“I hear tell that you are a successful entrepreneur. That is quite impressive given your young age.” The delicate lady sitting directly opposite Volkan must have been somewhere in her middle ages, but it was hard to judge by her appearance alone. She spoke with one hand daintily raised to her mouth. Orphen felt a chill run down his spine, completely unsure of how to respond to the lady. Before he could even come up with anything, however, Volkan carried on the conversation by himself.
“Indeed. Where we come from, everyone from housewives to factory workers is familiar with the Burplewarts Corporation.”
“And what sort of a corporation is Burplewarts? I’m afraid the name has not quite reached our town yet.”
“W-Well, that is... You see, it’s rather difficult to summarize it succinctly, however, uhh...” Volkan apparently hadn’t thought this through, because his hesitation was written all over his face.
“Well, ours is a corporation, and naturally as a corporation we have a large influence in the markets— You know how it is being a company in the market, it holds a very important place in the economy, indeed.” His words were practically incoherent. Orphen had to press his palm to his face just to stave off a headache he could feel oncoming at any minute.
“By the way, Master Burplewarts—” It took Orphen a moment or two before realizing that it was ‘his’ name that had just been called.
“Y-Yes, Madame?” he struggled to speak as politely as he could after being put on the spot.
The lady smiled brightly as she addressed him.
“You do not seem to be participating in the conversation very much. Not that I do not understand, of course. Arranged marriage meetings do often go this way, especially among younger persons. My daughter is usually not this timid herself—” As she spoke, she cast her line of sight towards her daughter who sat neatly by her side.
The daughter had been introduced as one Miss Mariabelle Everlasting. The mother had also introduced herself, as one Mrs. Tishtinie Everlasting.
Orphen directed his gaze to Mariabelle’s face, and she smiled gently at him in return. She hadn’t spoken a word since they had arrived, but her appearance gave the impression that she might be a prim and proper young daughter belonging to some high-class family. As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what she was. Mariabelle looked to be slightly older than Orphen was, most likely somewhere in her early twenties. She was quite a beautiful blonde woman, but her timidness at that age struck Orphen as the trait of a rather idiotic young lady.
The real idiot here is me, though. No doubt about that, Orphen judged himself, far more harshly.
I shouldn’t have gone along with this idiot’s scheme. I should’ve just stayed at the inn and convinced Majic to let me teach him some sorcery and made a living off of that instead. And it’s all thanks to this dumbass, this total dumbass, this complete and utter dumbass! Orphen glared at Volkan while trying the hardest he’d ever tried in his life not to let his irritation show on his face. Meanwhile, Volkan sat there altogether oblivious sipping away at his cup of tea, not a care in the world.
Here I was wondering just what kind of shady ‘business proposal’ he’d lobbed my way this time... How the hell was I to know it was a literal proposal!? This bricks-for-brains set me up in a marriage scam, of all things! Orphen felt like his vision was turning darker before his very eyes with every passing moment. In other words, Volkan had by some miracle managed to land an arranged marriage meeting with the not-quite-influential, but still-very-esteemed Everlasting family’s eldest daughter. It was a complete mystery as to how this had come to pass, and Orphen wasn’t sure he even wanted to know.
“By the way—” Tishtinie finally continued, seemingly having given up on trying to get her daughter to talk, almost like a dog owner giving up on trying to teach their pet a new trick.
“By the way, Master Burplewarts, exactly what manner of goods does your company specialize in?”
“Come again?” Orphen stumbled the words out in the tone of voice a child might use when asked to explain the mess they had made of their bedroom.
Volkan swiftly cut into the conversation once more with a bright little “Indeed, sleep medication!” which only served to make Orphen curse the boy’s very existence internally once more. At this point it was clear that Tishtinie was merely trying to keep the conversation alive as she asked more about the work.
“Sleep medication, you say? I am afraid I’m not particularly well versed on the topic, would you mind explaining the various sorts available on the market at the moment?”
“Whuh? Oh, uh, that is, well you see, it’s a rather specialized topic, so it’s quite difficult to put it in layman’s terms—” Orphen cut off Volkan before one more idiotic word slipped from his tongue.
“The majority of sleep medications traded on the market, particularly those grown in the tablelands, are sold only after being ground up into a fine powder to make them easier to mix with water and drink. As for the many varieties, the most common is technically not classified as a sleep medication, but rather a respiratory tranquilizer.”
