Published: February 1, 2026
Humming a little tune, Eleven walked down the early-morning street that was just starting to come alive.
With every step he took, the red hair tied into a single tail swayed like a snake.
His already narrow eyes squinted even more in apparent good mood, and as soon as the inn he was heading for came into view, Eleven broke into a trot.
“’Mornin’.”
“Here again today? For someone who looks like you, you’re awfully devoted.”
“I was called today. Show some mercy for my devotion and gimme some tea.”
If you show up every single morning, of course you become a familiar face.
Taking full advantage of the fact that he no longer got thrown out at once, at some point he’d grown bold enough to demand drinks like it was only natural.
Showing no effort to hide how exasperated she was by his smooth-talking, the landlady went into the dining hall.
She came back almost at once with a glass of chilled tea. Eleven drained it without the slightest reservation and leaned his elbow on the front counter.
Around this time of day most of the guests who’d stayed the night were heading out, so the landlady was stationed behind the counter.
“That guy still asleep?”
“I haven’t heard anything about him needing an early start today, so who knows when he’ll get up. Weren’t you called here?”
“He didn’t say what time.”
The landlady brushed Eleven’s limp arm off the counter like it was in her way and turned to deal with a guest returning a key.
As for how Eleven managed to match Lizel and the others’ schedule every morning to barge into the inn—he simply received full reports from the people watching them.
On days with early-morning requests, he came at dawn, and on other days he showed up at a reasonable hour at the inn or “happened” to meet them at the guild. His timing was always impeccable.
But this time he’d actually been called from the start. He didn’t need to go out of his way to match their timing; they were bound to see each other.
Even so, he couldn’t quite suppress his impatience and, for someone who was terrible in the morning, had ended up arriving pretty early.
Apparently Lizel was still asleep.
When Eleven had found out that, unexpectedly, Lizel was bad at getting up in the morning too, he’d burst out laughing, completely ignoring the fact that he was the same.
He was idly gnawing at the rim of his emptied glass, wondering if he should just go wake Lizel up himself, when suddenly the inn’s door opened.
Lots of people were leaving, but it was rare for someone to be arriving at this hour.
When he saw who had come in, Eleven’s face twisted in open disgust.
“Oh, you again. Here to complain to Lizel-san some more?”
“No, last time I didn’t come to complain either… Though it’s true I have business with him again.”
Recognizing the chief military police officer, the landlady looked at him with puzzlement and asked.
The chief, for his part, was aware that the previous time he had been in the wrong. He offered a brief apology and asked the landlady where Lizel was.
“Haven’t woken yet,” she told him, and he frowned. As a military policeman, he lived by strict routine; perhaps he simply couldn’t understand that Lizel was still asleep at the hour when most people were already up and moving.
At the word “Lizel,” Eleven’s eyebrow twitched up. He leaned his back against the counter, looking the man over as if to size him up.
“This time I’m here with a message for him. It’s about the matter he entrusted to me the other day.”
“Oh, then I’ll pass it on for you.”
“No, I’d like to deliver it in person. It’s a matter of some importance.”
A message from Rei was not something a serious man like him would casually entrust to someone else.
He was just about to nod when the landlady suggested they go wake Lizel up, when a sharp, heavy bang rang out from the entrance.
The landlady’s eyes went wide in surprise, and the chief turned with a dubious look. The source of the sound, Eleven, slowly lowered the sole of the boot he’d slammed down on the counter.