Officially, Major Tanya Degurechaff died a war criminal's death, a name consigned to history along with the Empire that created her. Unofficially, she lives on—traded away like a piece of classified hardware, the last currency a defeated nation has left to spend. Her knowledge of the Empire's captured nuclear arsenal is the only thing standing between her and the hangman's noose, and Lieutenant General Zettour has made the calculation without sentiment: a dead hero is worthless, but a living sec
Silver, Posthumous Deal - In the Cage of Surveillance — The Night the Reaper Learns to Be Spoiled
Spring ended, summer came, and autumn passed.
Nearly a year had gone by since Tanya Degurechaff had been taken in to live at Lergen von Waldstein's private residence.
The upscale residential district on the northern outskirts mirrored the four seasons. In spring the roadside trees burst with fresh green, in summer the cicadas sang, and in autumn the ginkgo trees dyed the cobblestones gold. Now the chill of winter rode the cold wind across the garden.
Tanya stood at the window of her room. Her silver curls swayed against her shoulders as she gazed outside with clear blue eyes. Her posture was as straight as it had been in her military days. An eerie stillness, unimaginable from her small frame, made the air around her feel taut.
(Seventeen surveillance points in total.)
In her mind spread the map of the residence's surroundings she had finished constructing over the past year.
(The gap in the garden hedge. The second floor of the house across the way, east-side window. The shadows of the roadside trees. The gaps in the street-stall awnings. The hours when carriage traffic thins. Guard shifts change at two in the morning and two in the afternoon. The blind spot runs along the northwest wall, about three meters.)
She had it all memorized. Her fingertips unconsciously traced a small arc in the air—a habit of trajectory calculation, a motion ingrained in the body of the aerial mage who had once soared through the skies.
(And yet—)
She looked at her reflection in the window glass.
(I cannot take a single step out of here.)
Knowing the surveillance net meant nothing without a means to actively exploit it. She had no allies. No means of communication. Boredom and humiliation filled her days.
She let out a small breath. The white puff fogged the glass. She wiped it with her fingertip, and the view outside came back into sharp focus.
She was being watched. Around the clock, without rest. While she ate, while she slept, while she bathed. The Allied Kingdom's intelligence service, the Eastern Union's special affairs bureau, the Western Alliance, and even the Unified States. Spies from every nation kept recording the Silver Death's every move.
(I am a corpse in a cage.)
On paper, she was already dead. An existence erased from history. And yet that corpse, for some reason, kept its heart beating. She had not expected it to be this painful.
"I am bored."
She murmured it to no one. Her voice was swallowed by the quiet room and vanished.
Around that time, Lergen von Waldstein sat at his desk in the first-floor study. His dark brown hair was cropped short, and his sharp gray eyes glared at documents. His left hand pressed at his stomach, as always. On the face of a man who, at the young age of twenty, effectively commanded the remnants of the Imperial Army, exhaustion was written plainly.
Documents piled in mountains on the desk. Postwar settlement reports, inquiries from various nations, surveillance reports. Tucked among them was a single sheet: the daily activity log for Tanya Degurechaff.
Waking, breakfast, reading, lunch, a walk in the garden, dinner, bed. Every day, an identical schedule. Not a minute's deviation. An unnaturally orderly, far-too-perfect routine.
He picked it up and furrowed his brow.
(It's unsettling.)
A normal person would have some whims. A walk at a slightly different time, a skipped meal. But Tanya had none of that. Like a machine, she repeated the same actions every day.
(What is that girl thinking?)
Pressing his stomach with his left hand, he heaved a deep sigh.
"My stomach hurts..."
It was a verbal tic. In recent years, not a day passed without him saying it. Especially whenever he thought about Tanya, the pain in his stomach only worsened.
(She never asks for anything herself.)
That, conversely, terrified him. She never complained about the food. Never complained about her room. Never said she wanted to go outside. Never said she wanted to read a book. She demanded nothing. She simply accepted, quietly, day after day, a life of being watched.
(A normal person couldn't endure it.)
House arrest. Deprivation of freedom. Round-the-clock surveillance. Anyone who could live under such conditions without a single complaint could not be sane. She was plotting something. There was no other explanation.
(But nothing happens.)
A year was nearly gone. Tanya had made no move. No sign of trying to break through the surveillance net. No attempt to contact the outside. She merely passed each day in silence. That silence gnawed slowly at Lergen's stomach.
Dinner time. The residence's dining room was too large for two people. Lergen and Tanya sat at opposite ends of the long table. Servants carried in the food and quietly withdrew. Steam from the soup drifted slowly up between them.
Tanya kept her back straight and quietly brought her spoon to her lips. No sound, no wasted motion. Her movements were so precise it was as if the meal itself were part of her training.
Lergen stole a glance at her.
(Again today, she says nothing.)
Silence filled the dining room. Only the faint clink of a spoon against the plate.
"...Is the food to your liking?"
Unable to bear the silence, he spoke.
"Yes, it is delicious."
She answered in a voice stripped of emotion.
"...I see."
The conversation ended there. Lergen cursed himself inwardly. There had to be other things to talk about. But he didn't know what to say. He couldn't talk about the war. He couldn't talk about the surveillance. And she couldn't go outside, so he couldn't talk about the weather.
(What am I supposed to talk about with her?)
Feeling the ache in his stomach, he continued eating in silence.
Dinner ended, and Tanya should have returned to her room. But that day was different. She left the dining room, walked straight down the corridor, and stood before the door of Lergen's study.
