Villainess
Villainess
And so, onto the carriage we climbed.
Ttageudak ttageudak
We escaped the city and rode for a full two hours.
By the time we reached our destination, the sun was hanging over the horizon.
'Did it really have to be today?'
A beach draped in sunset glow.
A peaceful village where not a single high-rise building obstructed the view.
It was such a secluded fishing port that it was strange to see over ten boats moored at the wooden pier.
Adel looked at the anchored ships and spoke.
"They may look like that, but they're all high-speed boats that served in the navy."
My eyes went wide.
I had thought they looked too sleek for fishing boats, but I never imagined they were military vessels.
And that number, too.
'Even if they're secondhand, that's still... Ten warships prepared?'
The devotion of nobles to their country.
The concept of noblesse oblige—I couldn't understand it.
From my current standpoint, I'd concluded that such 'feelings' simply didn't exist.
All the evidence I'd gathered so far pointed that way.
So it could only be a question.
'What do they gain from going this far?'
Even if just out of curiosity, I decided to dig a little deeper.
As it happened, only one maid was beside Adel.
"Helsi."
When I called her name, a startled Helsi flinched, and I gestured with my chin toward the maid.
Hesitant, Helsi lingered for a moment before asking Marisa.
"Could you lend her to us for a moment?"
Marisa looked down at me with narrowed eyes, then said to the maid.
"Go to the lodging ahead of us."
The maid stammered in confusion.
"B-But..."
Marisa pulled out her folding cane from her bosom and extended it.
"Go. I'm fine."
The maid stared at the red gem at the tip of the cane before reluctantly answering.
"...Understood."
As the maid turned her back, I looked at the cane's tip as if taking her place.
It was similar to the cane Zenon used.
'Is this some kind of trend?'
Short wands exist, so I don't understand why they'd go through the trouble of using a folding cane.
While I was focusing on this sudden curiosity, Helsi and Marisa exchanged questions and answers.
"Are all three of you nobles?"
"I cannot say."
"Are you a mage?"
"Don't worry. I have the skill to carry out the request."
"That sounds like you might not be a mage."
"You heard correctly. That part is also awkward to discuss."
I snapped back to attention and cut in.
"More importantly, let's talk business."
Marisa moved only her eyes to look down at me.
"Before that, you need to restore my trust first."
I was momentarily baffled, but soon understood.
'I see. So that's her type.'
I'd thought she was refreshingly straightforward.
The type that freely gives away what's hers and confidently demands what's yours.
If what's being exchanged were material goods, she'd be an exhausting person to deal with.
But what we're exchanging here is trust.
Whether the other party goes first or I do, there's nothing wrong with giving and receiving faster and more generously.
"That maid you just saw—she was having some interesting fun upstairs before we came here."
Marisa's previously expressionless face twitched subtly.
"Why are you telling me this?"
An unexpected reaction.
'Did she already know?'
I was trying to build trust by offering information, but now I need a bit of bluffing.
"First reason: showing off my skills. Second reason: sharing a secret."
I added an explanation for Marisa, whose eyes were narrowing.
"If I intended to harm you using this secret, I wouldn't be telling you here."
Only then did Marisa withdraw the mana infused in her cane.
"I'll take it as you having the intention to carry out the request."
Then she looked at the sun, which had nearly sunk below the horizon.
A flowing silence.
It seemed time to get to the main point.
"Actually..."
"Before that."
Still not yet.
Marisa cut me off and slowly turned to face me.
Until our eyes met, her face grew colder and colder.
Finally, when our gazes locked, I saw an expression of a trait I'd never encountered in my life.
A face that makes the other feel a threat to their life, not through intentional bloodlust, but solely through emptiness and coldness.
With that expression, Marisa requested—no, commanded.
"Drop the perception inhibition magic."
A beautiful person must be strong.
Only then can they live even a little longer.
Born as the youngest of five beautiful sisters, Marisa was fortunately given time to realize this truth.
Her older sisters didn't have enough time.
The beautiful daughters of a declining noble family were precious gems coveted by everyone.
If that family had been declining in an ordinary way, the people approaching the gems would surely have been collectors who couldn't suppress their surging possessiveness.
