Mess 171
by Cristae171.
An emergency meeting was convened at once.
In truth, the only attendees were Serapi and Luni, plus Orkis and Karl, who had been outside demonstrating sword techniques for the children.
Batisa discreetly excused herself.
“Grandmother, honestly!”
Serapi complained, rubbing her aching jaw.
“How could you tell me such important news only now!”
“Just wait until you’re my age. You start forgetting important things every now and then.”
Lady Kia reproached her in return.
“Not even a kind word for this old woman, you just scold me…”
“It’s not like that…”
“Lady Kia,”
Orkis ventured cautiously.
“Did you perhaps keep it from us on purpose?”
It was already the fourth day since they’d arrived at the retreat. The fact that Lady Kia had chosen to reveal such a startling event only now meant she’d hesitated greatly to share the news.
“……”
And indeed.
“…If I’d told you, child.”
Lady Kia spoke honestly.
“You’d have thrown yourself into this, vacation or no, wouldn’t you?”
At those words, Serapi’s eyes stung with emotion.
“Of course I would have…!”
The madman who’d driven her uncle’s family to their deaths had resurfaced, and now there was evidence that he was one of the crown prince’s inner circle.
“Child.”
Lady Kia addressed her excited granddaughter coldly.
“Do you think you’re a god?”
“Grandmother!”
“You seem to think everything’s been working out because of your own talent, but do you really believe all your successes are solely your doing?”
“……”
It was an unexpectedly sharp rebuke.
Serapi felt a flush of shame; she had no retort. Deep down, she knew her grandmother’s words were true.
Yet, she couldn’t simply sit back and do nothing.
“…Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything, after all.”
Realizing her granddaughter’s stubbornness, Lady Kia sighed and rose from her seat.
“Grandmother!”
Serapi called after Lady Kia, who departed without turning back, but her grandmother left the room.
“……”
Disheartened, Serapi slumped limply into a chair.
“…She’s worried for you.”
Orkis defended Lady Kia as best he could.
“The one who murdered her only son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren has returned. Something inhuman and monstrous, hiding behind a human face.”
Lady Kia was fearful for Serapi, who would have to confront such an evil.
“The fear of losing the family she’d just found again must weigh on her,”
Orkis fully understood Lady Kia’s heart. The old woman was much like himself—scarred by tragedy, possessing a deep-seated aversion to people that bordered on phobia.
“I understand….”
And that made Serapi all the more frustrated.
“But those words aren’t wrong, either.”
Luni advised that she should take her grandmother’s words to heart, her tone for once serious.
“We’ve made it this far thanks to our own work and skill, but let’s not forget how much fortune has favored us beyond our efforts.”
Even the most talented person becomes powerless if the timing is wrong.
Luni reinforced that now was an especially good time to remember that fact.
“Because fighting the crown prince is not something luck alone can accomplish.”
“I agree as well.”
Karl echoed Luni’s remarks.
“Serapi, you’re suspecting Count Loria, aren’t you?”
“I heard things directly from His Majesty the Emperor.”
“If Count Loria really is the culprit behind that incident back then….”
Karl chose his words with care.
But it was enough.
Serapi, her face pale, brought paper and pen from the nearby desk.
She began to scribble.
Mars Harbor explosion.
Iris rebellion.
The foundling scandal at the sanctuary.
At first glance, there seemed no connection among these three incidents. But, on closer inspection, there was a clear intersection.
Serapi carefully identified these overlaps, drawing lines between them.
“……”
Each time she connected another event, a chill ran down her spine. Yet she continued tracing the threads.
The room fell quiet, so silent the sound of someone swallowing was clearly heard.
Every eye stayed fixed on the sheet of paper.
Gradually, it filled with incidents from the previous year to the present.
“In the Mars Harbor explosion, a new type of explosive was used. Then, a knight named Lim was poisoned with the same herbicide that was a component in the explosive, and at the sanctuary outside the capital, there was black phosphorus of unknown origin….”
The cases tangled together, one after another.
She wasn’t forcing the connections; they were there, of their own accord. Each new overlap deepened the heavy, uneasy silence in the room.
Even breathing was hushed now.
“Baglosa sent massive donations to the sanctuary each year…”
The sanctuary was close to the Catio family, whose goldmine was drying up. That’s why they became involved in forging counterfeit gold bars.
The fake gold was at Mars Harbor.
Baglosa’s trading fleet was docked at Mars Harbor.
And these families were involved in the speculative redevelopment of the plaza last year.
“Is this country going to be all right…”
Luni murmured in despair. The nation was in utter ruin. Orkis and Karl silently agreed. Survival itself seemed a miracle.
Nonetheless, the events were forming a single shape.
“Look at this.”
Serapi’s voice quivered.
“They all support the crown prince’s power.”
“Once you lay it out, it’s appallingly blatant.”
The schemes were contemptible. Orkis frowned. But the most frightening part was that those evil deeds had almost succeeded.
“Kis.”
Serapi turned to him.
“Who do you think came up with these schemes?”
The crown prince was the ultimate beneficiary, but it was unlikely he had personally masterminded all these incidents.
‘He’s not nearly that clever.’
