Sydney stood up, her face twisting into a mask of pure revulsion as she reached out with two fingers, carefully grabbing Laulif's severed head by a clump of its bloody silver hair. She held it as far away from her ruined uniform as humanly possible, blood dripping steadily onto the polished marble floor.
Turning on her heel, she snapped,
"Eirene, Mochi, follow me to Chief Anton."
The name cut through the quiet bureau lobby like a razor blade.
Sydney walked forward, completely unaware of the devastating slip of the tongue she had just committed. But next to me, Mochi froze completely. His golden feline ears snapped straight up, pinning back in absolute, staggering disbelief. He spun his head toward my tattered crimson trench coat, his golden eyes widening as the final, missing puzzle pieces violently clicked together in his mind.
"Eirene?! You... you're the bounty hunter?!"
Sydney stopped dead in her tracks on the office stairs, holding the bleeding head of the syndicate leader out to the side. She blinked, looking back at Mochi with a thoroughly confused expression.
"Huh? You mean you didn't know that Eirene was operating as the bounty hunter this entire time?"
The air in the hallway turned completely stagnant. Behind the rigid, calcified lines of my Leech's Hollow Mask, my single green eye locked onto my loyal subordinate. The absolute secrecy of the Crimson Phantom had just been shattered in a single, careless sentence by the registrar. Mochi stared at my empty left sleeve, the mask, and the heavy aura of death radiating from my frame, finally realizing that the legendary, ruthless executioner he had been admiring was the very commander he had sworn his blade to.
Knowing the secret was completely compromised, I reached up with my pale right hand and unclasped the straps of the Leech's Hollow Mask. With a soft click, the calcified bone came away, fully revealing my face to the morning light.
Mochi's breath hitched. He stared at the jagged scars, the thick cloth wrap covering my permanently gouged right eye, and the undeniable features of the leader he thought he had lost. His golden feline ears trembled, pinning flat against his hair as pure, staggering emotion flooded his face.
"Eirene... you're alive, Why... why didn't you tell me? Why hide yourself from us?" Mochi whispered, taking an instinctive step forward, his voice thick with a mix of reverence and deep hurt.
I stood in absolute silence, my single green eye locking onto his. I didn't speak… partly because the ruthless, mechanical demeanor of the Crimson Phantom demanded absolute silence, and partly because the sheer weight of what I had become, along with the heretical life ticking away inside my womb, couldn't easily be explained in a bureaucratic hallway.
"Hey! No time for dramatic reunions! Follow me to Chief Anton right now!" Sydney snapped, interrupting the heavy silence as she held Laulif's dripping head at arm's length
True to her response, Sydney was having a perfectly pleasant morning until a certain legendary, one-armed bounty hunter decided to materialize a freshly severed, soaking-wet S-rank head directly onto her neat paperwork. Her day was completely ruined, her tailored uniform was stained with syndicate blood, and she had absolutely zero patience left for emotional breakthroughs.
I placed a single pale finger over my lips, silently shushing Mochi to cut off his questions. Slipping the bone mask back over my face, I turned and marched past the irritated registrar, heading directly toward the heavy mahogany doors of the Chief's office.
Mochi fell into step right beside me, but his posture had completely shifted. He was no longer treating me like a legendary, anonymous mercenary. His golden eyes were intensely scanning every single detail of my appearance.. the tattered fit of my crimson trench coat, the heavy sway of my empty left sleeve, the way my right hand hovered with cold precision over the hidden Death Chant firearm, and the deliberate, slightly guarded rhythm of my stride. He was analyzing the stark, brutal evolution of my demeanor, silently calculating the immense, agonizing price his commander had paid to survive.
Chief Anton sat behind his massive, mahogany desk, surrounded by towering stacks of state ledgers and ancient tactical maps. He was reviewing a file with his usual stern, unflinching gaze until the heavy double doors creaked open.
Sydney marched in, her face twisted in a mask of absolute annoyance. Without a shred of ceremony, she tossed Laulif Flower's heavy, bleeding head directly onto the center of the hardwood floor. It landed with a wet, echoing THUD.
