Yukina Himeragi, crouched in the corner, slowly lifted her head. Her slightly childish, round-cheeked face was now streaked with tears, her reddened eyes fixed on Cid.
"Senpai!"
She let out a startled cry. Coming back to herself, Yukina Himeragi hurriedly raised her hand to wipe her tears, but no matter what she did, they just wouldn't stop.
"Here, wipe up."
Seeing how disheveled she looked, Cid pulled a pack of tissues from the bag in his hand and handed it over.
"…Thank you."
After a brief silence, Yukina Himeragi accepted the tissues and softly thanked him.
"Senpai, what are you doing here?"
After wiping her face clean, she asked the question without thinking.
"…"
Cid said nothing. He turned his head to glance at the door of his own apartment down the hallway, then looked back at Yukina Himeragi, his expression oddly pointed.
What kind of dumb question is that?
That was exactly what his eyes were saying.
Though she didn't fully understand his look, following his gaze made Yukina Himeragi realize how silly her question had been.
"You don't look too good. Did something happen?"
"…Yeah. Something did."
Cid raised an eyebrow at her answer. He could already smell the hint of something big.
"Want to tell me about it? As your friend, I might be able to help."
His natural instinct to stir up trouble and chase interesting developments pushed him to dig deeper. Whether it turned out to be a major Shadow-related incident or just some juicy gossip, it was a win either way.
"…I can't. Thank you for your concern, Senpai, but I'd rather not trouble you. This isn't something I can easily involve others in. If you get dragged into it, it might put you in danger."
After a short pause, Yukina Himeragi gave a bitter smile and gently shook her head.
Cid wasn't bothered by the refusal. He simply set his bag down and crouched beside her, just like she was, leaving about a hand's width between them. He turned slightly and quietly watched her.
From Cid's experience, when someone like Yukina Himeragi said they didn't want to talk but still dropped hints that piqued curiosity, it usually meant only one thing.
Classic tsundere behavior.
Deep down, she probably wanted someone to listen. At times like this, all you had to do was sit beside them for a while, and sooner or later, they'd start talking on their own.
Just as expected, after only a short while, Yukina Himeragi couldn't hold out any longer and spoke up.
"Senpai, I want to be alone for a bit."
"…"
Cid understood. This was just the lead-up to her giving in. He silently nodded and made a zipping motion across his mouth.
Yukina Himeragi stared at him for a moment, speechless, before turning her head away again, gazing ahead as if lost in thought.
"Senpai… what do you think about arranged marriages?"
It had only been a few minutes, but she couldn't hold it in anymore.
Heh. Couldn't even last a few minutes.
Sneering inwardly, Cid still put on a slightly surprised expression.
"Arranged marriages… dirty deals among the upper class. To put it bluntly, it's sacrificing the small family for the greater one, trading away your children's future partners in exchange for family interests. After all, bonds formed through blood ties are, in theory, the strongest kind under normal circumstances, and the most convincing proof of sincerity in an alliance. Whether the children themselves are willing is a completely different matter. Didn't I tell you this before?"
Cid tilted his head, looking at Yukina Himeragi in confusion.
"Senpai, do you think that kind of relationship… is really reasonable?"
"Huh?"
Apparently caught off guard by Yukina Himeragi's blunt question, Cid blinked, then decided to answer from the perspective of noble common sense.
"From society's point of view, it's perfectly reasonable. In noble households, children are taught that everything they have was given to them by the family, so once they grow up, they're expected to give something back in return. Being made to decide who they marry is already considered fairly mild."
"Society's point of view? Then what do you think, Senpai?"
Yukina Himeragi immediately seized on that and pressed him for his personal opinion.
"Hmm…"
A little surprised by how sharp she was, Cid fell silent for a moment before giving his honest thoughts.
"From an emotional standpoint, it depends on the person. Personally, I don't think blood ties are all that strong. In a way, blood relation is like a natural +10 affinity bonus in a game. But does blood relation equal affection?
I don't think so. Parents and children are supposed to have one of the closest blood relationships there is, right? And yet, for the survival of the family, cases of children killing parents who committed major wrongs, or parents killing their own children, may not become public very often, but they're actually not rare at all.
At the very least, I know of more than seven hundred cases over the past few years."
Cid lowered his voice a little at the end.
"Well… like I said before, one of the things noble children are taught as common sense is that the family gave them everything.
So then the question becomes this. When a pair of nobles has a child, are they thinking of bringing a tool into the world, or are they thinking of bringing their child into the world?
Some are the former. Some are the latter. The former is laughable, and the latter is foolish.
Among the upper class, blood ties are less about affection and more like a fragile emotional fig leaf made of blood relation, draped over a relationship built to preserve shared interests.
Parents expecting nothing in return from their children, and children only wishing for their parents to be well, that's what family affection should be.
