by SOW
“Wait a second. What did you just say?”
Everyone in Organbaelz knew the Tockerbrot Bakery’s bread was delicious. The townsfolk also knew something else. The bakery’s employees increased every now and then.
Come to think of it, a silver-haired girl joined the bakery as a waitress six months ago, and then a nun and an orphan girl from the church atop the hill, and even the young owner of a repair shop that had recently closed were added. And today, the townsfolk would see another new face.
“Why do I have to do this?!”
“Don’t look surly in front of customers, Miss Schutzstaffel!”
Today customers saw an unfamiliar blonde girl alongside the silver-haired waitress. And as they tended the shop, the atmosphere was strained.
“What’s wrong with you? Smile, Miss Schutzstaffel! Can’t you smile, Miss Schutzstaffel? Now I’m the one who has completely lost her smile!!”
Sven’s usual charming sales smile disappeared, her cheeks were twitching angrily, and eventually she let out a scream.
“This was all your stupid boss’s idea!”
“Watch your mouth or I’ll twist your neck! About 540 degrees!”
Hilde glared at Sven and Sven glared back as she made her threat.
“Argh! Why did master make this decision?!”
Sven would do anything—body and soul—to fulfill her beloved master’s wishes, but she suffered agony over this.
Heidrig and Hildegard had come to kill Lud. For some reason Heidrig had admitted defeat and groveled before Lud, even though he had enough strength to fight.
How could Lud trust them? Even after once receiving pardon, Hilde had attacked again. And Lud had forgiven her again. If that had been the end of it, she could have accepted it.
But how could he hire them to work in the bakery?!
Lud had ordered them to work at his shop in exchange for letting them live. Of course, Sven had tried to stop him. She had mounted a fierce effort to convince him to change his mind.
Lud just looked troubled and said, “But we’re short on labor.”
Even if we are short—and it is true that we don’t have enough employees—even Ellis would be far better!
Ellis was the name of the cat at Tockerbrot.
Of course, it would be impossible for a cat to knead bread dough. It would be impossible, but a cat wouldn’t try to kill Lud!
Heidrig the Wolf Man... Such a man would never admit defeat so easily...
She didn’t know his real name, but along the western battlefront during the Great European War, she had heard his nickname, the Wolf Man, from both friend and foe.
The name Wolf Man figured in many incidents, whether true or not, such as an attempt to assassinate the president of Filbarneu, the plot to bring down the Domino Fort on the border with Wiltia, and the foiled uprising of allied forces against Wiltia with stolen information. Some considered him the most dangerous man on the continent of Europea.
He must be planning something... I’m certain of it!
Lud and Heidrig were alone in the oven room, which Sven could reach in just ten steps. She was uneasy at the thought of what might happen while she worked.
Sven thought only Lud and Heidrig were in the oven room, but Milly was there, too.
“Wow... you’re good!”
Milly said this with genuine admiration.
“I’m not that good!”
Heidrig was kneading bread dough on a worktable.
Kneading dough was the heart of making bread. Mixing flour, water, salt, and yeast stimulates the gluten. It’s said that the texture and fluffiness of the bread depends on this process.
Milly was learning how to bake bread under Lud’s teaching, but it was more difficult than it seemed. Her weight and muscle strength were barely adequate, and learning how to apply that strength evenly for fine adjustments required lots of practice by baking bread over and over.
“I worked in the kitchen when I was in the military a long time ago.”
“Huh? I thought soldiers only ate canned foods.”
“That’s a big misconception.”
Heidrig smiled wryly at Milly’s honest surprise.
During wartime, meals had a big influence on a soldier’s morale.
A long time ago, in order to prevent soldiers from stealing food, the military intentionally made the food taste awful. But, perhaps because of higher stress levels, the violent and even fatal incidents increased. More importantly, the bad food had a disastrous effect on critical missions.
“It’s hard for anyone to be deprived of good food. And that includes soldiers, too.”
The army was now careful to serve the best food possible unless intense battle prevented it, or they were unable to secure supplies. Professional cooks were often hired as civilian employees and paid high wages.
Heidrig placed bread he had kneaded on a shelf to mature, and then picked up some matured dough and divided it into pieces.
“Did you know that about me?”
He asked Lud Langart, who was working with him.
“I couldn’t tell just by seeing you.”
Lud answered casually as he adjusted the fire in the oven.
“It’s just, when we were fighting, you were careful not to knock bread from the shelves.”
During their encounter a few days ago, Lud and Heidrig had grappled inside the shop.
Usually, during a fight, it’s natural to use anything that might help you defeat your opponent. Heidrig could have thrown bread from the shelves, or bottles of jam and marmalade, or overturned the desk, but he hadn’t. Instead, he had taken care to collide with Lud so that they wouldn’t disturb anything.
“People who make food should know enough to treat it carefully. That’s why I asked you to work here.”
Lud had asked Heidrig if he knew anything about baking bread, and Heidrig had answered, “A little.”
Based solely on that answer, Lud told Heidrig and Hilde to work at Tockerbrot.
