Perzen von Schweik Brutein
After dining out, I returned to the manor of House Brutein, summoned the butler Chris, and ordered him to find a painter of real skill. Then I went to my blood brother, the present head of the house, Jeremiah, and asked a personal favor.
"You asked me to find a man?"
"Yes."
The protagonist—Ciel Midford—had fled the backwater of Ruerug, and I did not believe that at this point in the story he would already have drifted into the center and begun to move. There had been a scene in the novel where Euphemia explained to him, in detail, just what sort of house Brutein was. Unless he was a fool, he would not coil himself up where his enemy's influence ran thickest before he even held a proper hand.
Even so, one never knew. I had no wish to take a blow to the back of the head in the old way—the darkest place being the one beneath the lamp—and so I meant to spread the net as thoroughly as I could. The show of indifference, of having already wiped him from memory and lost all interest, was nothing more than an act.
"I asked you to find him... but if he is truly found, and if there is room enough to kill him, I would ask that you bring me his head yourself."
"For you to speak this far, the stake must be no small thing. Is there anything I ought to watch for?"
"He is likely awakening, little by little, the aptitude of an Aura Knight. If he is still alive, he will already have grasped a portion of it by now."
Neither Ciel Midford, the protagonist, nor Euphemia, who had been at his side, would have known. Only I, who had been nothing but a reader, had read a novel told in the third person, and so I knew what the protagonist's talent was. Among the paths laid down for those who carried mana, the aptitude hardest of all to awaken was the Aura Knight. The moment one reached the Extreme Realm, the mana released outward took form, and that form held the force of anti-magic. Ordinarily, the first means of undoing a phenomenon realized under the name of magic—mana converted in its nature—was interference. But a single blow from an Aura Knight clad in anti-magic simply shattered the formulas that composed a spell. Their mana itself was a kind of counter. Hence, anti-magic.
"The dog that guarded its master has run, and someday it will come back to bite me. That is why I ask to borrow a little of the house's strength."
The center I would seal off with the power of House Brutein. The outskirts, where that power did not reach, I could cover by quietly asking the noble children gathered at the Imperial Academy. A chance to bind themselves to the center—they would hardly keep an Aura Knight who had not even fully bloomed hidden away.
"As for the portrait, once Chris brings a painter I will have it finished at once and delivered to you."
"All right... Don't worry. And I'd rather you didn't carry it as a burden. What happened in childhood belongs to childhood. Even now that I've become head of the house, Brutein will always stand quietly at your back."
"......"
"So whenever you lean on the house, you don't have to come quite so low. I'm saying this with my back turned, so I can't claim to know how well it carries..."
"I do not doubt your true intent, Brother. Then I will withdraw."
I left the office and walked slowly. Outside, the sun was sinking low. Were the days short here in winter and spring as well? With my head full of idle thoughts, I stepped into the bath, washed briefly, and entered my room.
"......!"
Euphemia, who had been sitting quietly on the bed with a book, flinched and looked at me with care.
"I—I had nothing to do... so I took a book from the shelf..."
"It is fine."
I had no thought of scolding her for reading without leave. And yet the way she sought my will in every small act pleased me more than I could quite explain.
"Read on. I have something to do."
I sat in the chair, wet the pen with ink, drew out a sheet, and fixed it with tacks.
So natural that I have nothing to say.
The tacks were surely meant to keep the paper from shifting midway. At the work habits soaked so deeply into this body, I let out a hollow laugh within and began to fill the page with the life of Isabel Ron Pierre Genova, as far as I had come to understand it. Pour my present mana out in full, and I could probably hold an Implementation Rate somewhere in the forties or fifties. To draw out her performance entire as an Elemental Magician of Euclid rank, I would need to reach the sixties.
......
The moment I finished setting down the life I understood so far, I could not hide my astonishment at the letters, left and right meeting in perfect symmetry. Fine Penmanship was listed among the talents, yes—but how much blood and effort did a single person have to spend before something like this became possible after the fact? And alongside that wonder, I felt a pity, a sorrow, for the life of Perzen, who had had no choice but to become this way.
