The Price is Everything of Yours - Chapter 36

Whack! Or perhaps with a slightly stronger sound, Nualan staggered. A few people screamed as he seemed about to fall over the railing.

He barely managed to grab the railing and stand up.

“I’m telling you it’s not true! Joyce, don’t you trust me?”

“Then why is my sister crying!”

Joyce’s eyes flashed with indignation. From the first floor, Count and Countess McKinnon and Sivna came running up.

“What are you doing with guests present? Were you two fighting?”

“What are you doing, Nualan!”

Neris had never been formally introduced to Sivna since coming to this mansion, but she recognized him at once.

He was a man whose shoulders were hunched due to lack of confidence, and whose eyes openly revealed defeat and resulting self-defense. At least Nualan could deceive people with his outward appearance.

Indeed, Nualan showed no sign of caring about his father’s scolding. He quickly rolled his eyes and tried to smile nonchalantly with his face starting to swell.

“There was a misunderstanding, uncle, aunt. Joyce, let’s go downstairs for now. I won’t argue, so just calm down a bit, okay?”

Nualan’s words were quite cunning, taking on the role of resolving the situation while subtly implying that the cause lay with Joyce for using violence rashly.

People were about to shrug and walk away. That’s when Neris wailed out loud.

“Diane! Diane, are you okay? You’re not bruised, are you? I thought something terrible was going to happen to you because of Nualan, elder brother…!”

Bruise. At that word, the count and countess’s faces hardened.

Seeing them cast disbelieving looks at him, Nualan understood why Neris had called people over and said he had ‘hit’ Diane.

People like things they can understand. If Neris suddenly said in front of them that ‘Nualan tried to kill Diane’, few would believe it. But ‘hit’ is quite believable, isn’t it!

Moreover.

Nualan looked towards Diane’s legs. Betty pushed through the gathering crowd.

Joyce handed Diane to Betty and instructed:

“Check carefully if she’s hurt anywhere.”

“Yes, young master.”

Nualan wanted to grab Betty, but she was already out of his reach. Sivna, who had been rolling his eyes, stepped forward.

“Nualan, what did you do to make the child cry! Hurry up and apologize to Diane!”

Neris found those words ridiculous. Apologize? For what?

An apology for attempting to take a life can only be received with a life. Isn’t there an ancient saying passed down from before the empire was formed? An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

Sivna’s words didn’t sound good to others either. How could he raise his voice without apologizing to his elder brother and sister-in-law when it was he who had raised his son wrong?

Betty, who had taken Diane into a nearby room, soon screamed.

“Oh my, young lady! What happened!”

Those words alone were enough. The count’s face hardened, and the countess gracefully ushered the guests away.

“I’m sorry you had to see this on such a joyous day. This is a family matter, so please don’t worry and head to the reception room.”

It was precisely because it was a family matter that people looked like they were dying of curiosity and interest, but they couldn’t go against the hostess’s polite request to leave.

The guests dispersed to the reception room, music room, and banquet hall. Gathering in small groups with people of their own rank, they would have plenty to speculate about all night long.

“Nualan, Joyce. It’s late, so both of you go to your rooms. And dear, you shouldn’t be out at this hour either. Go to your room and sleep.”

“Yes…”

The ‘dear’ the count and countess referred to this time, Neris, responded with a rather dejected and shocked face. Then she stood firm next to the door of the room Betty had entered.

The count and countess didn’t force her further and led the people around them to the reception room.

Nualan couldn’t say anything due to the presence of others, but the look he left Neris as he departed was ominous.

Neris wasn’t afraid even if a man much taller than her was seething. The maximum harm he could inflict on her was death.

Death is the loss of expectation. Neris had no expectations for the future. So she wasn’t afraid of death, and consequently, she wasn’t afraid of Nualan’s anger.

It was a while later when Betty brought Diane out. Diane, who came out into the hallway with a solemn face, brightened a little when she saw that Neris had been waiting.

After taking Diane to her room, Neris was about to go to her own room right next door when she was held back by her sleeve. She turned to look at Diane sitting on the bed and said quietly.

“Well. You were scared today.”

Diane raised her eyes, red from crying, to meet Neris’s gaze. Then she mumbled and asked.

“Can’t we sleep together?”

For a moment unable to understand the situation, Neris realized after a while.

Unlike her, Diane was a real child, and she had just nearly been murdered. So it wasn’t strange that she needed the only other person who knew about it, and who had primarily helped her avoid that situation.

“Yes, Miss Neris. I’ll bring all the things you need.”

Betty, who had come to find ointment for Diane’s legs, encouraged.

If she had disliked it, even if a hundred Bettys had encouraged it, she wouldn’t have cared, but there was no particular reason not to. So Neris sat down next to Diane.

“Alright. Your bed is wide, so we won’t fall off if we roll around, I guess.”

“I sleep very still!”

Diane tried to smile brightly, but what came out was a weak smile. Betty, having finished applying the ointment, went to stir the fireplace with a poker and exclaimed indignantly.

“I really couldn’t have imagined it. To think that Master Nualan was such a person! I mean, what did our young lady do to deserve such pain? More than that−”

The bruise on Diane’s leg was in a position and shape that was difficult to attribute to the kind of violence one would typically imagine. Betty stopped speaking as she thought about this and frowned.

Diane burrowed into the thick goose-down quilt covering the bed and instructed.

“Betty, I want to sleep quickly. Turn off the lights.”

