The hallway was long.
It was nothing but long.
I’d heard somewhere that in a good family, even the corridors had to be wide, long, and quiet for dignity to show,
but what lay before my eyes now looked less like dignity and more like the result of not being able to afford either heating or cleaning staff.
A few portraits hung on the walls.
All faces of ancestors pretending to be handsome, pretending to be dignified, pretending to be rich.
Their expressions were all so identical that I almost laughed.
If they saw how ruined their descendant had become, they’d probably leap out of their graves and grab him by the collar as a group.
Of course, not my collar.
Originally, it would’ve been Yurian’s. No, I guess I’m Yurian now.
The thought made me feel a little foul.
I slowly went down the stairs.
The old wooden steps creaked.
What an impressive sound.
Even if a thief broke into this house, sneaking around secretly would be out of the question. Take two steps and it would practically broadcast itself through the whole mansion.
When I reached the lower floor, the air grew colder.
I couldn’t tell if the gaps in the windows hadn’t been sealed, or if they were saving firewood.
There was a high chance it was both.
In truth, houses like this are always the same.
On the outside, they hang fine curtains to preserve noble dignity, while giving up on one thing after another in places no one can see.
At the end of the hallway, I saw a maid passing by.
She was an older servant.
She seemed like the owner of the voice that had called me from outside the door earlier...
She wore a plain apron over a black dress, and from the state of the fabric, I could see traces of wear from being washed too many times.
The circumstances of this house showed even there.
The mansion was large, the people were few, and the objects were old.
The woman saw me and bowed.
“Young Master.”
I only nodded.
If I spoke too much for no reason, I felt like I’d give myself away. In situations like this, pretending to be the quiet type was the answer.
And since the original Yurian didn’t seem like the talkative type either, all the more so.
The servant hesitated for a moment, then added,
“The dining room is to the right.”
“I know.”
The words left my mouth, and I cursed inwardly.
What do you mean, I know?
It was a path I’d just seen for the first time.
Fortunately, the other party showed no particular reaction.
Either the original Yurian had been a bit lacking in manners, or she had enough experience as a noble household servant to keep her expression in check against most things.
I hoped it was the latter.
If it was the former, it meant the atmosphere in this house was even more exhausting.
Before turning toward the dining room, I stopped briefly.
One of the side doors along the hallway was open.
It was a space like a small office.
I saw account books.
For a moment, those entered my eyes before the meal did.
Food doesn’t run away.
Talk of money always does.
And it seemed like I needed to understand the finances of this house.
I glanced around once, then quietly entered the room.
Several account books were stacked on the desk.
I opened the first page.
I saw numbers.
Income. Expenses. Arrears. Deferred payments. Taxes. Repairs postponed.
The more I read, the colder I felt inside.
“Wow.”
It slipped out of me in a low voice before I knew it.
They really were ruined.
To be precise, this was a house slowly drying to death while hanging itself by the neck on the maintenance of dignity.
Wine purchases had been cut off, banquet expenses had disappeared long ago, and there were no management funds either.
And yet items for maintaining noble appearances, such as coat mending fees, carriage wheel replacement fees, and official letter delivery fees, remained to the very end.
This house wasn’t spending money to live.
It was spending money to look a little less ruined.
I understood completely.
And it made it hard to breathe.
Because I had lived similarly before too.
Back when I worked at a company, there had been a time when I ate convenience store food for lunch to cover my credit card bills, while ironing my shirts for no reason just so I could look normal in front of others.
Living as a person is originally a little miserable like that.
Especially when you’re collapsing.
I turned to the next page.
There was a separate list of expenses related to enrollment.
Partial tuition payment. Ceremonial uniform alterations. Travel funds prepared. Estimated living expenses in Lumenheim. Dormitory deposit. Textbooks scheduled for purchase.
I saw a small memo written beside it.
Maintain the bare minimum of dignity.
I stared at that sentence for a while.
Looking at the state of this house, dignity had already fallen halfway into the ground, and the fact that they were clinging to that remaining half until the end was even more pitiful.
I am a noble. But I have no money.
And in this world, a noble without money is more exhausting than a commoner.
At least commoners spend less on appearances. Not here.
