A Knight Cheers the Young On (9)
Lee Han had debuted Pierre in high society for a single reason: to catch the cultists parasitizing in the cracks between the nobles.
Fortunately, the work came easily.
After all...
"You're popular, you know that?"
"......"
"Loosen the face, will you. Keep it that stiff and people won't even be able to come near. You're supposed to be the flower of society."
"I have no intention of becoming any such thing."
"Any such thing? You know how hard our chicks have been working just to debut, and you call it any such thing? I ought to rip that mouth of yours clean open!"
"...I-I am sorry. For that."
Cooperation had come that easily, and his entry into society lasted only a moment. Not even four days had passed before Lee Han saw the problem.
"They went and hid on purpose, the bastards..."
Search as he might, he could not find them.
Someone might have said it was early to judge on four days alone. For anyone else, perhaps. For Lee Han, it was a different matter.
He was a man whose senses, merely by walking the streets, took in everything within some five hundred meters. If he set his mind to it, three kilometers and more were possible; yet narrowing the range of his presence, rather than forcing it wide, let him read that presence all the more thoroughly. So even in four days he could carry out, at a single stroke, the observation and search of a hundred men, and so he was certain.
...These bastards had already hidden themselves.
"And they used a fairly special method, at that."
They had not merely concealed their presence. Scent and energy alike had been wiped clean, and not a trace of them remained. Magic or shamanic aid, most likely — and disgustingly thorough.
But...
"Doesn't feel like magic and shamanism alone."
However completely they had hidden, the fact that he found absolutely nothing struck him as wrong, and Lee Han began to wonder if perhaps...
"...Are they using Holy Law as well?"
It was only a hypothesis that had struck him of a sudden, but he thought it might be right.
Holy Law. A priestly Mystery, distinct from magic and distinct from shamanism. If they had obtained that power, and the aid of magic and shamanism besides, then hiding themselves this thoroughly would not be difficult.
And yet it was strange.
In the temple that governed Holy Law, the impious who had cooperated with the cult had long since been turned to kindling. He had watched with his own two eyes as they burned, bright and fierce, which meant the temple was no longer in league with the wicked. So how had these ones obtained the help of Holy Law?
Lee Han set his inadequate brain to the problem in earnest, and at a certain moment something flashed. For the record, it did not flash because he was clever...
"Now that I think of it, there were bastards using Holy Law who weren't even priests, weren't there?"
Holy Knights — no. More precisely, he remembered one great noble house that moved as a single body with the temple.
The name was definitely...
"Loengrin, was it?"
The holy house of Loengrin. It called to mind the only house that had not been made kindling in the incident the other day, and somehow...
"Well, would you look at that...?"
The moment he spoke the name, his instinct seemed to answer him, as if that direction were the right one.
"After that, I had her use the surname Loengrin. Go around wearing a name you don't own, and a reaction's bound to come."
"...Hah."
Roen had heard the whole of it, and he nodded as if the guess were reasonable enough. It was certainly a story with some possibility to it. Even so...
"...There are a great many holes."
Roen offered the dissenting view.
"Impersonating a noble is a grave crime. And should that instinct of yours prove wrong, this may become a still greater offense. However much their pillars may be collapsing, the great nobles remain strong. Their pillars are not something one erases by toppling one or two."
Push too far, and he himself might come to harm. When Roen set out that worried opinion, the other man only said:
"It won't be me doing the time. It'll be her, so I don't care. If it goes wrong, she's the one who takes the whole fall anyway."
"......"
"What?"
"...Nothing."
He stated the solution without a shred of shame, and Roen found himself with nothing left to say.
How did that villainess end up...
That the most cunning woman Roen knew had become bait that could be discarded at any moment was more than enough to leave him with an ironic feeling. It was a complicated emotion, hard to put a name to, and Roen — who had looked on Pierre with hostility from the first word to the last — cast her, for the first time, a glance mixed with pity.
Her circumstances were so wretched they made him forget even his grudge.
"I shall look into Loengrin as well, so I hope you will not overreach alone."
Ha...
"Geomdung's got more loyalty than that face of his."
The impression was cold as the world itself, yet once he gave his regard, he meant to help to the end. Wasn't it moving, to learn that a cat you had taken for nothing but haughty was in fact a cat with a dog's heart? That was roughly how Lee Han felt now.
"Think this'll put some speed on the rumors?"
With Geomdung resolved to help in earnest, the Loengrin impersonation would likely spread through every corner of the Royal Capital in no time. A few days, and perhaps there would be no one left who hadn't heard.
