Chapter 154
Chapter 154
Ah, shit.
That startled me.
Why are you bringing up dangerous words here again?
I barely managed to swallow my tea and fend her off.
"Come now. Surely I can't annoy a lady I'm attending. That wouldn't be proper conduct for a nobleman."
Sophia's expression grew peculiar.
Her blue eyes narrowed, and the very same narrow-eyed smile Lucius wore spread across her face.
Twins really are twins. Just look at how identical their smiles are.
But when Lucius smiles, I want to punch him. Why does she look so pretty when she smiles like that?
This is why chromosomes are fucking important.
"You already know that too, don't you, Young Master Farne?"
Sophia hit the nail on the head in her gentle voice.
"If you insist on drawing such a scrupulously formal line between us, that's actually less courteous to me."
"……"
The Rohanna family genes are terrifying.
I improvised an excuse in a hurry.
"Haha. If I were rude to you, my lady, who knows what that bastard Lucius would say to me? He might even grab me by the collar for treating his little sister rudely."
"Hmm. That's your excuse?"
"It's not an excuse. It's a genuine survival instinct."
That bastard is a crazed siscon, after all.
Sophia then asked, disappointment lacing her voice.
"You accept anything from Lucius, yet with me, are you going to keep treating me like this, maintaining only a safe distance?"
"That's……"
I scratched my chin and thought for a moment.
If I tried to dodge the question here, it was obvious this young lady would keep digging.
"It's just that Lucius is the same se—…… a man. There's simply nothing I can do about that."
Phew.
I almost said 'balls.'
Sophia's eyes wavered at my answer.
"……"
She parted her lips slightly, then promptly pressed them shut.
A brief, strange silence hovered over the table.
Sophia stared at the yellow flowers in the vase once, then slowly nodded.
"……That's true, I suppose. Lucius is a man. Hmm. Right."
As she muttered that with a faint sigh, was it just my imagination?
'It felt as though she'd just swallowed back the words she'd been about to say.'
The shift in her expression a moment ago had definitely carried that nuance.
What on earth had she been about to say?
I was intensely curious, but I deliberately chose not to press her.
If I asked first why she was acting that way and showed interest,
I'd look like I was curious about what was going on inside her,
and that would be exactly the sort of behavior likely to make the other person uncontrollably misunderstand: 'Does he have feelings for me?'
* * *
* * *
The drawing room of the Rohanna mansion.
In the heavy silence that had settled over the room, Lucius nearly dropped the teacup in his hand as he looked at the uninvited guest seated before him.
"……Are you serious?"
Lucius forced the corners of his mouth upward and asked again as though he could hardly believe it.
The person sitting across from him.
A distinguished guest who had suddenly knocked on the door of the Rohanna mansion without any warning whatsoever.
The words spoken by Viscountess Müller—the proprietress of the Müller Guild, which boasted the greatest financial power in the Empire, as well as an Academy professor—were every bit as far-fetched as that.
"I don't lie about matters like this. I sincerely wish to become Lady Sophia's patron."
Viscountess Müller gave him a seductive smile beneath the wide brim of her hat.
At the sight, Lucius's suspicions deepened further.
'Why?'
Of course, as a student in the Academy's Alchemy Department, his relationship with Viscountess Müller was not bad.
If anything, he was one of the model students who attended her classes diligently.
But outside their formal teacher-student relationship, it was a different story.
From one family to another, this woman was a rival.
Given how severely the Rohanna family's guild had declined over the past ten years, she might have thought they weren't a worthy opponent for the mighty Müller Guild to bother competing with.
Even so, it was still impossible to accept the current situation in any common-sense manner.
The fact that Rohanna was no match for Müller ultimately meant that Rohanna had nothing to offer Müller in return.
For that reason, Lucius couldn't simply take the proposal thrust before him at face value.
The only beneficiaries of accepting the proposal would be Rohanna and Sophia.
In those circumstances, if they accepted Viscountess Müller herself as Sophia's patron for her debutante ball,
without needing to think deeply, it would be tantamount to receiving an ironclad political and social shield for free.
'There must be another reason that I haven't seen.'
Lucius's blue eyes turned cold.
His suspicions chased one another: What trap was hidden here? Was this another ploy by his uncle, Baron Hamel, who wanted to pick even the last bones of the Rohanna family clean?
But then.
"Cassian asked, so what choice did I have?"
Lucius flinched.
The moment the unexpected name left Viscountess Müller's red lips,
the thick suspicion that had been tightly constricting Lucius's entire body began to abruptly fade, as if by magic.
"……You mean Young Master Farne?"
"That's right. The one who was with you."
Viscountess Müller crossed her arms, nodded, and smiled.
"I can't reveal every detail here. But Student Cassian and I have formed an extremely close, inseparable bond through our involvement with Saintess Lily."
Her fingers twitched atop the opposite arm.
"We fought back-to-back, even taking a stand against the Church's armed forces. How could I possibly coldly refuse the heartfelt request of such a trusted partner?"