Here, even when you’re ruined, you have to look the part.
If you don’t, you get trampled.
I was about to close the account book when my hand stopped.
At the very bottom, unlike the other account books, there was a thin booklet with dark gray leather wedged in.
There was no title.
Instead, on the inside of the cover, the crest of the Balter family had been faintly pressed into it.
It was hard to tell whether it had worn down because it was old, or whether someone had deliberately rubbed it away.
I pulled it out and opened it.
The first page was blank.
So was the second.
Only on the third page did words appear.
It wasn’t a settlement record.
Date. Transfer. Retrieval failed. Storage delayed.
The sentences were all half erased.
Not because the ink had spread, but as if someone had deliberately scraped them away.
I narrowed my eyes.
“What is this?”
It looked like an account book, but it wasn’t.
It didn’t look like household records, but it wasn’t a letter either.
Most of all, why hide something like this among ordinary account books?
At that moment.
The inside of my left eye stung.
Very briefly.
It was truly only an instant. But my body stiffened first.
It was strange.
I was looking at paper, but it felt like something was misaligned behind it, not in the paper itself.
A sensation difficult to explain.
It was similar to realizing a stair was missing right before your foot came down on it.
I slowly put the booklet down.
It could have been my imagination.
No, in my current state, it would actually be more normal if it were my imagination. I had possessed someone, I was scheduled to die, the family was ruined, and I was flipping through account books first thing in the morning, so getting one headache wouldn’t be strange.
But.
Something strange is still strange.
I reached out again. Just then.
“Young Master.”
A voice came from behind me.
My heart seized.
Almost reflexively, I closed the booklet and slid it under the other account books.
I was a little surprised at how natural the movement of my hand was.
When people want to live, they learn faster than expected.
The same servant from earlier stood in the doorway.
Her expression was ordinary.
But an ordinary expression doesn’t always mean ordinary.
“The family head is waiting.”
“…I’ll be there soon.”
“The meal will grow cold.”
With the state of this household, it seemed like it would be fine even if it went cold, but they paid attention to pointless things like that.
That’s noble society for you.
Even if you let people starve, the soup has to be hot for dignity to stand.
I rose from my seat.
As I walked toward the door, I asked as if indifferent,
“Who usually organizes this room?”
The servant looked at me for a moment.
“Most of the time, I do.”
“I see.”
“As for the account books, the family head tends to look over them personally.”
At those words, I nodded as if nothing were wrong.
Only inwardly did I think,
Ah, I see.
Then there’s a high chance that scratched-up booklet I just saw passed through Father’s hands too.
Really great.
The family is ruined, Father is hiding something, and I have to go to the academy in three days.
At this point, it’s not that the difficulty balance of my life failed. Isn’t it more like the developer hates the user?
I headed for the dining room.
Right before I crossed the threshold, strangely enough, the gray booklet I’d seen kept coming to mind.
Retrieval failed. Storage delayed.
What object? What record? Or a person?
With that thought caught in my mind, I opened the dining room door.
And the moment I saw the man sitting inside, I realized.
That man was the reason the Balter family had not yet completely collapsed, and at the same time, the reason it had collapsed even deeper.
The moment people think of the word father, they usually split into two types.
Those who first recall a face they’re glad to see, and those who first recall a face that makes them feel suffocated.
Ethan Balter was clearly the latter.
Of course, this was a face I was seeing for the first time.
But that didn’t matter.
There are some people you know the moment you open a door and walk in.
Ah, this person is going to be exhausting.
Or, ah, if you live under this person for a long time, your personality will end up a bit twisted.
That sort of thing.
Ethan Balter was sitting by the window.
There was quite a bit of white mixed into his hair.
He wasn’t completely old, but he had a face that had aged quickly.
His jawline had not yet collapsed, and his shoulders were not narrow either.
Once, he must have been neat and handsome. But not now.
He felt like good material left neglected for too long.
His clothes were tidy.
An old house, few servants, tight account books. In the middle of all that, he alone persisted in looking like a noble to the very end.
It didn’t look ridiculous. Rather, it seemed somewhat fierce.
That was less vanity and closer to a way of enduring.
The man set down his cup and looked at me.
Eyes close to gray. Tired eyes. But not eyes that were completely dead.
