Chapter 17 – Extra Story : We Used To Be Family  

What went wrong? No, I knew, all the things that caused it… From where was it became irreversible?

The Star Maiden began to wear a sweet-smelling perfume at all times, and since then, the way I dealt with her changed little by little. The effect on His Highness was extraordinary, as he spent the longest time being clung to the most. With each passing day, I would simply say「Oh dear,」annoyed at the same behavior that I had been telling her with a straight face just the other day,「Give me a break.」

I did a quick check to see if it was charm or drugs, but nothing. Just as I was thinking that this was a bad idea and that I should appeal to the center of the castle through my father-in-law, an invitation from the devil whispered to me.

I was thinking that if His Highness Williard continues to choose the Star Maiden, I will be allowed to desire my sister… Remilia.

…This seems like a very attractive idea, and I’ll kick Stefan’s suggestion that we should「request the castle to quarantine the Star Maiden after all, even though we didn’t get any medicine or magic out of it,」 so as not to be unnatural. Holding back the edge of my mouth, which was about to distort, I began to do the calculations in my head while pretending to read a book.

It wasn’t impossible… There are anecdotes from the founding of the country, and in the national sentiment, it would be popular for the Star Maidens to be queens. In fact, the question of whether the engagement can be dissolved is a matter of His Highness’ strong desire and the approval of the Graupner family… When there was no turning back, I could make a proposal to the duke, saying,「If you accept this, you will owe the royal family a favor,」and it might work. There is a possibility that he could be stopped before that, but that man is not that competent despite his pretensions to be a political don, so I would be able to hide it from him.

My important sister adores His Highness Prince Williard, but because she adores him, she accepts his change of heart with sadness. Because that’s the kind of person she is. I thought of the stories I had heard about women who are easily taken advantage of when they are heartbroken in love, and I was horrified at my own black-heartedness. But I could not dismiss this plan. My older sister who accepted me after my father’s death and loved me as a family member. When I became aware of my first love, she was already engaged to the crown prince. I spent many years as his brother, but my feelings for her have not faded at all. Behind the door in the depths that I haven’t opened in a long time, there is the same old… There lay a love affair that was stronger than ever before… I swore in my heart at the time to be a good brother. I swore it, but…

Although the royal family’s convenience will be a flaw, it is not enough to cancel out the charm of my sister. I need to get her hands on it now and crush it so that when it happens, the new fiancée’s story doesn’t come up.

I was thinking too far ahead, and I had no idea about my sister, who was hurt and trapped here and now. I would be lying if I said that there was no personal grudge involved in admonishing my sister for being hard on Miss Pina. It was I who was jealous, saying,「I thought you weren’t the kind of person to mistreat people, but you would be this caustic and jealous for Williard.」

Does the Star Maiden have the power to make people around her like her? What she is doing is disgusting, but for some reason I can’t dislike Pina herself. It’s possible, she has the ability to give blessings to the whole country, and as part of that, it’s not surprising that the effect would be「people around her like her and try to protect her.」

It’s okay, for my sister’s… My feelings for Remilia are stronger.

Because of my sister’s reputation to date for getting along with Pina and His Highness, she was unable to talk me way out of a dissolution, and the evening meeting was held. If I made an apology, it would be treated as a handcuff and I’d be right back where I started. I was so worried that I would only end up damaging Remilia’s reputation. His Highness was so disgusted with my sister, who had thoroughly refused to admit her guilt and made no apologies, that he broke off the engagement. No way, I thought, but by the end I almost laughed as I began to think,「If this happened, everything would be as I wanted it to be.」His Highness was obviously behaving strangely… I wonder if it has something to do with the strong smell of Pina’s, usual perfume.

Thank you, Star Maiden, for granting my wish.

My sister was forced into a country estate after her engagement was broken off. However, it was clear that His Majesty and The Queen regretted her excellence and thought that even if she went to the countryside, she would rise again, and then they would welcome her back into the royal family on the basis of her achievements. I won’t let that happen, though.

