WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Returned as a God ◈
Chapter 90: You Call That an Answer? (3)
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In the twenty-first century, poverty was a fairly relative thing.
Somewhere in the world, poverty meant not even having gruel to eat. Somewhere else, poverty meant barely scraping by in a cramped one-room apartment.
Lee Eunyheui was Korean.
If the Korea I remembered lined up with the Korea she remembered, then going hungry unintentionally in Korea wasn't exactly easy. Not unless something was seriously wrong.
Whatever Lee Eunyheui was about to say clearly stepped outside that timeframe.
"You know."
Plenty, actually.
There'd been days when I hadn't eaten anything for so long that by the end I felt like I could've chewed on grass. And once, I'd gotten stranded in a dungeon and nearly starved to death.
"No, I've got one too. Since I got pulled into the tower, all kinds of messed up stuff has happened to me. That's not... ah, screw it!"
Once she'd cleared the slums, Lee Eunyheui kicked a rock lying on the ground.
She watched it roll away and spoke.
"Since it's you I'm telling this to."
"Why me?"
"You didn't even know what happened in the lobby, right? Something that big went down, and I figured there had to be someone out there who never heard about it..."
Something that big, huh. Now I was genuinely curious what had actually happened in that lobby.
Lee Eunyheui pulled a large bottle of a drink out of her item window.
Was she treating that thing like a convenient fridge instead of an inventory?
She drained about half the bottle on the spot.
"I've gone hungry before."
"Going hungry's a big deal? I have too."
"Read the room, I'm talking about before I came to the tower."
Outside the tower meant back when she was living a normal life.
Before I could even ask, Lee Eunyheui just told her story.
"I'm from North Hamgyong Province. I defected way younger, so I don't really remember much of it. But there's one thing I know for sure. Back then, I was always hungry."
"I'll take back what I said about you having a beggar living in your stomach."
"You little punk."
Hearing it put that way did give things a different flavor.
Not an exaggeration, but until she'd actually said it, I genuinely couldn't have guessed anything about her background.
It came out so naturally, and she'd said she came over young, so it made sense in a way.
"Anyway, this is just me being nosy. Man, though, who would've guessed I'd get dragged into a world like this and go through all this hell."
"How'd you end up getting pulled in?"
I'd heard Yu Jihan just woke up one day and found himself in the tower.
Natural enough question, and I wasn't exactly free of curiosity about the other people in the tower either.
More data points couldn't hurt, right?
"Me? I fell off a construction site."
"Worked at a construction company. Went on a business trip to Saudi, went to check the site, and had an accident and fell. Normally that would've been instant death, or if I'd lived, not really living. So I just figure I had a good experience out of it and I'm making the most of it now."
Man, what a pointlessly upbeat way to look at it.
"So anyway, I'm gonna head back to the guild. I've got to go meet the count tomorrow too. You..."
Lee Eunyheui looked in the direction of the Western Guard Division's branch.
Once she disappeared, I headed straight for the Western Guard post where Ludie was.
Stepping inside the guard post, one of the guards sitting near the entrance recognized me.
"What brings you... ah! You're the one from last time..."
"Ruin."
I'd mentioned I had no alias, and Lee Eunyheui had told me to at least come up with one.
Still better than introducing myself as Yu Jihan again.
Not that it mattered anyway.
Weirdly, the people in the tower never seemed to properly remember my name or face.
Most likely because I wasn't a normal challenger climbing the tower the usual way.
Lee Eunyheui was probably the same.
Bitter, but nothing to be done about it.
"Ah! You're the one who helped out with the dungeon expedition last time, right? Sorry about that."
"No, it's fine."
"What brings you here today?"
"I've got business. I did say I was coming, but..."
I glanced around the inside of the guard post.
Right then Ludie stepped out into the corridor and waved.
I looked at Ludie, and the guard stepped aside, gesturing for me to go on ahead.
I went into Ludie's office.
"No woman with you this time, huh."
"She had business, so we split up."
I settled comfortably onto the sofa in the office.
"Alright, cutting straight to it. Does the Faillia Duke's house happen to need anyone right now?"
Guards moving on to become noble escorts wasn't unusual.
Anyone from the capital's guard division had a solid background and better than average skill.
Some guards got scouted directly to become escort knights for nobles, and some nobles came right out and asked the guard for someone to send over.
"You didn't seem interested in nobles."
"I'm not particularly interested in nobles."
"Then what?"
"Let's just call it personal business."
"Wasn't trying to pry. Just, well."
"Just what?"
"The Faillia Duke's house is a name that bothers me a bit."
Ludie glanced toward the door.
Once whoever had been passing through the corridor was completely gone, he lowered his voice.
"A few months back, the duke's house reached out asking if we had any good escorts available. Happened to have a young man interested in nobility on hand, so I sent him. Haven't been able to reach him for about a month now."
"Just lost contact, or something worse?"
"Not the type to go silent for no reason. Asked the duke's house about it, and they said he'd been reassigned to a territory up north, but..."
"Did you check on that?"
"Don't have the manpower to send someone all the way north for a guy who left the guard."
Fair enough. Different situation from someone like Igerus or Erel, who investigated things properly.
Besides, once someone went in as an escort, they technically belonged to the duke's household.
The guard couldn't exactly meddle in the internal affairs of a duke's house.
"Not a guy who'd die easy, though."
