Pinning the Blame
The question came out of nowhere—Estelle stepping in close and asking whether he already knew something.
"…What?"
For a moment, Juhan's thoughts simply stopped.
"Where did that come from all of a sudden?"
"You've probably already gotten the sense, but I'm not great with complicated, annoying stuff. Don't care about it either. I just say what I see."
Her eyes said she was already certain.
"But my instincts are good. Better than anyone's."
She looked him straight in the eye and spoke without a shred of hesitation.
"You're too calm right now. You're acting like someone who already knew."
As if she was telling him to open his mouth already—to stop hiding whatever he was holding back.
"……."
A dozen thoughts flashed through Juhan's head at once.
…She's trying to pin this on me just because something feels off?
The suspicion that Estelle was already treating him like the culprit and trying to corner him.
But the very next thing she said made it clear that particular fear had been nothing but his own misunderstanding.
She gave a short, amused huff.
"So something does come to mind, right? Then spit it out. Anything's fine."
"…Huh?"
Juhan's face went blank for a second. Estelle looked at him like he was being deliberately dense.
"I want to hear what you think."
"……."
"Everyone else is only talking about what kind of magic beast it was, where it disappeared to, whether we should call the Holy Kingdom for backup…"
She jerked her chin at him.
"But you look like you're thinking something completely different."
"…My thoughts?"
"Honestly, in some ways you come off as overflowing with confidence and drive… so why are you suddenly reading the room in a situation like this?"
Even if he was wrong, nobody was going to give him a hard time for it.
That muttered remark was the last thing she said before she tipped her chin toward him again, clearly waiting for him to speak.
Estelle hadn't been suspecting him at all.
She had simply decided that he had an idea he wasn't voicing because of the atmosphere, and she was asking for his opinion.
"……."
Juhan looked at her face for a moment.
There was not a single trace of suspicion or interrogation there. Only pure curiosity about what he thought.
…I got worked up over nothing.
He let out a quiet sigh inside his head. That didn't mean he thought he could just brush past this, though.
He was going to have to say something.
Obviously he couldn't tell the truth.
"Well…"
He pretended to chew on the problem for a few seconds, lips working, then finally opened his mouth toward Estelle.
"I don't really know either."
"Mm."
"But deciding it's a magic beast from the start already feels weird to me."
"…What do you mean by that?"
The suggestion that it might not have been a magic beast at all made Estelle's eyes light up—like she was itching for him to keep talking.
Nearby, Photon and Baron Anton both turned to stare at Juhan as if they couldn't believe what they'd just heard.
"Not a magic beast? Is that even possible?"
"He's saying it might be, Your Lordship. We should hear the young man out a little more."
Every gaze in the vicinity had locked onto him. Juhan kept his expression as flat and even as he could manage while he laid out his thoughts.
"It's strange, isn't it?"
"What is?"
Instead of answering Estelle's question directly, he simply gestured at the surroundings.
"The traces are too exaggerated."
"Exaggerated…"
"At first I thought I was the only one who felt that way, but after hearing what you said last… it got a little more solid for me."
He leaned on the last thing Estelle herself had pointed out—that the presence had vanished as if it had simply evaporated in an instant—and used it to shore up his own argument.
"If a magic beast that size really existed, there'd have to be some kind of trail left while it moved. Just like you said."
"Right."
"But the traces just… cut off at some random point."
He gave a small shrug and delivered the last piece of his theory.
"I don't know what the goal was, but it feels like some group—or some individual—deliberately created these traces. Or maybe they were trying to cover something up."
"……."
The people around him listened in complete silence, each of them turning the idea over in their own heads.
Estelle watched him quietly for a moment. Then a faint smile touched her lips.
"So? Who do you think did it?"
"……."
"You've gone this far. Don't tell me you don't have anyone in mind."
That question was exactly the kind Juhan had been waiting for.
Why? Because now he could finally, naturally, pin the crime on the people he was most wary of.
"Cultists."
"…Huh?"
