“The bounty?”

Shiro tilted his head slightly. The angle conveyed interest without overdoing it—a calculated gesture meant to encourage the other person to continue comfortably.

“Yes. Anyone with an ear for such things already knew the rumors that criminals had been slipping into Belkain as its seal weakened.”

Yuto smiled wryly. It was the Kingdom of Ristal that had taken the lead in sealing Belkain and declared itself its protector. Just as the angle of Shiro’s head was calculated, Yuto’s smile was an expression chosen out of consideration for the man before him—the prince of Ristal.

“For someone in my position, those rumors represented an opportunity too good to ignore.”

“Haha... But by then, you must already have been treated as House Marigold’s benefactor. Were you still looking for opportunities?”

“To be honest, at the time, I wasn’t certain about the antidote I’d given the head of House Marigold.”

Yuto shrugged, maintaining his wry smile.

“That was why I left for Belkain the very next day. I also thought that if the worst happened to him, I would be all right if I fled to Belkain. Of course, Lady Levian’s insistence on accompanying me was not part of my calculations.”

Yuto deliberately introduced a lightness into his voice. He softened the curve of his wry smile as well. He intended to make it impossible to tell whether his answer was serious or a joke.

“...”

Shiro’s eyes glinted sharply. Just as Yuto intended, he spent a moment wondering whether the answer he had just heard was a joke or the truth. And he considered Yuto.

‘The bounty.’

It was a clear-cut answer. For someone born in the slums, abducted into slavery as a colosseum fighter, then left as the sole survivor to become an adventurer and earn a living, no motive could have been more natural. As with the poisoning, there was consistency to the principles behind Yuto’s actions.

Money and opportunity. The logic of survival for someone who had to claw his way up from the bottom.

But Shiro did not take clear-cut answers at face value. Most clear-cut answers were prepared answers, and behind a prepared answer there was usually a truth someone wished to hide.

That should have been the case. Yet Yuto’s answer had changed. Now it was something that might have been a joke or might have been serious. He claimed he had left House Marigold for Belkain the very next day because he had not been certain about the antidote. This—this was not clear-cut. And that made it feel remarkably true.

For a fleeting moment, Shiro felt bewildered.

Yuto’s answer about the poisoning had been clear-cut and airtight. He had experience with poison as an adventurer and had applied that knowledge upon seeing similar symptoms. That very clarity had aroused Shiro’s suspicion. It had smelled like a prepared answer.

But this answer was different. He had not been certain about the antidote. He had even considered fleeing if anything happened to the head of the house. Lady Levian’s decision to follow him had been unexpected...

This was not how a prepared answer was structured. He was voluntarily revealing thoughts that could work against him. Saying he had not been certain about the antidote diminished his own achievement in the poisoning incident. Admitting that he had considered running away was a confession of cowardice.

‘I was certain your answer was a lie, but I’m in no position to point that out.’

Shiro slowly brought his glass toward his lips.

‘I don’t know you, but you know me. That was my assumption. Perhaps Marketer simply made a mistake...’

His reasoning threatened to waver.

He had felt that the answer about the poisoning was a lie because it was too clear-cut, yet this time the answer was anything but.

‘Another hypothesis. You’re not skilled at lying. You happened to have a clear-cut answer for the poisoning, but you weren’t sufficiently prepared for the matter of Belkain, and some of your true thoughts slipped through.’

He tasted nothing in the drink that wet his lips.

‘Next hypothesis. You saw through my suspicions. So you’re deliberately mixing in imperfect answers to confuse me.’

If it was the former, there was no need to be wary of Yuto. He was someone Shiro could readily handle, someone whose inner thoughts he could lay bare.

‘But if it’s the latter, that means you’re... reading me. That you know me well.’

A chill ran down Shiro’s spine. Faint as it was, the sensation was exceedingly rare for him. Shiro Ristal almost never felt a chill on account of another person. The other person was always the one being read, and Shiro was always the one doing the reading.

Yet now, he had to consider the possibility that he was the one being read.

‘Calm down.’

Shiro pulled himself together. He had to think dispassionately.

The latter possibility was unlikely. To see through Shiro’s suspicions, Yuto would have to understand him inside and out. Could a fourteen-year-old adventurer from the slums see through the mind of Ristal’s prince? By any reasonable standard, it made no sense.

“...”

Something that made no sense might have happened. There was the answer about the antidote, crafted so that exposing the lie would turn the blade back on Shiro himself. And the conversation just now. A way of speaking that condemned Ristal’s failures without giving him any grounds to take offense. The readily understandable desire of someone from the slums to rise in the world.

‘What are you?’

In the end, Shiro had to reserve judgment yet again. This was already the second time.

Deep in his chest, it stirred both displeasure and interest.

“Haha... To think you even considered running away. You truly are an honest man.”

Shiro laughed, bright and light, as though he had simply enjoyed Yuto’s joke.

“But perhaps that very honesty is why Lord Rufus trusts you.”

Shiro raised his glass lightly toward Yuto. Yuto smiled back and raised his own. His smile held just the right suggestion of a boy from the slums relaxing at a prince’s joke.

His eyes, however, were meticulously dissecting Shiro’s reaction.

‘He wavered.’

It had lasted only an instant, but Yuto had clearly seen it: an exceedingly faint flicker of uncertainty in Shiro’s eyes.

Had he offered nothing but clear-cut answers, Shiro would have classified him as a skilled liar. The moment that happened, Shiro’s scalpel would become even more relentless. Once convinced something was a lie, Shiro would invariably try to strip it away.

