Newman (2)

How did the daughter of House Aln come to know about our son?

The Newman family was a noble house built upon the underworld, and as such, they remembered almost everyone who did business in its shadows.

The name Aln was not among them.

Why would a knightly house of such renown ever stoop to touching the underworld? They had neither the reason nor the need for it.

Put another way, it meant House Aln's information network simply wasn't that extensive. They might catch wind of rumors that had surfaced into the open, but nothing more.

Muscle-bound pigs who trusted nothing but their own strength could never dig up what lay hidden beneath the water's surface — or so Cuz had believed.

He had been wrong.

Lucy Aln possessed the means to descend beneath that surface.

How?

Brow furrowed in thought, Cuz let out a low hum before finally realizing the question was pointless. It was not difficult to guess that his son had fallen under Agra's curse.

Not after everything he himself had done, desperately trying to save the boy. Anyone who merely followed the trail of his actions could piece it together.

"Whether this information came from House Aln itself or from that daughter of theirs is something I'll have to verify — but that's all it is."

Cuz had lost his composure for a moment at the mention of his son, but he quickly recovered his calm and lowered his gaze.

"That damned girl."

The moment he read the next sentence, Cuz ground his teeth until they ached.

Insufferable. Utterly insufferable.

He had known for a long time what kind of person Lucy ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Aln was. A freak who'd hung the nickname "Pitiable Prince" on the Third Prince of the Empire himself, Arthur. She clearly knew nothing of courtesy or respect — just a walking lump of conceit and arrogance.

And yet, watching her from a distance and standing before her were two entirely different things.

Had some middling nobody pulled a stunt like this, Cuz would have used the power of House Newman to bury the fool alive.

Ah, of course, not before extracting whatever he wanted through a properly staged negotiation.

But this girl was the daughter of House Aln.

The daughter of a knightly house whose martial might ranked among the finest on the continent. Today they sat in their back rooms like aging elders, guarding nothing but their own territory — but in the past, they had been a house of nightmares, a name that made every nation beyond the kingdom's borders tremble.

If Benedict Aln, who loved his daughter to the point of madness, flew into a rage and descended upon House Newman, then the very name Newman would burn away to ash.

So he could not touch her. Could not coerce her either.

Because Cuz Newman was the head of House Newman before he was ever a father.

Having read the first page to its end, Cuz took a deep breath and tried with all his might to keep his composure. Stay calm. Do not take the bait. Do not fall for her provocations.

Steeled by that resolve, he turned to the next page —

He hurled the letter across the desk.

Cuz had worked the underworld for years; there was almost nothing he hadn't lived through. He'd been sneered at by youngsters like this more times than he could count.

And yet somehow, reading this letter made something deep inside his chest feel like it was cracking apart, and he could not bear it.

"My lord?"

"Quiet."

"Yes, sir!"

Damn it all. If this kept up, seizing the upper hand would be out of the question.

Lucy Aln was a person who would sooner shatter than bow her head to another. Just look — she'd sent a letter like this to the head of a noble house. A human being this saturated with arrogance would never bend the knee to anyone.

Ordinarily, the easiest way to deal with someone like that was to break them — but the problem was that Benedict Aln stood waiting right behind her, which made her the most vicious kind of target imaginable.

"If she cannot be made to bow... then I have no choice but to lower my head and go to her."

Arriving at that conclusion after long deliberation, Cuz found himself laughing despite himself.

Bowing one's head wasn't such a difficult thing, after all. If Lucy Aln truly had a way to cure Agra's curse, and if negotiation could secure a cure for his son, then a bowed head was a trivial price.

The problem was that he had no certainty.

Did Lucy Aln really hold in her hands a method to cure Agra's curse? And even if such a method existed, was she someone who would risk incurring the Evil God's wrath to cure his son?

He had planned to seize the high ground first and slowly draw information out of her — never expecting her to come at him like this.

Was Lucy Aln cunning, or had she simply lost to her own temperament and acted on impulse?

He couldn't tell.

But one thing was certain: unless he met Lucy Aln face to face, nothing could be confirmed.

"I'll have to swallow my pride for now, it seems."

Cuz swept away the carelessly discarded letter, drew a fresh sheet from the drawer, and with his fountain pen scrawled out a few lines in an instant before handing it to his trusted aide.

"Deliver this to Lucy Aln."

"Yes, my lord. Understood."

Who would have thought that after graduating from Soul Academy, he would have occasion to return there once more?

After hearing everything I'd told him yesterday, Grandpa said this:

"I don't understand what there is to agonize over. Aren't you telling me you're an irreplaceable resource to this man? Then simply summon him and demand what you want."

'What if he decides to threaten me instead?'

The Newman family were underworld people, remember? Someone like me, with no reputation and no real strength, could end up straight-up game over if things went wrong!

If this were a game, I'd have thought, whatever, I'll just reload a save if I get screwed — but this isn't a game!

I'm scared, okay?!

