at him with a pale, haunted face.

“R-René? Why do you look like that first thing in the morning? Did something happen during your duty last night…!”

“Head Clerk.”

René came over with hollow eyes and suddenly bowed deeply at the waist.

“Although it was a very short time—just one day—thank you for everything. I won’t forget your kindness, Head Clerk.”

“……?!”

Oscar’s bright smile froze solid like stone. Thank you for everything? Wasn’t that what the terrified clerks said when they fled and quit the Bureau?!

In Oscar’s mind, the warning sirens of ‘Emergency, Emergency!’ blared like mad.

“R-René! What do you mean you’re quitting all of a sudden! Is it the pay you’re unhappy with? Or perhaps…….”

Truthfully, René was seriously agonizing over whether she should quit and run away right this moment.

But she had sealed the music box’s curse and falsified the residue levels in the record, so when the full moon rose again, if someone else took the night duty shift, they would realize the music box’s curse had been sealed.

And now that she knew a Valea family item was here, she couldn’t simply run away either.

“Ah, I’m not quitting. Actually, last night…….”

René confessed about Duke Kael, whom she had encountered during her night duty. That starting this morning, she had been ordered to come up to the Director’s Office and work as his direct clerk.

The moment he heard those words, Oscar’s dead eyes gleamed eerily.

‘The Director’s Office direct report? The Director’s Office direct subordinate?!’

How long had it taken to hire a new clerk? René, who had calmly continued her interview even amid a curse rampage and given perfect practical answers.

And she was the person who, on her first day, had clung to her trembling legs before a B-grade monster and stubbornly sought out her own duties.

“……Let’s go.”

Oscar growled low and grabbed René’s wrist.

“What? W-where are we…….”

“I cannot let you be taken from me like this.”

“……Me?”

A fierce light swirled in Oscar’s eyes.

In fact, the Winslow Marquess family, to which Oscar belonged, and the Eckhardt Ducal family had maintained ties for a very long time. Oscar too had known Duke Kael since childhood, but within the Bureau he had always maintained a perfect superior-subordinate relationship and shown meticulous courtesy. But this morning was an exception.

Kwaang—!

The Director’s Office on the top floor of the Bureau. The massive door burst open as if it would shatter, and Oscar stormed in, panting, with René’s hand in his.

“Kael!! No—Di-rec-tor! What is the meaning of this!”

Kael’s red eyes, which had been reviewing documents, narrowed sharply. Oscar, who always addressed him with meticulous courtesy as ‘Director’ and kept his distance within the Bureau, now stood with bloodshot eyes, snarling like a hunting dog.

And behind him stood René, staring so intently at the back of Oscar’s head as if trying desperately not to meet Kael’s eyes.

“Head Clerk. Are you in your right mind? Barging in without even knocking, smashing the door.”

“Do I look like I’m in my right mind right now?!”

Oscar strode up to the desk and began spitting as he spoke.

“How can you take away an employee I just hired overnight! This delicate young lady is my subordinate, one I barely managed to break in by grinding up my dying old heart! I absolutely will not give her up! It’s not as if the Director is going to come down and fill out paperwork himself!”

At Oscar’s ferocious outcry—the first of its kind Kael had ever seen in his life—Kael’s cold, steady pupils momentarily quaked.

It had only been a command tossed out on a whim, out of curiosity about the sweet taste of the curse René had left behind, yet Oscar was foaming at the mouth as if he would bite his own tongue and die any moment, which rather left Kael flustered.

“No, I was merely thinking this clerk…….”

“If you want to take her, then step over my corpse! I’m going to keel over and die from overtime soon enough without René anyway, so it doesn’t matter. Do come to my only friend’s funeral, Di-rec-tor!”

At Oscar’s relentless barrage, pouring out nonstop, Kael unconsciously flinched and drew his body back.

He could strike the back of this noisy Oscar’s neck and knock him unconscious to enforce his will, but if René were frightened by that sight and quit her clerk job and went into hiding…… he would never be able to dig out the secret of curse dismantling.

“……A-all right. I understand. Enough.”

Kael waved his hand with a shudder.

“Lady Argen will continue working in Zone 3. Satisfied?”

Kael glared at Oscar with his red eyes bulging.

“Thank you, Director.”

Oscar, having achieved his goal, instantly changed his expression as if nothing had happened, gave a brief greeting, and then grabbed René’s wrist and left the room. Left alone, Kael stared for a while at the door the two had closed behind them.

“……Didn’t she only work one day?”

Suddenly finding Oscar’s behavior outrageous, Kael slammed his large fist on the desk.

“And he even holds her hand…….”

Kael scowled and growled low like a child whose favorite toy had been snatched away.

“René, from now on don’t worry about anything and just work under me!”

“Yes, Head Clerk…. Thank you.”

René, dragged out into the corridor by Oscar with her wrist in his grip, looked at him with a dazed expression.

It would be a hundred, a thousand times better than being beside Duke Kael, who seemed like he could see right through her secret, but……

The madness Oscar had radiated in front of the Duke earlier was more vicious than any A-grade evil spirit.

‘I-I’m going to be okay…… right?’

Watching Oscar’s retreating figure as he hummed and scurried off to the end of the corridor, René gently bit her lip.

Click. Click.

In the predawn hours, when only the sound of the second hand of the old clock on the wall echoed quietly. It was exactly ten minutes until the shift change with the day team.

René was organizing today’s night duty work log. Just ten more minutes and she could safely hand over and return to where a cozy bed awaited.

Thinking about everything that had happened from the interview to her first day of work was dizzying, but the past few days’ work had gone very smoothly.

‘Come to think of it, I heard he doesn’t usually come down to Zone 3…….’

For the past few days, Duke Kael had been making surprise visits to the underground curse storage areas, startling people.

The clerks, already working with tension, were jolted whenever the Duke visited, but each time Oscar rushed over and chased the Duke away with a menacing look. Madness that overcomes demonic energy—what a thing.

‘Head Clerk Oscar, he’s more dependable than I thought?’

Just as she smiled softly, set down her quill, and was about to pack up her things.

Kkigigigik—

Behind her, the heavy iron door of Zone 3 opened with an unpleasant grinding sound. René reflexively furrowed her brow.

Before dawn, at this hour, no one should be coming down to the underground.

“I-is there a Bureau duty officer here…!”

Two special transport team drivers, pale as death, hurried in pushing a cart loaded with a large wooden crate. Their thick protective suits lined with silver thread were soaked through with cold sweat, and the fingertips gripping the crate were trembling finely.

“What’s the matter? You must know the rule that bringing in new heresy relics is forbidden just before sunrise.”

The two looked to be in bad shape, but René responded in the most businesslike and cold voice she could manage. In truth, for a low-ranking clerk, an uninvited guest ten minutes before shift change was scarier than an evil spirit.

But the transport drivers didn’t even pretend to listen to René, and shoved the cart abruptly toward her.

“Please save us! If we take this back like this…! Anyway, emergency acceptance approval has come down from above!”

“Emergency approval?”

“It’s a relic confiscated from Count Vladimir’s estate. W-well then, good luck!!”

Before René could even answer, the transport drivers abandoned the crate as if throwing away their lives and fled outside the iron door.

Bang!

The sound of the iron door shutting firmly echoed through the dark underground corridor.

“Ten minutes! Couldn’t you have come ten minutes later!!”

René desperately shouted at the firmly closed iron door, but all that remained in the empty space was her and the wooden crate emitting an ominous aura.