Lucius's mind was a wreck, as though reagents had been poured out at random and mixed together.
The first thought that came to Lucius's mind was a single word.
'Why?'
Yes.
To be honest, he had begun to feel somewhat closer to Cassian recently.
Just a few days ago, they had clinked whiskey glasses at a barbecue restaurant in the middle of the capital and even laid bare their deep, festering thoughts.
But.
'Even so, could he really have gone this far, shouldering such enormous involvement and effort?'
Though Cassian might have considered their dinner meaningful, just as Lucius had, this situation was far too extreme to regard as something born of goodwill over that alone.
Why on earth?
That man only pretended to act like a fool. He was never actually a fool.
It was then that Lucius, his eyes wavering, sank into a swamp of confusion.
"Hmm."
A deep mischievous glint appeared in Viscountess Müller's alluring eyes.
"That expression right now. If I passed along to Cassian your reaction—full of suspicion that 'you and Cassian aren't actually that close'—I think that boy would be terribly hurt."
"……!"
Clatter!
Lucius's knee unconsciously struck the table.
For a moment, his breathing hitched.
At the negotiating table.
Worse, in front of a veteran guildmaster who personally ran a colossal trading guild, he had let such blatant dismay show on his face.
It was a serious mistake—fatal, even.
The instant Cassian's name was mentioned, Lucius had unconsciously begun lowering the blade of suspicion he'd raised so sharply.
All of it was tantamount to giving Viscountess Müller a clue that let her see straight through his feeble, muddled mind.
'I can't let this happen.'
Lucius desperately swallowed and steadied his breath.
He quickly rebuilt his shattered poker face and plastered it over his features.
He narrowed his eyes into slits and struggled to recreate his usual unreadable smile.
Yet even as he composed his outward appearance, his thoughts continued to swirl in a complicated vortex.
'Cassian thinks of me as being that close?'
Or was Viscountess Müller telling an outright lie to test his reaction?
'No.'
Lucius immediately denied it inwardly.
Whether it was a lie or a bluff, at a merchant's negotiating table, it could only succeed if there were some benefit to be gained from it.
Why on earth would the mighty Viscountess Müller personally come all the way to this decrepit Rohanna mansion to tell him a pointless lie that offered her no benefit whatsoever?
Then it had to be the truth.
Of course, Cassian had no compelling reason to involve himself so deeply in Lucius and Sophia's lives and look after them, either.
'……Really?'
What if he really had moved Viscountess Müller solely through friendship and loyalty toward Lucius?
Lucius understood rationally that neither possibility had sufficient logical grounds.
Yet his parched emotions had already begun helplessly tilting sharply to one side.
Toward a blind belief that, if it was that man, he might truly have worked a miracle beyond all understanding for no reason other than 'he wanted to.'
A sharp twinge.
The instant he sensed his emotions tipping, Lucius knew.
He had to end this meeting.
His own pace and rhythm had completely collapsed.
Not a speck of dust remained of the initiative he could exercise in the face of Viscountess Müller's composed smile.
He needed to wrap up the conversation quickly, cool his head alone, and calmly sort through the situation at hand.
Lucius pressed down hard on his thigh, which was starting to tremble, and opened his mouth.
He couldn't let her words sway him any further.
'Thankfully.'
Lucius sighed inwardly in relief.
Wasn't Sophia, the person involved and final decision-maker for today's proposal, away from the mansion?
Using her absence as an excuse to secure time to think was the natural course of action.
"For that excessively generous proposal of yours…… I am sincerely grateful, Professor."
Lucius folded both hands neatly over his knees and bowed politely.
He continued, keeping his voice from trembling.
"As a professor at the Academy my sister attends, and, before that, as someone who greatly contributed to the growth of a merchant guild, you have personally come to make this gracious proposal. So, even though no appointment was made beforehand, it would be appropriate to call my sister, the person concerned, here at once and ask her wishes, but―"
"You're with Cassian, aren't you?"
"……Pardon?"
"Your lovely little sister. I know she's on a date with Cassian right now."
For a moment, Lucius's heart sank.
"……Yes."
Lucius's voice cracked ever so slightly as he answered.
Did that mean she had come at this precisely calculated time?
"I knew that, and deliberately came at this time."
Viscountess Müller said it in a low, whispering voice.
"I didn't want to burden a poor young lady who knew nothing with having to make a decision in a sudden meeting, especially in front of a frightening adult like me. It was only right for you, her older brother, to hear this first and have time to make a wise decision."
"……"
Lucius bit his lip tightly.
The fact that Viscountess Müller knew about Sophia's date schedule made it certain that Cassian was directly involved in her visit.
But.
For some reason, he felt that her claim just now—that she had deliberately come at this time to give him room to think—was a lie.
However, any further suspicion or objection would amount to nothing more than kicking away the lifeline being held out to him and picking a fight with the other party.
Lucius knew exactly what he had to say.
"……Thank you."
"You're very welcome."
Viscountess Müller smiled gently.