“You’re late.”
I nodded inwardly.
Right. I can roughly tell why the father-son relationship isn’t so good.
“I couldn’t come down immediately after waking up.”
“You have plenty of leisure for someone who must leave for Lumenheim in three days.”
At that tone, defiance rose in me for no reason. But I held it back.
Starting an emotional fight here would bring me nothing good.
I needed to extract information from this house, secure money too, and most importantly, avoid drawing as much attention as possible until I went to the academy.
I sat down.
The meal had already been served.
Bread, thin soup, something like thinly sliced ham, and tea.
For the table of a noble family, it was modest. For the table of a fallen noble family, it was excessively well arranged.
Anyone could tell it was a meal for appearances.
I took a spoonful of soup.
It was ordinary.
Not terribly tasteless.
But it subtly tasted like they had skimped on the ingredients.
Ethan opened his mouth.
“How is your body?”
That was unexpected.
I set my spoon down.
“Not bad.”
“Until a few days ago, you collapsed often.”
Ah.
That was information I didn’t know.
Without changing my expression much, I answered,
“I’ve been fine recently.”
Ethan was silent for a moment.
His gaze swept over my face.
It felt less like the gaze of a man looking at his son and more like the gaze of someone inspecting a horse he was about to put on the market.
It made me feel a little foul.
But strangely, it wasn’t pure malice either.
This man didn’t seem like the type who didn’t love his child, but rather the type whose way of loving had already become twisted.
The family was falling apart, appearances remained, he had nothing in hand but couldn’t give up either. If a person endured for a long time between all of that, his expression could probably harden like that.
“You’ve checked the admission notice, I assume.”
“Yes.”
“When you enter the academy, at the very least, do not disgrace the name of Balter.”
This man really had a talent for tiring people out from the very first line of a conversation.
I swallowed my curses inwardly.
The family circumstances are already disgracing it first, though.
Isn’t it a bit much to dump that on a kid before he’s even enrolled?
That was what I wanted to say, but if I did, the dining table would immediately become a battlefield, so I held it in.
Instead, I asked briefly,
“Is that the most important thing?”
Ethan’s eyes changed very slightly.
He seemed displeased with the question.
Even so, he didn’t explode right away.
It seemed this man knew how to hold back in his own way.
“Do you know what remains in our house now?”
“A title and a mansion. Account books. Appearances.”
“You know well.”
It was hard to tell whether that was praise or sarcasm.
Probably both.
He took a sip of tea.
“There is no money. No connections. No one trustworthy enough to entrust anything to.
All that remains is our name. If that name falls completely to the ground, from that point on, no one will remember the Balter family.”
Hearing that, I found it a little unexpected.
This man sees the situation more accurately than I thought.
Then that was an even bigger problem.
Because it meant that even though he saw it accurately, this was the only way he could endure.
“So that’s why you’re sending me to the academy?”
“Because you were able to get in.”
His words were utterly sharp.
He threw only the facts.
Not because you’re outstanding, but because you can be sent.
From the listener’s perspective, that’s fucking miserable.
But at the same time, it was strangely honest.
As I tore the bread, I asked,
“May I take that to mean you want me to save the family?”
Ethan looked at me for a long while.
Then he said in a low voice,
“No.”
He paused briefly.
“Survive there.”
For a moment, my hand stopped.
It wasn’t the answer I had expected.
Endure for the family. Restore our honor. Behave like a noble. At the very least, win a scholarship.
I knew he was going to say something like that.
But he didn’t.
Survive.
That one short word was even more chilling.
I looked Ethan straight in the eye.
“What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I said.”
“Is the Academy that dangerous?”
“It is the Empire’s finest educational institution.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
The moment those words left my mouth, the air over the dining table sank.
Even the servant standing by the door stiffened ever so slightly.
It seemed the Yurian of this house had never used that tone with his father before.
I knew that too. I had gone a little fast.
But I couldn’t help it.
That single word just now wasn’t something I could simply let pass.
Ethan’s face slowly hardened. Then it relaxed again.
It was the face of a man suppressing his anger.
“You have many questions.”
“There are many things I need to confirm.”
“Now, after all this time?”
“Even now.”
