The Proposal (3)
The deal had gone far more smoothly than expected.
For all the arguments Roseline had prepared, the head of the trading house never once managed to properly lift his head from beginning to end.
"I never imagined it would be resolved this easily…."
The words slipped out of Roseline almost unconsciously the moment she stepped out of the trading house. In her hands were a certificate stamped with the house's seal and a stack of documents — matters she'd been unable to get answers for anywhere until that very afternoon, all settled on a few sheets of paper.
Serena smiled lightly as she started toward the carriage.
"It wasn't resolved easily."
Roseline lifted her head.
"Then… how?"
"You went the hard way around."
Serena stopped and looked back at her. Beneath the streetlamps, her black hair sank into shadow, and her sharp eyes held not the slightest flicker of uncertainty.
"The trading house master didn't come out to hear you talk. He came out to confirm my name."
Roseline felt her grip tighten on the certificate.
"I'm well aware of that much."
"No, you're not."
Serena took a step closer.
"That door didn't open. You simply found yourself standing in front of a door I'd already opened."
Roseline couldn't answer right away.
The scene inside the trading house came flooding back. Before she had even begun her explanation, the master had already been wearing the face of a man accepting a conclusion — and it hadn't been aimed at Veloa, the party to the transaction.
It had been aimed at one name. Serena Arzen.
"Thank you," Roseline said shortly. "It's a fact that I was helped."
"When you put it that way, it's no fun at all."
"This isn't something to be heard for fun."
"Fun is the most important thing to me," Serena replied with perfect composure.
Roseline said nothing more. She already knew that the longer she exchanged words with this woman, the more she would be dragged along at her pace.
But Serena wasn't finished.
"Still, today was rather entertaining."
"What was?"
"The way you sat beside me wearing the face of someone who could do absolutely nothing."
Roseline's expression hardened. Yet Serena, seeing that reaction, didn't laugh.
"You can be angry. It isn't as though it's untrue."
"……."
"You did the talking, yes. But what the trading house master saw was me, and it was I who made him press the seal."
Roseline tucked the certificate deep inside her coat.
"That doesn't mean I become yours, Serena."
The corner of Serena's mouth rose, just barely.
"We'll see."
That single phrase lingered in the cold street air more vividly than the chill itself.
"My lady, you've returned."
When they arrived back at the Arzen Annex, Isabel was waiting at the door. "Was the transaction satisfactory?"
"It hardly deserved to be called a transaction."
Serena entered, pulling off her gloves. The cold night air of the capital still clung to the hem of her clothes. Perhaps it was because she had parted ways with Roseline, but her mood felt inexplicably heavy.
Not bad, she thought. If anything, it had gone well.
Isabel took her coat and spoke quietly. "Even so, this move was unexpected."
"What was?"
"I expected you to seize the Veloa family's financial lifelines and shake them from side to side. I assumed you would block or throttle everything — their investments, their appraisals, their trading houses."
Hearing this, Serena considered it for a moment before speaking. The hand passing over her coat stopped in midair. And then, very slowly, she smiled.
"Isabel."
"Yes."
"Have you ever fallen from the highest place?"
Isabel couldn't answer immediately. "I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean."
"Nothing in particular."
Serena walked to the window and stopped. The Academy lay quiet under the blanket of night. The streets that swarmed with students by day looked, from up here, like nothing more than a line of scattered pinpricks of light.
"It's simply this — a beautiful bird that once soared freely through the sky finds, at some point, that it can no longer fly."
Serena tapped the window frame lightly with a fingertip.
"If you clip its wings from the start, there's no fun in it. The bird never even properly knows it has fallen. The height it once flew to, the sensation of looking down from above, the illusion that it could fly again — all of it remains nothing but a momentary dream."
"Then," Isabel ventured carefully, "you lifted her up on purpose."
"A little."
Serena didn't deny it.
"Roseline believes she's already at rock bottom, but she isn't. Not yet. She's merely convinced there's still ground beneath her feet. Her family is crumbling, but it isn't finished entirely. A mine appeared, and today the trading house doors opened. Back at the main house, they're probably breathing freely for the first time in ages."
"You're giving her hope."
"Yes."
Serena smiled. "So she can endure that much longer."
Isabel said nothing, only watched her.
"If I tighten the noose right away, Roseline will choose to resist. Even with her family in ruins — no, especially once she realizes I'm pressing down on her openly, her defiance will come first. That's simply the kind of person she is."
"Then for now…"
"I have to carve it into her first — that I am not her enemy."
"She seems to have already taken a good deal of ill will toward you for anyone to believe you're not an enemy."
Serena looked at her own reflection in the window. Black hair, sunken eyes, the shallow smile still resting at the corner of her mouth.
"The one who opened the door. The one who let her breathe. The one who let her main house move again."
Her fingertip slowed to a stop.
"And at the same time — the one who made her understand that every one of those doors hangs from my hand."
Only then did Isabel lower her eyes, as if understanding had finally arrived. "You intend to make Lady Veloa see you as her passage — by her own doing."
"A passage isn't enough."
Serena's voice dropped low.
