The Ring at the Pawnshop

"...My lady. Are you certain this is the right place?"

"It would seem so."

At Laura's disgruntled voice, I nodded wearily, then gazed at the shabby building before me with a tangle of emotions.

On its sign, the word PAWNBROKER had been painted, the letters faded to half their original color.

In fact, it was so old and battered that the first character had half peeled right off the board.

It was nothing like the upscale pawnshops patronized by moneyed aristocrats—this was the sort of grimy establishment that catered to back-alley clientele.

The reason I had come here today was simple.

"Haah. I really am..."

Letting out a long sigh, I unfolded the letter.

At first I'd been too flustered and shocked to examine it properly, but... there had been a back page.

When I checked it, more densely scrawled writing met my eyes.

There it was.

If the front page had simply detailed her circumstances and misdeeds, the back page contained a meticulous, itemized ledger of every single piece of trouble she had stirred up.

And she had the nerve to claim she couldn't remember. She said the only thing she was sorry about was the incident with Leon Obsidian—just that one thing!

Reading it again only made my blood boil, and I ground my teeth despite myself.

No wonder my finger had felt so bare ever since I came to my senses.

The ring that had always graced my index finger was gone.

"That lunatic woman. Does she have any idea what that ring even was, hocking it off for cash?!"

By custom, the right index finger bore the ring of the family head—a mark of authority.

And that ring was a treasure passed down through generations, the very symbol of the House of Zacherete.

And yet.

A ring that important.

"She handed it to a pawnshop? Is that the thinking of a sane person? No—if she needed money, she could have opened a line of credit in the Marquisate's name. Or written a check, for that matter. There were a dozen ways to do it!"

The woman's atrocity nearly suffocated me; I could have wept.

Why on earth was I the one suffering like this over a woman whose face I'd never even seen?

So absorbed was I in my lamentations that I stepped inside the shop without looking—and nearly fainted.

"Ah, the ring you had on display out front? I'm afraid that one's already been sold."

"I beg your pardon?"

"What on earth were you thinking?!"

"..."

"You suddenly rush off to a pawnshop, and I wondered what could possibly have happened, and then—what do I hear? You pawned a ring? The very ring you wore every single day? Do you have any idea what that ring was?!"

Yes, I know.

Laura was shouting herself hoarse, veins standing out on her neck.

But—

I'm the victim here!

From the mess with Leon Obsidian all the way down to the family ring, the true culprit behind all of this was not me.

But explaining the whole sordid truth in painstaking detail would only wear my tongue out, and I doubted she would believe a word of it anyway.

I had no choice but to swallow it all, yet the injustice of it was driving me mad.

What exactly did I ever do in my life to deserve this?

Ah. Now I'm starting to resent the gods themselves.

"First things first—we get the ring back. The pawnbroker promised to find out who bought it, so we wait."

"And the estate, my lady? You were to depart for the territory tomorrow, so I've had everything prepared."

You had finally finished every last bit of your pending work, my lady, Laura said, patting her own knees as if in mourning.

Just as she said—every arrangement for my escape had already been completed.

And then this sudden variable had appeared, and everything had fallen apart yet again.

Worse still, that wasn't the end of it.

She went and punched an actual person this time.

She'd only been in this body for a single week—how had she managed to collect trouble after trouble with such industrious efficiency?

Thanks to her, I felt as though cleaning up her messes had aged me a solid decade.

Well. The pawnbroker said he'd track down the ring, and as for the assault... if the victim comes knocking at the Marquisate demanding compensation, I can just settle it quietly.

There was only one thing that nagged at me.

What in the world was this supposed to mean?

The back page of the letter had recorded her major crimes in scrupulous detail—and among them, this little chronicle she'd jotted down at the very end grated on me strangely.

"If you're going to write something, at least be clear about it. This isn't some riddle game. You leave nothing but a few bare lines and expect me to do what, exactly?"

The most frequently mentioned name, of course, was Leon Obsidian.

The problem was that the words trailing after his name read less like commentary and more like a curse.

Execution, no less.

So reading it at face value... does the Grand Duke die? But why? And treason, of all things? As far as I know, the Grand Duke and the Emperor were on good terms.

It was a charge that didn't suit that man in his white priestly robes at all.

"Ugh, I give up!"

After groaning over it for ages, I threw both fists into the air and cried out.

Perhaps I'd been thinking far too much these past few days—my head felt ready to burst.

Meanwhile, the carriage arrived at the Marquisate.

"My lady! You've finally returned. We've been waiting for you!"

"Don't tell me something else has happened."

The moment I stepped down from the carriage, the butler—who had been pacing at the entrance of the manor—came rushing over.

The scene felt uncannily familiar, and when I asked in disbelief, his face crumpled as if he might burst into tears at any moment.

All the while, his withered stick-legs trembled in place.

Yes. Something else had happened after all.

"A guest is waiting for you in the drawing room."

"A guest? Who?"

It couldn't be the Grand Duke, could it? He'd promised to give me time to think, surely.

The butler answered my question without a beat of hesitation.

"Countess Oscar and Lord Valentine are here to see you."

"What? Why on earth would they be here?"

A visceral revulsion washed over me at the mere names, and I frowned.

Countess Oscar. Sylvia Valentine before her marriage.

She and I had been classmates at the academy—roommates, even.

Classmates in name only, though. She had been the proverbial flower of high society, my polar opposite in every way.

Since her marriage, I'd heard she reigned as the very model of noblewomanhood, holding the social season in the palm of her hand.

So why would she suddenly come looking for me?

Don't tell me it was about that matter again...

Puzzled, I made my way to the drawing room all the same.

And the moment I stepped inside—of course. There sat another beautiful noblewoman in a lavish gown, for the second time this week.

Perhaps to match the dazzling diamond necklace at her throat, her dress glittered as though it had been encrusted with gemstones, and I could only imagine what the bill for that must have looked like.

And that was on top of the hair ornaments and the parade of ostentatious jewelry.

The only thing missing was a crown—from the neck down, she might as well have been a princess of some immensely wealthy kingdom.

By contrast, I had come straight from work, dressed comparatively simply.

My outing gown was tailored from fabric that cost a fair sum, but it was nothing beside that blinding dress.

Perhaps that was why.

The instant I entered the drawing room, Sylvia swept her gaze over my attire and smiled—a small, delicate smile.

The look of someone staking out the high ground before the battle had even begun.

Whatever business she has, she certainly came armed for war.

I was thinking that as I turned my head—

Hm?

My gaze locked onto the man seated beside the noblewoman.

Because his face was an absolute catastrophe.

Anyone would have believed he'd been dragged through a rock field—his mouth was a mess of split, crusted scabs, and bruises bloomed black and blue across every inch of his face.

He had never been much to look at—a potato of a man—but now he resembled a potato gone green with mold, if anything even less presentable than before.

"Forgive me for keeping you waiting. I had some business to attend to... I—um, Lord Valentine, what on earth happened to your face?"

"Ha! You're telling me you don't know, and that's why you ask?"

At my cautious question, the man sitting beside Sylvia's face twisted in outrage.

"This is all because of you!"

"I'm sorry—because of me...? Ah."

At that very moment, something flashed through my mind.

The passage from the letter.

Oh no.

It seemed the man she'd beaten to a pulp was sitting right in front of me.