Chapter 19

Long ago, when Carlyle was still a child.

[Carlyle. It’s a relief that you’re the strongest in our family.]

The first time his father, the Grand Duke of Rupesk, said that to him, he hadn’t understood it at all.

Carlyle had been skilled in every kind of martial art since he was small.

By ten, he’d already sparred with the grand duchy’s own knight commander, and by twelve, there was no one left in the family who could beat him.

There was nothing physical he couldn’t do.

Wasn’t that, naturally, supposed to be a good thing?

[Isn’t being strong obviously a good thing?]

[It’s good, at least, because it means there’s a better chance we won’t lose you, you little fool.]

He didn’t come to truly understand those words until he was eighteen.

It started with the pettiest of arguments.

His cousins had simply bickered a little, the way cousins do, and somehow that alone was enough to set it off.

Every single one of them turned into a wolf monster, in an instant.

His mother, who’d been there with them. The relatives not yet claimed by the curse. The attendants. The knights.

All of them died.

And so did the people of the grand duchy’s own territory.

[Lord Carlyle! Please, help us!]

[Aaaargh!]

[S— save me…!]

He’d been certain, of course, that he could save them. He was the strongest in the whole domain, after all.

Of course he had to be the one to put down the “monsters.”

[But how could I?]

The ones who’d turned into monsters were the same relatives he’d shared a meal with, just the day before.

He did, in the end, manage to save the people of the territory.

And his relatives did eventually return to human form — only to collapse, exhausted, and die.

He never wanted to remember that day again, for the rest of his life.

Standing before a graveyard that had grown so much fuller in a single night, Carlyle despaired for the first time.

[Why do we have to go through something like this?]

[…]

Unable to bear it any longer, Carlyle confronted his father.

But the Grand Duke had only one answer to give him.

[Because we’re cursed.]

A curse that had begun three hundred years ago.

Any family member who couldn’t master their own anger turned into a black wolf.

[We’ve never been able to break it, not since a black mage who used the black crescent moon as his mark cursed us.]

[Then what was the reason for it?]

There had to be some cause, some justification, for a suffering like this.

But no record of it had survived, so even his father had no real answer to give him.

Even so, Carlyle could be certain of one thing.

Whoever did this to us held an immense, deliberate malice toward our family.

No one could curse a family across three hundred years, generation after generation, without one.

Unable to bear it any longer, Carlyle left his homeland for the capital.

[I’m putting together a special division to hunt these people down. Will you join me, Young Grand Duke Rupesk?]

When Edgar Crowe, a man cut from the same cloth, made him that offer, he’d joined without hesitation.

So much had happened, since then.

But strangely, he couldn’t remember ever being this irritated before.

Carlyle tried to steady his breathing, tried to force his temper back down.

“Hoo…”

Judging by the way people leaving work kept flinching at the sight of him, it wasn’t working especially well.

Without quite meaning to, he found himself walking toward the Magical Herb Research Lab.

Whether it counted as good luck or bad, Theodore Wordsworth was inside, watering his plants.

Theodore, spotting his uninvited guest, smiled with his usual courtesy.

“Good evening, Young Grand Duke Rupesk. Lovely evening we’re having.”

“Address me by rank while we’re working.”

“Ha, but work hours are already over, aren’t they?”

Theodore studied Carlyle’s rigidly set face.

“And I don’t think you’ve come here to talk about work, either.”

“You’d be right about that.”

“Ah… you’re upset with me, then. I wonder why.”

Carlyle’s frown deepened, thinking back to that sit-down earlier.

As for how he’d known Leila had gone to see Theodore—

Edgar told me. Of course he did.

Through that irritating mind-reading ability of his.

[Ha, someone watching might think Wordsworth’s the mentor here, not Rupesk.]

Edgar’s smug little jab had been infuriating enough on its own.

But it had lodged itself somewhere in his chest, all the same.

He’d tried so hard to do right by her — and Rowell hadn’t even wanted that from him?

[I want to do good work, but there’s so much to memorize… I got a little impatient about it.]

But Rowell’s halting, stumbling answer had left something aching in his chest instead.

Have I already been putting performance pressure on her?

Then again, the moment she’d formally started, he’d thrown something as enormous as the kidnapping case straight at her.

Maybe she’d simply been too intimidated to actually ask him for help…

Still…

He’d wanted to come here and have a firm word with Theodore, all the same.

“I hear you gave my junior, Leila Rowell, some herbs.”

“Ah, yes, that’s right.”

“Rowell’s enthusiasm is one thing, but please don’t hand her anything dangerous.”

“Hm…”

“Anything that might affect Rowell’s fitness for duty, I’d appreciate being informed of in advance.”

The longer Carlyle talked, the more this felt, somehow, like the correct thing to be saying.

Right. That must be why I’m this irritated.

If Rowell collapsed sick right now, wouldn’t that put the whole department in a difficult spot?

But Theodore, watering his plants without much apparent interest, shook his head.

“Young Grand Duke Rupesk.”

“Say what you have to say.”

“A jealous man tends to make the woman in question sick of him, you know.”

“…? What is that supposed to mean.”

“…”

Theodore studied Carlyle quietly for a moment.

But instead of a proper answer, he simply smiled.

“Call it advice from experience. Just take it to heart.”

“Mm. Prep’s done, then.”

I looked back and forth between the neatly parboiled ballet-jump-pose root and the herb compendium.

Eating the mandrake root only lets you recall a very specific slice of memory.

And since the effect was this powerful, there had to be a cooldown before I could use it again.

At least a year, apparently. A little bit of a shame.

I really hoped I could get the Black Spoon Division destroyed and myself resigned well before then. The orphanage was already weighing on my mind enough as it was.

What Henry said is bugging me.

However he’d managed it from the orphanage, the youngest kid I worried about most had actually reached out to me!

In the world of Beyond the Golden Gate, voice-transmission devices were in common use.

Devices like that were installed in both the orphanage and the dormitory.

[Sis, when are you comin’? I wanna see you!]

[I’ll come this weekend. But wait, how are you contacting me at this hour?]

[Director’s been out late playin’ lately!]

[Excuse me?]

Wait. Thinking about it again, that made me angry all over again.

What? After making me do chores every single night?

Off gallivanting around, leaving the children unsupervised like that. Unbelievable. Thank goodness the new teachers were apparently staying behind to hold the fort.

Once I resign, I’m taking the money I’ve saved and getting those kids out of there with me.

With that future firmly in mind, I resolved to just go ahead and chew on the mandrake first.

“Ugh.”

Was this what it tasted like to chew on a sock that hadn’t been washed in three years?

I wanted to throw up, but the sight unfolding in front of me overwhelmed the nausea entirely.

“Whoa!”

Exactly like the pages of a paper book flipping smoothly by, everything I’d once read unfolded across my mind like a screen.

Every beat, from the heroine’s first day on the job all the way up to the start of the final incident, sank straight into my memory!

Unfortunately, since I’d died before I ever got to read the ending, it only played out as far as where I’d actually stopped reading.

That’s fine! I got everything I needed!

Locations, dates, who to go to for information — I remembered it all with total clarity, right down to the smallest side events.

“Yes…! Huh?!”