But, it was more like he had invited them.
“I don’t get it... What are you thinking?”
It may seem strange to ponder such a question while quietly baking bread, but Heidrig couldn’t understand Lud’s intentions.
The Silver Wolf had been among the top five Hunter Unit pilots in Wiltia. He went into battle in his teens, and within three years, was performing heroic exploits at the end of the Great War.
I can’t understand why he ever walked away from his war record and became a baker.
Lud could have risen within the ranks of the regular military or the Schutzstaffel. According to what Heidrig heard, Lud declined an honorary knighthood, albeit of the lowest rank.
I can’t understand it.
Heidrig turned it over and over in his head.
“Hey, um... Mister?”
“.........!”
Heidrig snapped back to reality when Milly spoke to him.
“W-What?”
“That twisty thingy... How do you do it? Can you teach me?”
Heidrig was making cinnamon twists by mixing sugar, cinnamon, and butter into the bread dough and then weaving it into a spiral before baking.
“Oh, this? First, you divide the dough into three pieces and then...”
Heidrig explained how to make the bread in a voice infused with complicated feelings.
“Oh, so that’s how you do it! It’s just like braiding hair!”
“Um... is your name Milly?”
“Yes.”
“Uh, instead of ‘Mister,’ you can call me Heidrig.”
Heidrig didn’t usually show his feelings. He didn’t get upset over things. He had experienced many situations that would not change because he cursed his rotten fate and asked, “How could this happen?!” or “Why me?!” One such situation was becoming a pawn of the girl Hildegard.
Now, however, his voice was shaking and his emotions were rattled.
Uh-oh...
Afraid that Lud had noticed his distress, He
idrig glanced at Lud.
“?!”
Lud was watching Heidrig and Milly’s exchange. His face had tensed and turned dour.
“Is s-something wrong?”
Lud started to answer Heidrig’s question.
“I...”
That night...
In the attic of Tockerbrot...
The room had once been used for storage, but had been Sven’s room since she arrived at Tockerbrot. After the renovation, they established a proper room for her on the first floor, so the attic was used for storage once again.
Now Hildegard and Heidrig lived there.
“So how did he answer?”
After the day’s work, the two had gone back to their room. Hilde was listening to a report from Heidrig about what had happened in the oven room during the day.
“Oh, nothing important.”
“Tell me! That’s an order!”
“............”
Hilde’s fierce pride wouldn’t let her allow anyone to disobey her requests. Especially someone who worked under her.
“There’s no point in you hearing this.”
“I’ll be the judge of that!”
Knowing the reason for Lud Langart’s dismay might help her find a way out of this mess.
“You know that girl who does chores in the shop? Her name is Milly.”
“Yeah, that shrimpy girl.”
“...............”
Heidrig fell silent for a moment at Hilde’s reply.
“What?”
“Oh, nothing.”
Milly was fourteen years old and soon to be fifteen on her next birthday. And Hilde was also fifteen. It seemed rather childish for Hilde to treat someone who was almost her age like a child.
“Well, she does have a slight build, but she appears to have thick bones, so maybe she’ll grow taller.”
“Which isn’t what I asked about.”
It was said that trained martial artists could calculate an opponent’s strength from the slightest movement of the hand or foot. Moreover, they could tell if others would be successful as a martial artist simply by looking at the structure of their muscles and the hardiness of their bones while they were still young.
Heidrig was speaking with this knowledge, but that didn’t matter to Hilde.
“It’s just... I heard that she’s very shy, so it took time for her to feel comfortable around Lud.”
Apparently, Milly had disliked Lud for over a year.
“Which means what?”
Failing to understand Heidrig’s point, Hilde prodded him.
“Lud was shocked to see Milly talking to me in a friendly way the first time we met.”
“Huh?”
Now Hilde was even more confused.
“He felt conflicted to see Milly being friendly toward me, when it took her over a year to get along with him.”
Lud had looked down and mumbled, “I don’t mean to complain. It’s not like that, but... but...” And then, maybe to ease his discomfort, Milly had said, “It’s not what you think! It’s just, um...” The atmosphere had grown awkward.
“Are you dense?!”
Hilde exclaimed this in amazement.
The point was that Lud had felt jealous at how quickly Heidrig had become friends with a child, since Lud was a grownup man with scary features.
“What am I doing here?!”
Hilde felt ridiculous for putting her position on the line by coming all this way to kill such a pitiful opponent.
“But he really is strong.”
Heidrig chided Hilde.
“I was with him all day, and to my surprise, he never gave me an opening.”
“Huh?”
Hilde was surprised to hear this from Heidrig, who she thought had lost the will to fight.
“Are you still planning on...?”
“Were you going to give up?!”
“No, of course not!”
Hilde raised her voice at being answered with a question.
“But you begged for your life!”
“Nothing is easier than repairing a bad situation by begging.”
Heidrig lightly squinted his eyes.
“It’s an unexpected development, but we’ve infiltrated the opponent’s territory. Now there’s a better chance to attack him, right?”
