Bzzt.

“Hm?”

Ro, who had been holding the steering wheel, glanced at Upsilon as he slowed the car down at the vibration echoing through the cabin. Upsilon checked his own phone, meeting Ro’s look to confirm whether the sound had come from Ro’s phone, and then spoke.

“It wasn’t mine.”

“Then that means it’s mine.”

The vibration had been short, so it was a text notification. At this late hour, with nearly three in the morning approaching, the only person who would text him was probably Robert.

It was deep in the night, and there were barely any cars on the road, but that didn’t mean they could let their guard down. Ro pulled over at the shoulder and checked his mission phone. But there were no notifications on that phone.

“Boss?”

“No, I don’t think it’s this phone.”

At Upsilon’s question, Ro tilted his head instead. If it wasn’t a message on the mission phone, there was only one thing left. Ro took out his everyday phone and lit up the screen, and as he expected, the vibration had come from his regular phone.

“Who’s texting at this hour? If it’s spam… huh?”

“Why.”

“What, what is it? Why did this person text me?”

Upsilon looked puzzled at Ro’s visibly flustered reaction, but the sender seemed to be someone Ro had never expected, because Ro didn’t seem to have the presence of mind to explain. Ro looked as though he had fallen into serious thought, letting the phone hang over his knee. On the tilted screen, there was only one line of text: “Come home.”

Home. Judging by the nuance, it didn’t seem to mean the apartment Ro was currently living in. If there was anyone who could call the place they were summoning Ro to “home”… Ro’s family?

“I wasn’t trying to peek, but I saw the text just now.”

When Upsilon honestly admitted it, because he truly hadn’t meant to snoop, Ro gave a light shrug.

“It’s fine. It’s not like it said anything important.”

“…A message from your family? I’m not prying, it’s just that it said ‘home.'”

By then Ro had been about to reply to the other party, but after checking the text that had just come in after it, he answered with a drained expression.

“No, it’s not my family either, and the ‘home’ in this text doesn’t mean my home.”

“…?”

“And the owner of this message says to bring you too.”

He held up the screen. Another short text had really arrived beneath it: “Bring Upsilon too.”

The polite reply Ro had sent right below that, “Yes, sir,” was equally striking.

“Who is it who knows me? It doesn’t seem like the boss’s text.”

“Do you know someone named Clive?”

“No. Never heard of him.”

“He exists. Heeellll of a scary person…”

So who the hell was that? Upsilon was just about to urge Ro on with words that had risen to his throat, then closed his mouth again. He’d find out eventually.

Since they still had a long way to go, Ro told him he could sleep if he got tired, but Upsilon never closed his eyes until the end. On the way back, the car only occasionally carried talk about this mission. Ro reacted with some surprise to Upsilon’s burning down of the orphanage and the care he had taken to make sure children or staff who had nothing to do with this operation were hurt as little as possible.

“If it had gone according to your plan, this whole thing would’ve turned into a black mission, so I naturally thought there might be… casualties at the orphanage.”

“If the situation had been bad enough, then yeah. The people at the orphanage were just lucky.”

“You’ve gotten attached to those kids over the last few days, haven’t you? Otherwise, I don’t think you’d be the type to go to such trouble.”

“I don’t know what kind of person you think I am. I’m not a psychopath. I don’t kill unnecessarily for no reason. On the flip side, I also wouldn’t do anything that would cause a mission to fail because of personal feelings.”

“Mm… sorry, that’s not what I meant.”

Ro was simply grateful that Upsilon had, as always, cared about minimizing sacrifice in the way he thought most efficient. Whether he intended it or not. If Upsilon had told him that the children had been badly injured or killed because of the fire Ro had set to get the ledger, his mood would have hit rock bottom for quite a while, that much was certain.

“Thanks for making sure the kids weren’t badly hurt. That’s what I wanted to say.”

“I just moved according to the method I thought was efficient. You don’t need to thank me for that.”

Seriously, what a personality. Ro snorted at Upsilon’s tendency to add one more line when a simple nod would have been enough. It didn’t sound like he was just trying to sound lofty. Maybe he was trying, in his own way, to show that he was very strict about keeping business and personal matters separate.

“I brushed past it earlier, but the person who texted me…”

“Was it Clive?”

