DYPIOOP Chapter 1

I'm a Real Spirit Master

"Name."

The room was small and airless. No windows—not even a pretense of one—and whatever ventilation had once existed was long gone. The accumulated evidence of its abandonment hung in the stale air: cigar smoke, and a particular mustiness that spoke of ambitions long since rotted.

The portly man sitting behind the desk had the air of someone who had not been surprised by anything in at least a decade. He looked at the small woman seated across from him with the expression of a person reading a very boring form for the thousandth time.

The woman pulled her chair closer and said, "Elonia Devney."

"Devney Barony?" He made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a groan. "Mhmm..."

The man scribbled something on paper with a slight frown. Elonia swallowed nervously, her gaze fixed on the magistrate's embroidery on his uniform, anxiety tightening her throat. The man asked her again, "Have you had your coming-of-age ceremony?" he asked.

"Yes. And—sir, listen, I did not mean to—"

"Charge: impersonation of a spirit mage, and fraud." He clicked his tongue with practiced disappointment. Tsk, tsk. "Why would a grown lady do such a thing?"

Elonia's body jerked with indignation. "Sir, fraud? That's not true at all!"

"Right, right." He waved a bored hand. "They all say that when they get here."

The man gave a perfunctory answer and gestured behind Elonia. Soon enough, men in identical magistrate uniforms approached one by one, as if they'd been waiting. The men surrounding her spoke with finality.

"Lady Devney. Please stand. We'll escort you."

Polite words, but the destination was obvious. Metika Prison. She couldn't go like this. Elonia clutched the desk and spoke urgently.

"Sir, I really am a spirit mage! You know the Devney family—the spirit mage family whose ancestors helped found the Espidia Empire, whose bloodline goes back to the very—"

"Yes, yes. Can you prove it?"

Elonia nodded so vigorously her neck protested.

Something flickered in the man's eyes. Hesitation. It was the first crack she'd seen.

She needed this. If she couldn't prove it here, it was straight to a cell—and in the Espidia Empire, impersonating a spirit mage was not classified under ordinary fraud. It fell under impersonation of a founding contributor. The spirit mages had helped build this empire, which meant impersonating one meant both dishonoring their legacy and deceiving the imperial family who revered them. The charges compounded in ways that ordinary impersonation simply did not.

But the reverse also held: if she was recognized as a genuine spirit mage, the treatment she'd receive would be something altogether different. Fitting for a founding contributor's heir.

The trouble was that the empire's entire recorded history had produced exactly three spirit mages. They lived in founding myths now, in stories told to children. To most people living in the present era, spirit mages were relics—quaint artifacts of a past nobody fully believed in. Because of this, cases of spirit mage impersonation cropped up every year.

Knowing this, Elonia obediently closed her eyes at the magistrate's request.

"Please pay attention," she said.

She stilled herself and reached for what she'd learned to feel—the texture of the air, its shifting layers, the small disturbances where water gathered. Even in this dead room, moisture existed.

A sound like a single water droplet falling somewhere distant. A gentle ripple of something she couldn't quite name.

The anxious knot in her chest loosened, fractionally.

In the quiet of the interrogation room, she murmured softly, "Nyx."

A moment of silence. When everyone focused on Elonia—

Nothing happened.

Metika Prison housed all criminals in the Espidia Empire. Naturally, not all criminals received equal treatment. If you were from a family with imperial influence, or had enough money to afford bail, you could maintain a decent life even within prison.

Elonia, as it happened, qualified for neither category.

"Miss Devney. Letter for you."

She looked up. The guard handed her an envelope.

Three days. That was how long it had taken for a letter to arrive from the Devney Barony. Elonia broke the wax seal stamped with her family's crest without particular hope.

Baron Cordon Devney's handwriting was, as always, efficient.

「We were called in for questioning too, you know. Since you did this on your own, please conduct yourself in a way that doesn't cause the family name to fluctuate any further.」

Elonia read this without any particular feeling. Not surprise, obviously. But then she kept reading, and the real purpose of the letter revealed itself.