“B-But you...”
All of their weapons had been confiscated.
Sven had performed a head-to-toe body check before they started work and said to Lud, “At least allow me a bare minimum of security!”
“We can get hold of something. Like forks and knives from meals. It doesn’t have to be anything high quality. Even a single nail can serve as a sufficient weapon.”
“Ha ha! Ohhh, I see!”
Hilde had grown desperate in her belief that the mission had failed. Now that she saw that the situation was still evolving, she laughed with relief.
“Don’t jump to conclusions. I told you. This man doesn’t leave any openings. We failed when we couldn’t kill him the first time. Now that he knows we’re after him, it’ll be harder to get the drop on him.”
“Hmf! No problem! He may be a trained veteran, but if we stick with him 24-7, he’ll eventually leave an opening.”
And they were under the same roof. If all else failed, they could launch a sneak attack at night or a raid at dawn. Or they could attack by setting a fire like before. There were many options.
“I said don’t jump ahead! We’ve got a time limit, right?”
“Oh...”
At his words, Hilde remembered.
“We only have nine more days...”
Heidrig was supposed to be imprisoned in a dungeon, but Hilde had pulled him out with the corporal’s help. They covered it up by bribing guards and altering records, but they wouldn’t be able to avoid the monthly prison check by the Legal Affairs Bureau. They needed to kill Lud and get back to the royal capital before that happened.
“It’ll be hard, but there’s no choice. Now, let’s get some sleep.”
Morning comes early in a bakery. If they didn’t go to sleep, they would be in no condition for an assassination attempt.
“I’m the leader, so I get the bed!”
Sven’s old bed was the only one in the attic. Hilde was first to climb on top as if proclaiming her right to it.
“Fine. Sleeping on the floor here is much better than what I’m used to.”
Heidrig had been in jail for years, where he had slept on a stone floor.
“Besides, I wouldn’t be so childish as to take the bed from a little girl.”
“What?! Why you—!”
He got in a barb at least.
“Sleep. We rise early tomorrow.”
Wrapping a blanket around himself and lying down, Heidrig rolled over and quickly fell asleep.
“Argh!”
Hilde let out a yell, but stretched out on the bed, turned her back toward Heidrig, and fell asleep.
“It seems they haven’t given up yet.”
Sven, who was on the first floor, heard the entire conversation between Heidrig and Hilde.
Heidrig was no idiot. He had been careful about the volume of his voice so no one downstairs would hear, but he hadn’t considered that the person listening might be a humanoid Hunter Unit with highly sensitive sound receptors.
“Nine more days... I only need to protect my master that long.”
After that, they might be gone. So in a way, this was good news.
“But nine days is exactly the problem...”
Sven sighed at the irony of luck. She confirmed that the two were asleep in the attic and walked down the dark hallway. To her, this darkness wasn’t even dark.
Tockerbrot consisted of the shop and a residential area. Forty percent of the overall area was used for the store, forty percent was production-related space such as the oven and storage, fifteen percent was for living, and the remaining five percent was a small room that served as an office.
Sven went there to L
ud, who was working late.
“Excuse me, Master.”
“Oh, are you still up?”
There was a sketchbook on his desk. He had drawn an idea for a new type of bread.
“Are you still brainstorming ideas for bread to serve at Thanksgiving?”
“Well, this is my chance to bake something new for the townsfolk.”
There were various possibilities Lud could serve at the festival. It was important to serve traditional foods, but Lud also wanted to give people a fun surprise. He had been puzzling over it every day after work.
“There are only nine days left, so I have to hurry.”
Nine days... He was right. Only nine days remained until Thanksgiving.
The two newcomers were planning to kill Sven’s beloved master before the happy day when the townspeople would finally welcome him, and together they would celebrate the joys of the year.
“Master? Um, about the Wolf Man and that girl...”
Sven spoke hesitantly.
“You really should kick them out. If something were to happen to you, I...”
Sven didn’t want to suggest what she had in mind.
Lud’s kindness wasn’t saintly and so pure as to be without flaws. He had once witnessed Hell and had dealt with death. But his kindness also wasn’t merely for atonement. He wanted to live with his past, so he was kind from a desire to shoulder his sins and live an honest life.
It was heartbreaking for Sven to act against that desire.
“Sven, you’ve heard of the Wolf Man, right?”
Lud asked after mulling over his thoughts.
“Yes, it’s rare to find anyone who doesn’t know of his actions in the Great War.”
The opposing nation, Filbarneu, held a grudge against him over the deaths of tens of thousands of soldiers. And his home country of Wiltia abhorred him as a shameless national traitor.
“Do you really think that’s him?”
“Huh?”
Lud’s question confused Sven.
“Um, are you suggesting that Heidrig isn’t the real Wolf Man?”
Despite the legends, the appearance and age of the Wolf Man had long been unknown. Since both Wiltia and Filbarneu restricted information, his actual appearance remained unknown, but word spread that such a person existed and had performed certain acts.
“Yes, there was a wolf... and he is indeed the Wolf Man.”