So Yuto had mixed in impurities. Something that looked like truth among the lies. An answer that seemed unprepared among the prepared ones.

It was a diversion only Yuto could have managed, having watched Shiro in his previous life, trusted him to the end, and been betrayed at the last.

‘To face you, I have to wield a double-edged sword.’

Yuto slowly brought the glass to his lips. He, too, could not taste the drink. All he could taste now was the thick, metallic blood he had coughed up in his previous life.

“To think you set foot in that cursed land for a mere bounty. It must have been terribly trying.”

Shiro’s scalpel was about to move again.

“Yes, it was.”

Faced with that approaching scalpel, Yuto decided to reveal a little more emotion. Honestly. To keep Shiro from understanding him completely, while allowing him to understand a little at a time.

To make Shiro certain that the lies Yuto intended him to believe were the truth. To lead him into that misunderstanding.

“It was trying, but...”

Yuto paused. The bustle of the banquet hall filled the silence between them. Looking down at his glass, he spoke again. This time, the lightness had left his voice.

“What I saw when I reached Belkain made me forget all about something as trivial as a bounty.”

“...”

“The seal had long since crumbled. Tomb robbers were plundering the ruined city, and Black Mages were exploiting the restless spirits.”

Yuto’s voice was composed. Beneath that composure, however, lay the emotions he was deliberately allowing to show.

“I don’t know much about the Kingdom of Belkain. Nor do I know much of its history. But...”

Yuto tightened his grip on the glass slightly. He sensed Shiro’s eyes catch the movement. He had to let him see it. This emotion was meant to be seen.

“Walking through the ruins, I felt it. People had lived there. There had been homes, streets, a castle. Belkain must have been... a prosperous kingdom.”

A quiet tremor passed through Yuto’s eyes. That tremor was not an act. Belkain had been his country. The country he had ruled as king. The emotions he had felt walking through its ruins were real.

He was merely channeling those genuine emotions in a direction Shiro could misunderstand.

“I heard it was the wrath of the constellations that destroyed that country.”

Yuto’s voice grew heavy and subdued.

“Someone from the slums like me could hardly presume to speak of what sort of beings the constellations are. But...”

Yuto looked at Shiro. Indignation filled his eyes. It was not feigned. His indignation was real. Shiro simply would not know its true target.

“After seeing the people of a fallen kingdom wandering as restless spirits with my own eyes, I couldn’t help wondering... whether that was justice.”

Shiro did not answer. Nor did his smile fade. But Yuto sensed a subtle change in his eyes. This was no probing scalpel. It was a look that measured something, as though weighing what lay inside the person called Yuto, and how much it mattered.

“The Kingdom of Ristal...”

Yuto turned his gaze back to his glass.

“I know it declared itself Belkain’s protector. I saw for myself how that protection had fallen apart.”

He lowered his voice.

“I’m sorry. I know it is rude to say such things before you, Your Highness. You said so yourself earlier—that His Majesty’s illness had drawn all the kingdom’s attention to domestic affairs.”

“Yes, I did.”

Shiro nodded slowly. His eyes were still taking Yuto’s measure.

“I... grew up in the slums. The poor are accustomed to people failing to keep their promises. The kingdom’s protection. The lord’s mercy. The guild’s fairness. Such fine promises rarely reach the slums.”

Yuto smiled bitterly.

“So when I saw the ruins of Belkain, I felt something familiar. The familiar feeling of, ‘Ah, another promise left unkept.’”

Shiro’s smile changed. Its benevolent shape remained, but the light within it was different. As he listened to Yuto, sympathy spread through his eyes.

Of course, it was an act. But the fact that Shiro had chosen that particular act was itself proof that Yuto’s words were succeeding in planting a specific impression in his mind.

“Did you fight for the restless spirits of Belkain?”

Shiro asked quietly, but Yuto shook his head.

“No. My reasons weren’t so noble. I fought the Black Mages in Belkain to protect my own life, and I drove out the tomb robbers for the bounty.”

Once again, Yuto put his selfish motives front and center. This time, however, there were the emotions he had already laid out. His indignation in the ruins of Belkain. His doubts about the constellations. His familiarity with broken promises.

Even as he spoke of selfish motives, the emotions he had just displayed contradicted them. All of it was Yuto’s orchestration.

“But...”

Yuto showed a moment’s hesitation. It was a natural pause, as though he were debating whether to speak.

“There was one calculation I made.”

“A calculation?”

Shiro’s eyes narrowed slightly.

“I plan to enroll at Maria Academy next year. The head of House Marigold has promised me a letter of recommendation.”

Shiro’s smile froze in place. Maria Academy. The finest educational institution on the continent of Callisto, where royalty, nobles, and the next generation’s brightest talents from every nation gathered. And the place where Shiro himself was scheduled to enroll next year.

“It is common knowledge that you will also be enrolling next year, isn’t it, Prince Shiro?”

Yuto looked at Shiro. This time, there was no bitter smile of a boy from the slums, only a candid gaze that made no attempt to hide his ambition.

“Belkain was the land Ristal had declared it would protect. I calculated that if I had the achievement of clearing away the filth spreading through it... then when we met at the academy, Your Highness might at least remember my name.”

Yuto scratched his neck, looking sheepish.

“It was a very shallow calculation, but I was quite serious about it at the time. I thought that if someone from the slums was to survive at the academy, he would have to make whatever connections he could, however he could.”

Shiro listened to Yuto’s answer and fell silent for a moment.

Then he laughed.

This laugh was different from the earlier ones.

From behind his mask of benevolence, something close to genuine interest spilled out.