Goodbye to My Undercover Days

In her second year undercover at the Black Organization's distillery, Nako Chihaya recognizes the handsome newcomer with dark skin at a glance as one of her former police academy classmates. They weren't close, but the heroic exploits of their five-person group were common knowledge among their classmates, and she'd even gone on a date with one of them. At the time, she thought she finally had a fellow undercover agent. He was from a different department, but at least she wouldn't be all alone anymore. Then her boss at the distillery ordered her to take the civil service exam and infiltrate the Public Security Bureau. Nako, of the National Police Agency's Criminal Affairs Bureau, Organized Crime Department, International Organized Crime Division, career-track elite Chihaya: ... After passing the civil service exam a second time and completing police academy for the second time, Nako Chihaya had just prepared herself to infiltrate the Security Bureau as an undercover agent from the Criminal Affairs Bureau, when she was told she hadn't been hired by Public Security and had instead been assigned to the Nagano Prefectural Police. The reason may have been that she stepped out of the interview room with her left foot first, or that her own boss hadn't coordinated things with the neighboring department. Chihaya: Why is Public Security giving an international police officer such a hard time? :) Criminal Affairs Bureau boss/Distillery boss: Just do the job for now. We'll talk about the undercover mission later. Much later, Nako Chihaya, now thriving in Nagano, runs into the dark-skinned man again. He's still undercover, and he was the one who warned his colleague not to let her join Public Security back then. By now, she's the future sister-in-law of his childhood friend, and she's as close as family with his former police academy buddy. She's made a name for herself and has a bright future ahead, showing no sign of the pressure of carrying two identities. Bourbon, bewildered: Aren't you an undercover agent? Chihaya, coldly: Yeah. I've been your classmate this whole time. "About How I Was a Police Undercover Agent but Got Sent to Infiltrate a Police Station, So I Had to Go Through Police Academy All Over Again" "And How I Was Also Forced to Retake the Civil Service Exam" "The Most Ridiculous Part Is That Public Security and the Criminal Affairs Bureau Are in the Same Organization, Yet They Don't Share Information. Doesn't That Make You Mad?" - The pairing is with Takaaki. She and Bourbon are rivals, with resentment but no romantic feelings. See the neighboring collection, Afterword Collection, for the alternate-universe extra. - Bourbon belongs to the National Police Agency's Security Bureau, Security Planning Division. Chihaya belongs to the National Police Agency's Criminal Affairs Bureau, Organized Crime Department, International Investigation Division, Japan's equivalent of Interpol. The organizational structure and department relationships are based on the author's understanding of the real situation. Any errors are [author's original setting], so please don't look too closely. - Zero is not career-track. His rank isn't specified in the story, so no specific rank is assigned, though he has very extensive personal authority. - The characters belong to the original work. Any out-of-character behavior and plot holes are mine. - Blurb completed on January 8, 2022. Theme: No matter what job you have, let your light shine in the service of justice.