How to Claim a Fallen Noble Lady (2)
She really does want to die.
Iris's dead eyes looked up at me.
I hadn't done anything wrong, and yet a vague guilt lodged itself in my chest like a splinter.
"It's about time. Start seducing her in earnest."
That was the command Nyarlathotep had given me this morning on her way out.
Make Iris Gostrick your slave.
"Let me say it once more — there is no creature easier to tame than a human who has hit rock bottom."
Well then. Let's give it a shot.
"B-beside... you?"
First, Iris stared at me with eyes full of wariness.
Understandable. I was, for all intents and purposes, the very person who had dragged her down to rock bottom — we certainly weren't on good enough terms to sit next to each other and share a meal.
"What do you want? Are you here to mock me?"
Yeah, the reaction wasn't great.
But I had one perfectly plausible excuse ready.
"I packed a lunch box, and this bench is the only one around here."
This corner of the academy was what you'd call a forgotten outpost. You only had to look at the rusted legs of the bench, untouched by maintenance for who knew how long, to know it.
Walking all the way to another bench would have taken a good while, so claiming I'd just eat here was more than reasonable enough. Besides, the bench was so wide that sitting at opposite ends put a fair distance between us anyway.
"...Then why on earth would you come all the way out here to eat a lunch box?"
"Because I don't have anyone to eat with."
"...?"
At that, Iris tilted her head in confusion.
"No one to eat with? That can't be true."
"It really is."
Her case was that everyone around her had peeled away and left her eating alone. Mine was similar, but different.
Why is everyone suddenly clingy?
Back when I was in Class 1-F, the same people who'd treated me like a mongrel suddenly started swarming the moment I ranked up — latching on like leeches trying to scrape up whatever crumbs of fortune they could. It was repulsive. How did you get so strong out of nowhere? Give me your number. Nothing but naked opportunism from every mouth, so I brushed the lot of them off out of sheer irritation.
The only one who'd shown me any genuine goodwill was Gu Haseong, and...
"Master, that was INSANE! Just, like! I'm climbing my way to Class 1-A too, sir!"
...He was too much of a handful, so I left him behind.
Which meant, in the end, I was exactly like her — a person with nobody to eat lunch with.
"Anyway, I'm sitting here."
Swoosh.
"Wait, I haven't given you permissi... on..."
The moment I plopped down beside her, she flustered for a second before sighing in apparent defeat.
"Fine. Just... eat."
"Thank you for the meal."
I opened my lunch box with the picture of composure.
Cthugha had poured her heart into making it. Incidentally, it also contained one of her bodily fluids.
When I'd asked her what the fluid was, she'd said it was her blood. No idea why she reacted so cryptically about it.
Nom.
I picked up a piece of meat that tasted faintly of flame, and it was honestly pretty good. If it could satisfy even me — whose standards had been spoiled rotten by the Lesser Outer God's cooking — that meant her culinary skill was legitimately high-tier.
Ah, right. Now's really not the time to be admiring the food.
I nearly lost myself in the meal before snapping back to attention, rolling my eyes toward Iris.
Drip, drip.
Just as expected, her mind had clearly checked out — she was eating with sauce dribbling down her chin like her jaw had sprung a leak. Stains splattered across the academy uniform whose crispness was supposed to be its pride.
She's completely given up on how she looks to other people.
The first time I'd met her in the faculty office, her uniform hadn't had a single speck of dust on it, let alone sauce. But now it was smeared everywhere — which meant that under the weight of all that abuse, she'd finally decided to stop listening.
Right now, keeping my mouth shut is the winning move.
No matter how much I talked in her current state, nothing would land. So there was exactly one way to get her to hear me out.
I'll wait.
Wait until she opened up on her own.
I've got all the time in the world.
In games, I was the type to favor burst damage over attrition. But the moment those ears of hers showed even the slightest crack — she was done.
...He's here again.
"Hello."
And so a week went by.
How long is he going to keep coming?
Iris's confusion was steadily deepening.
Think about it — wasn't it strange? Fine, he wanted to eat alone. But why did he have to keep coming back here? There were benches on the other side of campus, the cafeteria, any number of places. Why here, of all spots?
He showed up suspiciously often, and then did nothing. He simply ate his lunch box and left.
In all that time, she hadn't managed a single conversation with him over a meal.
Glimpse. Glimpse.
Shoveling food into her mouth half-heartedly, she rolled her eyes and stole a look at him. He wasn't sparing her so much as a glance, eating away with what looked like genuine contentment.
He looks... happy.
