9th Grade Civil Servant In Another World Chapter 98 - White Raven Order ― Daniel (1)

“Lucas.”

“Groan…”

“Lucas!”

“Woof!”

“Huh!”

I jerked my head up at the sound of Colin’s crying that reached my ears.

“What, what is it?”

I wiped away drool and blinked my eyes, only to see egg dish that had been not just cut but completely dismembered, scattered pitifully across the plate.

Ah, it seems I had been nodding off while scraping my plate with a fork just moments ago.

“Get it together, Lucas.”

Daniel waved his hand in front of me with a worried expression.

“Uh… where are Oscar and Namir?”

“They finished breakfast and left a while ago.”

He pointed to a clock in the corner of the kitchen. What, nine in the morning already?!

“Ugh, where did my sleep time go!”

I rubbed my gritty, tired eyes and complained, causing Daniel to smile awkwardly.

“Did you have trouble sleeping?”

“Well, that’s nothing new.”

It’s been about three days since I was dragged to the floating fortress.

Kruger had been quiet.

Even though I knew perfectly well how events would unfold, it was difficult to shake off the anxiety and unease. Naturally, I spent my nights with my eyes wide open.

“But Daniel, isn’t it the same for you?”

These days we’d been suffering under a crushing workload.

“Damn, Erika was handling all this work by herself!!”

Daniel agreed with my outcry with a tired laugh. That’s how demanding the work was.

Well, ‘Redan Mining Company’ had a lot of business running secretly.

To handle all the accounting manipulation, bribery work, employee management and surveillance, and various cleanup tasks, the higher-ups had to work like oxen.

“Mm, I did go to bed a bit late yesterday too.”

Daniel said in a voice tinged with fatigue.

“But we can’t skip work, can we…?”

“Erika would try to kill us.”

I let out a deep sigh and sluggishly got myself up.

I didn’t want to go to work. I wanted to quit.

***

Setting aside Kruger’s conspiracy for now, I had my own work to do.

Check company affairs, meet with the White Raven Order friends and Bletter, handle backed-up appointments. Again, I was so busy that ten bodies wouldn’t be enough.

“Should I really start carrying coffee around?”

“What do you mean?”

Before I knew it, commuting with Daniel had become familiar. When I yawned and muttered, Daniel tilted his head.

“Nothing, I just thought it might help me use my brain… huh, what’s that?”

The front of the office building was unusually noisy today.

“Please let me meet the president!”

An old woman with disheveled hair mixed with gray strands, wearing clothes that were little better than rags, was causing a disturbance.

“This is troubling if you keep this up.”

The company’s security guards held the woman back and tried to stop her, but the woman wildly flailed her arms and legs, even hitting them with her fists.

“The president isn’t in right now, ack!”

“What’s going on?”

I hurried over and asked. But before the security guard could answer, the woman looked behind me and rushed over with a brightened face.

“Daniel! Daniel, my baby…! Do you know how long I’ve been looking for you?”

Daniel’s face, embraced by the gaunt and small woman, was stiff and expressionless like a plaster statue.

“What on earth is going on here?”

Perhaps having heard about the commotion, the glass front door opened and Erika appeared with employees.

“Ah, Miss Brightner.”

“Director Redan. You’ve arrived.”

Erika and I were very polite to each other in front of other people.

Regardless, the woman was busy stroking Daniel’s frozen cheek, showing no interest in what was happening around her or what conversation was taking place.

“Daniel, I finally found you. Do you know how long I waited in this cold place to meet you…?”

The aged woman clung to Daniel pitifully with a voice tinged with coquetry.

The scene was incredibly bizarre.

From the woman’s words, they seemed to know each other, but the atmosphere between them was somehow awkward and murderous.

Perhaps because of this, both the security guards and employees stood still, looking back and forth between the two.

The atmosphere was clearly difficult for anyone to intervene in, but Daniel just stood there looking down at the woman. With unfocused, dead, vacant eyes.

Ah damn, looks like I have to step up again.

“Uh, who is this? Aren’t you going to introduce us, Daniel?”

In the end, there was no one but me.

When I reluctantly intervened, Daniel squeezed his eyes shut and opened them, then answered in a low voice.

“…She’s my mother.”

In that moment, the woman’s face changed.

An expression that was so happy and sweet, dreamy as if walking through a dream.

What?

“Ah, I see.”

I felt strangely unsettled for a moment, but soon nodded and put on a business smile.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Hartmann. I’m Lucas Redan, a director at Redan Mining Company. And this is Erika Brightner, my secretary and acting president. We’re both always indebted to Daniel.”

“I’m Johanna Hartmann.”

She clasped my outstretched hand with an eye smile full of coquetry.

‘Ah, so this is why he didn’t talk about family matters.’

That thought suddenly occurred to me.

Mrs. Hartmann was far from normal not only in appearance but also in speech and expression.

“You came to see Daniel, right? We have work to do, so would you like to look around the company briefly or rest in the break room? This person here will show you around.”

She slowly nodded and followed an employee. Daniel still had a stiff face.

***

“Mommy, what is love?”

A rural area with lush green vegetation, a beautiful mansion on a hill. Today was the day to paint a family portrait.

The girl sitting in a chair looking at the painter twisted her whole body in boredom and suddenly asked.

“Hmm? Why are you suddenly asking that?”

The mother, who had been standing next to the girl posing, turned her head.

An adorable beloved daughter who wouldn’t hurt even if put in one’s eye, a pretty child like an angel was looking up at her with wide eyes.

“The priest said yesterday. God loves all humans, so He’ll forgive me for secretly eating candy. What’s love, hic!”

