The Girl Gained a Family... Didn't She? (2)
"The Folt family, I mean. Ruined to the last coin. You wouldn't happen to be the one who did it?"
"?"
"Hmm. So it wasn't you."
"I haven't even said anything yet..."
"I can tell from the face alone. A truly knightly simplicity. Heh heh."
"...Hey, old man. That isn't a compliment, is it?"
"Heh heh."
The Folts. More precisely, a house reduced to Reynol Folt, his wife, and a single daughter. Calling them nobles was an embarrassment, and as human beings they were nothing short of contemptible.
"I went looking, but I couldn't find them anywhere. You know something?"
For the past week Lee Han had been hunting House Folt—more precisely, the animal who went by the name Reynol Folt. The man was nowhere to be seen, and Lee Han had been working himself into a slow burn, so when the hint came out of the marquis's own mouth he could only find it strange. Under that suspicious look, the marquis gave a light shrug.
"I was simply curious, so I looked into it. According to what the marquisate turned up, Reynol Folt had only one child, a daughter. So why did that number suddenly become two...?"
"......"
"Five years ago, a daughter appeared out of nowhere. Curious business. A daughter who hadn't existed suddenly did, and then he had the nerve to try and marry that daughter into the marquisate. Heh heh! Tristan must have looked awfully easy, for him to try a thing like that..."
"So what are you going to do about it?"
"What else? Teach him. Teach him why Tristan has remained a marquisate of the kingdom through all that long history. Heh heh."
"...Hrm."
The mouth smiled. The eyes did not. They were a raptor's eyes—fierce, intense, arrogant past all measure. A civilian who met that gaze would probably have shaken with fear.
However.
"You want a staring contest?"
"......"
"If that's not it, ease off. I don't feel like having an axe swung at a guest."
"Just a little joke. Heh heh."
The marquis smiled as if he had never put any force into his eyes at all. A bit of fun, in front of a young man he liked.
"Take a liking to you once or twice and somebody's getting murdered."
Lee Han snorted and clicked his tongue. Great nobles, every last one of them. Testing people was simply their passive. Completely.
Is this a butterfly effect too?
Inwardly, he was startled that the marquis had uncovered the truth about the Folts. This was exactly the sort of thing people meant when they talked about a butterfly effect.
...Originally, this wasn't supposed to come out so fast.
From what Taechang—that kid Derek—had told him of the original story, or whatever it was called, his disciple was supposed to be married off and endure three years in the marquisate. Which meant that, had things gone as they should, the fraud against the marquisate would only have been exposed after the marriage. Now that had changed. Whether fighting the house had shifted the marquis's heart, or whether the marquisate had simply been competent to begin with... The fraud seemed to have been uncovered within a matter of days. And also—
"My kid has nothing to do with it. She's just a good girl who got used. Don't touch her."
There was a good chance he had already grasped Levi's identity. The moment Lee Han realized it, his face hardened, with the desperate resolve that if they laid a hand on his kid, he would not stop at a door or a single house...
"I know."
"?"
"An honorable knight like you went out himself to save her. A girl like that could hardly be a villain who deceives people and uses them. So she was only used."
"...You believe that? ...That's all it takes?"
"It isn't 'that's all.' I believe you."
"......"
"So I believe it."
"...Mm."
He had thought it before.
The most gentlemanly noble I've met?
......This old man was more decent than he had expected.
"Well, if I give you only the result: Reynol Folt is currently laid up in a temple. Burns all over his body, the left arm and both ankles severed, and they say even his tongue was cut out.... He was found too late, the window for treatment was missed, and now he is barely clinging to life. Heh heh."
The burns were bad enough, but the other injuries were far worse. He was alive only by the temple's grace, which was another way of saying he now owed the temple a debt. Temple healing was reliable, and precisely because it was reliable, the temples were infamous for wringing out their payment without mercy. Only a rumor, of course, but didn't they say that to collect a debt they would send a man to a brutal mine, or a salt field?
"The mother and daughter are in serious trouble as well. The wife is at death's door from the temple's fees, the gambling debts, and the additional loans. The daughter who was attending a mid-tier academy has been expelled outright. Dear me."
The mother and daughter's future would not be bright either. Whether they had persecuted the girl the way Reynol Folt had was impossible to know, but in the end the Folts and Levi were irreconcilable enemies. They could not live beneath the same sky.
"There probably aren't many choices those two can make. A convent, or the worst choice of all—whatever it is, it won't be particularly hopeful. Of course not. I'll see to that myself."
"Hoh. And here I thought you were gentle with women."
"I am gentle with ladies. But standing by in complicity is still a crime. Do you really think they didn't know? That what the head of their house was doing was plainly mocking and insulting a marquisate? ...They couldn't possibly not have known. So they are not ladies. Among criminals, what difference is there between man and woman?"
"Damn. That's refreshing."
Clap, clap. Lee Han applauded. A refreshing thing to say, if ever there was one. This was the very model of a proper adult, and of a man with power.
"...You're liking it so suddenly that I feel rather odd."
