Is Irene Windler a Villainess? (5)
A shocking declaration!
Chick No. 2 had been a villainess all along?
It was no exaggeration to call it the greatest shock of the year, and for a moment Lee Han was simply thrown. Of all people.
That sunfish is a mid-boss?
The mid-boss part hit harder than all the rest. Wasn't this a girl who'd die if you so much as flicked her? Forget a knight's eye. Even coming at her the way an assassin would, the ways to kill her were lying around everywhere.
And they're going to put that to use somewhere?
......An event boss, maybe? Well. Spell-slingers had always been convenient to trot out for events.
That perfectly reasonable bit of mage-bashing was still running through his head, and Lee Han's expression was twisting into something grotesque, when—
"Um, uh..."
The boy Taechang, rattled by the change in his face, blurted out an excuse that wasn't quite an excuse. He must have realized the remark could be taken for sowing discord, because he rushed to mend it, already reaching for more words.
"O-of course, th-that was the old story. O-or I may simply have read her wrong. So please don't take it too much to heart, sir..."
"Explain it like that and it sounds even more like you're sowing discord."
"...I realized that a beat too late myself."
Whatever he said, the sprout of suspicion had already been planted. The boy pulled a miserable face, as if this wasn't how it was supposed to go—but contrary to what he thought, Lee Han had just picked up one more fact.
...Now that I look at it, this is turning into a joke.
This System Window kid.
He doesn't know Chick No. 2 is possessed.
Why else drag Irene's name into it? Because the Irene he knew and the Irene standing here now were different people. And yet Taechang couldn't even guess why she had changed. This, from someone holding a cheat skill called Status.
Which meant, in large part, one of two things.
One, the skill might perform worse than I expected. And two, it might need a fairly long cooldown.
A balance patch. If a skill that broken came with restrictions, or a cooldown long enough that he couldn't use it often, then failing to know the chick's true identity made sense. It was the most likely answer, too.
If that's the case, this kid came looking for me ahead of any regressor or possessor?
Ridiculous. What was there about a mere instructor worth feeling suspicious over, that he'd waste a skill that precious? Honestly.
Anyway. The chick is one thing, and that arrogant black-haired young master is another...
Not one of them could be called anything but strange.
After that, the back-and-forth between Lee Han and Derek went on.
"Th-then, with Young Master Roen as well..."
"First time I met him was at the Academy. Before that we didn't even have a connection."
"I-I see."
"Why? You know that arrogant black-haired young master too?"
"...He is a grand duke's son. Is it really all right to address him that way?"
"If a man's arrogant, you call him arrogant. What else am I supposed to say?"
"Mmm."
Derek scratched his cheek and shook his head, as if to say the man truly had no brakes. Even so, he went on answering in earnest.
"...The Young Master Roen I know is supposed to be in the North. It is a crucial period, if he is to become the Northern Grand Duke's undisputed heir."
"He's still the youngest, and a bastard besides."
"That does not matter. To Lionel, the only things that matter are blood and a noble soul. Meet those, and anyone is given the right to be heir. In that sense, the North is in the thick of a struggle over the succession even now. If Young Master Roen is in the Central Continent, it is the same as declaring that he has stepped down from it."
"They'll come fetch him later. Whatever."
"...Even so, he is the grand duke's heir. Are you not treating a seat like that as too easy to hold?"
"It is easy. And if he's got that much ability and still loses it, then that's simply the limit of the man."
"Y-you are merciless."
"I'm stating facts. You're the one too interested in other people's business. It isn't even something you can have."
"...I-it is just a waste, that is all."
"What's a waste?"
"Th-that is..."
"Haha, enough. You can keep it to yourself."
"...Yes, sir."
Judging by the reaction, the black-haired young master was supposed to have become the next Northern Grand Duke.
In this world's original setting, the chick was a villainess young lady, and the young master was supposed to end up Northern Grand Duke. Somewhere along the line, something went off script.
From Derek's reactions and everything gathered so far, Lee Han sorted the information in his own rough way, and the sorted facts spelled out a great deal.
Contrary to what the kid knows, the original chick wasn't a possessor, and the regressor wasn't a regressor.
A world with errors in the information, yet not one that had become something else entirely. Looking at a notion like that—
Did they call it a multiverse?
A subject he had run into often enough in films, once upon a time. Interesting talk. Anyone else would have let their curiosity run wild.
Could be, I suppose.
Lee Han refused to take it any further than that. What he had wanted the information for in the first place was to learn how many more headache-inducing incidents were still coming, not to puzzle out multiverses.
"Then we ought to get up."
"...Sir?"
"The debate looks about finished. No point talking any longer."
"......"
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"...Ah. You are not going to ask anything?"
"Ask what?"
"......"
Taechang's face went blank with disbelief.
...What is this man?
They had certainly talked about all sorts of things. It had taken the shape of question and answer, but Derek knew the conversation had been closer to simply letting what was inside come out than to any real interrogation—and that he himself had been the one pouring the words out, one-sided.
This man only listened. Quiet, the whole time.
In truth, Lee Han's questions during the talk had amounted to nothing. For the most part they were things like You dating that purple one? tossed out to tease him, or If you've learned Fighting Art, why are you in the history faculty instead of the sword faculty?—questions anyone could have answered whenever they liked. It had felt like a friendly older brother from down the street sitting him down for a talk, and Derek had actually felt it that way.
...Even the questions I asked were nothing but strange ones.
Bringing up Irene Windler and Young Master Roen had been strange enough. He had even let things about the temple and his skill slip, quietly.
He had to be out of his mind. Why ask nothing but suspicious questions like that? If anyone had been watching, it would have looked as though he were desperate to be recognized as an obviously suspicious person.