But unfortunately, Marisa's family was too special.
There were those for whom this family simply had to disappear.
Thus, the family's most precious gems were thoroughly exploited.
The 'enemies' cleverly used the gems—who were well aware of their own beauty—and the desires of the collectors fascinated by them to hasten the family's downfall.
Vanity.
Drugs.
Love.
The theft of chastity.
The brilliance of the gems faded in so many different ways.
That's how Marisa came to realize:
'Beautiful people must be strong.'
Fortunately, around that time, Marisa's family was deemed unrecoverable by their enemies.
They chose not to bother with the last remaining sharp and precarious gem.
Thanks to that, she was able to grow strong enough.
...And yet.
She thought there would be nothing left to shake her heart anymore.
'What is this adorable thing...?'
A beautiful person must be strong.
Was it because of that belief?
When the perception inhibition magic was lifted, the bright blue-eyed little one that came into view felt so noble that it shook her reason.
Perhaps the memory of the light that the gems, which had faded before her eyes, originally emitted had been idealized within her to an extreme, creating a single ideal, and that ideal had now converged with the sight before her.
Either way, it was dangerous.
'To think I still have feelings like this.'
She was disappointed in the weakness remaining in her heart.
Disappointment gave rise to anger.
"Tch."
With a face like she'd bitten into something foul, Marisa clicked her tongue, spun around, and looked back at the sunset.
The sun, now disappeared below the horizon, was leaving behind a faint crimson glow where it had been.
The sky gradually seeped with blue, calming down.
Marisa suddenly asked a question that came to mind.
"How old are you?"
The answer made her thoughts deepen.
"It's a secret."
Why a secret?
How did someone so young come to keep her age a secret?
Her deepening thoughts left her unable to answer the girl's following suggestion.
'I'll think about it while I sleep.'
Uncharacteristically, she put off what she needed to do and rested her body and mind at the lodging.
The lodging Marisa had arranged was an ordinary house on the edge of the fishing village.
A small living room attached to the kitchen.
Two bedrooms and one attic.
The creaking floorboards and walls with exposed bricks looked infinitely shabby compared to the mansion we'd seen earlier, but the furniture and tableware provided were on the higher end.
And most importantly—
"Alright. You can talk now."
—the absence of surveillance devices.
"What did you do?"
I explained to Helsi, who asked with an uneasy expression.
"You know that tiny gargoyle I used against the subjugation forces at the lab? The one that collects sound and images. I was checking if they'd installed something like that."
The beads of blood that had been rolling between the walls and floorboards came rolling back to my heels.
Helsi stared blankly at the sight, then asked with a trembling voice.
"Are we okay? Shouldn't I come clean and say I'm a commoner now?"
She'd had an uneasy face as soon as we entered the house, so I thought she still wasn't used to it, but she was worrying about something strange.
"We never claimed to be nobles. That was the concept from the start, wasn't it?"
Act like a noble, but never declare yourself one.
It was a safety measure against potential charges of impersonation.
Of course, this was also a policy based on my own self-established safety standards, so it was ultimately meaningless, but it was still important.
Having my own standards.
'I'm not doing this to commit fraud anyway.'
By my most important standards, impersonation wasn't really a great sin either.
If there was any sin, it might be on the side of 'cooperating with Marisa.'
The murder and mutilation that happened in the basement.
The business venture funded by war investment.
Both were too risky.
Dipping into things without checking the safe path was no different from ignoring the losses and sins—
That is, neglecting the probability of connecting to sin.
So I was thinking about backing out of the offer I'd made to Marisa when Hati's strange behavior caught my eye.
She was standing quietly by the window, looking outside.
I approached and followed Hati's gaze.
The seaside was still so clearly visible even after sunset.
What Hati was looking at were the large ships swaying with the waves.
'Is she just curious?'
Come to think of it, it seemed like an easy research subject to figure out where Hati's ego was hiding.
There was only one obstacle to that research.
Money.
'Let's make that my goal first.'
My mind solidified with a decision close to a whim.
'I won't back out of the offer, and I'll complete the request for sure.'
Having made that decision, I lay down on the bed.