TAHR 08

Chapter 08

The Ethan I knew and Ethan Esteban were the same person, yet also different people.

The conclusion was somewhat strange, but I was still able to let go of the old lingering feelings. Or at least, I thought I had.

“……Sigh.”

Elisa, who had spent a sleepless night thinking about Ethan, let out a deep sigh and gently pressed beneath her eyes, where dark circles had formed.

She had coldly snapped at him, telling him not to pretend they knew each other, yet here she was now. She felt so pathetic that all she could do was sigh.

Even while drowning in self-loathing, she kept thinking about Ethan.

Had he really run away because he felt the difference in their social status? Or had there been another reason?

And if so, what was that reason?

What could it possibly have been that made him say he couldn’t tell her now, but would tell her later?

She had thought about it all night, but the questions she could not find answers to continued to float around in her head.

Instead of taking his silence as an answer and letting it go, she should have pressed him until the very end.

She might have looked desperate and pathetic at the time, but at least she would not have been left with regrets.

She deeply regretted not doing so.

“……Should I find out now?”

Rather than spending more time blaming and regretting herself, she should act.

After making up her mind, Elisa immediately prepared to go out.

The most certain way to resolve her questions was to ask the person involved, but since that person had absolutely no intention of cooperating, she excluded that option.

Besides, facing Ethan and talking to him was uncomfortable.

Then the only method left was investigating him.

After leaving the mansion, Elisa headed to the Information Guild.

It would not be good if word got out that the daughter of a count’s family frequented such a place, so she got off a little distance away and walked the rest of the way to her destination.

She had also dressed as plainly as possible.

The place seemed to operate as a restaurant as well, because there were quite a few people eating in the hall on the first floor.

It was noisy as well.

Since this was Elisa’s first time in a place this noisy, and her first time visiting an information guild, she stood there awkwardly, like a lump of barley someone had set down and forgotten about.

Just then, a pretty woman with red hair tied tightly behind her head approached her.

“You don’t seem to have come here to eat. Are you here for business over there?”

The woman pointed toward the counter as she asked.

Understanding what she meant from the context, Elisa nodded.

“It’s too noisy here, so let’s talk inside.”

The woman grabbed Elisa by the arm and pulled her along.

Caught off guard, Elisa followed her into a room behind the counter and looked around.

It was a small space, less than ten steps from the door to the window.

There was nothing but a wooden desk and chairs, along with a small bookshelf.

“Don’t keep standing. Sit down.”

The woman sat in a chair near the window and gestured for Elisa to take a seat.

Elisa had been looking around nervously, like a lost child, but only then did she finally sit down.

“Well then, may I ask what business brings a young lady from such a noble family all the way to the Information Guild herself?”

“……How did you know I was a noble?”

Elisa had done her best to hide the fact that she was a noble, so she was surprised that the woman had recognized it immediately.

The woman laughed aloud, then rested her chin on her clasped hands.

“I make my living by reading people. If I couldn’t even figure out something like this, I’d have to quit my job.”

I see.

Something about it felt strange, but Elisa wasn’t sure why, so she simply nodded.

It wasn’t particularly important, anyway.

“I came because I want to know about the ‘K’ from the rumors. In other words, Baron Ethan Esteban.”

That was what mattered.

At Elisa’s request, the woman gave a short sigh and wrinkled the bridge of her nose.

Come to think of it, everyone had tried to find out who the rumored ‘K’ was—the person who had rescued Prince Howard and led the Allied Nations to victory when they were in danger—but they had all failed.

Still, now that it had been revealed that the rumored ‘K’ was a man named Ethan Esteban, Elisa had thought they might be able to find something out.

But apparently not.

“Is it a difficult request?”

When Elisa asked cautiously, the woman scratched her cheek.

“Well, I don’t know whether to call it difficult or easy…….”

“What do you mean?”

“If you want to know how Baron Esteban was adopted into the Esteban family and what he did on the battlefield, I can tell you. But…… other things are impossible.”

“Other things?”

“For example, we cannot find out what kind of life Baron Esteban lived before the war broke out.”

“I don’t need to know that.”

Elisa knew better than anyone what kind of life Ethan had lived before he joined the war.

