Catching a Thief
If I had to sum up Asie Grasis in a single sentence, I would say this:
An aristocrat who didn’t act like one.
He was kind to those beneath him, yet never so soft that anyone could mistake him for an easy target. He kept his dignity without lapsing into ostentation, and though he never looked down on the people around him, neither did he drown himself in luxury.
He never neglected either literature or martial arts; he polished himself constantly, and he bent his back to look after the people at the bottom of the ladder.
Come to think of it, most of the royal relief systems the Grasis royal family had once run were probably his idea.
At that point, anyone listening would probably think, “Huh? Isn’t that a good thing? Why does that make him unlike a royal?”
A royal family that lived frugally, kept its hands clean, and cared about the people.
That sounded like the very model of an ideal monarchy.
But the royals of Grasis that I knew were nothing like that.
To me, “royal” meant wastrels wallowing in luxury and pleasure, squandering the national treasury and sucking the lifeblood out of their people to fatten their own bellies.
Saying it like that made me feel like some revolutionary screaming for the guillotine.
“Um, Canaria. Is it really okay to talk about him like that? He is royalty, after all….”
“What’s it matter? He’d probably think the same thing.”
“Mm. It stings a little, but the girl isn’t wrong.”
“R-really?”
Daeun rolled her eyes nervously between us and let out a sigh that sounded equal parts relief and confusion.
Had she been worried he’d have her arrested for treason or something?
Even if Asie had really been that sort of man, with Grasis already fallen, there was no kingdom left to charge anyone with treason.
“I told you. He’s not the sort of man who acts like royalty.”
“Yeah… that’s true.”
When she nodded, it looked like she had finally understood what I’d meant.
Because of that personality of his—his… quirks, I guess? Whatever you wanted to call them—he had been treated in the royal palace like an abandoned child, or an eccentric outlier.
To put it simply, he was like a swan mistaken for a duck, cast among a flock of ugly ducklings.
As for why they hadn’t driven him out anyway, well.
Maybe it was because he was so capable. Maybe it was the last scraps of family affection. Or maybe it had been for some other reason entirely.
Whatever the reason, I had no desire to know.
There was no need for me to know now, anyway.
What I was really curious about was something else.
“How are you still alive?”
“...The way you say that makes it sound like I shouldn’t be. I know you don’t mean it that way, but still.”
Asie said that, sounding put out.
“What’s there to say? I was lucky. As you know, I’m not the sort of man who shuts himself away in the palace all day. On the day the kingdom fell, I happened to be away from the royal castle, and that’s how I escaped the disaster... That’s the story. If you were hoping for some moving tale about knights sacrificing their lives to buy time so I could flee the castle safely, I’m sorry to disappoint you.”
“I wasn’t expecting that.”
Maybe his personal escort knight, handpicked by Asie himself, might have done something like that. But the royal knights? Those guys?
Were the sort of men who joined the order to secure their own safety, not the safety of the royal family, really going to do anything so admirable?
“...So why are you suddenly pretending to be a blacksmith? It’s not exactly a fitting line of work for you.”
“I’m not pretending. I’m still an apprentice.”
“Whatever.”
“...You really haven’t changed at all, have you?”
His voice had gone soft, almost wistful.
I shrugged, pretending not to hear the feeling in it.
When he heard my question, Asie hesitated for a long moment.
The expression on his face as he looked back on the past was somehow painful, and yet touched with a deep, lingering nostalgia.
The others, caught in the mood, simply waited quietly for him to continue.
“...After you rejected me.”
“What?! N-no—sorry. Please, keep going.”
“After I was rejected, I kept thinking about it. What was I lacking? What on earth was missing that you couldn’t find me appealing? My face? My wealth? My personality? I thought about it carefully, but none of those seemed to be the answer.”
“...Well, the first two are one thing, but the personality seems about right.”
My comment was ignored with casual brutality.
“Then I realized something. Women are attracted to masculine traits in men.”
“Huh?”
“...What?”
Daeun and I both voiced our confusion at the conclusion he’d leapt to by skipping several steps at once.
Well, it wasn’t exactly wrong, but… wasn’t that a little sudden?
Even while we stood there dumbfounded, Asie kept talking.
“Then what is masculinity?”
He launched into his argument with the sort of opening that sounded almost self-evident: masculinity is simply being different from women.
And then came a whole string of this-and-that, as he went on and on.
Honestly, it wasn’t a very interesting story, so after a while I started letting it go in one ear and out the other.
Daeun, who seemed to be translating it to her viewers as best she could, also fell silent at some point.
Eventually, the long-winded monologue came to a stop.
Not by choice, but by force.
Figuring that if I let him continue, he’d never stop, I blocked the flow of his words at the source.
“So, basically, you’re saying women can’t do the kinds of things men usually do, and that means those things count as masculine jobs, right?”
“Exactly. There are plenty of male blacksmiths, but you can barely find any female ones. One among dozens, if that.”
“Hmm….”
Daeun’s expression had already twisted into something thoroughly bizarre.
I nudged her in the side when she muttered, “Is this really what a prince is?” and gave her a warning look.
Well, if you thought about men who work out and bulk up to look attractive to women, then maybe it wasn’t that far off.
Still, wasn’t it strange for a prince of a nation to become a blacksmith for a reason like that?
I wondered whether people blinded by love could really go that far.
It was impressive, in its own way, but once I remembered that I was the object of that love, the whole thing turned creepy fast.
“So you walking around half-naked is because of that too?”
“It’s part of the work only men can do.”
“No. I don’t think most men actually want to wander around half-naked.”
Asie tried to act like it was nothing, but the fall of Grasis had clearly dealt him a crushing blow.
