Supporting Characters Also Need Some Love

A large and colorful sign stands out.

<Rosalyn>

This was Midoc’s most famous designer, Rosalyn’s boutique. Milton top or what was owned top here? Rosalind was a legendary designer who came up to Midoc single-bloodedly, made the ladies of Midoc into slaves for dresses, saved money, and then opened the largest shop in Midoc, covering everything from dresses to shoes and accessories. It’s too expensive, so she didn’t even use it often. Did this have something to do with the defense industry’s corruption representative? It’s shocking. There’s going to be an uproar in the social world. When she entered the boutique in a daze, the two employees standing at the entrance greeted her with their foreheads pressed to the floor, then backed away and disappeared. After a while, a woman in a dress appeared shouting ‘She is gorgeous!’ The middle-aged woman, who looked to be in her late 40s, was surprisingly well matched in a fancy dress and makeup. Appearing with her fast step, she bowed her head deeply towards herme and Adrian. No, she bowed her head to Adrian.

“Duke. I’ve been waiting for you.”

Wait? So she was actively cooperating with the investigation?

Adrian nodded his head without any expression, and she began to introduce herself to me.

“My name is Rosalyn, the designer. Young lady, you really have beautiful eyes. It must be worth the effort. Ho-ho.”

It was also Rosalyn. She said that she had a high nose and was on the level of the Duchess of Ron. As soon as she saw her, Adrian also seemed to have a qualm.

“We don’t have much time.”

“It’s already ready, Duke. This way-“

Following Rosalind, who guided them with graceful gestures, they entered a luxuriously decorated room. She thought she was going to the office, but this is an individual fitting room? Adrian sat her down on a sofa covered in pink velvet. As Rosalyn lifted her hand, the waiter came in with a fancy box and set it down on the table in front of me.

“You’ll like it. Young lady, it’s been a while since my soul burned like this. Ho-ho-ho.”

…She didn’t think there’s a transaction ledger in that box, did she? No, this shooter. Let’s go investigate the guild, what was this doing? She looked up at Adrian, and she bent down to open the handmade box.

There was a brooch. It was a cute design brooch with a larger water-colored gem in the middle than the one she received before and small sapphires scattered around it. It was pretty.

It was Mario who broke her brooch with the color of her eyes, but why did it have to be him to buy this one that looks expensive? Since the Duke owned a mountain range where mines were located as mushrooms, it didn’t matter if it looked expensive or not, but it’s not. She just looked at it, and then she glanced down and looked at the brooch once, looked at her face again, looked at the brooch once again, looked at her face, and the corners of her eyes drooped.

What could she do about this cunning man who dares to give her presents in this place, a hotbed of rumors, didn’t hate it when he looked at her lightly.

“Don’t you like that…?”

He asked cautiously with a clearly downcast face. Rosalyn gasped behind him, covering her mouth with her hand and staggering. But she didn’t have to worry, since that brooch, which she said to have made it with her burned soul, was really pretty.

No but, wasn’t he a Duke? What if rumors about the only incumbent unmarried Duke dashing with a woman his age appeared in the neighborhood? Would a grown-up guy ever try to talk to her? Huh? After he said he would understand her rejection, huh? Was he just lying face down on the road to her wedding and telling her to step on it? And what was that restless face?

Whew. She pretended not to know because he was cute

“This is too much.”

“Of course not, Damian.”

He got down on one knee and gave her a quick and firm answer to her question, so she was handed a box. She missed the timing and looked at Adrian, who was half-sitting, and tapped the seat next to her, and he smiled and sat down next to her. The brooch he took out and put on her hand was much prettier than she had ever seen.

“Thank you, Adrian. It’s a nice brooch. Madame Rosaline, I really like it.”

Rosalyn smiled, a twitching look on her face. After asking for delivery to the Count’s residence and leaving the boutique, they finally headed to the top of Milton.

* * *

Around the time Damian and Adrian departed for Milton, Ethan, who had visited the office of the capital commander’s headquarters, opened the office door with a loud knock. Ethan first looked at the seat where Damian would be sitting, but the seat was empty. Next, he checked Adrian’s seat, but it was empty as well. When he turned his attention, Cale, who had occupied the empty room and was sitting on the couch leisurely drinking coffee and flipping through papers, finally caught his eye.

“How about those two?”

“Outside work”

“Working outside? Where?

“Investigating the top of the turn”

“All top? Why is he there with the lady?”

“Excuse.”

“Oh, you…! Speak using sentences!”

Ethan sat down on the sofa across from him, annoyed, but Cale didn’t take his eyes off the papers. Ethan was frustrated, but Cale listed the words as if he was deliberately making fun of him.

“Brooch, top survey.”

“Ah, today was the day they said it would be completed. He used the guild investigation as an excuse to go out with the lady to give her a brooch, is that so?”

“Date”

“Haha. That’s right. It’s a date. Aren’t you doing everything you do besides our lord?”

“No, I’m doing everything I have to do today? Can’t you see this?”

Cale waved the papers with a sullen face. Ethan laughed at it, saying it went well, then suddenly asked with a serious face.

“Is it Milton’s upper house?”

“Why? Is there a problem?”

“The King’s Eyes said they were moving towards the upper Milton today, but I’m trying to re-examine them, as I think they’re more closely related to Marquis Talus as well.”

“Are you saying it has to do with the entire aristocratic faction?”

“I doubt that the Merchant built for their money laundering might be the Milton Merchant.”

Ethan rested on his chin and knocked on the table, distressed. Cale straightened his posture and said in a serious voice.

“Is there anything special? The lord is gone.”

“Isn’t it? Even if there’s something special, they’ll be there, right?”

