After that, it was chaos.
I, who had been standing beside him, inadvertently caught Mikhail—his eyes had rolled back—and lost my balance from catching him in an awkward position, and then inadvertently the noblewomen standing nearby rushed over to help, but the ladies couldn’t handle the weight of two men and we all tumbled down together.
Screams and shouts mixed. We got up, supported each other, and then someone’s clothes tore, and we fell again.
When the family’s retainers finally pushed through and extracted me and Mikhail, the situation had become serious in a different sense.
“That can’t be true! The Mikhail I know is someone who stands against violence with righteousness!”
“Then are you saying Rilke is lying!”
Mikhail’s friends were shouting to stop talking nonsense, and Rilke’s followers were also shouting to stop talking nonsense.
I could see the Regent Duke and Rilke had withdrawn to the back.
Rilke, who had seemed to have prepared a lot, only bit his lips. The unconscious Mikhail was being carried out on the backs of physicians and knights who had just rushed in.
“I’m counting on you.”
Without following them out, I sent another retainer of the Count’s household and left only those words.
Once the person lying on the floor disappeared, people quickly regained their composure.
“……”
Still, the emotional resentment didn’t disappear, becoming a silent standoff.
Everyone’s gaze turned to Rilke and the Regent Duke.
Rilke was staggering with his hand on his forehead. In fact, even from my perspective, the timing to strike out had become ambiguous.
“Rilke, you’re not about to collapse too, are you?”
Flinch, Rilke’s shoulders trembled slightly, but that child pretended not to hear me and collapsed as is. “Rilke!” His followers crowded around him.
Well. It didn’t matter if he collapsed.
“If everyone thinks about it just a little, you’ll realize it’s strange.”
I took a step forward, brushing off my crumpled collar.
“Because it’s not true, I won’t bother refuting the words of someone who was once my brother. However, please think about what you’ve all seen and heard normally.”
Murmuring spread like small ripples. Without letting go of their gazes, I pointed to the door where Mikhail had been carried out.
“And remember. My hyung is one of the leading businessmen in this country,”
This time I pointed at Rilke.
“I don’t know what benefit my hyung could have gained by doing as that child said.”
Rilke had collapsed in the arms of one of his followers. Under his disheveled golden hair like grape vines, furrowed eyebrows were visible. Whether he was really in pain or for some other reason, only that child would know.
The nobles who were usually close with Mikhail agreed with my words, saying the cost-benefit didn’t match.
“But it’s also strange that the younger Meyer— no, Prince Yorick would lie.”
One of Rilke’s followers stepped forward.
“He is an exemplary noble and has never engaged in improper conduct until now.”
“If you put it that way, Mikhail has also never engaged in improper conduct.”
Marquis Loren, who was closest with Mikhail, refuted.
“Didn’t he hit Prince Meyer in a public setting?”
“That was because Joachim pushed Rilke. He stepped forward to properly establish family discipline, didn’t he!”
Rilke’s followers said.
“If he treated his own younger brother Prince Meyer that way, it’s obvious he would have treated Rilke, who was adopted, carelessly!”
“You’re clouding the point with hasty speculation!”
“The core is that everything that happened in the Meyer estate is Count Meyer’s responsibility!”
“That’s a leap!”
A second dispute began. The situation before my eyes was as chaotic as a disrupted courtroom.
“Wait a moment.”
Since Mikhail’s close friends kept trying to refute, I asked them several times. Just them holding back for a moment created space for me to speak.
“Why do you think I pushed Rilke?”
Why indeed.
“Because Your Grace personally admitted it with your own mouth that day!”
One of the guys who used to practice wooden sword sparring with me when I was young shouted. It was the answer I had expected.
“Do you also remember what I said after that?”
“What’s important is that Your Grace personally said you pushed Rilke!”
“You don’t remember. I said, ‘Even if I said I didn’t push him, you wouldn’t believe me anyway.'”
The opponent’s expression frowned as if they didn’t understand what I meant.
“What sophistry is this.”
“Because you’d call it sophistry just like now.”
“……”
“You always want to believe Rilke’s words. I was tired of it, so I just lied and said I pushed him.”
The opponent, who seemed at a loss for words, opened their mouth incredulously.
“Really sophistry— no, then tell me. If you didn’t push him, what reason would Rilke have had to fall from there? And why didn’t Rilke explain?”
Before I knew it, the audience was watching as if witnessing a bizarre and absurd comedy.
“Because Rilke threatened me that he would fall from there.”