He had been a decent enough guy, aside from pestering me all the time, but unfortunately….
Still, no matter how you looked at it, he had lost both his country and every last member of his bloodline. There was no way he could just shrug that off.
If Asie had been born even twenty years earlier—hell, even ten—and seized the throne, maybe Grasis wouldn’t have fallen at all.
The guy really was pitiful.
“So, Canaria, let me ask you again. Won’t you be my partner?”
“Get lost.”
...Except for that part.
* * *
With that spectacular record of two confessions and two rejections, Asie had earned a glorious...? title from Daeun’s viewers: pedo.
Of course, there was no way for Asie to know that, but he had already noticed that the looks Daeun gave him were somehow uncomfortable.
Still, he didn’t have any time to nurse the wounds of his shattered heart.
They had a far more important matter to solve: the theft of the Dragon Orb.
After being briefed on the situation by Brondein and Daeun, Asie—unlike someone else—had no trouble understanding them, since he could speak Arkish fluently despite being a Grasis royal.
“Do you have any idea who might have done this?”
“Hmm.”
Asie seemed to think for a moment before shaking his head.
“No, not really.”
“You don’t even have a guess about when it disappeared?”
“I took the item yesterday, gave it to my master, and haven’t touched the box since. There’s no way I’d lay a hand on anything of my master’s without permission.”
“Umm!”
With his arms folded, Brondein nodded.
It was an excellent answer—one worth a full hundred points from the standpoint of an apprentice—but it didn’t do much to help solve the theft.
“Ugh….”
Even though Asie had returned after running the errand, the situation still hadn’t progressed, and Daeun let out a miserable groan.
What was Canaria thinking about all this?
She stole a sidelong glance at me, and I just stared back at them with blank, round eyes.
Just like Brondein had done when the three of them were talking.
Looking at Canaria’s utterly thoughtless face, Daeun thought, ...Cute.
Ah, no, not that…!
She slapped her own cheeks twice and straightened up.
Even if Canaria was the most reliable and reassuring person in battle, there was probably nothing she could do in a situation like this.
She was the one who caused the mess, and Daeun was the one who had to clean it up.
And yet, instead of losing steam, Daeun’s determination only burned hotter.
This is my chance. A chance to prove myself to Canaria. If I can solve this without her help….
Imagining Canaria looking up at her with sparkling eyes and saying, “Daeun... you’re amazing,” made Daeun grin like a fool.
But no clever solution came to mind.
So she chose a different path.
“Help me out, guys!”
She decided to ask her viewers for help.
Human beings were social animals by nature.
We formed villages and societies precisely because we couldn’t do everything alone, didn’t we?
So Daeun felt no shame at all in asking for help.
That didn’t mean the viewers were especially helpful, though.
Daeun clicked her tongue at chat after seeing nothing but messages like, “I think the culprit is... [more]”.
“If you’d actually read detective novels or, at the very least, played some mystery games, maybe you’d have developed some deduction skills!”
Her silky smooth shifting of blame filled chat with grappling hooks.
It looked like they were about to hook Daeun and light her on fire any second.
“Come to think of it….”
Asie spoke as though he’d just remembered something he’d forgotten.
“Master. Nobody came to the workshop yesterday, right?”
“Huh? Right.”
There had been no commissions waiting, and no customers had come to buy anything.
Besides, there was a sign hung right on the door that plainly said, “Closed today!” so there weren’t many people who would bother knocking anyway.
This was Valtora, the city of dwarves.
Even if one blacksmith closed up shop, there were plenty of other workshops ready to welcome buyers.
“And Master always locks the door before sleeping, too.”
“Of course.”
Brondein’s workshop door was something he had made himself.
It was an iron door, sturdy and solid, with such carefully wrought locking mechanisms that an ordinary thief wouldn’t even dream of getting inside.
It certainly wasn’t a door that could be defeated by the pitiful lockpicks used by third-rate thieves.
“But it was broken into.”
“...”
Brondein, who had been bragging proudly just a moment ago, was instantly blown apart by Daeun’s single remark.
Since she had been admiring his workmanship only a moment earlier, her blunt jab dealt him an even heavier blow.
Asie cleared his throat and drew everyone’s attention.
“If a thief really stole it, then the crime would have taken place during the time between me leaving work and coming in for work again—so, at night. And as I said earlier, Master locked the door before going to sleep.”
“Right. I distinctly remember locking the door and checking it again yesterday.”
“Then there are only two ways to open a locked door: either someone opens it from the inside, or it’s unlocked with a key. But Master couldn’t have opened it for them, so….”
“The culprit must have had the key?”
At Daeun’s finishing blow, Asie nodded.
“Master’s door was built to be sturdy, so if someone had forced it open by an unusual method, there would definitely have been traces left behind. It wasn’t the kind of door that could be breached without a mark.”
Brondein hurried over to the door.
He examined the lock, then the handle, then the lock again, then stepped back and looked over the whole thing.
As he inspected the door in a flurry, his beard trembled.
“...There isn’t a single trace! Don’t tell me the thief was better at this than I am!”
“No, Master. There’s no way a thief could match your skill!”
“...My apprentice!”
“Master!”
...What a pair of idiots.
Daeun made a disgusted face at the two sweaty men hugging each other.
Then, taking over the rest of the line Asie had been too busy acting ridiculous to finish, she said, “We’ll have to find whoever has the key. Anyone come to mind?”
Brondein, who had been clinging to Asie, let go of him.
He hesitated, looking reluctant for some reason, but Daeun kept pressing him, and eventually he gave in.
“If you exclude my apprentice, there’s only one.”
“Who is it?”
He opened his mouth, still wearing a face that said he didn’t like this at all.