#34: Pursuit (3) — Copy Skills with Affinity!

“—Hm.”

Noelle let a breath out through her nose and glared at the papers on her desk. For a woman famous for never once losing focus in the middle of work, it was odd behavior.

“…”

She narrowed her eyes at the seal on the envelope. The handwriting on it was elegant, and it said nothing beyond the business at hand, and that briefly.

[From the Central Intelligence Bureau, to Dame Noelle. The personal particulars of the individual you commissioned.]

…The personal particulars of Aiden Kellermain, which she’d asked them to dig up a while back. She had put in the request the moment he told her he’d ‘been tangled up with’ her in the past.

Noelle got up without a word and took a lap of her office. She drifted slowly, a gloomy look in her eyes, as though she were inspecting every corner of the room, and after a while she came back to the table.

“—Hhhhmmm.”

She glared at the envelope again and let out another long breath through her nose. By now even she had lost count of how many times she’d done this.

“—Dame Noelle. Are you feeling unwell?”

That Stella, watching quietly from beside the desk, asked at all said plenty. She had never once seen this diligent woman, who normally kept her head down and worked without a word, fret like this.

“Is this not the information you asked for yourself? As I recall, you were waiting for it day and night.”
“…That’s true enough.”

Noelle forced the answer out and picked up the envelope.

Stella’s confusion was fair. Back when Noelle had ordered the investigation, not long after they first met, she’d been hugely curious about Aiden’s background. But by now things between her and that man had come a little… ‘further along’ than they’d been then, hadn’t they? Even in her own heart, Aiden Kellermain was without question someone who stirred up feelings far too complicated to call him a simple ‘contract partner’.

In a state like that.

There was one thing she knew for certain. The past of Aiden Kellermain sitting in this envelope was unknown territory, no doubt about it. The Central Intelligence Bureau shook out every last scrap of information, however small, so this would be on a different plane entirely from the background check she’d run on him herself.

Which was to say, put another way.

…If something goes wrong, there’s no going back to how it was.

If.

If, say.

What if Aiden had been tangled up with her in the past in a ‘bad way’? What if there was something mixed in there that she simply couldn’t overlook? And what if, because of it, she couldn’t go on with him the way they were now?

“…”

Her hand, reaching for the papers again, hesitated.

Why.

She’d felt something like this before. When she’d watched from a distance as the Prince and Aiden faced off, and thought he meant to break off the engagement with her, the feeling had been just like this one.

He.

might ‘grow distant’ from her. Every time that thought came to her, she was afraid, and why she should fear it at all, she couldn’t have said.

…To begin with.

The outer corners of Noelle’s eyes drooped.

What was she to him, exactly? She had heard him say he liked her, Noelle, yet she had never given him a single word in return. And for all that, here she was digging up information behind his back.

“…”

Really.

Necessary or not, this was plainly something she shouldn’t be doing.

Noelle’s eyes slowly slid shut. But then she drew a deep breath, snapped them open and tore the envelope wide.

…At the very least.

If she was going to do something she shouldn’t, then at least she would leave no regrets behind. If this showed her something he wanted kept hidden, she’d apologize honestly. If he had done some wrong he hadn’t been able to tell her about, she’d carry it with him. Wasn’t that, at the very least, the honest way to answer someone’s heart?

Resolve in her eyes, Noelle picked up the papers and began reading, her gaze all but blazing. It took a long while, and she went over them again and again before she finally set them down on the desk without a word.

“…Stella.”

Her voice was heavy, and Stella tensed and turned to her, since she had plenty of questions about who Aiden really was herself.

“Yes.”
“Aiden has never once in his life been in a relationship, apparently.”

“…”

“…And his favorite food is spicy noodles boiled Far-Eastern style.”

Stella turned to her with a look that said she had no idea how she was supposed to react to that, and Noelle tossed the papers onto the desk and dragged a hand down her face.

“…And that’s the most useful thing in there. Out of everything it says.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Come read it yourself.”

Stella tilted her head, came over and picked up the papers. By the time she’d read them to the end, she couldn’t help agreeing with Noelle.

“…He is a truly, perfectly ordinary commoner, is he not?”
“Quite.”
“There is not a single item worth noting—”
“There’s something.”

Noelle clutched her forehead as though she had a headache.

“That man is a war orphan.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The people he calls family now, he only met after he turned fifteen. They’re not blood relatives. And there was never any formal adoption either.”

“…”

Stella blinked.

“Given how dearly he treasures them, I had naturally assumed they were related by blood.”
“…I know.”

It was unexpected, certainly. He put his life on the line to protect them like that, so Noelle had naturally taken them for close blood relatives too. Yet on paper they were practically strangers, weren’t they? Much like Noelle and him.

“…”

It was a curiously fitting thing to have in common, all the more so given the way he now threw himself into anything that concerned Noelle as if it were family business.

“More to the point, if he is a war orphan… that would also explain why his childhood records are entirely blank.”
“Right?”

Sure enough, the records from before he met his present ‘family’ were completely empty. Common sense said that not even the Central Intelligence Bureau could trace a war orphan’s past. There were countless ways he might have ended up in the Empire, so it wasn’t just natural that nobody could pin it down. Expecting otherwise would be the mistake.

“…”

But here, too, there was a snag, and that was the problem.

…Of all things.

The stretch of time in which Aiden’s ‘movements’ were blank matched exactly the stretch her own ‘memory loss’ covered, the one she had never told anyone around her about. Of all things, the information she most wanted was a past that fell in the very period even the Central Intelligence Bureau couldn’t pull up.

There’s only one lead.

And there was only one way to follow it up.

“Stella.”
“Yes?”

“…”

“Aiden’s family. I think I need to go and meet them at least once.”
“…Ordinary common folk would be ready to faint just from coming face to face with you.”