As soon as Ro brought it up, the sender’s name popped out of Upsilon’s mouth as if he had been waiting for it. Even though he hadn’t said it out loud, Upsilon must have been curious who Clive was. Since they were about to meet someone unexpected, it seemed better to know at least who the other party was before going in. Strictly speaking, there was nothing confidential about it either, just something Robert would never have brought up first.

“You know those special intelligence devices we get issued when we go out on missions? He’s the head of the military supplier that provides them to Amabile. In defense and security, he’s a big name in the industry, but unlike the boss, he’s very much a civilian.”

Upsilon understood that Clive was a civilian, but not a normal one. What he still couldn’t understand was why such a person knew Ro’s phone number, and how he knew Upsilon. Just as he was about to ask that question, Ro continued first.

“And he’s the boss’s legal spouse.”

“What?”

“Pretty powerful couple, right? But Clive’s personality is completely different from the boss’s.”

“…I had no idea the boss was married.”

“A lot of people don’t know, not just you. It’s not a secret or anything, but there’s no reason for the boss to announce he’s married first, and Clive doesn’t really like being tied to Amabile outside of work.”

For the past five years, Upsilon had naturally assumed that Robert was single, but now that he thought about it, there had never been any basis for that assumption. For the first time in five years, Upsilon showed a rare look of surprise. Or rather, it wasn’t so much surprise as it was unexpected. But that still didn’t explain why such a man had sent Ro a private text.

“How does someone like that know your personal contact?”

“As for me, well. I’ve been at Amabile for so long that it just happened somehow. But that’s not the important part right now. The fact that Clive, not the boss, texted me means the boss must be in a situation where he can’t contact us directly.”

Upsilon had thought Ro was only explaining who Clive was, but the implication that something might have happened to Robert’s safety made him frown slightly.

“He was still in contact until we cleared out the gang members and burned the ledger.”

“We won’t know for sure until we get there. It’s been years since I was contacted directly by Clive too. Even longer since we met.”

No matter how well they knew each other, the text sent by a spouse to an employee of his company after years of unavoidable circumstances was an order that simply said, “Come home.” Not even a greeting, not even a word of explanation. To Upsilon, Ro’s acceptance of that as perfectly normal also looked strange. Was it related to Ro having said Clive was a scary person?

“You seem uncomfortable meeting this Clive person.”

“Less uncomfortable, more like scared, I guess.”

“Scared? Does he treat you badly?”

“Not exactly, but he’s a strict person. Maybe it’s because the image I had of Clive from when I was little is still stuck in my head.”

How little was “when I was little”?

“Is there anything I should watch out for?”

“Not really? If Clive called us to his house, that means the boss is there anyway, and we’ll probably hardly speak to Clive. When the boss talks with us, he’ll step away.”

“Even so, I’m not sure if I should know the location of the boss’s home.”

“I told you what kind of person Clive is. Even if you know the location, it’s not a place just anyone can enter.”

Ro then chuckled, saying that maybe Robert had been effectively placed under house arrest by Clive for some reason and had no choice but to call the two of them over. A person Ro, normally so slick and optimistic, was afraid of. And the spouse of Robert, the boss of Amabile, where he had spent the past five years, someone with the power… to keep Robert under house arrest. The big shot in the weapons industry.

He didn’t know what kind of person he was, but there was no question he wasn’t ordinary. As the car carrying Ro and Upsilon drew closer to Robert’s residence, dawn was breaking and the pitch-black surroundings were brightening.

“Wow, I never thought I’d come here again.”

At a time not quite six hours after leaving the business hotel, Ro and Upsilon stood before a glittering high-rise apartment building. Despite his words, Ro wore a disgusted expression as he went inside. The first floor of the building was closer to a luxury hotel than a residential space.

The clean marble accents, soft lighting, and lobby decorated simply with modern art sculptures and a few paintings gave off a luxurious, sophisticated feel. Just how good the security was became obvious the moment they stepped into the first-floor lobby, with security personnel stationed there and resident staff at the reception desk checking visitors.

“We’re scheduled to visit the penthouse today. Could you please confirm the registration? It’s for two people.”

Ro naturally walked to the desk and started the visitor check-in.