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Chapter 32
“Long time no see. Here to look for a dress?”
Because Tonin kept urging me to go have a dress made for the imperial banquet, I reluctantly headed to a tailor’s shop—and found an unexpected person there.
“How did you get here?”
Just like the first time I met him at the information broker’s, Robert was sitting casually on the boutique’s sofa, wearing a mask and a wig.
“Relax and speak comfortably. There’s no one here listening. I run this shop.”
Now that he mentioned it, the boutique—normally bustling ahead of the social season—was strangely quiet.
“Is that so? That works out nicely.”
When I leaned back against the sofa beside him, relieved that no one else was around, Robert chuckled as if he found something amusing.
“No wonder Tonin insisted we come here.”
It was odd, considering Tonin usually showed little interest in whatever I did. He had stubbornly insisted on this particular shop—and even said he’d wait in the carriage like he’d received some kind of order. It must have been Robert’s doing.
“I had something to talk to you about.”
Robert handed me a document envelope that had been behind him.
“This is what you asked me to look into.”
As I slowly read through the information he’d gathered, I couldn’t stop the corners of my lips from lifting. If things went well, this would perfectly express the picture I had in mind.
“What are you thinking about?”
“Making money. This viscount has a lot of assets.”
“He does. He’s been converting his property into gold and jewels one by one. He’s probably planning to smuggle it all out of the country next.”
“Right. Which means we need to catch him first—this swindler.”
The money he’d already made from his scams was nearing 500,000 Ritas.
In the novel, this con artist is never caught. No reports were ever filed in the first place. All the victims were nobles, and they valued their honor more than money. Even if the swindler were arrested, they wouldn’t get their money back—so they chose to protect their reputations instead.
The viscount in the novel probably took the money he’d scammed and went off to live happily in another country.
“So, do you have a plan?”
“Yes. I was sure of it the moment I saw this. Oh—by the way, I asked Tonin to look for someone.”
Robert grinned silently. Then he crooked a finger, and a shop attendant standing behind us stepped forward.
“They’re right here. You still don’t recognize them?”
“This person is that person?”
The person I’d asked him to find—the head butler’s nephew—was the same person who’d visited the estate last time.
The one who had been acting.
“Don’t you recognize them?”
They looked completely different from before. It wasn’t just the hair color; their entire impression had changed. A person’s face reflects their life—and now, this face held an entirely different life.
“Haha, this is even better than I expected.”
All I could do was laugh. The world really was helping me.
“Right? Now then—this is Miss Courin, the niece of Count Leon’s head butler, and a former stage actress.”
“Hello. I’m Courin.”
“Miss Courin, I’m Espin Leon. I’ll be direct. Would you be willing to work with us?”
“Work?”
“Yes. I heard your family is in a difficult situation. That your father was scammed.”
Courin’s expression darkened. That was the truly cruel part of fraud—not only the victim, but their entire family suffered.
Tears welled up in Courin’s eyes. Just the word scam was enough to make her cry, telling of all the hardship she’d endured.
“I’ll help you.”
“You will… help me?”
“Yes. Don’t you want revenge on those scammers?”
“Revenge?”
At the word revenge, Robert looked even more surprised than Courin.
“Yes. I’ll help you get revenge. Work with us. And of course, having your debt disappear will be a bonus.”
“Can we really get revenge?”
“Of course.”
The scam Courin’s father had fallen victim to was a loan scam that appeared from time to time in the novel—targeting people who couldn’t secure loans due to lack of collateral, offering them high-interest loans.
Not only were the interest rates outrageous, but their methods were so vicious that many people lost their lives.
“What can I do?”
“Act.”
“Pardon? Act?”
“Yes. You’re an actress. Just act. I’ll take care of everything else.”
I held out my hand to Courin. She didn’t hesitate even for a moment before taking it.
“I’ll do my best.”
“First, tell us about your father’s loan case. This man needs to find out who the scammer is.”
When I pointed at Robert, he laughed in disbelief.
“You really use me however you want.”
“Oh, come on. Like this is new. Go on—tell us.”
After cautiously watching Robert and me, Courin began to speak.
“My father runs a small bakery. Last year, after the heavy rains, the price of flour rose sharply, and it became hard to keep the bakery going.”
“That’s right. Flour prices still haven’t gone down.”
“Yes. Even so, my father didn’t give up and kept trying. But contrary to his hopes, business kept getting worse and the losses piled up. Then a fire broke out at the bakery.”
“That’s awful…”
“To reopen the bakery, we needed a large sum of money. But because of existing loans, it was hard to borrow elsewhere. Then, through an introduction from someone in the shopping district, we went to that loan company.”
“So you borrowed the money?”
“Yes. The interest was high, but we had no choice. But it was a scam. Unlike what they explained at first, they kept raising the interest rate and used a strange calculation method—adding interest on top of interest—to squeeze us.”
“How much did you borrow initially?”
“Five thousand Ritas.”
“And your current debt?”
“We worked hard and borrowed more to repay ten thousand Ritas, but… there’s still seven thousand Ritas left.”
“What? I heard it was five thousand Ritas not long ago.”
“Interest was added in just a few days. The debt is increasing frighteningly fast, day by day.”
“That’s ridiculous. You borrowed five thousand, and now they want almost twenty thousand?”
“Yes. By tomorrow, who knows how much it’ll be. If we don’t repay everything by the end of this month, they’ll sell me and my younger sibling as slaves to another country.”
The empire does not permit the buying and selling of people. Which meant they planned to sell them overseas, where it was allowed.
They weren’t human. Not really.
“That lender—are they still around?”
“Yes. Even now, they’re probably watching me outside, monitoring what I’m doing.”
“Is that so?”
My gaze turned to Robert.
“You can find them, right?”
“Of course. Using the information network, it’ll be easy. After all, I know the best information broker in the empire.”
Robert winked at me so only I could see.
It seemed he had no intention of revealing to Courin that he was an information broker himself. Well, he knew better than anyone that you shouldn’t trust people too easily.
“Good. Then look into it through the brokers. Courin, you can go now. I’ll tell you what you need to do in a few days.”
Courin wiped her tears and left, still looking somewhat dazed.
“So what’s your plan?”
“I need to buy a painting.”
“Do you have the money?”
“Money? Ah… now that you mention it, I’m a bit short. Maybe…?”
Robert shook his head.
“I don’t lend money. You know why.”
“I know.”
Once you’ve been scammed, it’s hard to trust people again. That was true for both Robert and me.
“Why not ask Count Leon? I think he’d allow you to use it for a few days.”
“My father?”
I wasn’t particularly eager. In the novel, he was the man who cast Espin out of the family after she was scammed. I wasn’t confident he’d lend me money.
Still, no matter how I thought about it, there was no other option.