A soft tap.
Under an endless stream of immediate Feedback, I had been digging into the life of Isabel Ron Pierre Genova. When my wrist began to ache, I set the pen down and rose.
This is enough for today.
I activated Quantification and checked at once. The Implementation Rate that came up was a mere fraction.
Implementation Rate
0.3%
For one human being to understand another's life completely lay, in truth, in the realm of the impossible. Perhaps it was only natural. Not even parents and children, not even a wife and a husband, could understand one another in full.
"......"
The hour, before I noticed, was eight-forty. Euphemia, who had been reading so quietly, was fast asleep. Curious what she had chosen, I looked at the cover.
Of everything on the shelf, she had taken the lightest.
The Five Blessing Gods. Other gods certainly existed in this world, but those who intervened in the human realm and bestowed blessings were gathered under that name. As the name itself made plain, the domains they governed were five: Protection, Love, Art, Abundance, and Wisdom. Of them, the god who governed Art was the most widely known, and the most recognized. Go to Rosenberg even now, and one might see several artists blessed by that god. The power of the blessing, of course, was nothing much. It granted only small things—an instrument that would not break until its owner's life was spent, and the like. Even so, the fame of having been acknowledged by a god. That alone raised their worth.
But the gods' blessings were not always so modest. More precisely, those of the gods who governed Protection and Wisdom. As hard as their blessings were to receive, those who received them were granted powers that were, by comparison, special. The First Imperial Princess, blessed by the god of Wisdom, could faintly sense the fortune or misfortune of any matter she planned. That alone said enough.
Knock, knock.
I had just lifted the book and set it back on the shelf when a faint knock reached me. I went to the door and opened it.
"The master asked me to inquire about dinner. What would you like to do?"
"Tell my brother I am sorry, but that I will sleep early tonight."
"Understood. Have a good night."
Watching the maid bow and turn away, I closed the door and put out every light that had been softly filling the room. The frame creaked. I climbed onto the bed and quietly took in Euphemia where the moonlight fell across her—a perfect golden ratio that set my heart at ease every time I looked.
......
I was stroking her hair, slowly, when a thought came to me, and I lowered my hand to rest it on her lower belly. If the present situation was to be kept as it was, would getting her with child not be surer than making her open her heart to me? Upon the aimless helplessness covering her, forcing a path might not be a bad choice. To become pregnant, to become a child's mother, would grant a meaning to life greater than she could imagine. And once I entered the Imperial Academy and became a professor, the time I spent beside her would grow even shorter than it was now.
"What... are you..."
She had not fallen as deeply asleep as I had thought. At my hand moving over her body, Euphemia opened her eyes. Wariness filled her face. She inched backward, then clutched the thrown-aside blanket tight against herself.
"It hurts...!"
I caught her slender ankle and pulled, and she came to me with astonishing ease, right up beneath my face. In the process the dress rode up, baring the pale inner flesh of her thighs and catching my eye.
The moral sense tangled up with Lee Seojin's self showed a quiet revulsion at the sight of a terrified Euphemia. But they were bound as husband and wife, and the original Lee Seojin already held more than enough fondness for her, so soothing that revulsion was no difficult thing. It was not as if the self of some enlightened saint had been mixed in—only the self of an utterly ordinary modern commoner. To lose one's shape before desire was only too natural.
"H-holding a low woman like me won't...!"
"It is fine."
After rolling my sleeves up neatly, I looked down at Euphemia and spoke.
"Hang a pearl necklace on a pig's neck, and those around will sneer. But let the one who stands at the opposite pole wear a shabby necklace, and they will hunt out some meaning of their own, then decide it must have been worth wearing."
"I..."
"Making even the low into the noble—that is the worth of the name Brutein. You need not worry over such things."
"I don't want to..."
"Before you are Euphemia El Lorraine Ruerug, you are my wife. To receive my seed and give me an heir is your duty as well."
Euphemia's struggling was subdued with absurd ease. She was like glass that might shatter at any moment, and yet how to handle such a thing with delicacy had soaked into this body all too naturally.