Whether he believed it or not, I told him anyway.
“And if not for Rilke, how could I have had the chance to meet the Regent Duke Your Grace?”
I held up the Regent Duke’s letter I was holding. I worried if my voice was too flat.
“Do you think I have that kind of resourcefulness?”
Rilke tried to answer something, but Mikhail’s face blocking him was terrifying. If he interjected in that state, he’d get hit. Rilke bit his lips and stepped back. I could see his eyes tearing up as if feeling wronged.
The servants looked at us in confusion, then all disappeared toward the dining room following Jake’s hand signals.
At that organized movement, Mikhail’s expression sank.
Mikhail told Rilke and me to quietly follow.
Moving to the study, we started again.
“Tell me from the beginning, Joachim. Don’t leave out a single thing. You can add your thoughts too.”
Right before entering the outer palace, I told him exactly what happened with Rilke.
Throughout, Mikhail seemed to try to reduce his emotions by asking only the most important questions. I also tried to say only what absolutely needed to be said.
“Why are you… why are you doing this to me?”
Rilke interrupted, but I ignored him. I looked only clearly at Mikhail.
Those blue eyes felt strangely unfamiliar.
When I told my thoughts, my thoughts about Rilke, my heart was pounding again.
I ignored the pounding sound in my ears. Ignoring it, ignoring it again, it became nothing. I trampled the pounding and just ran out. The trembling became part of me. As if I had never hesitated, I poured it all out at once without any blockage.
Finally,
Mikhail.
Believed me a little.
Thud, I squeezed my eyes shut at the sound of leather tearing. When I opened my eyes that had reflexively closed, Rilke had collapsed. He was with his hands planted on the floor.
I turned my gaze away.
I felt an indescribable emotion. The day I pushed Rilke away, when Mikhail hit me, I must have looked exactly like that.
“Jake. Tell the butler not to treat that bastard.”
Mikhail said while clenching and unclenching his hand nervously. It was the fist that had hit Rilke.
“Until that face subsides, I’ll lock that bastard in his room. I won’t allow anything to enter that room. Not even meals.”
Rilke couldn’t get up, so a servant had to come and carry him away. It was when I was silently following behind.
“Joachim. It’s not over.”
Mikhail stopped me.
With his eyes, he pointed to the Regent Duke’s letter in my hand. The outer seal of the letter was torn open.
“If you can’t properly answer about that content, know you’ll get beaten too.”
Unlike his momentum to interrogate immediately, Mikhail first called Jake.
I was curious what on earth was written in the letter, but it was taken away, and I was dragged out of the reception room by Jake.
Jake dragged me into the nearest empty room. Then she suddenly started undressing me, but since she started crying loudly, I just stayed still.
“I’m a half-breed with no merits at all…… Young master…… *sob*, I didn’t even know the young master met Duke Yorick! Twice at that!”
“No, how could you have possibly known that?”
Jake cried so sorrowfully that I almost got touched for a moment, but cooled at the words that followed.
“I couldn’t give the Count accurate information!”
Jake kept shedding tears, saying she was far from adequate to be by Mikhail’s side. Anyway, since she cried for too long, I offered comfort.
“Jake— well, but at least your loyalty to hyung is the best.”
Especially her ability to quickly grasp Mikhail’s meaning when his blood pressure rose like earlier was touching.
“*Sob*, thank you for saying so. *sniff*, I should try harder to give His Excellency more accurate information in the future. …Anyway, so nothing really happened with that old bastard, right?”
Duke Yorick was one year younger than Jake.
“Right. I swear.”
“For now, it looks like the young master’s body I knew.”
Jake looked me up and down after stripping me bare like peeling skin. Since it had been that way since childhood anyway, and she was the person who had seen my naked body the most recently too, I just let it be.
“Really nothing happened with the Regent Duke. So, can I put my clothes on now?”
“……”
“Jake?”
“You were originally like this, but were you originally like this?”
She, whose tears had now stopped, was examining me closely. Only then did I flinch slightly and gauge her reaction.
For the past few days, I had refused touching or biting my lips. I had carefully confirmed especially that no marks remained before coming. Pretending not to notice Jake’s gaze, I quickly put on my clothes.
“Well, if you spent the night with that snake-like bastard as you are, there’s no way you’d be fine like now.”
You look clean, so I’ll believe you. She came closer while sniffling. Jake, who pushed away my hands, carefully buttoned me up to the end of my neck.
