Another thing she didn’t know is what exactly he’d meant when he said “wildfire.”
“If you want a fire to really get burning, then a meadow’s the perfect place for it.”
“But what exactly does that—?”
“Flames don’t burn alone, you know. They hide living things, they nurture them, and when the time comes, those things rise up alongside the fire,” the man said softly. “Even if sometimes, those things are just a bunch of nameless weeds.”
He made no attempt to explain himself. “Someday, you’ll see what I mean,” was all he said before leaving.
After that, Sara never saw the man again. To this day, she still had no idea who he was.
Sara turned her thoughts back to the empty lot in front of her.
She knelt down and ran her hand across one of the weeds Johnny had been gnawing on to amuse himself. Weeds were often used as a metaphor for the untalented. There was no denying that they were elite plants that had survived and thrived in the harsh battle of natural selection, yet from the perspective of mighty humans, they might as well have no name at all.
When the scout’s words echoed back in Sara’s mind, she suddenly saw herself in them.
I was an academy washout… I had resigned myself to keeping my head down, understanding my place, and being just an ordinary old human.
Back at the academy when she was on the verge of flunking out, her instructors had snapped at her to know her place.
She’d spent countless hours weeping on the beach and lamenting her fate.
But then there were people who found and guided me.
Klaus had sensed the glimmer of potential in Sara and invited her to join Lamplight. And instead of just writing her off, the other girls had welcomed her as an equal.
At first, that was enough for me.
She could hardly believe how much she’d let Klaus spoil her.
There wasn’t a person in all the world blessed with better teammates than she was—that was something she could say with pride.
After all, I was just an amateur who hadn’t even made it to the starting line yet. If they hadn’t spent all that time praising and complimenting me, I would never have been able to take that first step.
Now, though, that was exactly what she’d done.
She’d become aware of how fortunate she was. She’d also come to recognize her own incredible talents, and she’d found a dream that those talents were grossly insufficient to attain.
That was why she had to—
Right when she saw the path that was available to her, she heard a chipper voice coming from behind her.
“What’re you doing out here, Sis?”
Sara turned around to find Annette grinning, with a bottle of milk in her hand.
Annette had just gotten out of the bath. She hadn’t even dried her hair properly, and it was visibly still a bit damp. She’d come all that way dressed in her pajamas.
“Miss Annette…”
She must have chased after Sara in such a hurry that she hadn’t had time to finish letting her hair dry.
“You haven’t been hanging out with me lately, so I stuck a tracker on you, yo!” Annette cackled, not sounding apologetic in the slightest.
Sara gave her a conflicted smile, and Annette leaned against her. Her hair still smelled of shampoo as it landed atop Sara’s arm.
“You know I’m getting wickeder and wickeder, right? It’s gonna be trouble for everyone if my owner doesn’t start training me properly!”
“This is the first I’m hearing about me being your owner, Miss Annette.”
“And if you’re willing to accept me being naughty—”
Annette’s voice was hushed.
“—then wouldn’t it be all right for you to be a little bit naughtier, too?”
Hearing that came as a shock to Sara.
Was that…advice? From Annette, of all people?
It was a surprise, to be sure, but not an unpleasant one. Annette saying that gave Sara’s idea the push it needed.
“That’s a funny coincidence.” She patted Annette’s head. “I was just thinking the exact same thing.”
Annette had repaid Sara’s kindness in the most unexpected of ways.
Perhaps she could serve as an example for Sara. Annette operated in a completely different way than Sara did. She followed her impulses wherever they took her, living her life to the fullest and not caring about the ways she was inconveniencing others.
Annette giggled and covered her mouth with delight. “You can just ignore ’em, you know?! Klaus, Monika, forget what they say! Freak geniuses like them can never see things from your perspective.”
She’d seen right to the heart of Sara’s woes. Sara was no good at keeping secrets from the others, so that didn’t come as much of a surprise.
Naughtiness—that was what Sara was lacking. And when it came to being bad, Annette was the best teacher there was.
“Let me give you a hand, yo. I can help you in your quest to become naughtier.”
Annette stuffed the empty milk bottle in her pocket and pulled out something else in its place.
It looked like a set of collars.
That was a Last Code—one of the unique spy tools that Annette had been making for each of her teammates.
Sara squeezed her lips tightly together and took the collars from her.
“I’m gonna become the best version of myself I can be. A version that the boss and Miss Monika could never dream of.”
When people set goals for themselves, their hearts often faltered from how distant those goals seemed. They ran into walls, and they writhed in frustration.
Now that Sara had found a reason to work as a spy, those were the kinds of hardships she was facing.
At the same time, though, it gave her an opportunity to reinvent herself.