Auction (3)
I sat in my seat and enjoyed the prepared wine.
—120,000 loopran! Any more bids! 120,000 loopran.
Neither too little nor too much—just the right amount. Exactly what I had expected.
“Diana.”
“You called?”
The ring would sell for 120,000 loopran. No one in their right mind would raise the bid from there.
“Get ready.”
“Understood.”
I brushed the dust from my collar. With the light flow stone already secured, there was nothing left to do here. Just as I moved to stand—
—200,000 loopran! 200,000 loopran has been bid!
“Damn it.”
Someone had. A lunatic willing to raise the price here.
“Two hundred thousand?!”
In the blink of an eye the bid had doubled. Even if it was the finest processed petrification stone, this was excessive.
The bidder sat in the VIP section. Though hidden beneath a robe, the fabric and the figure it failed to conceal marked her unmistakably as a noble young lady.
A smile tugged at my lips. So this was what they called printing money. I didn’t know which family’s fool she was, but that blind fortune would soon rest in my pocket.
Then—
—250,000 loopran!!
Someone added another fifty thousand, reopening the auction. The auctioneer’s shocked gaze swung toward a woman.
“Ha.”
The bidder was none other than Luna Winfred—Kyle’s sister. I blinked at the unexpected identity. Had she come to the auction solely for that ring? But why? What could that ring possibly mean to her?
At that moment the seats shook again and cheers erupted.
—300,000!! 300,000 loopran has been bid!!
The robed noblewoman had thrown fresh wood onto the dying flames.
‘Who the hell is that?’
Spending that kind of money on a ring with nothing remarkable except the petrification stone? At this point she could no longer be dismissed as a mere ignorant fool. Once the thought occurred to me, I could no longer sit back and watch comfortably.
“…”
The woman who had raised the bid was speaking with a man who appeared to be association staff. For a brief instant the robe slipped, losing its shape.
“…Isabelle?”
Shit. What the hell was she doing there? And more importantly, where had she gotten three hundred thousand loopran? I exhaled and pressed my fingers to my eyes as instinctive stress surged through me.
—300,000 loopran!! Sold at today’s highest bid!!
With a crisp hammer strike, I earned three hundred thousand loopran without moving. I watched Isabelle with narrowed eyes. Having won the bid, she immediately began filling out a document.
“Diana.”
“Yes.”
Diana’s senses were extraordinarily sharp. In the original game her five senses had been described as transcending human limits—distinguishing poison in food by taste alone, overhearing distant conversations, detecting faint killing intent to avert danger. More than half her feats stemmed from that acuity. Her eyesight, in particular, had reached a truly superhuman level.
“Do you see the woman in the robe over there? The document she’s writing—can you make out what it says?”
“I’ll try.”
Diana’s eyebrows twitched. She stared at Isabelle for a moment, then her tightly pressed lips parted carefully.
“Loan… collateral agreement…?”
“What?!”
Isabelle finished the document and slipped the ring onto her finger right there, wearing a faintly unhinged smile.
“Well, well.”
This was absurd.
****
“This way, honored guest!”
Once the auction ended, a waiting attendant personally escorted me. The reasons were to collect the proceeds and because someone wished to see me. Diana and I followed him to the reception room.
After walking some distance down the dimly lit corridor, the attendant stopped before a door framed by decorative lighting.
“We have arrived.”
Creak—
When the handle turned, colorful lighting that clashed with the corridor’s gloomy atmosphere stung my eyes. The reception room, buried deep within the building, was wrapped in beige wallpaper and crimson velvet curtains.
“Please have a seat here.”
Two crimson leather executive sofas faced each other across a long wooden table. And seated there—
“We meet again, little brother.”
Luna Winfred sat with legs crossed, a smirk on her face. She addressed the attendant in a cold voice.
“Quite a few eyes around, aren’t there?”
“…My apologies. I hope you enjoy your time.”
Thud—
The attendant hurried away. Only then did I regain my composure and frown.
“What’s your game?”
“Oh my? What game? Why don’t you sit first?”
I dropped into the seat with a scowl.
“Must you make your distaste so obvious? It wounds me.”
Wounds, my ass. A twisted laugh escaped me.