After answering curtly, my own heart began to pound.
For a moment, I wondered if I had gone too far, but then I thought, no.
I had to ask at least this much. Right now, I was a guy scheduled to go to the Academy and die.
Wouldn’t it be too unfair to stay meek in front of information and then get killed?
Ethan said nothing for a while.
Then, very slowly, he opened his mouth.
“That place is also where people are cultivated.”
He tapped the rim of his cup with a finger.
“At the same time, it is also where they are separated.”
The true purpose of the Academy’s operational documents flashed through my mind.
An educational institution, yet also a selection device. A place that classified dangerous talents, special aptitudes, the branded, and the responders.
Before it was a school for studying, it was a place that measured who could be used where.
Those words felt colder to me than the soup.
“Do you know that, Father?”
“A little.”
“How?”
Ethan did not answer right away.
Instead, his gaze shifted slightly.
Not toward the window, but somewhere on the dining room wall.
The glance was so brief that I might have missed it, but strangely, it caught my eye.
It felt similar to what I had sensed in the ledger room earlier.
The feeling of being just about to step on a blank space.
“The Valter family is a house that has endured for a long time.”
Ethan said.
“Not because it was so remarkable. On the contrary, it lasted precisely because it was not remarkable.”
What was that supposed to mean?
They endured because they weren’t outstanding? Did he mean that because they weren’t a heroic bloodline or a core noble house, they had instead remained for a long time at the fringes of dangerous matters?
That was possible.
Families that stand at the center rise greatly and fall greatly.
Ambiguous families remain for a long time.
They remain, and see many unnecessary things.
I asked casually.
“So what did the Valter family see?”
Ethan’s eyes turned instantly cold.
Ah.
I had poked the wrong place.
But it was already too late.
“Who told you to ask such things?”
“No one.”
“Then why are you curious?”
I closed my mouth for a moment.
I couldn’t honestly say, because I saw a suspicious booklet in your ledger room. That would be beyond stupid—it would be suicide.
So I gave him a vague answer.
“Just because.”
“Just because?”
“Because you told me to survive.”
Ethan silently looked at me.
It was not the look of someone trying to see through a lie.
It was closer to the look of someone measuring since when his son had started asking questions like this.
In the end, he was the first to look away.
“Do not take interest in useless things.”
Of course that’s how you respond.
I picked up the bread again. It wasn’t soft.
But I actually liked that tough texture.
It suited the circumstances of this family.
Ethan rose from his seat.
It meant the conversation was over.
“Organize what you need by the end of the day. Tomorrow, I will call the uniform tailor. And.”
He paused briefly.
“Do not enter the ledger room carelessly.”
I controlled my expression.
I’ve been caught.
Even if not completely, it seemed he had found out that I had seen something. The servant’s ambiguous expression earlier hadn’t been for nothing.
“Understood.”
I answered briefly.
Ethan said nothing more and left the dining room.
As soon as the door closed, I let out a long breath.
“Wow.”
This time, the sound actually came out.
The servant by the door glanced at me. I pretended nothing had happened and drank my tea.
It was bitter and cold.
Exactly like how I felt right now.
Let’s sort this out.
My father, Ethan Valter, is not a complete villain.
But he is not a good father either.
He is a man worn down after being caught for a long time between his family, appearances, and some old something.
And the Valter family is not just a ruined baronet house.
They saw something. Or took charge of something. Or hid something.
Good. It’s not good at all, but at least I have a direction.
One more thing had been added to the list of what I had to do before going to the Academy.
I couldn’t just calculate the money. I also had to find out what this house was hiding.
Just then, wind brushed past outside the dining room window.
The surface of the glass trembled very briefly.
It was truly brief.
But that strange sensation came again.
The inside of my left eye tingled, and somewhere in my head came the low sound of something cracking.
I turned my head reflexively.
At the end of the garden outside the window. Beneath the stone wall where weeds had grown. In a place where there should have been nothing, for a single instant, I saw something like a black line.
Like a hairline crack. Like a fissure. Or…
It vanished immediately.
I slowly rose from my chair.
My heart began to race again.
My head already felt like it was going to burst from Father and the ledger alone, and now even my vision was starting to act strange.
Great. Really.