Our Department Chief Isn't Sick - 4

For a moment, Erich's words left me completely flustered.

But I recovered quickly enough. Right—Erich was still a fledgling buried in his Academy studies. For someone already struggling to absorb the established truths of the world, taking in a radical new truth was bound to be too much.

So of course he would call me insane. When a truth that contradicted everything the Academy taught unfolded right in front of him, how could he not be thrown?

"Someday you'll understand what I'm saying."

I made myself sound as calm as I could.

Shu-Ha-Ri. You learn the knowledge, you shatter the knowledge you've learned, and then you set out to find a truth of your own. That is what learning is.

With that conviction, I patted Erich on the shoulder. At seventeen, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the road ahead of him was still long—very long.

"There'll come a time when you stop clinging so tightly to what you've been taught."

"You never learned any of it in the first place."

Oh, for—

A clean, vicious blow straight to the solar plexus. I lost every word I had ready. Of all the cheap cheat codes to pull out.

"And the idea that a first wife is one person isn't something you learn. It's common sense."

On top of that, he was looking at me with such genuine pity that my mouth simply would not open.

Still, I had to push back. You cannot draw a line around the world and call it common sense. Letting that so-called common sense chain you down is what holds humanity back from—

"I feel sorry for the people who are going to be your wives."

"What?"

The muttered line hit a nerve. The way he said it made it sound as if my stubbornness was going to hurt other people.

I would never do that. I would never force my standards onto people who actually liked me. That was why I had brought it up ahead of time—because if everyone became a first wife, everyone would be happy.

Granted, only Margeta had said it out loud herself. But Luise and Irina had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠heard it through her, and neither of them had refused.

This is not coercion.

Once I told the Demon Duke and the First Division Chief as well, I would have everyone's agreement. It was not my unilateral decision. It was not force.

"…They all said it was fine. They still seem a little thrown by it, but none of them said no."

"How are they supposed to say no? What if they do and you call the whole marriage off?"

My mouth shut again. If that was the reason, then maybe it really was my—

No. No, it wasn't. I had tried to raise the subject in a gentle atmosphere. I had worked to make a space where they could lightly refuse if they didn't like the idea.

"If they'd truly hated it, they would have refused."

"In front of a lunatic casually spouting lunatic nonsense?"

Hey.

He was calling me a lunatic like it was nothing. I was still his older brother.

"If they say no, they start worrying they'll be the one left out. And if they say the wrong thing and you get even weirder, what then?"

Erich let out a long sigh, dragged a chair over, and sat down.

He looked exactly like a civil servant forced to take a seat because a report that should have been short had dragged on forever.

"Luise says she thinks you're a little unwell."

The unexpected line made the corner of my eye twitch.

I had known she worried about me, but I never imagined she thought of it that way. If gentle Luise had gone so far as to use the word unwell, then what on earth—

"How bad do you think it has to be for her to come to me for help?"

Erich sighed again and raked a hand roughly through his hair. Another sigh. A dry scrub of his face. Yet another sigh.

His whole body was broadcasting that he had no idea how to keep talking.

"Hyung."

"…Yeah."

"Have you lost your mind?"

In the end, he repeated what he had said before.

"All of them first. It sounds nice. The words sound nice, but…"

He exhaled a sigh I had long since lost count of, his face faintly worn with fatigue.

"Put another way, doesn't that just mean all of them are last?"

An angle I had never considered. Could you even look at it like that…?

True enough—if you thought no one stood above you, you were tied for first. But if no one stood below you either, it also felt a lot like being tied for last.

"And there are several brides who are each supposed to be the main character. On the one wedding day of a lifetime, they have to split the attention?"

A sharp point. Hearing it, I realized just how fatal the problem was.

Why had I only noticed now? Or had I known all along and deliberately looked away?

"Even during the ceremony—slipping on the ring, the kiss, walking out hand in hand… eventually an order gets decided for all of it."

"……"

"An order is going to form no matter what. You're the one forcing yourself to deny it."

Having said that much, Erich leaned back into the chair as if he were lying down, as if that were the end of everything he had to say.

His eyes, though, never left me. If it felt like that stare was saying, If you still deny it after all this, you're a bastard, that was probably just my imagination.

