YMPDKMA Chapter 40

Rupert didn't answer. He put the extinguished hwea back in his mouth. With a stiff sigh, Ruize sank down as if about to burst into tears. Tori sympathized with him and crouched beside him.

"Hang in there, Rui," she patted him gently with birdlike touches, but it didn't seem to comfort him. Ruize eventually burst into thick, heavy tears.

Rupert was somewhat taken aback by a grown man's tears. The sight of a man with shoulders broad enough to lay a child across them crying loudly was beyond bizarre—it was grotesque.

"Ugh, I'm married. Sob! Good God! How much of a madman do you want to make me look!"

"Quiet."

"People will think I'm a pedophile! Good God! Good God!"

"Shut up."

"Even if there wasn't a single woman left in this empire! I! Sob! Would never do that with Your Highness!"

At Ruize's tedious wailing, Rupert turned his characteristically irritated gaze toward the documents. He'd decided to tune him out completely.

"I'm even seeing someone right now... If word gets out wrong, really..."

"Prettier than me?"

The question, which sounded like jealousy, left Ruize stunned. But he quickly recovered his expression.

"Of, of, of course! Your Highness is a m—"

"Watch your mouth."

This time he didn't just warn with words. Rupert actually picked up a well-polished pistol, intending to silence Ruize. He'd loaded bullets earlier.

Bang!

"The gunshot's louder!"

The bullet wrapped in pale blue light tore past his ear, but even clutching his bleeding ear, Ruize's face showed no fear. That was precisely what irritated Rupert.

"It hurts!"

"I shot you so it would hurt."

"Damn it, Margaret is far prettier than Your Highness! Incredibly pretty!"

"People say I'm incredibly pretty too."

"As if that face that looks like it could kill with a glance is pretty!"

He was pretty. But Ruize didn't say so. His last shred of pride. But Rupert had never received or given the word "pretty" as a compliment anyway. Meaningless wordplay. Even if someone scorched his face right now, leaving hideous burns, he wouldn't care. Though he would kill them for harming him.

"...Do you plan to keep Lady Bellua by your side?"

At Ruize's sudden question, Rupert, who'd been burying his nose in trading company documents, slowly raised his head.

Bellua. A name that kept grating on his ears lately. The image of a girl with cheeks flushed like ripe peaches came naturally to mind. He frowned without realizing it.

"Yeah."

"It's dangerous."

"So?"

"Does she even help? She doesn't seem very smart. No, if she were smart it'd be more dangerous... Besides, that young lady is hostile toward me for no reason. She seemed to be wary of Your Highness."

"So what."

Rupert spat out like a defiant adolescent boy and focused on his documents again. Ruize rambled on as if voicing his grievances. After all these years following Rupert, to have his loyalty go unrecognized like this.

"No, I'm saying be careful."

"Of what?"

"Lady Bellua. You don't even know what she's scheming."

"If she's just a stupid girl like you said, why do I need to be careful?"

Lariette Bellua certainly wasn't as dangerous or useful as her name suggested. Rupert recalled her—looking straight at him, so frightened and terrified and horrified by him, yet still babbling about becoming his.

It hadn't felt bad. He was used to others' revulsion. It was just interesting—the way she hid her fear so clumsily while running her mouth about becoming his. She didn't know it, but that was exactly how to convince Rupert. Annoyingly so.

He wanted to completely possess something, someone...

"But that father of hers is no ordinary person. You know he was the previous emperor's man. He's curled up like a winter bear now, but there's no telling what he's planning. That's why we've been keeping watch."

"That girl knows nothing."

"How can you be certain?"

In reality, her father had no reason to hate Rupert, even if he pitied him. There was no way he'd sent his only daughter into the imperial palace. From the day Lariette entered the palace, Rupert had continuously monitored her surroundings, but she'd never once made direct contact with Bellua. She seemed to meet her younger brother sometimes, but the listening device he'd secretly planted detected no dangerous content.

"I don't do certainty."

"Then why keep her by your side? It's strange..."

"Tsk, shut up."

At Ruize's backtalk, Rupert threw the heavy rifle he'd been using as a paperweight and stood up. He picked up the rifle that had properly struck Ruize's forehead and fallen to the floor, then aimed the barrel at him again. This time he aimed properly at his head.

"Don't nitpick at my words."

"Is it all right to so carelessly try to kill your lover?"

"Crazy bastard."

Ruize, who'd been pestering him to play and constantly getting cursed at beside Rupert, claimed to be hurt with a completely unhurt expression, then gave up on getting Rupert's attention and flopped onto the sofa prepared in a corner of the room. Rupert looked at him pathetically and picked up a weapon shaped like a palm-sized crossbow, loading two needles into it.

