Divorce (8)
A message from the Game Developer is available. Would you like to check it?
“…….”
Truth be told, I couldn’t bring myself to open that message right away.
So far, only two people had been identified as the “Game Developer.”
Some man who was the representative of Cthulhu Games.
And my mother, the representative of the Salvation Project.
If I assumed this possession had begun with the representative of Cthulhu Games, then the odds were high that the man who’d sent this message was him as well. But the game he’d made had started out as nothing more than an otome title. Which meant the person who’d left me a message through the system could just as easily have been my mother.
Someone might wonder why I’d hesitate to open a message from my own mother…
But I’ve spent this whole time resenting her.
What if I opened it and found some explanation written inside—some circumstance that had forced her to abandon me? If I heard it from her in person after logging out, I could at least confront her, throw a word or two her way. I didn’t want it handed to me one-sidedly in a place like this.
This can wait… until next time.
In the end, I gave up on opening the message, hoping whatever was written inside wouldn’t turn out to be anything important.
The next day.
I’d left Luna with the commander and completely forgotten to go pick him up, so he scolded me for it. I watched him in silence as he fussed at me.
If Luna Moon really is my mother, and this little guy is the real Haydam… then I guess that makes him my older brother.
[I’m not Haydam, I keep telling you!]
Anyway.
I headed for Daphne’s Mansion with Shin Eun-jo, a few props in hand.
Shin Eun-jo looked back and forth between the thing I’d handed her and my face, then asked,
“……What is this?”
“The key to unlocking Daphne’s heart.”
Her expression turned faintly strange.
“These are… tarot cards. And ridiculously crude ones, at that.”
“Hey, don’t call them crude. I stayed up all night making them.”
I still hadn’t opened the Game Developer’s message the night before, but I had spent a long time thinking about how I might get Daphne to meet with me and finally hear what was really on her mind. The tarot cards were the result of that thinking.
“And what exactly am I supposed to do with these tarot cards…?”
“Just put your major to work.”
“Which is what, exactly?”
“Tarot reading.”
[What’s a tarot reading?]
A technique for reading someone’s true feelings… I guess you could call it that.
[You asked me if I had a lie-detection function, and then just went and made one yourself?]
Well. Something like that.
Unlike the naive Luna, Shin Eun-jo put up stiff resistance.
“Tarot reading, my ass. I’m a shaman.”
“No, listen. I already know you’re a shaman.”
“And?”
“Do you really think Daphne’s going to just accept it if you walk in and say you’re a shaman?”
“And you’re saying she’ll just accept a tarot reading?”
“Tarot still more or less fits the worldbuilding.”
“…….”
Shin Eun-jo was silent for a moment, looking utterly speechless, then let out a sigh.
“…I seriously don’t know how to do tarot readings.”
“It’s fine. I’m not asking you to actually read them. Just pretend you know enough.”
“Pretend I know enough?”
“When Daphne picks a card, put on a serious face and ask her if she’s having some kind of man trouble.”
At that, Shin Eun-jo nodded as if she finally understood.
“In short, you want me to run a scam.”
[You really don’t think about anything but scamming people, do you.]
This wasn’t even a scam for my own benefit, so I hoped they’d cut me some slack.
“No, more importantly—man trouble? Are you still curious what Daphne thinks about Meursault? I’ve told you over and over: Meursault isn’t a romanceable character.”
All the way to Daphne’s Mansion, Shin Eun-jo kept muttering about how she couldn’t understand why we had to dig into Daphne’s feelings for Meursault even if it meant running a tarot scam. I gave her only one thing in reply.
“When you meet Daphne, open her Character Info.”
“……?”
“And for the record, the fact that we’re players is a secret. Act as much like a clueless little kid as you can.”
Shin Eun-jo stared at me like she had no idea what I was talking about. Being told to check an NPC’s Character Info, and being reminded yet again to hide that we were players—of course both would sound strange. But in a little while, everything would make sense.
“Try not to look too shocked.”
I gave Shin Eun-jo one last warning, then stepped into Daphne’s Mansion with Luna in my arms.
A woman I’d seen before—dazzlingly beautiful silver hair, a pure white fur draped over her shoulders—came down the stairs. I’d already swapped out my title in advance to nullify the item effect, since that beauty had gotten me once before, but Shin Eun-jo stood there dazed for a moment.
“I’d heard you’d been going around with a cat lately… but it seems you have other company as well?”
Daphne looked surprised that I’d brought someone with me. She’d probably assumed I’d come to ask why she’d refused to meet Meursault, so bringing a stranger along would only have made her more puzzled. Even so, she turned a gentle smile on Shin Eun-jo.
“You must be that child everyone’s been talking about. Come along. I’ll serve you some warm tea.”
As we followed Daphne’s lead, Shin Eun-jo whispered to me,
“Was that the thing I wasn’t supposed to be surprised about? That she’s too beautiful?”
As if.
Character Info.
I mouthed the words without sound, and luckily Shin Eun-jo caught on and shifted her gaze toward Daphne. A moment later, her face twisted into something strange—like someone who’d just seen something they weren’t meant to see.
She’d probably been shocked that Daphne was a player, too.
Meursault’s Wife is a pretty jarring username, I’ll give her that.
