A Modern Man Wreaks Havoc in Another World (4)
Mismatch.
That was the result that came back when I ran a paternity test between the Count's daughter and the Count himself, using a strand of hair.
Despite the shocking outcome, the Count was surprisingly calm—as if he'd already expected it.
"Order every man in the manor to assemble."
At the Count's command, the men of the household began gathering in the garden, one by one. Watching them trickle in, a question nagged at me.
Why only the men of the manor?
Couldn't the lady have been stepping out with someone from outside?
As if he'd read the question right off my face, the Count offered an explanation.
"I've suspected my wife for some time, actually. No matter how I looked at her, the girl doesn't resemble me one bit."
"I see."
"So I once had her followed. But the reports said there was never any sign of misconduct outside these walls."
Fair enough.
Carrying another man's child would require, at minimum, the time and the place.
Holding hands doesn't summon a stork, and he wasn't a rabbit finishing the job in three seconds flat.
"Father!"
The Count's daughter, apparently. Beside her, the Count's son held her hand and guided her over—and comparing her against the boy, there really was no denying it: the daughter looked nothing like the Count.
"What's going on? Calling everyone out of nowhere like this."
At the sound of her voice calling him, something complicated flickered across the Count's face for a moment. But he quickly smoothed it away and, with a fond expression, patted his daughter's head.
"There's something I need to confirm. Where is your mother?"
"She's on her way."
"Good. Then we'd best begin."
"Yes, let's."
At the Count's order, strands of hair were plucked one by one from every servant in the manor and fed into the paternity test kits.
"Will you need more of my daughter's hair?"
The Count asked worriedly, apparently under the impression that comparing her against every man on the estate would take hundreds of strands.
"No need."
"The reliability is certain, yes?"
"Absolutely certain. The technology is that good."
From gene comparison to recording the results—all of it was rock-solid, thanks to Muriel's assistance.
Even back in my day, getting an instant on-the-spot result had been impossible. The fact that she'd managed it put her work at a level that arguably surpassed modern technology.
As an aside, that same mastery could easily have made the kits reusable instead of single-use.
But who in their right mind would do that?
Single-use is how you milk them for every last coin. Obviously.
Anyway, just as we were hunting for the real father—the man with the audacity to lay hands on the Count's wife—
"My lord!"
Frantic footsteps. A frantic voice.
The Countess had arrived, without even a proper coat of powder on her face.
"Wh-what is the meaning of this?!"
She must have hurried desperately, because her breath was caught somewhere up in her throat. Gasping, disheveled, she jabbed a finger at the garden and demanded answers.
The Count, still seated, replied without so much as turning his head.
"Meaning of this? You would know better than anyone what you've been up to."
"And that is why you treat me like this?! Are you suspecting me, of all things?!"
"Stay still. The results for my daughter and me have already been confirmed."
"……"
The Countess crumpled to the ground as though every bone holding her up had vanished.
Her lips, which she couldn't bring herself to close, parted slightly—as if her very soul were seeping out through the gap. Her face was utter, hollow desolation.
This must be exactly what a condemned prisoner looks like on the eve of execution.
Either way—it was a deeply, deliciously satisfying sight.
"Good afternoon, my lady."
I strolled casually up to the woman whose world had just collapsed and greeted her without a trace of tension.
"……"
The Countess said nothing.
She didn't even pretend to listen, as though nothing I said was registering at all.
"You sent assassins after me a few days ago."
At that, the woman—mascara smeared and running with tears—turned her head toward me with a creak, like a rusted hinge.
She'd treated me like a nobody, but ears, alas, are not organs one can simply shut at will.
"You……"
"Why did you do it? If you'd simply stayed quiet, you could have enjoyed this luxurious life of yours a little longer."
"How……"
"If you're asking how I survived, well, isn't it obvious? Your assassins failed, that's all."
"Those useless wretches……!"
"Now, now, don't be too hard on them. My name may not be known, but I'm a mage of considerable skill—so it was only the natural outcome."
Blood broke out where the Countess bit down hard on her lip.
She trembled from head to toe with pure fury, like a bomb about to go off—but what could a fallen woman possibly do about it now?
"More importantly—whose daughter is she? The Count seems to think the man must be someone in this household."
"……"
The Countess kept her mouth shut.
If she was going to be found out anyway, wouldn't it have been kinder to warn her in advance?
Was she taking my advice—staying silent even now to buy herself a little more time?
Well, she'll find out soon enough either way.
It was just about time for the results to come in.
"All of them—mismatched?"
The Count looked deeply disturbed by the results.
Perhaps because his certainty—that the culprit was somewhere inside this manor—had just been proven wrong.
His wife, by contrast, hid her mouth behind her fan and wore a thoroughly unpleasant smile.
"Hmph. By my husband's own logic, shouldn't there have been at least one match? Trusting such a ridiculous contraption in the first place was nonsense."
CRASH!
The Count slammed his fist down on the table, and it split cleanly in half and collapsed.
