Mission 2

Eden Academy's entrance interview demands two parents, and Loid's first solution, dressing Franky up as the mother, collapses even under his expert disguise work; some body types defeat all craft. Franky storms off, Anya consoles him with a peanut, and Loid accepts that a wife must be found.

At Berlint City Hall, gossiping clerks tease their aloof coworker Yor Briar about fashion, her inattention, and the danger of still being partnerless at twenty-seven, one recounting how neighbors reported a thirty-year-old single woman to the authorities. Camilla caps the mockery with an invitation to her weekend party, date required. That evening Yor's beloved younger brother Yuri phones; he has a promotion coming but frets over his sister's solitude, and to soothe him she claims a boyfriend will accompany her to the party. Yuri promptly says he will verify the man through his friend Dominic, trapping her in the lie. Moments later a second call comes from the man she calls Shopkeeper, dispatching the "Thorn Princess" to Room 1307 of the Royal Hotel. There, the black-clad Yor tears through a detail of guards and executes her target, Vice Minister Brennan of the Auditing Board, along with everyone in the room. Washing off the blood afterward, she frets over a rip in her only good dress.

Loid, meanwhile, sifts through city hall records of single women that Franky procured, since the recent purges have gutted WISE's roster of female agents. Taking Anya to a boutique for fitting, he evaluates the staff as candidates until a voice behind him asks about mending a dress; he never sensed Yor's approach, which startles him badly. Caught staring as he mentally reviews her file, he covers with flattery. Yor starts to invite him to the party, hesitates when Anya appears, and relaxes once Anya, having read Yor's mind and learned her secret trade, deliberately plays the motherless child. Loid agrees to escort her, on the condition that she pose as his wife at an interview, quietly planning to talk her into marriage afterward.

A coded message then saddles Loid with dismantling a smuggling ring on the very Saturday of the party. He drags Franky along as backup, paying him in recovered antiquities, and claims a diamond ring from the haul for the proposal. Their getaway ends when surviving smugglers ram them. Yor, stood up at the station, attends the party alone, endures Camilla's gloating, and learns Dominic is Camilla's boyfriend, killing any hope of a cover story for Yuri. Dark thoughts about silencing every guest flicker through her before she suppresses them. Just as she resolves to slip out, a bleeding Loid strides in and introduces himself as her husband, a slip she quietly corrects. Camilla's attempt to dump hot gratin on Yor backfires when Yor catches the pan with one leg, and when Camilla insinuates that Yor's old hotel-room "massage" work was something shameful, Loid instead voices admiration for a woman who worked hard to raise her brother. Moved, Yor leaves with him.

The smugglers return mid-conversation, ramming their van. The pair flee through an old factory, Loid dropping pursuers with improvised weapons and explaining the violence away as "concussive therapy" for his patients, Yor kicking an ambusher off him. Under gunfire, Yor proposes extending their arrangement into marriage. Loid accepts, discovers the diamond ring is lost, and improvises: he hurls a grenade at their attackers and slides its pin onto her finger as the blast goes off, the two vowing to stay together until their respective jobs part them.

Loid begins searching for a woman to pose as Anya's mother for the Eden Academy interview.

Yor Briar debuts and is revealed as the assassin Thorn Princess, killing Vice Minister Brennan at the Royal Hotel.

Anya learns Yor's secret via telepathy and engineers the meeting between her and Loid.

Loid and Yor agree to a marriage of mutual convenience, sealed with a grenade pin as a ring.

The boutique's name, "Muna & Monacca," was absent from the storefront in the original digital release and added for the Volume 1 printing.

The stolen Westalis antiquities number 78 pieces valued at 3 million dalc in total.

Two background names are Japanese wordplay: the subway stop "Matchawase Station" plays on machiawase, meaning a meeting, and Yor's bag reads "shiyakusho," the word for city hall.

The chapter belongs to the Introduction Arc, is adapted in Episode 2 of the anime, and debuts Yor, Camilla, Millie, Sharon, Dominic, and Vice Minister Brennan among others. Loid and Anya Forger appear on the cover.