The Lazy Boy Is, In Fact, the Strongest and Most Brutal Assassin. - Chapter 11: The Culprit Is Obvious.

The Culprit Is Obvious.

“‘Whether or not we sell the ‘Dark Green Steel’s manufacturing method,’ we searched thoroughly for it, but we couldn’t find anything… Even Toruk-san was scratching his head, saying, ‘The master would have definitely left a record somewhere,'” Shia said as she led the way with an unusual amount of enthusiasm.

Following her were Il and Rimrim, entering the workshop through the door next to the stairs, whose door had been broken off and left wide open.

“Why are you tagging along?” Il grumbled.

“Shut up! I can’t just leave you and Shia alone together, you know!” Rimrim shot back.

“You’re overprotective!”

As always, Il and Rimrim exchanged snarky remarks, their banter causing Shia to chuckle before she began explaining.

“I moved all the contents of the filing cabinet upstairs to search for the Dark Green Steel’s manufacturing method,’ but everything else is just as it was when Father passed away.”

Il barely listened to Shia’s words as he scanned the workshop.

The room was constructed of stones stacked and cemented with plaster. From the outside, this semicircular room extended outward, with the wall facing the corridor being flat, while the wall facing the courtyard in the back was also flat. However, the wall along the side of the building curved outward in a semicircle, creating an odd shape.

Viewed from above, the room resembled a slightly distorted fan shape.

What caught his attention first upon entering the room was the wooden door propped up beside the entrance. It had clearly been kicked with considerable force, splitting down the middle. The door, around two meters tall, had a deep slash about fifty centimeters from the bottom, as if cut by a knife.

“What’s this?” Il muttered.

“Looks like someone was measuring something,” Rimrim said, peering over Il’s shoulder at the mark.

Ignoring Rimrim’s comment, Il raised his head to ask about the mysterious slash, but just then, Shia pointed toward the far end of the room, gesturing to the floor.

“My father was lying here, face down like this.”

Shia gestured to explain the situation. According to her, her father had fallen with his head facing the entrance and his feet pointing toward the side of the building, where the semicircular wall stood.

From the description, it seemed he must have fallen from a standing position, leaning against the wall. If Il recalled correctly, Shia’s father had been stabbed through the back of the neck, leading to his death. Naturally, there were no windows in the curved wall where he fell.

The windows were on the opposite side, facing the backyard, high up near the ceiling. However, these weren’t standard windows but narrow ones designed for lighting and ventilation. Three were set into the flat wall, but they were so high up and narrow that not even a cat could squeeze through.

If the door that had been kicked down was indeed locked, it made sense why the old man had described it as a murder in a room that no one could enter.

Something just didn’t sit right. Il looked around the workshop again, reconsidering the scene.

“Hey, Shia, your dad seemed like a pretty meticulous guy, huh?”

“You can tell?”

“Yeah, I can.”

The image of a blacksmith’s workshop that Il had imagined was completely different from what he saw here.

Everything was too orderly. Far too orderly. The tools were polished and arranged perfectly in the same direction. Except for the scattered fragments of the door, there wasn’t even a speck of dust on the floor. Other than the soot around the extinguished furnace, the place was spotless.

Il had noticed that every time people mentioned her father, or Ward, there was always that little added emphasis — that Ward, that father. Now, he fully understood.

Shia’s father had been obsessively meticulous, almost to a pathological degree.

“He really was incredibly fussy,” Shia continued. “If something wasn’t in its usual place, he would get furious. Every day, he woke up at the same time, put his shoes on starting with the same foot, and never broke his daily routine. He was a stubborn man who never let his rhythm be disrupted.”

“Did your dad always work alone?”

“When he was researching dark green steel, yes. Otherwise, Toruk would work with him in the workshop. But the day my father died, Toruk accidentally kicked over my father’s shoes… He must’ve been in a hurry because he lined them up the wrong way.”

“What?”

“It doesn’t sound like a big deal, right? But my father got furious about it. Toruk spent the entire day pulling weeds in the yard as punishment.”

