The walk back to the Academy took longer than it should have.
Not because Isaac was moving slowly or because of the mana-bird on his shoulder. His pace was simply what it always was, the unhurried quality that covered ground without announcing itself.
But the residential quarter's street geometry in the evening had a different character from the daytime, the ambient population thinned to the subset of people who had reasons to be outside after the evening bell, and he found himself moving through it with the full attention of someone filing every detail of a route he would need to navigate again tomorrow.
The secondary outpost's location was fixed in his awareness. The direction the targets had taken from the central park. The street geometry between those two points. The wear pattern on the right street's pavement that had told him which route was used regularly.
Tomorrow was the sixth day. One day after that, the assessment concluded. All that remained in his pouch, after the evening's performance, were 15 copper.
However, it was no longer about the assignment, per se. Rather, it was about protecting the integrity of the Kingdom.
Am I loyal to this Kingdom?
Frankly speaking, Isaac didn't know.
However, he did understand that the Kingdom's collapse from the inside would lead to many complications. Even if he were to survive and manage his way out, the life of a refuge will be a several times harder, and running away wasn't his way.
This meant that one way or the other, those potential spies of the Solari Kingdom had to be dealt with.
Isaac was busy thinking about this matter—before he heard the voice.
"We've seen each other at parties many times."
The side street off the Academy's southern path was narrow. It was the kind of passage built for access rather than traffic, the kind that accumulated privacy by default rather than design. The mana-lamp at its entrance cast enough light to reach approximately halfway down its length.
"Ever since I first saw you, my heart beat. The more I met you, the stronger my feelings became."
Jax Wason stood at the edge of that light.
"I can no longer hold that feeling."
Isaac recognized the build before the face. Broad-shouldered, the owner of B-rank: [Bolt Streak]. He was standing with the posture of someone who looked desperate, hopeful, and nervous.
Isaac also recognized the woman whom Jax was speaking to.
Camilla Hedron.
She stood two steps back from him with the expression of someone who had been in this kind of situation before and had decided, sometime during a prior instance, that the appropriate register was cold rather than warm.
"I like you, Camilla," Jax said. The words came out with the particular stiffness of someone who had rehearsed them too many times and found that rehearsal hadn't helped. "I have for a while. Please go out with me."
Isaac had already noted the scene and calculated the most efficient path past it. He adjusted his angle and continued walking.
Camilla's eyes had moved to catch Isaac in the background.
"Isaac Nameless," Called Camilla. Isaac paused.
"Huh?" Jax turned. Saw Isaac. He scowled, "What are you doing here, fucker?!" He then turned back to Camilla with the realization of what he just said, "I mean—uh, I didn't mean to say that, ha… ha… so, uh, what would your answer be to my—"
"Silence."
Jax froze as he saw how Camilla's eyes didn't cease to leave Isaac. He felt a deep dent to his pride, but he couldn't find himself opening his mouth to object.
He had B-rank: [Bolt Streak]. She had A-rank: [Mystical Swords]. Clearly, she had the upper hand.
"Isaac Nameless." Camilla called Isaac again, with spite in her voice, "Answer me."
"I believe that you should answer him first," Replied Isaac, sighing.
"That's right. Camilla—"
"Miss Hedron, you mean," Said Camilla, to Jax, "I don't recall giving you a permission to refer me by my first name." She finally looked back at him, leaning a bit forward to make her message clear, "And what? Go out with you?" She frowned with a vivid disgust at him, "I'll pretend that I didn't hear that."
Jax looked crestfallen. Then, his fists trembled before he turned to Isaac angrily.
"You! It's your fault for ruining—"
Isaac, having lost his patience, was already walking away from the two, back to his room. Witnessing this, Jax seemed to be at loss of words.
"Isaac Nameless."
For the third time, Camilla called.
"Answer me, Nameless." Camilla's voice acquired the carrying quality she used when she wanted an audience even in the absence of one. "I have a proposal for you."
Isaac continued walking, uninterested. Camilla, completely ignoring Jax right in front of her, glared heatedly into Isaac's retreating form. She then took in a deep breath.
