The Merchant's Son (3)
"Let me say this once more — I did not come here to announce a wedding."
The moment I stepped into the courtyard, I said it to my mother point-blank.
Why she'd pulled me aside was easy enough to guess.
Though I've honestly lost count of how many times I've had to explain myself by now.
But Miriam only looked at me as if I were the strange one.
"Yes, yes. All three of them told us — duty and a royal decree brought you together. So you can stop denying it, dear."
"Oh..."
I hadn't expected her to take it so smoothly.
"That's not what matters right now."
"It isn't?"
You were raising hell about it just earlier, weren't you?
You even commandeered those exalted guests to cook up a feast in the kitchen?
And now it doesn't matter?
"Then why did you call me out here?"
I could already see it coming — 'So when is the wedding?'
Miriam studied my expression, then tilted her head back toward the house and called out.
"Come on out, dear."
And the one who opened the door and stepped into view was—
"...Father."
Tillion Kell himself.
"Ahem."
He cleared his throat awkwardly and settled himself a careful distance away. Miriam clapped her hands together once.
"Nathan may finally be home after so very long, but the rift between you two hasn't entirely healed yet, has it?"
"..."
"I don't know how you two managed to share a meal without exchanging a single word. Honestly, it's suffocating."
"Dear, that was just—"
"You hush."
My father's protest was cut clean off. She held up a single finger.
"I'll give you one hour. Punch each other's teeth out, drink together, sob and embrace — I don't care. Settle it, whatever it takes. Until then, neither of you sets foot back inside this house."
"Excuse me?"
"No explanations accepted. Now talk nicely, you two."
And that was that.
My mother, who had summoned me to the courtyard as if discussing a matter of grave state importance, abandoned the two of us and vanished like the wind.
- Creeeak. Thud.
With the sound of the door closing, an atmosphere so stifling it was hard to breathe settled over the courtyard.
"..."
"..."
Silence.
What was I even supposed to say?
A meeting arranged out of nowhere — and with the single most awkward person imaginable, the very man who had opposed my dream four years ago, no less, and we were supposed to converse, just the two of us.
My mind went blank.
But I figured I had to bring up some topic or other, so I spoke first.
"So, um—"
"So, um—"
My father opened his mouth at the exact same moment.
Apparently we'd been thinking along the same lines.
"You go first."
"No, please, after you."
"..."
"..."
Silence again.
The two men of House Kell found even meeting each other's eyes too much to bear, and simply stared at the marble statue standing in the middle of the courtyard.
- Caw, caw.
It was so quiet I could clearly make out the cries of crows wheeling high up in the sky.
I'm going to lose my mind.
'Mother, what on earth were you thinking?'
I was only stopping by for a short rest — what rift was there to mend?
Now that I was back in the house anyway, couldn't we all just let it slide?
The discomfort was making my stomach churn.
Somehow, being interrogated about the three women would have felt less painful.
That was when it happened.
"The world is a... difficult thing, isn't it."
Tillion spoke very, very slowly.
"..."
I couldn't answer right away.
The question came out of nowhere.
What did that mean?
Why was he saying something like that?
But a question had been posed all the same, and standing against that silence was getting genuinely hard, so I answered slowly in turn.
"It is. Difficult enough to make you want to curse at it."
The turns of phrase from my childhood came flowing out naturally.
Work at the Administration was anything but easy.
Every single moment, I had to question each traveler's true intentions, probe what they were hiding where, and why.
And with only five of us handling one entire stretch of the border, there was never a spare moment to rest.
"I can barely get off work on time either. Overtime every single day. Company dinners are out of the question — I get home late as it is."
Feigning a complaint, I tossed the line out casually.
My father's expression softened at the prospect of a conversation actually continuing.
"So busy, is it? Then I wonder whether you drank the Frost Dragon wine I sent you."
"Ah, that. I had another use for it, so I passed it along to an acquaintance as trade goods."
"You used something that expensive as trade goods? You didn't drink it?"
"No, sir. I gave it to one of my subordinates — in exchange for agreeing to twenty-four-hour room-and-board duty rotations until the pilgrimage group arrived."
The Merchant Secret Techniques.
Never spend high-value goods on yourself — invest them.
A faint smile crossed my father's face.
"So you haven't forgotten. The Merchant Secret Techniques."
"How could I possibly forget? You drilled it into my ears until I was sick of hearing it, for nineteen straight years."
The complaint slipped out of me before I knew it.
