The two of them ended up at a tavern.
Leone shot the owner a quick look; he caught her eye, glanced at the boy she'd brought along, and let out a small sigh on behalf of whatever was coming the kid's way.
Somewhere in the middle of their conversation, Leone suddenly piped up.
"Oh, right — now I remember. You're the one who was shouting his head off outside the barracks the other day, aren't you?"
"Pfft!" Tatsumi sprayed a mouthful of his drink clear across the table.
It had never once crossed his mind that this gorgeous woman might have caught his single most humiliating moment.
"Cough — cough, uh… you were there for that?"
"Haha. This whole area's my usual stomping ground. And judging by that reaction, the hot-blooded kid from the other day really was you."
"Ngh…" Tatsumi went red to the ears.
That little public spectacle was, frankly, black-history material — he'd been half a step from social death!
"By the way — that man you were yelling at that day. Do you know him?" Leone tipped her head down, her expression sliding out of view.
Her tone had shifted too, gone heavier, more serious.
But Tatsumi, still drowning in his own embarrassment, caught none of it.
He answered without a second's thought. "Nah, never met him. I just saw he got to walk straight in without lining up, so I figured he was some kind of officer."
"Oh — I see."
Leone's eyes narrowed as she studied the boy in front of her.
The truth was, she'd had her eye on him for days.
A country kid coming to the Capital to carve out a future for himself — she'd seen far too many of those, and their stories almost never ended well.
The boy had a bit of skill, sure, but in a city that chewed people up and spat out the bones, a bit of skill wasn't worth much.
And if she was being honest, it was his coin purse she'd really been after. Strip a kid like this of his money, the way she saw it, and he'd give up and head home.
The rebel army was massing its strength, and before long it would meet the Empire head-on — and in the thick of all that, she had no wish to watch a pure-hearted boy set foot on that road.
But just as she'd been about to make her move, something had gone wrong.
That man had turned up. Right there, out in the open.
In that moment she hadn't dared so much as twitch, distance between them or not.
By the boss's account, that man alone could go toe to toe with five Teigu users and more, holding the upper hand for the entire fight.
He was one of three people the boss had marked as a standing exception: cross paths with any of them, and you were cleared to abandon the mission, no questions asked.
The other two were the pair famous as the strongest in all the Empire — General Budo, and Esdeath.
No member of Night Raid was ever to engage those three under any circumstances; the order was simply to run, with everything they had.
It was one of the very first rules the boss had laid down once the group had a name.
Leone's own assignment was to seek out clients across the Capital, gather intelligence and scout locations, and find anyone with the makings of Night Raid to bring into the fold.
She certainly hadn't counted on bumping into that man in the middle of a public street.
Seeing him deep in conversation with the country boy, she'd figured she might sidle up to the kid and see whether he'd let anything useful slip.
So much for that.
The boy knew nothing at all — couldn't even tell her who the man was.
He was simply too green to know how the world really worked.
"Heh, so you came to the Capital with a couple of friends, did you?" Leone kept up the conversation while tipping back her drink in great, hearty gulps.
The sheer boldness of it made Tatsumi's eyelid twitch.
It was a little late to be asking, but he ventured the question anyway, gingerly.
"Um… is it really okay to be drinking that much in the middle of the day?"
Seeing that he stuck to soft drinks and wouldn't touch a drop of alcohol himself, Leone grinned.
"It's fine, it's fine. A good drink in the daytime is one of life's finest pleasures, you know."
"…"
"So — these two friends of yours. Where'd they get to?"
At the mention of them, the boy's mood sank all at once.
"Mm. We set out together, but one night we got jumped by bandits and ended up separated…"
"Bandits, huh?" There wasn't much optimism in Leone's tone.
Ambushed out in the wilds, and at night no less — the odds of walking away from that were grim.
Perhaps catching the meaning underneath her words, Tatsumi rushed to add, "Of course, a few measly bandits would never be the end of them. Those two are every bit as good as me in a fight — they're fine, I'm sure of it."
"Oh?" That gave Leone pause.
The way she saw it, the kid in front of her wasn't especially strong, but he had the makings of something — decent swordsmanship at his age was already a cut above the average.
Put him through some hard training and he might actually amount to something one day.
Run-of-the-mill bandits were nothing but a disorganized rabble.