「Beyond failing to set a proper example for your brother, you've now caused Erics to be contacted at the Academy. I can't tell you how disappointed I am. I've disposed of all your belongings too. You won't need them while imprisoned anyway, so I'll put them toward Erics's tuition.」

She stared at the last line from beneath the rough blanket she'd pulled over herself on the prison's cold floor.

「I trust, as a member of the Devney family, you'll understand.」

"I knew this would happen..."

She crumpled the letter.

Family. The word had always had a hollow ring when her parents used it about her. Their family meant the son who would carry the name forward. Erics was the family's hope, their future—they'd said it so often it had become something like a prayer. Elonia, meanwhile, had always been the temporary labor with an expiration date: useful until she married and left, at which point her absence would be the estate's gain.

'And they call it family when it suits them.'

She was about to throw the wadded letter at the wall when—

Click.

The prison door swung open.

The guard stepped inside and looked around. "Which of you is Elonia Devney?"

"That—that's me."

When she awkwardly raised her hand, still holding the crumpled letter, the guard spoke with an ambiguous expression.

"There's a supplementary interrogation required. Please spare us some time."

If it meant getting out of this place, what did time matter? Elonia jumped up immediately and followed him.

Outside the bars, the damp air changed immediately—as though it had been holding its breath, waiting. Moisture gathered in the space above her head and assembled itself, with remarkable casualness, into the shape of a small child.

[Hmph. I was more comfortable in there.]

This was the greeting she got right off the bat. Elonia used ventriloquism to scold him while muttering, "You shouldn't say things like that if you have any conscience."

She felt the guard's gaze on her like she was a lunatic, but she brazenly smiled back. From the moment she was interrogated to when she was imprisoned in Metika Prison, the looks Elonia received were generally similar to the guard's. But on the day she first saw Nyx, she simply couldn't help speaking. How could anyone not be startled to see Nyx's face poking out from the beard of a magistrate coming toward them on the street? By the time she realized he was a spirit, she was already in the middle of being questioned. Before she could even enjoy the happiness of being a spirit mage, she had to prove Nyx existed, but every time she tried, he refused to show himself as if to provoke her.

'Not that it matters much. No one else can see him anyway.'

Either way, it seemed she was fated for prison life.

She followed the guard through the wet-stone corridors and then, without warning, the architecture changed. Marble underfoot. Columns that cost more than her family's annual income. Elonia let her eyes drift sideways.

"Is this... am I being questioned by someone high up...?" she murmured to Nyx.

[You were so upset about being wrongly accused. Maybe they're going to confirm you're a real spirit mage.]

That was, against all odds, the most sensible thing Nyx had said to her since they'd met.

When the guard reached the massive door, he cleared his throat softly. No one had even announced who had come or why, but the door opened. It was a procedure that deviated from standardized protocol.

As the door opened, the first thing that entered Elonia's eyes in the spacious room was an antique guest table. And the man occupying that table.

"You would be Elonia Devney, correct?"

Carvel Haelton.

The Commander-in-Chief. The Empire's Sword. The Duke who had every military force in the empire operating beneath his authority.

There was no one in the capital who didn't know his name. What Elonia knew about him, however, was filtered primarily through the salon where she'd worked—the kind of establishment that catered to young noblewomen, where Carvel Haelton's name appeared with remarkable frequency. All gossip about his handsome appearance—how he'd picked up someone's handkerchief, how he'd smiled at someone else. None of it particularly illuminating about who he actually was.

'I'd assumed he was the sort of man who cycled through lovers like seasonal accessories,' she thought, studying him from across the room. 'But he doesn't look like that at all.'