All through my academy days, I'd been forced to learn every last one of those so-called family heirloom techniques.
How to persuade someone, how to soothe their anger, how to make it impossible for them to disagree with you, and on and on.
"Still, they weren't useless. Officer work turned out to be surprisingly similar to customer service."
A troublesome traveler was simply a troublesome customer, and when someone was dissatisfied with the service, you smoothed it over on the spot.
'If I hadn't learned those tricks, I probably would have suffered enormously.'
Work that dealt with people always called for lubricant-like smooth talking and a measure of small tact.
In that regard, the Merchant Secret Techniques had helped a great deal.
They still did, in fact.
The Merchant Secret Techniques: matching the mood of an awkward conversation partner.
In extremely active use as we speak.
"I see... not wasted, then..."
For the first time, I sensed something like relief in my father's voice.
And just as the silence threatened to descend again—
"I always knew what your dream was."
He brought up something I had never expected to hear.
"I'm sorry?"
I whipped my head around in shock.
"You — you knew?"
I had never once breathed a word of it before leaving home.
The seasoned merchant, whose hair was now beginning to gray in patches, quietly continued.
"My father — your grandfather — never stopped telling his adventure stories. There was no way I couldn't know."
"..."
"I suspected it even before that Immigration Officer ever came. That you wanted to see the world and feel it for yourself, the way your grandfather did."
The sunset was beginning to fade little by little.
Just like the evening I last walked out of this house.
Perhaps he was recalling that same moment, because my father murmured low, almost to himself.
"The day you left home, Noah and Miriam wept a great deal."
"..."
I didn't answer.
Because I still remembered it, even now.
My father, coldly declaring he wouldn't lend a shred of support; Noah bawling her eyes out as if the world were ending; and my mother, the only one who encouraged me, quietly dabbing away her own tears.
How could anyone forget that?
"Only after you were gone did so many things become clear to me. That's when I learned how desperately Noah had wanted to become head of a trading company."
Only after hearing that much did I manage to ask, my voice trembling.
"...Do you still want that noble title from me?"
My father's dream.
Or rather, the long-cherished wish of our entire family.
Did he still cling to that dusty, suffocating weight that had pressed down on me for so long?
Was that why he'd been so delighted when I arrived with the three women — why he'd even praised me, saying 'well done'?
"Yes. I wanted it. Desperately. Perhaps I still do."
He answered flatly, but without a trace of a lie.
"Because I believed it was the only way to protect our powerless family."
Those words — the me of today could not condemn them.
I understood now.
That had been the best my father could do as head of the household.
We had simply... each held our words inside, and never spoken them to one another.
I never said what I wanted to do. Not until I met Heilin.
My father never asked what I wanted to do. For fear it would interfere with the family trade and its long-held wish.
He looked at the weathered marble statue and spoke bitterly.
"When you said you wanted to see the world, that was precisely why I thought you had to become a trader, and a noble, all the more."
"..."
"With great power, wealth, and status to back you, the world's restrictions would finally fall away. Unlike me."
For an instant, Heilin's words flashed through my mind.
- To protect his family in a merciless world, he would have grasped the one weapon he could wield best.
For my father, that weapon had been noble rank and money.
Gripping the courtyard railing hard enough to turn his knuckles white, he went on.
"But I didn't know. How much that dream of yours truly meant to you. Or how heavy my expectations felt on your shoulders."
A small confession echoed into the silence.
"I regretted it. That day — I should have shaken your hand, instead of closing the door in your face."
A trembling voice barely forced out the last of it.
"My dream was only ever my own. I realized far, far too late that it should never have become yours."
I stared at him in astonishment.
There was no resolute, cold merchant there — only a man looking back on his past.
And then my eye caught it: the small fountain pen pinned to his breast.
The New Year's gift I'd grudgingly sent him last year.
Family was still family, and I'd apparently sensed we weren't entirely severed, because I'd mailed it off with no letter attached, just like that.
And though he'd retired and had no earthly use for it anymore, my father was wearing it over his heart like that.
Sensing my gaze, he glanced down at his chest, then casually tucked the pen into his pocket.
"...Hm."
Clumsy.
This man — my father — was clumsy.
The realization struck me with a pain that was almost unbearable.
A man who'd spent decades in a profession built on dealing with people, yet was utterly awkward with his own family.
The corners of his eyes reddened, just slightly.
He never looked at me. Only at the fading sunset, and the statue beneath it.
And yet, even so, he said it.
"...Welcome home, son."
