Chương 426: 200.Assassination

The Imperial Hotel's main entrance blazed like institutionalized showing-off. Over the Lunar City, night hadn't fully set in yet: outside the dome the dark hung like deep sea, while inside, the artificial daylight swept the whole building clean, expensive, and deeply punchable. That kind of high-end aura — where if you weren't dressed expensively enough, even your breathing felt like it was mooching off the floor — had never agreed with me. But today, the one failing to get along with it wasn't Hoshino Shimo.

It was Ayase Shiori. More precisely: it was me, wearing Ayase Shiori's skin, in a hotel server's uniform. Black vest, white shirt, slim necktie, tailored trousers, low heels. Hair done the way we'd settled on in rehearsal — a low side ponytail, a few escaped strands tucked behind the ears. Clean. Quiet. Not likable, not unlikeable. This outfit was never meant to look nice. It was meant to be unworthy of remembering.

I stood before my own reflection in the hotel's glass facade, and took one last look at my silhouette. Good. Didn't look like an attaché trainee. Didn't look like the sort who'd drag someone into an alley to pry out information, either. Looked like a young server running on overtime, underpaid, whose only wish tonight was to finish carrying the trays. Ideal. Today's stated purpose: scout the planned route of the school trip.

The student group wasn't checking in officially until tomorrow, but at this grade of event, a day ahead, a whole crowd would already be arguing the carpets, name cards, tableware, flowers, and security concerns down to the last detail. Hoshino Shimo couldn't walk into a place like this with any swagger. Ayase Shiori could. And a server could do it better than anyone.

Theoretically, I only meant to slip in for one loop — memorize the routes, memorize the blind spots, note which staircase was more of a trap than which person, then leave without anyone remembering me. Theoretically. Reality rarely had any face to spare. I'd barely slipped in through the side door, hadn't even finished sweeping the back-of-house corridors and exits, when a woman in a dark-grey uniform — hair combed flat as if discipline itself had pressed it down — slapped a clipboard into my chest.

"About time you showed up." she said. I glanced down at the clipboard, then back up at her.

"... Huh." That single syllable was the maximum amount of surprise I could perform underneath Ayase Shiori's skin. She didn't even look at my face. The floor captain — surname unknown, hours of sleep unknown, with the look of a person who'd schedule a planet's rotation into the roster if she could — was talking into her earpiece while jabbing a pen at me through the air.

"Temporary support does not get to be late. Tableware is short two people. The west-side private rooms on the second floor are being reset. Tomorrow's reception point for the school trip needs to be rehearsed. Go pull tables from Storage Sixteen first, then top up glasses at the Galaxy Hall. Move." I looked at her. She didn't even glance back, already turning to dress down another server.

"Not those glasses — the star-motif goblets. You trying to serve soup to the foreign guests in that?" I see. The Imperial Hotel wasn't in business today. It was at war. And I happened to be dressed like an unlucky soul just ripe for conscription. For one second I seriously considered, in the tone of attaché trainee Ayase Shiori, politely explaining that I wasn't temporary support staff — merely an innocent citizen who'd wandered past a human hell.

But before I could open my mouth, the floor captain had already pressed a set of key cards into my hand.

"Storage Sixteen. Now." I looked at the key cards in my hand. Then at her retreating back. And I logged another entry against Colonel Wiesland in my head. Notebook entry two: you told me to eat breakfast first — obviously not because you cared about my stomach, but because you already knew I'd probably get drafted as free labor by the hotel today.

"... Understood." I answered at the volume a server ought to use, and turned to leave. Anyway, this wasn't so bad. There were places you couldn't get into with identification, but could get into carrying a tray. Empire and hotel shared a striking kinship on that point: both looked down on the people who did the work, and so neither ever guarded against them.

Storage Sixteen was closer than I'd imagined — close enough to make me suspect this hotel had been built precisely for the convenience of squeezing temporary help. I found the tables, noted the camera positions at the corridor corners, the emergency exits, the distances between the food lifts and the service elevators, then carried that tall stack of tables — stamped with the imperial crest and a school emblem — up to the second floor. The second floor was more of a mess than the first.

The florist was quarreling with the banquet coordinator over color scheme. The sound tech was quarreling with the usher over microphones. Two very young-looking waiters were pushing a service cart, charging into the Galaxy Hall with expressions like soldiers prepared to die for dessert. And I threaded through it all quietly, like a drop of water with a high opinion of itself.

