The Minister, Collapsed

9.

She quietly gazed down at the set pieces arranged on the board.

At a glance, it resembled a chessboard, but a closer look would reveal it to be something entirely different.

In chess, white and black each begin with sixteen pieces.

But the number of pieces she was observing numbered in the dozens, at the very least. The size of the board also dwarfed that of a standard chessboard.

The pieces were already moving. Her own, too. And her opponent’s.

Raising her head, she glared at the opposite side.

Only a chair was there; her opponent was nowhere to be seen. But her eyes clearly perceived their presence.

“……..”

Finally, lifting her hand, she moved one of her pieces.

Anticipating her opponent’s next move, while remaining vigilant.

—

“Achoo!”

Damn it. Is this a cold?

I shouldn’t have left the window open last night, thinking it was a little warm. Never expected it to snow during the night.

Now, I woke up feeling heavy and sluggish this morning. And since then, I’ve been coughing and sneezing non-stop, my nose is stuffed, and my throat is sore.

At this rate, I won’t have a leg to stand on when people call me an incompetent fool who can’t even take care of himself.

Or, has that been the case all along?

Well, the work was already done, and the Intelligence Bureau functioned just fine without me anyway. Besides, pawning it off on someone else would just be a nuisance. I’d head home early today.

That decided, I started to rise from my seat, but a knock at the door forced me back down.

“Minister, I have a report for you… Minister? Are you alright?”

Celine entered, tilting her head at my face. I must have a fever; my face felt flushed.

“I’m fine. What’s the matter?”

“Ah, yes. It’s a report concerning the village where they were manufacturing Fairytale within the Empire. A battle broke out around midnight last night between our Intelligence Bureau operatives and unknown assailants.”

Unknown assailants? Some kind of bandits?

“This almost certainly confirms the involvement of a third party.”

What was she going on about? I fiddled with my fingers, racking my memory until I finally recalled Celine’s words from a recent meeting.

Ah, that’s right. That a third party, not the Clamore Small Kingdom, might be orchestrating the production of Fairytale.

Well, Celine could handle that. She was just here to deliver the report as procedure demanded, nothing more.

“Casualties?”

“The Fairytale being produced in the village, along with the production facilities, were all destroyed beforehand, so there was no particular damage.”

That wasn’t what I was asking.

This woman had no blood, no tears.

“I meant the operatives.”

“Ah… I-I apologize. None of the operatives involved in the battle were killed. The injured are not in life-threatening condition.”

Good to hear.

Hmm. But my body feels worse than I thought.

Could I make it home?

“The identities of the assailants are still unknown, but if they could stand up to our operatives, they must be quite skilled. In my opinion, we should dispatch the Owls to begin a full-scale pursuit… Minister?”

Celine seemed to be saying something, but the words weren’t registering.

This was bad. I’d better hurry home…

Ah.

Face planted on the desk.

“Minister? Minister!”

Her voice, a distant echo, was the last thing I heard before my consciousness dissolved.

Celine was seized by panic at the sight of the Minister collapsing abruptly onto his desk.

Even so, almost instinctively, she rushed to him, pulling the fallen man upright and into her arms.

“It’s hot…!”

His body blazed like a furnace. Not only that, but blood gushed from his nose in a torrent.

A single word flashed through her mind.

Death.

A subject attached itself to the front.

The Director’s death.

“No…no…!”

Celine felt terror.

A terror more overwhelming than any she had ever experienced in her life.

“Someone! Anyone! Is anyone out there! Someone, anyone, please come quickly! Please…!”

Several, hearing Celine’s voice, weeping like a child, rushed into the Director’s office.

Immediately, the terror spread.

Some froze in place, others trembled like aspen leaves, and still others fainted at the unbelievable sight; the Intelligence Bureau swiftly descended into chaos.

But even amidst that pandemonium, some maintained their composure.

Staff and agents, coldly assessing the situation, hastily went outside to summon a doctor, forcibly pulling Celine away from the Director and laying him on the desk.

Not long after, the doctor arrived. Or rather, the Intelligence Bureau agents carried the doctor in.

All eyes were fixed on the doctor as he was transferred into the Director’s office like a piece of furniture and meticulously examined Ervin.

Holding their breath, they watched the situation unfold for what felt like an eternity.

Finally, the doctor spoke.

“A collapse due to severe overwork. He’ll recover on his own with sufficient rest.”

Sighs of relief escaped from all corners.

Of course, it wasn’t a minor ailment, but the fact that he wasn’t suffering from a terminal illness brought immense relief.

After prescribing precautions for just in case and medication to aid in his recovery, the doctor departed, and the Director was moved to his residence.

Everyone volunteered to guard and nurse the Director, but Celine blocked them from the latter, at least.

“Too many people won’t be good for the Director. I alone am enough as a nurse.”

Naturally, protests rained down.

Some even suggested a rotating shift system, but Celine, as always, dismissed all opinions using her authority as the Director’s secretary.

