The Research Guild’s branch manager showed Page the Archive Room, backed away, and kindly closed the door, leaving the poor girl to gape at the landfill of folders and notes scattered across the floor, pouring out from the shelves, and teetering on the edge of paper towers.

The door opened behind her, and a young woman in a singed lab coat, and with tired eyes and a lollipop in her mouth, happily dropped a new box of papers on the floor and slid it under a desk labeled “Deckert.”

“E-excuse me,” Page said. The woman turned around and looked at her with bored eyes. “I-I’m the new Librarian, so um—”

“Ah.” The girl took out the lollipop. Her voice was impossibly cute for what she was about to say. “Fresh meat.”

“Sorry?”

“Each researcher owns one desk. If you move anything, they’ll get mad at you two weeks later when they finally actually go here—the lazy bastards.”

“Wuh—”

Like a storm, the young woman left, leaving Page in a daze of wonder…and utter irritation.

For she was a Librarian, and things like the lack of a proper check-in and check-out system heralded the true hell that no mortal being should ever experience: Search & Retrieval Hell.

For when you cannot find

That single damned thing

From a long time past

This was never your intent

But now you are here

For of this landfill

O hail, Your Highness

You are King

Indeed, she had watched many of her Librarian comrades despair and rot in the pits of Search & Retrieval Hell. At the same time, simply creating a check-in/check-out system was not enough, because it was also a slippery slope on the other side into Classification Hell or Collector’s Hell.

This type is that

A bigger tree is good

Until you cannot see

The roots or the canopy

Maybe this is useful

Maybe this is key

Everything at your disposal

Your knowledge is fantasy

To become a Librarian, one must have learned to tread the middle ground—the ridge upon which true information management lay. During the course of training, many would slip and fall into one of many hells, the variations of which, and the narrowness of the ridge, only increasing in severity as time passed.

That was not the only problem, however. The core of being a Librarian was not to simply establish check-in/check-out systems like some sort of magic bullet…no, their job was worse. They had to be some sort of telepath and figure out what the users wanted without even asking them. It was completely unreasonable, and it was all the users’ fault—they just didn’t want to talk about it!

Page left the room and approached a researcher to talk about her lord and savior, the Index Cardus Cabinetus—

“No. Shush. I’m too busy.”

Page was met with similar rejections throughout the day. Truly, the path that a Librarian tread was treacherous, narrow, and outright rude. It would have been an easy job—if only other people let it be one!

So, she did the next best thing: borderline-illegally poring through the stacks of notes and documents on the desks and mentally categorizing what sort of stuff people usually plopped down.

Unfortunately, but to no surprise, she discovered that everyone had different thinking and writing habits, so it was impossible to apply a single system for all the researchers. What’s even worse was that some of the researchers’ habits tended to change over time, so even if Page were to tailor something for them, their requirements would suddenly change after a few months, so things have to get shuffled around again. What a pain!

In a way, her former job at the Knight HQ back in Clarinets was a lot simpler to the point of being mind-numbing. It was all just highly-standardized reports, and her job was mostly to transmit them to the right people, really.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

Did she miss it? Not really.

Her hands stopped at a particular document on Deckert’s table. “Huh? What’s this?…”

—On the Concepts, Utility, and Implications of a Librarian in Magical Warfare

Before she could read more into it, the door creaked open. Page slowly turned her head to see Deckert, standing there with a new box of papers to drop off. There was a crunch as the lollipop in her mouth was reduced to sugary dust.

“What did I tell you?…”

“I can put it all back in perfect order!” Page said as she worked to do exactly that.

Even as she returned everything perfectly to the exact pseudo-chaotic arrangement they were in before she started snooping, Deckert slowly put down the box. There were shadows over her eyes.

“Snooping around, are we?” she said.

“It’s a user study, I swear!”

“Is it really”—Deckert unsheathed a well-adorned knife—“or are you a spy?”

“I’m not!—”

“Who sent you?”

