How to Strangle a Tiger – 2
If I were to describe my relationship with Yuria, it had always leaned toward me being the one who suffered. To her, the House was quite literally everything. Even weighed against herself, Yuria would have chosen the House without hesitation.
She had said that killing me, too, was a choice made only because my existence had become a poison to the family.
"It wasn't because I hated you. I never once disliked you. It's simply that the name Taylor was far more than you deserved."
Because I didn't fit—because there was far too much wanting in me for anyone who bore the name Taylor.
Of everything I had prized across my past regressions, staying alive was one thing, but closer to the truth was this: I had tried to turn Yuria's and Theresia's hearts. That Yuria might look away from the House and toward family instead. That Theresia might cast aside her own greed and repent.
Someone might call that foolish, but to me, they had once been precious people. Even later, when my feelings changed and they no longer held the place they used to, I still believed that Yuria and Theresia could change.
If I had set out to overturn the House and aim directly at the Crown Prince—the cause of my death—I could probably have finished it in a handful of regressions. The reason I hadn't was that I'd wanted to move forward carrying everything with me. Even if it made me look like a fool or an idiot, I believed it was right.
I didn't think Yuria would change in this life. I had discarded that kind of hope long ago; it was wiser to assume the woman called Yuria would remain exactly as she was from here on.
Having abandoned that possibility entirely in past loops, then—let me consider how things would flow from here, left to her nature. Most likely, she would do nothing right away. Even my declaration that I would become the Family Head was, from her position, still nothing more than an empty remark.
My standing in the ducal mansion was truly pitiful. There was no one to back me—Renald... no, even Renald might be supporting Yuria. Let me simply assume my base of support was nonexistent.
The imperial family existed, but with no word from the Crown Prince, that meant little for now. So then, what was I to do at this very moment? Having thrown out my bold pronouncement, what exactly was I supposed to do?
The answer was simple. Go to the Family Head of Taylor and make my position unmistakably clear. What was it they said—to catch a wolf, you must enter the wolf's den? It was time to meet the largest wolf of all.
"What were you thinking, moving as you did?"
It was the first thing I heard the moment I stepped into the study. The certainty in that voice—as though he had already seen through everything, down to my having contacted the Imperial Princess—gave me a moment's pause.
Having resolved to become the Family Head, my every judgment had to appear, in others' eyes, as being for the House and the House alone. The true reason I had approached the Imperial Princess was to build a faction of my own; the reason visible on the surface was the family's gain.
After a brief silence, I spoke as though it were nothing.
"I judged it would work in our favor. I never believed the subjugation would succeed in the first place."
"Your reason?"
"There are too many non-human races. If the elves and orcs united to hold the line, the subjugation might succeed in its early stages, but it would fail without fail."
This was, you could say, a future already set in stone. The subjugation that had looked like a success at first would end in complete failure—and the imperial family, which had opposed it from the very beginning, would seize the reins of power.
Thinking of what lay ahead, any shrinking of Taylor's power was unacceptable. And so I had weighed making the first move—and this was what that consideration had yielded. Looking at the outcome: Taylor had taken the imperial family's side, and the subjugation would be postponed for the time being. And the profit the House would reap from that? Even without my explaining, Father surely understood it well enough already.
"I take it the reason you believe it will fail is that survey of the non-human races you conducted on your own. I don't know where you obtained it, but is it reliable?"
"I am certain of it. The subjugation will fail."
"...Then what do we stand to gain through it?"
"The imperial family's support—and the assurance that we can continue to hold the highest seat among the nobility for years to come."
In truth, after the subjugation failed, Taylor's prestige had swayed violently. We had been the ones to champion the campaign most loudly, and so we took its fallout squarely on the chin. Could Father really not have foreseen that? He almost certainly had. He had simply gambled a certain stake on the outcome.
Those cold eyes were still fixed on me, but one thing was certain: he was clearly intrigued. There would be no flaw to find in what I had said. More than that, it matched what Father himself had been thinking—so of course it did. He had been agonizing over a way forward just then, and now that I had gone ahead and made contact with the imperial family, his assessment of me must have been revised. From a stupid, spineless, disappointing son—to, as it turned out, a boy who could think for himself after all.
But I had no intention of stopping there. So I let the words keep flowing.
"And to become the next Family Head, I needed to secure the imperial family's support in my own way."
"...The next Family Head?"
It must have struck him as rather amusing—he let out a hollow laugh and glared at me. His eyes, thinned as though to weigh whether my words were sincere, soon relaxed back into their usual shape. He had realized I wasn't lying. Now he would be turning over why I had said it at all. The son who had never once shown interest in the seat of Family Head was now declaring he would take it. Finding the reason behind such a reversal would be no simple matter.
"I won't ask why. Your claim to the succession is still valid. What I wonder is whether you can actually do it."
"I intend to head north this winter. I owe a reply for the handkerchief I received last time, don't I?"
That had originally been a card House Taylor meant to play for its own profit, but my heart had changed, and my thinking along with it. It was better that I go to the North myself. There was the matter of needing to meet Adele—but above all, looking to the future, nothing would serve me as well as the military might of the North.