"New girl. Over here." Another voice slammed into me. I turned my head and saw a male server waving me over — around my age, wearing that "I stopped wanting to live a long time ago but I still have to clock in" kind of exhaustion that felt weirdly familiar.

"Take that stack to the private room area first — third room on the west side. Quick." he said in a low voice.

"The Crown Prince's people changed the seating at the last minute; they've been arguing in there for half an hour. Once you get it inside, keep your eyes down. They treat servers like walls — but if the wall looks too much like a person, they get annoyed." I looked at him.

"... Thanks for the warning."

"Don't mention it." The young waiter gave a wry smile.

"Yesterday I got yelled at for ten minutes for being too much like a person." This hotel was brutally honest. It didn't even bother to fake labor ethics. Tables in my arms, I headed for the third private room on the west side. The door wasn't fully shut. The voices inside, however, couldn't be shut in at all.

"I've told you, the west corridor needs at least four more." A man's voice — urgent, holding back the anger, yet carrying that syrupy conviction of someone who believed he was giving the orders.

"Four's too many." Another voice, older, slower, carrying the nobility's habitual arrogance.

"Any more and it gets conspicuous. Two in the corridor, three at the service-elevator doors, the rest stay behind the flower cart, and move once the smoke disperses." My steps didn't stop, but I softened my breathing. Shadows shifted inside the doorway of the private room. Glasses clinked, chair legs scuffed softly, and paper was being spread open.

"The problem isn't the visible headcount." A third voice spoke — a woman's, languid, sweet as a drink that gives you a headache the next morning.

"The problem is command. My people answer only to my signet, and it's not as if your worthless attendants don't know that by now. Without me, the south half can't move at all." I carried the tables past the door at a deliberately unhurried pace. The pen in my head had already drawn a heavy line under that sentence. The south half. Her people. Her signet. Good. Found one.

"My lady, please keep your voice down." the earlier, agitated man said in a strained whisper.

"This is a hotel, after all."

"So?" The woman laughed once.

"You think those servers can understand a thing? They can't even memorize a wine list." That was a little rude. But at the same time, it did me a great favor. I pushed the door open and walked in, eyes low.

"Excuse me. The tables are here." The room went quiet for a beat. Out of the corner of my eye: four people seated around the table. Two men, two women. Spread out on the table — a banquet floor plan, specimen passes, and a guest list. In the corner, the Crown Prince's inner-court crest chest. These people weren't conducting a "loud conspiracy"; they were laying their plot out on the table with the kind of confidence I'd only ever get to overhear if I happened to be wearing a server's uniform.

The Baroness sat by the window. A deep wine-red gown, bare-shouldered, gloves that stopped at the wrist, long slender fingers — the kind better suited to choking than to signing. She wasn't the sort of beauty you'd call striking at first glance, but she knew exactly where to let her gaze fall so that others would mistake themselves for the one she'd chosen. The Baroness had been toying with a signet ring. When she saw me, her hand paused. Just for a moment.

Brief enough that anyone else might have thought she was simply thinking. But I could tell. She was looking at me.

"Put it over there." the agitated man said impatiently.

"Wait." the Baroness spoke. I set the tables down onto the side table — motion unhurried, eyes still lowered. Good. A wall should behave like a wall. Walls don't eavesdrop. And walls don't get too easy on the eyes. Too bad today's wall apparently wasn't featureless enough.

"New girl？" the Baroness said.

"Yes."

"Look up."... Trouble. I sighed inwardly, then obediently lifted my gaze — keeping the angle small, just enough for her to see my face, just short of giving offense. The service industry really was one of the most insidious trainings in human society: it packages "how to let other people enjoy looking at you" into etiquette, then demands you master it. The Baroness looked at me for two full seconds, and her lips slowly curved.

"I haven't seen you before."

"I'm temporary support for today."

"I see." That "I see" of hers sounded less like she cared about the hotel's staffing, and more like she cared whether I'd happened to fall into her line of sight only tonight. The middle-aged man at her left frowned.

"This is no time for games, Letitia." So her name was Letitia. Baroness Letitia swirled her glass with studied nonchalance.

"You all go on. The south half, I'll handle. As for this child," her eyes on me, the smile turning more direct, "lend her to me for ten minutes."

"My lady—" the agitated man seemed about to object.

