Aidan Ismart, a mercenary who was clearing away the corpse of a comrade, suddenly had a thought.
‘Isn’t it about time I quit?’
There aren’t many reasons why a perfectly healthy man ends up in a mercenary group.
However, there are all sorts of reasons for enduring ten years as a mercenary treated worse than a well-bred hunting dog.
Because of debt, because of young siblings and aging parents, because of a beloved wife and children. Or simply because there was nowhere else to go.
None of those applied to Aidan Ismart.
He had no surviving family, and he had earned plenty of money.
He even had a house inherited from his parents.
If he bought a small plot of land there and farmed, he could raise a modest family without much trouble—just as his parents had smiled happily while raising him.
The feeling of standing alone on a charred, blackened plain was lonely beyond words.
He hated the acrid smoke.
He was sick of the chaotic battles, and he was fed up with the cold sensation of a blade occupying the space beside him instead of another person’s warmth.
It was when he felt a stinging envy for a comrade who kissed a lock of a lover’s hair kept in a locket.
That was when Aidan Ismart decided to return home.
He would push dry firewood into the hearth where only ashes remained and let warmth circulate through the whole house.
He would clear the weeds that had grown thick as if they owned the place and let the world know the master had returned.
How wonderful would it be to sleep in a clean house without worrying about a night raid?
He had suffered enough. So now, he would live peacefully and normally.
…Or so he had decided.
Exactly one month ago.
He had lived a good life.
Because he had no money, he spent ten years wandering battlefields as a mercenary—beating people up, slashing them, stabbing them, killing them, occasionally looting, and sometimes fighting for forces that threatened his homeland—but excluding all that, he really had lived a good life.
He could swear it on both his mother and father.
Though they had already passed away.
Aidan Ismart could not understand why such a trial had befallen someone like him who had lived so virtuously.
He had earned many grudges on the battlefield, but he had never been hated by those around him.
Especially regarding his maternal relatives—forget doing anything evil, it had been so long since he’d seen them that he could barely remember their faces.
Even after digging through tattered, crumbling memories and consulting a conscience as thick as a jungle, he had no recollection of doing anything that should weigh on his heart.
Then why.
Why was this happening to him, a man just trying to enjoy some long-overdue leisure after finally returning home ten years later?
A man with brown curly hair, short stature, and a generous waistline—Viscount Orte, who huffed and puffed with every step because his chin fat made it hard to breathe—showed up without warning exactly one week after Aidan returned to his childhood home.
Then, he pulled a piece of paper from his coat that had turned yellow with age.
That paper, complete with a signature in elegant handwriting and certification from a law firm, was, in short, a promissory note.
It stated that Aidan’s mother had borrowed money from her brother-in-law, Viscount Orte, and that if the money was not repaid within the deadline, this house would be handed over.
While Aidan stood there blankly staring at the paper in the middle of cleaning the house, Viscount Orte forced his facial muscles—so swollen with fat they barely moved—into a distorted, pitiful expression.
“Aidan, my nephew. I have no sons, you see. So I have always thought of you as my own son. I could have disposed of this house immediately when Leila died, but I left it alone for your sake. I was worried you might be shocked to see the house changed if you suddenly returned.”
What kind of nonsense was this, thinking of him as a son? This was the first he’d heard of it.
In Aidan’s memory, Viscount Orte was someone who only ever thought about money.
He was so greedy that not only did he monopolize his wife’s family fortune, but he also sold his own daughter, Olivia—who wasn’t even ten years old yet—to a Count’s family under the guise of an engagement.
He was a man so obsessed with money that he frequently demanded funds from the Count’s family using his daughter’s educational expenses as an excuse.
There was no way such a man would have looked kindly upon a nephew who had lost his father.
Viscount Orte had treated Leila and Aidan like parasites when they tried to rely on Leila’s only older sister, the Viscountess Orte.
The memories of that time were still fresh.
“Like a son,” my foot.
If he felt like a father, he should have given the house as a gift while he was still alive.
Aidan suppressed the urge to say those words. It seemed Viscount Orte had more to say.
And just as Aidan expected, the man opened his mouth again before even taking a proper breath.
“I have shown you that the house is intact and let you stay here for a week for free in my house, so I have done my duty. I’d like to let you keep living here just as you are, but I have my own circumstances, you see.”
“Are you telling me to get out of my house?”
“No, it’s my house,” the Viscount corrected.
Aidan pulled down the towel he had been using to cover his mouth to block the dust.
Even with the cloth removed, the stifling feeling didn’t fade.
The Viscount hadn’t been in the house long, but Aidan’s insides were boiling like a pot that had been heated for a thousand years.
To put it bluntly, he felt like crap.
Aidan snatched the promissory note from the Viscount’s hand and checked the amount his mother had borrowed. It was roughly enough for a commoner family of four to live on for a year.
It wasn’t a small amount, but for Aidan, who had saved up blood money for ten years, it was an amount he could pay immediately without much burden.
He wondered why his mother, who had been receiving living expenses from him all along, needed this money, but for now, the priority was paying off the debt and kicking the Viscount out.
“Viscount. This money, I will pay it—”
“Tsk, tsk.”
Before he could even finish, Viscount Orte raised a thick, wrinkled index finger—looking like an old sausage—and wagged it back and forth.
“Aidan Ismart. You’ve wandered for so long, yet you know so little of how the world works.”
“What do you mean?”
The Viscount touched his thumb and index finger together to form a circle.
“Interest. Debts come with interest.”
His voice was disgustingly kind.
Aidan looked down at the note in his hand again.
Nowhere between the complex formulas and forced, long-winded sentences was there any mention of an interest rate.
“What is the interest rate?”
“We agreed on taking 20 percent interest upfront, then one copper coin every day until the final day of the term.”
Aidan’s mouth, which had been tightly shut, dropped open of its own accord.
It was a daily loan.
Where in the world was there a guy who charged his own sister-in-law daily interest rates?
Unaware that the note was being crumpled in Aidan’s grip, Viscount Orte continued.
“Since the deadline written there has passed, if we add the unpaid interest all at once and recalculate the interest rate…”
It seemed he didn’t need to hear any more of the Viscount’s calculations as the man began counting on his fingers.
Even by current real estate standards, it would likely be cheaper to hand over the house than to pay the debt in cash.
As expected, the amount Viscount Orte stated after finishing his math was more than Aidan had even if he vomited up every single cent he had earned risking his life for ten years.
This piece of trash uncle had not only lent money to his own sister-in-law at an outrageous interest rate, but was now charging the son, Aidan, interest on top of a principal that had been bloated by previous interest.
‘Should I kill him?’