But stranger than his own suspicious self—
Not once did he look at me like I was strange. Not once did he doubt me.
This man. Lee Han was, without question, the stranger of the two.
He had listened seriously to Derek's story from start to finish, and nodded along. Suspicion? None of that showed. Even when Derek had dared to speak of a duke's daughter and a grand duke's likely heir, he had not written the claims off as some bizarre superstition, or as a scheme to drive a wedge. And so Derek was at a loss.
Was this man truly listening, in earnest, to a complete stranger he had only just met? And why draw close so familiarly?
As if he's listening to me get it off my chest.
Maybe today Derek had let out more than he had thought. Maybe he had said things he never should have said. Maybe tomorrow, on the charge of being suspicious, the knight order would drag him off. But inside, he felt clear. Just quietly emptying, for the first time, a heart he had never been able to empty to anyone—that alone left him refreshed.
Which was why he wanted to ask.
"Is, is there nothing else you wish to ask? I am a suspicious man. A man like that keeps saying strange things, so why won't you..."
Ask anything. He meant to finish it that way.
"Did you put a lie in your mouth?"
"...Sir?"
"I'm asking if there was a lie in anything you said. Or did you come at me because you bear me ill will?"
"N-no! Th-that is absolutely not it!"
He answered at once, in a rush.
"Right. That's enough. There was no lie in either of our answers or our questions. That's sufficient."
"......"
"Doesn't seem to sit right with you. Then I'll say a little more. I told that black-haired one you're so wrapped up in the same thing, but sometimes a person shouldn't live with too much curiosity. Curiosity is a monster more frightening than poison, sometimes."
"...A monster."
"And this is personal advice, but don't try to live too hard."
"...?"
"I don't know what your circumstances are. I don't know what you're hiding, either. But if you try to live too complicated a life, that's a problem in itself. Living simply and intuitively is what raises the quality of a life, and yet people work so hard to live complicated."
"......"
"I'll say it again. Try to live simply, and intuitively. Don't stake your life on trifles. All I did today was meet a curious student who was a bit peculiar in a few ways. And we had a conversation."
"......"
"That's all it was."
"...Huh."
Derek heard advice that amounted to a whole speech and could hardly believe his ears. What was that?
"...Is that not no different from telling me to live like a fool?"
Live simply—or it had also sounded like, if something is difficult, just avoid it. The moment he tried to object again—
"......"
The words stuck in his throat.
The bright, clear smile he showed for an instant was refreshing beyond words, and somewhere in it—
Ah...
A man who didn't watch other people's eyes. A man who simply lived his own life with his head up. That—enviable past all measure.
I wanted to live like that too.
He had been struck, deep down, by an attitude toward life that he did not possess, and longed for.
Even I think I was being unbearable.
Ahem...
Aware he had said something that made his own face hot, Lee Han cleared his throat several times in a row. Seeing a kid live through the world as if it were endlessly complicated must have scraped at him.
Ugh. Is it because I'm doing instructor work?
He wasn't even a real educator, and he had gone and spat out a speech as if he had flared up. Anyone could see the System Window was a young fellow who hadn't been out in the world for long. A kid who had been pushed around everywhere. On top of that his speech was clumsy in places, so he had probably been pushed around even harder than most. Once Lee Han felt that, the meddling came out of him—the way a company senior, left with nothing but regrets, gets drunk, looks back on the old days, and hands out advice that doesn't even make sense.
Maybe he had found himself in the boy's figure.
...I was exactly like that.
More precisely, the him of his previous life. After his grandfather died and he became an orphan. Life right in front of him anxious and desperate, so he went into the army, got shoved around by his superiors this way and that, and in the end died young.
So Lee Han pities his previous life. He does not regret it. Back then, he could not have lived any other way. But he does pity it. Unable to be the master of his own life, able only to worry over other people's eyes, always living complicated and only ever suffering—not even knowing what happiness was—that version of himself was a pitiful thing.
I hope you don't live like that.
A young junior who might even be from the same home. Rather than a younger brother who might only ever be swayed by others, who might be living a complicated life, he was confident he had a little more experience, and so he had given advice...
Lee Han hoped the boy would change. In a positive direction.
Even so.
"...Sorry. I went and pulled the old-man act."
"No. If anything, my chest feels clear. What are you saying?"
"You don't mean that."
"I-I do..."
"Enough flattery. More importantly, get going. That purple one looks like she's waiting for you."
"Mmm..."
Before he knew it the debate had ended, and people were crowding around the girl who had put on a fine performance, pressing bouquets into her hands. Strangely, though, the girl's gaze was fixed precisely on the System Window. He had denied the relationship, but it clearly was not an ordinary one.
"...It is not like that."
"Then I'll take it as a thing."
"Ghk—!"
"Enough. Stop making the rest of us jealous and go, if you don't want her finding fault with you later."
"...Yes, sir."
And so Taechang got up and trudged off. The look of a head of household who couldn't so much as raise his head in front of his wife. Already like that—the future looked a bit pitiful.
......Or was he himself the more pitiful one?
Just then, a flinch.
"...Instructor."
"You still not going?"
"Th-that is not it. I, I think there is something I absolutely have to say."
"What?"
"......"
"Th-then I will be going."
"......"
The boy ran off in a hurry. He seemed aware he had said something useless, and yet as if he did not regret a single point of it. Having declared a thing he could not tell anyone, he looked refreshed.
On the other side, it was the opposite.
"...Taechang, dropping a bomb on his way out."
The last day of the exams. Which was to say—
"That's our kids' exam day, isn't it..."
Of all days to land on, it had to land on the unlucky one, and Lee Han's face crumpled without mercy.