WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 69: A Know-It-All Fool

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After Lee pulled off the almost magical feat of hearing Julia play once and copying it,

many things changed about Rimon’s lessons, from the once conventional curriculum to the stagnant atmosphere that had barely been progressing.

But the most dramatic changes were in Julia’s gaze and the pace of the lessons.

“Hmm. So playing like this, connecting the notes smoothly without breaking the sound, is called le-whatever?”

“Legato. It’s a technique where you keep the bow pressed against the strings.”

“That makes it sound like there are techniques where you don’t keep the bow against the strings.”

“Are you seriously asking because you don’t know? You’ve used saltato and arpeggiando several times already.”

“I wasn’t doing it because I knew what I was doing. I was just roughly copying your performance.”

“...Lee. If you say that in front of other violinists, you might get shot.”

“If they feel wronged, they can try doing it themselves. Anyone can copy techniques if they have enough time and effort.”

The black-haired young man spoke indifferently.

Julia gave a bitter smile as she looked at Rimon.

In the past, she would have sharply reprimanded him for such an arrogant, almost outrageous remark.

She knew all too well how many violinists spent their entire lives striving just to imitate those techniques.

But she could not bring herself to say anything.

Before she was a teacher, she was a performer. She had accepted that he had the right to say such things.

‘How could a genius who learned almost all my techniques in just a few days understand that?’

Julia remembered.

A few days ago, after Rimon had copied her performance.

She had played as if possessed until her arms cramped and she could no longer hold her bow.

And Rimon had not only copied every one of those performances without the slightest discrepancy, but absorbed every technique used in them.

‘He really has monstrous talent.’

And his monstrous learning ability was not limited to technique.

Perhaps seeing once truly was worth hearing a hundred times.

Using the techniques he had already absorbed from Julia as a foundation, he was now devouring even the theory and knowledge she taught at a frightening pace.

Talent so chilling that even she, called a genius of the century and experienced in teaching countless other geniuses, felt goosebumps.

It was no less remarkable than that of Players with Rare Skills.

‘Now I understand why his previous teachers ran away after hearing him play once.’

Before, she had thought they had grown sick of Rimon’s disastrously messy playing and fled.

But now she knew.

They had given up teaching Rimon because they could not bear the thought of handling his monstrous talent.

His talent was that astonishing.

Like an incomparably beautiful, radiant jewel that was frightening even to touch.

Of course, that did not mean he was perfect.

“But you still can’t read sheet music, Lee.”

Perhaps it was God’s balance patch.

Or perhaps it was simply the mystery of talent.

He could copy anything physical, no matter how trivial, after seeing it once. Yet he could not understand sheet music at all.

Rimon spoke indifferently when he saw her baffled expression.

“You try getting old. Using your body becomes easier than using your head.”

“...I’ve been wondering this for a while, but just how old are you, Lee?”

“Don’t you know better than to casually ask a man’s age?”

“I’ve never heard that before.”

“Then learn it from now on.”

Rimon chuckled as he organized his notes and stood up.

“You’re leaving already?”

“Yeah. I told you I had something to do today.”

“This is just personal curiosity, but what is this work? It seems like you have work pretty regularly, Lee.”

“Hmm, who knows?”

Rimon stroked his chin in thought for a moment.

After looking back on the “work” he had done these past few days, he shrugged.

“I guess it’s nodding along whenever I hear something I don’t understand.”

“...What kind of work is that?”

Julia was dumbfounded at what sounded like a joke.

But she did not know.

Rimon’s words were no joke at all. They were the most accurate and concise explanation of his job.

After all, that was exactly what he did after finishing the lesson and meeting Weiling.

“We posted a job listing, but as expected, there were no applicants. We will borrow personnel from Leviathan whenever needed.”

“Mm.”

“However, to prevent outside rumors, we will likely need to pay service fees each time. The estimated additional budget required is organized on pages fifty-seven and fifty-eight.”

“Mm.”

“Also, there is strong opposition to consolidating the security systems we were preparing, so it will be difficult to introduce it. We are still considering whether to scrap this Guardian System or apply it outside our subsidiaries and commercialize it.”

“Mm.”

“Furthermore, dissatisfaction is growing faster than projected. According to a discreet investigation, skepticism and resentment toward Guardian’s usefulness have already exceeded seventy percent. The detailed statistics are...”

“Mm.”

Weiling, who had been reading the report, fell silent.

Then, after looking with ice-cold eyes at Rimon, who sat in his chair and nodded with a serious expression, Weiling abruptly asked,

“...Do you even know what you are nodding along to?”

“No, not at all.”

Perhaps it was because the answer came so readily.

Weiling’s eyes instantly became those of someone looking at garbage.

It was not a look a secretary should show a company representative, but it was a natural reaction from someone who had worked hard to write a thorough report and briefed it point by point.

Even the bluebird dozing atop Rimon’s head looked down at his crown as if thinking, ‘I can’t believe there’s a team leader this shameless.’

