A stack of documents was hurled onto the heavy mahogany desk.
The office of the Requies ducal manor. The Duke’s expression — always cold and composed — had crumbled. Scattered across the floor were papers bearing vivid red X marks and the bright red stamps reading Rejected and Audit Required.
“What in the hell is the meaning of this!”
The Duke’s shout made the butler’s shoulders shoot up toward his ears. With bloodshot eyes, the Duke ground the fallen papers beneath his heel. The Emperor’s name alone wouldn’t have enraged him. That young pup was the Emperor, after all. But the seal stamped at the bottom of the documents was not his — it was the Empress’s.
“Luanisiel……!”
A sound like grinding teeth escaped the Duke’s lips. The family’s stain. The failure. The half-wit who had refused to learn magic, swordsmanship, or even the social graces of high society and had tried to flee to the temple instead. He had dragged that wretch out and seated him beside the young Emperor, at least for appearances —
And the idiot hadn’t been able to seduce the Emperor, hadn’t been able to seize any grip on power. All he had been capable of was keeping his mouth shut and haunting the corners of the imperial palace like a ghost, not even daring to breathe. He had assumed the boy was quietly rotting away. And now, of all things, he dared —
“You’d plunge a knife into your own father’s back?”
The Duke could not believe it. No — he did not want to believe it. Those sharp notations that had severed the family’s lifeline. Inflated unit prices. Ghost inventory. Contract funneling. This was no lucky stumbling upon of errors. It was a precise strike at the very jugular of the family’s covert money laundering operations.
That stupid, spineless wretch had spent five years lying low — and now he pulls this?
The Duke’s expression twisted into something vicious. His blood pressure surged until his neck went rigid. The humiliation of being bitten by something worth less than a dog he had raised was unbearable.
“The insolent little——. Thinks he can do whatever he pleases just because the Emperor’s got his back, does he?”
How the boy had managed to work his way close enough to the Emperor to process documents at this level, he had no idea. But that his first move was to bare his teeth at the family —
The Duke grabbed the lapel of his coat with a trembling hand, and snatched it roughly into his grip. His eyes gleamed with murderous intent.
“I’ll beat the insolence out of him today. I’ll carve into his bones exactly what it costs to turn his back on this family.”
“Y-Your Grace! If you go without a prior appointment——!”
“Silence! I am going to discipline my own son — who would dare stop me!”
The Duke threw off the butler and stormed out of the office. To crush that failure beneath his heel once more, and turn him back into a doll that could never open its mouth again.
With every step he took, cold fury dripped from him like blood.
***
Kirian was, in his own way, a reasonable superior. He had made Luan work through several days’ worth of tasks in one sitting, so he allowed him to rest for the remaining days. Of course, there was also the practical matter of needing time to send out the countless correction notices to each noble house — but that was irrelevant to Luan. He simply needed time to sleep while replenishing his sugar.
The sweet rest was short-lived.
It happened while Luan was rebooting his brain with a densely rich chocolate cake. The head chamberlain knocked on Luan’s door with a deeply uncomfortable expression.
“Your Imperial Highness the Empress. Duke Requies…… has requested an audience.”
Luan’s fork stopped mid-air. So it comes.
The glassy look in his eyes cleared slightly. Among the stacks of documents he had slashed through, there had been no shortage of embezzled funds tied to the Requies family. From the Duke’s perspective — having had his feeding tube so cleanly ripped out — it made perfect sense that he would be seething. Losing his mind entirely was understandable.
“Where is His Majesty?”
“In a meeting at the main office.”
If Kirian wasn’t here, then Kael — who trailed after him like a shadow — wasn’t either. With not a single person the Duke would think twice about remaining, the situation had become inconvenient.
“What did he say?”
“The Duke said…… he wishes to have a family conversation with Your Imperial Highness, and is waiting in the reception room.”
A cozy family chat — right. What he means is he wants to beat me quietly into the ground. Luan let out a sigh and rose from his seat.
