Chapter 23
I hurriedly stopped Rohen, but Rohen loosened the arm that had been holding me and let out an amused snort of laughter.
“It was cute.”
“Ah! Really? Aaaah, what a shame. I wanted to see you cry too, sis.”
Lari looked at me with great regret.
“Don’t regret things like that.”
“Sis. Sis. Can’t you cry in front of me too?”
She was always cheerful and lovely, but at times I felt a darkness from Lari. But perhaps because the Grand Duke was beside her now, or because she now had a reliable adult she believed would protect her, Lari seemed far brighter than before.
The way she looked at me. Her face, which looked healthy.
Of course, her whining for me to cry wasn’t childlike at all, and there was a slight sense of obsession, but still, it was enough to make me think it was fortunate.
“Cry for me.”
“No.”
“Even if Lari wants it this badly?”
“Yeah. No.”
For a moment, Lari’s eyes changed strangely. It felt eerie enough to send a chill down the back of my neck. The fine hairs on my skin stood on end.
‘What is it? Something feels off.’
Like something was wrong. But soon, Lari’s face returned to its usual expression.
“All right then…… if sis says so, I can’t help it!”
Smiling brightly, Lari rubbed her face against my chest.
Meanwhile, the Grand Duke’s knights began seizing the people behind us one by one. Contrary to my expectation of just one, at most two, people were dragged out in a long chain, like candied fruit on a skewer.
At first, the Grand Duke looked on without emotion, then let out a faint laugh and adopted a languid expression. As if he had gone through this kind of thing to the point of boredom, his expression gradually hardened.
“But tell me. If you truly didn’t know this child was my son, how do you explain those?”
“Ah…… th-that is…….”
“This situation is becoming rather interesting. Judging by the sheer number of assassins, it’s obvious. Did you really think you could tell such an obvious lie to me?”
“Th, that’s…… I mean…….”
Only now grasping what was happening, the orphanage director’s face turned deathly pale. Each time she looked at the people being dragged toward her one by one, she couldn’t say a word, only trembling her lower lip.
‘Quite a sight.’
For some reason, watching her made my chest feel oddly refreshed. It was like my situation—dry and stifling as if I’d swallowed a mouthful of dry sweet potato—had flipped all at once. This must be what people call soda-like catharsis.
Ha, soda really is the best.
I must’ve been forcing myself to eat dry sweet potatoes just for this moment. With every word he spoke.
“Are you still going to say you didn’t know?”
“Well…… y-yes. I, I truly…….”
“From what I hear, it seems you’ve done quite a variety of things here.”
Standing at a crooked angle, the Grand Duke looked at the orphanage director. Every time he moved, she turned her head stiffly like a doll, looking like a fish flopping about whenever touched.
“Y-yes? A variety of things, you say?”
As if he had been waiting to say this, the Grand Duke spoke very slowly, one syllable at a time. There was strength carried in his tone.
“I hear you abused them.”
Having kept her head lowered because she herself felt guilty, the orphanage director snapped her head up at those words, waving her hands as she denied it.
“N-no! Abuse? N-no way! I would never abuse children. Never!”
“Are you saying my child is lying?”
“…N-no, th-that is, I didn’t know either. That there were people in the storage room…… s-someone must have locked them in there. If you don’t believe me, the temple already investigated it, so you can check!”
Mentioning the temple, the orphanage director shook her head from side to side with an expression more confident than ever.
“You expect me to believe something that can be manipulated that easily?”
“B-but it was investigated by the temple. There’s no way it could be manipulated!”
Because of what the twins had said last time, the orphanage director seemed quite confident.
‘I don’t know anything. I don’t remember. I don’t even know why we were locked in there.’
When asked what they had eaten to survive, the children had said they roughly ate the food that was in the storage room. When asked who brought them there, the twins followed the script I had prepared beforehand.
‘I don’t know. Nothing…… nothing at all.’
The children, who had said they were scared and would tell everything, had only responded that they didn’t know.
‘So foolish. She really thinks that’s the truth.’
“At the time, we were too scared to speak properly, but that woman hit us.”
Clinging tightly to me like a cicada stuck to an old tree, Lari looked at the Grand Duke.
“That woman?”
“Yeah!”
As the child nodded with the brightest smile yet, her high-tied hair swayed back and forth.
“Locking children up for no reason—there must have been a reason.”
“N-no! That’s—!”
The director, who had always been at ease, and us, who had been trembling with anxiety. But now, the situation had completely reversed.
“Then those assassins—are they people you don’t know either?”
“I-I don’t know them either!”
Desperate to get help from anyone at all, the director frantically looked around. As if not intending to miss even that brief moment, the Grand Duke slowly opened his mouth.
“Are you still trying to say my daughter is lying?”
“Th-that’s right. I…… I am not lying…….”
“I didn’t believe that from the start, but I was willing to consider leniency if you told the truth. That won’t be possible now.”
The Grand Duke twisted his lips into a faint smile. It held no sincerity at all, but the director, seemingly unable to tell, looked at us with an awkward smile.
Truly awkward. As if she had suddenly become a good person, she lowered the corners of her mouth and eyes and pleaded her injustice. As if she believed that implausible statement—that telling the truth would earn her leniency.
“I’ll tell you the truth! Th-that is…… I, I was just being used.”
“Used? By whom?”
“Th-that is……!”
I could practically see her mind spinning like a top as she desperately searched for an excuse. Her wildly shaking pupils, her trembling hands.
‘Why is this so fun?’
My heart was pounding. To witness the director’s downfall right before my eyes—watching that seemingly unshakable, sturdy tower collapse before me.
“You’re kind of strange.”
Rohen, standing close beside me, poked my arm.
“H-huh?”
“Your expression. I couldn’t tell if you were happy or sad. How should I put it… you look kind of crazy.”
“C-crazy? No, it’s just…… this is…….”
Lari, who had been burying her face in my arm and glaring at Rohen as he leaned closer, lifted her head a beat late.
“Yeah. Sis, your face really is weird!”
“…I-it’s not weird!”
“You’re making a face I like!”
“Huh?”
“I like this expression of yours too. I like everything. Everything about you. I want to have you.”
In that instant, I felt the hairs on my back stand on end. These were words from someone who liked me, yet they felt dangerous. I could almost hear my instincts screaming: be careful.
‘It’s probably just the possessive whining of a child who’s never had anything of her own.’
I saw Lari’s eyes sparkling unusually brightly.
“Do you hate me like this?”
“No. There’s no way I’d hate you, Lari. I like you. I like Lari, and I like Rohen too.”
They were children I wouldn’t see again after today anyway. Since we’d never meet again, I nodded very slowly.
“Hehe. I like you, sis. I really like you! Right, bro? Sis is really great, isn’t she!”
“Uh-huh.”
Rohen nodded vaguely, arms crossed, looking at me with a strange expression.
Whether he had stopped to listen to our conversation or for some other reason, the Grand Duke spoke again.
“I’ve waited quite a while, but there’s still no answer. Then should I assume you have nothing to say?”
“I, I’m being threatened too! If you promise to protect me, then I’ll definitely tell you everything…….”
“Trying to come up with excuses in the meantime? How amusing. You’re cowardly, and on top of that, foolish. Now you want to beg for your life?”
“Please spare me. I, I truly was being used. If you say you’ll protect me, I’ll tell you everything, everything.”
“Well. I have no desire to do that. You want me to spare someone who placed assassins around a child until the very end? And did you really think I came here knowing nothing?”
With a faint laugh, he jutted out his lips and clicked his tongue.
In that moment, a question filled my mind.
Did the Grand Duke know everything that was going on?