Knock, knock. A quiet rap.
"...Come in."
A voice came from inside. Tanya opened the door and entered. The study was faintly warm from the fireplace. Lergen sat at his desk with documents spread before him. When he saw her, he stopped and looked up.
"What is it, at this hour?"
Wariness surfaced in his gray eyes. Tanya walked to the center of the study and stopped. Her back was straight. Her blue eyes looked directly at Lergen.
"Colonel. I have a request."
She said it quietly. Lergen's left hand unconsciously pressed at his stomach.
(Here it comes.)
She who had asked for nothing for a full year had finally come to demand something. Preparations for a coup? Part of an information operation? Or a plan to escape? Every possibility raced through his mind at high speed.
He closed the documents and tried to probe her true intent.
"...What is it. Out with it."
His voice was harder than he expected. Tanya was silent for a moment. The fire in the hearth crackled.
"...I would like you to hug me."
Lergen doubted his own ears.
"...Huh?"
A foolish sound escaped him.
"A hug, I said. An embrace. I want you to hold me."
She repeated it flatly. Lergen was speechless for a while.
(A hug? The Silver Death wants a hug?)
Alarm bells rang in his head.
(This is some kind of trap.)
He was certain of it.
"...What are you plotting?"
He pressed her in a low voice.
"I am plotting nothing."
"Don't lie to me. The Silver Death wouldn't simply ask for a hug."
He rose from his chair, came around the desk, and approached her.
"Preparations for a coup? Part of an information operation? Or do you mean to put me off guard and escape? Or perhaps...the flip side of a death wish?"
He piled suspicion upon suspicion. Tanya quietly observed him with cold blue eyes.
(This man is truly hopeless at this.)
(He cannot take my words at face value. No—he won't. He's convinced the Silver Death couldn't possibly have human desires.)
(But that is correct. I should not have human desires.)
"Colonel."
She spoke quietly.
"I am bored. And I am lonely. For this past year, no one has touched me. I have spoken to no one. I have not exchanged a single word with any human being other than you."
Her voice was as flat as ever.
"There is no calculation, no scheme. I simply want to be touched by someone. That is all."
Lergen was shaken.
(Those words can't possibly come from the Silver Death's mouth.)
"...Do you understand what you're saying?"
"I understand. I understand that it is inefficient, irrational, and meaningless as a survival strategy."
She said it.
"But even so, I want you to touch me."
Lergen pressed hard at his stomach with his left hand. A sharp pain shot through him.
"Ngh...my stomach...my stomach medicine..."
He yanked open the desk drawer and searched for the bottle. His fingertips trembled. Tanya watched him intently.
(This man is genuinely shaken by my words.)
(Because he sees me as dangerous. Because he cannot afford to take the Silver Death's words seriously.)
(But even so, this man is trying to see me as a human being.)
(Lergen von Waldstein. He is my watcher, and my only safe harbor.)
(His clumsy kindness is important information that I must record for my survival strategy.)
So she told herself.
Lergen finally found the stomach medicine and tossed two pills into his mouth without even water. The bitter medicine burned his throat. He exhaled deeply and turned back to Tanya.
"...You said you want me to hold you."
"Yes."
"...The reason is boredom and loneliness. That's all?"
"That is all."
Lergen stared into her blue eyes for a while. They were as cold as ever, betraying no emotion. But he felt as though something lurked beneath them.
(Should I hold her?)
(She is a war criminal. The Silver Death. A symbol of mass destruction. Is it morally permissible for me to embrace her?)
(But right now she is just a girl. A lonely girl, abandoned by her nation, erased from history, living all alone in a cage.)
The two thoughts clashed violently.
"...Fine."
He gave in at last.
"I just have to hold you, right?"
"Yes. Please."
Lergen approached her. His tall frame and her small one. The distance between them shrank, one step, then another. Tanya did not move. She only looked up at him with her blue eyes.
Standing before her, Lergen slowly extended his arms. And then, hesitantly, he drew her slender shoulders into an embrace.
Tanya's body was smaller than he had imagined, and cold.
(So this is the Silver Death's body temperature.)
Cold as ice. It hardly seemed the warmth of a living human being.
(I am holding a monster.)
(I am being swayed by this girl.)
(In the postwar settlements, I cut loose any number of people. Some I sent to the gallows. Some lost their families. The weight of it now bears down on these arms.)
Unconsciously, Lergen tightened his arms around Tanya.
Tanya stood still within Lergen's arms. The feel of his uniform. His body heat. The beat of his heart. All of it was far too distant a memory for her.
(On the battlefield, I held people countless times. Wounded subordinates. Comrades as they died. But that was the act of a soldier.)
(This is different.)
(This is not a battlefield. I am not a soldier. I am simply a woman who died on paper.)
(And this man is holding me not as a corpse on paper, but as a human being.)
Something stirred faintly deep in her chest.
Thump.
Her heartbeat quickened.
(Strange.)
She calmly analyzed her body's reaction.
(This is a survival strategy. A means to make him dependent on me and loosen the surveillance. I am using him. That is all.)
So she told herself.
(Yes. This is calculation. I am using his kindness. I am using his sympathy, his guilt.)
(So this heartbeat means nothing.)
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Her heart was so loud.
(This is a survival strategy.)
(This is calculation.)
(This is exploitation.)
She repeated it over and over. But she was beginning to notice that her self-persuasion was spinning in circles.
(Why am I so shaken?)
(Why don't I want to escape these arms?)
(Why do I want to feel this warmth for just a little lon
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