Chapter 108: Late Night

Chapter One Hundred EightLate Night

In the small hours of the morning, beneath the earth, where ventilation was good yet silence ran deep, yellow gaslight, protected by glass, shone steadily without flickering over empty, peaceful corridors.

Klein sat inside the duty room, casually flipping through the newspapers, magazines, and books piled before him. At the same time, he kept a small portion of his attention on the outside, guarding against anyone rushing toward Chanis Gate.

His coat and top hat hung on the coat rack by the entrance. His cane rested quietly against the wall, positioned where he could easily reach it.

A rich fragrance of coffee spread through the room. Klein instinctively inhaled, pinched his temples, and used the sensation to fight the heaviness in his head and the fatigue in his body.

Back when he had attended university on Earth, he had often been the kind of mighty man who slept at five in the morning and woke at noon. During the two or three years after he began working, he had also occasionally stayed up all night and still gone to the office the next day looking energetic. But all of that had depended on games being too fun, novels too good, films, variety shows, and television dramas too interesting.

This world clearly lacked all those essential supplies for staying up late.

“Emperor Roselle too… If he wanted to show off, he should have shown off properly. He should have devoted his limited life to an infinite cause and led the people of another world, step by step, into the information age!”

Klein silently grumbled, then could only console himself that at least there were still newspapers, magazines, and increasingly abundant novels.

He had originally planned to conquer drowsiness by studying with absolute concentration, but practice had shown that this conflicted with his duty. Once he entered that focused state, it became very easy to ignore movements outside and to overlook the situation at Chanis Gate.

Hoo.

Klein lifted his coffee cup and cautiously blew across it.

He took a small sip, letting the fragrance linger in his mouth and allowing the liquid to flow slowly down his throat.

“Fermo coffee from the Paz Valley. Very bitter, but very good for staying awake.”

Klein praised it and set down the cup.

The Paz Valley was in the Southern Continent, a high-quality coffee-growing region currently contested by the Intis Republic and the Loen Kingdom. Each had established colonial regimes on the valley’s left and right banks, destroying the original Kingdom of Paz.

In that scalp-tingling silence, Klein casually picked up a magazine and discovered it was Ladies’ Aesthetics, a publication about fashion and matching outfits.

“This definitely came from Rozanne…”

He laughed softly and flipped through it with interest.

Perhaps influenced by the rapid development of camera technology in the past decade or so, Ladies’ Aesthetics not only made extensive use of illustrations, it also imitated newspapers by incorporating black-and-white photographs into its content.

Very fashionably, they had invited famous theater and opera actresses to display the charm of clothing and the magic of coordination. In only seven short years, it had grown from a new regional magazine in Backlund into a mainstream periodical distributed throughout the entire nation.

“This dress is rather nice. The model too…”

Klein browsed leisurely, not concealing his appreciation for beauty.

He was a man whose body and mind had developed normally. He had always appreciated beautiful young women. It was simply that he had long set his goal on finding a way home, and so he did his best to keep a distance from members of the opposite sex. He did not want to delay them, nor did he wish to leave behind emotional debts.

As for visiting streetwalkers, he had a small measure of fastidiousness in that regard.

Benson and Melissa are bonds that already exist, impossible to sever. I can only think of some way to make it up to them in…