I want to go immediately to comfort her who was in shock, but if I turn myself in now, the royal family will know what I had planned. As expected, we cannot do that, so the groundwork must be well laid. Quickly, His Highness must fall to the Star Maiden. If His Highness makes a move on Pina, the queen, who insists that no one but Remilia is allowed to be Williard’s wife, will have no choice but to fold.

Let Pina make a ready-made case with His Highness or force her into a situation where he has no choice but to choose the Star Maiden. If they do, my sister is brilliant, and she will soon take prominent credit in the countryside. My father-in-law took away from my sister the rights to various products that yielded huge royalties and felt like he was winging it, but this is not the kind of potential that that man has.

Soon, she would have a new reputation that would more than make up for the reputation that had been ground down by the royal family’s breaking of the engagement and the assault on the Star Maiden… Yes, I could have welcomed her as my wife, being the next Duke of Graupner.

That’s what I thought, but since my sister disappeared, things have not been going as well as I had hoped. No, my sister’s village is well regarded. The abandoned villages are inhabited by people who have nowhere else to go from the surrounding territories, giving them jobs and generating an economy. As I had anticipated, she also quickly invented content that was upwardly compatible with the products my father-in-law had taken up, and began distributing them to the lands affected by the dukedom. I may have still underestimated that person’s excellence.

I am the one who is not on schedule.

At first, the older men, including His Majesty, were greased by the Star Maiden who was overtly flirtatious but good-looking, but recently they have been harsh on Pina’s lack of common sense and her inability to study properly and learn manners for any length of time, and constantly blaming others for anything that goes wrong. I hear some people beginning to realize that「the case of Lady Remilia may have just been the Star Maiden making too much fuss.」

On the contrary, we were made to like Pina as if we had been forced into liking her. At first she was like any other woman… I was disgusted by her wooing and touching my body with gestures that were more insectile than those of other women. For some reason, the feelings now are selfishly happy and welling up at the same time as disgust, even though they are doing the same thing they did then.

I had to get away from this woman as soon as possible, and I was in a hurry to make an achievement. My fiancé pretended to be caged by Pina because she would get in the way in welcoming Remilia, and the engagement was called off after she acted as affectionate as Stefan and David. At first, we had a number of next partners, but they stopped as the reputation of our Pina group fell into disrepute.

It was bad, if things continued as they were, people would think that we were not good enough to receive a competent female lord who would make a name for herself in the countryside. Father-in-law finally found out by this time that the queen had been thinking of setting up Remilia, who had thought that by breaking off the relationship he had「been able to limit my losses by abandoning my daughter who had been criticized by the royal family,」as Williard’s fiancee once she had achieved more than the disgrace she had created and the purification ceremony was over… Or maybe she found out about the demonic resources that have started coming out of my sister’s territory, and is eager to make a connection with Remilia again.

It would be too convenient for my father-in-law to say, as I used him to break off my sister and brotherhood with me in order to marry my sister. It’s no wonder, then, that with the trade goods from the demon realm and the new inventions produced by my sister, the income of the dukedom has been greatly reduced. Every single thing that is coming out of my sister’s territory is damaging the revenue stream of the Duke of Graupner’s territory. If you’ve thought of everything and you’re driving it, I can only say that I’m impressed.

It is only natural that my family, which has a feud with her, would be quietly shut out of the business if they knew that my sister was on the demon realm side. He must have realized that the dukedom’s finances would be in a tailspin in a few years if he didn’t do something about it. Both the duke and his wife are not associated with moderation. Until now, tax revenues have been coming from within the dukedom without any talent… From now on, if they continue to spend money in the same way as before, they will easily overtake our income. Losing power and wealth seems to me to be the best punishment for them for cutting off their daughter for this. Is this revenge against her own parents?