Elonia carefully observed Carvel. His clothing was immaculate, his posture precise, his entire bearing suggesting a self-discipline entirely appropriate to the title of Commander-in-Chief. His face, however—that was more complicated. The firm set of his features was softened, barely, by the faint curve at the corner of his mouth. It was the kind of expression that could read either as amusement or as the particular ease of someone who has never needed to hurry. Dark hair. Gray eyes—the color of ash—resting on her with a gentle quality she couldn't immediately name.

"Please sit," he said. "We have things to discuss."

Carvel indicated the seat across from him with a glance. Despite his cool impression, his manner of speech was quite polite. It was undeniably courteous. And yet an inexplicable sense of discord lingered. Elonia sat down awkwardly and asked, "Did you call me because of the spirits?"

"Perhaps."

He held her gaze steadily while saying it—which made the ambiguity of the answer more, not less, unnerving. Elonia looked away, an instinctive retreat.

She was sitting across from the Duke of Haelton. The late Empress had come from the Haelton family—had died young, which was tragedy enough, but the connection remained. If Carvel had bothered to come to this place himself, to this conspicuously empty room, through the mechanism of a guard who didn't ask questions—there was a reason for it.

'Maybe he thinks I'm really a spirit mage and came to confirm?'

Harboring faint hope, she stole glances at Carvel from the corner of her eye. The dignified aura of someone always at the center of power filled the spacious room. At its center, Carvel sat quietly, tapping his fingers at a steady pace while watching her. Just before Elonia opened her mouth to say something after observing him—

Carvel slowly leaned forward and placed a small case on the table.

Click.

It opened. Inside, on velvet, sat a ring set with stones that caught the light from every angle.

Gray eyes looked directly at hers.

When he finally spoke, it was with the timing of a man who had considered this thoroughly.

"Lady Elonia," Carvel said. "Will you marry me?"

Elonia blinked at him.

"I'm sorry," she said. "What did you just ask me to do?"

"Marry."

"Who?"

"You and I, as it happens."

For the first time, Elonia seriously wondered if she'd gone mad. Otherwise, why would there be a proposal—to her, a mere baroness's daughter with no acquaintance with him, at this moment when she was locked in prison? In contrast to her confusion, Carvel continued speaking calmly.

"I need someone who can convincingly play the role of a spirit mage. You, it turns out, are remarkably good at telling plausible lies. You're an excellent candidate."

Perfect timing. Impossibly convenient. She eyed him with the wariness of someone who has learned that things which appear perfect and convenient usually aren't.

"If you want someone to play a spirit mage," she said, "there are surely other candidates besides me."

"There aren't many fraud cases with Devney family credentials."

"Well. That's... true."

"It's quite a convincing background."

The truth was, Elonia didn't even properly know about the spirit mage from a thousand years ago. Much of it was lost when records were destroyed in a fire in the imperial underground archive. Because of that, all that remained was what was passed down orally through the family, but it was hard to fully trust the words of Baron Devney, whose daily life consisted of pretense. She felt bitter that while she wanted to leave the family, at times like this she ended up relying on that very background.

Elonia asked him again, "Does it have to be marriage?"

"Is there another way to release you from custody with myself as your guarantor, when you have no evidence in your favor?"

She nearly nodded before she caught herself. The logic was so presented as to make any alternative feel unreasonable.

Maybe this was a test. Maybe he was actually trying to see whether she was a real spirit mage—drawing out her reaction. The thought made her straighten.

"What about an employment contract instead of marriage?"

Distrust appeared in his sharp eyes that had been hidden beneath his smile. Elonia pressed before he could dismiss it.

"If what you need is someone to play a spirit mage, surely you'd prefer a genuine one to a fake—wouldn't you?"

"Obviously."

"Then: here is a genuine spirit mage. Trust me and wait, and the moment I'm officially recognized, I will take any assignment from the House of Haelton. Unconditionally. No questions, no conditions."

Carvel propped his chin on his large hand. His hand moved slowly along his sharp jawline, joints prominent. Perhaps due to the shadow cast over his gray eyes, his piercing gaze sent chills down her spine. Though nothing had changed, his atmosphere had grown considerably sharper.