And once that happened...
They'll bite.
Lee Han was in a fisherman's mood.
What else was this transformation for — no, this ridiculous disguise as Santa Rihan? To fish while showing as little of himself as possible. His fame had climbed, quietly and otherwise, until he had begun to stand out, so he killed that presence this way and gently shook the bait.
Anyone who has fished knows it. Taking the ones they call a great catch takes time, passion, caution, and the will to win. In that sense, Lee Han meant to pour all four into hooking the great noble — his great catch.
...Hm? And if there was no connection at all, if his guess was simply wrong?
Prison for Red, or the guillotine?
No need to worry. There's a scarecrow ready to take the fall.
Lee Han nodded, thoroughly pleased. He saw Pierre once more at the center of the party, hands trembling as if in spasm, and even so he slipped from the place at his ease.
...Or he tried to leave.
"Excuse me. Might I know your name, my lord?"
"...?"
"Th-this! I-if you don't mind, please come by later. I'll be waiting..."
"??"
Lee Han blinked at the woman who had left him a note out of nowhere and gone.
...What?
A glance at the note showed the name of a fine inn on an upper-district street, a room number, and the like, and a small twitch started at the corner of his eye.
"Th-this means what I think it means, right?"
Lee Han was no oblivious fool. He knew what the note meant, and he could not hide how sour it sat with him. It was the first time a woman had given him anything of the sort, and it was nothing if not a novel experience.
But...
"Um, e-excuse me..."
"Yes?"
"Wh-what is your name?"
"???"
The same situation unfolded some five times after that, and Lee Han realized it afresh.
...So a handsome face really is its own narrative logic.
To state only the conclusion, the notes Lee Han received numbered fifteen, and he burned every one of them as quickly as if they were kindling.
He did not burn them because they displeased him. Simply...
"Can't go toying with young people's hearts."
This face was a lie. What good would it do to deceive the women on top of that? He hadn't the slightest mind to find fault with them for handing such things over on the strength of a face alone. One could hardly scold the impulses of youth. Nearly everyone caused some accident when they were young, and had Lee Han not carried a peculiarity that set him apart from other men, he might well have fallen to a temptation like that himself.
"Hoho. Do you not find it a waste? With Ambrosia's aid, even a single day would suffice to let that desire loose."
"Hey now. Out of my head. Out."
Lee Han waved a hand at the lewd devil that had begun, out of nowhere, to whisper at his ear. It was nothing other than the sweet whisper of a devil wearing the face of the princess he called sister, but he had no mind to play with fire alongside a woman he had never so much as met, and — whether thanks to the curse or not — desire itself ran faint in him.
Well. If the curse were fully undone, that might be another story. Short of that, well...
Hss. The curse.
What came to him in that instant was the curse laid upon his own body.
A curse of impotence, inscribed upon his cells through shamanism. Unless it was a perfectly made Ambrosia, this curse would go on tormenting him like a scourge from heaven. For now, though, Lee Han was trusting Isis, and waiting.
Trusting that she would make a perfect Ambrosia for him.
She isn't the sort to break a promise.
...Well. She might not break a promise, and still keep making unreasonable demands of him.
"Do it right, and I might undo the thing on my own."
Overcoming the curse. Lee Han, whose growth over the past year had come fast, felt that each time he grew, the curse weakened somewhere. Which was to say: if his body came to hold a strength that could overwhelm even a curse like a brand, then perhaps...
Who knows.
He might overcome it without leaning on any medicine. It was the sort of sunny thinking that only wins inside one's own skull, but a chance was better than none.
Lee Han looked to the days ahead.
And for the sake of that brighter future, too—
A thin snap cut the air.
"—Less patient than I thought. I figured it'd take a few more days."
Bastards like these had to be wiped out thoroughly, didn't they!
A silver, thread-like thing had wound about his neck and snapped regardless. Lee Han watched it break, then caught the thread as it was drawn back, its purpose failed.
He set his strength to it, hard.
"!!!?"
"What—!!"
"That is three-hundred-year Arachne silk! And you seize it in your bare hands!?"
In the next instant the group hauled in along with the thread screamed, faces struck with horror, but Lee Han snorted and clicked his tongue.
"Three hundred years aged means it's long past its expiration date."
He had nothing for them but scorn — ignorant fools who didn't even know basic common sense.
...as he lightly threw a hand axe.
Whoosh!