END - 13

13.

Blen was still sitting across from him, still wolfing down his bagel. Rayner's gaze landed first on the silver hair, then once more on the eyes glimpsed between the strands.

Then he let out a short breath.

"Flattering me won't get you anywhere. I don't promote incompetent people."

"Pardon?"

Before Blen could ask what that was supposed to mean, Rayner had risen, tray in hand, his meal still half-eaten. Blen barely got out a "You haven't finished. Where are you going?" before the man strolled out of the dining hall without a backward glance.

"Well. Getting him down here in the first place counts as a win, I suppose."

Blen polished off the rest of his bread. His worry over how to build healthy habits into the man's life, and thus keep him from working himself to death, only ran deeper.

---

After dinner, Blen finished the rest of his overtime, and once again, it was late by the time he finally escaped the Ministry of Mana.

Before heading outside, he took the brooch from inside his coat and pinned it on. It served as identification, a mark showing that he worked in one of the palace ministries.

Stepping out of the building into the dead of night, Blen found himself looking around as though for the first time. This was the Imperial Palace, the very heart of the Heliorn Empire.

The layout was roughly this: beside the main palace, the largest and grandest, where the emperor and his family lived, stood the East and West Palaces. Directly behind it lay yet another separate compound known as the Detached Palace. The building that housed the palace ministries sat diagonally across from the main palace, set slightly apart.

"Pardon me."

He was walking toward the main palace entrance when a patrolling Imperial Guard approached and blocked his path. Blen, well practiced at this, held up the brooch he'd pinned on a moment ago.

The guard nodded that everything was in order and let him through.

The building that housed the Ministry of Mana and the others stood within the palace grounds, so security was tight. At late hours like this, being stopped by a patrol for an identity check was an everyday occurrence.

Crossing the vast grounds, Blen made for the West Palace gate, the nearest exit. Before he could step outside, the guards posted there checked him once more. Only after he'd shown the brooch marking him as a Ministry of Mana member did he finally leave the palace.

About five minutes' walk from the palace stood a plain building of dark orange brick. It was Blen's home: the Imperial dormitory.

Only members who worked in the palace ministries were allowed to live there. Living in the dorm wasn't mandatory, mind you. The entire building was opt-in.

"Blen, just getting back? Good work today."

Only after exchanging greetings with the Ministry of Mana colleagues he passed on the stairs did Blen finally reach his room.

The interior was plain, but clean and tidy enough to live in alone without any trouble. It had everything one could want: a bed, a desk, a private bathroom, a bookshelf, and a wardrobe.

And because the Imperial Office managed the building directly, even the shared facilities were first-rate.

"Ugh, I'm dead."

Blen dropped his bag wherever it landed and, without even changing, headed straight for the bed.

The perks of being a palace ministry member were a fairly high salary and the free use of a room this nice. It was one more benefit that came with working in the palace, though the moment you quit, you were thrown out without mercy.

The only other perk was that people treated you a little better once they heard you worked for a palace ministry. By that measure, for a commoner, it was a pretty successful life.

If only it weren't for that damned ending.

"There has to be some other good way..."

Some way he could help Rayner live a healthy life instead of working himself into the grave. Blen sat up on the bed and stared blankly into space.

As he looked around the comfortable, spotless room, a thought suddenly surfaced: What's Rayner's place like?

"I'm sure there was something..."

The original hadn't shown much of Rayner's private life, and that naturally included what kind of home he lived in and how he lived. Rayner had been a supporting character of real weight in the original, but he wasn't the protagonist, so there'd been no need to describe every little detail like that.

And yet something hazy came back to him: a line in which the original's protagonist described Rayner's home as a place they never wanted to visit again.

Where does health come from?

Some of it was innate, but diet, sleep patterns, mental stress, stamina, and energy were all closely tied to it too. And from that angle, the environment a person lived in couldn't be dismissed either.

Rayner was the last person to leave the Ministry of Mana office every night. He literally treated his home as a place to sleep, and more often than not, he didn't even manage that, crumpling himself into a corner of his own office instead. Honestly, he did every unhealthy thing in the book, and all by himself.

"..."

After thinking it over, Blen shook his head. He'd gone too far, thinking about Rayner's house. For starters, Rayner never went home, so there was no way Blen could go there either.