That was true enough, but.

Still, if she wanted to dig any deeper into Aiden’s past, there was nowhere else she could hear about it.

Noelle was mulling that over in earnest when the office door was suddenly flung open. It was Katya, and she looked thoroughly displeased.

“…Your Highness? What brings you here?”

Noelle tilted her head as she asked.

Ever since their fight, and the apologies they’d somehow traded afterward, Noelle had shown little sign of it, but Katya plainly still found her awkward to be around. For the two of them to get along, neither side could be awkward, so it was usually Noelle who eased the mood.

“Just stay calm and listen first.”

…It seemed.

that what came next would make keeping calm plainly impossible.

“That guy got kidnapped.”
“…And who would ‘that guy’ be?”
“Your groom.”

Sparks flew from Noelle’s eyes.

Having a sack pulled down over your whole face is, in fact, a good deal more of a drain on your stamina than you would think.

Add being trussed up tight with rope and dragged along, and there’s no need to say more. So by the time somebody yanked the sack off his head, Aiden was fairly worn out.

…I need to put in more training.

He had never thought his stamina was lacking, but getting tangled up in a main scenario crawling with every sort of monster put him through all kinds of things, and it would only get worse from here.

He was turning that over when the man who’d pulled his hood off pressed a gun muzzle to his forehead.

The man was wrapped up from head to toe, which stood out: a mask, black gloves, a coat. The outfit might as well have introduced itself with ‘I do dirty work in the shadows.’

“This is him?”
“Yes. We spotted him near the building and brought him in.”
“…You caught him easily enough. Isn’t this the one who’s been poking around about us all day?”

When another masked man said that, Aiden smiled wryly to himself. No, really, it couldn’t have been hard in the least, since Aiden himself had come along quietly without putting up the slightest fight.

As he thought it, the man holding the gun to his forehead raised it, just like that.

Ah.

There was no need to ask what for.

The pistol came swinging down hard, straight into Aiden’s face. It came down again, and again, until the blood running down his face turned his vision red.

“…Won’t even show that it hurts. A hard-bitten one, this.”

“…”

…No.

It wasn’t that he was hard-bitten so much as thorough. He’d simply taken a drug beforehand, because he’d been sure that being kidnapped to a place like this meant nothing good would happen to his body.

…The divinity isn’t coming out either.

His divinity, which by rights should have sensed a crisis and leapt straight out, was nowhere to be found, and Aiden laughed wryly to himself.

…Well.

“That’s enough of a greeting, and I don’t care for wasting time, so let’s get to the point. Who put you up to this?”
“I don’t like wasting time either, so I’ll give you a straight answer. If you don’t want to die, leave a fair amount of the documents and goods behind.”

The likely reason it hadn’t come out was that Aiden didn’t see any of this as a ‘crisis’ in the first place.

The answer came back without so much as a blink, and the masked man faltered.

“…What?”
“You know as well as I do that you can’t get rid of the whole lot in the time you’ve got. Just leave enough behind to show there’s a direct line to the Prince or the Administrative Minister. Do that, and I won’t come after you and beat you to death.”

“…”

The masked man gave a hollow laugh and leveled the gun almost against his forehead again.

“Listen, I don’t think you’ve grasped the situation yet—”
“I know you won’t kill me.”

“…”

“You must still have plenty left to get rid of as it is. Add a corpse to that and there’s no way you get out ‘cleanly’, with no trail to follow, is there?”

“…”

“If you want to keep your own necks, you haven’t got time to go making more work for yourselves here, have you?”

Aiden carried on as though it were nothing, and the masked man stayed silent.

What is this guy.

That was probably all that was running through his head. The man’s attitude was as good as saying he’d let himself be caught here on purpose, wasn’t it? He saw straight through their situation and how they worked. They were the ones who had him tied up with a gun on him, yet they were the ones feeling the pressure.

“I’m not out to kill you either, so if you’ll just cooperate a lit—”

Aiden had been about to go on in that vein when he stopped short. His eyes were adjusting to the dark, and as he made out the things around him one by one, he could finally piece the situation together.

Which was to say.

Right now, the number of people surrounding him here was far more than he had expected…

“…You haven’t all pulled out yet?”

…Far more, that is.

The color drained from Aiden’s face in an instant. The change in mood was so abrupt it startled even the masked man who had a gun leveled at him. A breath ago this man hadn’t so much as blinked and had been threatening them instead, so the sudden air about him was strange, wasn’t it?

“—No, come on, you lot are good enough that the Prince or the Administrative Minister hands you jobs personally. What have you been doing all this time?!”

…And then, out of nowhere, he started scolding them.

“…What?”
“I figured you’d have pulled almost everyone out and left one or two behind. This way I can’t protect all of you! Somebody’s going to die, guaranteed!”

“…”

They couldn’t make out what on earth he was saying. He’d been kidnapped, he’d threatened them instead, and now he was going to protect them?

“Stay calm and listen to me carefully.”

Aiden said it looking almost too frantic to breathe.

“It’s not too late yet, so treat me first.”

“…”

That made even less sense.

…Is he sick in the head?

They were seriously considering the possibility when Aiden said urgently,

“No, you’ve got to have an elixir or something! You don’t actually have to heal me, just make me look okay at least! I’m telling you, the moment I’m seen in this state, you’re all dead, for real!”
“—What the hell is this lunatic talking ab—”

Someone finally couldn’t hold it in and said it, but that sentence was cut off halfway too.

— …

Something.

It must have been because he’d felt it too, that something wasn’t right.

— … — … — …

Ringing.

The air.

Even though it was still a long way off.

…Some ‘dreadful thing’.

was drawing closer, little by little. That much, he could tell.

— …

— … …