FERH 35

Chapter 35

Tilman wasn’t exactly swearing.

“No, but why do they always have the same repertoire? Whenever something happens, they say it wasn’t them!”
“Even a song gets tiresome after the third verse, you know? Don’t they ever get sick of it?”
“I don’t get why they’re so desperate to look for a rookie they themselves chased out. If they were going to suck them dry so carefully, they should’ve just kept them around. Why fire them in the first place?”

But Royhem remained stubborn.

“Think about it. Lady Vincenheim, who found the Treasury’s back-door key in one go.”

With nowhere left to retreat anyway, he willingly exposed his base nature.

“How often must she have gone in and out of the Treasury to know there was a key there? She must’ve definitely tampered with internal documents or items as well.”

“Wow, damn, you really twisted it like that?”
“Isn’t it just that your Treasury was careless enough to leave a key in a place like that?”

This time, the head maid added her voice.

“If you doubt our words, then please check Lady Vincenheim’s drawer. There will surely be decisive evidence there.”

The Minister of Administration felt his head throb.

Even to him, it looked like the Minister of Finance and the head maid were forcing the issue, but if he simply glossed over it, he’d likely be accused of “taking the side of the Special Taxation Bureau,” which bothered him.

He pressed his temples and sighed.

“…May we check the drawer?”

“What the hell is going to come out of that anyway….”

“It’s fine.”

The people from the Taxation Bureau grumbled, but once the person involved, Rianel, agreed, they had no choice but to step back.

The knights departed at once, and a subtle tension spread through the hearing chamber.

The Taxation Bureau members grew uneasy for no reason.

It wasn’t that they suspected Rianel, but a chilling sense of what if clung to their backs.

Those people were the type to nitpick based on the strangest things.

‘Please, let there be nothing.’
‘Our rookie’s personality is weird, but they lived honestly….’

“We’ve brought it.”

After a short while, the knights returned carrying the drawer.

They began taking out the items inside one by one.

Reports. Reports. A file binder. Reports. A pen. Ink. More reports….

There were quite a lot of items inside, so it took some time to take them all out, but—

‘…Huh?’

“That’s everything.”

There was nothing particularly eye-catching.

The interrogation room fell into an awkward silence.

People were taken aback by the more barren and dry contents than expected.

Some even felt a sense of kinship; their own drawers weren’t much different.

‘Isn’t that just an ordinary civil servant’s drawer?’

The documents that came out were mostly draft versions of reports that hadn’t been submitted yet, or rough notes scribbled to determine the direction of writing.

The small memos were things like schedule management or instructions from superiors.

In other words, something like a “drawer_final_real_last_final” version.

Mel muttered,

“Well, something did come out of the drawer.”

“What, our rookie’s blood, sweat, and tears?”
“Ah, why am I tearing up?”
“Looks like a bit of your tears are mixed in too, senior.”

But that comedic mood didn’t last long.

“Not yet!”

Royhem shouted as he sprang to his feet.

He couldn’t collapse here.

If it were merely falling as an ‘embezzler,’ that would be one thing, but everything he’d built—his reputation, his position as minister, his entire life—was about to be shaken.

“There’s still a witness, so let the interrogation continue!”

Before the presiding judge could even respond, he rushed to the witness stand and grabbed Vanesha, who had been avoiding his gaze, dragging her out.

“My beloved niece, come stand closer.”

“What…! What are you doing, Uncle? Are you crazy?”

Vanesha tried to shake him off, but Royhem forcibly dragged her in front of the witness stand.

“Hurry and speak! Say what you saw, what you promised!”

“I—I have nothing to say! What am I supposed to say? What could I possibly say in this situation!”

Vanesha was on the verge of bursting into tears.

The scales had already tipped.

Royhem was a sinking ship, and staying with him meant boarding a vessel doomed to go down.

Moreover, present here was the Duke of Vincenheim—Vanesha’s future father-in-law.

He watched with a cold gaze, as if committing everything to memory.

“I—I have something to say! I was forced to commit perjury! All the embezzlement was done by my maternal uncle! I’m innocent! I didn’t know anything from the start—!”

“You damned bitch!”

When words he didn’t want to hear came out of Vanesha’s mouth, Royhem shoved her away.

“Ah!”

With a scream, Vanesha tumbled to the floor.

But Royhem didn’t even look back at her.

Right now, only one thing mattered—his own survival.

“Out of the way!”

Royhem shoved aside the knights guarding the cabinet and barged in.

He pulled out all the drawers, laid the main body on its side, and rummaged through it as if scraping the floor bare.

