MRDA 4

Chapter 4

I slowly looked the two women standing side by side up and down.

The most important clues were often found in the people themselves.

Their actions and manner of speaking, the fleeting looks in their eyes, the subtle changes in their expressions. None of those things could be used as evidence in court, but they were more than enough to provide leads for solving a case.

The first thing that immediately stood out was the enormous difference in their financial circumstances.

Beside Madam Lena, who wore a plain—no, to be perfectly honest, shabby—yellowish-white blouse and a faded green skirt, stood an elegant noblewoman wrapped from head to toe in silk and lace. The contrast between their wealth and poverty was impossible to miss.

Next, I shifted my gaze to the face of the child the noblewoman was holding.

The baby, who had been screaming at the top of its lungs while the two women hurled angry words at each other, had gone completely silent ever since I entered the room.

When I naturally met the child’s gaze as it peeked at me, I noticed a pair of orange eyes.

Orange eyes like something straight out of a webtoon.

Despite never having seen such an unusual color in real life, my first thought wasn’t that they were unsettling.

They were beautiful.

The child blinked repeatedly, its jewel-like eyes sparkling as it gazed at me with innocent curiosity. With those plump cheeks, it had the kind of face capable of winning people over without even trying.

“You can’t just send me away again today. The Marquess of Schwart might really try to hurt me now.”

Unable to bear her anxiety any longer while I was distracted by the child, Madam Lena grabbed the baby’s leg and pleaded tearfully.

“Please, you have to help me.”

“How dare you!”

Smack!

“How dare you insult the House of Schwart!”

“Waaaaah!”

As Madam Lena clung to the child’s leg and begged, the noblewoman angrily yanked the baby toward herself and slapped her hand away.

The baby’s head suddenly jerked backward, and it burst into tears.

Yet the furious noblewoman seemed concerned only with keeping anyone from taking her child away from her.

“I-I didn’t mean—”

Thinking she had nearly hurt the baby because of her, Madam Lena fidgeted nervously with her hands.

“As if trying to steal the sole heir of the Marquess’s house weren’t enough, you dare insult the House of Schwart and force me to come here twice?”

The argument had started all over again, and my head began to throb.

At this rate, we weren’t going to get anywhere before the end of the day.

I needed to just use a cheat code and finish this in one shot.

Status… window.

After saying the words in my head, I wondered whether the status window would even appear here.

Considering this ridiculous situation where I seemed to have been transmigrated into a romance-fantasy novel, there was no guarantee that my status window would still work.

…Was there?

It was.

It actually worked?

A translucent, sky-blue status window appeared in midair, blinking as if urging me to select a target.

Had this ability been engraved into my soul?

Or was it some kind of special privilege granted to transmigrators?

Well, whatever the reason, having an ability was always better than not having one.

Then—

Ding.

「Status Window update complete.
More detailed and intricate scene descriptions will now be available.
Enter the target you wish to read and the information you want to know.」

An update…?

Set target: Lena.

And…

I want to know what happened to the baby at the hospital.

As soon as I entered the question, the blinking screen stopped, and the status window began displaying clear lines of text.

「Verat Hospital, located in the slums.

Madam Lena arrived clutching a newborn baby in her arms, sweat pouring down her face. She rushed into the emergency room, crying out desperately for someone to look at the child.

“The baby! The baby is sick!”

A nurse hurriedly took the newborn from her and began wiping the baby’s body with a white cloth while checking its condition.

Clatter.

Something fell to the floor when the baby was hurriedly handed over, but Madam Lena seemed not to notice, too preoccupied with the limp, lifeless child in front of her.

“Are you the child’s guardian?”

“Yes! I am! I’m the mother!”

“You dropped this pendant.”

“…Sniff. Thank you.”

Madam Lena accepted the pendant, thanking the nurse through her tears before following her toward the waiting room for guardians.

Meanwhile, the nurse carried the baby inside and immediately laid the limp infant on the treatment table to administer emergency care.

The head nurse then entered after pulling open the curtain. She lifted the baby’s eyelids and examined its eyes.

Yet it seemed she wasn’t checking the pupillary reflex. Without even bothering to use a light, she simply lowered the eyelids again.

“The eyes are orange…?”

“After emergency treatment, move the child to an inpatient room.”

“Was the baby perhaps affected by magic?”

“Today, this child died.”

“What?”

The head nurse placed a hand on the nurse’s shoulder and whispered softly into her ear.

“I’m telling you that if you carelessly wag your tongue, you won’t live long enough to regret it.”

It was a remarkably ingenious method of kidnapping.」**

Click.

The sound of my shoes against the wooden floor made the two women, who had nearly been screaming at each other, turn toward me at the same time.