“Yes, young lady. There’s enough firewood. It’ll be warm until morning. Sleep well. Do you need any chocolate or cake?”

“It’s fine, just turn off the lights.”

Even with the temptation of snacks that were usually not allowed, Diane just spoke wearily.

Betty sighed deeply as she extinguished all the candles and left. Neris also took off her robe, changed into a white nightgown, and crawled in next to Diane.

Diane’s room was luxurious and smelled nice. However, Diane’s face, looking up at the bed canopy embroidered with gold thread, was full of worry far from that of a comfortable young lady.

After their quiet breathing had passed several times, when it became clear that Neris wouldn’t speak first, Diane couldn’t bear it anymore and asked.

“How did you know?”

“Nualan’s plan? I told you earlier. I roughly guessed.”

Of course, these were clues that would have been missed if Diane hadn’t continued to suspect the reason why she hadn’t attended the same school in her previous life.

And if Neris hadn’t been somewhat interested in even the languages used by foreign minorities, she wouldn’t have been able to be certain.

There was no need to say that much.

“You’re really smart!”

Diane felt genuine admiration for a moment and realized that because of that emotion, the sadness and fear filling her small chest had faded a little.

Neris lay on her side and looked at Diane’s face. Even without candles, thanks to the fireplace, all the expressions on that young face were visible.

“Diane, listen to me carefully. Your parents will do anything for you and would be too sad if they lost you.”

“Yes, they would.”

The words ‘they would be sad if they lost you’ seeped into the young heart, and Diane’s nose tingled. Neris, however, continued speaking monotonously, showing no sign of being moved by her own words.

“Not just Nualan, but Angelo Railing and Sivna McKinnon, they were all after you. They might not have originally intended to kill you, but since I appeared, they probably thought they had someone to frame as the culprit.”

People tend to distort situations to perceive them in a way that sounds better to themselves, even when they know all the inside information.

This meant that even if there were some suspicious circumstances, from the perspective of Count and Countess McKinnon, if the people they usually trusted kept insisting, a powerless and completely unrelated little girl could become the culprit at any time.

Diane’s face went blank with shock. Neris understood her feelings well.

She had always endured, believing they were family. She had always acted for them. But what was it that they ultimately wanted?

There seem to be too many people in this world who want more and more the better you treat them. You treat them as family, respect them, and even revere them, but that’s not enough, this is not enough, so they want you to give up your life too.

Thinking like this, Neris smiled bitterly.

“Yeah, what good would it do to kill you? You were just the primary target. If you get hurt, your parents won’t be able to pay attention to anything else for a while. The same goes for your brother. Then someone else will have to take that place, right? The person who benefits the most is the culprit.”

That speculation could only come after first being certain of the existence of a crime, and Diane vaguely noticed this fact. However, she had not yet learned the vocabulary and logical skills at school to clearly raise such suspicions.

So Diane decided to resolve another curiosity—really, there was a mountain of them.

“How did you manage to move the holy water just at that time earlier? How did you know it was today? Hmm?”

The position of festival decorations, especially important items like holy water, is not usually changed in the middle of an ongoing party. It was clearly Neris’s instruction.

“If they were going to act quickly, today was the most likely, and that was the only time they could slip away during the gathering.”

In fact, Nualan himself had all but told her the date.

His nonsense about hugging Neris and showing her the view below, while staring fixedly at the balcony with those gleaming eyes, was even creepy.

If he was having the insane thought of throwing Diane from the second floor, the time of execution was clear.

The day of the most formal and splendid banquet, which children would be most curious about.

The time between the banquet and the after-banquet gathering, when things would be most relaxed and servants wouldn’t be coming and going in the hall.

During the banquet, of course, there would be over a dozen servants carrying food, causing interference, and Nualan would have to make an awkward excuse to leave his seat.

If it was in the middle of the after-banquet gathering, it would be too late, and no matter what pretext was used, it would be difficult to avoid suspicion that the children had not come out of their bedrooms on their own.

Neris closed her eyes.

“Actually, I told the servants that it was your mother who ordered the holy water to be moved. Explain it well tomorrow.”

“Of course!”

Diane nodded with wide eyes. Then, seeing that Neris had closed her eyes, she waved her hand in front of them.

Neris slightly furrowed her brow at the gesture and opened her eyes again.

“I’m going to sleep now. What is it?”

“How can you sleep, nothing’s been resolved! What should I do, Liz? Huh? What kind of face should I make when I see Nualan and Uncle Sivna tomorrow? I feel like I want to throw a stone at them as soon as I see them!”

“You don’t need to see them tomorrow. Your parents won’t let them come near you.”

“Still! Why didn’t you tell the whole truth earlier?”

Diane couldn’t understand.

Of course, she wasn’t blaming Neris. She herself had been unable to say anything, just crying out of fear that family relationships would be broken.

But hadn’t Neris lied right there? As if she had some kind of plan.

Neris sighed.

“Diane, some things are more effective when not said directly.”

“If not said directly?”

“You have to make them guess. People may doubt what they hear from others, but they rarely doubt conclusions they’ve reached on their own.”

The more shocking the content, the more true this is.

Neris knew she would have a lot to do the next day. And none of those tasks were for Diane to help with.

To conserve her energy, she resolutely closed her eyes.

Seeing this, Diane rolled her eyes. Then, after pondering deeply, she wriggled her body closer to Neris’s side.

Although Neris couldn’t have failed to notice the arms hugging her tightly and the leg draped over her body, she remained still. Diane closed her eyes, grinned, and drifted off to sleep.