Chapter 86: As God Leads (5)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 86: As God Leads (5)
The dinner banquet was, quite literally, magnificent.
Alto’s party arrived first, followed by Count Dakuus and his wife, Nasian the bank manager, and even Karen, the branch manager of the Adventurer Guild.
All the heavy hitters of Dakuren’s power structure had gathered in the salon.
As Count Dakuus raised his glass and gave a brief congratulatory speech, Alto fought back the goosebumps that instinctively rose on his skin.
A course meal began, starting with appetizers he had never even heard of but which looked undeniably high-end. Meanwhile, the salon’s maids performed dances accompanied by live music.
“Some wine here, please.”
“Yes, Lord Alto!”
As a maid brought over a bottle of fine wine, Airune, who was sitting beside him, snatched it away as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“I’ll pour it for you.”
“Thanks.”
As Airune filled Alto’s empty glass, Narupa, sitting on his other side, poured water from a pitcher she had produced from somewhere.
“You’re low on water too, aren’t you?”
“Uh, thanks?”
“Don’t mention it.”
The Count and his wife beamed as they watched the scene.
Everything was going perfectly.
Along with the revival of Hus, the marriage plans for the girls—who were as good as their own daughters—were sailing smoothly like a boat with a following wind.
All that remained was to announce Alto Bertrand’s existence to the world and hold Airune’s coronation.
When that time came, Hus would enjoy a period of revival and prosperity, stepping up as a nation that no one would dare look down upon.
“I shall perform a dance to liven up the mood.”
Whenever the atmosphere seemed like it might dip, the clever Eris would step onto the stage to play an instrument or perform a song and dance.
She intentionally chose fast-paced traditional Hus songs, and the performance had the other guests, including Alto’s party, clapping along in delight.
“My, you certainly picked a good one. The branch manager has quite the eye, doesn’t she?”
When even the fastidious Nasian expressed admiration, Branch Manager Karen’s shoulders puffed up with pride.
There had been a lot of talk within the branch about hiring a country bumpkin, but those complaints had quickly vanished because she was so good at her job.
“Gyahahahaha!”
Diane, who lived for parties, laughed loudly and clapped hard, but she didn’t try to butt into the conversation.
Since being forgiven by Alto, Diane had learned from Eris how not to be overbearing.
She stayed quietly in her seat, enjoying herself internally, and had even learned table manners alongside the teacher Airune had hired for Eris.
All of this stemmed from her desire not to be a nuisance to Alto.
Thanks to the social awareness she had barely managed to cultivate, Diane was able to refrain from impulsively announcing Krima’s presence at the banquet.
Doing so would have thrown cold water on the entire atmosphere.
However, she decided she would at least tell Eris once the party wound down.
Her judgment was that the smart Eris would know the right moment to relay the news to the higher-ups.
But life is as fickle as the weather, and in hindsight, that decision turned out to be a tragic mistake.
Regardless, Diane was happy just seeing Alto smiling so genuinely at the banquet.
On the other hand, it stung a little because he had never smiled like that when he was with them.
It hurt all the more because it was all her own fault.
“Are you going somewhere?”
“Mm-hmm, the restroom.”
“Dessert will be out soon. They said it’s berry sorbet, so come back quickly.”
“That sounds delicious! I’ll be right back!”
She stepped out of the banquet hall with a calm gait.
I’m doing great today.
She felt a sense of pride as she praised herself, but it was hard to remember how Alto hadn’t spared her a single glance throughout the entire banquet.
She had to endure it.
She had to be patient.
“Huh?”
As Diane pressed her hand against her chest to suppress the ache, she felt as though her breasts had swollen.
It wasn’t just a feeling; physically, though slight, they were definitely making their presence known with a rounded shape.
“Heehee?”
“Diane!”
Startled by the voice calling her name, she looked around to see Krima beckoning from behind a wall.
“Krima?”
The appearance of someone she had briefly forgotten triggered a sense of unease, but Diane approached her, preparing herself to respond.
“How are you here?”
“Why are you here?”
Their voices tangled in the air.
Realizing they were surprisingly loud, Krima quickly grabbed Diane’s arm and led her outside the salon.
“How can someone like you be by Lord Alto’s side?”
“Someone like me?”
When Diane’s expression hardened, Krima flinched.
This was the Diane who used to just react based on her own mood, never picking up on social cues no matter how she was treated.
The fact that this woman, who used to have zero ability to read nuance or context, had changed felt alien to her.
“Didn’t you die at the Lukart border?”
“I didn’t die. I just ran as hard as I could through the explosion to save Alto.”
“Save Lord Alto? Ha, you?”
Diane also found Krima strange.
Back in the Lukart days, she had thought Krima’s nagging was out of concern for her, but hearing it again now, a certainty began to crawl up that it had simply been contempt.
“I worked hard because I wanted to be of help.”
“If that were the case, you should have done that from the start.”
What’s with her phrasing?
