The Eipperos Family (6)
When I received the episode requiring me to revitalize the Rusmayer territory while playing through this game, there were honestly quite a few things that put me in a difficult position.
The nobles I could deal with by my own hand to a reasonable extent.
The demonic beasts, too, could be handled quickly with minimal losses on our side if I made preparations well in advance.
But no matter how much I cleared Chapter 1 and squeezed personal funds out of the Bagrand Ducal House, that alone could never save Rusmayer.
At least one venture absolutely had to be launched—something that would generate revenue on a territorial scale.
That was what led me to remember it.
Wagloo Mountain was the only thing these people possessed, yet at this point in time, that very mountain was the biggest pile of money in sight.
Monsters. Demonic beasts.
Grotesque beings that threatened humanity—imaginary creatures given life through a fantasy setting's generous allowances.
By the in-game lore, these beasts the players called "monsters" were a perpetual headache for the outlying regions of the Pecellos Empire.
And if I could offer them help?
If some kind of trade became possible with them?
That single thought was how I had broken through this branching route.
For soldiers forced to hold their positions behind sturdy fortress walls and sweep away beasts endlessly, these would hardly be mere lumps of stone.
"We're selling stone?"
"Come to think of it... I heard they build fortress walls out in the frontier regions."
"I think I've also heard the nobles stacking their buildings higher and higher these days."
"Either way, it sells as building aggregate—that's what you're saying!"
"That's it! We can stand on our own feet now!"
Barak, who had bolted out the door like a man possessed by Archimedes himself, was beside himself with glee, laughing along with the villagers.
Then one man suddenly voiced a worry.
"But once we've dug through the whole of Wagloo Mountain, won't we go right back to being beggars?"
At those words, several villagers began to fret again.
A fair point.
But there was no need to worry about that.
"Oh, come now. We're not just digging the mountain open willy-nilly. Have you forgotten what work he entrusted to us?"
"Er... now that you mention it..."
"The Lord had us work that mountain like a sculptor carving a statue, didn't he?"
"If all he'd wanted was the mountain gutted, he'd have shoved pickaxes into our hands and called it done. Why else would he have gone to the trouble of hauling in all that heavy equipment?"
Exactly. That was the whole point of it.
If my only goal had been clearing the episode by scraping together aggregate, I could simply have bought them a mountain of pickaxes and left it at that.
The reason I reworked the plan on such a grand scale and ordered them to carve the mountain into a specific shape was this:
"Look at the shape. Doesn't it look like a great big tunnel? Why do you think I ordered you to bore through it all the way to the other side?"
"A road! It's a road!"
"Oho! Of course! It's a passage!"
"That's right! A grand, wide road cutting straight through Wagloo Mountain."
It was all to fix the wretched geography of a region forced to trudge all the way around Wagloo Mountain's bulk.
The mood shifted once more.
Laughter bloomed among the villagers, with Barak at its head.
Come to think of it, I remembered talk of carving a road through Wagloo Mountain even among the nobility. Arina and Claire had both voiced their frustration over that roundabout route, after all.
But once this tunnel was punched through, merchants would pass through it—and so would the nobles.
A permanent passage, opened wide in a place that otherwise demanded a long, exhausting detour.
It was the perfect conditions for collecting a toll.
So now I have a way to gather money.
Once the tunneling of Wagloo Mountain was finished, I would have the means to raise funds on my own.
With that money, I could pay back the ducal house, piece by piece.
The way one pays off debts little by little after starting a part-time job.
Of course, the tolls alone would never cover what Karsein had spent on food and lodging, and once I factored in the expenses Claire had been quietly covering for the Shatren territory and Karsein's allowance on top of that, the sum would balloon into a mountain all its own.
But bad conditions aren't only bad. Being set in a medieval world rather than the modern one isn't necessarily a disadvantage.
In a world where progress creeps along, there are far more ways to multiply money. And all of it would be handled by the textbook knowledge stored in my head and time. Anything that boiled down to in-game settings, I could resolve with a bit of study.
So the plan I needed to carry out came down to one thing.
Gather a sum so scrupulously reasonable that not one of them could find fault with it, then walk out of the ducal house.
Just as I had in my real life.
"It's gotten late. Barak will show you to your room, so get some rest first, Harnie."
"Oh—yes. Of course."
Having said that to Harnie, I picked my pen back up.
-Click.
Claire, who had been pacing the hall with her arms crossed, pulled back the curtain.
Beyond the drawn curtain, the sky had already swallowed the sun.
It was late enough that calling it night would not have been an exaggeration.
And—
Her younger brother's door remained shut, even now.
Which meant that by this hour, Karsein still had not come home.
"Whew..."
Staring up at the darkened sky, a sigh escaped her whether she wanted it to or not.
Coming home this late meant he wasn't coming home at all. He hadn't sent word of staying out, of course—but given the state of Karsein's heart, there was no way he'd want to set foot back in that house.
Not after the way today had gone.
Pitea Gelgeton of the Viscount Gelgeton family.
A gathering of nobles.
The nightmare of the Kelvia fruit.
Karsein had been an uninvited guest at that tea party.
"And maybe... it was the same back when he went with Flora."
No. Not "maybe." It was the same.
She had sent him to the Viscount Gelgeton's estate half hoping he'd at least eat something healthy there—and back then, too, Karsein had been served food containing the Kelvia fruit.
And unlike this time, he had eaten plate after plate of it, come home, and screamed that he would never set foot outside with Flora again.
But what happened that day?
Her eyes squeezed shut.
She had been scolded by Karsein.
She had watched, wide-eyed, as the family explained the whole affair to each of the others one by one and heaped on scoldings worse than any before.
