A Coin on a String

In that instant, Guile's gaze turned glacial.

"When exactly did I ask for your opinion?"

"Y-yes...?"

"A lowly servant like you, running your mouth without the faintest sense of your place."

"F-forgive me, young mas— no, my lord."

"The choice is mine to make. Cross the line one more time, and I'll have your lips sewn shut. Am I understood?"

"Yes, my lord."

Only after pinning down the servant who had the audacity to crawl up to him with suggestions did Guile feel his irritation begin to subside. His own dignity, after all, was what mattered most.

Sweeping the hair roughly back from his forehead, Guile gave the man a curt wave of his hand.

"Get out. And don't come back to bother me again."

"As you wish, my lord."

When the servant had gone, Guile and the painting were left alone in the room together. He stood with his arms crossed and stared at it for a long while, his eyes clouded with something complicated.

Sunflowers, is it.

Yes — he had heard of this before. Hang a painting of sunflowers in your home, they said, and money would follow.

Certainly no master's hand. But clumsy brushwork aside, whoever painted it has a good instinct for what sells.

It happened to be exactly the thing he needed right now, and a satisfied smile spread across his face. Casting a glance around the room, Guile picked up the painting and hung it in the most conspicuous spot he could find.

"Mm. Very good."

It sat perfectly at his eye level — the first thing anyone would see upon opening the door and stepping inside.

That was when he noticed the small lettering beneath the frame.

He burst out laughing at the title — so crude, so unapologetically blunt.

"How amusing. Whoever painted this is clearly no nobleman."

Nobles regarded the open pursuit of money as something vulgar beneath them. And yet, perversely, it was that very shamelessness that pleased him.

"Well... let's hope it's true, then."

He tossed the words out like a light joke.

Around noon, a flurry of footsteps came clattering down the hall, and the guild's steward burst in, breathless and scrambling.

"My lord! Cashew Merchant Group's main fleet has capsized at the harbor!"

"...What?"

Guile shoved the papers he'd been reading aside and shot up from his desk, instinct taking over. The news was that serious.

Their fleet sank?

Goods imported by sea were, as a rule, traded in staggering volumes. And a shipment substantial enough to warrant deploying a fleet of that size...

"The cargo?"

"S-salt, my lord."

"...And you're certain about that information?"

Guile deliberately let his voice drop low as he pressed the question. Salt stored in wooden crates and sacks dissolved the moment seawater flooded in. If it was true, this was a catastrophe beyond undoing — and yet, to a merchant of his stripe, it was also an opportunity.

The servant swallowed hard and nodded, his eyes alight with conviction.

"Yes, my lord. I heard it from a source we can trust."

"If that's true, food prices will skyrocket. Not just salt — cured provisions, livestock feed, even bread."

"R-retailers with sharp eyes have already sent letters asking whether they might place orders for our salt. At triple the usual contract price."

"Triple?"

Calculations raced through Guile's head at lightning speed.

It'll take at least three months for salt prices to stabilize. If I snatch up as many contracts as I can in the meantime...

Just then, another servant hurried into the study.

"M-my lord! My lord!"

"What now?"

Heads of the household bursting into his office in quick succession — it was like watching déjà vu unfold. Guile shifted his gaze with a sinking feeling of don't tell me, and the more shocking news arrived.

"Have you — have you heard the rumor, my lord?"

"What rumor?"

"The one going around among the nobles lately, my lord — that black tea doesn't taste what it used to."

"What does that matter to me?"

"Well, my lord — apparently there was a massive fire at the tea plantations on the Southern Island. The blaze started through Claudel Merchant Group's negligence, and while the two sides are deadlocked over compensation, their supply has stalled—"

"What?"

To anyone else it would have sounded like a perfectly random piece of gossip, but from where a competitor stood, it was information worth its weight in gold. And to the Pistachio Merchant Group, who had been desperately scrambling to secure a new distribution channel for black tea, doubly so.

"So that's it — the Claudel fools must have been scraping through whatever old stock was lying around in their warehouses. No wonder the quality's gone to pieces."

"Yes, my lord. All the evidence points that way."

"Find someone who can interpret the language of the Southern Island natives. And check how much liquid capital we can move right now."