Diane discovered several flaws in Krima, whom she had always considered to be right and somehow holy.
Until now, Diane had simply been ignorant, not stupid.
Thanks to Eris’s mysterious and devoted education, Diane was gradually becoming more human.
“I only followed him to beg for his forgiveness.”
“And? So you were forgiven? Is that why you’re shamelessly laughing and chatting by Lord Alto’s side?”
“I wasn’t forgiven easily!”
For the first time, Diane got angry at her former comrade.
Krima was flustered when Diane, the only person she had always been able to win against in a battle of wills, came at her so aggressively.
“I begged for it at the risk of my life! I did it with the mindset that I’d throw my life away even if I wasn’t forgiven!”
She wanted to pull up her shirt right then and there to show the scar on her stomach, but she didn’t.
She didn’t want to give Krima even a single hint about how to get forgiven.
“You treated me like such a fool when I asked us to apologize together!”
“You said it yourself. You knew, didn’t you? That Lord Alto was a Bertrand!”
“What kind of nonsense is that!”
“It’s true! You’re the one who found out where Lord Alto went in the first place! But you hid it from us until the very end!”
“I told you we should go apologize, and you guys intentionally avoided listening! And now you’re trying to pin it on me?”
This is strange.
Why am I arguing with someone like Diane?
Why do I feel like I’m losing?
“Let’s just say you were lucky enough to be forgiven. So? Do you think you can be loved by Lord Alto with a childish body like yours? With a figure that even Gerend rejected?”
“Don’t bring up Gerend! And… if we’re talking about that, I’m better than you guys!”
“What did you say?!”
Having her sore spot poked by someone she considered beneath her, Diane snapped.
“All of you were sucking and fucking with Claude and Gerend!”
“Wh-What…!”
“I know everything now. I learned! I learned that our behavior was something you should never do if there’s a man in the party. But you, Krima, you had sex! You even had sex! You sucked and swallowed Gerend’s thing and everything! I didn’t!”
“Y-You kissed and touched them too!”
“So what!”
The one who had sinned more tore at the flaws of the one who had sinned less.
Diane’s face contorted because it hurt so much.
“That’s why… I can’t even… go near Alto…”
In the end, both of them were people who had committed great wrongs against Alto.
As Diane, feeling as though she’d been punched in the solar plexus, struggled to breathe, Eris appeared looking for her.
“Diane?”
“Ugh! Uuuuh…!”
As a tear-streaked Diane collapsed into her arms, Eris instinctively held her and glared at Krima.
“Who are you?”
“Th-That is…”
“Aren’t you a salon employee? How dare you argue with a guest and make her cry? Should I have a word with Lady Narupa and the Madame?”
“No, it’s not like that…”
Under the sharp interrogation, Krima realized instantly that this opponent was a formidable foe on a completely different level than Resin or Mirei.
Just as she was rolling her eyes, hesitating,
“Oh! There she is! It’s the Adventurer Guild receptionist!”
“Hurry, hurry! The Count is here, right?”
“I heard Lord Alto is here too!”
A group of people recognized Eris and came running.
“Everyone? What’s going on?”
“Are the prominent figures of Dakuren inside? It’s an emergency!”
As Eris looked perplexed by the sudden intrusion, Krima shrewdly slipped away.
She vanished right into the crowd of people who had swarmed in.
“A woman has grabbed a man on top of Lord Alto’s statue construction site and is threatening to commit suicide!”
A worker who had been controlling the construction site announced the emergency in one perfectly concise sentence.
While Diane stopped crying and gasped, Eris quickly assessed the situation.
“Do you know who the culprit is?”
“That, I’m not sure…”
“I know! It’s Arasen! Arasen the carriage driver! The man she’s taking with her is short and frail, so it’s definitely her!”
She didn’t listen any further.
Eris and Diane grabbed the construction worker and ran toward the banquet hall.
“Lord Alto!!!!!”
As they threw open the doors to the banquet room and screamed, a heavy silence fell, and everyone’s eyes turned toward them.
Without shrinking back, Eris shouted again with all her might.
“Lady Arasen is reportedly staging a suicide attempt in the plaza!”
“Where in the plaza!”
Count Dakuus reacted immediately.
The other high-ranking officials also hurriedly stood up from their seats.
“It’s at the top of Lord Alto’s statue!”
“The, the! The arm! The outstretched arm! They were going up that way on the elevator!”
Eris provided the general location, and the worker they had brought along provided the specifics.
“I’ll go first!”
“Right! We’ll follow right behind you!”
Alto and Count Dakuus bolted from the room, and Airune and Narupa hiked up their dresses.
Not just the leaders of Dakuren, but everyone in the salon rushed out toward the plaza.
Outside, it was raining.
By the time Krima, caught in the crowd, finally reached the plaza—
“I…! I just wanted to be loved…! That would have been enough—!!!!!!!”
The sorrowful, resentful cry of the forlorn primary wife filled the plaza.