Chapter 19
Chapter 19
The moment Rose yelled her answer, James’s eyes widened in disbelief.
“Of course I hate the idea!”
“Of course, you say…”
He hadn’t actually expected her to say it so bluntly.
As someone who ranked fairly high on the list of Endor Kingdom’s Most Eligible Bachelors—and would no doubt shoot to first place if he ever revealed his face publicly—it was a blow to his pride.
Rose, for her part, tried to logically explain how absurd it would be for them to be together, but she soon found herself at a loss for words.
I’m a Mythos, and you’re a Logos. So there’s no way we could ever be connected in any form…
…How am I supposed to say that out loud?!
Logos didn’t even know Mythos existed!
Startled by her outburst but quick to recover, James calmly observed Rose, who was now gaping at him like a broken automaton.
“That stung a little, but I take it there’s no rational explanation you can give me.”
Hands laced and resting comfortably on his knee, he stared into her violet eyes with the patient gaze of a predator watching its prey.
“There is a reason! It’s just hard to explain.”
“Don’t tell me… you still haven’t gotten over Mr. Huckard?”
“Excuse me? That is incredibly offensive!”
“…If you say so. I’ll take it to mean there are no lingering feelings.”
James found Rose’s horrified expression fascinating, as though he’d just mentioned the end of the world.
So the real her isn’t the flirty drunk, but this version instead.
She hadn’t let him catch a single dull moment that night, and now, even in broad daylight, she was too entertaining to look away from.
If she hadn’t run away out of love or regret, perhaps persuasion could still work.
Smiling in a way that anyone would interpret as warm and friendly, James began to lay his trap.
“I said ‘responsibility’ earlier, but there are actually three main reasons I came to find you, Miss Blavatsky.”
“Three?”
Rose raised an eyebrow, and he nodded.
“First, I intend to court you. I don’t want to be branded a lecher who deflowered a maiden and left her behind. I get to preserve my reputation, and you gain access to absurd amounts of wealth. Seems like a win-win.”
“…Reputation?”
“A man running a company as large as Dautryche & Co. has an image to uphold.”
Ah. So it wasn’t some pathetic obsession—just a business decision.
Rose found herself easily convinced by the logic.
“Fine. What’s the second reason?”
“The strange mark you left on me.”
He tapped his left chest for emphasis.
“I’ve got a lot of questions about it. How you inscribed it, what it means, and more than anything—how the trick works. Why can only I see it? But what I really want to know is: why would you leave something like that on my body?”
James had considered countless possibilities.
Maybe she’d used hypnotism to implant a hallucination, hoping to drive him mad.
Or perhaps the mark was a code used by some secret organization…
“…I…”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t catch that.”
“I… I don’t know how it happened either.”
Rose mumbled the truth under her breath.
“Who ordered you to do it?”
“No one, Mr. Dautryche.”
“If someone threatened you or paid you off, just say the word. I have more than enough resources to take care of it.”
“I swear, I honestly have no idea! Really!”
Rose pounded the armrest in frustration.
“Threatened? You were the one who threatened me! With that whole ‘illegitimate child non-disclosure agreement’ nonsense! And do I look like someone who got paid off?”
James glanced from the steaming Rose to the nearly-clear tea on the table.
“Well, yes, it seems you’re definitely not living in luxury.”
“And there was no blackmail either!”
Clearly, he wasn’t going to get all his answers today.
Accepting that, James moved on to the third point.
“This is the last reason.”
“That’s the paper flower I folded for you, isn’t it?”
Rose tilted her head as he pulled it out from his inner pocket.
“I want to know about this origami.”
“Wait… don’t tell me you came all this way because you forgot how to fold it?”
“I want to know who taught it to you, what it’s called, and what region it comes from.”
“Pardon?”
Everything he’d said so far had been strange, but this part was utterly baffling.
“Wait. You don’t know how to fold this flower?”
A long silence settled between them.
With James deep in thought and Rose practically in a panic, the office was thick with tension, swirling like a storm cloud.
James was the one to break it.
“So, according to you, this is a flower fold that everyone knows.”
“Y-yes?”
“You said every child learns it.”
“Right, they do.”
“But strangely, no one around me—not even myself—has ever seen it before?”
“Hahaha, how odd! It must be something we do in Morgenia…”
And that was when Rose learned, for the first time in her life, that cold sweat could drip straight from the crown of one’s head.
“Miss Blavatsky. My mother is from Morgenia.”
“Ah… well, I am a proud native Endorean.”
James folded his arms and narrowed his eyes.
Rose desperately avoided his gaze.
She’d been so confident she’d blended in with the Logos, but to think—that paper flower was a Mythos tradition?
“Which region was it again? The one where everyone knows how to fold these?”
When panic hits, the brain short-circuits—and time slows to a crawl.
Along with the cold sweat, she discovered a new sense of her own body.
Even the lies that flowed effortlessly when she played Olga Blavatsky wouldn’t come today.
Maybe improvising without a script really was impossible.
What do I even say? That there’s a secret society of people living among you?
No, impossible.
The man sitting before her was not someone who would be fooled by half-baked lies.
If I tell him the truth about Mythos, would I be thrown in a Logos psychiatric ward first—or get caught and punished by the Royal Paranormal Bureau’s golden crows?
James let out a light sigh as he watched her mumble without uttering a full word.
“Very well.”
“…Sorry?”
“If it’s too hard to explain, I won’t pry. But I do want to hire you for a job related to this flower.”
“You want to hire me?”
“I’m looking for someone. She’d be an adult by now—light brown hair with a pinkish hue, violet eyes, and she knows how to fold this flower.”
James didn’t take his eyes off her as he listed each clue.
“Miss Blavatsky, if I may ask… have you ever been kidnapped as a child?”
Her eyes widened in shock.
“Kidnapped? No, never.”
James felt something collapse inside him.
“I see.”
Well, of course not.
If she were that easy to find, he’d have found her ages ago.
With a faint smile of disappointment, he continued.
“The woman I’m looking for was kidnapped at the age of six or seven.”
“Are you searching for someone who went missing?”
“Not quite. She was rescued in quite a dramatic fashion, so she was never officially listed as missing.”
He recalled the final image of that little girl in his mind.
Sunlight pouring through a crumbling brick wall.
A small, warm, slightly damp hand reaching toward him from within that blinding light.
It all came back like a dream.
“Thanks to her, I was saved too. I just want to thank her properly.”
“Ah…”
Only then did Rose understand the context of this bizarre request.
So the rumors were true—Mr. Dautryche had been kidnapped as a boy.
And now she was hearing it straight from the source.
“I see. But I’m not a detective, Mr. Dautryche. I make my living through séances and paranormal shows.”
“This flower is the only clue I have, Miss Blavatsky.”
He finished the last of the near-flavorless tea.
“And as far as I know, you’re the only person alive who knows anything about it.