The Delinquent Third Son
"Young Master. It's time for breakfast."
A soft voice tickled his ear. Warm sunlight wrapped gently around his whole body.
"Five more minutes…"
"Young Master!"
"What kind of young master am I supposed to be…"
He twisted in the sheets, half-asleep. His entire body felt as heavy as lead. The last thing he wanted was to get up.
"If you skip another meal, the head of the house said he'll cut off your funding."
"C-cut off my funding?!"
At the word funding, his eyes snapped open of their own accord.
Cutting off my funding? Absolutely not. No way.
"Oh my."
He sat bolt upright—and found a startled young woman staring straight at him.
"…Who are you?"
She wore a maid's uniform trimmed with white and black lace. Come to think of it, she had been calling him Young Master.
"Honestly! Young Master! Stop fooling around and get moving!"
She grabbed his arm and hauled him upright by force. Before he knew it he was on his feet, letting her dress him. Was this a dream?
…Where am I?
A four-poster bed hung with canopy and curtains. A linen mattress embroidered with fine stitching. An intricately carved wooden chair and table. Walls of stone draped in tapestries.
This was not his room.
"Huh?"
Rattle—
He pushed open the window, and an unfamiliar landscape spilled into view.
A broad courtyard with a central fountain. Servants tended the gardens while, near the main gate, knights in full armor stood in formation. At that very moment, a sleek iron automobile rumbled through the elegant front entrance, exhaust growling.
What on earth was he looking at?
"Is there a… mirror?"
"Here you are."
She handed him a small rectangular hand mirror. In its cloudy surface, a stranger stared back—curly blue hair, deep dark circles under his eyes, a haggard face he had never seen in his life.
"What… the hell?"
He slapped his own cheek and pinched his thigh. Pain flared—nothing more. He did not wake up.
So this wasn't a dream?
He turned to the maid who had woken him and started firing questions: What was his name? Where was this place? What about that automobile just now?
She answered with surprising calm, wearing the expression of someone thinking, Oh, he's at it again.
"Honestly. Still half-asleep, are you? Young Master Robon Bladewyn?"
Robon Bladewyn.
This was the Bladewyn family estate, and that scrapheap of metal was a mobile vehicle manufactured by Vulkan of the Mardin Principality.
So it really is a dream after all.
He had half-wondered whether he'd been possessed by some medieval figure—but an automobile? What was that doing here? Was this one of those medieval fantasy worlds from movies, comics, and novels?
Was he the clichéd protagonist who'd been hit by a truck and dumped into another world? Hah…
Smack! Smack!
"Oh my! Young Master! Why are you hitting your own face!"
"…Is this real?"
"Really now. You must have had a strange dream last night."
His mind felt foggy. Had he actually been possessed?
"……You said that thing earlier was a mobile vehicle, right?"
"Yes. That's what I heard. And why do you keep speaking so formally?"
Once he decided to roll with the reality in front of him, the automobile he'd just seen started nagging at him. It had looked peculiar—clearly not a steam engine. An internal combustion engine, then?
"Hurry along. Everyone's waiting."
"Ah—uh… right."
He rubbed his eyes and headed for the dining hall, picking up various scraps of information from the maid along the way.
"Ahem. Ahem."
Before the towering iron double doors—far taller than he was—he straightened his clothes and cleared his throat.
"Young Master. Feeling more yourself now?"
"Yeah."
The maid's name was Rachel. She had been his personal attendant since childhood—or rather, Robon Bladewyn's. He was not Robon Bladewyn. He was Noh Bo-jun.
Creeeak—
The doors opened, revealing an enormous rectangular dining table.
At the head sat a blue-haired middle-aged man whose expression could have frozen the room solid. Direct family members lined both sides of the table.
That must be the head of the house. And the woman beside him, his wife…
Best to play along, keep his head down, and get out without drawing attention.
The one silver lining was Robon Bladewyn's reputation.
—People call him a delinquent, you know. That's why they say those things.
—A delin… quent?
—So if you're suddenly speaking formally because of that, it's not going to change anyone's opinion of you… Ah, I'm sorry!
Tch. So Robon Bladewyn was known around here as a good-for-nothing. Damn it. Dream or reality, of all the people he could have reincarnated as, it had to be the family delinquent.
"Robon. Come sit down. Everyone's been waiting on you."
The young man seated beside the head of the house. He resembled the patriarch more than anyone else—right down to his tone and presence.
"Yeah."
The young man had scolded him. His disapproving gaze left a strong impression.
"Robon Bladewyn."
The head of the house called his name without warning. He tensed for an instant, then held his poker face as carefully as he could so nothing would show.
"Do not skip your meals. Even that curiosity of yours needs a healthy body if you ever hope to satisfy it."
"Yes."
The patriarch lifted his knife and began cutting his meat; the clink of cutlery rose from all around the table. Watching their manners carefully, he made an awkward show of following the etiquette as he sliced his own portion.
Even he could tell how stiff he looked next to their natural ease. The family's pointed stares prickled against his skin.
I'm losing my mind. Did they notice?
Cold sweat seemed to crawl down the back of his neck. He was a man who had never properly cut a steak in his life, let alone practiced noble etiquette. There had always been invitations, but he had turned them all down, claiming he was too busy with research. He should have gone to a few of those dinners while he had the chance.