“Show me in.”
When faced with an unavoidable difficult patron, the best strategy is to deal with them swiftly and get it over with. He had thought coming to another world would mean never having to look at the face of a nightmare client again — apparently not.
He followed the flustered head chamberlain to the reception room. He dismissed him, and the moment the doors closed, a murderous pressure pierced the air like needles against skin. The middle-aged man seated on the sofa — Duke Requies — slammed his teacup onto the table the instant Luan walked in. The sharp crack shattered the silence.
“Your Imperial Highness the Empress.”
The Duke rose slowly to his feet. Eyes narrow and cool as a serpent’s swept down the length of Luan.
“You’ve moved into the Main Palace and seem to be living quite comfortably, haven’t you? You’ve been causing quite the amusing little stir.”
“It has been a while, Duke. I’ve been too occupied to reach out.”
Luan answered dryly and sat down on the sofa across from him. The Duke’s eyes narrowed. The old Luan would have trembled like a leaf at the mere sight of his shadow — yet here he sat, bold as anything.
Of course. What inhabited this body was a civil servant forged in the fires of every kind of difficult patron imaginable, with the mental fortitude to match. He had seen more than a couple of people screaming at him with veins bulging on their necks. Walking in with the energy of today’s your lucky day was familiar to the point of being tedious.
“Too occupied?”
The Duke laughed as though he couldn’t believe his ears.
“Yes. Occupied, I’m sure. Stabbing me in the back.”
The Duke pulled a crumpled bundle of papers from his breast pocket and threw them onto the table. They were the requisitions Luan had stamped Rejected and sent flying back.
“What is the meaning of this?”
“Ah, those.”
Luan glanced at the documents and gave an indifferent nod.
“There were numerical errors. The evidence of embezzlement was also clear. Preventing waste of state funds is a natural duty of the Empress, is it not?”
“……What did you say?”
“Please have them resubmitted with proper documentation. With proper receipts, of course. Fake—…… that is to say, false receipts are easy to spot.”
The Duke’s face went from red to purple. The audacity. This had been a boy who was considered fortunate to keep his mouth shut and serve as a useful figurehead at best. And now that wretch dared to reach for the family’s jugular?
“Luanisiel!”
The Duke bellowed.
“Have you lost your mind?! Do you think you’re somebody just because you’ve gotten cozy with the Emperor?! A half-wit who can’t do a single thing on his own!”
“Less of a half-wit and more of a defective item being returned.”
“What kind of nonsense is that!”
“I submitted divorce papers. Did you not know?”
“You — you’re insane……! You dare to ruin the family’s plans? Take it back right now! Get on your knees and beg before the Emperor has your head!”
“Negotiations with His Majesty are already underway. And please lower your voice. This is the Main Palace of the imperial emperor. Not the Duke’s private quarters.”
“You insolent——!”
The Duke closed the distance in long, heavy strides. His imposing shadow fell over Luan. Instinctively, Luan’s shoulders drew inward. His mind told him this is just a difficult patron — but the memory of abuse that remained in this body summoned genuine fear.
“You’re nothing without this family! Have you forgotten who it is you owe your position to?!”
The Duke’s hand rose high.
“A good beating is the only cure for someone who can’t learn their place.”
Whoosh. The Duke’s palm flew toward Luan’s cheek.
Ah, that’s going to hurt like hell.
Luan squeezed his eyes shut. He had no strength to dodge and no energy to resist. He had just resigned himself to taking the blow and sending the man on his way when —
Thwack!
With a dull impact, the Duke’s hand froze in midair. There was no pain. Luan cautiously opened his eyes, and a familiar black sleeve of an imperial uniform cut across his field of vision.
“……Your Majesty.”
It was Kirian. He had the Duke’s wrist locked in a crushing grip. The Emperor’s expression had shed every trace of its usual irreverence, and in its place was something cold enough to make one’s blood run still.
