He stepped out into the garden before six in the morning. The sun was still low, the sky caught between orange and white. A thin mist drifted through Feria's alleys, and everything was quiet. Shinji had a habit of coming out to the garden before boiling water—a fifteen-year-old ritual. He would check the sky's color to read the day's weather, feel the soil beneath his feet to gauge its moisture. Nothing remarkable. Just the small movements of morning. But this morning, his foot stopped before it could touch the ground. Four wooden stakes had been driven into the earth around the collapsed pit. They were brand new. The wood still held its pale color. They'd been driven in last night—while Shinji slept. Yellow cloth was strung between them, and a metal plate hung from the center. Shinji approached and read the engraved letters. "No Entry—Ruin Management Ordinance Article 8, Applied." The seal of the Kingdom Information Bureau—Geheimwache—was stamped on the right edge. Shinji stood there for a while. Morning mist crawled around his feet. A rooster crowed somewhere. The sound of Feria waking up. He reached out to touch the stake. His fingertips stopped short. (What happens if I touch this?) Nothing good. That was the right answer. The stake had been driven by the Kingdom Information Bureau's authority. The moment he tried to pull it out with his bare hands, it would become evidence of violating the Ruin Management Ordinance. The legal foundation was entirely on Zeno's side. Shinji had nothing. A footstep crunched. A small shadow emerged from the neighboring garden—the Seidel family's laundry-drying area. Seidel Lynn. The fourteen-year-old girl who lived to Shinji's south. She was also the one who'd first discovered the pit's collapse. Lynn carried laundry in both arms, heading toward the clothesline, and glanced briefly at Shinji's garden. Their eyes met. Lynn looked at Shinji for about a second, then withdrew into the house without a word. The sliding door closed with a soft *pat*. (Yeah... that makes sense.) She couldn't have called out to him. Shinji himself didn't know what to say to a neighbor while standing before those stakes and that plate. Lynn was a smart girl. She understood that saying nothing was the right choice. Shinji withdrew his hand from the stake and went back to boil water. On his way to work, his mind kept calculating. How to remove this seal. He'd already filed a report. He was waiting for the Ashwing Bureau—the Royal Ruin Survey and Preservation Bureau—to conduct their investigation. If they came, the seal's reason might change from "pending danger assessment" to "confirmed, removal authorized." But it would take weeks at minimum, months at worst, for an Ashwing investigator to reach Feria. Until then, the seal remained. If he could consult with Alphas, maybe the branch could say something about the Kingdom Information Bureau's actions. That was Shinji's calculation at this point. —— When he arrived at the guild branch—the Twin Blades Beacon Feria Branch—the air around the reception area felt different. Not that anything specific had changed. The request board was neatly organized. The material settlement window's shelves were undisturbed. A colleague was sorting ledgers on a back shelf. The moment Shinji entered, they noticed and said, "Good morning." But they didn't meet his eyes. Still holding the ledger, they moved to another shelf. Until yesterday, whenever Shinji came in, they'd say, "You're early again, Tsubaki." Just that. But today, that small thing didn't happen. He took his usual seat at the right end of the counter and opened the ledger. His elbow naturally settled into the worn depression. Fifteen years of sitting in the same spot had shaped his body's memory. The first person to approach the window was Gram, a D-rank adventurer in his twenties. A Feria native, he'd made a habit of saying "Thanks for your hard work, Tsubaki" every time he reported a quest. Three years of that habit. Today, Gram placed his paperwork on the counter. "Thank you," he said. He turned his back. He didn't look back. Shinji stamped the documents and moved them to the shelf. He proceeded to the next task. Before noon, he knocked on the branch director's office door. No answer. He knocked again. Still nothing. A small blackboard beside the door had words written in chalk: "On headquarters business—return date undetermined." (Headquarters business.) There'd been no mention of it last week. If there was a business trip, the staff would have been notified in advance. The fact that they hadn't meant it was decided suddenly—or decided *for* him suddenly. After Zeno moved, Alphas disappeared. There was no proof. But there was no reliable superior left. In the Feria branch, there was no one to consult about this problem now. Shinji left the blackboard and returned to the counter. He opened the ledger. He ran his pen across the page. To anyone watching from outside, he was just a clerk doing his usual work. But inside, something was being worn away, bit by bit. —— In the early afternoon, the branch's front door opened. The air changed. In that single second, Shinji knew. A tall man in a black coat. Silver short hair slightly disheveled, cold gray eyes behind silver-rimmed glasses. A thin scar beneath his left eye. An old silver ring gleamed on his right hand. Zeno Lax, investigator for the Kingdom Information Bureau. With the same posture as yesterday, carrying the same weight, Zeno entered the branch. This time, instead of the counter, he approached the colleague sorting ledgers in the back. "As part of a business inspection of the Feria branch, I'd like to review the processing records from the past month." The colleague handed over a stack of documents. Zeno accepted them and began turning through them slowly. Shinji watched from the counter window, eyes on that back. Zeno looked up. Their eyes met. One second. Two seconds. Then Zeno's gaze