And that stare made something hot surge up in me again. Easy to talk. Anyone can sit there and lecture with words.

"Maybe you're right."

This time the sigh came out of my own mouth.

Fine. Erich might be right. In this era, the idea that everyone could be first might not be the correct answer. Margeta, Luise, Irina—maybe they all disliked the method and were only going along with me out of kindness.

But so what?

"Then what am I supposed to do?"

Did he think I had come up with this for fun? I simply could not rank the people who said they liked me. The thought of dividing a duke's daughter and a duke into number one and number two was enough to drive me mad—that was why I was doing this.

"You know a noble marriage is an extension of politics."

I was fond of Margeta. Grateful that someone like her could care for a man this inadequate. As a first wife she was not lacking in the slightest—if anything, she was far more than I deserved.

But the Demon Duke had stepped in. Of course I was grateful to her as well, and after what had happened in the Imperial Capital I had begun to consider the relationship in earnest. No—I was already thinking past that.

Margeta the person, the Demon Duke the person—I liked them both. But behind them stood House Varenti and House Katoban.

"Choose one of them and the other ducal house gets pushed aside. It becomes the sitting Audit Department Chief picking one of two ducal houses over the other."

It was enough to drive a man insane. And still I had to bear it. That was the duty of anyone who enjoyed privilege—to weigh the fallout of every action. That was a noble's obligation.

From the moment I had lost the Hecate I chose, from the moment I could no longer be the first to choose anyone—that duty and that obligation had settled onto my shoulders.

"So this is the best I can do."

Even if people called me crazy, it would not turn into a feud. No hierarchy would form between the two ducal houses. That was why I had chosen this method—the one that could make as many people as possible happy.

And whether that resolve had finally reached him, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Erich's mouth—poised to call me a lunatic again—showed no sign of opening.

At last, this older brother's heart had reached his younger—

"Yeah. That's enough to drive anyone crazy."

Or not.

The dagger that slipped out after the silence hurt.

"Hyung. Stop overcomplicating it."

"You want me to think about this even more simply…?"

I asked back on pure instinct, dead serious. It was not my place to say so, but was there really a cleaner, more dramatic solution than a joint wedding?

"The order of wives is usually just the order of the marriages."

"Right."

Which was exactly why I had been going on about simultaneous weddings and the rest of it.

"And marriage is the result of a confession."

"…Right?"

I had no idea why he was bringing that up all of a sudden, but it wasn't wrong, so I nodded.

"Then shouldn't you just marry them in the order the confessions came in?"

?

"The Academy graduates people in the order they enrolled. So you marry in the order you were confessed to."

???

What is he even saying.

I felt my sanity starting to leave me. Was it acceptable to compare matters of human destiny—confession, marriage—to Academy enrollment and graduation?

And yet it wasn't exactly wrong. If an order was going to form one way or another, maybe confession order really was the fairest?

"And ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the most important part…"

Erich closed his mouth for a moment and quickly scanned the surroundings. He already knew no one was nearby, so if he was still checking, whatever came next was not ordinary.

"If the duke's daughter gets pushed back, His Grace the Iron Blood Duke will be furious. But if Her Grace the Demon Duke gets pushed back, you can still persuade Her Grace the Demon Duke."

Oh.

The instant I heard it, I stared blankly at Erich.

Are you a genius?

Leaving my brother alone with his thoughts, I slipped out of the club room.

In the corridor I found Luise lingering about and told her it would be better to leave him by himself for a while. He was only just gathering his wits; if someone else spoke to him now, things might go sideways again.

It was such a simple problem.

I let out a small sigh and stepped outside the building. After talking with him, it really hadn't been that difficult.

Not that his worries were simple. Curing his particular brand of madness just hadn't been hard.

If only someone had been there to say it.

All he had needed was one person willing to tell him, when he went off the deep end, You seem crazy. Even just now, one sharp prod and he had started fixing himself.

He had known, deep down. He knew he had gone mad—but with nowhere to turn and nowhere to run, he had simply charged ahead in pure escapism.

And instead of stopping him, everyone around him had only soothed him and said it was fine. That was how this whole mess had grown.

