Chapter 5
Chapter 5
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 5
Chapter Title: My Brother Is Bad at Games
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After playing games for several days, I had to admit that I'd overlooked something.
Mayches really was smart... but there were all kinds of smarts when it came to people's heads.
Just like IQ and EQ were different things, being good at studying didn't mean you were good at games.
Mayches was proving that with his own body.
“Bro…ther, you really don’t regret it? Thieves’ Catch is a profound game where one choice can flip the whole board... Are you really taking that card?”
“Hmm…….”
Mayches pondered as he peered over the cards at my eyes, which were burning fiercely.
I was practically sending him the right answer via telepathy. Right. Right. Right. Right.
I should have learned some magic in advance……. So I could directly beam the Joker card into Mayches's head…….
But the Mayches who gazed steadily at me ended up plucking the card on the left without fail, just like always.
“Ha ha ha ha.”
Having checked the card, Mayches even burst out laughing in a way that totally gave away what he'd picked…….
Doria, of course, had her eyes gleaming as she deftly avoided that card and drew another.
No, how was he supposed to run a family with a poker face that bad? Was the Rudelriz Family really okay like this?
In the end, Mayches failed to shake off the Joker card in his hand until the very last moment, and the game came to an end.
“Lost again……. Ha ha.”
That was right.
My brother—the genius mage and family head of the Rudelriz count family who had ushered in a new era of prosperity; a smart guy with a capitalist mind who was lately scooping up the continent's wealth through all sorts of research (or so the maids always hyped him up to me while I lay in bed)—
None other than Count Mayches Rudelriz... was actually a total dunce at games.
I was losing my mind.
He couldn't win a single game—not Harrigal, not Jen, not Gosu, not even Match-Match, which you might stumble into someday.
He needed to win at least sometimes if he was going to get hooked on games, but who'd have thought he'd be this hopeless? Could your luck in games really be this rotten?
I chucked the premium One Card deck I'd had specially made onto the bed. My shoulder and wrist throbbed in pain from the throw, and I groaned; Doria hurried over at once to massage my arm.
“Doria… Thieves’ Catch is hopeless too.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
I meant we had to hunt down another game.
I had no idea how many times this made.
Before Mayches could get into it, I was going to become the king of games……
“...Finally, another admission invitation from Repitelips Academy.”
“Handle it like always.”
“Yes. I’ll send the rejection letter.”
Butler Grenji neatly gathered up the letters after reporting on the last piece of mail.
Even after all the business was done, Grenji showed no sign of leaving, so Mayches spoke without lifting his head from his paperwork.
“Anything else?”
“Lady Aiel seems to be fretting over devising yet another new game.”
The elegant flow of the quill came to a halt. Mayches flicked a glance at Grenji before fixing his eyes back on the parchment.
“Why? Thieves’ Catch was fun.”
“Well, you’ve only ever let her win, so she must feel awkward about it.”
“But I can’t go beating Aiel.”
Grenji gave his young family head a faint smile.
Mayches, now fifteen, was growing by the day. And it wasn’t just his abilities or his looks.
The security of knowing there was always someone to steady you made a person’s heart grow strong and firm.
After the previous Count Rudelriz and his wife passed away, the young master had scraped by on hatred and rage alone, day after day.
Butler Grenji had quietly steeled himself as he gazed into those gray eyes that had glimmered with a bleak darkness.
The fall of House Rudelriz, which loomed in the not-too-distant future.
They had all tried to turn Mayches into a puppet and devour him, coveting the unparalleled magical talent he possessed.
Rather than defend himself, Mayches had lunged to attack alongside them. Mutual destruction seemed to be his goal and his method.
The Rudelriz Family had endured an eleven-year-old boy recklessly swinging a blade around only because that blade had been quite sharp.
Even after enduring tragedy, Mayches was still a genius, and the death of that boyish heart had stolen his humanity but granted him cold rationality in its place—he could cleverly trample the crude humans who bared their greedy desires so hastily.
But the truly cunning ones knew that wouldn’t last forever. Many had taken pleasure in his self-destruction, waiting for him to sink.
…And then one day.
In the annex built in the most remote corner of the Rudelriz estate, the family’s treasured disgrace finally opened her eyes after two months.
The new maid Doria had come trembling to inform the family head, just as the previous attendant had.
Lady Aiel didn’t know it, but that day the Rudelriz mansion had been filled with a chill tension so thick no one could even breathe properly.
Everyone had been on edge, wondering if the new family head might do something unspeakable to his own sister.
Mayches hadn’t been able to hide the madness surging within him, and it had been primed to lash out at anyone.
Anyone who got on his nerves—and especially the defective last of his bloodline, who had never once stepped out of her bed.
And the young master who had entered his sister’s room harboring cold disgust……
Had emerged as nothing more than an ordinary boy with a wounded heart.
Grenji still remembered the rippling gray eyes of Mayches as he trudged down the hall.
The day the tender green sprout first budded in the estate grounds, blanketed in white snow.
Mayches drew back the curtains of his study for the first time in ages and basked in the sunlight streaming through the great glass window.
He did nothing but gaze up at the sky the whole day long.
At sunset, he had called for Doria and entrusted her with “my sister,” asking her to inform him the moment she awoke—no matter what.
And then he had fallen into a deep sleep, the first in a very long time.
After that, he no longer did anything to destroy himself.
“Well, charging in to beat a sister four years younger would look pretty pathetic… Heh heh. Still, wouldn’t it be more fun to alternate wins and losses?”
“We already alternate wins and losses. Doria wins sometimes too.”
Doria always gave it her all in every moment.
In fact, at first she’d even felt a little hurt as an adult, constantly losing to those eleven- and fifteen-year-old kids.
These days, she’d gotten past it with the typical Rudelriz servants’ mindset of “these siblings are geniuses, after all~.”
“But you know why Lady Aiel keeps insisting on these games.”
“Ah… right.”
A few days earlier, Doria had been on her way back to Aiel’s room with paper suitable for making cards, at Aiel’s request.
She just couldn’t bring herself to pass by Mayches’s study right next door and had ended up knocking on the door.
Then, with a face full of her own感動, she had whispered to Grenji and Mayches.
‘Well, Lady Aiel seemed worried that you only ever work, Family Head, so she was grunting away, trying to invent a hobby for you?’
Just thinking back on it now made Mayches laugh.
Aiel’s kind heart had been so precious and lovely that he’d nearly snapped the quill he was holding clean in half right then and there.
“But that face she made when she got all excited after beating me at One Card was just too cute. Ever since, I end up losing without even meaning to let her win.”
On the first day they’d played One Card, Mayches had instantly memorized the tiny creases on the backs of the paper cards and the minute differences in their sizes.
And he’d set the board so Aiel would win. She’d triumphed beautifully with the seven of hearts, her face blooming with a smile as clear as glass beads.
And from then on, Mayches could never bring himself to beat Aiel.
Grenji chuckled as he switched the letter he was holding to his other hand.
“Strictly speaking, letting her win is the real way to lose. That’s the kind of games you two play.”
“Well…….”
At that moment, someone flung open the door without even knocking.
In this house, there was only one person who could open the family head’s door like that.