“Respiratory tranquilizer?”
“Put simply, poisons.”
“Oh my,” Tishtinie raised her hand to her mouth and let out a shocked little gasp. Panicking, Volkan hastily added, “Naturally, our company takes no part in the dealings of this much more dangerous sort.” Beneath the table, Volkan pinched Orphen’s thigh as brutally as he could muster. Orphen returned the gesture and pinched Volkan’s hand without so much as flinching.
Why the hell would you go with sleep medication!? Orphen whispered out of the corner of his mouth, to which Volkan replied in a strained voice, Just think about it, what’s the one thing every high-class lady can’t live without? The answer is sleep medication, without a doubt! Orphen decided to drop the subject before he went insane, and instead shifted back to Burplewarts mode. With just a faint smile on his face, he turned to gauge Mariabelle’s impression so far.
Orphen knew better than anyone not to be fooled by a woman’s smile, but Mariabelle seemed to at least hold a somewhat favorable opinion of him so far. A favorable opinion of Burplewarts, the entrepreneur from the far away city of Urbanrama, that is — not the dropout Black Sorcerer-cum-moneylender known as Orphen. Urbanrama was a self-governed city far to the Northernmost point of the continent, and one of very few at that. This background story that Volkan had come up with was quite smart on this one and only point, in that it would make it very difficult for Tishtinie to distinguish the truth no matter how suspicious she might potentially get during the arranged marriage meeting.
That said— If you were gonna set up a marriage scam, wouldn’t you normally target wealthy young women who lived on their own rather than with their family? The Everlastings were not quite nobles, but from the commoner Orphen’s point of view they might as well have been, which initially had Orphen worried that their lies would be exposed immediately with a simple background check. Instead, the Everlastings seemed to be a family of women living off the fortunes amassed by the previous family head who had been a big-name market trader. But if the Everlastings hadn’t retreated from the market entirely then Orphen felt like that would have been the lucky alternative, since Volkan’s scam would have been blown wide open from the outset and they could’ve all left this place by now.
Still thinking about how much he wanted to leave, Orphen gave Mariabelle one last bright smile while summing his conclusion of her in his head. She gave a cheery smile in return.
Behind his forced facade of politeness, Orphen thought to himself, Hey lady, I don’t suppose you’d rather marry Volkan instead and pay off his debt, would you? I’m just here for the money, I’m not looking to get hitched just yet.
“You stupid Sorcerer! Do you have any idea how hard it was covering for your brainless ass!?” When Tishtinie and Mariabelle left the parlor room, Volkan suddenly exploded with rage. Dortin, on the other hand, was hanging his head like a prisoner who’d just been given the death sentence.
“You got something to say, brat?” Orphen spat.
“First you stuff me into this suffocatingly tight suit, then you drag me into this giant mansion with no explanation, and suddenly my name is Burplewarts? Seriously, Master Burplewarts, entrepreneur of a damned sleeping medicine corporation? What the hell are you even expecting to happen?”
“That’s obvious,” Volkan replied with a straight face, “I’m expecting you to pull off the role flawlessly and get hitched with this rich broad.”
“Okay, that makes sense... in your head, maybe!” Being as careful as possible not to damage the seams of his rental suit, Orphen grabbed Volkan by the collar. He glared daggers first at Volkan, and then at Dortin, and Dortin shot bolt upright like he’d just been given an electric shock. “I-I didn’t know, honest! It was all Volkan, my brother was the one who set everything up this time...!”
“I hope for your sake that’s the truth, brat,” Orphen put on the pressure, to which Volkan took as his chance to brag.
“Exactly, this brilliant and cunning plan was all mine! Dortin doesn’t have the smarts to come up with something as fantastic as this!”
“I don’t need a cunning plan, I need you to find real work!” Orphen literally tossed Volkan across the room like a rock, before standing up out of the chair himself and raising his arms in the air with the delirious frustration of a man who had just been framed for a heinous crime by his worst enemy in the world.
“Here I was wondering what kind of job you’d brought me this time, and of all the things in the world, it just had to be a damn arranged marriage fraud! I don’t even know how I’m supposed to react to this!” Volkan’s eyes opened wide with apparent shock.