The Great Full Short (2)
The sea came in a long white rush, then struck the pilings — slap, slap — as if it meant to keep striking until the wood gave out.
Grivel, the great trade city of the Empire's south, did not believe in spring. The air here was already the air of high summer, thick and glittering with heat. And at the farthest edge of the Selwyn docks, Edward sat alone.
"……."
His gaze was nailed to the horizon. He looked the picture of vigor, but the wreckage of his fingernails told another story entirely.
When is it going to get here…
A great merchantman, packed to the ribs with Eastern luxury goods. The cargo alone was worth tens of millions. He had clawed open an exclusive arrangement with the great merchants of the East, and it had not been easy. If those goods simply arrived, he could shake off his rivals' interference and hold the chief executive's chair.
…The one thing I cannot lose is that seat.
Chief executive of Selwyn Trading. He had wrenched the position out of the hands of his corrupt brothers and the officers who ran with them, and he had barely held it since. He would not stand by and watch the legacy the previous generation had built be wrecked in those bastards' hands.
And yet the expected date of arrival had come and gone, and there was still no sign of the ship. He had been making excuses to the executives' interrogation until only moments ago.
Anxiety was just beginning to work its fingers through him when a shadow fell across the boards.
"Edward. So this is where you were."
"Ah — Miss Rachel."
He rose, sliding his ruined fingertips into his pocket.
"What brings you down to the harbor? I hope it isn't anything urgent…"
"No, nothing like that. I only… I was worried about you, so I came."
"W-worried?"
The words caught in Edward's throat. He arranged his face into something confident, as if nothing in the world were wrong.
"Haha — worried? What in the world is there to worry about? Everything is running exactly as it should."
Rachel did not fall for the clumsy bluster. Her voice dropped, soft with concern.
"…But you've been coming out here for days now. Doing nothing but staring at the water."
"Th-that's…"
He let the sentence die. He could hardly do otherwise — he had been skipping meals to keep watch over this harbor.
Rachel knew about the Eastern venture. Of course he's afraid. The ship still isn't here.
A woman with a heart as warm as hers was never going to walk past him in that state. She was a woman who knew how to cherish the people who held out a hand to her.
Of course, I first came here for reasons of my own.
Selwyn Trading was one of the pillars of the imperial economy. If she could build a career there, gather connections, and earn real recognition, it would become the foothold she needed to crush House Vesmont. So when Edward's offer reached her, she had accepted the position at once.
In a strange southern city where she had neither roots nor allies, he had trusted her ability and seated her in a post of real consequence. Protest and persecution had rained down from the executives — and he had dismissed every accusation and shielded her.
At first she had drawn a line, telling herself they were business partners and nothing more, each using the other for mutual gain. But his warmth, his trust, had slowly undone the walls around her heart. She could not do anything practical about the missing ship. The least she could do was lift some of the weight from his mind.
Rachel smiled, and offered what comfort she could.
"Don't torment yourself like this. A merchantman running a few days late is hardly unheard of. She's coming. I'm sure of it."
At that, the rigidity went out of Edward's shoulders. A laugh escaped him, and he nodded.
"…Now that you say it, you're right. Haha! After all these years in this business, to get this worked up over a late ship — it's unbecoming."
"Exactly. Come on. Pull yourself together."
"I will. Coming all the way out here on a day like this… I seem to have caused you some concern."
The sheepish question earned him a playfully tart reply.
"Of course I was worried! You've wasted away to half of yourself — how was I supposed to pretend I didn't notice?"
For a moment, the gentle scolding went through Edward's chest like a spark.
It was the first purely selfless concern he had heard since taking the chief executive's chair at Selwyn Trading. The slightest misstep, and his brothers and officers were at his throat. As for sharing his heart with the people under him — his seat was too high, too solitary; no one dared come close. And so he had no choice but to wear composure and confidence at all times. Playing the indomitable executive, day after day, was exhausting beyond measure. That was why a few uncalculated words from Rachel drove so deep.
Edward cleared his throat, trying to cool the heat in his face, and groped for another subject.
"Ahem! Anyway, Miss Rachel. How are you finding the Third Technical Division? Manageable?"
"Yes. Everyone's been looking after me, so I've been settling in comfortably. But… I still don't know if I'm really the right timber to be sitting in the director's chair."
The moment she had accepted his offer, he had placed her at the head of the Third Technical Division — the department charged with developing cold-storage technology, one of Selwyn Trading's core projects. It suited her. She had graduated from the Academy's Department of Magitech Engineering, and she already had a record of successful inventions that married magic to machinery.
Of course, ability or no ability, dropping a newly hired outsider into a department's highest seat had been an extraordinary appointment. Edward had believed in her all the same.
"I have an eye for people, if I have anything. When I get a feeling, I'm usually right. Don't take it as a burden. Just go as far as your talent will take you."
"You do realize that speech only makes the burden heavier?"
They were still trading easy, warm jokes when a boat appeared beyond the horizon, making for the harbor.
Edward's face went rigid.
"…That's—"
A lifeboat. One of the lifeboats assigned to Selwyn Trading's merchant vessels.