"At first, a passage will do. Next, she'll need me as a prop. After that, an airhole. And then, at some point, she'll realize it — that while she thought she was standing on her own, she had in fact been in a state where everything would collapse the moment my hand withdrew."
A short silence settled over the room.
Isabel, tidying Serena's gloves, asked quietly, "Then what do you intend to do about the mine?"
"Let her verify whether it's real."
"You won't block it?"
"Not yet."
Serena turned around.
"If it's fake, it'll collapse on its own. And even if it's real, it hardly matters."
"Because you hold the leash either way."
"Yes."
Her eyes curved into a thin crescent.
"The truer the hope, the longer it lingers once it's torn away."
This time, Isabel couldn't answer right away.
Serena picked up the documents laid on the table — copies she'd brought back from the trading house today. A schedule for the first appraisal, a conditional review, a request for reply from the main house. All of it amounted to a few thin sheets of paper, but to Roseline, they must have weighed far more than that.
"Roseline wrote it with her own hand today."
"What do you mean?"
"An Arzen guarantee."
The corner of Serena's mouth lifted slightly.
"Not mediation — a guarantee. I told her to correct it, and Roseline drew a fresh line and rewrote it herself."
"……."
"That's what matters. I didn't force her to write it. Roseline wrote it — in the letter going to her main house, my name, written by her own hand."
Serena set the documents down.
"From now on, every time Veloa moves, Roseline will have to pass through me. The main house will think the same way. Lady Arzen is watching. Lady Arzen guaranteed it. Lady Arzen made the connection."
"In that case, the Veloa family will have no choice but to be conscious of you as well."
"Exactly."
Serena smiled in satisfaction.
"The family will push at Roseline's back. Look into it further. Ask around. Speak with Lady Arzen. If you can receive her help, then receive it."
"From Lady Veloa's perspective, her grounds for escape are shrinking."
"Yes."
Serena turned away from the window.
"Roseline will try to protect herself to the very end. She'll remember my saying I'd stop if she told me she hated it, too. And in truth, I won't cross that line."
Then she added, slowly:
"In exchange, I'll drive her right up to that line every single time."
Isabel's gaze wavered, if only faintly.
"My lady."
"Don't worry."
Serena smiled. "I have no intention of breaking her yet."
The room grew quiet again.
"You mustn't break her wings. If you do, she'll never fly again."
Serena rested her fingertips on the documents.
"I want to watch Roseline struggle to fly again. Watch her reach for the heights, endure, believe that it's her own strength carrying her."
Her fingertip pressed down on the paper, ever so slowly.
"And then, at the very last moment, I'll let her know."
"Know what?"
"That the place she climbed to was never the sky."
Serena's voice sank low.
"It was the palm of my hand."
Isabel asked nothing more. Serena, as though that were answer enough, closed the folder.
Today's transaction had succeeded. Roseline would bring the letter, the main house would fixate on Serena's name, and the trading house and the appraisers alike would remember the Arzen guarantee.
"When Roseline comes tomorrow, show her in immediately."
"Yes."
"And don't give the appraisers an answer too quickly. Make them wait."
"Do you mean the Veloa side?"
"No."
Serena smiled.
"Roseline."
After a brief silence, Isabel bowed her head. "Understood."
Serena looked out at the lights beyond the window.
The beautiful bird still believes it can fly.
And the longer it believed that, the better she liked it.
Because the fall must come only after it has been lifted to its very highest point.
"For all that you are my mistress, you have an ugly nature."
Isabel said it quietly.
Serena blinked for a moment, then broke into a laugh of pure incredulity.
"That's going too far."
"Compared to what you intend to do, it's a gentle way of putting it."
"That badly?"
"Yes. Quite."
Serena laughed and leaned back against her chair. "And yet you don't try to stop me."
"If you were someone who could be talked out of it, you would never have come this far in the first place."
"You've gotten rather insolent."
"I can only blame having taken after my mistress."
"That's even worse."
In answer, Isabel simply bowed her head. Her expression remained calm as ever, but Serena caught the disapproval hidden in that silence.
"Are you worried?"
"About you, my lady."
"Me?"
"Yes."
Isabel seemed to pause, choosing her words. "I am not entirely without worry for Lady Veloa either. But more than her, I worry about you."
"What about me?"
"You say you won't cross the line — and yet you try to set foot on it every time."
Serena was silent for a moment.
"And… you seem different from before."
Serena didn't drop her smile, but her gaze grew cold. "How so?"
"The lady you used to be was jealous, certainly, and took pleasure in troubling others."
"My loyalty is moved to tears."
"But in the past, you never clung to a single person this long."
Serena didn't answer.
Isabel kept her head bowed and continued. "It's different now. Rather than Lady Veloa being the one you mean to shake, there are times when it appears you are the one being shaken first."
"Isabel."
"Yes."
"You're crossing a lot of lines today."
"Confirming those lines has never been a privilege reserved for you alone, my lady."
Serena looked at her for a moment, then slowly turned her gaze back to the window.
"It's fine."
"May I believe that?"
"No."
Serena laughed low.
"I just said it for the sake of saying it."