No one had asked how things looked from Karsein's side.
Later, word reached her through Shayden that Karsein had been bedridden—but even that, she hadn't spared a thought for.
"..."
Her lip was bitten raw.
What must Karsein have felt, facing the nightmare of the Kelvia fruit all over again at that tea party?
He hadn't gone there of his own will. There was no reason he should have had to endure such humiliation.
For exactly the same reason as in the past. Over a disaster sparked by Flora. What resentments must be churning inside him now—she couldn't even begin to guess.
And. He must have assumed that if he came back after all this, the family would tear into him again. The thought alone made one side of her chest ache.
If there was anything she could do to help in this situation,
there was only one thing.
"...At the very least, he shouldn't have to get chewed out by Mother and our sisters."
A disaster erupting for exactly the same reason as before.
Karsein would almost certainly catch hell from his sisters and his mother.
So Claire went to her mother's room.
So that Karsein would not, by any chance, be saddled with a false accusation.
So that she could explain things properly.
-Knock knock.
"Mother. There's something I need to tell you—may I come in?"
While she was at it, she would report Pitea Gelgeton's conduct and clear up her sister's misunderstanding too.
That was, the best move she could make right now.
-Tap.
The pen that had been racing across the page came to a halt. A knock had drifted in from outside.
"Um... Karsein? May I come in for a moment?"
Harnie's voice came through the door, sounding troubled.
She should have been asleep by now... had something happened?
Best to let her in first, so I told her to enter.
Her expression was, if anything, even more troubled than her voice.
"What brings you here? You looked exhausted earlier—I assumed you'd be fast asleep by now."
"N-no! I sort of forgot about that—!"
She cut herself off mid-exclamation and cleared her throat with a loud ahem!
Her sharp eyes flashed toward me for a moment, but she quickly moved on to the matter at hand.
"Right. Yes, I was tired, and yes, I did doze off. It's also true that it's late and I'd like to get a good night's rest. But I can't sleep."
"I beg your pardon? What do you mean?"
"Well, you see..."
Apparently, Harnie had done exactly as I'd arranged and asked for a small room to stay in.
But when she did, Village Chief Barak had apologetically given her this answer:
"He can't spare you a room?"
"...No."
"Why on earth not?"
She was the Lord's guest, and she certainly didn't get along poorly with the villagers. For all her noble blood, that gentle disposition of hers had worked in her favor—she'd mingled with the common folk without a hitch.
And they wouldn't just hand over a room like that?
Something was off.
It wasn't as though they were throwing her out for being a noble now, of all times.
Then Harnie let out a long sigh.
"He says it isn't that they won't give me a room—it's that this territory hardly ever takes in guests at all."
"...You can't be serious. There's truly no room?"
A small nod.
Good grief.
So it wasn't that they refused to give her a room—there simply was no room to give.
Come to think of it...
Neither had I?
The room I was staying in had originally been a storage shed.
I had only just barely cleared it out enough to sleep in.
I had badly underestimated the fact that even the village chief had no spare capacity to lodge anyone else.
Then again, perhaps I had made things too simple. In any other territory, a spare room might have existed—but hadn't this place been stripped to the bone by Hemnon Modric and the nobles around him?
And with the demonic beasts raiding so frequently, setting aside a guest room must have been a luxury they couldn't afford.
Nothing for it, then.
"You sleep in this room."
"What?!"
"There's no help for it. This is the only spare room there is."
"B-but... if I sleep here, then where on earth are you going to sleep...?"
Harnie asked, her voice tight with worry.
Wasn't the answer obvious?
"Outside, of course. What else?"
"Ou-outside?! That's insane!"
"I can't very well sleep in here with you, can I?"
As I answered and reached for the door handle to leave, my hand disappeared beneath both of hers.
"I never said you should sleep outside!"
"...Then what do you propose? We can hardly sleep in here together."
She glanced back and forth between the bed and the neatly folded blanket for a moment, then squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again.
"Y-you take the bed."
"I'm sorry?"
"I'm the one who barged in and caused all this trouble. So... you take the bed."
With that, she lifted one of the blankets off the top and spread it on the floor.
She meant to sleep on the ground herself.
"...Are you certain? It would be just the two of us in this room, alone."
Harnie gave a small, quick nod.
Apparently, this much was fine by her.
It was not fine by me.
-Thump.
"What are you doing? That's my spot."
"Let's renegotiate the terms. If you insist on sleeping in this room, then I'm the one taking the floor."
"Why? I'm the one who's intruding. I showed up out of nowhere and demanded your room, remember?"
"If you refuse, I'll go outside."
At that, Harnie pressed her lips together firmly.
After a brief silence, she obediently sat down on the bed.
"So... why, exactly?"
Her voice had changed completely from a moment ago.
Unless I was imagining it, there was even a faint note of anticipation in it?
I put into words the reason I'd been debating whether or not to say.
"Because I haven't finished my work."
"...Your work?"
"Yes. If I have to watch you sleeping on the floor while I'm trying to work, I won't be able to concentrate on that, either."
"...!!"
Whereupon Harnie yanked the blanket clear over her head.
"I-I'm going to sleep now! Goodnight!"
...I hadn't finished talking, you know.
No. She said she was going to sleep—might as well let her be.
Truthfully, Harnie had already extended me a great deal of consideration.
After all, there was a time I'd spent a whole night shivering outside because the youngest had deliberately refused to open the door—I could hardly fail to endure this much.
Still, this was more than fair.
But sharing a room with someone else like this...
It felt strange in an entirely new way.
Not a man—a woman.
Truly, whenever Harnie was involved, one impossible situation after another just kept happening to me.