Chapter 122: Relationship

“G-General Newsbeck! This is…”

“There’s no need to leap up in such a panic.”

Recognizing the visitor from her name, Shia hurried to her feet, but Newsbeck calmed her.

“You’ve been traveling around the country and working very energetically.”

Shia was traveling throughout the Lunoa Kingdom teaching anti-magic barriers so that another tragedy like Frankhalt wouldn’t occur. Newsbeck had come to visit her.

“Yes… This is the only thing I can do.”

“A splendid attitude. And you needn’t speak so formally to me.”

“No, I couldn’t…”

“In return, I’ll call you Shia. Let’s be friendly.”

“…Understood. No—All right.”

“An excellent answer.”

Newsbeck nodded with satisfaction.

“Now, to the reason I came. Do you know that Noah is being pushed toward becoming the head of House Willard?”

“What!?”

“From your reaction, you didn’t know.”

“No… But for Father to try to make Noah the head…”

“That man is a thorough pragmatist who will do anything for his house.”

“That’s…”

“I hardly need ask. Like Noah, are you opposed to him becoming head of House Willard?”

“Yes. There’s no reason for me to support it.”

“Is it truly so bad? It doesn’t seem an entirely poor offer.”

“My family has many relatives. No matter how highly Noah is praised, it doesn’t change the fact that they treated him as beneath them. Those relatives would never help him. The idea of Noah working as a head he never wanted while they obstruct him is absurd.”

Shia spat the words bitterly.

“Hmm… I see.”

Newsbeck nodded in satisfaction, judging that her plan could work.

“As his superior, I naturally don’t want anything that harms Noah. We shouldn’t let Marquis Willard have his way.”

“Yes!”

To organize her thoughts, Newsbeck saw Noah’s nature as not so different from that of an ordinary boy.

His intelligence and memory were exceptional, but his disposition was fairly ordinary. He didn’t wish to hurt people and hadn’t accepted a war in which death was everywhere.

He was a teenage boy with the expected desires and capacity for love. The war had worn down his heart and left him dispirited, but Newsbeck believed his true nature was easygoing and carefree.

(Does she have no romantic feelings for Noah?)

The Noah Newsbeck knew wasn’t the sort of boy who could receive Emma’s affection and ignore it completely. Yet he did exactly that, never blushing even when Emma pressed her ample body against him.

Why?

The answer lay in Shia.

“…General Newsbeck?”

For some reason, Noah didn’t truly regard the members of House Willard as family—not even Shia, the sister he adored.

The feelings he directed toward Shia were those of a man toward a woman: romantic affection, not familial love.

Noah seemed to reject those feelings. Following the common belief that it was wrong to view one’s sister as a woman, he pretended not to notice them.

But he couldn’t erase them entirely. Until Noah reached some conclusion about his relationship with Shia, he was unlikely to form a romantic relationship with anyone else.

(Shia may not feel romantic love for him, but her affection is so heavy that she looks ready to offer him her body without hesitation if he asked.)

What a difficult pair of siblings.

Both loved too heavily. Noah’s possessiveness was plain in the way he kept Shia from leaving his merchant company.

From only fragments of observation, Newsbeck accurately inferred the nature of their relationship.

“General Newsbeck! Why did you suddenly go silent?”

“Oh!? Sorry. I was thinking… And please, call me Hera.”

“What? No, that would be…”

“I want to hear you say it. Now, about Noah becoming head of the family—the refusal is simple. He can marry into a family too powerful for House Willard to oppose. A ducal family, for example.”

“I see. That certainly… Hera?”

Shia gave her a suspicious look.

“General Newsbeck is unmarried, isn’t she?”

“Hey! Don’t go back to that! Still, it’s one option. It depends on whom Noah loves. Choosing his fiancée for him would be even worse than forcing him to become head of the family.”

“That’s true. In the end, it’s up to him… I only hope Noah will be happy.”

Newsbeck watched Shia’s loving expression and calmly concluded that Noah would be happy as long as he could remain with her.

Newsbeck had no intention of interfering with that.

(I’m content with being the mistress!)

The woman in her thirties who desired a teenager knew her place.

(Heh heh… If he struck me, strangled me, insulted me, and loved me…)

Perhaps she didn’t know her place after all.