"Chief, Eirene has slain another S-rank bounty. And she completely ruined my morning intake forms to prove it." Sydney muttered, crossing her arms tightly to hide the dark bloodstains ruining her tailored dress.
Chief Anton slowly lowered his reading glasses, his gaze shifting from the severed head of the syndicate leader to my hooded, masked silhouette, and finally to Mochi, who was standing stiffly at my side. A low, gravelly chuckle rumbled in the old commander's chest.
"Well, well, look at this. The two Luminous Knights are actually working together. All this time, the rumor mill told me the top-tier Bounty Hunter of Caria was a strict lone wolf. Turns out she's working with a cat."
The words had barely left the Chief's mouth before another massive wave of realization hit Mochi like a physical blow. His golden feline ears twitched violently, and his eyes widened as he stared down at me.
A Luminous Knight.
He knew I was Eirene Rynd, but in all his undercover operations, he had never once put the pieces together. He had assumed I was operating entirely under the table, completely cut off from the legal grid after my supposed demise. He hadn't realized that I was maintaining a dual existence right under the nose of the high command.
"You're... you're still a registered Luminous Knight? You have two jobs? An official Knight of the Order by day, and a high-tier mercenary hunter by night? Eirene, how are you balancing an active state rank while single-handedly wiping out three S-rank titans on the black market?!" Mochi blurted out, completely breaking his disciplined military composure as he looked between me and Chief Anton
Behind the rigid, calcified lines of my Leech's Hollow Mask, I remained completely stoic. I didn't offer him an explanation. I didn't tell him that the staggering dual income was the only way to rapidly secure a multi-million gold retirement fund before the accelerated, heretical life ticking inside my womb forced me to disappear forever. I simply kept my solitary green eye fixed on Chief Anton, waiting for the Bureau to authenticate the kill and distribute my well-earned payout.
I just stared at Mochi through the dark, unyielding slit of my bone mask, letting the dead silence of the room stretch out.
Mochi's golden feline ears twitched nervously, waiting for a sarcastic retort or a quiet whisper like the old days. But as the seconds ticked by without a single sound from my lips, his analytical brain rapidly put the pieces together. He looked closely at the rigid tension in my throat and the mechanical, silent way I had been communicating through scribbled notes back at the border post.
"Eirene… You're... you're mute? Gods, there have been so many changes since we last met. Did you... did you actually survive that?" Mochi's voice dropped, a sudden, heavy wave of sorrow washing over his face.
He didn't explicitly voice the name of the horrific catastrophic event, but the unspoken truth hung heavily in the air. He was looking at the brutal physical toll of my survival… the missing left arm, the gouged right eye, the lost voice.
Before Mochi could spiral further into his realization, Chief Anton tapped his heavy knuckles against the mahogany desk, breaking the tense atmosphere.
"Sorry to interrupt your reunion, you two, but would both of you sit down for a while?" the Chief said, his gravelly voice grounding the room.
Mochi immediately pulled back, reclaiming his military discipline, and we both took our seats in the heavy leather chairs opposite the desk. Sydney stood off to the side, still scowling at her ruined dress, while Chief Anton leaned forward, steepling his fingers over the blood-stained report sheets.
"Well, Eirene, first it was Oksana, the drug lord who had the lower sectors completely poisoned. Then it was Don Anthony, the arms trafficking leader who was supplying illegal siege weapons to the border factions. Then... what remains the most shocking and controversial liquidation in recent history, you brought down the Immoral Knight Commander himself, Cameron Gal. You tore out a corrupted pillar of our own military."
The Chief looked down at the severed, silver-haired head resting on the floorboards, its blue eyes dulling in the morning light.
"And right now, you've delivered the head of the cross-continental human trafficking ring, Laulif Flower. You haven't just cleared out a bounty list, Eirene. You've single-handedly dismantled the entire black-market network threatening this kingdom."