“I see…”

Il couldn’t help but sigh. Come on, give me a break. How could anyone call this a mysterious death? Everything about how he died and who did it was glaringly obvious.

He had figured out the culprit. But Il had no intention of getting involved in unnecessary trouble. He wasn’t interested in capturing the person who killed Shia’s father. The only reason he was here, looking around the workshop, was to find the whereabouts of the dark green steel formula.

***

In the end, they couldn’t find the dark green steel formula that day.

“Shia I can understand, but what about you? Shouldn’t you be working?”

Il asked, still looking down at the documents left by Shia’s father while lounging on the sofa in the upstairs living room. Across from him, Rimrim was sprawled out on another couch.

“Oh, it’s fine. Everyone needs a break once in a while, right? Besides, if I leave, a sleepy-eyed wolf in sheep’s clothing might take the chance to pounce on Shia.”

“Who’s a wolf? Who? Let me make one thing clear: there’s no way I’d bother with something so troublesome.”

“You know, saying it’s too much trouble is pretty harsh… as a human being.”

“Whatever.”

Il spat out the words as he looked up from the documents.

What Il had been poring over were the account books from the Ward Workshop. He had hoped to find out what the debt Hiluluk mentioned had been used for, but true to Shia’s father’s meticulous nature, every income and expense was recorded down to the last digit, yet nothing seemed suspicious.

Thinking more rationally, he realized he had never actually seen any kind of IOU, and there was even the possibility that the whole debt story was a fabrication.

The timing was just too convenient—right after her father’s death, debt collectors show up demanding money. As the saying goes, dead men tell no tales. It all seemed far too suspicious. Looking back, there was one line from Hiluluk that he couldn’t quite shake:

‘Since you have the dark green steel formula, which could sell for a lot, why don’t you sell it to the guild?’

Why were they pushing to sell it to the guild? It would make sense if they were demanding the formula as collateral for the debt, but why sell it to the guild? If the formula were sold on the black market to a warring nation, the money that would come in would be staggering. Ternoir, Mirabel, Goa—there was no shortage of countries currently at war. The entire region was teeming with conflict. And any of those nations would be more than willing to pay handsomely for a method to forge powerful weapons.

• • Shia’s father’s death.

• • The siblings being cornered by debt.

• • The reason why the formula had to be sold to the guild.

As these things connected, a hypothesis began to take shape in Il’s mind.

If he played his cards right, he might be able to get some leverage over Hiluluk, threaten him, and make him back off from Shia and Peter.

Il suddenly stood up from the sofa and walked over to Rimrim, thrusting his face close to hers. Rimrim leaned back, glaring at Il as she pulled her face away.

“W-What the hell!”

“Hey, perverted woman.”

“Who are you calling a perverted woman!”

“When I’m not around, don’t ever leave Shia alone with anyone.”

“I-I know that already! You don’t have to tell me something so obvious. Are you stupid?”

“Well, as long as you get it, that’s fine.”

With that, Il casually called toward the kitchen.

“Shia, I’m heading home for today.”

“Oh, really? Dinner’s almost ready though…”

“Nah, if I eat out too much and go home, my little sister will get pissed… She’s a real pain when she gets mad.”

Saying this, Il threw the stack of documents he’d been holding onto the table without bothering to tidy them up, clearly irritated.

“I might come a little late tomorrow, so stay safe.”

“Are you worried about me?” Shia asked.

“…Well, it’s just work,” Il replied.

Shia, pouting in rare frustration at his words, watched as Il, completely unfazed by her reaction, quickly left the room. As she listened to the lazy sound of Il’s footsteps descending the stairs, Shia spoke.

“Il has a little sister, doesn’t he?”

“With how strict he seems, I bet she’s well-disciplined. When you have a brother like that, the younger sister probably turns out pretty strong. A perfect example of learning by contrast,” Rimrim added.

“Oh, Rim-nee!”

With that, the two of them giggled together.