"You don't mean — you intend to broker the fire compensation yourself?"

"Of course. Would you rather we act after the opportunity's already dead?"

"N-no, my lord!"

With the calculations finished in his head, Guile commanded his servants like a general on the field of battle.

Between the flood of incoming letters and the whirlwind of work, the Pistachio County household found itself humming with vigor for the first time in ages.

Days later.

Having finally cleared away the mountain of work, Guile leaned deep into the sofa and raised a glass of wine, his face still savoring the afterglow of the past several days, which had swept through like a storm and left triumph in its wake.

All that's left now is to win the natives over...

Truly, even the rank of first among the merchant guilds would not be out of reach.

Even without voicing it aloud, a brilliant, heady exhilaration was brimming up in his eyes.

But how can my luck have turned this good?

It was an unfamiliar sensation. The past few days were so drunk on euphoric achievement that the old days — when he'd had to bend his back for every single contract — felt like a distant dream.

It was in that very instant that his eye fell on the sunflower painting hanging on the wall.

"...Surely not."

Because of that painting?

"No. Don't be ridiculous."

Everything he'd gained was entirely the fruit of his own brilliance. He'd been born clever — it was his doing, and his alone.

And yet, despite his certainty, Guile found himself somehow unable to tear his eyes away from the painting.

The moonlight-soaked sunflowers seemed to sway, alive, rippling across the canvas — and following their movement, his pupils trembled faintly.

...

The way a coin sways, suspended from a thread, as someone dangles it before your eyes.

Thanks to the string of major contracts he'd sealed one after another, Guile was able to sit down at a meal with his shoulders squared for the first time in a long while.

He stole subtle glances at his father seated in the seat of honor across from him.

"Ahem, ahem... Mm."

A moment later, the lips of Count Pistachio — who had long suffered from his chronic lung illness — finally fluttered open. And out came the words Guile had been waiting for all this time.

"I hear you've been terribly busy with the guild's affairs lately."

Guile forced down the corner of his mouth and answered with studied calm.

"I have only worked as diligently as ever, Father."

"Hard work alone doesn't yield results like these. It seems fortune favored you as well."

"It was only possible thanks to your guidance, Father."

"Hmph. Keep at it, then."

The Count, who had always frowned upon his eldest son's petty jealousy and rash behavior, seemed genuinely pleased for once. Guile found the conversation thoroughly satisfying — until the second son, Noah Pistachio, seated beside him, cut in without warning.

"By the way, brother. Is there something you've hidden away in your room?"

"What?"

"I hear you've been leaving the guild office empty and shut up in your chamber instead. And you've even forbidden the servants from entering — it strikes me as rather curious, that's all."

For the space of a heartbeat, a chill crept around the table.

"...And what, exactly, do you find so curious?"

"Well, you never know, do you? Perhaps something terribly 'secret' is hidden away in that room of yours."

Noah had only been sneering out of contempt for a brother who was getting far above himself. But when the stare burning into him from the side turned openly venomous, his head came up without his meaning it to. And the moment he met those dead, lightless triple-ringed eyes boring into him, a lump dropped down his throat before he could stop it.

"You. You're saying some very strange things."

A voice without the slightest rise or fall — terrifyingly, unnaturally calm.

"That I'm hiding something. Is that right? Go on. Say it to my face."

"...I beg your pardon?"

"Or did you perhaps enter my room while I was away and see something you shouldn't have?"

"No, I — that's not — I only meant—"

Noah swallowed hard at the unfamiliar voice, one he had never heard from his brother before.

He'd only meant to pick at a sore spot, annoyed by how smug his brother had been riding his winning streak. But this reaction — this raw, hair-trigger sensitivity? Was there really something in that room?

Just as his curiosity threatened to surge up, the Count cut the exchange short.

"Noah. You must not suspect your brother so carelessly."

"F-forgive me, Father. That was never my intention."

"You were too hasty in this. Later, you will apologize to Guile. In person."

...

Guile, who had gone abruptly silent, soon smoothed over his face as if nothing had happened, a soft smile settling over it.

"Come and visit me sometime. It's been a while since we shared a pot of tea, after all."

"...Yes, brother."

With the conversation strangled mid-breath, an awkward tension hung over the table like a sour, discordant note.