Furthermore… He was optimistic about his relationship with the royal family because I was still in his entourage, but he was apparently even more impatient when he heard the rumor that Williard was to be made the abolished crown prince. I would like to find Remilia, who is once again gaining a reputation for excellence, as the fiancée of the first prince Elhasha, whose mother is a concubine. But I can’t let that pass.

Every move I make to make an achievement to pick up my sister isn’t working. Was I this incompetent?

I thought about what Pina had said to His Highness about this and that, in the past, my sister had talked about a similar social system, and I tried to put together a proposal in my own way, but it was rejected, mainly because it was not well thought out in terms of funding, and they wouldn’t even put it on the drawing board. It was a very appealing measure when my sister was telling me about it and I thought,「Why hasn’t any country come up with this, why don’t they just adopt it right away?」My thinking was so lacking that when people told me, I was ashamed to say,「Why didn’t I notice those flaws?」

For the first time I was confused as I experienced a setback. Why? This was not the case when I was with my sister discussing plans for developing and distributing new products. I would often find improvements in my sister’s sketchy designs, and she would praise me, saying,「That’s great, Claude.」I was always getting excellent grades on my school reports, and I was even being posted as one of the top few for assignments. What has changed…

Then it occurred to… me. It was my sister. I was always talking to my sister and taking hints from those conversations to make unconscious corrections. Was I ever leaning on her talent…?

I heard the rattle and crash of the footsteps on which I had been standing, having earned a reputation as「an outstanding incoming duke.」

I am considered the next duke, but I have no real power. I am just a young political officer. Not being in a position to decide on a fiancée at my own discretion, I was so desperate that I suggested to Duke Graupner,「How about recalling my sister Remilia in exchange for her forgiveness of everything? She still has knowledge and talents worth using, so why not make her my wife and have her contribute to the dukedom?」

I wanted to pick her up on my own… So much so that I have to give up that pride. Fortunately, my sister refuses the royal call, putting forward the frontier lord’s right to refuse to go up to the castle. She must not like it herself. It must be so. However, I had sniffed that the royal family had already given up on the Star Maiden and were trying to set up my sister Remilia as the fiancée once again. I can’t refuse a royal order, as expected, I have to make my sister mine before I can do that…!

Right now, the whole castle is in a flurry of activity to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the start of diplomatic relations with the demon realm. I myself was busy with my work as a political officer.

I have been informed that after this soiree is over, the royal family is going to promote my sister to a knighthood. Perhaps at that time, they will approach her to reengage the engagement. I can pretend that I was unaware of the royal family’s true intentions and make my move before then.

My sister… I wonder what Remilia would say. She would be surprised that we were family and she never thought of me as a man. But we were a family to begin with, surely we could get along well as a couple. I had never doubted that until this moment.

At that soiree, I learned that everything was too late. No, I am not talking about「when.」…I made a mistake in everything. My sister… My first love was not a woman who would maliciously hurt people. I should have known. I should have known that first-hand… I was the only one who could have noticed.

I am still a little child, just saved by my sister, and I am crying in the back of my mind. Why did I believe that lie, my sister would never do that, and now she blames me.

Ahh, that’s right, I have made a mistake…

I was not completely entangled in that woman’s curse. I was the only one who could have betrayed Williard and the others and sided with my sister.

Since my sister had been disowned by my stepfather, we were no longer even a documented family, as we were not my real sister and brother.

I thought she would be too kind to refuse my apology, so I asked her to set up a place for me to apologize, and when she looked at me with sad eyes, I almost went insane. When I try to cling to her, she quietly rejects me, and I want to cry and scream when I realize that I can no longer even call her my sister.

…I knew that my sister loved His Highness Prince Williard with all her heart. If I really loved my sister, I should have only supported their friendship and not done this. I know. I made a mistake, I was stupid.

I was trying to get someone I loved, and I intentionally hurt that loved one. I don’t deserve that kind of person… I totally deserved to lose my happiness.