Just as Well
Just as well.
“Y-Young Master. Wait a moment.”
Encia tried to stop Shiron, but he kept walking down the corridor without a word. His destination was the private bath he always used. Grains of sand had worked their way into his clothes and were driving him mad; he wanted nothing more than to scrub every inch of himself clean as soon as possible.
“Young Master!”
“…….”
He had already reached the bath when Encia planted herself in the doorway, blocking his way. Shiron’s eyes narrowed as he gave the order.
“Move.”
“Young Master. I must have misheard you, right? You said you don’t want the seat of the family head?”
Her words came fast. Right now Encia was looking at him with pure bewilderment. Her brow twitched, and even her tone had gone strangely stiff.
“You didn’t hear me?”
Shiron paid her reaction no mind. If anything, he enunciated every syllable so she couldn’t possibly miss it.
“Family head? Even if you handed it to me, I wouldn’t take it.”
He stated his position without the slightest hesitation.
“If you understood that, then move. I want to wash.”
“I won’t!”
“……Encia. What exactly is your problem? You said you heated the bath for me. At this rate it’ll go cold.”
“Oh, I have plenty of problems!”
Shiron tried to slip past her, but a hand clamped onto his shoulder and kept him from entering the bath.
“Young Master. I’m being completely serious right now. This isn’t me teasing you like usual.”
Encia bent her knees so she could meet his eyes. Did this mischievous young master even understand what he had just said? Worry began to gather in her gaze.
Thank goodness I got here first.
Encia felt a flicker of relief, but urgency rose right alongside it. Arriving first also meant the others could show up at any moment.
“You’re treating the seat of the family head far too lightly, Young Master. You’re lucky it’s me—anyone else wouldn’t let this slide!”
“Anyone else?”
“That’s right!”
Encia nodded with a hard face. On any other day she might have turned it into a playful jab, but the matter was too serious; she wore an uncharacteristically humorless expression.
“I’m not joking. I’m not saying this carelessly—compared to the others, I really am the easygoing one. Even Ophelia’s soft, fluffy side isn’t all there is to her. If any of the others heard what you just said, I honestly couldn’t guarantee how things would go.”
So she had to warn him before the rest of them reached the castle. Even if she couldn’t change his decision to refuse the headship, tossing off a declaration that he was giving it up so casually was bound to cause problems.
What the Prien family headship actually meant, how much value it held—those things mattered. But what worried her most was what the others would think the moment they heard Shiron’s words.
Encia knew better than anyone that demons did not possess human hearts.
Yet Shiron only grinned, completely unmoved by her concern.
“Perfect timing, then.”
“Excuse me?”
“I shouldn’t be saying this to you alone. I’ll call everyone together and make it clear. Better to be thorough about something like this. While I wash, gather all of them in my bedroom and have them wait. That includes Yuma, of course.”
With that, Shiron brushed past Encia and stepped into the bath.
Click—
“Young Master? Young Master…!”
Encia’s face crumpled as she reached for the door, but Shiron locked it faster than she could open it.
“……Haa. Being the family head would be great. Who do they think is turning it down because he actually wants to?”
Shiron sank deep into the bath and let out a long sigh. Encia’s explosive reaction wasn’t unreasonable.
He knew perfectly well that the headship of the family came with benefits so massive that anyone would covet it.
The family head could freely dispose of the wealth and treasures accumulated over centuries. He could walk into private holdings scattered across the continent—places like Dawn Castle—without answering to a soul. Dozens more reasons to take the seat sprang to mind without effort.
And yet a single reason forced Shiron to refuse it.
What a shame. If it weren’t for the death flags, I’d be scooping up every last scrap of it.
The headship brought enormous advantages, but all of them put together still mattered less than Shiron’s life.
The major death flags lined up neatly in his mind.
To the Apostles of the Evil God, the head of House Prien was target number one for elimination. Glenn didn’t avoid Dawn Castle simply because he disliked the children.
Siriel, the orca, was obsessed with the seat. Whether it was because of Hugo or some private reason of her own, the original Siriel had wanted to become head of the Prien family.
Lucia Prien would absolutely kill Young Master Shiron. Setting aside whether it was the original Shiron’s madness or his obsession, when you played as Shiron without the title of Young Master, you could survive Lucia. Of course, even then you still couldn’t clear the game.
