Back in the only ‘safe’ room of the heavily monitored villa he had been allotted by his ‘good friend’ who was now reaching the peak of his political career, Tom couldn’t help but frown in displeasure as he pointed his finger at his ‘assistant’ in frustration. “Hey you, be honest with me here… it was because you knew about Emilia’s ‘secret’ that you switched sides first, right?”
The girl with shoulder-length ash-blonde hair blinked at him in confusion. “W-What are you talking about… switched sides?”
Even though she now knew that she was ‘born’ in Red Dusk, all she remembered was her life in Blue Dawn. She may not be very smart, but Cindy still believed that, regardless of her past, Red Dusk didn’t deserve her allegiance now.
This was true both logically and morally, and she didn’t think there would be many who could argue otherwise. Moreover, with everything she now owed to the Empress and the Prime Arbiter, there was no doubt in her heart where she belonged.
Tom could practically feel the cogs in the dumb girl’s head turning as she nodded to herself while justifying how she wasn’t a traitor in her mind. ‘Damn, this disposable cover personality is so fucking stupid!’
He sneered. “Oh come on now, I’m not talking to you. The girl on the inside, hey, get the fuck out! We need to have a word!”
Cindy shrank back immediately, looking at him in fear. “D-Don’t! Don’t provoke her!”
Although she hadn’t talked with her ‘sister’ for long, they had still been in communication through a diary ever since she was ‘discovered’ by the Prime Arbiter, Crystal.
But while she may not know much about ‘Mindy’, as she referred to herself, two things were for sure.
First, her sister absolutely adored the Empress and the Prime Arbiter.
And second… she positively detested the man she was going to be ‘assisting’ on her first job.
Cindy wasn’t too sure about the specifics, but from what she managed to gather from Crystal, her sister’s hatred of the man wasn’t really unjustified.
Apparently, they had been first born in the Commonwealth of Red Dusk, and this man was supposed to be her ‘guardian’?
Even if she couldn’t remember her childhood, it was clear from her life in the past decade that the man had more than just ‘failed’ to fulfill his duties, however.
That being said, Cindy believed that she had turned out quite well in the end, and didn’t feel the need to hate anyone in particular. After all, if not for the trajectory her life took, would she ever have had the chance to meet the likes of Crystal and Emilia?
But since her ‘sister’ was sure to be hostile to this man, and Cindy felt like he didn’t deserve to die, she knew she had to prevent their ‘meeting’. At the very least, she must hold on until there was no other choice, or the mission the empress gave him was already completed!
Tom naturally had no idea how she was ‘protecting’ him, and only groaned in frustration. “Why not? I’m doing everything the empress told me to, that’s all she’s here to prevent, right? As her former boss, can I not even have a word?”
Well, technically, it was Cindy’s job to ‘assist’ him, and her ‘sister’ was only here as a precaution, but Tom wasn’t stupid enough to believe that. Especially not with the extra precaution they had taken to make sure he didn’t leak the ‘secret’ of the Empress.
Cindy shook her head furiously in denial. “Y-You can’t!”
Tom sneered. “Why not?”
The ash-blonde turned her head away awkwardly. “B-Because s-she told me to only switch her out when you need to die!”
”…”
Seeing how the man’s face turned dark, Cindy couldn’t help but twiddle her fingers meekly. “… S-Sorry, she’s a little grumpy, but not a bad person. B-But since I can’t explain it to her first, w-what if you end up… dying… w-we don’t want that… right?”
Although he felt like bashing his head against the wall, Tom also felt like it wasn’t worth the risk. “Well, whatever, fuck it… I’ll just have to ask you, then.”
”A-As long as it’s not used to hurt the empress…”
”Hey, we’re on the same side now, no need to be so stiff!”
”O-Okay…”
Tom grinned. “Alright, then… I know you were admitted to an orphanage in the capital of Blue Dawn at the age of eight. But how the fuck did you end up working for the empress in the end?”
Naturally, he had received ‘reports’ from Mindy about how she managed to sneak into the rebels and befriend some higher ups there. But since most of the information they got back then turned out to be fake, he couldn’t help but think everything he knew about her must have been a lie.