After accidentally confessing her small transgression and belatedly covering her mouth, the family burst into laughter at the girl’s appearance.

“Johanna, love is caring for each other. Like Daddy and Mommy.”

“And big brothers and Miss Krause too!”

“You little rascal! I told you not to say that!”

“Young masters, you mustn’t move.”

When the twin older brothers sitting on either side of Johanna started bickering, the painter desperately tried to stop them.

Johanna thought for a moment and asked.

“Then do you get married when you love someone? Did Mommy and Daddy get married for that reason too?”

“Aah!”

“Of course. Mommy and Daddy had a really wonderful love. Right, honey?”

After giving each twin a knock on the head, the mother looked at the father and smiled.

“Huh? Oh yes, that’s right. It was a very wonderful love. Johanna, you must marry someone you love too.”

“Please, your poses…”

Johanna Hartmann had been a very pretty baby from birth. Her family called her their ‘little angel.’

It wasn’t the feeling of a hedgehog cherishing its thorny offspring.

When Mrs. Hartmann went out holding Johanna, ninety-nine out of a hundred people would look at her in admiration.

And they would invariably add this praise,

“Oh my! Your daughter is as beautiful as an angel!”

Mr. Hartmann wasn’t a nobleman, but he was the only son of a rural landowner.

Having been doing business in Lüdelheim, when his parents passed away, he led his family back to settle on the inherited land.

Johanna was about ten years old at the time.

Johanna spent a peaceful childhood.

Kind father and mother, mischievous twin older brothers, good friends, gentle and well-behaved tenant farmers.

Everyone adored Johanna. They cherished and revered her as the most beautiful child in the world.

Johanna grew up to be a bright and beautiful young lady.

However.

1869. When she was sixteen years old.

A revolution broke out.

***

Actually, an ominous atmosphere had been circulating in the village for quite some time.

The children from tenant farming families who had played with Johanna since childhood somehow distanced themselves from her.

Older siblings who had attended university opened something called ‘night schools’ and gave passionate speeches to the villagers all night long.

News kept coming from the capital, from foreign countries, from neighboring cities that disturbing incidents were occurring.

The older brothers had been secretly moving assets abroad bit by bit after consulting with their parents from early on.

Only she didn’t know. No, she was only pretending not to know.

At sixteen, according to the customs of the conservative rural village, she was old enough to put up her hair and reveal her nape.

She could buy clothes freely, bring friends over to whisper secrets all night under the covers without her parents nagging.

And in the joy of soon becoming an adult, Johanna fell asleep every night with happy fantasies in her fluttering heart like a maiden in love with spring.

‘What kind of person will I fall in love with?’

‘I want to marry a man with black hair, tall, with melancholy eyes.’

‘My wedding dress should be pink. My brothers will appear escorting me like knights.’

Her family left her empty fantasies alone.

They were too busy preparing for the upheaval that would soon come, the chaos they could already feel on their skin.

And Johanna was their adorable baby angel. Forever.

But the people’s anger did not spare even angels.

“Ahhh!”

“Johanna! Run away!”

“We’ll hold them off, gah! Hurry!”

Johanna trembled in terror as she stared at the hellish scene before her eyes.

“Kill the evil landlord!”

“Complete the revolution!”

The gentle villagers had transformed, rolling their eyes back and rushing in to kill her family members.

“Why, why are you doing this!”

“Johanna, just go! Run to the forest! Don’t cry!”

One of the twin brothers pushed her away and closed the door. Left alone in the wide, dark corridor, her mind went blank at the metallic sounds and shouting coming from beyond the door, from the hall.

Then, suddenly smelling something acrid, she cracked the door open.

“Hic…!”

In the hall splattered with blood, several corpses were rolling around.

“One’s missing! That girl!”

“Find the daughter quickly!”

Among the cackling shouts, red flames were growing larger, devouring the beautiful decorations.

Johanna staggered backward and looked up at the paintings hanging along the corridor wall.

Family portraits that had been painted every year since they came to live in this mansion, calling painters.

Johanna looked at the last portrait painted just a few months ago, quickly took it down from the wall, hugged it to her chest, and ran away.

Having escaped through a small secret door at the back of the house, she ran through the forest, hacking through it. Her clothes became a mess from bushes and thorns, and she got scratches all over her body, but she couldn’t even feel the pain.

“Hah, hah…”

Out of breath and panting, the moment she stopped walking, a man jumped out from behind a large tree.

“Hans!”

“Johanna!”

When the young man she had been very close to since childhood appeared, Johanna stamped her feet and shouted in joy and sorrow.

“Hans, people burned down our house! They, they stabbed mother and father and my brothers too…”

But Hans wasn’t listening to her words. He just looked at her with a complicated expression, then suddenly shouted.

“Found her! I found Hartmann!”

“Ha, Hans!”

“Sorry, Johanna.”

He approached with a rope. Johanna ran away again.

She ran and ran and ran.

The whole world was hell.

Wherever she went, people were killing people, protesters were marching, buildings were burning.

Running like this, having finally reached the capital Lüdelheim, Johanna could run no further.

She had no strength, no money.

After starving for several days, she tried begging, but even the capital’s residents had no spare resources. The streets overflowed with beggars like herself.

Just when she was about to die as a stranger, someone reached out to her.

“Pretty miss, are you hungry? Won’t you work with us? You can make a lot of money.”

It was an old woman who might have been beautiful once, heavily made up. Too exhausted, Johanna ate the bread the old woman gave her and followed her.

And she found lodging in a shabby building in a corner of the red-light district.

Johanna was now a prostitute.