The Great Full Short (3)

Back at Goldman Manor once more, Allen spread the newspaper open — and there it was, the article he'd been waiting for, splashed across the front page.

He snapped his fingers in triumph.

"That's it! Go down already!"

Ah. Was that a little much, even for him?

"Ahem."

In any case, Selwyn Trading would be in chaos from the inside out. The stock would go into freefall, and Edward's seat would start looking very shaky indeed. But Rachel would put it all back together anyway. Before long she was going to invent a cryo storage device that left every existing model in the dust — a unit that could refrigerate and freeze, running for long stretches without a single hitch on half the energy of anything currently on the market.

If I remember right, she got in touch with Professor Sarah Benzos and worked through the part that had her stuck.

Sarah Benzos. Professor of Magic Engineering at the Imperial Academy. She was also the wife of Dr. Daniel Benzos, the geologist whose resurvey of the Arcanium vein had driven Rachel Mining's stock into the floor. And during Rachel's years at the Academy, she had been the advisor who actually looked after her.

In the original novel, the real bottleneck had been the circuit coils — the lower the temperature dropped, the less load they could take, and they would snap almost at once. That was when Professor Sarah had given Rachel a piece of advice that struck dead-center, right at the heart of the problem.

At that simple suggestion, Rachel's eyes had lit as if she'd just been handed enlightenment itself — and she proceeded to knock together an entirely new high-conductivity substance on the spot.

Narrative logic? Verisimilitude?

She's a romance-fantasy heroine.

Copper: excellent conductivity, but it wore down fast under a current of mana. Aegisium: tough as anything against damage, but its resistance was high. She blended the two metals into an alloy, laid enchantments over it, and fused the whole thing with mana — firing a mana beam through it, if he remembered right. She'd even modified the mana-beam irradiator on the fly to crank the output higher. It had been one of those episodes meant to show that Rachel was a proper engineering nerd, which was why the details had stuck with him.

At any rate, Rachel patented the thing. And then she raked in returns so absurd they made the loss of a trade ship look like pocket change — dozens of times over. The Selwyn Trading stock that had been rotting in the gutter would explode upward and smash straight through its previous high. Edward's foresight and his eye for talent would be recognized, and the factions circling him would break.

All of it would be over in a little more than two weeks.

Which was why, a week later, Allen clocked in — after a fashion — at the branch manager's office of the domain bank.

The receiver clicked into place.

Oho. It had dropped quite a bit. After a brief identity check, the rest had gone through without a hitch. He hung up.

When he turned his head, Branch Manager Smith was staring at him with a look like his soul had quietly left his body.

"What are you looking at me like that for?"

"Th-that's… did you anticipate that Selwyn Trading would crash like this, Lord Goldman…?"

Allen gave a dry little laugh.

"Anticipate? Nothing of the sort. Just a hunch. A gut feeling."

"A-a hunch…?"

Leaving the branch manager sitting there with his mouth hanging open, Allen rose from his seat.

"Well then. I'll be by again soon."

The next morning, he read the morning paper as usual. There wouldn't be anything tied to the original novel in it today, but keeping up with current events was basic hygiene for a trader. He was skimming the small items from around the Empire when he stopped.

"…?"

A tiny obituary, tucked into a corner of the page.

"What is this…?"

He narrowed his eyes at the type, rubbed them, and looked again. He hadn't misread ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it. The ink was all too clear.

"The Benzos couple… is dead…?"

The strength went out of his hands. The newspaper slipped and fell.

"N-no… that can't be right. Why would the Benzos couple just… die…?"

There was only one professor couple at the Imperial Academy named Benzos. It couldn't be a namesake, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and it couldn't be a misprint. These were the people he knew. But they weren't supposed to die. In the novel, the Benzos couple were still alive when the story ended — they even turned up in a side story afterward, spending time with Rachel.

And it makes even less sense now.

In a few days, Rachel was supposed to contact Professor Sarah and get that piece of advice. And yet they'd died in an accident. His head was spinning.

Why the hell are they dead? A butterfly effect? I didn't do anything that should've thrown the plot off course. Rachel hits it big with the Arcanium vein, sells the company to the Vesmont ducal house, gets scouted by Selwyn Trading — that all played out exactly as in the original. Don't tell me this is some parallel world that has nothing to do with the novel?