Meanwhile, I'm this miserable.
Then, unbidden, the thought crept in: Is all of this punishment being dealt to me?
For trying to kill someone whose guilt I never even verified — just because a Constellation told me to. And for that, my family, my Constellation, my friends... did they all abandon me because of it?
Drip. Drip.
She began to cry again.
Pathetic. So this was what a would-be hero came to — this wretched, drooping figure. The shame of it sickened her, and just as she made to flee her own company—
"Hey, why are you crying all of a sudden?"
—he caught her off guard.
Shit, her mental state is way more contaminated than I expected.
"...S-sniff!"
I handed a tissue to the sniveling girl while discreetly wiping sweat from my own brow.
Had my own carefree eating somehow overlapped with the sight of herself? Or had she suddenly been struck by how pitiful her own reflection was?
No way to know for sure. Either way — this is my opening.
A crack had appeared.
But at the same time, I had to be careful. One wrong word and it could backfire spectacularly. So every single sentence had to be weighed.
A Story That Makes Sense
In the end, I activated A Story That Makes Sense to maximize my odds.
"Mm... they say it's good to confide in someone close to you when something sad happens. It's been true since ancient times."
When I said that to her as she dabbed at the flood spilling from her eyes, she gave me a look that plainly asked what kind of nonsense I was spouting.
"Sniff! I... *haa*... don't have anyone left to talk to."
"You've got me right here."
I pointed at myself, bold as brass.
"...Excuse me?"
"Everyone who got close to you left, didn't they? Then wouldn't the guy who's been sitting next to you for a whole week be your closest person?"
With every one of her relationships reset to zero, I — the sole connection still holding a value of one — was now her best friend.
Granted, "best friend" only by relative grading. On an absolute scale, I was statistically indistinguishable from Random Passerby #1. But A Story That Makes Sense kept the listener from worrying about such details.
"Is that... really so..."
Especially when the target's mental state has bottomed out completely.
SAN Value:140 / 160
Gotta shut this down soon.
She'd dropped to Class 1-B, sure, but her overall specs were undeniably Class 1-A caliber — and attempting brainwash-flavored persuasion on a target like that had sent my SAN value plummeting with every word. Thank goodness I'd topped it up with the Book of Mind beforehand. I needed a good 140 remaining to feel safe.
"Go ahead. Tell me. I'll listen."
Being gentle with her in this situation would only backfire. However cornered she was, some basic social awareness surely remained — if I was transparently nice to her, she might smell my intent.
So I played it indifferent: suit yourself, but you clearly need to vent, so go on then.
"Um... a while ago, my Constellation gave me a command."
I deliberately withheld any reaction, offering only a vague nod. This wasn't a conversation — it was a story being told. Responding too eagerly would break her momentum.
"She said some hateful wretch had slain her brood. She told me that if I killed his minion, she would take me as her Incarnation."
"Oh ho."
Ah, dammit. I was NOT supposed to react.
The content was just too interesting; the sound escaped me before I could stop it.
An Incarnation Contract was, in essence, a promise. A pledge to gather everything the deity could offer and forge the contractor into the absolute best. Thanks to my own contracts with Nyarlathotep and Cthugha, I was quite literally becoming the best in real time.
If a Constellation was willing to dangle such a prize just to have one man killed, you could gauge exactly how much she hated the target.
Yes. I can gauge it just fine.
And that target was Nyarlathotep. The minion, of course, would be me.
Anyone could piece it together just by listing the events so far — not knowing it at this point would take genuine talent. She'd even been warned outright that the Incarnation Contract would put her at odds with every Constellation in existence.
"I couldn't refuse, so I tried to do the killing... and I failed, and now I'm like this."
She murmured the words while gazing emptily at some point in the middle distance.
"I told myself he must deserve it. If a Constellation orders a kill, he has to be a villain. I rationalized it while I came at him. When I actually met him... he wasn't a bad person at all. But even so, I kept lying to myself and swung anyway."
Pfft.
A bitter little laugh burst out of her, and she went on.
"And then I lost. Lost everything, and ended up like this. All that's left of me is a vile failure blinded by greed."
Then her eyes whipped around and looked up at me — brimming, to the brim, with guilt.
"I'm sorry. I was wrong. I'm sorry I tried to kill you. So please..."
Tears streamed down her face anew.
"Please, take my sin from me... please."
"..."
I swallowed dryly at the flicker of madness bleeding through her crumbling expression.
This was, without a doubt...
I'm fucked.
Something tells me I said the wrong thing.