Chương 111: 45-1. Those Who Understand

When I pushed the door open and stepped out, the first person I saw was Jessi. She was still there, of course—leaning against the wall, looking so profoundly bored she was approximately three minutes away from sprouting moss. The guard beside her had the expression of a man who had just discovered, for the first time in his career, what it meant to genuinely consider requesting a transfer to the frontier.

Evidently, Jessi's talent for weaponized nonsense had successfully tortured him into a new understanding of human suffering. The moment I pulled the door shut behind me, Jessi glanced up. Just once. Then that expression of magnificent boredom on her face paused. Very subtly. My stomach dropped. Wonderful. I had apparently deteriorated to a state where Jessi could draft half a coroner's report just from looking at me.

"Young master," she said, straightening up and strolling over with the unhurried confidence of someone appraising a recently acquired antique that had suspicious new dents in it.

"That expression of yours doesn't look like someone who just got scolded." I stared at her, deadpan.

"Then what does it look like?" Jessi tilted her head, eyes bright with that infuriating glint.

"Like someone Her Highness took apart for inspection," she said, pausing to let her gaze flick down to my collar, "and then put back together in slightly the wrong order." My hand moved toward my collar before I could stop it. Halfway through, I regretted it. Because that movement was basically a signed confession. Jessi's eyes lit up instantly—bright as a rat catching the scent of a compromised grain silo, or worse, a pickpocket detecting the distinctive aroma of palace gossip.

"Ohhh—" She drew the syllable out long enough that I wanted to strangle her to silence the echo.

"So something really did happen."

"You'd better shut up," I said quietly.

"I didn't say what happened," Jessi replied, the picture of innocence.

"Young master, your reaction is doing all the confessing for you." I closed my eyes. The night wind drifted down from the far end of the corridor, carrying the sea's particular damp chill. I had foolishly assumed that whatever had happened in that room was the worst of it. I was now being reminded that consequences rarely have the courtesy to arrive in single file. They queue up politely, one after another, making sure you fully appreciate each installment before sending the next.

The guard was still standing right there. I had no interest in playing riddles with Jessi in his presence, so I turned and walked toward the darker stretch of corridor. Jessi fell into step immediately, her footfalls so light she seemed born to exist in the gaps between other people's secrets. I stopped where the lamplight thinned enough to be useful.

"Young master," Jessi said, voice lowered but tone unchanged, "the way you look right now makes it very hard not to suspect you left something irreplaceable in there." I looked at her.

"Such as?"

"Such as your life," she answered without hesitation.

"Such as your brain. Or—" She paused with deliberate timing, smiling in exactly the way that warranted physical consequences.

"Something very precious, very personal, and generally not the sort of thing you can explain to people at dinner parties." I genuinely wanted to throw her off the tower. Not because she was wrong. Because she was terrifyingly close.

"Jessi," I said coldly, "if you actually want to die tonight, I can arrange it."

"The way you're talking sounds less like a threat and more like you barely made it out yourself." Instead of backing off, Jessi stepped closer, the amusement fading from her expression.

"Did Her Highness yell at you?" If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"No."

"Hit you?"

"…No." Jessi narrowed her eyes.

"Then it's worse than yelling and harder to clean up than hitting." She studied me, voice dropping further.

"Young master, what did she say to you?" I didn't answer. Because I understood perfectly well that certain things, once spoken aloud, stopped being companion conversations. They became royal secrets, future political positioning, and the kind of material that could get a person strung up on the scenic cliffs to dry in the wind. Never mind Jessi—I wasn't particularly keen on admitting to myself what had happened in there. Jessi waited two full beats. When I didn't speak, she didn't push.

She just looked at me quietly. Then her gaze dropped. My heart sank. Too late. Erina's healing had closed the wound beautifully—so flawlessly that at a casual glance there was nothing obviously wrong. But no matter how perfect the repair, my hand still wasn't quite right. Not bleeding. Not trembling. Just a very faint stiffness, like an invisible thread lying across my palm, ensuring that every time I made a fist, I'd remember exactly what I had promised away tonight. Jessi's hand closed around my wrist.

I tried to pull back. Half a beat too slow. She turned my hand over. There across the center of my palm, almost invisible in the lamplight, lay the pale white line. Once you saw it, it was impossible to pretend it wasn't there. Jessi's breath stopped for a moment. This time, the smile vanished from her face entirely. She didn't ask immediately. Didn't gasp. Her thumb hovered just beside the pale mark without touching it. The gesture was quieter than anything she'd said all evening—and clearer. She understood.

