A Veteran Orphan's Performance
Lately, Hana's behavior has been strange.
"Young miss, is there anything you happen to like? A hobby, say, or…"
There was no way she had seen through my plan, and yet the fact that she had begun taking such an interest in my tastes and the things I enjoyed was suspicious all on its own.
And she asks it so desperately, too.
Maybe something like a threat was waiting behind her. Or an order. For this to be her own idea, the change in her reactions was far too sudden.
Not a bad thing. If anything, it's good.
It worked in my favor. It meant our precious little treasure was still capable of rational judgment.
Worst case, I'd already braced myself to end up soaked in blood.
Sorry, Hana—but if Pino had been past the point of thinking straight, Hana's head would have burst like a firecracker. And if even a scrap of restraint had remained, it simply would have burst somewhere I couldn't see.
That risk had already been accounted for. How much time remained until the final chapter was anyone's guess, and I was frankly skeptical that Pino's condition could be called sound. I had weighed that carefully enough… but any sensible modern person comes equipped with a healthy not my problem and an unbreakable the important thing is a heart that doesn't fold, and both of them recommended the same choice: charge straight ahead.
If she was already gone, my efforts were useless anyway, so it was better to find out early. If she wasn't, then I got to confirm it. Rational enough, if you asked me.
The result of acting on that bravado was a measure of certainty. For now, at least, Pino was still all right.
All of it, really, was thanks to Hana. Omedetou…!
What a relief. She doesn't seem crazy yet.
On the premise that she hadn't lost her mind, Pino was written as someone capable of remarkably rational thought. The mere fact that she could honestly admit she and the person standing across from her were not the same was proof enough.
Whenever she hit a wall in Part One of Vanguard, there was a question she always asked: Why does that person think that way? Considering the cast was, by default, a pack of my-pace idiots who knew nothing but charging forward, that was honestly astonishing. All the more so when you remembered the unjust situations she had been shoved into. No matter how much of a piece of shit the other party was, she still tried, at least once, to consider their side.
Of course, she got dragged so unfairly every time that she fell into darkness anyway… but her nature itself could fairly be called considerate.
And the object of that consideration was me. Watching her ears flush red over a compliment as trivial as being told her white hair was pretty, earning Pino's favor looked very easy.
She'll assume I'm speaking without knowing a thing, so she won't even suspect me.
Which meant the situation was flowing in my favor. And I was confident.
The twenty-first century is the age of dazzling self-promotion. In a deranged society that demands a résumé from people who are hunting for a job in order to build a résumé, survival required a spectacular talent for inventing stories, and a face thick enough to tell a lie without flinching.
For someone who had clawed their way from an orphanage into a major corporation, this was very much my field.
I deliberately put on a forlorn expression. The face was what mattered. You had to look as though it were nothing at all, while letting just a hint of an old wound show through.
"Well… the warmth of another person, I suppose? It might sound a little strange, but I have this feeling no one has ever held me. Which can't be right, and yet… isn't that odd?"
For an instant the air went awkward and cold, as if everyone had been caught off guard. It lasted only a moment.
"O-of course not! You have no idea how the countess doted on you, young miss."
"I know. I do. Both of them loved me very much."
Honestly, I didn't know. I didn't care.
What were my parents' names, anyway? The place where they should have been was a blank, and the moment I thought blank, the first thing that came to mind was a certain famous pair of anime siblings. I highly doubted I had been conceived via some entryway quickie, so my parents were probably just left undefined.
I had a vague memory of being loved by them, but no matter how hard I searched, I could not find a single concrete fact about the people who were supposed to be my parents anywhere in my head. My guess was that the story had meant to write them out later, with some plausible accident, and let them exit on their own.
Then why plant memories of people who were only going to leave? If I had to guess, it had something to do with Pino's unfortunate family.
This was a world where every kind of superpower ran wild, and yet Vanguard's setting sat closer to the Middle Ages. Which meant the science was garbage, and pregnancy was a different difficulty entirely from the modern version. So her mother dying as she gave birth to her could not be called her fault. It had been unavoidable.
Her father, however, seemed to have held a slightly different opinion.
He hurled abuse at a Pino who was still only a child, locked her away, and left her there.
In an age when albinos were poorly regarded, it might have been meant to protect her… but even granting that, there was no escaping the verdict of a horrific father.
The way abused children so often blame themselves, Pino would have walked a similar road. And she would have wished for it—parents who loved her.
So maybe she at least wanted to give me a happy memory. She couldn't give me the real thing, but a memory, she could manufacture.
A guess, of course. Still, when it came to reading my favorite character, I had a certain confidence. And even if I was wrong, it didn't matter.
Just look at how strangely gloomy the room had become.
"…Of course. The count and the countess both loved you so very much, young miss."
Hana cast Bullshit!
The effect was astonishing.
Chilly Atmosphere +20
What a load of nonsense.
But what mattered was the situation itself.
To them, what I had just said must have sounded a great deal like a child who didn't even know their parents were gone, chirping, "If I sleep a hundred nights, Mom and Dad come home, right? I'll wait, because I'm a good kid." The gap in what we knew would lead them to their own reasonable conclusions, and along the way they would pity me all the more. Once a plausible reason was in place, my behavior could be read from an entirely different angle than before—like a baby unconsciously seeking warmth.
Waaah. I'm a baby with no parents. I'm lonely. I need warmth.
Pino would be no different. Her circumstances weren't the same, but she had surely thought something similar once. It even occurred to me that my unusually mature appearance might exist for that very reason. If she had wanted a friend, she could have made one around the same age—so why go out of her way to give me a grown body? Perhaps she had projected a mother onto me.
If so, this subject was bound to land.
I wore a sorrowful smile and threw the final straight punch.
"Of course I know. I know how much the two of them love me. But isn't it strange? Sometimes a corner of my chest feels empty in a way that doesn't make any sense. As if I haven't seen someone precious to me in a very long time… that kind of feeling."
Even then my looks were working overtime, and the method acting of a veteran orphan with twenty-six years on the job had more than enough power to wring tears out of people.
"……"
As if I had no idea the room had gone silent and bleak, I turned my eyes back to my book. A success.
Good. My skills haven't rusted. What a relief.
My sympathy-baiting skill. I used to steal tears from the lunch-counter aunties with it, and thanks to that I got sausage buns for free. The buns I couldn't finish, I turned around and sold to my friends with tears still in my eyes—but the kindness they had shown me, that much I kept buried whole in my chest.
Aunties, are you watching? Thanks to all that practice, I have become a magnificent femme fatale who can make any number of women cry. I'm not entirely sure how I ended up here, but please accept my thanks.
And this little sympathy strategy of mine paid off surprisingly soon.
A bit too well, if anything.
"Did you enjoy your meal, young miss? Let me hold you!"
"Mm… well, thank you?"
"Not at all. I should be the one thanking you."
Maid A locked me in a tight embrace and patted my back. They had always been a little excessively kind, but now they were genuinely treating me like a baby. The moment I did anything at all they called me a good girl and scooped me up, and setting aside how intriguing that was, it was starting to feel like too much. At this rate I was genuinely afraid that any day now someone would coo, Shall our wittle missy have some num-nums?
Still.
If she's acting like this, then she really did empathize with my situation.
Then that was enough. One step at a time would do. There was still plenty of time.
"M-me too! Let me hold you too!"
And what was this redhead's problem now?