The Vault in the Sunflowers
"Aagh... damn it."
The groan tore itself out of Gale's throat before he could swallow it, riding in on the wake of a vicious headache as he forced his eyes open.
"Where... am I?"
Staggering upright, he threw his gaze out into the distance.
Sunflowers. A field of them, packed so dense they ran all the way to the horizon. Stalks tall enough to reach his waist held their heads rigidly aloft, every last one of them straining toward the sky.
And yet there was something deeply wrong with the scene.
The barrage of garish yellow stung his eyes — so much so that he half wondered if drinking himself blind had finally cooked his optic nerves.
None of the new shipments had sunflower seeds or oil in them... so what is this?
No. Wait. More importantly — why was he here?
He tried to force his thoughts into gear, to piece together the situation, but nothing came of it.
That was when he heard something behind him, pushing through the field.
"Gale?"
A body too slight for a man. Eyes irritatingly large. Pink hair in a shade far too vivid for its own good.
It was, without a doubt—
"...Camille?"
Gale's stunned voice spread through the air.
"You were... alive all along?"
The sweat streaming down his forehead pooled at his chin and dropped into the dirt.
The sun beat down without mercy.
Beneath it, with no time at all to hide his stricken expression, Gale looked up at Camille standing before him.
Camille, for his part — dry-faced, without a single bead of sweat — simply smiled.
"Hm? What are you talking about?"
"..."
"Anyone would think I'd died."
The untroubled voice. The gentle smile he'd seen a thousand times too many.
"Gale, are you quite all right?"
It was a perfect resurrection of Camille Ortega.
Impossible.
When the one fact his mind held as certain was denied point-blank to his face, Gale's thoughts simply stopped.
"Ugh!"
A wave of dizziness struck him and he swayed — and Camille's hand shot out in an instant.
"Goodness, let me steady you. Here, take my hand."
Watching Camille accept his alcohol-soaked body without the slightest hesitation, Gale's eyes trembled faintly.
And so, a little while later.
Two sets of footprints began to press themselves into the damp dirt path.
"I never expected to find you here. What brought you to a place like this?"
With Gale still silent, Camille naturally opened the conversation for both of them.
"As it happens, I've been wracking my brain over how to get out of this place. Meeting you here is nothing short of a blessing."
"..."
"It would seem the gods sent you to me. Although... Gale? Why aren't you answering?"
"...Ah. Ah, right."
His gaze, which had been flickering in disarray, darted away the moment it met Camille's, fleeing for cover.
It was hard to hold those transparent blue eyes. Every time he did, the memory of that day flickered at the edge of his mind.
Does he really not remember anything?
He stole a glance at Camille's profile. Not a speck of wariness anywhere on it.
No. It could all be an act.
Shaking his head, Gale turned on Camille with a suspicious glare.
And in that exact moment, Gale's steps faltered.
"...Wait."
What had this bastard just said?
He was almost sure he'd heard something very, very important...
"Hold on — wait!!"
Gale hurriedly stopped Camille in his tracks.
The words burst out of him laced with panic, and his hand shot out to seize the man by the collar.
"What did you mean by that? Finding a way out!"
"Hm?"
"Just now — what you said!"
Not even Camille blinked at the rude hand knotted in his collar. Instead, a soft, soothing voice followed.
"Oh, you mean this sunflower field. No matter how far you walk, there's no way out. But don't worry — it doesn't seem like there's no way out."
Then, to Gale — who stood there with a blank, dazed expression — he pointed off toward somewhere far away.
"Surely you, of all people, would know how to open that vault."
"...A vault?"
Following the line of the outstretched finger, Gale's eyes hardened into stone.
A single incongruous cube sitting amid the garish yellow of the paint. That jet-black blue thing — he knew it intimately.
...Huh?
Only then did he understand. What all this wrongness had been, all along.
"Th-this can't be. No. There's no way. Things like this don't happen outside a dream..."
That was when a clear laugh rang out.
Camille had looked at his flustered face — and was laughing out loud.
"Hey. Are you laughing at me right now—"
"Judging by that reaction, I'd say you do know something?"
"What?"
Cherry-blossom-pink hair scattered in the wind, and his gaze was caught and held.
Camille calmly laid his own hand over the one gripping his collar and peeled it away, the corners of his eyes curving with mischief.
"Gale. I'm truly glad I kept you as a friend."
A smooth, honeyed voice — one that might have suited a poetry recital.
"You'd agree, wouldn't you?"
"..."
—Camille had uncovered every one of his secrets a single week before he killed himself.
Gale's feelings toward Camille had never quite been jealousy. They were closer to admiration.
"We're looking for a new supplier for the Agnus Orphanage's provisions. The trouble is, the big conglomerates like Cashew run their capital far too rigidly... Is there anywhere that could reliably sell us quality household goods at a fair price?"
Which is to say — when he'd volunteered for the charity donations, part of his heart had, to some degree, been in the right place.
"Camille, why not let me handle that one?"
"You? But as I understand it, Pistachio doesn't deal in household goods."
"Ah! As it happens, we're expanding our product lines right now. We've already built a new warehouse. Whatever you want, I'll import it — cheap manufactured goods, all of it."
"Well, if you're offering, I'd be delighted."
The charity contract didn't turn a profit right away.
But in the end, the deal with the Ortegas became a letter of guarantee for the merchant group — an ironclad one.
"The Pistachio Merchant Group has begun importing salt. The quality exceeded my expectations."
"Oh? They handle foodstuffs too now? I hadn't heard."
"I hear the Ortegas stand behind them. I'm planning to reach out myself before long."
One contract after another — everything Gale had ever longed for — fell neatly into his lap. That was how effective a guarantee could be.
It's all going too well!
His heart pounded like it might burst.
Keep this up, and the number one spot is right within reach!
With the prize glittering before his eyes, the ambition swelling in Gale's chest grew larger still.
But greed has a way of summoning greater greed.
It was not long after that his eyes turned toward a new field of business.
"My lord Viscount, please look at this."
"Hm? What is it?"
"It was slipped in among the receipts the orphanage director gave us. Purely by accident..."
"...An adoption list?"
Illegal adoption.
In an empire where the legal procedures were punishingly strict, it was a business built for those who wanted a child without the paperwork.
A hidden route for smuggling children in — for people who balked at identity verification, at audits of their wealth, and above all at leaving behind any record that an adoption had taken place.
Gale had no wish to be part of such a thing, and he'd meant to look the other way. But—
...Wait. He's already in on it too?
Knowing that someone he dealt with had already stepped into the trade dissolved his wariness with humiliating ease.
And besides — didn't he happen to have an absolutely perfect way to get close to the children?
...The charity donations, of course.
Come to think of it, there's no reason I can't.
And so Gale set his foot onto the path of the adoption business.
But was it fate's little joke?
"Gale. What, in the name of everything, is this?"
"C-Camille. That — that's, well, you see—!"
Roughly a year after he'd started the business alongside the charity work, Camille — who had happened to visit the county estate — caught the trail dead in his tracks.
"...I am deeply disappointed in you."
With no room left for excuses, Camille held in his hand the ledger of the adopted — fished out from the very depths of the vault.