The man was now sitting up.
Thump!
Of course, it wasn’t a comfortable position. He was tied up to the chair. His arms were bound behind his back, his legs were tied to the chair legs, and a strap wrapped around his chest was secured to the backrest. If he wanted, he could at least squirm a bit to try to escape. But in the end, he’d probably just tip over.
Just like all the furniture and decorations in the room, even the chair he was sitting in looked luxurious. It wouldn’t easily break just from toppling over.
Crash!
“I knew about it from the Imperial Court.”
I repeated the man’s last words.
“What does that mean?”
“It means exactly what it says.”
Blood was flowing from the man’s face. Seeing his face made me remember much more clearly. The man with the monocle. That distinctive mustache and well-groomed hairstyle. Of course, he was dressed differently now, just in a shirt with rolled-up sleeves and pants.
His nose was crooked to the side. It looked like it had broken when he had slammed his face into the floor earlier.
From the way he answered my questions readily, it seemed he thought that my reason for asking was merely because I belonged to the Imperial Court.
And there was no way he could think otherwise. He had never seen my face before. At least not since I had turned back time.
“In the Imperial Court, there’s no way they wouldn’t know. There are places in the Imperial Capital and other cities… where drugs and people are sold.”
I heard a small whimper and turned to see Mia Crowfield with a pale white face standing there. She looked as if she couldn’t stand comfortably while leaning against the wall.
But Alice didn’t let her go out.
She seemed to think she needed to hear this.
After all, it was she who had asked the questions and brought him here.
Moreover, Mia Crowfield didn’t seem to have any intention of leaving. Although she was barely standing, her eyes were fixed straight on the man.
“Nobles turn a blind eye to it all. As long as it doesn’t challenge their authority, and doesn’t harm their fiefs… they don’t really try to catch us. It’s easier to control those who gather right in front of them rather than those hiding in places they can’t manage.”
So that’s how relationships become entangled.
“But the Emperor would never have given such permission. Unlike some nobles.”
“……”
However, the man didn’t provide any more excuses to my answer.
It was as if he was blindfolded and playing possum. The orphanage I had been in was under the watch of Lucas. If Lucas had wanted, he could have killed the director of the orphanage and taken all the children. But Lucas didn’t seem inclined to do such a thing. And the Emperor also didn’t give Lucas any orders to save the children…
…Wait a minute.
“What position did you hold in the Imperial Capital?”
At my question, the man looked up at me with wide eyes. It was as if he was asking if I really didn’t know that.
For a moment, I thought about smashing his cheekbone, but I held myself back and waited patiently for his reply.
“I was just a middleman. I brought what those busy folks ordered and resold it.”
“……”
I turned to Alice. She nodded with a stiff face.
She had said they had pulled all the strings to get to this point.
This man was just an insignificant guy. He put on a gentlemanly façade and used a seemingly relaxed tone, but the real buyers were the nobles, and he was merely a distributor who received orders… buying raw materials and processing them for sale.
That “item” could have been a child at one time, or it could have been drugs.
But if that were the case…
Then this man’s orphanage was just one amongst many.
If so, what reason would Lucas have to keep an eye on such an ordinary orphanage? Unless the Emperor had no intention of destroying that organization, it wouldn’t make sense for Lucas to watch over an orphanage ‘for no reason’ at all.
“Sylvia.”
Suddenly, Alice’s voice calling me snapped me back to reality.
“Are you okay?”
She asked, but her expression clearly said she knew I was not okay.
I wasn’t okay. But it wasn’t because of this man. I felt upset and thought I could just kill him on the spot, but a bigger problem had arisen in my mind.
If Lucas had been intentionally watching that orphanage, and of course, I thought he must have had some kind of agenda regarding that orphanage—
What if the reason Lucas was there was to look for ‘Claire’?
There must be a reason why Lucas chose me and not Claire.
And the Emperor, seeing me brought by Lucas, must have judged me for ‘what I was.’
What was it that the Emperor had been ‘looking for’?
What had things been like in the original story?
Claire, barely surviving in a terrible environment, eventually awakened her powers under extreme stress and caused a huge fire in the Imperial Capital. The cause of the fire was a lamp, but she escaped without a scratch due to her prodigious talent.
In the original story, Lucas sought Claire because he had seen that talent.
In the original story, after Claire sacrificed herself for Alice, the Emperor’s plans started to crumble rapidly.
In the original story, there were several hints that Claire’s birth held some kind of secret.
If that were the case, then here…
Here, Lucas must have seen ‘my’ talent and sought after ‘me.’
If that is the case… that must be mistaken. I had no birth secret or anything. Such a thing simply did not exist.
What did the Emperor mistake me for in order to accept me?
“Sylvia?”
Alice carefully called my name again.
I looked at Alice’s face.
It was a face I had seen for the last ten years. Since I was very young until now.
Perhaps it was because of that, Claire’s sacrifice for Alice was for this reason; a sister-like Alice, with whom she had fought and bickered every day.
Then, what if…
What if I sacrificed myself for Alice in this world?
If Claire was still alive and the story continued similarly to the original…
…How could I have not realized this until now? I knew that Lucas had gone out of his way to take Claire, and I knew there were plenty of orphanages besides that one. I had even held similar questions many times in my mind, but only now did it come to me?
Clatter!
“So, what happened here?”
After the man was taken away, Mia Crowfield asked, almost clinging to me.
“Who was that man? What relation does he have to our father…”
Oh right, that was another issue.
“Mia, first, just sit down for a sec.”
There were still no knights inside. Only us in the room.
Alice had chosen to sit on the bed rather than the chair where the man had just been. It wasn’t that the chair was stained with blood, but she seemed hesitant to sit where a criminal had been tied up moments ago.
Of course, this bed was also one that the criminal had used.
“That man… he sold things to your father, Count Crowfield…”
“What kind of things?”
Even with Mia Crowfield, she might vaguely recall from the previous conversation.
Was it because she didn’t want to believe it? She asked us as if she knew nothing.
“…Children. On the opposite side, opium was probably among those things he was selling.”
Alice hesitated for a moment before answering that.
Mia Crowfield’s face fell blank. It looked as though all emotion had drained from her.
“…No.”
After a long pause, she muttered.
“No!”
And that word grew louder.
“No, my father wouldn’t… he couldn’t do that!”
The vacantness in her eyes sharpened once again. It was the sharpest expression I had seen from Mia Crowfield, even including her face before I turned back time.
“You are tarnishing the honor of our deceased father—”
“…The eyes.”
Just as Mia Crowfield was about to stand up, I opened my mouth.
“Do you remember your father’s eyes?”
“…”
Mia looked up at me with a confused expression.
“Have you ever seen his pupils constricted like a dot?”
Mia’s mouth parted slightly.
I had seen it. Every time I faced the Count, his pupils became like dots. I had never seen them change size.
A pale face. A skinny body. Dark circles under his eyes. And bloodshot eyes as if he hadn’t slept for several days, with pupils shrunk to dots.
Even in dark places, even in such dim rooms, his pupils remained like dots.
“That’s the kind of eyes that people with drug habits have. The pupils keep constricting even in dark places.”
“A- father… he was just working hard for the territory…”
“Do you truly believe that?”
At my question, Mia Crowfield looked up at me without being able to muster a single word.
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