#;deceive

                     { 欺く --- 利便性 }

He had s l i p p e d.

   A glance had been enough to doom him.    Years of experience, a mind set on achieving    one thing;    not getting caught.

   The guild in question had committed crimes, earned    punishment exceeding that of the culprit his position    within the Council served to get him closer to, and    he had let those evil-doers capture him.

   They dubbed him a rat, ‘council scum’ as he had    been dragged into the shady alleyway in town. Not    a first, not a last, but never a pleasant situation.

   Kicks would be dealt, punches in between, and he’d    only now and then feel his grin slipping. There was    nothing amusing about the circumstances, but he    somehow could not help but feel light-hearted.

   The kicking came to a sudden halt, allowing the young    wizard to take a breath. He did so through a light grunt,    the pit of his stomach itself aching intensely enough to    send a shiver down his spine. Without glancing back up,    he gave a husky chuckle.

                          Was there already a drop of blood on his lips?

                    { 欺く }

                        { 欺く --- 混沌 }

   The council bore in mind the safety of the country’s citizens.    That was a fact that the informant valued and always held    high in his own regards. That being how things were, he was    one of the few undercover councillors capable of being sent    to investigate artefacts that possibly held properties that    allowed it to harm a broad mass of innocents. He prided himself    on possessing that much use at times, and took joy in venturing    into Fiore’s darkest corners in order to gain information on    those artefacts.

   At the time, the Council believe Eva Marigold to be tracing     down something that they did not want her to find. The details    had been kept from him ( an understandable procedure, seeing    as his mind was a neatly ordered library of facts and secrets     that were begging to be spilled ) and simply tasked him to     follow her steps. Now, while Japer could be as stealthy as any    other wizard would expect him to be, he had quickly elected    to resort to a strategy subject to the obvious. He had decided    to follow her in broad daylight and without hiding the such.

   In a small town somewhere in the middle of nowhere, he found    and approached the wizard in question, having no bad intentions    in mind and hoping to make the such clear straight away.    He stepped up behind her, grinning broadly and crossing his    hands behind his back.