Do you know what tragedy retail investors—ants—commonly suffer in the stock market?
When you’re convinced, “This one’s absolutely going to skyrocket!” and scrape together every last penny to dump into it, only for the stock price to go nowhere and keep moving sideways for years.
If you cut your losses, all the time and money you’ve sunk into it feels horribly wasted; but if you keep holding, it feels like you’ll dry up and die. That vicious swamp of “involuntary long-term investment.”
That was exactly the state I was in now.
I had been trapped for over two years in an undervalued blue-chip stock I’d believed would skyrocket at any moment and fatten up my wallet.
“Nasus. Is dinner potato stew tonight?”
“Yeah. We ran out of meat yesterday, so there’s only potatoes.”
“That’s fine. The stew you make is rather excellent.”
A calm, graceful voice reached the back of my head.
I stopped stirring the potatoes in front of the stove and turned my head slightly to glance at her.
Camellia sat leaning by the window, reading a book.
The ghastly figure I had picked up for a single silver coin—nothing but skin and bones, reeking of a corpse—was nowhere to be seen now.
Clear, milky skin, and an undeniable elegance befitting a noble.
Judging by appearance alone, she looked like she’d fetch at least a dozen gold coins if I put her out on the market right now.
If only she didn’t have the label of a “traitor’s family” attached to her…
That was why a slightly improved appearance was nowhere near enough for her.
The future of Camellia that my [Vision] had stolen a glimpse of in a fleeting instant was, in a word, wondrous.
“The one and only silver Archmage in the history of the Empire.”
When she carelessly flicked a hand toward the tens of thousands of demonic beasts covering the sky, thousands of silver meteors poured down, swallowing the world in white.
Even now, two years later, I remembered that “brilliant peak” with perfect clarity.
That was why I had taken her in without caring in the least about other people’s mockery. Because I had no doubt she was the perfect blue-chip stock that would save my life.
But two years.
It had been a full two years since I’d believed in that damned [Vision] of mine and devoted myself to supporting this girl.
Over the past two years, trusting in the value of that future, I had gone into debt, worked manual labor, run errands for smugglers, and done all kinds of rough work to earn money and keep her fed.
I’d bought her expensive mana recovery potions and procured every kind of basic magic textbook I could find for her.
And yet the current Camellia was an ordinary person who couldn’t even use a basic fire-starting spell.
The devastating bad news hidden beneath it all was that her mana circuits had been completely destroyed after her family was exterminated.
‘Fuck…… Where did my Archmage go!!’
Inwardly shedding tears of blood, I gripped the ladle tight.
Camellia would surely, someday…
Someday… become a splendid mage.
But whether that was three years later, five years later, or ten years later… I had basically dumped my entire life into a stock.
“Nasus? You don’t look well. Why don’t you stop pushing yourself and rest early today?”
“Ah, no. I’m fine. The stew’s ready, so come eat.”
At Camellia’s worried question, I forced a bitter smile and held out a bowl.
After two years of living together, she now accepted the food I gave her without complaint, and sometimes even showed me a faint but rather affectionate smile.
But whenever I reached out without thinking, or the distance between us suddenly narrowed in an instant, I could unfailingly feel her thin shoulders flinch and stiffen.
Seeing her reflexively hold her breath and squeeze her eyes shut, it felt as though her time was still trapped somewhere in that past.
…
But as dark as her bleak memories were, my insides were burning black as well.
Forget recovering my principal; even next month’s rent and food expenses were uncertain.
The person reflected in the mirror was a haggard wraith with sunken eyes, looking as if he might drop dead from overwork at any moment.
‘Should I cut my losses even now? No, after all the money, blood, and sweat I’ve poured in for the past two years……!’
As I chewed on the potato stew, I repeated the same dilemma I had wrestled with hundreds of times in my head.
***
A few nights later, as my soul was slowly shriveling away like that.
“Cough, hack…….”
After returning from working as a porter in the market’s back alleys until late at night, I opened the door while coughing up blood.
Recently, my condition had been deteriorating rapidly. It was probably because overwork and malnutrition had piled up together.
‘Hah, at this rate, I’ll be the one getting delisted first.’
Staggering into the room, I realized that Camellia, who should normally have been sleeping peacefully in bed, was nowhere to be seen.
“Huh? Camellia?”
Inside the dark room, with not even a light lit.
The bed was empty, and instead, a single note had been left in the middle of the room.
A note? …Did she run away?
No way. Don’t tell me the future blue-chip stock I’d poured two years of blood and sweat into had eaten and run.