As he ate in silence, he pieced together their names and ranks.
The mistress of the house, Marie Bladewyn. The eldest, Gain Bladewyn. The second son, Burgess Bladewyn. The third son, Robon Bladewyn. And finally, the fourth child.
"Hmm…"
Seated across from him was Wendy Bladewyn.
"Oppa, you're acting weird today. Why are you watching everyone so carefully? You never used to notice anything."
His cute younger sister studied him with bright, sparkling eyes.
So he was the type who never read the room? Given the whole delinquent reputation, that tracks… but still.
He hadn't expected her to talk like that even in front of the ice-cold patriarch. Standing next to the man felt like it might freeze a person solid.
After a moment's debate, he abandoned etiquette entirely and just ate. Better to act the delinquent than keep fumbling through manners that didn't fit. He stabbed the meat with his fork, hacked it roughly with the knife, and tore it with his teeth. It was tender enough that he hardly needed the blade.
"Ooooh… So savage."
Wendy watched him the way one might watch an animal at the zoo, openly impressed.
It was oddly irritating.
"Mmph…"
He glanced at the others. He had expected someone to bark a correction any second—but no one said a word. Not for the rest of the meal. Was that the privilege of being the family good-for-nothing? Not bad at all.
"More! Do more!"
What exactly did Wendy want him to keep doing? Should he try eating with his hands next?
The meal finally ended. After a brief word of advice from the head of the house and reports from the eldest son and the mistress, everyone rose from their seats. The contents of those reports meant nothing to him, so he let them wash past.
"What kind of place is this, anyway?"
Before investigating the family itself, he first had Rachel lead him to where the mobile vehicle was kept. The whole meal, that automobile had refused to leave his mind. He had barely known whether the food was going into his mouth or his nose.
When they reached the garage in the rear courtyard, mechanics were already examining the vehicle.
"Young Master Robon. You've come?"
A mechanic of some years greeted him warmly.
"Yeah."
He didn't know the man, but the man seemed well-disposed toward him.
"Mind if I take a look at this?"
"Of course. This is the new prototype from Vulkan—the Black Terrahole."
"Black Terrahole?"
"It means 'black horse galloping across the land.'"
Not a bad name. The name, at least.
"Hand me some tools."
"Here you are."
A red toolbox snapped open with a thunk, revealing an assortment of instruments—wrench sets, screwdriver sets, hammers, pliers, and more. Plenty of useful gear.
Is their metalworking better than I thought?
Why a place that looked so thoroughly medieval would have equipment like this was a question for later. The existence of an automobile here already made no sense.
What mattered now was figuring out how this thing actually ran.
Creeak! Clunk! Thud!
He opened the hood with practiced ease and inspected the structure inside.
What is this? The layout is strange…
A rectangular unit etched with blue circuits sat where an engine should have been.
…A battery? No. The shape is all wrong for a battery. And what are these bizarre components?
A blue substance glowed as it was pumped through lines into the cylinders. The overall architecture was roughly familiar, but every individual part was something he had never seen before.
It was neither an engine nor a battery. More precisely, it was something that sat somewhere between the two.
His eyes lit up.
There's residual heat, but not much. The internal structure is complicated—the chassis must be heavy, and it takes up a lot of volume. The cooling system is… what is it even made of?
He felt as if he almost understood it, and yet he didn't. If he could just pin down the role of this engine-substitute, everything else might fall into place…
He had no idea what the blue liquid was, but a little research would clear that up soon enough. Probably a substance that existed only in this world. It seemed to be serving as the fuel.
"Y-Young Master! You can't just tear it apart like that!"
The elderly mechanic rushed to stop him. He had been poking and prodding so many places so quickly that the old man's reactions lagged a full beat behind. He still couldn't actually stop him—he could only hop from foot to foot in distress.
"But why build it like this? There's so much missing."
"E-excuse me? Y-Young Master? What do you mean by that…"
"How is anyone supposed to ride in this thing? For starters, there's no suspension—the ride quality must be garbage."
"G-garbage?! Young Master! You mustn't say such things!"
The old man stammered in panic. Garbage was garbage. Was Vulkan really such a big deal around here?
"Mustn't? I saw it earlier—it was rattling like crazy. Drive this long enough and you'll destroy your backside."
There was still plenty he didn't understand, but the basic principles had to share some common ground. As an engineer, he simply could not ignore this—the absolute pinnacle of inefficiency! The ultimate monument to passenger discomfort, designed without the slightest thought for ride quality!
However impressive that power source might be, the internal structure was a mess.
It has that exact feel of something they kept bolting extra parts onto until it finally, barely, worked…
Crunch! Clatter!!
"Rachel! Stop him, would you!"
"Young Master! You can't go causing accidents! The family elders are already watching for any excuse—!"
He ignored them both and focused on his work. When had he ever cared what other people thought?
Robon Bladewyn's nickname was the family delinquent, right? How convenient that it fit him so perfectly. In the robotics world, the real delinquent had always been Noh Bo-jun. That was exactly why Korea's power brokers had cut him loose in the end.
"Heh heh heh…"
He was cheerfully dismantling parts under the hood and unscrewing bolts around the wheels when a voice like a sheet of ice ran down his spine.
"Robon. What exactly do you think you're doing?"
He crawled out from under the car. Behind him stood the head of the house, staring down at him with eyes as cold as winter.