"Do you have a problem with that？" That sentence dropped the room into silence on the spot. No. Of course not. Because at least half the people in this room lived off the signet ring on her hand and those words, "my people." I stood where I was, posture quiet, while in my head I rapidly rearranged everything I'd just heard. South half. Signet command. An attack planned. Her death alone could strip one side of unified command on the spot. Good. Those ten minutes had suddenly become very worth investing in.

"Excuse me." I said softly. That was for the rest of the room. That was also for Baroness Letitia. And it was for the breath she was about to lose. The Baroness rose, and as she passed me, her scent was faint — an expensive darkness that had been trained. She didn't touch me, simply walked naturally toward the door, like a woman instructing a newly noticed toy to follow. I followed. The corridor ran long, the lighting warm, the carpet thick enough that footsteps nearly vanished.

Baroness Letitia didn't head for the guest elevators; with the practiced familiarity of someone who knew the place, she turned deeper into the VIP suite wing. That choice raised my opinion of her a notch. She wasn't the kind of low-grade aristocrat who'd fool around in public areas — she knew to do her shameful business behind closed doors. A pity that today, once the door closed, what she might lose went well beyond face.

"What's your name?" she asked as we walked. This question, I'd had ready for a long time.

"Shiori." I answered. Ayase Shiori. But in a setting like this, half a name was enough. Extra truth was never cheap.

"Shiori." Baroness Letitia repeated it once, tasting it in her mouth like wine.

"Sounds very soft."

"Does it?"

"Your face, though — not quite." She glanced back at me with a glint of interest.

"You don't look like a typical server. Too clean, too quiet. As if you were meant to stand somewhere else, and simply walked in through the wrong door." The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.... A little too accurate. I lowered my eyes, letting myself look like someone who didn't grasp this kind of high-flown teasing.

"My lady flatters me."

"Children like you always make every sentence sound like an apology."

"It comes with the job."

"And if I don't want to hear the work answer?" The suite door opened. Baroness Letitia went in first, stood by the door, and looked back at me. From that angle, the light fell right on her collarbone and the line of her lips. She really did know how to make herself look attractive, and how to exploit it. She'd simply had bad luck picking tonight: the person she'd chosen wasn't here for mood lighting.

"Come in." she said. I went in. The door closed behind me with a soft click. The suite was large. Large enough for one person to do something wicked in — and large enough for another to clean the wickedness away. Baroness Letitia pulled off her gloves and tossed them onto the sofa. She didn't close in right away; instead she turned to pour herself a drink, savoring the process of the prey walking itself into the cage.

"Relax." she said with her back to me.

"I don't eat people." That remained to be seen. And even if you don't eat people, today it might well be someone else's turn to eat you. I stood quietly between the foyer and the sitting room — neither advancing nor retreating. A distance that was both shy and wary. To her, probably amusing. To me, exactly enough room to measure my steps.

"Shiori." Baroness Letitia came back with her glass.

"Lift your head. Let me look at you again." I looked up. She came to a stop very close in front of me. Close enough that I could see the small diamonds on her earlobes, smell the wine mingled with the warmth of her skin. She reached out, and the tips of her fingers brushed the knot of my tie.

"Such a waste, this uniform." she murmured.

"What's the waste?"

"It wraps people up too well." She smiled.

"Forces me to rely on imagination." That line, in someone else's mouth, might have come off oily. But she delivered it with some measure of style. No wonder she could hold that group down in conversation. Women like her usually survived on class — or on class plus just enough misjudged charm. A pity charm had never worked particularly well on me. Especially when she still held the command of half the attackers in her hand.

"My lady," I began, in a very soft voice, "you said a moment ago that the people of the south half answer only to your signet. Is that right?" For the first time, something genuinely changed in Baroness Letitia's eyes. Not surprise. Understanding. She was clever. Clever enough that the instant I finished that sentence, she knew she hadn't brought a new server into this room — she had personally invited in something that should have existed only on someone else's list.

"Who are you."

"Bit late for that question, isn't it." I smiled a little. Not Ayase Shiori's smile. It was the thin, lazy, faintly apologetic smile Hoshino Shimo wore when the act no longer had to go on. Baroness Letitia reacted fast — the wineglass came flying straight at me. I tilted my head out of the way. The glass smashed against the wall behind me, wine spraying out like an alarm that had remembered itself far too late. Her right hand went at the same moment for her waist.