"No matter how hard I think about it, they're the only ones who come to mind."
In a way, they were the ones who had summoned him and kept trying to drag him out of the quiet life he wanted. Right now, the cultists who worshipped him were more dangerous to Juhan than the Holy Kingdom itself.
Without the slightest hesitation, he lifted the hem of his clothes and showed everyone the scar carved across his abdomen.
"Baron Anton."
"…Y-yes? Me?"
"I assume you're aware of what happened in Urutun Village."
"Urutun Village… Ah, of course I am. But why the scar?"
"Because I got it there."
The wound on his stomach was impossible to hide—a clear blade scar. He pointed at it and continued.
"A cultist gave me this. Plenty of Holy Knights saw the scene with their own eyes, so you can verify that I'm not lying."
"…Good heavens."
"So you're that young man? I'd heard the story from the Holy Knights, but…"
Soft, sympathetic sighs rose from the others listening.
Juhan pressed on, adding weight to his theory.
"Cultists appearing in this area recently. The strange phenomena in Anton Village. And now these traces that showed up today."
"……."
"Unless someone is deliberately trying to create chaos, these things don't just keep happening one after another."
"So the ones you suspect most as the masterminds are the cultists?"
"Pretty much."
He nodded at Estelle's summary.
…Huh?
Then he noticed something a little off about her behavior.
"Hey, Estelle."
"Mm?"
"When someone's talking, you're supposed to look at their face when you answer, right?"
She wasn't looking at his face at all. She was staring straight at the scar he'd just revealed—eyes full of pure curiosity, the way someone might stare at a strange new creature.
"What does it matter?"
"……."
She shot right back that it didn't matter in the slightest, completely unbothered.
Juhan lost all will to argue. The first thing he did was simply pull his clothes back down without another word.
"…Hey, what are you doing?"
"That's as far as my thoughts go. After everything I've been through lately, I might just be oversensitive about it."
He left room for the possibility that he could be wrong and closed his mouth. The reactions around him were mostly of the "that actually makes sense" variety.
"Hmm… True enough."
"Things around here have been far too unsettled lately. And there were reports of cultists."
"…For heaven's sake, why does this keep happening near my territory?"
Exactly the way Juhan had intended.
From his perspective, the best possible setup was to set the cultists and the Holy Kingdom against each other.
One side was hunting him with murder in their eyes.
The other side believed everything would be solved the moment they dragged him out into the open.
The more those two sides fought each other, the safer he would be.
Thinking that, he carefully put on a calm, unbothered expression again.
And then—
"Hmm."
Estelle made a short humming sound and stepped right up beside him. Standing shoulder to shoulder with Juhan, she spoke to Photon.
"Photon."
"Yes, my lady."
"We can't just leave a situation like this and head north, can we?"
"……."
"If someone known as a descendant of the Hero doesn't step up in a time like this, people will point fingers."
Photon simply closed his eyes in silence, the look of a man who had known this was coming… but he still didn't answer.
"T-truly, Lady Estelle?"
"Of course. How could I just ignore something like this and go back north?"
"Ahh… Lady Estelle. You truly are the rightful heir of Hero Carius."
Baron Anton, on the other hand, looked moved to the point of tears.
…That sounds like an excuse.
Watching Photon's dizzy expression and Estelle's wide grin, Juhan thought exactly that.
His thoughts were cut short when she tapped his shoulder.
"Huh?"
"Why are you staring like that? Like this has nothing to do with you."
"Nothing to do with me? What are you talking about?"
She snorted at him, looking thoroughly unimpressed.
"You're coming with me, aren't you?"
"…What?"
The sudden remark left him completely lost. Where exactly were they supposed to be going together?
He was just about to open his mouth and ask when she leaned in close to his ear and whispered.
"Once this is over, you're coming north with me to live."
"……."
"Forever."
It was a familiar kind of gaze.
He had felt this exact look before.
The first person who rose in Juhan's mind when he saw those eyes was—
The Saintess.
The woman with the title of Saintess whom he had parted from not long ago.