Can't be helped, I guess?

How many people in the world can shout You're insane at someone they love?

Fortunately, he had a younger brother who could. After going to the trouble of winning Luise over, the least he could do was make her happy—not leave his fiancée fretting before the wedding even began.

Still, it had worked out well enough. From the look on his face, I doubted we would hear any more talk of joint weddings.

"Erich! Where have you been all this time?!"

When I got back to the field where the club members were playing ball, Ryutis waved both arms with extravagant energy in greeting.

"The bathroom. I said I was going earlier."

"Did you?"

"I didn't hear anything."

Tanian shrugged as he spoke. That bastard had definitely been standing right next to me.

These guys. Not a single one of them had been paying attention.

"Well, at least you made it back at the perfect time."

Ryutis laughed as if none of it mattered and tossed the ball to me.

I caught it on reflex, but something about it was off. A ragged, patched-up thing covered in stitch marks—and yet somehow fully inflated, firm as could be.

"We're going back to jokgu! This time it's three-on-three!"

"Three-on-three?"

There were five of us. What was he talking about? Was one of us supposed to play with an imaginary friend?

I looked around with that thought—and found someone who absolutely should not have been standing there.

…Sir Villar?

What was he doing here…?

Our eyes met as I stared blankly, and Sir Villar gave a slightly bitter nod of greeting.

"Figured Later would only admit defeat if the numbers were even."

Noticing the exchange of looks between me and Sir Villar, Ryutis burst out laughing as he explained.

It was true—Later, against all expectation, still refused to accept that he was the weakest link. The numbers hadn't been fair, so it wasn't a proper match; you couldn't measure skill with a game this absurd; and on and on. For the usual Later, it was pure, unimaginable ugliness.

So Ryutis had dragged Sir Villar in to make it three-on-three.

This maniac.

Calling in a royal knight for one game of jokgu?

This is going to be fun.

Crazy bastard. That was exactly why I liked him.

I stepped onto the field, holding down the thrum of anticipation in my chest. The faint worry about my brother that had still been clinging to me vanished clean away.

Right. I had already done everything I could. If he didn't change after hearing all that, it was simply beyond me. And I believed he would come out the other side fine.

"Clean three-set series, best of three."

"Usually 'clean' means a single match."

I steeled myself as the club members and Sir Villar took their places.

Our jokgu started now!

I had been insane.

That was the conclusion I reached after long, careful reflection. I had been out of my mind—thoroughly, spectacularly so.

Damn it.

I covered my face with both hands in sheer mortification. Remembering the idiotic logic I had so confidently laid out in front of Margeta, in front of the Second Division Chief, in front of Erich, made me want to die.

And when I thought of how Margeta, Luise, and Irina had still treated me with warmth after hearing all of that, I wanted to die even more.

"Just the thought is enough. Thank you."

Margeta's voice, soft as she patted my back, echoed through my skull again. At the same time my hands and feet curled in on themselves.

Instinctively I looked out the window. If I went out headfirst, would the memories just… disappear?

I'm going to lose it.

Still, running away into amnesia would be cowardly. I had already surrendered myself to madness once and acted like a coward. I was not going to do it a second time.

I sighed and pulled out a communication orb. There was damage control to do immediately.

"Yeah. It's me."

Seeing the Second Division Chief's tense expression, I found myself looking away for no good reason. Had I ever felt this embarrassed in front of this guy before?

"So, about what I said a while back…"

And how long had it been since I had seen the Second Division Chief this stiff in front of me?

"…Did you tell anyone else?"

"Anyone besides him?"

Exactly the scale I had expected—and a scale I could still salvage. Relief slipped out of me in a sigh.

Thank goodness. If only the Minister knew, I could manage. If word had reached the other division chiefs, there would have been no walking it back.

But the relief came too soon.

Between the questions and the sigh, he must have figured something out. The rigid set of the Second Division Chief's face melted at high speed into a grin.

"Hey, wait—"

And before I could stop him, the Second Division Chief tossed the orb aside and vanished.

Talking about a mad department chief was never easy—but talking about the dark history of a department chief who had finally come back to his senses was pure joy.

"Damn it."

I want to die.