But once she knew the username and the fact that Daphne was a player, she would have understood why I’d said the one who wanted the divorce was Daphne’s side.
We arrived at a salon lined with art pieces and sat facing each other across a small tea table. The moment I sat down, I asked Daphne,
“Why did you refuse to meet Meursault?”
There were two reactions I could reasonably expect.
If my question made Daphne flustered over the presence of a complete stranger like Shin Eun-jo, that wouldn’t be so bad. In that case, if I stayed behind alone to hear her out, there was a high chance she’d speak honestly about her situation.
But.
“You’re still so young, Haydam. You don’t understand yet. The only men permitted to enter my mansion are Hayden and Haydam.”
When she came out with that—acting as if she had no idea what I was talking about—that was not good. I clearly remembered her telling me she would work up the courage to confess to Meursault. If she was talking like this now, something had changed her mind in the meantime, and she was likely trying to pretend everything she’d said until now had never happened.
This is exactly why I prepared the tarot reading.
In a situation like this, it was better for me to step out. If I stayed, Daphne would only keep offering that mechanical smile.
When I stood up, Daphne’s face showed surprise. Her eyes wavered with a faint unease—she was definitely hiding something.
“Actually, I came today to ask if you’d look after this child for a while. My surroundings are crawling with nothing but rough men, so there’s no one who can watch her.”
“Ah…! So that’s why you brought her.”
“Would you mind keeping her company for the day?”
“Of course not. A guest of Haydam’s is a guest of mine.”
Once it became clear I had no intention of pressing further about Meursault, Daphne accepted my proposal with visible relief. Shin Eun-jo, who’d been sitting there looking thoughtful, stared at me for a moment with a betrayed expression—apparently she hadn’t expected me to dump the entire rest of the job on her—then turned to Daphne and gave her a shy little smile.
[Leaving me here like this is so mean.]
A girl who runs a pseudo-cult in her own zone can handle cooking one Daphne.
[Still, I feel a little sorry for her.]
Don’t. You’re staying too.
[What?!]
I have to make sure Shin Eun-jo doesn’t say anything unnecessary to Daphne.
[You—!!]
Luna was helplessly lifted out of my arms and deposited into Shin Eun-jo’s. In any case, a complete stranger like Shin Eun-jo would be an easier person for Daphne to open up to than me—Hayden’s son and Meursault’s closest aide. More than anything, Daphne already knew I wasn’t an ordinary child, which was why she was watching her words around me.
She had no idea that the person left in front of her was an even more relentless veteran player than I was.
Shin Eun-jo didn’t return to the commander’s residence until nearly evening. When she found me lounging on the bed in my room, her fists were trembling.
“How’d it go? Did you get a good talk in?”
[Haydam is an idiot!]
Luna, who’d come back nestled in Shin Eun-jo’s arms, shouted that in a sulk and vanished into the ring. Maybe handing him off to someone else two times in a row had been a bit much.
Unlike Luna, Shin Eun-jo seemed to have already resigned herself to the part where I’d abandoned her. She flopped down on the edge of the bed and said,
“I don’t want to admit it, but… the tarot reading was a good idea.”
“Yeah? What did you do?”
“Exactly what you told me to. And she spilled everything before she’d even drawn a few cards.”
Good. So the tarot operation had worked. Honestly, even if I’d brought some other vaguely counseling-adjacent gimmick instead of tarot, Daphne probably would have opened up. She was the kind of person who’d poured out her entire story the moment I told her I knew she was a player, like something that had been building for a long time had finally burst.
“So… why did she change her mind?”
“She was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
I sat up properly and asked,
“Of what? Of confessing to Meursault?”
“No. Of divorcing Commander Hayden.”
“Hm?”
I blinked, unable to see why she’d suddenly be afraid of divorcing Commander Hayden. Shin Eun-jo continued with a sigh.
“From what I heard, you’ve taken out two pro-Daphne officers recently. Max and Anton.”
“I didn’t do that. They brought it on themselves.”
“If those two had still held their full power, Daphne probably wouldn’t have been afraid of a divorce. But after you purged the pro-Daphne faction… even I would be scared to divorce Commander Hayden.”
Ah. So that was where it had tangled.
In other words, everything Daphne had said before about wanting to divorce the commander had been sincere. But that had only been true while she’d held power equal to his. Now the balance had tipped decisively toward the commander. I’d judged that divorcing Daphne in this situation wouldn’t cost the commander much—but for Daphne, the damage would be severe.
I hadn’t thought that far. Now I understood why her attitude had changed.
“I cleared out her close aides and then told her to divorce my father and marry Meursault. From Daphne’s perspective, of course my motives looked suspicious.”
“So what are you going to do now?”
“If fear is what’s stopping her from divorcing, then we make it so she has nothing to fear.”
“Knowing you, you’re not about to reinstate Anton…”
Of course not.
Because the person who was going to solve this was someone else entirely.
“…What did you just say, Young Master Haydam?”
Meursault asked me again, looking as if he couldn’t trust his own ears.
“For Lady Daphne to get a divorce… she would need me to do what, exactly?”
I smiled and repeated, word for word, what I’d just told him. Meursault stared at me for a moment, speechless.
“…Do you truly believe that’s possible? No—this is pure madness from the start!”
“Didn’t you know, Meursault?”
Marriage has always been a mad act.