It slapped against the quay, and people in ruins poured out of it in a rush.
"W-we're alive…!"
"Oh, God! Thank you — thank you!"
"We have to report this to the President at once…!"
Edward was already running.
He pulled up in front of them, breathing hard.
The employees started at the sight of him.
"P-President?! What are you doing down here in person?!"
Edward's eyes raked over them, fast and searching.
"Is everyone all right? And the ship — I'm sorry, but I need you to report what happened. Right now."
The senior-most among them burst into tears.
"P-President…! Our merchant ship… on the voyage home, it struck a reef. She ran aground… she's gone…!"
The strength went out of Edward's legs. Rachel, who had followed him down, caught his collapsing frame.
"Edward!"
On any other day he would have thanked her. He had no such presence of mind now. His unfocused eyes wavered.
Tens of millions in gold. Straight to the bottom of the sea…
The financial loss was brutal enough. The real problem was something else entirely. His seat as chief executive had just become desperately unstable.
They won't let this lie…
That knowledge was what truly tormented him.
A café with a view of Grivel's harbor. A reporter sat sipping coffee, fidgeting with the camera slung around his neck.
"Damn it, it's hot enough to kill a man. How long am I supposed to sit here rotting?"
A few days earlier, he had obtained confidential information from an executive at Selwyn Trading: Edward Selwyn's merchant ship was long overdue, and showed no sign of returning. The executive had sneered that Edward did nothing in meetings but make excuses — and had quietly commissioned the reporter to do a job. If he could catch the reason the ship wasn't coming in, he was to blow it across the front page.
The reporter clicked his tongue, sneering at the rotten underside of Selwyn Trading.
"I mean, really. It's their own company. Isn't this just carving up their own flesh? They're thrashing themselves half to death trying to sink their president. Tsk. A den of beasts, the lot of them."
For days he had been circling the harbor, waiting. And then—
"…Huh?"
A man sprinting hard caught the reporter's eye. Brown hair. Tanned skin. Edward Selwyn.
What? Why is he running like that?
This had a smell to it. He was on his feet in an instant. He slipped toward the harbor, melted in behind a stack of cargo, and watched.
People were climbing out of a boat. Fragments of conversation drifted over.
"Our merchant ship… on the voyage home, it struck a reef and ran aground…!"
The reporter's mouth curled all the way to his ear.
"Bingo."
He burst from cover without a second's hesitation and shoved a camera lens into the faces of everyone standing there in shock.
The flash went off like a gunshot. The sudden light jerked every head on the dock.
"Good afternoon! Newspaper! Just now, I believe I heard that the President's Eastern merchantman has run aground — would you care to explain how that happened?!"
The employees and Edward stared at the uninvited guest in horror. The reporter did not care. He poured questions into Edward's face.
"I've been told the goods aboard that ship were worth tens of millions in gold alone! That's a staggering loss — how do you intend to compensate the shareholders? I understand this was a venture you rammed through over the objections of certain executives. Do you intend to take responsibility for this catastrophe and resign?!"
They were questions designed to scrape a man raw. Edward's brow knotted, and the grind of his teeth was audible. But if he so much as grabbed the man by the collar, he could already see the headline that would follow. He swallowed the rage and turned to head back to the company.
That was when the reporter darted in with nasty speed and cut him off.
"If you refuse to answer, I will take everything I just heard and print it on the front page as established fact — a catastrophe born of one man's arrogance and incompetence!"
Edward's fist clenched until the knuckles went white. God, he wanted to put that fist through the man's face.
Whether the reporter knew he was scraping the last of Edward's patience or not, he kept popping the flash, right in his eyes, with a nasty little smile.
"You."
A woman's voice, cold as a drawn blade.
"Hm?"
The reporter turned his head — and Rachel's hand closed on the camera hanging from his neck. She put her strength into it and wrenched.
The coupling on the strap tore free with a sharp crack.
"Ghk— aaagh! Wh-what do you think you're—!"
He didn't get the protest out. Rachel lifted the stolen camera, and hurled it into the paving stones.
The camera exploded. Lens shards and delicate inner workings sprayed across the dock.
"Aaaaaagh!! D-do you have any idea what that thing cost!!"
The reporter clutched his head and wailed. Even Edward, whose rage had been at a boil, went rigid at the sight.
"M-Miss Rachel…?"
The reporter turned on her, foaming.
"Y-you!! Do you understand that you have just suppressed the sacred freedom of the press and violated my property rights? Can you even handle the—"
Rachel seized him by the collar.
"H-hiek—!"
The reporter's breath hitched as his throat closed.
H-how is she this strong? Ghk—!
She was a magitech engineer — a technician. The kind of functional muscle you only built by wrestling with massive equipment and heavy tools, day after day. Her golden irises flashed, predatory as a beast's.
She dumped him on the boards and went to Edward's side.
"This isn't the time to stand here wasting it. We need to get back to the company and put a plan together."
She pressed her palm to his back, a gentle push.
"Ah— I… Yes. Of course."
Edward came back to himself, took the lead, and headed for the company.