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 - Life outside the documents — the morning the Grim Reaper discards her name, and still chooses
It was around the time when the first signs of spring finally began to soften the garden's soil.
The surveillance surrounding Lergen von Waldstein's private residence had been dwindling little by little over the past few years. The great powers' schemes had settled for the time being. The twenty-three watch points that had once existed could now be counted on one hand. Even so, the fact that she was dead on paper had not changed in the slightest.
Tanya Degurechaff sat on an old wooden bench in a corner of the garden. Her silver curls swayed in the wind that still carried a lingering chill. Her clear blue eyes gazed at the distant sky beyond the budding trees. Her posture remained as straight as it had been in her military days. The stillness emanating from her small frame made the surrounding air feel taut.
Her fingertips traced the corner of the book resting on her lap. Five years had passed since she was taken into this residence. She had not spent her time inside the cage of surveillance doing nothing. The spies who came to watch her had, before anyone noticed, been reshaped into her own intelligence network. She had fed false information, played the great powers against one another, and against a world that had erased her existence, she had quietly but surely driven in her wedges.
In her mind, the many schemes she had set in motion over the years surfaced and faded. How she had made a trainee spy of the Allied Kingdom named Erika Alvarez her first pawn. How the false information she had fed through Erika had thrown the surveillance networks of various nations into disarray. And how, threading through the gaps in that web, she was gradually reestablishing thin connections with her former subordinates.
Her gaze caught the figure of a man standing at the garden's entrance.
Lergen von Waldstein. His dark brown hair was cropped short, and his sharp gray eyes were fixed on her. He still hadn't broken the habit of pressing his left hand to his stomach. At twenty-five, his face no longer held the pallor of youth; in its place were the deep lines of exhaustion carved by the heavy burden of postwar administration.
"So you were here."
He stood beside Tanya, looking down at her as she sat on the bench.
"Yes. The outside air is still preferable to being indoors."
Tanya answered without looking at him. Her voice, as always, carried no trace of emotional inflection—nearly monotone.
Lergen lowered himself onto the bench beside her. The wood creaked faintly under their combined weight.
Silence filled the garden. Only the sound of the wind rustling the leaves could be heard.
Lergen murmured inwardly. Whenever he was alone with Tanya, this silence invariably descended. She never initiated conversation. And he never knew what to say. Watcher and watched. Guardian and ward. An ambiguous relationship that was neither, and it had lain between them all this time.
"...Hey."
It was Lergen who spoke first.
"Is there something you want to talk about?"
He studied her profile. Silver hair swayed in the wind, brushing against her pale cheek. Those blue eyes remained fixed on the distant sky.
Tanya was silent for a while.
Then, slowly, she opened her mouth.
"There is something I must tell you."
Her voice was just slightly lower than usual.
Lergen waited for her words. His stomach gave a sharp pang.
"When I asked you to hold me. That was a survival strategy."
Tanya spoke in a flat tone.
"It was a calculation to draw your sympathy and make you dependent on me. I was the one who spread the rumors, too. It was to create slack in the surveillance network by damaging your reputation."
Her words pierced Lergen's chest like a cold blade.
He thought inwardly. He had vaguely sensed it. That she was no ordinary girl. That her every gesture and action was driven by calculation. That the embrace that night, the rumors that spread the next day—all of it had been rolling around in the palm of her hand.
But even so, he could not bring himself to abandon her.
"...I know."
Lergen said quietly.
Tanya's shoulders trembled, just barely.
"...You knew, and yet why—"
For the first time, she turned to face him. Her blue eyes looked straight into his gray ones. In them was a flicker of agitation—rare for her.
"I also watched you as a danger while protecting you. That's all there is to it."
Lergen said it without averting his gaze from hers.
"Whatever you're plotting, what I do won't change. I keep you alive, here. That is the task I've been given."
"A task, is it."
Tanya murmured softly.
"So to you, I am nothing more than the object of a task."
A faint trace of disappointment mixed into her voice.
Lergen screamed inwardly. It's not because it's a task. I'm protecting you because I wanted to protect you.
But he could not bring himself to say those words. He was a man who was poor at showing his emotions. The more he worried, the harsher his words became. He knew that clumsy side of himself better than anyone.
Silence fell between them once more.
The wind blew hard. The trees rustled, and fallen leaves swirled upward.
Unconsciously, Lergen reached toward Tanya's hand. Because her fingertips had looked so terribly cold.
His fingers touched hers.
Tanya did not pull her hand away.
Cold fingertips. But beneath them, her body heat was certainly there.
"...You're cold."
He wrapped her hand in both of his.
"Your hands are warm."
Tanya said quietly, feeling the warmth of his hands.
"Perhaps I was only using this warmth of yours."
Her voice was trembling.
"Perhaps it wasn't calculation. Perhaps the reason I wanted you to touch me was really just... because I was lonely."
She spoke aloud, for the first time, a truth she hadn't even realized herself.
Lergen tightened his grip on her hand, just slightly.
"That's fine too."
He said quietly.
"Exploitation, calculation, loneliness—whatever it is, it doesn't matter. I will stay by your side."
Tanya's blue eyes wavered.
For the first time, she squeezed his hand back of her own accord.
"...My calculations have gone awry."
She murmured softly.
"You are far more... foolish, clumsy, and kind than I ever thought."