Even my blood-mixed cough seemed to stop. Forgetting even to breathe, I reached out with a trembling hand toward that scrap of paper lying there like a notice of bankruptcy.
I read the words written in elegant, graceful handwriting that made me recall her past as a noble young lady.
“To Nasus.
I still do not fully know the reason for the kindness you have shown me.
But to me, a slave, you have treated me far better than I deserve. Though it is late, I wish to thank you for that.
The sound of you coughing up blood that I hear every night of late has greatly disturbed my heart. If you were to collapse, then for me, continuing this wretched life, no hope would remain.
So please wait just a little. I intend to go to the market and ask around for medicine that can stop your cough.
Before the sun sets, I will return without fail, no matter what.
Camellia”
“…….”
‘She said she’d definitely return before the sun set?’
I turned my head and looked out through the rattling old window. The sun had not only set long ago; it was late at night, with pitch-black darkness pressing heavily down on the slums.
Veins bulged on the hand gripping the note. Tens of thousands of horrifying possibilities surged into my head like rotten water.
She went outside alone?
That coward who trembled even when I only reached out a hand?
No way… Did she really run?
After sucking up two years of my blood and sweat, did she leave behind this fake note just to buy herself even a little more time before bolting?
No, wait….
This place was a back-alley slum where all kinds of human trash gathered.
Once the sun set, vagrants, gangs, and human traffickers crawled out like rats, turning it into a lawless zone.
When she looked like she was worth a single silver coin, no one gave her a glance, but the Camellia now, whom I had fed and kept alive by shaving away my own blood for two years, was different.
Dazzling platinum-blonde hair that anyone would covet at a glance. An unmistakable noble dignity she couldn’t hide.
A woman like that wandering these night streets without a guardian?
What if she hadn’t “not” returned—
but “couldn’t” return?
“Shit… No. Absolutely not!”
At the sudden surge of stress, my insides twisted again, and a dark-red clot of blood spilled onto the floor.
My body, which had returned after a full day of hard labor, was screaming. But I roughly wiped my bloodstained lips with my sleeve and kicked the door open.
The cold night wind dug into my lungs as if tearing them apart.
Panting like a madman, I began combing through the market alleys. Even the thugs slowly slunk away at the sight of my unfocused eyes and the bloodstains on my clothes.
“D-did you see a young lady with platinum-blonde hair earlier today? About this tall!”
In a corner of the slums, I all but grabbed the herbalist by the collar as I asked, and the owner opened his mouth in fright.
“I-I know! I know! She came before sunset!”
“Where did she go! What was she doing!”
“No, that young lady… She came in out of nowhere without any money and asked what herb was best for lung disease. So I told her a few, and then she asked where she could dig them up….”
“Don’t tell me you told her?”
“The back mountain… I said she could get them if she went to the back mountain… B-but I clearly told her that there are lots of beasts there, so going at night is the same as putting your life on the line….”
The back mountain beyond the slums.
It was too rugged to be suitable as an escape route, and with beasts swarming there, it was unsuitable as a hiding place as well.
She hadn’t been buying time to run away.
…It hadn’t been a fake note.
That timid, wounded woman had walked into that dreadful deathtrap of her own accord to save me, coughing up blood as I was.
“Fuck….”
Cursing, I began running madly toward the dark-shrouded ridge of the back mountain before I had even finished hearing the answer.
An Archmage… No, a court mage… No, even if she only becomes a high-ranking mage, that’ll be enough. Then I can recover the money I’ve spent so far…
And now, after all this time, she suddenly floors it on her own and crashes?
‘Absolutely not!!’
Ignoring the pain that felt as if my lungs were being torn apart, I clawed my way up the pitch-black mountain path like a madman. Sharp branches scratched my cheeks and drew blood, and my worn shoes slipped in the mud, slamming my knees hard enough to shatter them, but I didn’t even feel the pain.
“Haa, hah, cough…!”
Hot blood surged up between my ragged breaths. But I scrubbed at my mouth with my sleeve and made my eyes blaze, focused solely on finding that foolish platinum-blonde head.
The mountain at night was truly an enormous hell with its maw gaping wide. Every time I heard the howls of starving beasts from somewhere, my heart plunged down past the floor and into the basement beneath it.
What the hell were those stupid herbs worth? Just because I coughed a little, she crawled into this deathtrap on her own?
You foolish woman! You stupid woman! You absolute idiot who doesn’t even know what your future price will be…!
If you get so much as a hair injured and lower your product value…
I’ll make sure there isn’t a single scrap of meat in your stew from now on!