Of course, that's the upper limit of morality. Noble education that talks about parents raising children and children repaying parents as if it were some kind of transaction is more like the lower limit. It definitely carries a bit of the stench of moral coercion."
As he recalled the core management of the Mitsugoshi Company, Cid's gaze shifted slightly, and he let out a quiet laugh at the idea of so-called noble education.
Most of Alpha's subordinates were noble children abandoned because of Demon Possession. They were proof enough of just how fragile those blood ties born from so-called political marriages really were.
Could any normal parent turn on their own daughter without hesitation just because she had been afflicted with Demon Possession? Hunt her down, cast her out, even have her burned?
Thanks to those noble parents, the noble children they abandoned ended up adopting the same logic.
Everything their families had given them ceased to matter the moment those families chose to have them killed. Once freed from Demon Possession, they would live only for themselves.
"A person's choices in life are decided by a set of scales in their heart. One side is interests, and the other is emotion.
When emotion becomes just another bargaining chip for interests, can it still be called emotion?"
Cid gave a casual shrug and sighed.
"So… is political marriage right or wrong?"
Out of the corner of his eye, Cid caught the half-understanding, half-confused look on Yukina Himeragi's face, and his eyelid twitched. It felt like explaining music to a cow.
"That depends on whether there are special circumstances."
Suppressing the urge to complain, he gave her the simplified answer instead.
"Special circumstances… does it count if one side of the marriage never received a noble education?"
"Hmm… you mean one of them was never even told about the marriage arrangement, right?"
"More or less. Actually, Sayaka even now…"
Seeing the strange look on Cid's face, Yukina Himeragi's voice grew quieter and quieter.
"What a piece of work."
After a long silence, Cid finally spoke.
"Just so you know, at most I would've called it feudal if they'd told the other person in advance. But not telling them the truth at all? That's just completely disgusting. Is that person a psychopath?
…You've asked me all this, so what, Yukina? Are the people behind you forcing you into a political marriage too?"
"No. It's not me. It's a friend of mine. She's the one who's supposed to get married… I think it's a political marriage…"
Your friend wouldn't happen to be you, would it?
Hearing that familiar "a friend of mine," Cid looked at Yukina Himeragi with obvious suspicion.
"Fine, let's say it's your friend. Is there anything else you want to ask?"
Some things were better left unsaid, so Cid chose not to press the point.
"Senpai, do you think it's possible for two people in a political marriage to spend a long time together, gradually fall in love, and end up happy?"
After hesitating for a while, Yukina Himeragi finally asked the question.
"It depends on the situation. Some people take a moderate approach, while others go for something more extreme."
"And the moderate approach is…?"
"The moderates do it like this: after getting married and having their first child, they each go their own way. As long as nothing comes to light, they act like they don't know anything, and life goes on as if nothing happened.
As for the chances of them actually falling in love? You'd have better odds believing that than believing I'm the God of the Bible."
Hearing this, Yukina Himeragi's eyes widened, her mouth slightly agape as the corners of her lips twitched. She was clearly shaken.
If this was what counted as "moderate," then how far could the "extreme" go?
"Gulp… th-then… what about the extreme approach…?"
"Simple. Kill or kidnap your fiancé."
"W-wait, wait… that can't be real, right?"
Yukina Himeragi was genuinely frightened. In her mind, the worst-case scenario would be threatening her parents with her life. Jumping straight to something like this felt completely absurd.
"What's so impossible about it? I've got two examples right beside me."
At that, a hint of nostalgia surfaced in Cid's eyes.
"There was this blond guy—handsome, famous across the entire country, and serving as a swordsmanship consultant with exceptional skill. But his fiancée constantly gave him a sharp tongue, and eventually he snapped. To get back at her, he kidnapped her, his fiancée, who was basically a would-be murderer—and used her for human experiments. In the end, he had the bad luck of running into Shadow and got taken out in a single strike.
By the way, even though he gave off serious traitor vibes, I actually had a pretty good impression of him at first."
"No, that logic is all over the place. And what do you even mean by 'would-be murderer'?"
Ignoring Yukina Himeragi's complaint, Cid continued reminiscing.
"And then there's Rose. To keep anyone from taking the power she was supposed to inherit in the future, she tried to assassinate her fiancé. When that failed, she went and killed her own father. In the end, she wiped out the masochists in her own kingdom and became a tyrant standing alone against the world."
"What kind of logic is that? And why do you sound so familiar with all of this, Senpai?"
"Well, don't worry about the details."
Cid waved it off, looking completely unconcerned.
After the exchange, silence settled in once again.
A long while later, Yukina Himeragi suddenly smiled.
"Thank you, Senpai. I think… I know what I need to do now."
Picking up the spear beside her, Yukina Himeragi stood up.
…I only gave you a bit of a pep talk. What exactly did you figure out?