This was the only way to turn the situation around.

Evidence had to come out proving Rianel was the culprit.

‘Where the hell did you hide it…!’

That was when—

“What are you looking for so urgently?”

A familiar voice cut through the hall.

The door opened, and a man’s silhouette appeared against the backlight.

Asil, Director of the Special Taxation Bureau.

He walked in slowly, meeting Royhem’s gaze.

His straight nose caught the light, carving out a sharp outline.

The hand clasped behind his back moved forward.

Thud.

A small object rolled across the floor and stopped at Royhem’s toes.

It was a seal, about two finger joints long.

“No way… this?”

It was also evidence—a crude replica of Royhem’s seal.

An item that should have been found in Rianel’s drawer and served as the “decisive evidence” that she had forged the seal.

‘Why is this coming out here?’

Royhem stared wide-eyed up at Asil.

Then he saw another person standing behind him.

Torban, standing with both hands behind his back, head bowed.

In an instant, Royhem’s face twisted.

“Y-you… why are you…!”

To think it would come out there?!

Money, status, reputation, the future.

Royhem had promised Torban conditions that were hard to refuse.

Having a sick family was like having a bottomless pit that demanded endless money.

A pit you never knew how much you’d need to fill.

And the task Royhem gave him was simple.

[You only need to do one thing. Just hide this. It only has to be inside that rookie’s drawer.]

Of course he was tempted, and shaken.

But—

“A person ought to have some sense of shame, don’t you think?”

He was jealous of Rianel. He envied her shining talent and suffered as he imagined the widening gap between them.

But that was all.

‘Still, it can’t be helped.’

He accepted that he wasn’t a star meant to light up the world, but merely a common pebble scattered everywhere.

Only then could he at least remain human.

“Ah, I’ll return this as well.”

Torban pulled a check from his pocket.

The fluttering paper slowly fell through the air and landed in front of Royhem.

On it was an amount Torban would never touch in his lifetime.

And he likely never would again.

‘This too can’t be helped.’

If you eat what isn’t yours, your stomach is bound to burst.

“You don’t need to keep your promise of appointing me as vice minister either.”

This time, people erupted into loud murmurs.

Proposing not just bribery, but the buying and selling of official positions, carried a very different weight of crime.

“I was just abou—!”

Royhem clawed at his throat, trying to speak, but Torban was faster.

“I don’t know if someone about to be dismissed even has that kind of authority, though.”

Torban scraped at him mercilessly until the very end.

—Now you’re beneath me.

Torban’s muttering struck Royhem alone with pinpoint accuracy.

“You bas—!”

Royhem’s face flushed red, then he foamed at the mouth and collapsed unconscious.

A fitting end for a villain.

A large-scale embezzlement case—the first in quite some time.

With many people involved and considerable repercussions, it became juicy gossip passed around many mouths.

“So what happened in the end?”

The same was true in a shabby tavern on the outskirts of the imperial palace.

A man, boasting that he’d been present at the hearing, gulped down the beer he’d been given as payment for the story.

“The minister bastard passed out on the spot, the priest didn’t say a word until the end, and the head maid cried and clung to Her Highness the Princess….”

Recalling the farce, the man shook his head.

“She didn’t let her off. Not one bit.”

Though still young, the princess clearly had a ruthless side—or perhaps the sense of betrayal had been that deep.

The princess didn’t even blink once until the head maid was dragged away by the knights.

“But what’s this about the minister bastard fleeing in the dead of night?”
“What, the guy who should be in prison for embezzlement is walking around outside?”

“Oh, that?”

The man chuckled.

“They definitely locked him up, but apparently he vanished overnight. Whether he bribed the guards or the prison was sloppy, who knows.”

“No matter what, he’s a noble. To run away without even a shred of dignity?”

“He probably didn’t have the luxury to care about that.”

The man snickered.

“Apparently, he’d been so busy piling up bribes to offer the Emperor to keep his ministerial post that he couldn’t even pay his servants’ wages.”

And now, not only was all his property confiscated, but he was about to be buried in debt.

They said Royhem disappeared with only some hidden gold and his son.

“But wasn’t there a foul-tempered woman staying at that house too? A niece or something? What happened to her?”

“What do you think happened?”

At the same time—

“Are you all insane? Move out of the way!”
“If I can’t get money to feed my kid, I’m not leaving!”

Vanesha was surrounded by servants at the entrance of the mansion.

“She’s finished.”

The man added in a mocking tone.

After all, it was someone else’s problem.