In truth, every flag except one was no longer a problem under the current circumstances.
He would hunt the Apostles down first and kill them. And as long as he was the one possessing this body, the odds of clashing with Lucia were drastically lower than in the original story.
But Siriel is different.
Even if he spent every day from now on carefully molding her, once her rebellious phase hit she would become a serious headache. Lately Shiron had noticed his own emotions swinging harder than usual—clear proof that the body’s influence was starting to take hold.
I still don’t get how that pure little Siriel turned into such a little shit either.
Shiron looked down at his heavily bandaged hands.
This was the result of thrashing around just to look impressive to other people. He had no idea how he had come across to everyone else, but whether positive or negative, he had clearly left a deep impression.
The original Shiron was a ruthless bastard too.
“Haa…”
He let out a light sigh.
In the original, Shiron could earn the title of Young Master depending on the choices you made.
That meant the original had somehow passed today’s succession ceremony. There was zero chance a worthless failure who couldn’t complete the rite would ever receive the title of Young Master.
The original Shiron hadn’t shattered the ice. He had climbed back onto it again and again, been sucked under dozens of times, and still finished the ceremony in one piece.
Looking back, that method might not have been so bad either.
But he felt no regret. That route had been safer, sure… No. No matter how he looked at it, his way was better.
I only know this one method… but I’m right.
A faint wave of dizziness washed over him as Shiron smiled thinly to himself.
Shiron’s room.
As ordered, every servant of the mansion had gathered in one place.
“Did you see it? The Young Master’s eyes earlier.”
Perhaps because Yuma, the head maid, had stepped out to change Shiron’s bandages, the room packed with nearly thirty people had grown a little noisy.
“No, seriously. He’s still so young, but his eyes were just pouring out this murderous aura, you know?”
“……I’m never going to forget what happened today for the rest of my life.”
“That’s stating the obvious. When I saw his face back then, something just went whoosh through me. My knees went weak and I nearly ruined the whole ‘acting normal’ act.”
They looked exactly like girls of that age, and right now they were replaying the events of a short while ago.
Their speech, their looks, their voices—all of them were full of individual flair—but because every last one of them shared the same topic of interest, the entire room burned with talk of the succession ceremony.
“Now that it’s over I can say it—I almost pissed myself a little.”
“……I actually did, a little.”
The shocking confession drew every eye, but after a moment of thought they all decided it wasn’t that big a deal and returned to their places.
“Still.”
Dorothy, the maid with black hair cut at her shoulders, broke off mid-conversation and shifted her gaze.
“What’s wrong with her?”
Her eyes had landed on a golden-haired maid whose shoulders were slumped. Encia, who had sneakily run off first. She had claimed she suddenly had something to do and left ahead of everyone, and ever since then she had been acting strange.
“Encia. What’s the matter? Are you hurt somewhere?”
“……No. Nothing hurts.”
Encia shook her head at Ophelia’s question. Quite some time had passed, yet her heart still refused to settle.
The others’ excitement came from the possibility that the Young Master would become family head—not from some child who would amount to nothing. The more expectation they piled onto him, the heavier Encia’s shoulders felt, as if they were being crushed.
What on earth is he thinking…
“Haa…”
Encia sighed so deeply it felt like the ground might swallow her.
Having lived for so many years, she could read the emotion on Shiron’s face.
Judging by what she saw, it wasn’t a child’s bravado or simple rebellion. The Young Master truly did not want to become the family head.
Why?
The question rose on its own.
As a guardian of Dawn Castle and a loyal servant of House Prien for centuries, Encia had watched countless descendants of the family. Her friend and colleague Ophelia looked down on those who failed to become head, but in Encia’s eyes every one of them had achieved great things.
And every single one of them had, at some point, wanted the seat. That was how it had been for hundreds of years, which made the shock all the greater.
If he never wanted the headship in the first place, there was no need to even take the succession ceremony…
“Haa…”
“Encia. The Young Master said that if you sigh, your luck runs away.”
“……He sighs every single day himself.”
“Heehee. True enough.”
Ophelia laughed softly as if she found it amusing, but Encia could not laugh with her. She was terrified of the moment her love-struck friend’s attitude might flip.