Ludie pulled a letter with broken wax seal out of a drawer.
Below the envelope's fold was an emblem representing the Faillia Duke's house.
"Kicking a talented guy off to the north and then shamelessly turning around to ask for another escort knight, that's what's got me pissed."
There was definitely a Faillia duchy territory up north. But that was about all there was to it.
The Faillia Duke's house had been a core noble family operating out of the capital for generations, and its provincial territories were basically just assets on paper.
Sending someone to the countryside effectively meant they had no intention of introducing him to any other noble family.
Plenty reason for Ludie to be sore about it.
Ludie tapped the letter on the table with a finger.
A request was just a request. No obligation to honor it.
Just as the guard couldn't meddle in the duke's house, the duke's house couldn't afford to treat the guard, protected by the imperial family, carelessly either.
A genuinely delicate relationship.
"I'll write you a recommendation letter if you want. Your skill's solid, so there's no need to vouch for that part. But there's a condition."
If someone wasn't after becoming a noble but still wanted in as an escort knight, there was only one reason for it.
"I won't ask what you're actually doing while you're in there. In exchange, you don't mind taking on one more job while you're at it, right?"
"Of course not."
"The name of the subordinate I recommended was Kale."
"Got it, I'll look into this Kale guy."
"The escort request that came in to the guard was for the second daughter, Faillia Platina Rizu. Came into the Faillia house as a young lady at a young age, and she's arrogant beyond belief. So, would you be willing to put a scar somewhere on your face, by any chance?"
We were talking fine and then it veered off into this?
Scar my perfectly fine face! Why the hell would I do that!
Ludie coughed and took a sip of the water in front of him.
"Not literally telling you to do it."
"That old man, what's his deal, his hobby's supposedly buying up fourth-class slaves and pitting them against each other, right? Eats with whoever catches his eye."
"If it were just eating, that'd be a relief."
I knew it!
Wait, what? Go in as a slave?
What was supposed to come out of the bedroom part exactly?
I found myself grateful all over again that I'd turned down Erel's offer.
"I'm not, I'm not going in as a slave, right?"
"Being an escort knight means nobody's allowed to touch you? Says who?"
"Nobody, damn it, nobody."
Better treatment or not, from the nobles' point of view, an escort knight was just an expensive possession.
And unlike slaves who had nothing left to lose, a noble's escorts and maids had a clearly defined hierarchy above them.
Muel maids and escort knights hadn't been chosen as adopted children of nobility, but they were people who still wanted to become nobles eventually.
Their futures rode entirely on how well the noble they served decided to introduce them, so refusing outright wasn't exactly easy for them.
This world really was.
Disgustingly so.
Trash.
I drank some water to calm myself down.
"But not every escort knight gets touched, right?"
"True."
"Unless you're five years older, taller, darker-skinned, with sharper eyes, and about twice the body weight of what you've got now."
"Hey, where's the most effective place to put a scar?"
Damn it, the duke had looked perfectly normal in his photo.
Guess appearance really doesn't tell you everything about a person.
Even with a recommendation from Ludie, the guard captain, getting into the Faillia Duke's house as an escort wasn't exactly easy.
Never expected there'd be actual competitors besides me.
Getting told to come in for an interview genuinely threw me off.
Figured they'd just have us fight it out, but no, it was a real, honest interview.
Made me wonder if that was even an acceptable way to pick an escort.
They say a master recognizes another master, but what happens if there's no master among the interviewers?
Ludie, who'd had to handle the investigation into Kale, had put together a solid enough fake identity and background for me.
Thanks to that, the interview wasn't too hard to get through.
Except for one thing.
After going back and forth with Ludie about how to steer clear of the duke's tastes, we settled on covering one eye.
Uncomfortable.
Wasn't like I trained under some extreme regimen, so covering one eye wasn't exactly something I was used to.
"I'm Ifeseph Albertha, the steward and the duke's close aide."
A middle-aged man dressed neatly in a tailcoat.
I gave a slight bow of the head in place of a greeting.
"Unfortunate about the eye."
"It happened a long time ago, so it's fine."
And don't show any more interest in it!
Ifeseph showed me around various parts of the mansion.
Most of the space filling the large mansion was staff.
For a household with only two people actually living there, it felt excessive.
"There are exactly two people in this mansion you'll need to serve. The Faillia Duke. And Lady Rizu, the duke's daughter."
The eldest daughter, Ellin, was staying at the royal castle.
"Without the Faillia Duke's direct order, you are never to set foot on the floor where his office and study are. And you are to obey the commands of the two of them without question. That's everything required of you as an escort."
Ifeseph stopped walking and stepped closer to me.
His fingertip drifted toward the eyepatch covering my eye.
"You wish to become a noble, do you not?"
"Then close your eyes to whatever you see, and shut your ears to whatever you hear. That is how one becomes a noble. Hmph, these days people can't even manage something that simple. Lacking in resolve, I suppose. Tch."
What is he even talking about.
Letting my displeasure show as I sighed, Ifeseph stepped back and let out a hearty laugh.
"I'll show you to your quarters. Rest up for today."
Beyond the large window, a red sunset was pouring in.
The shadows trailing down the pillars and the sunset reflected on the floor looked almost blood red.
Late that night, I met up with Lee Eunyheui at our meeting spot.
"That bitch."
"That woman's a bitch like the world's never seen."
Footnotes:
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