Cindy hesitated for a while before nodding. “I-I guess it’s not really a secret… Actually—”
And as it turns out, Tom’s intuition wasn’t really wrong, though Cindy didn’t share the full explanation from Mindy, and only told him what he could have found easily on his own anyway.
Halfway through her explanation, however, her eyes suddenly turned cold, and she stopped speaking.
Tom suddenly felt a chill run up his spine. “Y-You—”
’Mindy’ grinned as she started twirling the ballpoint pen leisurely, which now looked a lot more lethal than before. “Why, weren’t you clamoring to talk to me just moments before?”
As the one charge of the project that created her, Tom naturally knew that while Cindy remained oblivious to the existence of her sister, that wasn’t the same the other way around.
Mindy could not only see and hear everything from the inside, she could also send her sister to sleep and come out at any time.
No, as the true master of the body, that was far from the limits of what she could do. In fact, even the inner thoughts of the ‘shell’ weren’t safe if Mindy really wanted to pry into them.
In the worst case, she could even shred the memories of this ‘shell’, but that wasn’t really something that should be done unless really necessary. After all, even their experts hadn’t been sure whether the shell would just ‘reset’ or become completely useless if that happened.
Of course, what made her really dangerous weren’t all these ‘privileges’, but the lethality of her physical body.
It had to be said, aside from being a spy, Mindy was also an assassin born and trained to kill since birth. Although the training she went through was only for five years from the age of three… this monster had survived and thrived where two hundred and ninety nine other girls had died.
Although he didn’t want to show weakness, Tom couldn’t help but gulp. “W-Well, I-I just wanted to know why you switched sides. W-We’re now in the same camp, s-so… n-no need to be hostile to each other.”
Much to his relief, Mindy didn’t react violently to his words, and even smiled, though Tom would rather she hadn’t given how dangerous it looked on her face.
”Alright… I’ll explain what happened to you since you’re so curious…”
Back then, although she was technically a ‘spy’ in Blue Dawn at that time, Mindy’s unique ‘position’ as a ‘sleeper’ made it so that she never actually had to do much ‘work’ except to ‘wait for instructions’… which she hoped would never come.
Of course, when it came to large-scale events such as the nationwide collapse of various infrastructure and supply chains, as well as the brewing of the ‘rebellion’ later, there was no way the ‘sisters’ would remain unaware or unaffected.
After all, her agency had only thrown her here in an orphanage and cut off all support thereafter, so Cindy’s struggle as an impoverished girl in a struggling country could be imagined, especially after the institution they were taking shelter in closed when they were twelve.
Tom couldn’t help but grumble to himself. “Don’t tell me you hold a grudge against us for something like that? Please, even if she had to struggle a little, it was only the shell doing the hard work. If you really wanted to, you could have easily—”
Mindy gave the man a scathing look, and then ignored him once he had shut up. “Fortunately, Cindy managed to get ‘part-time’ work in an ice-cream parlor that same year, which earned us just enough money to fill our belly with cheap fast food every day… most of the time.”
Of course, having their own place to live or going to school was impossible, but in their situation, just being able to survive could already be considered ‘lucky’.
Mindy felt quite sorry for this innocent yet stubborn sister of hers, but she didn’t feel that their situation would improve much even if she came out.
After all, while her survival skills were much better than Cindy’s, and it was definitely possible for her to ‘acquire’ enough money to change their lives in a short time, would Cindy really just accept it all? Unlike Tom, Mindy didn’t think her sister was just a disposable shell, nor did she feel like hurting the girl’s feelings was a ‘trivial’ matter.
And being who she was, if she’d really done as Tom suggested… Cindy would definitely have freaked out about ‘going crazy’… and then surrendered herself to the authorities right after.
As luck would have it, however, perhaps it was her sister being such a silly ‘goody-two-shoes’ that really changed everything for the better in the end.
Mindy couldn’t help but smile genuinely as she thought back to that day, even in front of Tom. “Who could have known that ‘saving’ a fainted puppy from the backseat of someone’s car would be what ended up changing our life, huh?”
Tom scratched his head in confusion. “W-Wait, wait a minute… how did you end up meeting the empress by saving a puppy? What nonsense is this?!”
The ash-blonde sighed. “That adorable idiot… she got sued for breaking into someone’s car to ‘rescue’ a stuffed toy…”
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