At least seven-tenths of it.

"Young master," she said at last, very quietly, "what did you promise her?" I pulled my hand back and closed it into a fist. Phantom pain bloomed across my palm immediately. Perfect. Erina's after-sales service was apparently comprehensive. Not only had she extracted a sworn commitment, she'd thoughtfully included an automatic recall mechanism. If this woman ever entered commerce, the Imperial Ministry of Internal Affairs would be on its knees within a decade begging her not to compete with the tax bureau.

I looked at Jessi. She wasn't playing around anymore. No laughter, no circuitous approach, no steering things toward entertainment. It was precisely because she'd gone so still that I knew this had to stop here.

"Don't ask," I said. Jessi didn't move.

"Young master—""I said don't ask." My voice wasn't loud, but it came out hard enough that even I found it unpleasant. The corridor held nothing for a moment but distant waves against the cliffs and the faint hum of magic lamps in their copper housings. After a long pause, Jessi slowly let go. She looked at me with complicated eyes—curiosity, worry, reluctance, and something else she probably wouldn't admit to herself. She was a thief. She'd been born knowing which pockets were safe and which held knives.

She had just felt the handle, so she stopped.

"All right," she said. One word. Quiet enough that I almost didn't know what to do with it. Which only made everything worse. When Jessi went silent, it never meant the matter was finished. It meant she'd identified something even she shouldn't touch. That kind of silence was more unsettling than her worst jokes—because it meant my situation had officially graduated from deeply embarrassing to potentially fatal. I exhaled and started walking.

"Go pass on her message. She won't be joining us for dinner." Jessi fell into step beside me. After a moment she asked quietly: "Young master, are you actually standing steady right now?" My steps paused for just a fraction. Then I let out a short, humorless sound.

"Steady or not, I'm standing. What else am I going to do? Collapse here and wait for someone to cart me out tomorrow alongside the gossip for a joint exhibition?" Jessi looked at me for a moment, then that infuriating, irreplaceable expression crept back onto her face.

"It's not that bad," she said.

"You've just been processed at a very high standard." I gave her a sideways look.

"Do you think you're good at comforting people?"

"No," she answered with complete honesty.

"I just suddenly realized that you've probably passed the point of no return today." I didn't reply. When we returned to the waiting chamber, everyone was still there. Olivia sat in the high-backed chair by the window, teacup in hand, posture so impeccable she looked like she'd been positioned specifically for a family portrait commission. Alvira stood by the fireplace, arms folded, expression as cold as the sea outside. Adeline sat at the small table organizing her notes, quill tip still wet with ink.

Kuroga leaned against the wall like a load-bearing door that had learned to breathe. Lucas sprawled in his chair with the relaxed confidence of someone who had decided this was a tavern's private booth rather than a royal antechamber. Matthews sat at the far end, back so straight it made church candles look slouched—clearly a man who hadn't yet learned how to breathe naturally on imperial flooring. The moment we walked in, every head turned.

For a brief, disorienting instant, I felt less like someone returning from a princess's chambers and more like someone who had just been retrieved from an execution ground and now had to confirm to assembled loved ones that his neck was still attached. Unfortunately, I had no physician's certificate to offer. Only the healed white line on my palm, thoughtfully reminding me that tonight was far from over.

"My lord," Adeline spoke first, her tone admirably level.

"How did it go?" A beautifully constructed question. How did it go. Broad enough to mean anything, flexible enough to cover affairs of state or dinner arrangements, pre-packaged with plausible deniability. Spending time around the von Brandt household had clearly taught her to armor every sentence before deployment. I adjusted my jacket and attempted to look like a man who had just concluded official business rather than someone who had just undergone premium processing.

"Still alive," I said, "and not yet scheduled to be mounted on the castle exterior as a wind indicator." Lucas made a short, amused sound.

"That qualifies as good news."

"From my perspective, yes," I said, taking a seat.

"From the Yansha Empire's perspective, probably not." The atmosphere, which had been cautiously relaxing, snapped taut immediately. Olivia set down her teacup with the softest possible sound. She didn't ask anything—just looked at me, gaze clean and ready, like she was already sorting everything I was about to say into appropriate categories. I reached into my inner pocket and placed the royal certificate on the table.

"Simple matter first." I tapped the document.

"I'm no longer the unrecognized stray scratching at the Rosa family gate. His Majesty personally retrieved me and cleaned up my name while he was at it."