The status window had certainly become rather unusual, but I could put that aside for now.

As I sat casually on the edge of my desk, the situation didn’t seem nearly as simple as it had at first.

The status window never provided information unrelated to the case.

So even if the child in the noblewoman’s arms wasn’t Madam Lena’s baby, it seemed certain that the child had indeed been kidnapped by someone.

But then why hadn’t she gone to the police?

Why had she come here instead?

I slowly looked Madam Lena up and down again.

A poorly dressed woman from the slums, with no family other than a newborn baby.

Either no one had helped her… or she hadn’t been able to ask anyone for help.

I deliberately walked back and forth a few times, letting the sound of my shoes echo through the room.

Then, folding my arms, I slowly stepped in front of the two women.

“Let’s get straight to the conclusion. Madam Lena is this child’s real mother.”

“What? What kind of nonsense are you talking about?! This is my child! My baby!”

I don’t think so.

My status window wasn’t the sort of thing that spouted useless nonsense.

“Madam, perhaps you wouldn’t know this because you’ve never personally cared for a child, but if you scream directly into a baby’s ear like that, you’re going to frighten the poor thing.”

“What did you just say?! How dare you! Where’s your proof? Do you have proof? Proof that I’m not the real mother!”

“Even when the baby was crying and its head fell backward, you never once looked down at it. You didn’t readjust your hold. You didn’t support its neck. You were too busy shouting at the other woman. You never once spared a thought for the baby’s condition. You were focused solely on obtaining the child. That attitude is the first piece of evidence.”

“Are you seriously trying to present something as ridiculous as maternal instinct as evidence?”

Her shrill screaming was making my ears ring, so I gently covered both ears with my hands.

“The child has orange eyes, doesn’t it? Yet you have purple eyes.”

“Hah! Orange eyes are the signature color of House Schwart! What would a country bumpkin like you know?”

“Then I assume your husband has orange eyes as well?”

“Of course!”

“What do you think?”

I lowered the hand covering my ear and asked Madam Lena for her opinion.

She hesitated for a moment, seemingly caught off guard, before stepping forward and holding out the pendant around her neck.

The pendant had a pale sand-colored case with an orange gemstone set into it. I had noticed it faintly glimmering beneath the collar of her blouse earlier.

And the status window mentioned it, too.

If this was something she had taken with her to the hospital even while her only family was on the verge of death—and something she had been unable to leave behind even when she was in danger of losing the child all over again—then there was a good chance it was either a keepsake or a family portrait.

Something that could prove the child’s identity, at that.

She had already lost one heated confrontation over the child.

And yet, despite fearing retaliation from the Marquess’s family, this fragile woman had come all the way to a detective agency by herself.

It’s obvious.

She’s a widow.

At first, I had considered the possibility that she might be divorced, so I’d held off on jumping to conclusions.

But the moment I saw the pendant in person, I became certain.

I was certain that the pendant was a keepsake from her late husband, the man who had possessed orange eyes.

Madam Lena held it dearly in her hand and glanced once at the child.

Then, as if she had made up her mind, she opened the pendant’s round case and showed it to everyone.

Whatever’s inside a thing like that, it’s one hundred percent a photograph.

There it was.

Just as I expected, inside the pendant was a noble-looking man with orange eyes—

…Wait.

He wasn’t there?

I tilted my head in confusion at my completely wrong deduction and looked at Madam Lena.

There was a faintly wistful expression on her face as she began to speak.

“This is a keepsake from my husband, who passed away last year. The photograph is of my late mother-in-law. The gemstone in this pendant was set by my husband, whose eyes were orange, as a symbol of himself.”

Tch.

If it had been a portrait of her husband or father-in-law, it could have been decisive evidence.

Hmm?

Wait a minute.

Father-in-law?

A sudden thought flashed through my mind, and I began turning it over in my head.

Then the agitated noblewoman’s voice rang out beside me.

“How could that possibly count as evidence? Setting gemstones into pendants is a common fashion among nobles! Are you trying to threaten me with a trinket like that?”

Seriously, this woman.

I’m trying to think through the case here, and all she can do is screech at the top of her lungs.

“Madam Schwart, I would advise you to watch your words.”

I wanted to challenge her to a battle of decibels right then and there, but instead, I maintained my composure and gave her a cold, firm warning.

“Hah! How dare a commoner—!”

It seems to me you’re the one who came all the way here to this commoner’s office of your own accord, though…

Hmm…

But why would she come here voluntarily?

That was strange, too.

A marquess was a high-ranking noble.

So why would the marchioness—the mistress of a marquess’s household—personally come to a detective agency run by a commoner?

Something smells fishy.