Something was hidden there, sure enough — a gun or an alert. A pity her speed wasn't quite enough. I stepped forward half a pace, seized her wrist, and slid a thin blade from my sleeve with the other hand. Not a handsome weapon, not a dramatic stance — just a move that was very close, very short, and very unsuited to being printed on a hero poster. As the blade went in, Baroness Letitia's eyes flew wide.

I caught her in the same motion, so she didn't fall at once, and didn't knock over the side table beside her — one of those extravagantly carved wastes of timber.

"Shh." I said softly by her ear.

"Weren't you the one who just said you didn't want to hear the work answer?" She stared at me, her breathing coming apart at once, like an ornate fabric torn by an unseen hand. In those beautiful eyes: anger, unwillingness, and a very brief flash of disbelief. Probably because she'd spent her life being the one who chose people — not the one who got chosen.

"... You—""Yes." I replied with great politeness.

"Temporary support, for today." She seemed to want to laugh, or to curse me, but neither option had time to finish itself. The strength drained out of her faster than an aristocrat's dignity ought to allow. I lowered her gently beside the sofa, smoothed her skirt back into place, and slipped the signet ring off her finger as I went. Heavier than I'd imagined. That was power for you. On someone else's hand it looked like an ornament; in your own palm you found it was hard.

Baroness Letitia could no longer manage a full sentence. She watched me, as if trying to memorize this face. That wasn't necessary. Because when someone finally came in, all they'd find was a baroness who should have lived respectably until tomorrow, meeting with an accident in her own suite tonight. And the new server would simply happen to be gone. I reached down and pulled out what I'd found at her waist. A communicator. And an internal dispatch card. Good. More considerate than I'd expected.

I unlocked the communicator. The password wasn't a birthday, wasn't a family crest, wasn't an imperial calendar — just a deeply boring four-digit repeat. These days, nobles had the power to orchestrate attacks, yet couldn't be bothered to remember a decent code. The regression of civilization was truly moving. At the very top of the communication list hung a single group: South Half Standby I glanced at the headcount inside, then at Baroness Letitia's now-settled profile.

"... I see." A genuine half. I laid the signet ring and the dispatch card side by side on the table and skimmed the latest messages. All positions, times, passageways, shift changes, confirmation codes. So this Baroness wasn't just in charge of arranging people — she was also the one holding that half back from biting early. In other words, with her dead, that half might not vanish outright, but it would at minimum fall into disorder first.

And people in disorder are usually easier to handle than people gone missing. I sent a single tersest delay order from her communicator — worded vaguely, like an aristocrat changing her mind at the last moment. South half: stand down. Without my signet, no one moves. Sent. I deleted the input log and laid the communicator back at her side. Not for the sake of a perfect cleanup. But to give the people on the other side a little more time to trip over themselves. I stood up and looked down at Baroness Letitia.

"Honestly, your taste isn't bad." I said softly.

"If today weren't this kind of occasion, I probably wouldn't have moved so quickly." Half of that was politeness. The other half, surprisingly, was even a little bit true. She didn't answer. I brushed the loose strands of hair from her face, gently. Not pity — professional habit. Tidy the scene, keep the noise low, make the traces look as if the world had always meant to treat her this way. Then I turned and walked toward the door. Before my hand reached the handle, I paused, and looked back once at the suite.

The scent of wine still hung there. The warm light was still there. The arrogance of the nobility was still there too — it had just lost its owner. As for me, I remained only some forgettable new server at the Imperial Hotel tonight. Good. That was the most convenient identity of all. I opened the door and stepped back into the corridor. The corridor was still quiet. The carpet still thick.

Even the distant clink of tableware drifted over, as if this entire hotel had no idea that, just moments ago, half the teeth the Crown Prince's faction had prepared had already been pulled from its mouth. I pulled the door shut, straightened my tie, and returned my breathing to a server's rhythm. Then I walked away, in the opposite direction from the private rooms. Today's work wasn't done yet. But at least from here on, it would get a little easier.

After all, compared to a whole strike team, carrying trays was the simple part. I pulled Baroness Letitia's suite door shut, my hand still on the handle for half a second, when an extremely impatient bellow came from the end of the corridor.

"New girl. Where'd you run off to." I looked up. It was the floor captain. Dark-grey uniform, hair combed into what looked like a military blastplate, stride fast enough to suggest gravity owed her overtime. This was the same woman who'd press-ganged me as temporary support in the back of house just now.