"Don't you want to reclaim the surname of Valerius? Don't you want to be a noble once more?" Camilla, as if being generous, offered, "Should you wish, I can offer you a helping hand. There will be something that I require you to do, however."
Now, Isaac stopped. He turned his head slightly.
"Why would I want that?"
"…What do you mean?" Camilla looked shaken by what he said. "Why wouldn't you want that? Aren't you ashamed of being Nameless?"
Isaac didn't answer. Instead, he said, "If you need an errand boy, you got one right in front of you."
"You are lying."
"Lying about what?'
"Having the surname of 'Nameless'—in a sense that it is redundant—is considered one of the worst form of humiliation in the entire Kingdom. You will be reminded of your fall from the nobility every time someone refers you as Nameless. There is no way—just no way—that you are fine with that."
"Your opinion means nothing to me," Replied Isaac, nonchalant. "Furthermore, so what if I'm not fine? That's none of your business."
And that was his closing statement. He wanted to deal with none of this.
"Hey! Where do you think you are going?! We aren't done yet! We are—"
Isaac's mind drifted back to the matter of two faces that he identified earlier in the day. Spies. Solari Kingdom.
He kept walking.
"—Isaac—"
Isaac reached the passage's end and turned onto the southern path without adjusting his pace.
The silence that followed had the quality of something held too tightly for too long finally finding a point of fracture.
"NAMELESS!"
The word left her at a volume that Camilla Hedron had never, in Jax's memory of her, produced in public. It cracked through the evening air with a rawness that had nothing to do with the composed, architectural coldness she had maintained since the moment he had known her. The sound of it made him take a step back without deciding to.
He had known Camilla for years. He had watched her dismantle people in conversation without raising her voice once. He had watched her receive bad news, social humiliation, academic setbacks, all of it absorbed into the same perfect composure that had made her the standard against which lesser nobles measured their own presentation.
He had never heard her sound like that.
She was shaking. Not visibly, but Jax was close enough to see the slight tremor at her jaw, the way her hands had closed at her sides into something that wasn't a fist and wasn't not a fist. Her eyes were fixed on the empty southern path where Isaac had been standing, and they held something in them that Jax couldn't name because he had never seen it in her before.
"Camilla," he said, without thinking.
She turned. Looked at him, as if having remembered that Jax too was here.
The composure reassembled itself, piece by piece, like a wall being rebuilt while someone watched. It took longer than it should have. The finished version was slightly less complete than the original.
"…Don't," she said. The flat delivery was back, but the flatness was working harder than usual.
Jax said nothing. He was still processing what he had just seen. The confession he had come to deliver felt very far away.
She turned and walked in the direction of the Golden Repose without looking at him again.
Jax stood in the side street's lamplight for a long moment.
"Fuck…" Then, he cursed, "What does that F-ranked nobody have that I don't?"
…
The Golden Repose was quiet at the midnight bell.
Isaac reached his room. Placed the iron charm on the desk's edge. Sat.
The mana-bird settled on the windowsill with the patient attention of something that had one day remaining on its function.
He looked at the city through the window.
The sixth day was tomorrow. The assessment concluded at the seventh day's evening bell. Between now and then, two variables remained open: the performance, which would produce whatever the final day's crowd produced, and the bounty, which required solving the problem of how to locate the targets when the performance's conclusion had removed the mechanism that had identified them.
He thought about this. He already concluded that he will catch them.
The targets had been in the crowd. The crowd had been drawn by the performance. Five consecutive days at the central park's fountain junction.
If they had come five days in a row, the probability that they would return tomorrow was quite likely.
The Tomlin disruption was a happening. However, he couldn't guarantee that an event of similar nature wouldn't occur.
He needed to prepare.
What if, there are more than just two of them?
Perhaps, the disruption today was a fortune in disguise. While he would've successfully exposed the two in the public, the tail would've been cut immediately, making any further investigation meaningless.
Currently, the targets believed that they weren't discovered. Of course, their assumption would've been correct if not for his [The Prism].
A tracker.
Isaac needed a tool of some sort that could track their location.
And he could think of someone who were well-versed at this.
"Professor Andrias," Spoke Isaac, looking into the eyes of the mana-bird in the room. "I have a proposal."
The bird blinked its eyes.