“What is the meaning of this, Duke Requies.”
A low, growling voice. The Duke’s face flooded with shock. The Emperor — the Emperor who should have been in his office — when had he come in?
“Y-Your Majesty…… this is……”
“Raising a hand against the Empress in the Emperor’s own Main Palace.”
Kirian released the Duke’s wrist with a sharp, rough throw. The Duke stumbled back. This was a disaster. In his rage, he had forgotten that this was the Main Palace and raised both his voice and his hand.
Kirian stepped squarely in front of Luan, looking down at the Duke. It was unambiguous — both protection and a declaration of ownership.
“The Empress is the mother of the empire, and my consort. The only one permitted to lay a hand on that person is me alone.”
The phrasing was strange, but this was not the moment to pick at it. The Duke broke into a cold sweat in his rattled state. When Kirian had been young, the Duke had held him in the palm of his hand — but the moment the Emperor had come of age, he had seized full power in the blink of an eye. This was not someone to underestimate.
“There has been a misunderstanding, Your Majesty. He broke the family’s rules and acted on his own accord — I was simply disciplining him as his father.”
“Discipline?”
Kirian smiled, cold as a blade.
“The Empress’s education is the purview of the Imperial household. It is not the Duke’s affair.”
“However, this child——!”
“Furthermore.”
Kirian’s gaze turned razor-sharp. He tilted his chin toward the documents strewn across the floor like rubbish.
“The documents the Empress processed yesterday — I granted him full authority to handle them. If you have grievances, bring them directly to me. Do not threaten my people behind my back.”
Luan’s eyes went wide. My people — since when? When exactly was that agreement reached? It was hardly the appropriate term for someone on the verge of a divorce, but the Duke in front of him was more objectionable by far, so for now he kept his mouth shut. Kirian, unbothered, tilted his chin toward the door.
“If your business is concluded, you may see yourself out. My Empress is tired.”
An order to leave. The Duke ground his teeth and clenched his fist. With the Emperor having stepped in directly, making any more of a scene risked being charged with sedition. As the Duke passed Luan on his way out, he ground out words in a low, biting murmur.
“……Mark my words. You will feel to the bone what it costs to turn your back on this family.”
The Duke pulled the door shut with a rough slam and left. Silence returned to the reception room. The tension released all at once, and Luan’s legs gave out beneath him as he sank back onto the sofa.
“Haah…….”
His heart was hammering wildly. He hadn’t been struck — but he felt utterly drained. Dealing with difficult patrons was emotional labor, no matter what world you were in. Just then, Kirian turned to face Luan.
“Are you alright?”
“……Yes. I’m alive thanks to you.”
“Were you just going to stand there and take it? With that clever head of yours, and you couldn’t even dodge?”
“You need stamina to dodge. Besides…… I was thinking that if I did get hit, I could at least demand compensation for damages.”
Luan smiled — a slightly bitter one.
“Ha. You really are something……”
Kirian studied the pale cheek of Luanisiel. If he had been even a moment later, there would have been a red mark left on that white face. Imagining it brought a strange, sharp displeasure rising in him.
“From here on out, do not meet with the Duke alone without my permission.”
“Pardon?”
“I won’t have you getting hurt somewhere outside my line of sight. You’re in the middle of handling my affairs right now.”
Kirian offered the excuse that wasn’t quite an excuse and gave Luan a light tap on the shoulder.
“Let’s go. There’s a mountain of paperwork.”
“……Did you just rescue me so you could pile more work on me?”
“Obviously.”
Kirian grinned and led the way. Luan stared at that broad back and let out a deep sigh.
……In the end, terrible bosses are terrible bosses no matter where you go. Though wait — the Duke is more of the nightmare client type.
Luan grumbled all the way, but dragged his aching legs along after Kirian regardless. Either way, a verbally reasonable terrible employer was a hundred times better than a violent father.