At the moment she was clutching a clipboard, an earpiece hanging over one shoulder, and on her face was written a perfectly legible sentence: if anyone dared die on the sly in the Imperial Hotel tonight, the first thing she would never forgive would be the scheduling system.

"Champagne top-up, west side, second floor. Now." The floor captain strode up to me without really stopping.

"You're here to work, not to evaporate."... That line, in another context, might just be sharp. Said to me now — fresh from a VIP suite — it was high-grade dark comedy. I nearly laughed. Nearly. Ayase Shiori's skin was wearing the server edition right now. A server should not laugh like someone who'd just hidden a body. So I bowed my head very obediently.

"Sorry. The lady called me over."

"Which lady?"

"Baroness Letitia." The floor captain's eyebrows moved imperceptibly. Not surprise — that professional kind of "oh, that explains the delay" understanding. Evidently this hotel had long since developed a mature attitude toward the nobility's private indiscretions: don't ask, don't look, don't handle — just keep the glasses topped up.

"Understood." She pressed a tray into my hands.

"Now go do what you were actually supposed to do. And if some noble takes a fancy to you again on the way, remember to finish delivering the champagne first." I took the tray.

"... Yes." That "yes" came out too smoothly. Smooth enough that it annoyed even me. When you've spent long enough in dangerous places, certain survival skills get polished very bright. How to receive a knife. How to hear a lie. How to disguise yourself as the one least worth killing first among a crowd that wants you dead. And how, just after disposing of a baroness, to pick up a champagne tray with an unchanged face and top up glasses at the banquet. I took the silver tray full of goblets and turned to go.

Walking, I added a new entry against Colonel Wiesland in my head. Notebook entry three: if I make it back alive, besides cursing Colonel Wiesland, I also need to ask why his chosen missions always come bundled with such a high concentration of service-industry humiliation. The west corridor on the second floor was even more of a mess than before. The sound tech was still quarreling with the usher. The florist had escalated from flower colors to flower-vase heights.

Two waiters rushed past me with a dessert cart at roughly the speed of fleeing a disaster. And I, carrying champagne, slipped through it all like a fish that had just bitten someone and now had to pretend it was only hotel décor. This hotel was something else. It packed murder, conspiracy, labor exploitation, and fine dining into a single corridor — without any of them conflicting. It took a real civilization to reach that point.

I topped up the champagne on the welcome table by the Galaxy Hall entrance — movements standard, expression blank — then, with the tray half empty, circled back casually toward the third private room on the west side. Not for nostalgia. I wasn't twisted enough to form attachments to a crime scene. Because Baroness Letitia was gone — and those people were guaranteed to blow up. Before I reached the private room area, I ducked into a short corridor laid with dark-red carpet beside it.

There was a decorative tall flower stand there, and behind it a half-concealed small door for staff to slip through quickly. Position ideal: no sight line, but the room's voices bounced off the walls and carried over. I leaned the tray against the wall for the moment and stepped into shadow. Then I waited. Didn't have to wait long. The first thing to sound was a man's voice — deliberately lowered, but burning.

"Where is she. Where did she go." Ah, here we go.

"Wasn't she just here." Another voice, urgent and shrill — the sort who loved to talk about "composure" until trouble hit, then went hunting for a scapegoat first thing.

"Her people answer only to her signet. Now Letitia's gone — who takes the south side?"

"Find her. Get her back first." A third voice, older, also clearly losing composure.

"Without her, tomorrow's arrangements break straight in half." I leaned against the wall and let out a slow breath. Good. I hadn't overestimated her — I'd underestimated her. Not "will fall into a little disorder." It was "breaks straight in half." From the room came the hard scrape of chair legs across the floor.

"And what good will finding her do?" Back to the first man, his temper clearly up.

"If she was taken, it means the list has leaked. If she slipped up herself, that's worse. Do you really think Hedwig's side is just a princess sent here on a school trip?" —That line, finally, was something worth hearing. I pressed my back flush against the wall and kept listening.

"What's there to fear about the little twit." the shrill-voiced man couldn't help retorting.

"She's just the Empress's daughter."

"How exactly have you kept your seat this whole time." the older man from before growled in a low voice.

"What you fear was never Hedwig herself." The room fell quiet for a beat. Then someone set a glass down on the table with force.

"Who you fear is Elizabeth von Hohenlohe." the older man said, one word at a time.

