Episode 30

Summoned to a flower garden, Yor passes a surprise reflex test from the Shopkeeper before receiving her briefing. Olka Gretcher and her infant son Gram, sole survivors of their family, must be guarded from a pack of assassins during a border crossing aboard the cruise ship Princess Lorelei. Yor initially balks over her cover at home and at city hall, but Garden has already arranged a story framing the voyage as a work trip, and she accepts. Riding the subway home, she bumps into Yuri, whose insistence that he no longer needs looking after leaves her quietly asking herself why she still does this job.

At a mall raffle whose grand prize is a pair of cruise tickets, Anya senses through telepathy that the attendant has stuck the winning ticket to the top of the box, and she plucks it out. The prize turns out to be passage on the same ship as Yor's assignment. Loid plans to sit the trip out for work, but Anya's screaming and an unexpectedly agreeable Sylvia, who clears his schedule at Berlint General Hospital, put all three Forgers on board. Yor boards separately, resolving that this could be the Thorn Princess's final job.

While Anya marvels at the ship's pool, circus, and game room and embraces the family's cramped third-class cabin, Yor takes up her post in first class. There her colleague introduces himself as Matthew McMahon, and Olka travels disguised as "Shaty Grey," wife of a gruff crewman posing under the name Furseal. Alone with her charge, Yor maps the suite's entry points and learns of Olka's simple wish for a quiet life with her son. A brief trip outside for air ends with Olka sharing Gram's name and letting Yor hold him, a warm moment with a cold edge: a hidden listening device has captured the entire conversation, and an informant now knows exactly which cabin they occupy.

The Shopkeeper assigns Yor to protect Olka and Gram Gretcher during their escape across the border on Princess Lorelei. Yor's chat with Yuri plants the question of whether her assassin work still has a purpose, a thread that runs through the whole arc. Anya exploits a rigged raffle to win cruise tickets, unknowingly booking the family onto Yor's mission. Sylvia approves Loid's leave with suspicious ease. Yor meets Matthew McMahon and the disguised Gretcher party, and an eavesdropping bug betrays Olka's cabin location to an informant as suspicious figures board the ship.

The episode adapts Chapters 44 and 45. The unnamed Garden member who admits Yor and Matthew has dark hair here despite being light-haired in the manga. Its key visual is the first panel of a three-part combined artwork spanning Episodes 30 through 32, the first time episode visuals have interlocked this way. The passenger list spells Olka's alias "Gray," while the manga uses "Grey."