“Why haven’t you done it yet?”

The higher-ups were getting impatient.

“You think it’s that easy to assassinate royalty? Of course, I’m waiting for a good time.”

“Fair enough. When are you planning?”

He fooled around with a heart in hand, treating it like a ball as he answered.

“I heard the festival was coming up.”

‘I see.’

So that was his plan.

“One week. We need it done by then.”

“Yeah yeah.” He waved his hand with the heart before plopping it in his mouth.

“I’ll see you then,” I said, nodding as I left the alleyway.

Next up on my list was meeting with “that” broker.

Coming upon a seemingly normal house, I knocked on the door three times in a row followed by another knock two seconds after.

“What do ya want? It’s midnight goddamnit!” shouted the grumpy man from inside.

“I’m in need of a thing,” I said.

“Come tomorrow! I’m tryna sleep here!”

“I’ve got a Model-3.”

With that mention, the door flung open as a decently sized middle-aged man in a suit greeted me.

“I thought you said you were sleeping.”

“Do I look like I have time for that?” the man said, unfazed by my words.

“You know I’m a busy man, come in.”

As he brought me in, I tipped my hat slightly and took it off. My snow-white hair fell after it.

He brought me into a room with a small conference table and two sofa chairs on both sides.

“Take a seat. Ah, have some pearls too,” he said as he brought out a bag from underneath the table.

I knew better than to eat some.

“Do you have any records—”

“Woah woah woah, you know that’s not how I do things here,” he interjected in the middle of my sentence.

“Haah.” A sigh escaped my throat as I sluggishly reached a hand in my coat.

“Here.” I dropped it on the table.

Its appearance was small so it could fit in small places easily, making it a good tool for assassins—or so they have told me. It was still just a prototype.

“It looks a lot neater than the last one,” he said as he reached his hands out to examine it.

He held it by the pipe instead of the handle. That was where I was told the ammunition came out of. Apparently, if you sent mana into the handle, it was supposed to fire something out of the pipe.

They said at its full capability, it gave any half-decent magician the ability to shoot faster and harder than master bowmen.

“Ahem.” I gave a small cough to remind him of my presence.

“Ah. Right. What are you here for?”

“I need records on a student,” I said.

“A student? Why would you want to know—.”

“I know you know that I am a student there. Just tell me if you have the records.”

Hearing that, he rubbed his forehead.

He didn’t ask how I knew he knew I was a student at that academy, because that was pretty obvious. If he didn’t know that much about his clients, then I wouldn’t have come to him for information.

“You know, they’re all aristocratic brats. Their info should be very public…”

I looked him in the eye as he tried to beat around the bush.

“Ahh fine. Who is it?” he said as he put the object I gave him into his suit pocket.

I never said he could take it. But I’ll overlook that.

This was a lot more important.

“A freshman, get me everything you have on a Daniel.”

My report on him has caught the eyes of the higher-ups.

—Daniel—

[The Sword God advises you to become her apostle.]

Those words have been ringing in my ears every day.

At first, I thought I knew who this proclaimed “God” was. But now, I wasn’t sure.

For now, I’ll continue to ignore it for no reason other than because I feel like it.

It was a funny thing. Just because I didn’t feel like doing it, I wasn’t going to. But I also didn’t feel like staying in this school—yet, here I still was, confined to this campus. It’s hard to say where my hypocrisy comes from, but I love and hate it all the same.

If I don’t go on these tangents, then everything will just devolve into existential despair. No one wants to listen to that.

Why am I like this?

It’s because I’ve experienced this drought before back in my adolescent days. My grades depicted the model student for any school, but I couldn’t bring myself to do anything about it because I had nothing to strive for.

“What do you want to be?” they ask. But that wasn’t half as genuine as Edgar Allen Poe saying he wasn’t intoxicated.

People ask questions to criticize you, observe you, and to presume an omniscient stance over you.

“Have you found a girlfriend yet?”

“What are you majoring in?”

“How old are you?”

In the end, I made the cowardly decision to stick my middle fingers in the air and enlisted in the military.

At the time, it was a great feeling. The aftertaste; not so much.

I’m glad I can’t see them ever again.

But here I was. Back to square one.

“What do you want to be?”

To be honest, I don’t fucking know.

I had this strange feeling that my current life was a fever dream. A delusion.

It wasn’t the first time I’ve felt this way. But I don’t think my psychosis was at that severe stage yet.

When I think about what has happened these past weeks, it’s as though nothing happened at all. It was all just so surreal and absurd. Like Benni. Why the fuck is he alive? And God. Why the hell does that thing exist?

‘Why won’t anyone explain it to me?’

The answer was reasonable. No one wanted to give me my info dump because I was a depressive whiny bitch.

I’ve heard of those Japanese stories where a hero is summoned to another world and is commanded by God to slay the demon king.

That’s great.

Those heroes had a purpose, a meaning, a raison d’être.

But fuck all—where’s my God?

Fuck Benni, even if he brought me into this world, he’s no God. When I was born, my parents were no God. They were all just as prone to making mistakes as any other couple with a broken condom.

And knowing this, who’s to say that the “real” God up there in the sky isn’t the same?

In such a situation, was I supposed to just off myself?

‘I don’t want to die.’

At the same time, what am I supposed to do? Where’s my demon king that I’m supposed to slay?