This Novel is not my Novel

"So your brother never said anything at all about a family head remarrying. Helga simply hated him so much that she framed him? She used me, a young master of House Austri, to put your family and your brother in trouble?"

"Yes, exactly! To summarize it so neatly... As expected, you are remarkably perceptive, Young Master!"

"Ha...! Did you just call me perceptive? According to that story, I am nothing more than an idiot who fell for a baron's daughter's attempt to sow discord and then repeated every detail of her slander to my brother."

I let out a hollow laugh, crookedly raising one corner of my mouth as I spoke in a mocking tone.

The man's bright expression instantly darkened, and bewilderment spread across his face.

"No...! Young Master Karvaldr is..."

"Are you saying I am not perceptive?"

"That is not what I meant to deny! You are indeed perceptive, Young Master Karvaldr. It is simply that Lady Helga is exceptionally cunning and malicious!"

He had never even met Helga, yet he readily spouted claims that were both baseless and far removed from the truth.

Besides, while Helga and I were not particularly close, we were not complete strangers either.

We were at least acquaintances.

And yet he is casually bad-mouthing Helga right in front of me...

I could not tell whether his brother had neglected to mention that part or whether he knew and was doing this anyway.

"From what I hear, that young lady spent the past year concealing her true nature and pretending to be demure... She surely behaved that way in front of you as well. Did she not slander my brother while pretending to be pitiful and sobbing her eyes out? You merely felt sorry for her, Young Master Karvaldr."

Did he think that if he blamed everything on Helga's excessive cunning and defended me by saying I had not been foolish, only compassionate, I would eagerly agree to escape looking like an idiot?

I had no idea what sort of mind one had to possess to reach such a conclusion.

But I had no desire to understand the thought process of someone like this.

So instead of activating 【Character Analysis】 and examining him deeply, I spoke at once.

"It appears you trust your brother without question, but I cannot do the same. As far as I know, the liar here is your brother."

"What do you mean by that? Lady Helga deceived the entire student body of Valhalla Academy for a full year."

"Not the entire student body. Some people knew what her true personality was from the beginning... and I was one of them."

The moment I finished speaking, the elder of the villainous brothers whipped his head around to stare at his younger brother.

His gaze seemed to ask whether he had known that Helga and I were close enough for her to reveal her true personality to me.

The younger brother shook his head to indicate that he had not.

Of course he didn't. Helga and I are not nearly that close.

I had merely been present when Reisir complained that he wanted to be comfortable around his childhood friend Helga again, as they had been before.

And because I had read the novel containing this world's story before possessing this body, I knew her true nature and why she had concealed it.

I had simply exposed that knowledge and left Helga with no choice but to stop pretending.

"Could it be... that you are blindly believing her because of your personal connection...?"

"I am not particularly close to Helga. I only happened to learn about her true personality while spending time with her childhood friend."

"Is... that so?"

"Are you not the one ignoring the truth because of personal ties?"

"I... believe my brother."

It was fortunate that the one sitting here was me, the possessor.

If Karvaldr himself had been here, he might have died of envy.

The reason Baltraus arranged this meeting instead of handling the matter himself must be that he did not fully trust the contents of my letter.

As though he intended to hear both sides before deciding whose claim was correct, he sat there silently listening.

The sight was utterly repulsive.

"You believe him because you are his brother? Then you are clearly the one who has lost objectivity because of a personal relationship. Do not presume that I must be the same simply because you are."

"That... I apologize for."

"You are quick to apologize for things like this, yet busy denying the far greater wrongdoing."

"Surely you cannot expect us to apologize for words he never said."

As expected of the villain's brother, he had no intention of readily acknowledging and accepting his younger brother's fault.

I would have been perfectly willing to let the matter go if he had simply apologized, promised to discipline his brother properly from now on, and actually kept that promise.

"Who knows? Perhaps you decided this was not something a single apology could resolve and concluded that you had to bury it somehow. Without realizing that doing so would not cover up the problem at all, but merely add insolence to the list of offenses..."

"Why do you completely believe Lady Helga and suspect my brother, Young Master Karvaldr? You said yourself that you are not even close to her..."

Amazingly, the man's face looked aggrieved as he said this.

Did he think it was only natural for me to trust his brother, a complete stranger to me?

Why?

I genuinely could not understand it, nor did I want to.

"I did not completely believe Helga. I merely confirmed that your brother is precisely the sort of person who would say such a thing."

"Forgive me, but until now, you have had no contact whatsoever with my brother, have you? Surely that baron's daughter, Helga..."