“I said I’m not!—”

Deckert lunged at Page—but it was surprisingly slow in Page’s eyes. She easily sidestepped the knife, but all the while screaming and crying.

“I-I’m not!”—tears were already streaming down.

“Then how’d you avoid that attack, huh? It’s obvious you’ve been trained!”

…Come to think of it. “My Knight friend trains me sometimes!”

“That’s what they all say!”

Deckert attacked again, and Page dodged. No matter Page’s explanations, Deckert kept sending low-level attacks her way, and Page, only slightly higher-level, just kept dodging them all the same. Of course, both of them were careful about accidentally toppling over the towers of papers everywhere, treating them like the environmental hazards they were, being tall enough to actually kill them were they to come crashing down.

With all this ruckus, a passing researcher peeked into the room.

“D-deckert! What are you doing!”

“It’s a spy!” said Deckert as she delivered another stab.

“I’m just a Librarian! This is my first day on the job!” Page said as she dodged.

“I caught her snooping around my papers!”

“It’s a user study!”

The researcher ran off to get the manager. After a moment, the manager rushed in.

“You idiot! Stop!”

Deckert finally paused, with her knife raised in the air. She pointed at Page. “She was snooping around! She’s a spy!”

The manager, who had just witnessed the Sentinel and the Princess Knight treat Kalender with familiarity, and who also knew that Page and Kalender were friends, was already hallucinating Deckert’s head rolling over this incident.

“That girl is a friend of Kalender!” the manager said.

“And?!” Deckert raised a bewildered voice.

“Kalender is a friend of royalty!”

There was a pause—then color drained from Deckert’s face. She lowered her knife, but continued pointing at Page. “B-but s-she was snooping around!”

The manager sighed and looked at Page. “Why?”

“I-it was a user study…” Page poked her fingers together.

“What is this…‘user study’? ”

“I-I was just figuring out everyone’s—er—archiving habits. So I can come up with a system that works.”

The manager rubbed her forehead. “Sign NDA’s with all the people who have names on these desks, first.” She glared at Deckert. “You. In my office.”

***

Deckert and the manager were in her office.

“What were you thinking?”

“How was I supposed to know!” Deckert was apt to pull out her hair at this point. “And you know what sort of research I’m doing, don’t you? If those fall in the Republic’s hands…”

“Still, you can’t just stab the first person who touches your research! And what would you do if she were actually a Republic spy? She would have outclassed you in every way! You would be dead by now!”

Deckert’s heart pounded and she sighed out all the air she could sigh. She knew she would have been outclassed, but to be reprimanded by someone else over it…it felt like people were telling her little self she was wrong. Again.

“You will need to make up for this, or else I won’t be able to cover it up,” the manager said.

“What would you have me do?”

“Listen. That Page Turner is a friend of Kalender, who is a friend of the Princess Knight—”

“Sounds like a lie.”

“My source is a Company executive.”

Deckert…ought to listen to her, after all. Her quiet became the manager’s cue.

“First, issue an apology to her,” the manager said. “Second, involve her in your Battle Librarian research.”

“Wait—”

“No buts. You are a good judge of character, are you not? If she is a spy, you will discover it soon, but do not act on your own, am I clear?”

“Is there…another reason? That can’t be the only reason.”

“My source also tells me Kalender and some of his group have joined the Company. I would hazard a guess that Page Turner is also itching to join. Do you know what means?”

Deckert was wide-eyed. At the risk of secrecy, she could potentially have a living proof-of-concept in the form of a volunteer. Nowhere else had she been able to find a Librarian willing to go into battle before—the type’s all rather shy and timid, instead. Of course, she would first have to ascertain Page’s disposition, and then sell the idea if she found her a suitable subject.

Finally, she thought, the supremacy of Combat Maids can finally be brought into question.

“The look in your eyes…” the manager said. “Your research is of strategic importance to Lyrica. Don’t let your head roll over a small mishap like this. Understood?”

“Thank you, Alsae.”

Deckert left, leaving Alsae to think in silence about her strange relationship with her daughter. It wasn’t bad, at least.