Children of the Rune – Winterer - Chapter 604

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 56.
The Velvet Invitation (17)
Only then did Maximian remember. The promise they’d made to meet at three o’clock that afternoon.
It had been nearly twenty days ago.
Espin, who had been stood up, bore no trace of anger for reasons I couldn’t fathom. Yet it seemed I owed an apology—except explaining how things had come to this was far from simple. The professors at Nenyaple had insisted I keep their secrets, and that tangled everything together. The same applied to why I’d vanished without a word and ended up here in Keltika. Was I supposed to say I’d come as a refugee because Juspian and I had conspired to close Nenyaple’s doors?
Perhaps that’s why something entirely different tumbled out first.
“What’s with that outfit?”
Espin brushed the tips of her short hair back with her fingertips and smiled mischievously.
“Oh, I tried cross-dressing a bit.”
It was absurd. Of course, Espin spoke as though it mattered little whether I believed her or not. I tried to continue.
“That’s not what I meant—”
“Did you think I wore it because of you? That’s not it.”
Then she looked me over from head to toe, and her dark eyebrows rose in admiration.
“But you’ve dressed quite nicely today yourself, haven’t you? You look beautiful.”
The last time we’d parted, I’d worn a shabby coat instead of my school jacket, my shirt tail hanging out wrinkled, my shoes scuffed from being worn crumpled—but now I stood before her in a crisp shirt with a teal cravat, dressed in a sleek coat with embroidered buttons. It was hard to believe we were the same person. Had my friends at Nenyaple seen me, they would have been astonished to discover I was capable of wearing clothes without wrinkling them if I simply made the effort. I came to my senses and let out a scoff, responding curtly.
“Senior? What kind of senior are you talking about? You and I were never in that kind of relationship from the start, and we won’t be in the future either.”
“Why, because the school’s about to disappear?”
She said this and then burst into laughter. Without thinking, I furrowed my brow and asked back.
“What do you mean, disappear?”
Espin shrugged as if to say I already knew everything. It was ridiculous, but as I’d never felt a trace of affection toward her in all these years, it surfaced for the first time now—I glared at Espin firmly.
“Nenyaple is the greatest magic academy on the Continent, protected by mighty Mages. It won’t disappear.”
“Yet you and I closed its doors? What a predicament. I suppose from now on the greatest academy on the Continent should be the Orlanne Royal Magic Academy.”
For a moment, I wondered: How much does she know? How could she possibly know this?
“How did you find out about the academy? Then you—do you know what you’ve done?”
“Me? All I did was hire a detective notorious for irresponsibility on a whim, and then got stood up cleanly. Since I’d never experienced anything like that in my life, it was quite refreshing, you know? So I caught you to think about what to do, and then—”
Espin pulled up the corners of her mouth and rolled her eyes toward empty space. Then, with an “aha,” she held up a finger.
“I’ll just start working again from today. Consider the early leave as already given. But in exchange, no vacation next year?”
“What?”
I thought: Vacation? What was that about… Was that a fixed-term contract?
I couldn’t recall exactly, but it couldn’t have been. I’d never entered into such an arrangement before. When I worked as a detective in that corner tavern near Nenyaple, my work was measured by cases themselves. That is, once solved, it ended immediately, and if unsolved, it might stretch longer, but never more than a few days. Yet she spoke of next year—what nonsense was this?
“Hey, Ispin Charles. I think you’re misunderstanding something. True, I made a promise to meet the next day and didn’t show up—that’s my fault and I’m sorry. But the fact that I broke that promise is connected to what you did at the tavern, isn’t it? It’s not entirely because of that, but regardless, you bear about half the responsibility. And I simply solve cases I’m hired for—I don’t get employed on a fixed-term basis.”
Espin nodded with a smile on her face.
“Right. So I said I’d forgive you for breaking your promise. But think about it carefully, Maximian. Back then, I only said I’d hire you—I never said until when. And I promised a very large sum of money. Have you ever seen someone work for three days and four nights for that kind of money?”
I squinted one eye as if to say, “You’re joking.”
“So just because you paid a lot, it automatically means I should work until next year? Why not just say you hired me as a slave for life?”
Espin responded smoothly, as if she’d expected this.
“That makes sense. But I’m not so heartless, and when you say slave, it sounds like you’re the one being wronged—but if you think about it, it means I’m taking you in and taking responsibility for you for life. I’m not doing that. What we have now is enough. Besides, I’m not the type to do things half-heartedly. Anyway, I think about a year would roughly balance the accounts.”
“You never mentioned a time period beforehand—how does it become that just because you’re unilaterally proposing it?”
“Is that so? Then shall we do it your way? Did you bring the revolver?”
“….”
Maximian, who had been momentarily at a loss for words, soon replied.