"And after that, I'll be heading south with the Saintess."
"The Saintess?"
"We're personally acquainted."
The expression that had turned strange at the mention of Adele was, for an instant, washed with surprise. He must have found the idea of my being acquainted with the Saintess genuinely unexpected. The weight the name Saintess carried was immense. Her support was the Church's support, and if Adele's backing and the imperial family's were stacked on top of that—at the very least, how the outside world judged me would change in a single stroke.
That the imperial family supported me could be dismissed as coincidence. So there's some arrangement between Taylor and the palace—it was the kind of thing that could be waved away like that. But if the North and the Saintess stood behind me as well? From that point on, the world's assessment of me could hardly remain the same.
"...It seems a great deal happened while I wasn't watching."
"I've been rather busy. Resolving to become the Family Head is quite a recent decision, after all."
"This change of heart—was it your own choice?"
At that question, my voice briefly stalled. Becoming the Family Head was a decision forged across my past loops, but Father knew nothing of my regressions; to him it would simply look as though I had transformed overnight. My own choice, was it. The thought that trailed after it drew a dry laugh from me, and I opened my mouth slowly.
"Someone said something to me once. Back when I was busy being pathetic, he came to find me and said this."
It was a memory that belonged to me alone. What Father had said when he came to my cell, with my execution drawing near, after that very first death. Those words had lodged in my chest, and so my regressions began. It was with that vow—never again—that I had taken the Moonstone into my keeping.
"He told me that in the end, everything was my sin—that no amount of remorse or regret would change a thing. That even if I met a miserable death, it was a wrong I had committed myself, so who was there to blame?"
"...That's a rather insolent thing to say to the head of House Taylor."
"Hearing those words, I came to a realization. Which is why I intend to prove it."
What my many regressions had taught me was that no matter whom I blamed, nothing would change. The people around me never changed—neither Yuria nor Theresia. In the end, their natures were fixed, weren't they? Which meant that, in the end, it was I who had to change.
Father studied me for a long moment, then at last leaned back against the sofa and stared into the empty air. In eyes that never stopped weighing something, I glimpsed anguish. Anguishing over what—and for whose sake? I had only a moment to wonder before he murmured, in a low voice:
"Then prove it."
The anguish in his eyes remained, but his tone, unlike before, was iron-firm. The contempt for me had thinned; this was a gravity I had never seen in him, not once in my life. Only now, at last, did those eyes regard me not as a pathetic son, but as a man who might someday become the Family Head. Meeting that gaze, I nodded, slowly.
"Prove to me that you can become the Family Head. Go to the North, and then to the South. If you can take the qualification of Young Matriarch from Yuria—"
Cutting through the long silence, that blazing gaze settled on me.
Come to think of it, this was the first time Father had ever granted me such acknowledgment. And yet I felt no joy. If anything, a strange sensation filled my chest to the brim, and my nod came a beat too late.
A thought surfaced in my mind, unbidden. An imagining of what would come after—of me inheriting Taylor, just as he had said, and standing as its head. If I inherited Taylor, what would Father say then? What expression would he wear, watching my Taylor—leveling its blade at the imperial family, baring its sharpened fangs at the Empire itself?
For no reason at all, my heart began to pound. If this feeling rising in me now could be called euphoria, then what on earth was I feeling euphoric about? With my racing heart barely concealed, I somehow managed to slip out of the study.
"Young Master, is it true?"
And with that, the rumor that I intended to become the Family Head would spread through the ducal mansion. It traveled as though on wings—so fast that even Renald, who hadn't heard it from me, came running in astonishment to ask. He was so shaken he arrived with his hair in complete disarray, and when I laughed at the sight of him, Renald went grave and spoke.
"You know better than anyone that the seat of Family Head is not so easily won. Did you truly mean what you said?"
"I have never once lied to you in all our conversations. It's the same this time."
Renald bit his lip as though frustrated for a moment, then at last heaved a long, deep sigh. Watching that, I honestly couldn't help but doubt whether he really was acting out of worry for me. Hadn't there been a time he looked down on me? And yet that behavior didn't feel like mere pretense either, so for now I was simply watching.
No one understood the force of my words better than I did. The rumors alone made it plain that opinion of me was in poor shape—so what would people say, hearing that I intended to throw myself into the contest for Family Head in the middle of all this? No doubt something along the lines of: there he goes again, a flower garden blooming in his head.
I expected it would stay that way until winter had well and truly passed. Which was precisely why winter mattered so much to me. If everything went right over the winter, then before long, the faction of support Yuria had gathered and my own would stand on nearly even footing. The question was what I would do until then—and fortunately, there was one piece of good news.
A letter Renald had brought me. At the name written at its very end, I smiled faintly.
J
The alias Arwen used—and the name of the only alchemist living anywhere near these parts. A letter arriving now with nothing written on it—didn't that mean she had reached a decision of her own? All that remained was to go to her and finish the conversation about the Crown Prince that I had begun last time.
The role Arwen would play this time around was quite simple. If the family called Taylor was the wolf, then the Crown Prince was the tiger I had to bring down. And the one I needed in order to learn how to strangle that tiger's throat—was Arwen.