The marquis scratched his cheek at the sudden, unstinting praise. The man who had been insolent from start to finish—why was he like this? Even so.
"Heh heh. I can't say it feels bad!"
Pleasant was pleasant, and the marquis could not hide his smile. For a long while the two men laughed heartily and talked. Most of it was about how to deal with Reynol, and the bulk of that subject...
"There's a thing called Tendon-Splitting Bone-Dislocation. Just what it sounds like—a method that separates only the bone and the flesh, doesn't kill you, and gives you nothing but pain. If he isn't dead yet, it might be worth a try."
"Heh heh. And if he dies of the shock, what then? Better to begin with torture that uses anesthetic and potions. Flay the flesh and draw the blood every day, and so long as you drive anesthetic and potion into the veins, he won't die, at least! In the war I used this method to make a prisoner remember what he'd done on his third birthday. Heh heh!"
Most of it was a debate over how to torture a man without killing him, but the two of them enjoyed the talk and felt a kinship. Friendship beyond age. Something very like it sprouted between them in that moment. And in the midst of that blooming conversation, at last—
"...So, getting back to the point. Why do you want to take my kid as your daughter?"
"Ah. That. I was so caught up in the conversation I forgot."
Ahem. The marquis chose his words for a moment. This part, he felt, had to be serious. Taking in a girl he had never met was not a decision to make as a joke. It truly required gravity. And so, in a serious tone:
"Let me be plain. I have no scheme to take that child in because of you. If I must put it one way, it's because it would be a waste."
"A waste?"
"That talent. The talent to become a fine knight someday. It would be a waste."
The marquis brought out an extremely calculating argument.
"I only know it from the reports, but I heard that child hasn't properly learned the sword for even three months. And after barely three months she beat a Rock Troll, and she didn't give ground even before a great host of monsters, and she distinguished herself? Good heavens. I never thought I'd be hearing a hero's legend from one of my men and calling it intelligence. But... when I cross-checked it carefully, there wasn't a lie in it."
"......"
"...That child's talent is real. And yet a talent like that has to be buried because of 'birth' and 'status'.... A child who might become a second Dame Felicia—I don't think I can simply leave her be."
A child who might become a second Sword Duke. If Tristan took such a child in and raised her well, that too would be an honor that lifted Tristan's name. So the marquis weighed gain against loss, and—
"—Your real reason?"
"......"
"Don't feed me some strange excuse. Tell me what you actually think."
"Mm. I thought I'd hidden it well. Apparently not."
"You did hide it well. I just happen to see through lies."
"Now that... is quite an enviable talent."
The marquis admired him once, the way a man admires some curious animal, held five seconds of silence, and then, slowly:
"...Isn't she pitiful?"
"......"
"I know. How thin this sort of pity is, and how wretched it can make a person. But if no one takes that child in, she becomes an orphan with nowhere in the world to go. If I didn't know, that would be one thing. Now that I do, isn't it all right for someone to reach out a hand? Ah, of course you could reach out yourself. Even so, don't I have more than you? I am confident I can let her live in some comfort."
"......"
"Does a reason like mine seem too thin?"
"...No. I like it better than the reason you gave first."
"Hm?"
"Only people with full bellies treat pity as an insult. For someone truly desperate, even that pity is something they desperately need."
Watching dramas and films in his past life, he had seen plenty of people refuse help out of pride. Watching people like that, from the standpoint of a man who had been an orphan, he could not stand it. And he had come to understand. Ah. Those characters had never truly starved, and they did not know what real humiliation was.
"Real humiliation isn't worrying about tomorrow. It's when you don't have food or water for today and the tears come, when you catch a cold because you've got no blanket to cover yourself, and you don't even have the money for a single dose of medicine. That's when it's truly humiliating. Truly shameful."
When he could not even pay the electric bill, and the landlord cut the power. When he could not pay the gas or the water either, and lived through winter without ever turning the boiler on, and drank water he had fetched from a public restroom. The despair, the bleakness, the loneliness he had felt then—that was true humiliation and true shame. So to someone who truly knew humiliation and shame, pity was not pity. In other words...
"My life is so bleak and filthy I feel like I'm going to die... and there's a guy who says don't pity me, because of his pride? A guy like that is only hungry in words. He can still get by. He's got the ability to survive. But my kid isn't like that. She isn't in any position to pick and choose between pity and whatever else. She's living a truly desperate life. Make her an offer like that, and she'll probably be grateful."
It had been salvation. What Lee Han said was flat—no, flat, and yet there was a tremor in it that would not lose to any shout. ...A tremor only someone who had truly felt a vicious humiliation and a vicious loneliness could have.
"...Huh."
The marquis was genuinely impressed, but Lee Han, unaware of that, went on.
"Like you said, I thought about taking her in myself. But a richer place would be better for the kid than a poor knight who can barely look after his own hide. So take her, if you can. Persuading her will be your job, of course."
"......"
"What? Why are you looking at me like that?"
"...The longer I look, the more I want you."
"?"
"I was already hesitating a little as it was, but... you. By any chance—"
"......"
......Lee Han barely swallowed the curse that wanted out.