“Did you betray me?”
With one letter, the Regent Duke made three men of Meyer House useless at the same time.
I silently put down the letter I had been reading on the table.
Judging from the content, Clemens Yorick really was an unpredictable human driven by interest.
“The information about the black mine is information that can’t be known unless you secretly looked at my documents.”
Mikhail had become calm.
On the surface, the Regent Duke’s letter consisted of gratitude toward me. Content saying he was glad to learn information about the magic stone mine thanks to me, and since I gave great business help, he wanted to meet again to repay me.
“That water snake bastard kidnapped you in collusion with Rilke, yet shamelessly put such content in the letter.”
“Fortunately nothing happened. Jake also said earlier that I was clean.”
“When you went, really, what was it, it wasn’t that Yorick bastard but—”
I explained again that Prince Benedict had been there. Mikhail gasped slightly.
“But naturally, His Highness the Prince had no interest in me. He already had a lover, and didn’t welcome me who came as the Regent Duke’s omega. As you heard from Lady Celtic Quina’s attendant, after that I was moved to the great mansion and stayed under Count Quina, that’s all.”
It was Miss Sana using illusion magic who had busily come and gone, but anyway, Mikhail was quickly convinced.
“It’s clear Rilke sent me to the Regent Duke with bad intentions. I can’t know exactly because I was unconscious. But if that child knew I was going to Prince Benedict,”
“That bastard would have gone.”
Mikhail said decisively.
“I didn’t know Duke Yorick would go that far. Does he surprisingly have loyalty to Prince Benedict?”
Absolutely not.
“No, but why kidnap our house’s perfectly fine omega and do such things?”
“I think no omega should suffer such things.”
“Ha, now you’re even trying to teach me. You bastard, now that I look, you’re changing the topic! Quickly give me a convincing explanation about my mine!”
“You should give up on the transport business.”
No one called the ancient island by its official name, but the island had a separate name. ‘Isoladi Iota.’
“In the old language, it means ‘Island of Iota.'”
Mikhail’s mouth fell open.
“Do you think Iota’s distinguished scholars wouldn’t know what I found out?”
In reality, the Academy of Iota starts raising questions first.
“The more the Empire develops the ancient island, the more stories about the island will spread across the entire continent, and it’s only a matter of time before Iota rises up.”
Probably about two or three months later.
“If the Empire had its old national power, Iota could only issue a protest statement at best. But Iota’s national power is growing stronger, and what if they come forward saying they won’t hesitate to go to war using the ancient island as justification?”
The ancient island development project will progress to a complete suspension situation. In reality, Iota dispatches its navy all the way near the ancient island and exercises force. Eventually, the Imperial army can’t just stay still either. For several years, everything will be suspended in an endless standoff.
As all this story came from me, Mikhail looked dumbfounded.
“But.”
But four years later, the ancient island will become completely the Empire’s.
“About 500,000 florins.”
Because Benedict will make it so.
“It’s not even half of half of the existing mine investment expected amount, incomparably less money than the transport business overhead costs. Isn’t it suitable to bury it thinking of it as discarded?”
Mikhail’s eyes began to widen as he understood what I was saying.
“The Regent Duke Your Grace will try to dispose of the mine quickly before the rumors start circulating in earnest.”
He’s always someone in urgent need of cash, isn’t he? I said while smiling.
At this point in time, war between the two nations is unavoidable.
Four years later, the reason the ancient island can be entirely Imperial territory again is because Benedict, who stabilized domestic affairs during his reign, suppressed Iota with national power.
This winter, Benedict will become Emperor.
“500,000 florins. 500,000 florins.”
Before I knew it, Mikhail had sprung up from his seat and was nervously pacing back and forth in the reception room. The Regent Duke’s letter had clearly become secondary. As always when business inspiration struck, I could see his face fully flushed with excitement.
I definitely thought things had changed a lot from the past. In the past, Mikhail didn’t listen to my words.
I tried to live the same way, but it seems things changed more than I thought. Unconsciously, I placed my gaze on Mikhail’s shortly trimmed hair.
“—What’s wrong?”
Only after Mikhail asked did I realize I had been staring too long.
No, it’s nothing, I lowered my trembling gaze. Mikhail looked at me once as if finding it bland, then started devising business plans while pacing around the room.
Again I glanced at Mikhail’s nape, at the faint gray traces rising there.
Mikhail,
Had caught that disease.