"I did not rashly judge him based solely on what she told me. I reached that conclusion because of what I personally saw and heard."

I was thoroughly sick of hearing him go on about Helga.

So I cut him off, declared this firmly, then shifted my gaze slightly and glared at the true source of the problem.

"You. Did you not confess to Helga in front of me last Tuesday and get rejected?"

"That...!"

"That, what? Are you planning to claim that I saw and heard things that never happened?"

"N-No. That did happen. I simply did not think it had anything to do with the current situation..."

Perhaps he could not bring himself to spout the absurd claim that there was something wrong with my mind, because the confession villain admitted that he had confessed.

Though he did add a qualification afterward.

"You know better than anyone that it is relevant. When she rejected you, you belittled her family and territory and pressured her to date you. There would be nothing strange about you mocking the fact that her father had not remarried."

"That is an excessive inference..."

"I was not speaking to you. Do not interrupt. Be quiet."

While Baltraus remained completely silent, the villain's brother tried to interject yet again.

I no longer wanted to waste time arguing over whether Helga or the confession villain was more trustworthy.

So I quickly cut him off and ordered him to keep his mouth shut.

He had overlooked my informal speech because the difference in our families' status was obvious.

But perhaps being ordered around by someone far younger offended him, because the elder villain's expression hardened.

Even so, he merely bit his lip and could not protest.

There seemed to be no reason to pay him any further attention, so I turned back to the confession villain.

"And on the day you confessed to Helga and were rejected, you said that before someone else could take her away, you would announce that she belonged to you. You also spread the false rumor that she liked you and followed you around."

"I-It was never proven that I was the one who spread that rumor."

That fact had been uncovered personally by the heir to the greatest Information Guild in the world.

If I revealed that, no one would doubt it.

But they would begin to wonder how I had managed to commission someone like Pret.

I could not expose Pret's identity over something this trivial.

No, there was no need to do so in the first place.

"Then what about Thursday evening? In a place where countless people, including me, could see and hear you after Helga rejected your confession, you claimed that she liked you but was afraid of being rejected, so she was only trying to preserve her pride. Do you intend to dismiss that as another baseless accusation from me?"

"Th-That time... the situation..."

"It seems you are the sort of person who starts spouting lies the moment circumstances turn against you."

"B-But everyone does that!"

As befitted the true villain of this chapter, his stupidity was in a different league from his brother's.

At least the elder brother made some attempt to bow his head when the situation demanded it.

The younger one shrank back for a moment, then immediately raised his head stiffly and raised his voice.

"I do not believe everyone does, though quite a few people certainly do. But what does that have to do with anything?"

"What I mean is, the lie I told then was merely an improvised response..."

"Improvised response or not, a lie is still a lie. And you spoke it shamelessly in front of me, even though I knew the truth perfectly well."

I had continued bringing up how he confessed to Helga and got rejected in order to get under his skin.

But it would not benefit me to appear as though I were defending Helga.

If I did, this villain would direct all his anger toward her.

I needed to make it clear that I had written to Baltraus not because Helga had incited me or because I pitied her, but because the villain's behavior had gotten on my nerves.

"What would you have done if I had stepped in then, corrected your lie, and revealed that you confessed to Helga and were rejected? Were you planning to turn around and accuse me of being a liar?"

"N-No...!"

"If that was not your intention, you would never have told such a lie in the first place. And you would have readily admitted and apologized for the matter I raised through my brother, rather than making things worse with pathetic lies to evade responsibility."

"Th-That truly...!"

"There is a limit to how much you can insult someone's intelligence. Are you attempting to mock me again with another transparent lie?"

I frowned and raised my voice, pretending to be angry.

The villain looked as though something had surged up inside him, but he could no longer speak.

His eyes darted around, and rather than showing even the slightest sign of remorse, he did not appear willing to acknowledge his fault at all.

I looked away from him once more and addressed his older brother.

"Haah... I heard that you and Brother Baltraus were extremely close, so I did not wish to make the matter any larger than necessary. That was why I contacted my brother instead of reporting it directly to Father... Yet after I went out of my way to show consideration, you have chosen to exhaust me like this."

"Wait. That claim has been bothering me ever since I read your letter... Who told you the absurd lie that I am close to that man?"

At last, Baltraus spoke.

The fact that he had refused to say a word until I directly mentioned him was deeply irritating, but at least he had finally reacted.

Rather than show him my displeasure, I put on a baffled expression and pointed at the confession villain.