If the boy had gotten away, his friends likely had too.
Still, she could tell he hadn't seen much real combat, and she wondered whether he had it in him to land a killing blow when the enemy was another human being.
And if his friends really were no weaker than he was, then his village must have had a decent instructor — some retired frontline soldier, most likely.
"It's just… I'm worried they've gotten lost. Sayo — ah, that's one of them, a girl — she's careful and clever, so she'll be fine. But the other one, Ieyasu, he's a hopeless idiot with zero sense of direction. I really don't know if he'll make it to the Capital in one piece." Tatsumi let out a sigh.
Leone gave a slow, coquettish smile, then spoke up out of nowhere.
"All right, I've got it. In that case, let your big sis here track those two down for you."
"Eh?" Tatsumi brightened in an instant. "Really — you can do that?"
"I've got connections all over," Leone said, all confidence. "Intel brokers among them. Pay the right price and they could hunt down a single ant if you asked them to."
"Wh—what?!" the boy gasped. "That's incredible!"
But once the thrill wore off, Tatsumi remembered his money was all but gone.
The smile stalled on his face; then he gritted his teeth and, steeling himself, dug out every coin he had left.
"I don't know if it's enough, but… this is everything I've got."
Leone took the purse from his hand and weighed it in her palm, a faint gleam kindling in her eyes.
From the sorry look on his face she'd expected a couple of gold coins at most — but there was a fair bit still in here. Enough for a few dozen bottles, easy.
One glance at him told her he'd been treated as a fat lamb more than once lately, well and truly spooked by it all.
But sometimes, kid, a person just can't grow without taking a few knocks along the way.
'Forgive me. Bwahaha!'
Outwardly, Leone put on a troubled little frown.
"Mm… this really isn't quite enough. But with my connections, I might be able to call in a favor or two. It's not completely out of the question."
"R-really?" Tatsumi clenched a fist. "Thank goodness — I might actually see those two again!"
"Mm-hm. Sit tight here a sec. I'll go have a word with the intel broker and get them looking into it. Back in a flash~"
"Okay — thank you so much!"
And even at that point, one thing still hadn't dawned on Tatsumi: he'd handed over every coin to his name without so much as learning the woman's!
...
"So — that's the whole tragic tale of how you got fleeced?"
"Yeah…"
"Bwahahaha!"
"…"
With the tavern owner pointing the way, Tatsumi had found the Imperial Police — and after pouring out the entire miserable story, the man had the nerve to burst out laughing right in his face.
'Are you kidding me?! That is beyond rude!'
"Hahaha — sorry, sorry, it was just too good, I couldn't help myself. Right, let's do introductions. Name's Guy."
"…I'm Tatsumi."
"Tatsumi, huh. Look, I hate to say it, but you can forget any dreams of tracking down that woman who scammed you."
"Eh? Why not?" Tatsumi demanded, worked up.
Guy dug at his ear with his pinky, utterly unbothered. "I only just joined the force, but a story like yours? I heard it more than fifty times yesterday alone."
"Huh?"
Fifty… were the swindlers in the Capital really running that wild?
Guy sighed. "Honestly, there are so many suckers out there the con artists can barely keep up with the demand. And that number's only going to climb."
A little anger mark practically throbbed above Tatsumi's head.
This guy — had he just casually called him a sucker, plain as anything?
"Bottom line, Tatsumi — all you can do is chalk it up to bad luck."
The boy sucked in a sharp breath.
His temper slipped its leash, and his palm came down hard—
Bang!
The table let out a dull thud.
"Damn it," Tatsumi ground out through his teeth. "What is this place? Is the whole Capital like this? It's nothing — nothing — like what I heard!"
The clowns at the barracks, the crooked shops, and then a slaver and a con woman right out in the open on the street!
And reporting it got him precisely nowhere — they'd actually told him to swallow it and count himself unlucky?
'This isn't the Capital at all. It's just hell!'
Looking at the boy across from him — a year or two younger than himself, at most — Guy went quiet.
'The Capital, huh. It was true.'
The real thing looked nothing like the place their father had described.
In their father's telling, the Capital, the whole Empire, had been a flourishing land: people living and working in contentment, comfortable and well-off, society fair to all.
And in the end… had their father been lying to them the whole time?
'If he were still alive, I'd give anything to ask him to his face.'