Of course, Rimon had something to say for himself.

“You could have summarized it better. How am I supposed to know how things are going from this? This isn’t a report, it’s practically a weapon.”

Rimon grumbled as he tapped the report, which was as thick as an encyclopedia rather than an ordinary book.

But Weiling’s answer was cold.

“This is already condensed to the minimum information you need to know as the representative.”

“...If this is condensed, how much was there originally?”

“If you wish, I can have it brought in on a cart.”

“I absolutely decline.”

Rimon raised the white flag.

The moment it was measured in carts rather than volumes, it became a mental weapon. Or perhaps a plot to work him to death.

“Are you really complaining over this much when you intend to become the princess’s prince consort?”

“I’ve always been hopeless at looking over paperwork.”

Even at Weiling’s cold rebuke, Rimon answered shamelessly, as though it were no big deal.

[Why am I the one who has to be ashamed...?]

Yoo Na-gyeong finally covered her face with her wings and lamented.

But Rimon did not even twitch an eyebrow. Instead, he calmly gave another order.

“So make it even simpler and report it to me. Keep it to around ten characters if you can.”

“Do you honestly think that is something one can say?”

“That’s what capable secretaries like you are for. The princess must have assigned you to me because you could do it.”

“...”

“What, don’t tell me it’s impossible?”

Rimon grinned as if provoking Weiling.

Weiling stared coldly at the shameless old monster’s face, then crumpled the stack of reports in hand with a crunch before speaking.

“Fine. Then I shall explain the situation as briefly as you wish.”

“Oh!”

“At this rate, Guardian will go under.”

“...Huh?”

Rimon’s face, which had been smiling as though pleased with the retaliation for the report barrage, turned blank in an instant.

For a moment, he blinked as if doubting his own ears.

Once he finally came to his senses, Rimon hurriedly demanded,

“Wait, what do you mean? My company is going under? It hasn’t even been around that long. Why?”

Perhaps even a figurehead president had some sense of responsibility as the representative.

Weiling’s lips curled with a cold sneer at Rimon’s sudden panic, but the explanation remained matter-of-fact.

“To put it bluntly, we have no work.”

“Why wouldn’t we have work? You’ve been working hard this whole time. I’ve gotten quite a few reports about things you handled.”

“Everything I have done so far was merely preliminary preparation to take on work.”

“You worked in order to work?”

Rimon looked confused.

“...Think of it as sharpening your blade before heading into battle.”

“Ah. So you diligently sharpened your blade to butcher people, but once you finished preparing, there was no longer any occasion to go to the battlefield.”

Yoo Na-gyeong looked dumbfounded as Rimon nodded, seeming to understand at last.

[...What kind of brain does our team leader have, to understand only analogies like that?]

‘You try spending a few hundred years doing nothing but wielding a sword. You’ll gain the magical ability to judge everything in the world by the standards of brawling.’

[Isn’t that more of a curse than magic?]

Rimon let Yoo Na-gyeong’s comment go in one ear and out the other.

Instead, he rested his chin on his interlaced hands and looked at Weiling with a serious expression.

“So, who is it?”

“What do you mean, who?”

“The person responsible for cutting off our work. Unless someone pulled something, there’s no way a perfectly good company would have no work coming in.”

Rimon made a cool-headed judgment.

If the company was in danger because of someone’s scheme, all he had to do was find the culprit and crush them.

“There is no such person.”

“What?”

“I said there is no evidence that anyone deliberately cut off work from our company or interfered with us.”

“...Then why is there no work?”

Weiling’s answer to Rimon’s vacant question was clear.

“Because Guardian is not a perfectly good company.”

Guardian had been a newly established company from the beginning. Its only employees were Rimon and Weiling.

There was no insane executive in the Black Dragon Clan, at least, who would entrust their company’s security and protection to a place that was practically a ghost company.

Especially when Rimon was its representative.

“Who would entrust security and protection to an audit organization in the first place?”

“So there’s no work because it’s only natural that no work comes in?”

“That is correct.”

Weiling answered coldly, as if asking whether he finally understood, then belatedly offered consolation.

“That does not mean you need to worry. Until I create results and pass them on to you, Her Highness will generously provide the operating funds we lack.”

It was a reassuring thing to hear for the head of a business on the brink of collapse.

But Rimon was neither reassured nor pleased. He merely looked at Weiling strangely before speaking.

“Hey, you’ve never worked in an audit organization... No, you’ve never had any real experience running a business at all, have you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t need to answer. If you became an elite of the Black Dragon Clan at that age, you must have spent your whole life practicing Psionics and studying yourself to death.”

Rimon leaned deep into his chair.

He tapped the desk with his finger, tap, tap, as though pondering something, then let out a long sigh.

Only then had he realized the real reason Li Qing-yu had deliberately assigned Weiling to him, something he had failed to notice because of Weiling’s competence.

“Now that I think about it, this princess didn’t give me a capable attendant. She handed me a know-it-all fool I have to teach.”

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