She had absolutely no curiosity about that.

“More than that, I want to know how Baron Ethan Esteban came to participate in the war.”

The reason he had joined the war must have been the reason he had left her without saying a word.

If he had simply been afraid of the barrier between their social statuses and run away, he would not have joined the war.

“Hmm, I’m sorry, but I don’t think we’ll be able to find that out either.”

“Why? Can’t you just check Baron Ethan Esteban’s enlistment record?”

Anyone who volunteered for the army instead of being conscripted had to write down their reason for enlistment.

This was to check for anything that might cause problems, such as whether they had enlisted with bad intentions or whether they were spies from an enemy nation.

Ethan should have been no different.

Yet the woman was saying it was impossible without even trying, which left Elisa somewhat bewildered.

“Is it difficult to check because enlistment records are military secrets?”

“No. Since it’s military information, it’s more difficult than an ordinary background investigation, but it’s not impossible to obtain.”

“Then why…….”

“There is no enlistment record.”

What kind of nonsense was that?

Elisa narrowed one eye, and the woman nodded as if she understood her reaction.

“We also thought it was strange that there was no enlistment record for someone who had participated in the war, so we checked several times. But we couldn’t find anything.”

“Is that even possible? If there was no enlistment record, there would be problems with his unit assignment and the distribution of supplies.”

“It is extremely rare, but it isn’t completely unheard of. The administrator might have lost the paperwork by mistake…….”

The woman glanced at the firmly closed door, then leaned toward Elisa and whispered.

“Or if someone of such a high status that even people like us information brokers couldn’t dare approach hid it, then we wouldn’t be able to find it.”

At those words, Elisa thought of Prince Howard.

The two of them had looked quite close at the victory banquet.

It was probably because Ethan was his lifesaver.

For the same reason, perhaps he had hidden Ethan’s enlistment record to conceal his past as a commoner and servant.

There was nothing good about the hero who had saved the Allied Nations being revealed to have once been nothing more than a servant.

So that was probably the most likely explanation.

“I’m telling you this because I don’t want you to waste your money, young lady, but even if you go to another guild, you’ll get the same result. So it would be better to give up on digging into Baron Esteban’s past.”

If giving up had been that easy, Elisa would not have spent the past four years suffering because of that man, nor would she have spent countless nights lying awake thinking about him.

She swallowed the words she could never say and took a gold coin from her pocket, placing it on the table.

“Then tell me how Ethan Esteban was adopted into the Esteban family.”

“If that’s what you want, I can tell you right away. First, the information fee is one gold coin, including the previous request.”

Elisa willingly paid the price.

The woman smiled brightly, then took out a box from beneath the bookshelf.

She pulled some documents from the box and placed them in front of Elisa.

Written in large letters on the first page were the words:

‘Investigation Report on Ethan Esteban.’

“I didn’t expect you to give it to me right away…….”

“As you know, the rumored ‘K’ was extremely popular. Even elderly ladies wanted to know K’s identity.”

So it was that popular.

Before finding out that the rumored ‘K’ was Ethan, Elisa had never been interested in the matter, so she had not realized just how popular he was.

“Even after it was revealed that the rumored ‘K’ was Baron Esteban, his popularity didn’t die down. In fact, so many people came asking us to find out what kind of person he was that we prepared the information in advance.”

The woman shook her head, saying that they even had a dedicated team assigned to investigating Baron Esteban.

Elisa was a little surprised by something she had not known, but it wasn’t particularly surprising.

Even when he had been a servant, Ethan had been popular because of his handsome appearance.

There had even been people who offered a great deal of money and asked for him to be handed over.

When she was young, Elisa had been proud and pleased that such a popular person was her playmate.

After she fell in love with Ethan, however, she had become anxious and jealous.

She did not want to show him to other people, so she had avoided going out as much as possible and kept him by her side.

And now…….

“Oh, come to think of it, one of the clients who asked us to investigate Baron Ethan Esteban was also that person.”

“That person?”

Elisa, who had been lost in her thoughts, came back to herself and looked at the woman.

The woman smiled sweetly and continued.

“Sir Derek Grenville, your fiancé. He also commissioned us to find out about Baron Esteban.”