From everything Serapi had witnessed, the crown prince was cautious by nature. But even a little provocation caused him to bristle and make mistakes.
He was not at all the sort to orchestrate elaborate plots.
So, then—who had planned it?
“My uncle’s case…”
With trembling hands, Serapi added another incident to the list.
The death of the former Lord Kia’s family.
The single event definitively connected to Count Loria, bearing traces of his involvement.
“I truly owe them.”
Even in death, they were helping her.
One tragic incident sat atop the web of cases, solitary yet terribly significant in its implication.
“It was after that that Baglosa gained a complete monopoly on the tea trade. And so…”
“The crown prince’s financial base was established.”
Orkis clenched his fist quietly. The pain of his nails digging into his palm almost made him smile bleakly.
“My god… my god…!”
Luni turned away, eyes shut tight. Karl only hung his head in silence.
Serapi, staring at the paper covered in cases, considered coldly.
She might never have known.
‘I might never have linked it all together.’
She hadn’t even been present in the Empire last year. That’s why she’d never connected these incidents to each other. She still couldn’t be sure whether the Liloa Trading Company, involved in black market explosive materials, even belonged to Loria.
But the one mistake he’d made—marked by the unfair deaths of her own family—was pointing straight at him.
“Karl was right.”
If the mastermind of all these incidents was ‘him’—
“If the one who killed my uncle’s family was Count Loria…”
If all this had originated from Count Loria’s mind…
“…This is going to be even more harrowing.”
The return of a madman, vile beyond even the crown prince.
Serapi came to understand Lady Kia’s reaction. Only after facing this staggering truth did her naïve granddaughter see the reason.
‘Grandmother already knew.’
Just how dangerous Count Loria was.
At the same time, a single conversation came to mind—what Lady Kia had said when she passed the land and company to Serapi.
‘I’m just tired now.’
An old woman, unable to catch the murderer of her son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren, introducing anti-stalker legislation for the fourth year in a row, hoping at least to prevent more tragedies.
Remembering it anew, her grandmother seemed so heartbreakingly weary.
“…But still, isn’t it wrong to do nothing?”
Despite her gratitude for her grandmother’s care, Serapi couldn’t bear to stand idle after discovering such awful truths.
That’s why, late at night, she paid a visit to Lady Kia’s bedroom.
“Do my words fall on deaf ears with you?”
Lady Kia, already changed for bed, wore pajamas and a fine robe—both gifts from Serapi.
“But grandmother.”
Serapi smiled sweetly at her grandmother’s reproachful gaze.
“How could I just sit still after learning all this?”
“Did I ask you to avenge me?”
“You meant for me to be careful, because it’s dangerous. I know.”
“Then why do you persist in digging your own grave?”
Does she think she has two lives? Lady Kia now outright ridiculed her.
“I thought you weren’t a fool, but here you are, acting as though you can do anything—”
“I can’t do everything.”
Serapi denied it.
“Grandmother.”
The decisiveness vanished from her face, replaced by a self-deprecating smile.
“Nothing’s changed.”
“……”
“I’ve only ever just scraped by, getting through by the skin of my teeth.”
Serapi had never considered what she’d done to be ‘victories.’ In truth, she’d never managed to truly defeat anything.
She had barely managed to stop the plaza redevelopment speculation.
She nearly got herself killed in the Mars Harbor explosion.
During the Iris rebellion, she’d come close to being murdered.
“All I’ve ever done is struggle to survive, but people decorate that and sing my praises. Now their expectations for me are absurdly high, when it’s all nonsense.”
“That’s because I misspoke.”
Lady Kia slumped her shoulders in resignation.
“If I were really so worried for you, I should never have told you anything. In the end, all I did was burden a child with the foolishness of an old woman.”
When the news reached her in Kia, Lady Kia’s vision had turned red once more.
The memory of her family, returned to her as corpses, was still painfully vivid.
Ever since the day she had to bury those innocent souls, Lady Kia had simply gone on living, never really alive. She had never once withdrawn the blade of vengeance buried deep in her chest.
She would not know peace until she tore that bastard to shreds.
“My child, you’ve already avenged me.”
And it was Serapi who had, openly, resolved the old woman’s resentment.
Lady Kia knew it well. She was, herself, a wretched soul who praised Serapi’s deeds louder than anyone.
“That’s why… you mustn’t.”
The old woman clasped her granddaughter’s hand.
Her wrinkled, gnarled fingers gently traced the back of Serapi’s hand, a soft, endless caress, like soothing a baby.
“I can’t bear to lose you, too…”
Serapi silently embraced the bowed old woman.
“Please don’t worry too much.”
But her gentle words belied the cold flash of her blue eyes.
‘Count Loria.’
Even in the darkness, those blue eyes glimmered with a chilling resolve.
“I’ll just fumble through again—and somehow barely pull it off.”
“…So vain.”
In the end, Lady Kia gave a wry laugh.
“Whom did you inherit this stubbornness from?”
“It wasn’t my mother, so perhaps it’s you, grandmother?”
Lady Kia, raising her head, now wore a proud smile. Serapi smiled back.
As if that earlier flash of killing intent had been nothing but a fleeting illusion.