Chapter 135
“What terrible things are you saying! And the deal you made with me won’t disappear even if I were to vanish!”
At Max’s desperate words, Riina narrowed her eyes, and despite the contextless mention of a “deal,” Einar skillfully pressured Max.
“I wonder. What if I make you disappear? If that’s what I want.”
“Because it’s a rule beyond this world, even Your Highness’s ‘luck’ can’t affect this deal! Ah, aah! I shouldn’t have said that!”
Feeling the crisis that he might truly disappear if Riina said just one word, Max shouted in panic and soon covered his face with his hands, heaving deep sighs.
“So he wasn’t even a being of this world.”
“If we’re talking about those who come from other worlds, there are plenty among our ancestors as well.”
Riina casually dismissed the accidentally revealed fragment of Max’s true identity with a glance.
“We should go to the base of those suspicious groups you’ve identified. It seems to be the same place the imperial household investigated, but you might discover things that the investigators or we couldn’t see.”
After a brief pause, Riina raised the corner of her lips.
“You are a merchant, after all.”
“I am a merchant, but… just to be sure, let me ask again: am I going with you two?”
“Of course.”
“You’re stating the obvious.”
As Einar and Riina nodded simultaneously, Max waved his hands with all sincerity.
“I absolutely, positively do not want to move together with you two!”
“You don’t have a choi—”
“I do! I do have a choice! A pitiful person caught between lovers always has a choice! Especially since you two have the opposing forces of misfortune and luck! Though opposites attract most intensely, you’re asking me to get between you? I absolutely decline!”
Max’s desperate cry to avoid going with the two of them echoed among the piles of documents in the office.
Jane, exhausted from anxiety and fatigue, forcibly turned her sluggish mind as she stared blankly at Hans, who was crouched tensely before her, watching her every move.
She had heard his incoherent mutterings, but she couldn’t understand what he was saying at all.
However, with mountains of paperwork to process—with a little exaggeration—she didn’t want to spare him any more time, so she reluctantly asked:
“Is this important?”
“Huh? Um. No. I’m not sure how important it…”
As Hans trailed off and hesitated, Jane waved her hand dismissively, not even trying to hide her annoyance.
“Then next time, or rather, don’t just show up like this. I told you not to come until I called you.”
At Jane’s reproach, which pierced like an awl, Hans froze for a moment but soon answered with drooping shoulders:
“S-sorry.”
“If you’re going to apologize, don’t create situations that require apologies in the first place… Ah, never mind. I’m busy, so please leave now.”
Jane, who found even scolding Hans a waste of time, had no interest in listening to anything else he might say.
Or rather, it would be more accurate to say she had no intention of dealing with him from the start, having appeared uninvited at the Bolshevik mansion.
But unlike before, Hans didn’t leave obediently when Jane told him to go, instead continuing to fidget in place with an expression that suggested he was very anxious about something.
How much time had passed since Jane, who had already turned her attention away from him, had forgotten his existence and was deeply engrossed in her paperwork?
“Um, Jane.”
A large shadow fell over the last page of the document, and a voice that sounded as if his throat was constricted rang out.
Startled by the large, dark shadow looming over her head, Jane inadvertently left an ink stain on the last page.
Looking down at the ruined document with flashing eyes, Jane slowly raised her gaze.
As her attention turned to him, Hans swallowed dryly as if terrified but didn’t retreat.
“Hans.”
With just a short calling of his name, without any other words, Jane instantly made Hans feel like a criminal, and she delicately furrowed her brow.
“You said it wasn’t important. Why did you come, exactly? Can’t you see I’m busy right now? Is it about the letter? Then look at me now. How can I send a reply in this situation?”
“It’s not that.”
“Then what is it, for heaven’s sake!”
As Jane, unable to bear it any longer, put down her pen with a clatter, Hans gulped.
“People came looking for me, do you remember?”
“Speak so I can understand you.”
