“Physical Renunciation Letter…”
I read the document title in a low voice and unconsciously furrowed my brows.
I wasn’t sure exactly what the content of this letter entailed, but the feeling it gave off wasn’t good.
As I was staring at the Physical Renunciation Letter with a somewhat detached expression, Ruth suddenly pointed to the bottom part of the letter.
“Look here.”
“Yes?”
Why?
I moved my gaze to follow his finger with a feeling of confusion.
There, written in small letters, was a clause.
“[1. Leopold Harvest (7) must pay ‘D’ the principal amount of 1,500 gold coins and the monthly interest of 200 gold coins before early summer passes. If he fails to do so, the person of 7 will be bound to ‘D’, and it will be considered that 7 has renounced his physical body.]”
…So this was it. The reason why the eldest son of the Harvest family had no choice but to die.
Seeing the shocking clause, I momentarily forgot to breathe, as if all the air had left my body, and an intangible force pressed on my chest.
This confirmed that the Duke of Dright had indeed killed the eldest son of the Harvest family.
Because the reported time of the eldest son’s accidental death was just after the early summer specified in the clause.
But why is that? Even though I finally found evidence to support my suspicions, rather than being purely happy, my heart feels even more troubled.
“Sigh…”
After I had been frozen for a few seconds, Ruth, who heard me sigh deeply from below, looked up from scanning the document and stared at me.
“What’s wrong? Are you feeling unwell somewhere?”
“Oh, no. It’s just that I’m feeling a bit troubled.”
“Why is that?”
“Um.”
I couldn’t bring myself to answer Ruth, who asked why I was feeling troubled. It was because I couldn’t quite grasp the source of my distress myself.
If you ask whether I feel sorry for the deceased eldest son of the Harvest family because of debts, it’s not that.
Whatever happened to him, the fact that he accumulated debt in the casino was fundamentally the eldest son of the Harvest family’s fault.
Therefore, although the situation that led to someone’s death is regrettable, the circumstances of the Harvest family’s eldest son did not particularly move me.
If you ask whether it’s because the situation seems deeper than expected, that’s also not it. As per Ruth’s wish, to prevent the curse that ruined our lives from continuing to future generations, we had to eliminate the root of the curse. And to do that, we couldn’t just skim over the issue; we had to delve deeply into it.
Therefore, it seems more likely that the problem lies with the content of the clauses…
Right after having that thought, I slightly lifted my gaze to look at the clause once again. Then, a particularly eye-catching sentence came into view.
[…If not, the personal safety of ‘7’ will be bound to ‘D’….]
“The seventh.”
“Huh? What did you just say? I think I heard you wrong.”
As I muttered softly to myself, repeating the sentence, Ruth furrowed his eyebrows in a cross. It was as if he couldn’t understand what I had suddenly mumbled.
To clear Ruth’s doubt, I moved closer to him and repeated what I had said.
“It was the seventh.”
“What was?”
“The part that troubled me.”
“Hmm?”
Ruth’s eyes, failing to fully grasp the story I wanted to tell, silently demanded an explanation.
Under his questioning gaze, I began to organize my thoughts, scattered like puzzle pieces in my mind.
As seen in the clause I just viewed, the declination of bodily rights referred to the eldest son of the Harvest family as ‘7’, while addressing the Dryte viscount as ‘D’ quite clearly.
Regarding this contradiction, I raised several questions.
Why would they write the eldest son of the Harvest family as ‘7’ and not ‘H’? What does this significant number represent? Even if it means nothing, why specifically choose ‘7’ over any other number?
Eventually, I reached a hypothesis. It wasn’t just the eldest son of the Harvest family who fell victim to the tyranny of Duke Dright. More precisely, the eldest son of the Harvest family was the ‘seventh’ victim to fall prey to him.
After seamlessly concluding my train of thought, I spoke up, “Looking at this sentence, Duke Dright is written as ‘D’, while the eldest son of the Harvest family is noted as ‘7’. I pondered over it and it seems like the number represents a sequence.”
“‘7’ representing a sequence means there were others murdered by Duke Dright besides the eldest son of the Harvest family?”
“If my hypothesis is correct.”