After staring at her for a long time, Carvel's lips twisted crookedly—his next words came in a lower register.

"For a fraud case, you have a particular style."

The flatness in his voice communicated his feelings precisely.

"Evidence?"

The warmth that had been purely formal was gone. The faint courtesy—the kind you might offer anyone—had simply evaporated, and what remained was the raw version of this man: clear-eyed, cold, and unimpressed. Had he been testing whether she was a spirit mage?

Hope shattered. Like every person she'd stood before and tried to explain herself to. Like every interrogation, every skeptical face, every set of eyes that looked at her and saw nothing but a liar.

She couldn't grab Nyx and hold him out for inspection. She couldn't produce documentation. She couldn't conjure anything visible to anyone but herself. And here was the man who'd said he needed a spirit mage—and he didn't believe in spirits either.

The particular injustice of this had a specific texture. She was familiar with it.

Elonia swallowed the frustration that had been building since she'd first been arrested, and pointed—with remarkable composure—at her own earlobe, where a small waterlike shimmer, Nyx, was currently lounging with the insouciance of a garden ornament.

"He's right there," she said.

Carvel's sharp gaze tracked to where she was pointing. He frowned, marginally.

"From where I'm sitting," he said, "what you're pointing at is yourself."

She followed the line of her own finger, then quickly cupped her hand and extended it toward Carvel.

"If you look very carefully at my hand, there should be a translucent five-year-old child—"

"I don't see one."

"—sitting in it." She sighed. "—I see you don't."

Under Carvel's flat attention, Nyx dissolved into droplets and dispersed into the air with the timing of someone who had been practicing being inconvenient.

Elonia curled her now-empty hand into a fist.

That spirit. That utterly useless—

"So," Carvel said, watching her with the mild interest of someone observing a minor oddity. "You won't do the marriage?"

"The marriage is a bit..." Elonia trailed off to hide her displeasure.

She was a real spirit mage. She knew it. She had always been the person whose qualifications were dismissed, and here she was being asked to impersonate herself—fraudulently, from the outside—while the actual evidence hovered invisibly behind her left ear and refused to perform.

The logic was clear enough. If she could prove herself—actually prove herself—the recognition would bring money, reputation, freedom. She didn't need to tie herself to anyone's house to access that future.

"I don't mean to be unpleasant, Your Grace," she said carefully.

"The beginning of that sentence suggests the rest of it will be."

"I genuinely believe I'm a real spirit mage."

"...Is that so."

Was that belief? She looked at him hopefully.

He unfolded his arms.

"Is Greythur available?"

"Yes, Your Grace."

Rattle. The door opened, and a man entered with a sword at his hip.

Still watching Elonia, Carvel issued the instruction without inflection.

"Return her to the cell."

The footsteps behind her started moving.

What if Nyx never performed when it counted? The thought came with the sharp clarity of cold water.

She'd carry the fraud charge the rest of her life. Every decent employer would see the record and close the door before she could speak. The Devney household—the people who had sold her possessions within three days of her arrest—would greet her at the door when she was released, and she'd go right back to being their convenient source of income until she married or simply wore out.

'The very people who threw me away the moment this became inconvenient now expect me to come home and contribute. Again.'

She didn't want to go back. She didn't want to play fraudulent spirit mage either, but weighing the options—pretending to be what she actually was, while waiting for actual proof, was considerably more survivable than the alternative.

Thump. Both palms hit the desk. She looked at the man across from her and spoke with firm determination.

"Fine," Elonia said. "Let's do it. The marriage."

Only then did a satisfied voice emerge from Carvel's faintly stretched lips.

"I was just wondering how to handle you, so this is fortunate."

"H-handle...?"

"Keeping secrets requires the most reliable possible method."

Though his appearance was calm, the meaning behind his words was chilling. Elonia forced her lips into a smile while thinking, 'The answer was decided from the start anyway...!'

And so Elonia agreed to become a fake spirit mage.