And if he told him, "Please, go home," Rayner would knit his brows and snap at him to stop meddling before he was sent home for good. That much was obvious.

"Eh, it'll work out somehow."

Blen flopped back onto the bed. His eyes, still full of the light spilling from the ceiling, slowly drifted shut.

---

The sound of birdsong reached his ears, faint and far away. Sunlight slipped in through the gap in the curtains. Perhaps because of the glare, Blen, sprawled carelessly across the bed, scrunched up his face.

Before long, his eyelids fluttered open.

"Ah... guess I just fell asleep."

Blen sighed heavily at the sight of himself still in his uniform. He'd only meant to rest his eyes for a moment because they hurt, and apparently he'd dropped off completely. Unable to get up right away, he dawdled for a while, then slowly slid off the bed and shuffled into the bathroom.

After washing up, he stepped into the corridor with his hair only roughly shaken dry. He planned to eat breakfast on the first floor before coming back up. Any later, and the crowd would swarm in and he might miss out on what he wanted.

"Wonder what's on the menu today."

He was yawning widely and heading down the stairs when he heard frantic footsteps from somewhere.

"Blen!"

He'd barely turned toward the voice before the person barreling toward him clapped a hand on his shoulder.

"Ugh..."

The grip was so strong that Blen staggered.

"Good morning!"

"Morning... Senior Ian, you're full of energy this early. I'm jealous."

"Yeah, thanks! But..."

Blen forced his heavy eyes open. Ian, a First Rank member of the Ministry of Mana, was for some reason sucking air through his teeth and busily inspecting Blen's face from every angle.

"What?"

"You're not bad-looking at all, so why don't you ever dress yourself up? You always walk around with your hair hanging down like that."

Ian swept Blen's hair, still slicked back with moisture, down and then up again. The shape of the eyes beneath that eye-catching color was every bit as striking as the silver. Blen, however, seemed utterly uninterested. He raked his fingers through it and let his bangs fall back over his face.

"It's just more comfortable. Anyway, what's going on? I doubt you came all this way at the crack of dawn because you were curious about my hairstyle."

"Oh, right. Do you have a minute? I know someone in the Foreign Affairs ministry, and he wants to meet you, the Ministry of Mana aide."

"A Foreign Affairs member? Why?"

"No idea. I'm just passing on the message, and we're not exactly close. He said he'd wait in the dorm lounge. Could you stop by if you have time?"

"Sure, why not."

Ian thanked him and zipped off again like the wind. Honestly, no matter how many times Blen saw him, the man was one of a kind.

Blen gave up on breakfast for now and headed to the lounge. Inside, he found a man sitting there all alone.

"Um... Senior Ian sent me."

The man rose slowly. Judging by the brooch on his uniform, he was a Second Rank member of the Foreign Affairs ministry.

"S-sorry for calling you out of nowhere. I'm Isaac."

"Blen. So, what's this about...?"

They'd never met. Well, they might have passed each other in the ministry corridors at some point, but Blen had no memory of the man.

"Haah."

Isaac abruptly heaved a sigh and dropped into a chair. His face was etched with worry.

"Do you happen to know the name Sandrew Alaine?"

"Sandrew Alaine?"

He was sure he didn't know the name and was about to shake his head, but it sounded oddly familiar. He even had the feeling he'd seen it somewhere.

"Uh... um..."

"They'd be one of the candidates who passed the second round of the National Mage Examination this year..."

"Oh!"

That did it. Blen clapped his hands and nodded.

"Yes, I know the name."

It had definitely been in the analysis sheet of third-round candidates that Rayner had handed him. The candidate's skill level made it hard to understand how they'd even made it to the final round, which was exactly why it had stuck in his memory. 

Slipping through the second round might be explainable, but the scores weren't remotely good enough to pass the third, and he'd been about to mark them as a fail.

"From what I vaguely heard from Ian, you're in charge of the third-round pass list..."

"Yes."

Isaac sighed again. It was so heavy that a few more might have collapsed the floor.

He looked at Blen, then at the ground, then at Blen again, repeating the routine about three times. At last, having apparently made up his mind, he squeezed his eyes shut.

"I'm sorry to ask, but could you pull a few strings so that candidate gets a license...?"​