I have zero desire to experience firsthand what it's like to vanish without a trace!

"If that's what frightens you, simply bring your knight along. With that man at your side, he'd pull you out of nearly any crisis. And after that, everything is trivially easy. Hasn't the man handed you your justification? Speak to the Academy and to your own house, apply the pressure, and the matter will resolve itself."

Grandpa said it all as if wondering what on earth there was to agonize over when the answer was already written — and I, sufficiently persuaded, decided to follow his advice.

And so, sitting down to write the letter summoning Cuz Newman, I promptly ran headlong into a whole new obstacle.

I couldn't write the letter the way I wanted to.

Every word I spoke and every action I took was under the control of the Mesugaki skill. Whatever I tried to say, the Mesugaki skill translated it, and even my body moved only to enrage whoever stood before me. Thankfully, outright forced action was relatively rare — but writing was the exception. In moments like this, every single movement of my fingers was under someone else's control.

Do you know how mortified I was last time, when I had to write my exam answers in full mesugaki dialect? Luckily that hadn't caused any real trouble, but this time was different. A noble daughter writing to the head of another noble house simply cannot be writing filth like this!

Why does "To the Esteemed Head of House Newman" keep turning into "Scrub Household"?! Explain that to me!

After tearing up and rewriting the letter again and again and again, I hit the wall of reality and despaired.

That was when Grandpa offered his opinion.

"If it must end this way regardless, then let us simply provoke him. Make it so the man cannot possibly stay away out of sheer fury."

'...Can we really do that?'

"Have I not told you? If the other party picks the fight, the gain is ours."

If I couldn't send it politely anyway, then fine — provoke him.

Having no other option, I accepted Grandpa's suggestion, wrote a letter dripping with mesugaki venom, and sent it to the head of House Newman through Alsaetin.

And now, two days later, I was standing out on the street with Karl at my side. On my way to meet Cuz Newman.

I'd assumed it would take weeks of letters flying back and forth before we ever met, but apparently he wasn't inclined to give me any breathing room. Had he really, properly taken the Mesugaki skill's bait?

The moment I stepped into one of the Soul Academy restaurants Cuz Newman had designated as the meeting place, a waiter standing at the counter came straight over.

"You would be the young lady of House Aln?"

'Yes. That's me.'

"Right. And the tag-along."

"This way, please."

Following the waiter, I was led to a private room at the back of the restaurant. When he opened the door, a middle-aged man came into view across an empty table.

His graying hair was swept back, and his face was etched with a scatter of small scars, as if he'd lived a rough life. His fierce blue eyes were cold and hard. Despite his considerable age, the sharply cut silhouette of the man radiated a will that seemed to promise not a single step out of line.

"An honor, my lady of House Aln."

A stiff greeting, offered without a trace of warmth. Ordinarily, the proper thing to do would be to return the courtesy — but I did not. Instead, I answered with nothing at all, sat down in the chair, and asked:

'Where is the head of the house?'

"Where's the measly puppy of House Newman, hm? Where's your master?"

"That is rude, Lady Aln."

His voice, low and level with narrowed eyes, carried a heavy weight to it.

Heavy enough that even Grandpa asked me why he was suddenly like that.

But I wasn't the least bit rattled. This was just the sort of thing Cuz Newman pulls when you meet him in the game.

He sends out a stand-in first and makes you verify whether it's real or fake, which lets him size up your abilities. In the original game, you needed to have leveled an observation-related skill past a certain threshold before you could call him out on it. So even if you knew perfectly well the man in front of you wasn't the head of House Newman but a fake, a insufficient skill level meant you were forced to swallow it.

But this isn't the game, is it?

As long as I don't live in a world where my words are chosen from a command menu, I can flush out the real Cuz Newman with or without a skill.

'I know everything, so you can drop the act.'

"Puh-hut. You measly puppy. Did you really think I'd fall for that? Yeah, you're definitely House Scrub's puppy. What a dummy~"

At the snickering laughter that spilled out of my mouth, the middle-aged man rose slowly from his seat. And then he started toward me.

But he never made it. Karl planted himself in the space between us.

"Move."

"No. Why exactly should I take orders from House Newman's dog?"

"Ha. Have you lost your mind entirely? You're saying I'm not Cuz Newman?"

"That's right. Her Ladyship says so, so it must be true."

"You think I would jest with my son's life on the line?!"

I had been fully convinced this man was a fake — but the sound of the middle-aged man shouting made me flinch, just slightly.

What if this man actually was the real Cuz Newman?

In the game, he always set up a double to test you at your first meeting — but reality could be different, couldn't it? I'd thrown that out there to seize the initiative, but if I'd genuinely just committed an unforgivable insult, how on earth was I supposed to smooth it over?

Just as certainty and doubt were warring inside me and a low, creeping anxiety began to pool in my stomach, a door opened behind us.

"That's enough. It seems you've seen through it completely already."

...Whew.

Thank goodness.

I thought I was done for.