One Day, My Dad Disappeared - Chapter 16

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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 16
“Please, calm yourself. We’ve come to help you.”
As the woman knelt and wept, all eyes turned toward us. Not wanting to seem like villains, I quickly knelt beside her and took her trembling hands in mine.
Her hands were rough, the fingerprints worn smooth by years of labor—they reminded me of my father’s.
“We’re here to understand what happened and investigate properly.”
“Really? You truly mean it?”
She rubbed her reddened eyes repeatedly.
“Yes. So stop crying and tell us everything you remember. Starting from the day you found that jewel.”
At Aeidan’s words, she opened her trembling lips.
“There was nothing special, truly. As you know, people like us—our days are all the same. We wake when the sun rises, go to the Seg River, and I clean and sell the fish my husband catches.”
Work when the sun rose, rest when it set. Among the common people, this was simply the way of things.
“That day was no different. Fish have been plentiful in the Seg River this season—it’s spawning time, their bellies full of roe. Anyway, my husband caught one fish, and something seemed wrong with its belly. At first I thought it was full of roe like the others, but it wasn’t round and swollen like that. It was lumpy, uneven…”
She gestured with her hands, tracing shapes in the air as she spoke.
“I had a feeling, so I cut it open—and inside was a Red Jewel about this size. My husband and I had never even seen jewels from afar, but even we could tell this was no ordinary stone. It sparkled so beautifully, with such mysterious colors. My husband got excited and rushed it to the jeweler in town.”
There was only one jeweler in this village, and he was known to supply even the lord’s household, so his shop was unusually grand for such a small settlement.
“He said it wasn’t a jewel. But then he said he’d buy it anyway. It was a mineral he’d never seen before, but since it was beautiful enough to look like a jewel, it had value, he said. My husband and I were uncertain. When he insisted it wasn’t a jewel but offered such a high price, we grew even more confused.”
The jeweler offered 100,000 gold for the object he’d just declared wasn’t even a jewel—merely some mineral.
It was certainly suspicious.
No matter how valuable a mineral might be, to name a price of 100,000 gold for something one couldn’t even identify with certainty—that was far from ordinary.
“My hands shook terribly when I heard the sum. In all our years selling fish, we’d never held such money. I began to wonder—what if it was actually a precious jewel and he was lowering the price to trick us?”
She wanted to sell immediately, but her husband, being a fisherman, thought differently.
“So we said we’d think about it and left. We planned to visit another jeweler in a different town that weekend. Just outside here is the Wis Region, where there are many jewelers.”
“Why didn’t you go right away?”
“We had to work on weekdays, of course.”
She tilted her head as if baffled by such an obvious question.
“We couldn’t even fathom taking a day off. People might think it strange. And my husband has his usual fishing spot—he could lose it to someone else.”
Unlike farmers who worked their own land or parcels given by the lord, the river and sea belonged to no one.
In fishing, there are places where fish are caught abundantly—what people call a Prime Fishing Spot. To claim such a spot, fishermen had to be diligent and present every day.
“It was the day before the weekend. Since we’d always lived in this village, we didn’t know which jewelers in other towns were reputable. So my husband asked someone he knew—a man who runs a large orchard and supplies fruit to shops in the Wis Region. After that man heard our situation, the jeweler himself came to our door.”
When they returned home that evening after their usual work, the jeweler was waiting in front of their house.
“He said if we decided right then, he’d give us 200,000 gold. He claimed that was more expensive than real rubies. When my husband hesitated, he said that if we came back after the weekend, the deal would revert to 100,000 gold.”
Fearing that another jeweler might appraise it lower than 200,000 gold, the fisherman decided to agree to the transaction.
“Once my husband agreed, he gave us 50,000 gold as a Deposit right there. He said he only had 50,000 gold with him, and that he was afraid we might change our minds. Instead, we signed a Contract. We agreed to exchange the mineral for the remaining 150,000 gold after the weekend.”
She pulled out the Contract hesitantly. I scanned it quickly, but found nothing obviously suspicious in its terms.
“My husband and I were happy that night. Suddenly we had such a fortune. We fell asleep talking about what we’d do with it. But then…”
Tears welled up in her eyes again.
“Even on weekends, we wake when the sun rises—it’s our habit. But that night we were too excited and woke even earlier than usual. I was thinking of preparing breakfast since I didn’t think I’d fall back asleep, when I found someone in the kitchen.”
She rubbed her arms as if the memory still made her skin crawl.
“At first I thought I was still half asleep. But I wasn’t. Someone had deliberately broken in—their face covered with a black cloth—and they walked toward me, step by step, and covered my mouth with their hand. I was so terrified I lost consciousness right there.”
When she came to, the house had been ransacked and the mineral they’d hidden so carefully in the kitchen cupboard was gone.
“And then the jeweler reported your husband for breach of Contract.”
The fisherman had been thrown into the underground prison and was now awaiting trial.
“Couldn’t we just return the Deposit we received and cancel the Contract as if it never happened?”
“That’s what we tried to do. We said we’d accept the loss from the theft and return the mineral. We even told him we hadn’t spent a single gold of it!”
She answered through her sobs.
“We didn’t know there was such a clause at the very bottom of the Contract.”
“Written awfully small, I see.”
At Aeidan’s words, I examined the Contract in his hands more closely.
At the very bottom, in tiny letters: “Should the seller breach or rescind this Contract, the seller must immediately pay a Penalty Fee equal to ten times the received Deposit.”
“Suddenly they demanded 500,000 gold. How could common people like us possibly gather such an amount?”
That was how the fisherman had been taken away.
“This is certainly suspicious. Who knew about the mineral in your house?”
“Only the jeweler and the orchard owner knew. We kept our mouths shut otherwise. It’s not the sort of thing to boast about carelessly.”
“Is there any chance either of them mentioned it elsewhere?”
“I don’t think so. Both of them are tight-lipped.”
She seemed certain. But Aeidan and I exchanged a quiet glance. He was thinking the same thing I was.
I swallowed a bitter sigh. In this world, there is no such thing as absolute trust. No matter how tightly one guards their tongue, when faced with a sufficiently large profit, the human heart becomes lighter than a feather.
Especially when the jeweler showed up immediately after the orchard owner was asked about him.
For now, Aeidan and I excused ourselves from the house under the pretext of investigation.
“So where do we find the Core now? All our leads have vanished.”
“No, I don’t think that’s it.”
I shook my head as I spoke.
“The groove where the core was located was at most half the size of my pinky finger. But the size this woman drew with her finger was considerably larger than that.”
“Still, we can’t be certain, can we?”
Aeidan had a point. People tend to exaggerate when they’re recalling something, after all.
“You’re right. Since we can’t rule anything out, we should investigate anyway. So let’s start here first.”
I pointed to the map as I spoke.

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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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