Her voice was wet with tears.
Lergen drew her into his arms.
Tanya buried her face in his chest. The sound of his heartbeat reached her ears. A steady, powerful beat. It seemed to slowly melt her frozen heart.
"I thought I was using you. I thought that if I wasn't, I had no right to be by your side."
She said through her tears.
"But I was wrong. I just wanted to be near you. I wanted to feel your warmth. That was all—and yet I was so afraid to admit it."
Her tears soaked into Lergen's uniform.
Lergen gently held her back.
"It's all right now."
He whispered into her ear.
"You don't have to force yourself to be strong anymore. In front of me, just be yourself."
Tanya wept silently in his arms.
Eight years of loneliness, fear, and despair spilled out as tears.
Holding her, Lergen looked up at the sky.
The spring sky was endlessly high, blue, and clear.
Beneath this sky, she had been fighting all alone all this time, he thought. I want to protect this girl. Not because it's my task. Because this heart of mine wishes it.
He felt, for the first time, that he had been honest with his own feelings.
---
That afternoon, the residence received a visitor.
Zettour von Stauffenberg. His salt-and-pepper hair swept back, the intellectual light behind his thin silver-rimmed glasses gleaming—a seasoned schemer. He was the very man who had once kept Tanya alive as a nuclear bargaining chip, and then erased her from the records.
He sat deep in the sofa of the reception room, a thin wisp of smoke rising from the pipe in his hand.
"It's been a while, Major Degurechaff."
He looked at Tanya and wore a knowing smile.
"Lieutenant General. Whenever you come here, it's always when you bring ill tidings."
Tanya said coldly as she sat across from him.
"Ill tidings, is it. Perhaps so."
Zettour drew deeply on his pipe and exhaled slowly.
"I have decided to appear before the international tribunal."
At his words, Lergen's eyes widened.
"What? You're going to be judged yourself?"
"That's right. The responsibility for the captured nuclear weapons deal lies with me. By turning myself in, I will draw the international community's attention onto me alone. That should ease the scrutiny on you two somewhat."
He spoke in a composed tone.
"I'm surprised you would do something so noble."
Tanya stared into his eyes as if probing his true intentions.
"Noble, is it. Does it look that way to you?"
Zettour laughed self-deprecatingly.
"I made you a disposable pawn. I have no intention of running from that sin. By standing in the same place of judgment as you, I want to make it at least a form of atonement."
"Atonement, is it."
Tanya murmured, as if turning his words over.
"So I am to be dragged along by your self-satisfaction."
Her voice was cold.
"Self-satisfaction suits me fine. I will simply walk the path I believe in."
Zettour said quietly, receiving her cold gaze.
"Do you resent me?"
Tanya thought for a moment before answering.
"I don't resent you. What you did was a rational decision for the state. Had I been in your position, I would have done the same."
Her words were genuine.
"However, I will not forget that you used me. And I have used you to survive this far. We're even."
Hearing her words, Zettour smiled with satisfaction.
"Fascinating. You've grown into a far more dangerous existence than I imagined."
He extinguished his pipe and stood.
"You have surpassed me. You've fully turned to the side that uses others. That is proof my eye was not mistaken."
He turned his back to Tanya and made to leave the room.
"Lieutenant General."
Tanya called after him.
"When you are judged, I will not stand in the courtroom. I am, after all, a person who is dead on paper."
Without turning around, Zettour answered.
"Yes, that's fine. Survive outside the documents."
With those words, he left the room.
Lergen watched his retreating figure with a complicated expression.
"...What do you suppose he wanted to tell you?"
He asked Tanya.
"Who knows. The thoughts of a seasoned schemer are beyond me."
Tanya said that and looked out the window.
He told me to live. The man who erased me told me to live.
An emotion she could not put into words swirled in her chest.
---
Several days later.
In her room, Tanya was composing a letter.
It was a letter to be sent to her former subordinates through the intelligence network she had built by hijacking the spy networks of various nations.
I have chosen to live outside the documents. I must let them know.
She took up her fountain pen and wrote the characters onto the stationery.
'I, Tanya Degurechaff, am a person who has died on paper. However, I am alive. And I will continue to live. Outside the documents, I will walk my life, by my own will.'
She entrusted the letter to Erika Alvarez.
"Erika. Please deliver this as usual."
"Yes! Leave it to me, Tanya!"
Erika replied energetically, her chestnut waves bouncing. As the first pawn of Tanya's intelligence network, she had by now become a thoroughly capable courier.
"But Tanya, are you really sure? Marriage, of all things... I was so surprised."
She said with a slightly worried look.
"Yes. It is my decision."
Tanya answered quietly.
"I see... Well, if you've decided, Tanya, then I'll support you! Besides, I think you and Colonel Lergen make a great match!"
She said with a bright smile.
Seeing her smile, Tanya relaxed her lips just a little.
"You still have such a blissfully simple head, don't you."
"Ehehe, I'll take that as a compliment!"
Erika left the room laughing.
Tanya watched her go and let out a small sigh.
Now the preparations were complete. All that remained was to wait for their reactions.
She looked out the window.
The spring sunlight brightly illuminate
Novelia is an AI-powered platform to read original light novels and fan fiction, create your own in just a few taps, and chat with the characters. New, illustrated episodes arrive daily — free to start.