"And the Hohenzollern she has behind her." I kept my eyes down, and my finger tapped very lightly against the rim of the tray. One tap. I see.

"As if everyone didn't know." the first man sneered.

"The problem is, that thing belongs to the Empire in theory."

"Theoretically." The older man's voice finally showed that genuine, age-old rancor and wariness.

"Theoretically, of course it belongs to the Empire. Just like, theoretically, a border marquis is an emperor's vassal." Border marquis. That simile, old enough to have gone moldy, landed — and some scattered threads in my head suddenly clicked together. Not a military stronghold built, held, and commanded unilaterally by the Empire. Not a "royal plaything." Not the kind of clean, state-owned strategic asset found in textbooks.

But the Hohenlohes — more precisely, that line of nobles, the Hohenzollerns — had built the thing first, then "lent" it to the Galactic Empire. Lent. That single word was filthier than any declaration of war. Someone inside the room paced restlessly back and forth.

"You're saying, at this point, we still have to watch the Hohenlohes' mood."

"Not their mood." the older man said coldly.

"Their gun ports." No one answered. Because that line was too precise. I stood in the shadow, slowly assembling the picture in my head. Hohenzollern. One hundred twenty kilometers in diameter. Mass of roughly six hundred trillion tonnes. A genuine giant artificial celestial body, flying the Empire's military flag. In old terms, that wasn't a noble at all. That was a border marquis with walls, soldiers, passes, independent firepower — even the capacity to say "no" to the center. And not an ordinary border marquis.

A border marquis holding an entire steel moon in its arms.... Small wonder the Emperor and both princes were afraid. I was suddenly a little amused. Not because things had gotten simpler. But because things had finally become complicated in the way they always should have been. Human beings, once they made power big enough to be used as an artificial celestial body, naturally stirred family, nation, marriage, military power, and kinship into one poisonous soup.

Evidently the Galactic Empire wasn't much smarter than old Earth. Inside the room, the shrill-voiced man spoke again. Quieter this time, but more urgent.

"Then we absolutely can't let Hedwig go back alive. As long as she's alive, Elizabeth has grounds to pull Hohenzollern back."

"That's not all." the first man said through clenched teeth.

"The moment that woman closes the fortress's military-access rights to Imperial Headquarters in the name of 'protecting her daughter,' a third of the strategic hubs on our border routes all have to be reorganized."

"More than a third." the older man snorted coldly.

"If Hohenzollern tips toward anyone not directly under the Emperor, it's not one fewer fortress — it's one fewer key." Key. The moment that word came out, I finally understood everything. Hedwig was not a princess. At least, to these people, she was more than that. Hedwig was a key. The most legitimate, most respectable, and sharpest key in Elizabeth von Hohenlohe's hand.

As long as Hedwig lived, as long as that princess remained on the Empress's side, that artificial celestial fortress named Hohenzollern would never be a military asset the Emperor and both princes could hold in their hands with one hundred percent assurance. No wonder. No wonder Colonel Wiesland had packed me off here. No wonder this wasn't a simple school trip.

No wonder the disappearance of a baroness had the Grand Prince's and Second Prince's people buzzing like a poked hornets' nest, yowling in that room while flipping their cards up for the walls to hear. So from the very start, what everyone was fighting over wasn't the princess's life. It was the key behind her — the key that could pry the Empire's entire military power structure open.

"What do we do now." The shrill-voiced man was approaching collapse.

"The south half won't move without Letitia's signet, and the north side can't all be pulled up — that'd be too conspicuous."

"Suppress the news first." the first man said.

"Before tomorrow, no one mentions her disappearance."

"Suppress it?" The older man laughed coldly.

"This is the Imperial Hotel, not a cemetery. A woman like her vanishes — within an hour, half the corridor will know." That was very true. Especially persuasive to someone who'd just personally left her in that suite. I was about to eavesdrop a little more when rapid high-heeled footsteps came from the other end of the corridor.

Not the aristocrat's rhythm of "I'm busy, but you'll all wait for me" — but the back-of-house rhythm of "if I'm half a second slower, someone will strangle me tonight between the flower arrangements and the champagne." I didn't need to look to know who. Sure enough, the next second, the floor captain's voice came crashing over from behind.

"New girl. Where the hell did you disappear to this time." I turned. She stood at the corridor corner, one hand on the clipboard, the other pointing at the tray I'd leaned against the wall, her eyes cold enough that if the Imperial Hotel had military law, she could have had me shot twice tonight.