The haughty Countess flinched, cleared her throat for no reason, and shut her mouth.
As I waved away the clouds of rising dust, the Count shot me a razor-edged look.
"The results aren't wrong, are they?"
"There is no possibility of the results being wrong."
I'll say it again: none whatsoever.
Muriel—the magic of a woman once called the Sage—was handling the analysis. Under any conceivable circumstance, the kit would not malfunction.
But a man who didn't know that might well doubt my confidence.
So rather than argue him into trusting me, I decided to prove the kit's infallibility a different way.
"My lord, think about it. You haven't yet checked the results for every man in this manor, have you?"
"What is that supposed to mean? I gathered every last servant under this roof."
Instead of answering, I smiled and turned my head.
There sat the Count's son.
Pale as a corpse, drenched in cold sweat, gnawing at his fingernails as though he'd made himself ill.
"Well……"
"My lord, the young master is, after all, a grown man. Entirely capable of getting a woman with child."
"What preposterous slander! Guards! Seize this man at once, before another word—!"
The Countess threw a fit at my words.
But no one was listening to her anymore. Everyone was too busy watching the Count, who was barely containing his rage.
"Didn't you say it yourself, my lord? If there is a culprit, he is inside this manor. Then the young master must be tested, too. It's only proper."
"That's—that's absurd…… surely…… it's not…… common sense would……"
Oh dear.
Perhaps the shock of that one-in-a-thousand possibility had simply been too much.
The once-vigorous Count looked as though he had aged a lifetime in the blink of an eye—a frail old man who might stop breathing at any moment.
"You can question my product's reliability after we've seen the young master's results."
I approached the Count's son to collect his sample.
The moment I reached out to pluck a strand of hair, the Countess leapt from her seat and swung her arm, striking my hand away.
"My lord! You cannot possibly mean to entertain this madness?!"
"What's the matter, my lady? You act as though there's some reason the young master must not be tested."
"……"
The Count's hollowed-out eyes turned toward his wife, who refused the test.
Under that gaze, she seemed to decide the wall could no longer be held—and gave up resisting.
The ashen-faced young master, for his part, offered no resistance either as I plucked the hair from his head.
"Ready? Inserting it now. Here we go—confirming the result."
Dum-dum-dum-dum.
The hair went in, and before long the answer would appear in the blank white circle at the center of the paternity test kit.
The result hadn't even come out yet, but with the exception of the daughter, the Count's entire family already seemed to know what it would say—they didn't spare the kit so much as a glance.
And then—
Color slowly began to fill the empty white space.
Two lines. A vivid, unmistakable red.
"It's a match?"
The result: MATCH.
Probability of paternity: at minimum, ninety-nine percent.
Wow.
This was beyond anything I'd imagined.
I'd seen cases of a woman passing off another man's child as her husband's—but watching a mother conceive a child with her own son, with my own eyes? That was a first.
"Ah……"
Faced with something that defied all human sense, the Count staggered, clutching the back of his neck.
He had every right to.
His wife and son had betrayed him—and worse, the girl he'd believed was his daughter was, in truth, the child of his wife and his son.
"……"
A suffocating silence settled over the room.
The wife and son hung their heads like criminals awaiting sentence, while the Count did nothing but sigh and drag his hands down his face, over and over.
The calm before the storm.
Though all was quiet now, the air was charged enough that a bloodbath could have broken out at any moment and no one would have been surprised.
Time for me to slip away.
"I'll be taking my leave, then."
I'd come back for the cost of the kits later. Best not to tangle with a man whose eyes had gone completely mad—nothing good would come of it.
And so I slipped out of the manor.
Not long after I left, I heard what sounded like human screaming. According to what I heard afterward, the son and the wife had every bone in their bodies broken and spent a long while afterward lingering somewhere between life and death.
Still, he hadn't killed them—so apparently a shred of restraint had survived after all.
"Did you hear? About Countess Imes?"
"I did. They say her infidelity was exposed recently, and now she's on the verge of divorce."
"Actually, what I heard is that she wasn't caught being unfaithful at all—she brought it on herself when she tried to eliminate the very mage who invented the paternity test kit."
"I'm sorry—is that true?"
"Quite. According to one of the manor's guards, the mage showed up the very day the Countess's affair came to light. Come to take his revenge on Countess Imes for trying to have him killed."
"Oh my… what a dreadful business…"
"It doubles as a warning, you see. A warning that if any of them set their sights on his life, he won't simply sit back and take it."
At the blonde woman's words, several of the noblewomen flinched and shifted in their seats, as though something had struck far too close to home.
And judging by the way they went pale and cowered, it seemed unlikely that any of them would dare pull the sort of stunt Countess Imes had.
The blonde woman studied them closely for a moment, then smiled brightly and clapped her hands together.
"Really now, it's poor form to gather for a lovely afternoon only to trade such grim gossip. Shall we change the subject? Ladies—have any of you been to the coffeehouse yet?"