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Chapter 43

Ch 43 — Who Would I Trust, if not You?

[Ara] "Is it really the Little Duke?"

[Linden] "Yeah. I even double checked it since I couldn't believe it either."

I couldn't understand why I was hearing that man's name here.

[Linden] "To be honest, I also looked into everything where you and that woman were involved with each other since I had suspicions about a lot of things as well, but..."

In other words, he had run a background check on me without informing me, but it didn't matter to me. Because I knew just how touchy Linden was on having all the information in his grasp first.

[Linden] "And the places I had stuck my hand in all had traces of the Little Duke presence."

[Ara] "So apart from the poisoning case, the Little Duke had been investigating everything before that?"

[Linden] "Yeah. It's too much of a coincidence."

How could there be such a good opportunity for him to coincidentally investigate all the past 'villainous' acts of Meliara and find out that she had actually been framed instead? No one would bother investigating unless they already had doubts about what they knew. But to think that just investigating wasn't enough and he even needed to take away an important witness...

[Linden] "This is just my opinion, but..."

Linden snuck a look at my face and spoke cautiously.

[Linden] "The Little Duke of Darchez... I think he knows you're being framed."

[Ara] "What?"

[—] "There's no way..."

The quiet voice of a woman sounded in my ear, overlapping with my own voice.

Shocked because there was no one else around me except for Lecht and Tanma, I turned my head to where I had heard the sound come from. But there was no one there.

[Ara] "Just now, did you hear someone else's voice?"

[Linden] "A voice? Whose voice?"

[Ara] "A woman's voice..."

[Linden] "I'm not sure."

Linden tilted his head at my question while Lecht walked over to the place where I was looking. Behind a pillar. He looked behind the curtain and shook his head.

[Ara] "Never mind, I must have misheard."

But I was sure I heard it. It was strange, but since Lecht said he didn't feel anything, I brushed it off, thinking only I had felt it.

[Ara] "So what you're trying to tell me is that the Little Duke seems to believe that I'm innocent?"

[Linden] "Yeah."

[Ara] "The Little Duke and I don't seem to have a relationship that justifies such faith in me though..."

Meliara and Alion's sibling relationship was in a way, worse than that of strangers.

[Linden] "Although I haven't met the Little Duke very often either, he's not the type of person to be so affectionate."

[Ara] "No, that isn't the problem."

He neglected the young Meliara, who was being mistreated by the Duke, and turned a blind eye to her abuse. By hiding behind the position of a 'bystander', what he had done was nothing short of enabling and agreeing with Meliara's abuse.

It was a totally different matter to being an affectionate person. But now, he seems to believe that I'm being framed...?

[Ara] "How hypocritical."