This, I thought, was probably his true heart.
Not as a merchant — but as the father of a son.
I forced down the something rising hot in my throat and swallowed it.
No matter how many people I met, no matter how long I stayed somewhere,
was there anyone I missed the way I missed family and home?
And was there any moment as overwhelming as the one when, at last, they welcomed me back?
And so I too answered, doing my best to sound completely unbothered.
"...Yes. I'm home."
That was my true heart, too.
Not as an Immigration Officer — but as one father's son.
No reply came.
None was needed.
Four years of estrangement.
Four years of silence, finally bridged.
A single exchanged word between us was enough.
And so the two men with black hair and black eyes stood for a long while without speaking, watching the sunset fade over the marble statue in the courtyard.
"So that Kirba child really isn't yours? Then I'm not a dragon's grandfather?"
"Oh, come on. Old age has completely addled you."
Of course, less than a minute later, the whole thing ended with me throwing a fit.
And so, after mending our rift in the most clumsy, awkward way imaginable — night fell.
Thankfully, Miriam wasn't the sort of mischievous soul to go so far as arranging our sleeping quarters together.
"There we go."
I sank into the bed of the room I'd been assigned, feeling perfectly at ease.
Home was home, after all.
I could let my guard down a little here, surely.
Sure, I hadn't been able to sleep a wink at my own place with work on my mind, but this was different.
Things had patched up with Father, hadn't they?
All I had to do was sleep without a single worry.
'Besides, I've already cleared up the wedding misunderstanding, so there's nothing to trouble over. Just rest easy.'
With that thought, I closed my eyes.
For exactly three hours, twenty-three minutes, and forty-nine seconds.
Then I opened them again.
"Damn it all..."
I couldn't sleep.
No — I couldn't sleep.
Home or not, work was work.
How was the Administration running by now?
Was Senior Officer Dhin Askyrin covering my absence properly?
What if the dragonewts started raising hell, demanding we hand over the Dragon Tongue declarant?
A torrent of thoughts churned through my head so violently that sleep refused to come.
Workaholism.
A disease that only afflicts those who have sold their souls to the job — and I had caught it.
I sat bolt upright in bed and muttered.
"Great. No crystal orb here either, so I can't even ask..."
That was when I heard it.
"Rest your weary body, lay your head upon my lap and drift to sleep..."
A voice drifting from somewhere far off — a voice I somehow knew.
"This is..."
And it was a song I'd heard somewhere before, too.
'Who on earth would be singing at this hour?'
It couldn't be Noah, whose singing was worse than a crow's, and nobody in this house would be wandering around in the dead of night.
Who could it be?
As if under a spell, I began walking toward the sound.
The place I arrived at was the living room.
In the pitch-dark center of it, a single candle burning, someone sat on the sofa quietly humming a song.
Sky-blue hair, and a golden aura wrapping around her, casting a very, very faint glow.
"Don't open your closed eyes. I don't want you to catch me watching you..."
Careful not to spoil her song, I drew closer very, very quietly.
When only a single step remained between us, I spoke.
"It's been a while since I heard you sing."
"And so into my arms— Aaaagh, mmph!"
Startled, she nearly shrieked before hastily clamping a hand over her own mouth.
"That wasn't my intention, I assure you."
"You didn't even make a footstep sound — I nearly fainted! And what if Elaine had woken up!"
Beneath her, Elaine lay fast asleep, her head resting on Erzena's lap.
"...What is Elaine doing here?"
"She normally shares a room with Hannah, but I think she was frightened sleeping alone. So I was keeping her company until she drifted off."
Ah, I see.
Come to think of it, Elaine hated being alone.
That was why Hannah was always beside her at bedtime, too.
I plopped down into the chair across from her.
"Well, that works out nicely. I can't sleep either, you see."
Erzena flinched, her face flushing red.
"D-don't tell me you want a lap pillow too!?"
"I said no such thing."
Why are you turning into my mother?
I leaned back against the chair and let myself relax.
"I just... was drawn here by the sound of your singing."
"...Smooth talker."
"If it's all right with you, how about two sleepless souls keep each other company with a little chat?"
"A... chat?"
"Yes. There's been so much happening lately that we haven't really had the chance to talk."
At those words, Erzena looked at me without speaking.
The night deepening around us — just like that time when the two of us were alone in my house, long ago.
"Nathan..."
She opened her mouth slowly.
With slightly reddened cheeks, and a trembling voice.
"I'm... scared."