“Before, you told me to bring the entry passes used by the servants of the Bolshevik mansion.”
“Are you talking about the hunting competition?”
“Yes. The woman who was working there with her identity hidden came to see me.”
Until then, Jane hadn’t been listening to Hans’s words very attentively.
In truth, she was hoping that Hans, who was persisting in staying instead of leaving, would quickly say what he had to say and depart.
But at his next words, Jane jerked her head up with a swish.
“What did you just say?”
“I-I said I made the mechanical device… and that you have it. B-but I said it’s absolutely not dangerous because if it was discovered that you brought a suspicious object into the Bolshevik mansion, you’d be in danger!”
Hans rolled his eyes awkwardly, unable to directly face Jane’s gradually distorting expression.
And Jane, watching him like that, could hardly believe what she had just heard and barely managed to ask again:
“So you’re telling me you just blabbed about the secret weapon to bring down the fake to a servant of Bolshevik, especially one who’s stuck close to the fake?”
“No. I definitely didn’t say it was a weapon. When they asked what it was used for, I said it was a decorative item…”
“Who would believe such a lie!”
Jane’s face, after exploding in a shout, changed like a crumpled piece of paper.
She tried hard to calm herself, clenching her trembling jaw tightly.
I need to remember where I am. It’s fine to speak normally, but if I shout and my words accidentally leak through the door cracks, it’s over.
She desperately suppressed the wave of anger and bewilderment rushing over her, biting the inside of her mouth until it bled.
Wasn’t this “endurance” the very thing she had needed most and used most effectively to get to this position?
Forcefully pushing down the urge to grab Hans’s neck and twist it, Jane spoke with trembling lips:
“What were you thinking, blurting out such things to just anyone? Is it because I didn’t explicitly say it was a secret? Some things are secrets without having to be labeled as such. This is about overthrowing the Bolshevik family. Even a three-year-old would know it’s a secret.”
Though her voice was calm, it was a voice Hans had never heard before.
Not just her voice, but also her clouded blue gaze as she looked at him…
Why did the words the blacksmith had spoken on some past day, when he had cursed Hans as a pathetic fellow, come to mind at that moment?
‘Don’t trust that woman too much. You might think of her as family, but it seems only you think that way.’
But Hans had no time to dwell on other thoughts.
Jane was relentlessly pressuring, blaming, and crushing him word by word, though she was refraining from actual curses.
“…to think you would block my path like this.”
Hans, who had been spending time where each second felt like a hundred years, was overcome with emotion at Jane’s words.
He said tearfully, as if wronged:
“Block you! I’ve been working so hard for you… And you, you didn’t call me. I’m your only family! Y-you go so readily to the Third Prince!”
“What? What are you talking about now?”
Jane was feeling beyond anger, now just bewilderment.
What on earth is this idiot saying?
“I’m your family, your family! I could do anything for you, but since you entered this mansion, you’ve been trying to hide me, and when I send letters, you ig…nore them.”
As his bulging eyes filled with tears, Jane felt a throbbing in her head.
She truly couldn’t understand what was going on in his head.
He was speaking, but his words made no sense, so how could she understand?
What was the connection between that kind of talk and blabbing about secrets?
Jane considered Hans not as family but as a convenient tool to be used, so she completely failed to understand the wave of emotions he was feeling and the outburst it had triggered.
The fact was that the resentment and hurt he had kept in his heart, unable to speak to anyone, had burst out of Hans’s mouth the moment Becky had prodded him.
She quickly ran through her thoughts, leaving Hans—who was either crying or seething, she couldn’t tell and didn’t want to know—to himself.
She had only just managed to poison the fake once.
Lately, she had been so busy that she had postponed all her plans, whether it was tea time or sending baked snacks.
Jane gnawed on her fingernails and muttered:
“This is no time to be sitting idle. It’s turned into a race against time.”
Come to think of it… there was that proposal the Third Prince had made earlier?