In the end, more than three times the usual number of personnel were assigned to guard the Director’s residence, while Celine took on the sole responsibility of nursing him.

Having monopolized the role of nurse with what could almost be considered an overreach of authority, Celine’s first act upon being alone with the unconscious Director was to remove his clothes.

‘It’s a nursing procedure. He was dirtied with blood and sweat, so it can’t be helped.’

Whispering apologies to someone she couldn’t name, Celine undressed the Minister. Each garment fell away, layer by layer.

When she’d even removed his undergarments, she nearly gasped with a triumphant joy, but with an iron will, she suppressed the desire bubbling up inside, focusing instead on her nursing duties.

Celine cleansed the Minister’s body ‘inch by inch’ with warm towels soaked in hot water, a fleeting sense of regret washing over her, yet she refrained from further action and quietly helped him into fresh clothes.

Finally, she placed a cool compress on his forehead, tucked him beneath the covers, and only then did the reality of being in the Minister’s home truly sink in.

‘The Minister must keep things just as immaculate at home,’ she mused.

Under the guise of needing to know where everything was in order to care for him, Celine wandered through the house.

While the agents occasionally glimpsed the Minister’s residence during protection details, Celine had never had the chance, making everything she saw incredibly exciting.

‘Now Christina can’t taunt me for never having been inside the Minister’s house,’ she thought.

Celine found Christina’s bragging, born from a single, begrudgingly assigned protection detail, terribly irritating.

But things were different now.

She’d washed the Minister’s body and dressed him; Celine was certain she now held the upper hand.

‘He might be hungry when he wakes up; perhaps I should prepare something light.’

Lost in the thought, Celine pictured what it would be like if she were married to the Minister, living together in this house, a vision that flooded her with both shame and delight at such blasphemous imagining.

Sadly, her blissful reverie was short-lived.

“Minister!”

The intruder burst in, threatening to splinter the door with the force of their entry.

“Minister! Where is the Minister?! Is he alright?”

She’d instructed the guards to let no one pass in case of such an emergency, but it seemed even they were powerless against a member of Owl.

Christina, having rushed back from a mission upon hearing news of the Minister’s collapse, was met with Celine’s reprimand.

“Christina, shush! Keep your voice down! What if you wake the Minister?”

“Oh, I, I’m sorry. So, how is the Minister…?”

“He’s resting. Therefore…”

“Erwin!”

The door flew open again.

As Celine watched Francesca stride in without so much as a by your leave, she resolved:

She’d suggest to the Minister later that these useless guards all be dismissed.

—

Opening his eyes with difficulty through a haze, he found himself in the midst of chaos.

“Minister!”

“Minister!”

“Erwin!”

I found myself surveyed by my capable, though not particularly close, secretary; a forceful, frightening woman; and a kind, but bothersome, acquaintance all at once.

“……”

I closed my eyes again.

Sleepy.

Gotta sleep.

—

“The fever seems to have subsided a little. You all can probably head back now, I reckon.”

With a face of annoyance, Celin waved her hand as if shooing away insects, prompting a fiery response from Christina.

“Maybe *you’re* the one who should be heading back, Celin? You’ve got no fighting prowess, and you’ve got plenty of work to do tomorrow, right?”

“The escort’s waiting outside, isn’t it? Besides, what does combat ability even have to do with nursing the sick? Did all the blood rush to your muscles and leave nothing for your brain?”

Celin explained that, thanks to the Minister’s usual superhuman efficiency with his duties, he could be absent for several days without a problem.

“But, but… what if there’s an emergency? What if the whole Information Department control tower is empty!”

“In that case, we’ll just handle the work from here. More to the point, do you even know how to nurse someone back to health? I bet you couldn’t even make rice porridge.”

“I-I can totally make that!”

Amidst their argument, Francesca, who had been observing the exchange, raised a hand and spoke.

“As the Captain of the Knights, I have sufficient strength to protect the Minister, and as a Lady of the Countess family, I’ve picked up some cooking skills from my bridal lessons. Wouldn’t it be best if I stayed, and the two of you cleared out?”

It was the beginning of a dogfight.

Even afterwards, they each argued that they were the most suitable, but no one conceded an inch, leading them to decide they would simply nurse the Minister in their own ways.

That being said, their desired areas of responsibility overlapped, leading to more bickering. But when the Minister stirred at the sound of their squabble, the three of them, with a slight, a *very* slight return to reason, divided the tasks by lottery.

“I’ll do the cooking. Christina does the cleaning. Francesca does the laundry. No complaints, right?”

“……Fine.”

“……Guess I have no choice.”

It stung to have the opportunity for cooking, the most direct way to show care, snatched away, but both women begrudgingly accepted, focusing on their respective tasks because cleaning and laundry were still for the Minister’s benefit.

Then, Christina found something.

“Huh? W-who is this woman?!”

“Woman?”

“A woman, you say?”

Reacting to the word ‘woman’, Francesca and Celin gathered where Christina was, their gazes falling on the drawing she held.

It was a portrait of some woman.