“I’m a little concerned that Lady Damian went with him. I’d better send some knights.”

Ethan nodded and robbed him of his seat.

* * *

The Milton Merchant was located on the outskirts of Midok. Near the mouth of the Lorraine River, which crosses Midoc, the shops and warehouses of each merchant group are gathered, but the shop and office at the Milton Merchant Chamber were a little further away from them.

They rode the wagon for quite some time, chatting about the lunch they planned to have together on the way back. The Duke had no friends other than her, and he hadn’t been to a single restaurant in Midoc’s main street. How many delicious places were there in Midok? They decided to go to a restaurant she used to go to with her father and Lootvan, but at some point a carriage arrived at the top of Milton. Looking down, it was a large two-story building made of grayish-white bricks.

Franz was again tied up with the carriage in the backyard. Leaving behind Franz, who was seeing off with a sullen face, Adrian entered the building. As soon as he saw the building, he thought something was strange, but as he entered, he realized why.

“Adrian, this building has no windows.”

Adrian nodded and took a quick look inside. The first floor was a shop that doubled as a product display. Since it was a place that mainly deals with military supplies, there were strange items and weapons on display. As if he didn’t want to take a long time, Adrian called the top lord.

“I’m the commander of the Capital Army. Bring the top liquor.”

‘What is this madman?’ The stern-looking employee who was looking at Adrian with a smile on his face checked the color of his eyes and the commander’s uniform he was wearing a couple of times before disappearing to the second floor. Then came down with a man who looked like a thin hairtail. The man hunched over his waist, rubbing his hands together.

“Ah, Duke Bigor. How did you come all the way to this humble place? If you needed anything, I would have come to you. I am Milton, the one running this humble company.”

He looked like a typical merchant with no liver or gallbladder, but maybe it’s because of his uneasy eyes. She glanced up at Adrian, but as soon as she entered this place, she couldn’t read his thoughts because his expressionless face was cold.

“I came to see the transaction details with the military.”

“Ah- I’ve already heard about the supply manager. I don’t know how he did it, but our corps is guilty of delivering good goods at an honest price.”

“Transaction statement.”

“No, that’s true. If you suddenly come and do this blindly… We know there’s a procedure too, Duke.”

It looked suspicious even to her, who knew nothing about spinning words, but how similar it must have been to Adrian. He replied in a very simple, dripping tone of ice water.

“Me coming here is the procedure you are talking about. Are you saying you can’t show me the transaction details?”

“Oh no, no. Please go to the office on the second floor.”

As Adrian’s momentum grew, the skinny hairtail guided them to the second floor, bending his long waist. They passed through the long hallway with two rows of bright stones and entered a room, it was quite spacious and luxuriously decorated, unlike what she saw from below.

Milton muttered something at his spacious desk, then brought out a ledger. Adrian, who sat her down on the sofa, spread out in front of me the ledger he had received and the military statements he had taken out of his pocket.

“Hey, I wondered how you came here, but this beautiful young lady has become the administrator. Administrator, I don’t know if you’ll like it because it’s a rough place, but should I serve you a cup of coffee?”

Adrian made a very unpleasant face, but he still asked her kindly.

“Would you like some tea?”

However, she also shook her head, not wanting to stay for a long time, feeling stuffy despite the fact that the room was bright, perhaps because there were no windows.

“It’s better to review quickly and leave.”

Adrian nodded and sat down next to her, and she quickly read through the papers. First of all, the number and price of the items in the upper ledger and the military transaction statement matched. As she quickly flipped through a few pages while comparing the numbers in the books and documents, something caught her eye. The delivery to the military and the delivery to other mercenaries were the same item, but the price was different?

“About this military blanket. Do you supply expensive items that are only supplied to the military?”

“I can’t believe that, magistrate. Those entering the military are delivered in large quantities at a low unit price. I am enlisting in the army that protects my country, so can I have a lot left over?”

“But why is the price different between the book of the mercenaries and the book of the military?”

“Yes?” Milton asked, taken aback.

As Adrian leaned toward her, she showed him what she had discovered.

“Here, 200 blankets for the Big Bear Mercenary Corps cost 180 gold, and each sheet costs a little less than 1 gold. But 1,450 blankets delivered to the military cost 3,200 gold. At a rough glance, each sheet costs more than 2 gold, right?”

These people made a fake ledger by rewriting only the items related to supplying to the military. She guessed he thought she wouldn’t pay attention to other deals, right? When she glared at the skinny hairtail triumphantly, he made gibberish excuses.

“Ah, that’s, yes, that’s because there was a payment I didn’t get from the last transaction. It’s because they didn’t pay for last year’s blanket, so I calculated it together.”

“Then get last year’s ledger. We can check it.”

The skinny cutlass made a puzzled face for a moment, then changed his face in an instant. Stripped of his feigned politeness, the mean bare face was revealed.

“Huh, really. You’re a wild young lady.”

“You’d better refrain from talking. You bastard.”

Adrian’s momentum also rapidly became ferocious. Despite this, the skinny hairtail got up from the sofa with a relaxed attitude and looked down at me with an eerie look. The skinny cutlassfish looked at her and nodded at the tough-looking employee standing next to it.

“Did you hear? Last year’s ledger. Bring it.”

The skinny hairtail’s subordinate looked at her once and opened the door and went out, and a long whistle sounded after a while. She was surprised to hear a grinding noise right next to her and turned her head to Adrian, but she saw something flying. Milton screamed and turned his head back to find a rather large dagger lodged in the middle of his stomach.

What the hell was this going on? She was too shocked to say anything and looked back at Adrian to see that he had taken off his coat with red, sunken eyes.