He turned the chaos in his head over and over, hunting for a cause. Where did it start going wrong? Where's the problem…

"…Ah."

A wrong note, suddenly audible. There was one thing that had diverged from the original.

"I bought Rachel Mining stock and talked her confidence up — which meant she sold the company later than she was supposed to."

He walked it back. Rachel had taken his advice and pushed a sale that should have gone through at dawn all the way to late that night. So how would that have looked from the Vesmont ducal house's side — the people who'd just been stuck with a hundred-ton millstone at a fortune in gold? Up until dawn she'd sworn she wouldn't sell. Then, after a sudden staff meeting, she'd rushed to put the company on the table. And the very next day after they acquired it, the resurvey report on the Arcanium reserves dropped, and the stock fell into the abyss.

Would Heath Vesmont — arrogant, foul-tempered, the main villain of the piece — have shrugged an outrage like that off as coincidence? He would have decided that Rachel had known about the survey in advance, that she'd colluded with Dr. Benzos to run a con and make a fool of House Vesmont. Even without hard evidence, people like that handed out personal revenge the way other people ate breakfast.

He would have gone after Rachel first, as the supposed ringleader of the fraud — but she was already inside Selwyn's orbit. So he would have turned to the easier target, Dr. Benzos… and Professor Sarah Benzos had, unluckily, been with her husband when the retaliation hit.

All of it was still only a guess. But still.

"This traffic accident… might not have been an accident at all."

A chill went down his spine. With the kind of intelligence network the Vesmont ducal house used to take the Imperial economy in one hand and squeeze, digging through the stock exchange's transaction ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠records would have been trivial.

In which case… they could also identify the mystery trader who bought three million gold of Rachel Mining at the bottom, dumped it at the top, then even ran a short and sucked out a fortune in spread.

He swallowed. His throat was dry.

"…I'd better be careful for a while. Expand the domain garrison, hire private bodyguards."

Wait.

No. That wasn't the problem. The real problem was somewhere else entirely.

Rachel…!

The one person who could have pointed her at the heart of the invention was gone. Without that advisor, the device that was supposed to save Edward would never get made.

And then what happens?

Edward's fall from power. Rachel would be driven out of the South, and unprotected, she might well take House Vesmont's revenge and die.

"No, no, no…!"

If Rachel disappears here, the Empire is finished!

Her role wasn't just "genius businesswoman." She was the narrative axis — the one who went around putting out the fires that kept erupting across the Empire, slowly tightening the noose around the Vesmont ducal house. And in the final episode, when the Emperor died and the succession was a mess, a cornered Heath Vesmont would gather the pro-Vesmont faction and raise a rebellion. The protagonist who held that crisis at the front line, calling in every connection she'd built with the male leads along the way, was Rachel.

Which meant that if the queen on this chessboard vanished…

House Vesmont would be a runaway carriage with the brakes cut.

"What do I do? What am I supposed to do…?"

He had to salvage the plot somehow, but nothing useful would come. The only person who could have advised Rachel was gone.

Gone…

"Wait…?"

Someone who could give her that advice…

There was someone.

He was already running for the domain bank. There was no time.

I have to contact Selwyn Trading. Now.

"Hmph…"

A sneer crept across Heath's mouth as he read. His golden eyes curved into thin, pleased slits.

"That's the price for daring to interfere with Vesmont business. Rot in hell."

He flipped the paper over and spread the front page. The headline announcing Selwyn Trading's crisis caught his eye.

She's hiding behind Edward Selwyn for now, which makes her difficult to touch… but that man's fall from power is only a matter of time. When that day comes, I'll kill her slowly. That insolent bitch…!

The office door creaked open, and Isabel stepped in with a sheaf of documents in her hands.

"Brother. I brought what you asked for."

"Good. Well done."

Heath took the papers. The title printed across the first page read as follows.

He was leafing through the names when Isabel spoke.

"Page twenty-seven. What you're looking for should be there, Brother."

He turned the pages as she'd said.

"So it is."

The record of someone who had bought three million gold of Rachel Mining stock at the very bottom, sold it at the peak, and immediately taken a short position to wring out every last drop of profit. Had the man seen the future? It was trading so precise it was practically art — not a hair of error between the low and the high.

And then Heath read the name stamped beside the trades, tasting it as it left his mouth.