“That’s interesting.”
Ruth, murmuring to himself with a smile at my response, suddenly stretched his lips upwards and reached his hand back into the still-open drawer.
What is he doing?
As I bewilderingly watched him rummage through the drawer, Ruth swiftly pulled out something. Driven by rising curiosity, I closely examined them and found envelopes identical to the magic circle he had deciphered earlier.
“I was just about to say that these were in here as well. It seems your hypothesis might be correct, my lady.”
While listening to him in one ear and out the other, I found myself staring intently at the envelopes in an almost surreal spectacle.
Ruth held about nine envelopes in his hands. This meant that, in addition to the firstborn of the Harvest family’s physical renunciation declaration, there were nine other such declarations.
Not just one… What exactly had the Viscount of Dright been doing? As I tried to compose my contorting face and muttered to myself, Ruth, noticing my reaction, neatly laid the envelopes on the table.
Then, he broke the magic seals on the envelopes and pulled out the physical renunciation declarations from each.
I silently watched him work. Sure enough, as I had suspected, the numbers written on each declaration were different.
I saw the numbers ‘1’ to ’10’ in sequence and then burst out in a mirthless laugh.
“Ten in total. And all of them are illegitimate children.”
“Do you think it’s a coincidence, my lady, that they all have this in common?”
“……”
A coincidence, you ask?
I chewed over Ruth’s question and clamped my lips shut, trying to swallow the bitterness that threatened to surge up.
Whether looking at it from the perspective of circumstantial or physical evidence, it was impossible for this incident to be a mere coincidence. If it were coincidental, it would be inexplicable that all ten individuals related to Duke Dright were illegitimate children.
“Honestly, no. Even if it were a coincidence, I think it’s a very intentional coincidence.”
“I think so too.”
We get along well in these kinds of situations. After hearing my response, Ruth added with a playful tone.
I looked at Ruth, who had a deeply serious look in his eyes but spoke lightly, and chuckled quietly. It seemed that he, who usually doesn’t enjoy joking around, purposefully added that remark at the end for a reason.
He must have noticed that I was feeling down. Again, I failed to hide my true feelings.
A sense of self-reproach came over me, but I managed to act composed.
Then, as if someone had planned it, a document near the corner of the table caught my eye.
I glanced at the document with a bad premonition. In short, it was approval paperwork that clearly showed a history of buying and selling children residing in the facility.
“…Your Majesty.”
“Why do you call?”
Upon hearing me call his name, Ruth, who had been copying the declarations onto blank paper, glanced at me. I fixated on his purple irises for a moment before managing a strained smile. It was a smile born from a desire not to burst the fragile bubble of effort Ruth had put into lightening the gloomy atmosphere between us.
“It seems Your Majesty’s hypothesis was correct.”
“What are you talking about all of a sudden?”
“This.”
Not sure if my words were too vague, Ruth, stopping his work, furrowed his brows. Then, with a hardened expression, he crumpled the document he was reading and brought it over to himself.
As he read the documents about the children, time seemed to stretch into eternity. It felt like being on a horse charging endlessly forward, yet at the same time, as if holding a fragile glass ball that could shatter at any moment.
Just when I felt almost suffocated by the increasingly heavy air, Ruth, having finished reading the documents, slumped weakly onto the table.
I kept glancing at Ruth, who remained silent even after reading the documents, and bit my lower lip gently. His expression, previously rigid with tension, now seemed somewhat undone, which was distressing to see.
After a long silence, Ruth finally spoke in a subdued voice.
“I hoped I was wrong even as I guessed I might be right. But to have my suspicions confirmed so precisely… damn.”
However, he trailed off and cursed softly.
In the face of his turmoil, compactly pressed into a single phrase, I hesitated whether to lay my hand on Ruth’s hand, bulging with veins. It was the doubt of whether, as a ‘Serbia’, I should comfort Ruth, who was in distress.
After a moment of hesitation, I concealed my twitching hand behind my back and offered a faint smile. Then, I cautiously began to speak.
“Don’t be too hard on yourself.”
“……”
“It just makes us too sad.”
Even if someone else’s misfortune feels entirely your fault, in the end, it is their unhappiness.