returned to the colleague. "Three instances of record omission were confirmed this month." His voice was calm. Emotionless. He spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, stating it plainly. Shinji stood up from the counter. "That's——" "The records have already been submitted." Zeno cut him off quietly. His gaze still faced the colleague. He wasn't looking at Shinji. Shinji stood frozen. There were no record omissions. Shinji knew this. In fifteen years of processing guild documents, he'd never made a single mistake. He'd repeated confirmations so meticulously he'd been called overly careful. Three omissions couldn't exist. But. Shinji had no way to overturn what the Kingdom Information Bureau had recorded in their "inspection report." The clerk could only appeal to the branch director. The branch director was absent. A direct application to headquarters required formal documentation and a submission period, and results would take at least a month. During that time, only one record would remain on paper: "a clerk with three record omissions in the past month." (Fabrication.) He knew it. But knowing didn't change anything. Shinji stood there, fists clenched. Zeno made a final notation on the documents, bowed slightly to the colleague, and left the branch. The hem of his coat disappeared beyond the door. Shinji slowly sat back down. He opened the ledger. He picked up his pen. For a while, he couldn't write. —— When work ended in the evening, he stepped out onto the main street. As he passed the Mudwheel Tavern—Feria's only bar and inn—he thought he saw red near the entrance. He stopped without thinking. (Seraphim?) He turned around. It was someone else's coat. A reddish-beige thick overcoat. Nothing like Seraphim's vivid red. Different age, different build. Shinji quickened his pace and turned down an alley. He'd been mistaken. That was all. In his home's kitchen, he took out a pot. There was leftover lamb from yesterday. He decided to make additional soup. Out of habit, he prepared more than enough for one. Three onions, a handful of soup beans. As he set it on the fire, he realized after a moment. It was for two people. Shinji stirred the pot, trying to remove half an onion. But the broth mixed with it, and he couldn't tell which was which anymore. The beans had sunk. There was nothing he could do now. He ended up placing the entire pot on the table for one person. Too much soup for one, steaming away. Beyond the window lay the sealed garden. Four stakes and yellow cloth. The collapsed pit beyond, stone stairs. The door he and Seraphim hadn't yet opened, waiting on the other side. It had been several days since Seraphim stopped coming. Today, for the first time, that weight settled in his stomach. He'd known she wouldn't come. He'd sensed that Zeno had said something to her. But facing the leftover soup tonight, only tonight, it became real. That relationship—more of a mismatched duo than master and student. Seraphim complaining his notebook sketches were terrible, declaring she'd learn on-site and descending first anyway, that back of hers. Zeno's single word had cut it cleanly away. Shinji took a spoonful of soup. It tasted neither good nor bad—the same as always. —— Night fell. Shinji went out to the garden without his exploration lamp. He didn't intend to descend tonight. He couldn't. He just wanted to see. He stood before the fence and gazed at the collapsed pit beyond the stakes. The moon was out, and the pit's rim stones were faintly visible. Only the first step of the stairs was barely illuminated by moonlight. Beyond that was darkness. He held his father's journal against his chest. (What's beyond that door?) The warmth from when he'd touched the seal still lingered in his palm. The seal that matched perfectly with the symbol his father had recorded. Why had his father documented it? What connection had his father—who'd died around the time Shinji was born—had with this labyrinth? He might never be able to confirm it. That's what he thought now. A footstep sounded behind him. The sound of stone pavement being stepped on. Hard shoe sounds. A gait with evenly distributed weight—emotionless, uniform steps. Shinji knew who it was before turning around. Zeno Lax stood in the shadowed alley. His black coat dissolved into the night. Only his silver-rimmed glasses caught the moonlight, gleaming faintly. Perhaps he had nothing to say. He simply stood there. Watching Shinji. Then he opened his mouth quietly. "...It would have been better if you'd simply remained a clerk." His voice was cold. Not angry. Not accusatory. Just stating fact. "Know your place—unlit old man." The final words fell quietly into Feria's night. Shinji's fists clenched. No voice came out. There was anger. Certainly anger. But beneath it lay something else. Fifteen years of dull resignation. Something that had always been there since birth with his unlit constitution. He couldn't become an adventurer. He couldn't go to the front lines. All he could do was organize documents, maintain ledgers, and verify report text. He'd thought that was fine. He'd told himself it was enough. So when the pit opened in his garden, for the first time, it felt like a place he could actually step into. But in the end, stakes were driven there too. (I guess it was impossible for me after all.) That voice was crushing his throat. Zeno turned on his heel. His footsteps receded. He turned the corner and vanished. Shinji approached the fence and slowly pressed his forehead against the cold metal bars. His eyes closed. He had nothing now. No authority to pull the stakes. No way to overturn the records. No words to stop Seraphim. Nothing. Not the moment they'd high-fived in the garden that night. Not the warmth in his hand when he'd touched the seal. Everything had stopped here. Shinji stood there with his eyes closed for a long time. —— Back in his room, he tried to put his father's jo