“Right. I don’t have it at the moment, but… then once the pistol issue is resolved, the case is closed and the employment ends, correct?”
When Maximian said “I don’t have it at the moment,” Espin’s mischievous smirk grated on him. It was undoubtedly retaliation for the time Maximian had laughed at her before.
“That could be the case, but… about that pistol. If you don’t have it now, could it be that you left it behind in Nenyaple?”
Around that time, Maximian also vaguely recalled what he had intended to tell Espin when they met at three o’clock that afternoon. Something about how he couldn’t hand over the item that Professor Nenyaple had deemed dangerous and locked in a shielded box, but he could arrange a meeting—was that it? In other words, he had meant to break the employment contract from the previous day, but the problem was that too many days had passed since then. Maximian considered how to redirect the conversation, but since he couldn’t fulfill the request anyway, he decided it was better to speak plainly rather than make excuses and delay.
“Look, I know this will sound bad, but I’ll just be honest with you. I can’t keep that promise. That pistol—Professor Nenyaple took it to investigate, and after hearing what you said, I went to check on it. Turns out it’s extremely dangerous, so he put it in a mana-shielded box. It’s not the kind of situation where I can just ask for it back. If you’re truly the owner of that pistol, I can arrange a meeting with the professor, but beyond that is beyond my ability.”
Espin didn’t seem particularly surprised. As if she had anticipated this, she simply stared at him while listening, then spoke.
“I see? So what are you going to do from now on?”
“What do you mean, what am I going to do?”
“You don’t want a fixed-term contract, you can’t bring the pistol, so what about the contract we made?”
“Well, we’ll just have to pretend it never happened.”
“Ah, by whose authority? It would be nice if the world worked that simply, Senior Maximian.”
Espin’s large eyes narrowed slightly as she wore a cold smile. Maximian deliberately looked away, glancing at a passing cart. As he did, he thought to himself: I suppose I’ll just have to brazenly walk away.
“If it’s not simple, what do you expect? Are you asking me to fight with Professor Nenyaple? Is there hazard pay for that?”
“If you don’t like it, just do a one-year contract.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. We never wrote up a contract saying we’d do a one-year contract if the case wasn’t solved.”
Espin chuckled and tapped her pocket lightly.
“We didn’t write a contract, but don’t you have a shiny gold coin in your pocket, Senior? Common folk call that earnest money, and once you accept earnest money, the contract is considered established. If you’re unsure, you shouldn’t accept earnest money so readily. Does Nenyaple teach magic but not such civic knowledge? But I think if I stopped any of these refined Keltika citizens passing by and asked them, they’d agree with me. However, I’m fairly reasonable, so if you have any suggestions on how to proceed, tell me. Since there’s no written contract, I’ll consider it.”
“No, I want to return the earnest money and pretend this never happened.”
Espin simply tilted her head thoughtfully.
“Well, if that’s what you truly wanted, shouldn’t you have notified me within a day or two of the verbal contract, considering common courtesy? I don’t want to become an unscrupulous employer, but it’s been twenty days since you accepted the earnest money, and you didn’t even come find me—you just happened to run into me on the street and now you’re saying this. There might be someone somewhere who would say ‘oh, I see’ and let you go, but I’m not that person.”
Maximian honestly thought Espin was right. But right or wrong, he had no intention of being employed for a whole year. Wasn’t this like stepping out of Nenyaple only to fall into some absurd servitude contract? He might as well get into a fistfight with Juspian over this. Come to think of it, the fact that he’d come all the way to Keltika dressed up as a gentleman unsuited to his nature was probably because of both of them. But setting Juspian aside, why was she being so persistent?
Maximian had his own way of dealing with such opponents.
“Fine, fine. I get it. Your pistol—once you get that back, this contract or whatever ends, right? Let’s go with that. I’ll try very hard. But the way people try is different for everyone, isn’t it? And sometimes even with effort, things don’t get resolved quickly, do they? But as long as I don’t give up, that should be fine, shouldn’t it? You said yourself there was no time limit, right? So just wait about twenty years. Around the fifteenth year, you might hear something, so leave your address or something.”
“….”
If a contract could be established simply by “accepting earnest money” without any conditions on what or when, then couldn’t the request conditions be fulfilled simply by saying “I’m trying hard”? No time limit could mean three days and four nights, but it could also be interpreted as unlimited.
While Espin was at a loss for words, Maximian turned and began walking away. Was she caught off guard? Soon, Espin hurried after him, calling out.
“Where are you going, Senior? Surely you don’t think you can just spout such sophistry and run away? Once I set my mind to something, I don’t usually let it go?”
Indeed, Espin quickly cut through the crowd and appeared in front of Maximian. He altered his direction slightly, took a few steps, and spoke while keeping his gaze forward.
“Why are you following me? Want me to return the gold coin and end the contract?”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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