“If you have nothing to say, get lost.”
I snapped at her. Luna shrugged lightly and got to the point.
“Annul the engagement.”
“…”
“You still haven’t, right? Persuading your fiancée seems off the table for now.”
She slid a document across the table—an loan contract written in Isabelle’s hand.
“Your fiancée has quite the nerve. Or perhaps she’s simply stupid? Taking out a loan this large for a mere ring. Kids these days are terrifying.”
I understood Luna’s intention well enough. Participating in the auction, inflating the bid on a single ring, summoning me here afterward—all of it was to manufacture a solid justification for the annulment. Three hundred thousand loopran might not burden the Ustia County, but Isabelle’s standing within the family would certainly waver.
“A noble lady rushing to an auction house at this hour, leveraging her family name to borrow money—and from that ruthless auction association, no less.”
“…”
“Rather convenient, isn’t it? As grounds for breaking the engagement.”
With this in hand, threatening the Count would make the annulment effortless. Luna’s meaning was plain.
“Persuasion? I guarantee it won’t work no matter how many times you try. That girl’s completely lost it.”
She was right. Threatening the Count would be far easier than convincing Isabelle, who had thrown away three hundred thousand loopran just to reclaim one ring.
“Well?”
I’ll help you annul the engagement. Her attitude seemed to say exactly that, and a bitter laugh slipped out.
“Luna Winfred.”
“Speak.”
“I genuinely don’t understand. Why would you help me annul my engagement?”
“Simple. Once the engagement ends, you won’t remain at the ducal residence, will you?”
“Why? So you can isolate me there and resume your usual petty schemes?”
At my sarcasm Luna’s face twisted grotesquely, as though she had heard something she never wanted to hear. After a moment she forced the words out, looking frustrated.
“…It’s a misunderstanding.”
“Misunderstanding? What misunderstanding?”
“I was young then. There were circumstances I couldn’t avoid. Of course I made mistakes, but your birth as Kyle also—”
A hollow laugh burst from me. Excuses, pretexts, blame. That was all the justification offered for destroying Kyle’s life.
“Ha.”
Luna Winfred was not a villain. After all, she was one of the world’s designated major characters—a heroine candidate.
—I saw it. Kyle wandering the hallway at dawn with the safe key.
—Who’s your sister? Listen carefully. You seem to think you’re part of the ducal family, but you’re nothing more than trash, less than a servant.
—Are you that hungry? Then why didn’t the desperate one even touch the meal prepared for him?
Her past wrongs were merely painted as a young girl’s immaturity. The wounds she had inflicted on Kyle were, at some point, treated as if they had never existed.
Yeah. That was really…
“Convenient.”
“…What?”
“Whether it’s slapping false accusations on me, humiliating me in front of the knights under the pretext of sparring, or tossing moldy, rotten food into my room and calling it a meal.”
“…”
“Because I was young. Because there was a reason.”
“That’s not—”
“And because I’m a bastard.”
Luna’s mouth snapped shut. I regarded her with a cold, sunken gaze.
“But now what? Help? You, helping me?”
“…”
“Why not be honest? You need a target to vent your anger on. You need a trash can to dump your emotions into whenever you like.”
Patience felt harder today than usual. Remembering the stress Luna had caused in the previous run made it impossible to keep my expression in check.
At that moment—
“…Yes. I admit it.”
A thick vein stood out at Luna’s temple.
“I was clumsy.”
She confessed her mistake as though granting a favor. Yet strangely, I felt neither joy, frustration, sadness, nor anger. I answered flatly.
“So what.”
Damn system. I was wasting time.
“No need to explain yourself to me.”
“…Kyle Winfred.”
“I told you before. I don’t resent you.”
Cold mercy rippled outward, swelling into a wave that swallowed Luna whole. She poured out her emotions; I simply endured. When that simple equation broke, her face collapsed in misery.
The longer we spoke, the dumber I felt. I gathered the documents from the table and stood. Without a single backward glance, I turned away. A moment later I tossed an irritated remark over my shoulder at Luna, whose shoulders were trembling.
“Little brother, my ass.”
Bang—!
The reception room door slammed shut with force.