He pulled the string silently, but strangely, the needles didn't fire. Instead, Ruize, who'd been hit by something like a bundle of light, jumped up in surprise at the prickling sensation.

"Gyaah! Ah! Gyaah!"

"Does it hurt?"

"Of, of course it hurts! Obviously! It hurts!"

"Don't be dramatic."

Rupert lightly scolded him, but when Ruize genuinely seemed to be in pain, he pressed his lips shut and turned his gaze to the desk. His eyes settled slightly.

"Ah, sorry. I shot wrong."

"You, you, you're lying, right? Ahhhhh!"

Ruize's skin soon turned bright red. Tori followed him with squirrel-like nimble movements as he ran around the room stomping.

"Kyaa, Rui! Your skin is glowing!"

She grinned broadly, as if enjoying his pain. At Tori's excited shouts and Ruize's screams, Rupert clicked his tongue sharply and reloaded the crossbow.

"Hold still. It'll be bad if Tori gets hit."

"You only worry about Tori!"

"I said hold still."

"Damn it, Your Highness! You're genuinely a terrible person!"

Though he said that, Ruize stopped. Aiming at Ruize's chest as he stood there as if rooted, Rupert observed his skin, tattered by the light bundle, and moved a pen with his other hand.

"Need to reduce the nitric acid ratio a bit."

"Am I some kind of lab rat?"

He protested desperately, but Rupert didn't care in the slightest. The weapons development he'd started last year was now nearly complete. Two new weapons he'd developed had already been confirmed safe and begun production as military supplies. Few people knew that Princess Lapherte was the military alchemist Barbarossa—only Rupert himself, Tori, Ruize, and the Emperor.

Many didn't trust Barbarossa, who handled the military's top-secret new weapons without even showing his face, but since his guarantor was none other than the head of state—the Emperor himself—no one could object. Moreover, his weapons were innovative enough to attract investors from foreign countries.

It was purely because of the bombers he'd developed that the battles of Ransburg and the siege of Whittgen ended in Imperial victories. With fewer than ten thousand troops, the Imperial army had crushed dozens of ethnic minorities and trampled Wilethan as a colony. Not all of that extreme cruelty was Rupert's achievement, but it couldn't be said he had no part in it.

According to the holy war of Volgorad, the one true god protected by the Emperor, his soul had committed such tremendous achievements and sins that it would be torn to shreds with nothing left.

So what?

He was irreverent. His sins already overflowed—there was no room left to take responsibility for such indirect evils. However he lived the rest of his life, the cold Volgorad would never invite him to his beautiful castle.

The hell awaiting him was a bottomless pit. People cursed that Barbarossa's cruel weapons would bring divine punishment, but did he have even the slightest corner left where punishment could be received or forgiveness sought? Rupert put down his pen and laughed bitterly at himself.

Having judged that he'd collected all the data, Ruize brushed off his skin where rough scabs had formed and raised his voice.

"Damn it, you calculate all the effects anyway, don't you? Why do this to me?"

"It's different from seeing it with my own eyes."

"So why me! Am I easy pickings? You always let Tori off when she whines!"

"She's contaminated anyway, so it doesn't come out accurate."

Rupert answered coldly and grabbed the ankle of Tori, who'd crawled under the desk, pulling her up. Stay still. She only behaves when threatened.

"What about that young lady then? Bellua!"

"She won't do."

"Why not!"

"She'll get hurt."

"Oh, so I can get hurt?"

Ruize clutched his throat, stammering with betrayal and shock, barely able to speak.

"She's mine."

It was too outrageous to even refute. Ruize, who'd been following Rupert for years now, thrust out his wrist where blisters had risen, suffocating with frustration and injustice.

"What about me! What about me!"

"You're just a stray military dog."

"Isn't that too much? That woman hasn't even been here that long."

Without even looking at Ruize, who trembled and flushed as if he were a jealous mistress, Rupert sat back down at the desk and pulled out a paper from the very bottom of a stack of documents, drawing a line through it. The names crammed full were those of nobles around his age. Hidden among them was the name of someone he absolutely had to eliminate.

Beatrice Gorten, Lariette Isabel de Bellua, Rehan Dietrich Bellua.

Naturally, the owners of the faces he was looking at now were written there too. But the pen tip hovering over Lariette's name didn't move from its spot. He ignored her name and passed over it. Of course, it was a list he could flip back to anytime.

Saying Lariette was his property didn't mean he trusted her. She herself had said he didn't need to trust her. And Rupert didn't trust her in the slightest.