“Now… what nonsense are you…”
“He climbed up onto the railing and asked me. If he fell from there, ‘whose words would people believe?'”
I carefully observed Rilke, who was pretending to be unconscious. He wouldn’t get up going “Aah—” again in this situation.
“But Prince Meyer. Those are only your words.”
“Aren’t Rilke’s attacking words against my hyung also only words?”
“Look at his usual conduct. Count Meyer is someone who has hit you.”
“Usually my hyung is someone who cherished Rilke more than me.”
The opponent closed their mouth for a moment.
Before I knew it, Rilke’s face was even more covered by his hair. I couldn’t tell his expression.
“I ask you.”
He might be glaring at me with all his might.
“Whose words will you believe?”
The words I left behind wouldn’t be able to become an important topic. But if I could just create various points of contention and disturb the atmosphere Rilke intended, that would be enough.
Although he received a diagnosis that nothing was wrong, Mikhail didn’t regain consciousness until he returned to the estate.
“I feel so wronged I could die……”
Mikhail, who woke up in the middle of the night, groaned.
Seeing his face stretched out lifelessly, I felt uneasy.
Under the dimly lowered lamplight, I silently handed Mikhail, who was ailing, the documents organizing Jake and the current asset list who had been waiting nearby. They were hyung’s favorite things.
It was inevitable that he would think about his reputation, which had unavoidably been diminished compared to before, but I hoped he would at least feel relief about what he still had.
‘You can’t speak! Hyung just hit me to vent his anger!’
I thought Rilke had made a move unlike him.
Was he actually anxious? It was a choice like having a cliff at his back.
Two days later, news arrived that roughly revealed Rilke’s intentions. It was a summons with the court’s and Regent Duke’s seals side by side.
Duke Yorick and Rilke had filed a lawsuit against the Meyer household.
“What do we do! What do we do, our poor Excellency!”
Jake, who heard the news, started crying profusely again. Of course, it was where Mikhail couldn’t see.
Despite being tear-stained, Jake, who had always tried to smile brightly once Mikhail regained consciousness, collapsed at the talk of the summons.
Saying their expression management wasn’t working at all, they dragged me out too, and were now sobbing in an empty room.
“How can such, unfortunate things come all at once, ugh, I don’t know,”
Mikhail in the next room still couldn’t get up even now, two days later, and continued to ail. Mages and priests were coming and going, but he was still confined to bed. He seemed to have temporarily lost all motivation for life.
“Suddenly, hic, didn’t he catch rat plague, and that youngest young— no, that crazy bastard started having a shit-fit like an ogre hit by dung, now what lawsuit? Lawsuit?”
I handed over a handkerchief. Uuuuung, Jake poured out wails into my handkerchief for a while.
“When he’s already, ugh, having such a hard time……”
“What else happened?”
Jake wiped their face with the handkerchief and blew their nose again.
“We shouldn’t associate with that fickle artist bunch!”
“Ah, are you talking about Sir Rood?”
It seemed to be around this time that he declared he would no longer receive Mikhail’s patronage.
“That bastard is ridiculous too! After all our Excellency has done for him, to declare severance, not knowing his place!”
“Hmm, he’s an excellent composer who has received the laurel wreath twice.”
“Eeeei! Whose side are you on right now? That bastard is trying to abandon our Excellency at this, his most difficult time!”
That was probably because Sir Rood was having just as hard a time. The reason Sir Rood declared severance was after learning that his disciple had hidden the sheet music at Mikhail’s instigation.
Soon everything would become known in high society too. Previously, Mikhail’s position had been so solid that it boiled over briefly and ended, but I didn’t know what would happen this time.
I patted the shoulders of Jake, who had started crying with their face buried completely in the bed, and left. I entered the next room.
“I immediately! Need to issue a statement. I need to issue a statement……”
Mikhail had a fit—kicking off the blanket while going aaaaah!—at the news that Rilke had requested a trial, but his voice was still less energetic than usual.
“You always said official corrections are the stupidest thing to do. That it’s asking to be nitpicked.”
I said as I pulled a chair to sit by the bedside. I looked down at the area under his eyes that had darkened in just a few days.
“Besides, it’s no use fighting rumors. What’s the point of showing the truth to people who cover their eyes and don’t want to see?”
Mikhail, who had been mulling over my words with a haggard face, answered.
“It sounds somehow right while also going against my temper.”
“Oh, those are all things hyung told me before.”
“……”
I was worried that Mikhail, who had recovered a bit of energy, might become conversationally impossible again, so I just kept my mouth shut.
