Mitsuha also divulged the previous day’s incident of how a city guards officer threatened and nearly got violent with her, emphasizing that she was a young lady of nobility from another country. She’d changed into her more upscale clothes, obviously. The two girls had already told the nobles but there was meaning in having the soldiers at the scene take down the information.
It wasn’t long before the culprits started facing backlash from various sides: nobles who were rivals of those associated with city guards, capital army soldiers and royal guards who were disgruntled by the unethical behavior of an organization that was supposed to defend peace in the city, and the upright city guards who were livid about their superiors’ outrageous behavior.
The first order of business was to conduct a surprise investigation into the city guards’ headquarters. It was led by the internal affairs inspectors and field auditors. With the number of soldiers that were sent in, there was no time to hide any documents or obstruct the raid.
A city guards officer tried to get in an inspector’s way, but he was swiftly blocked by a soldier who drew a sword to his neck. Before he could lift a finger, he was tied up and led away. The other city guards meekly fell in line at the soldiers’ aggressive manner.
The atmosphere was so tense that the city guards feared they could get killed on the spot for treason. They were terrified of being punished as criminals who willingly followed their corrupt superiors’ commands.
For some reason, the inspectors were able to find evidence after evidence indicating malpractice. They knew exactly where to look for the bribe money. Secret ledgers and documents detailing illegal acts were discovered in the most obvious places like desk drawers and cabinets. A painting on one of the walls was crooked, exposing a hidden safe. And somehow, only the staff who were involved in the crimes were questioned and the innocent ones were skipped over. That kind of accuracy should not have been possible.
Normally when people committed crimes, they acted alone or had two or three agents they knew they could trust. Any more than that and betrayal became inevitable. Anyone backed into a corner was bound to confess in the hope of lightening their sentence.
There was a system like that on Earth called plea-bargaining. I suppose it’s one way to solve crime…
Anyway, the inspectors─who had an inexplicable knack for casing the building─uncovered all the city guards’ corruption.
That’s what I heard, at least. I don’t actually know anything for a fact. Besides, none of this has anything to do with me.
There’d been bad rumors about the city guards for a long time but forcing an investigation without evidence would’ve had dire consequences if they failed to expose anything. No one had been willing to try them. After all, erasing evidence and witnesses was a cakewalk.
This time, however, the investigators had received a tip. They were told specifically where all the evidence was hidden in the building. Additionally, several pieces of evidence had been submitted before the investigation just in case nothing was found. The tipper was someone who couldn’t be intimidated into retracting their testimony or die without warning.
They couldn’t possibly pass up this chance.
“What?! There was a raid at the city guards’ headquarters, the friends we’ve been greasing the hands of were arrested?!” Bartaad was enraged.
“Yes, sir. Even worse, the replacements who were promoted and transferred from other departments to fill their positions are all very strait-laced folk,” said the clerk who’d been responsible for maintaining relations with the city guards. His face grew increasingly pale as he spoke but the problems didn’t end there. “I also heard that the internal investigators seized countless evidence documents, some of which prove their connection to our company…”
“That’s absurd! I never created such documents! That’s way too dangerous!”
“I, uh, heard that the documents are minutes they recorded for our meetings,” the clerk gulped.
“How could that be?! That’s one of the most idiotic things I’ve ever heard! No one would keep minutes for conversations that you wouldn’t want the public to hear about! Damn it. Either the city guards wrote them after our meetings to threaten us with or the investigators forged and planted them in a stack of papers they confiscated… If they were forged, there should be some inconsistencies to prove it. That could save us.”
Little did he know, the minutes were actually written by Mitsuha using what she heard from the voice recorders, so the information was highly accurate. She slipped them among the city guards’ documents herself, making sure they were easy to find. Further investigation would prove the documents to be believable evidence.
“Anyway, those weren’t the only suspicious papers that were seized. There’s even a chance that other stores with ties to the city guards will be investigated next…”
Now that could spell catastrophe.
Bartaad said, “Well, we haven’t created any incriminating documents, let alone hand them to the city guards. I’m sure that’s true of the other companies too. They’re not stupid. Our ‘friends’ at the city guards must’ve forged them in the hope of blackmailing us for more money in the future. Those fools… But the records will only have the handwriting and signatures of people in the city guards. All we have to do is say that they were fabricated to extort us.”
The situation was bad, but not one they couldn’t recover from, Bartaad believed. He’d need to throw around a lot of money at people in power, but with enough wealth, erasing the testimony of commoners─and even the commoners themselves─was easy enough.
He seethed, “The investigators forced their way into the city guards’ headquarters, but they can’t do the same to privately owned companies without evidence, especially when said companies have friends in the nobility and other elites. Worst case, the internal investigators could end up making an enemy of the merchants’ guild. Not even a noble could survive that unscathed. It’s not time to panic yet.”
Bartaad had no idea how high up the chain of command Mitsuha’s and Larusia’s influence extended. Nor did he know about the documents of mysterious origin that had been slipped into his own store as well as others…
“Mitsuha, why are you going through all this trouble? You could’ve just taken everything from their storehouse like you did last time,” asked Colette.
I know where she’s coming from, but I’ve got my own policies that I refuse to bend, Mitsuha thought. When Lephilia Trading was attacked, the culprit stole everything in her storehouse. That’s why I retaliated by taking everything inside their storehouse. I didn’t do anything else that violated local law.