"Short-handed at the flower cart. A VIP dessert for the east side of the third floor is going out early — go now. Immediately." I glanced at her, then at the direction of the private rooms, and weighed the matter with one fair, objective second. The verdict was obvious. The people in that private room wouldn't calm down for a while yet. But if I ignored the floor captain any longer, she genuinely might detonate on the spot.

Between the two, I'd rather gamble that a noble conspiracy wouldn't grow legs and walk away within five minutes, than gamble whether the Imperial Hotel's floor captain would put me on her list of hazards to be dealt with.

"Coming." I picked up the tray and walked quickly toward her. The floor captain glared at me.

"You disappear a lot today."

"Sorry."

"Sorry doesn't top up the champagne."

"Understood."

"Understood doesn't top up the champagne either." What kind of new-school philosophical interrogation was this. I very much wanted to tell her I hadn't actually been slacking just now — I'd been conveniently trimming half the manpower out of the Empire's future civil war, then treating myself to a highly valuable lecture on imperial authority and border-fortress relations. By rights, that kind of performance should have been redeemable for three glass top-ups and two flower deliveries.

Too bad the Imperial Hotel probably had no such assessment line. So I only quietly steadied the tray again and followed her up to the third floor. At the stair landing, I took one last look back at the third private room on the west side. The door was still closed. The lights were still on. That nest of punctured hornets inside was probably, at this very moment, patching its wings and reworking how to strangle Hedwig with the key still attached to her.

Too bad — from now on, I also knew exactly how much she was worth. Hedwig was no mission target. No troublesome royal. No girl who'd look at you from head to toe with that faintly displeased expression in a corridor. Hedwig was a key. A key some people would turn an entire hotel into a slaughterhouse to get their hands on. I took my eyes back and followed the floor captain upstairs.

Then, for the next forty minutes, I very earnestly topped up champagne, moved flowers, swapped place cards, and, along the way, noted two emergency exits of the third-floor east VIP room, four dead angles of the security cameras, and one young waiter who kept sneaking macarons in the dessert area. Infiltration was sometimes that unglamorous. One minute you're shaving weight off the Empire's future balance of military power; the next, you're straightening a raspberry tart so some noble won't be in a foul mood.

The world made no sense. But it was at least very consistent. By the time I finally extracted myself from the back of house, the Lunar City's light-shielding system had already switched into night mode. I left the server's uniform at a pre-selected changing point on the hotel's perimeter, changed into clothes less likely to get me press-ganged into glass duty on the spot, and fixed my hair back up.

Ayase Shiori's skin wasn't fully peeled off — it had merely switched from "the useful server" back to "the unremarkable young woman." As for Hoshino Shimo, she eased back to the front slowly while her collar, her stride, and her breathing loosened up again. I stepped out of the service alley behind the Imperial Hotel and onto the night street of Copernicus Lunar City. This city was built on the moon, so its days and nights were never given by nature — they were finely tuned by the light-shielding system.

To put it plainly, humanity had to press a switch even to decide whether it was nighttime. It sounded grand, but it was really a lot like locking yourself in a fish tank and then having to pretend the waves were natural every day. I slipped my hands into the pockets of my coat and looked up. At the edge of my vision, the Earth hanging in the dark looked far older than in the textbooks — and far sicker. No clean atlas-blue. No bright fairy-tale white.

In their place, great swathes of murky coffee-brown, grey-shadowed green, and a layer of bruise-colored filth spread flat across it. Seen from this distance, it didn't look like the home world of human civilization so much as an old patient who, after being bled, carved, and hollowed out repeatedly by its own children, had finally lain down on a hospital bed to gasp.

"... Ugly." I muttered. The wind, of course, didn't answer me. The moon was a fair place — it didn't even hand out its wind for free. Watching that terminally ill planet, I suddenly thought humanity was some textbook-grade filial child: after polluting its mother into a wreck, it slapped its hands together, packed up, and moved to another celestial body to live — then, from across the vacuum and behind glass, sighed "how beautiful home is." Beautiful my ass. I gave a cold laugh and pulled my eyes off the Earth.

I'd seen enough of two dying things tonight. One was the aristocrats of the Empire who still believed they could lock the key back into its cage with intrigue. The other was that mother planet, nearly beyond saving at its own children's hands. One more look, and it would be wasted time. So I turned around and walked away without a second glance.