"Three months, Master Patrick," Reidward replied, the liquid in his flask sloshing as he lowered it. "Ninety-two days. The doctors said there was no hope, but I knew better. I knew you were still alive."
Patrick blinked. Three months. That was a long time for the original Patrick to be gone. "And... how did it happen? The accident?"
Reidward let out a short wistful laugh. "You were 'experimenting,' as you called it."
"You claimed that the secret to infinite energy wasn't in the crystals, but in the power of 'self-love.' You locked yourself in the testing chamber with a crate of high-grade lubricant and a lightning rod. When the boiler overloaded, the feedback loop hit you right in the..." Reidward paused, his eyes trailing down to Patrick's trousers.
"Well, let's just say it's a miracle everything is still in working order. The blast threw you into a rack of grandfather clocks. You took a pendulum to the skull at forty miles per hour."
The workers nearby suddenly found their valves very interesting, avoiding eye contact at the mention of the "self-love" experiment.
Patrick felt his face heat up until he surely matched the color of the glowing steam.
So the original guy was a freak too, he thought, a strange sense of kinship forming with his predecessor.
At least I come by it honestly.
"Three months," Patrick muttered, trying to regain his Young Master dignity. "A lot changes in three months. The company... Valeria, did I know her well before?"
Reidward stepped closer, lowering his voice so the workers couldn't hear. "You knew her name. The contract was signed by your father before he passed. You spent most of your time before the accident trying to figure out if you could make a clock that ran on semen instead of tension springs."
"You were a different kind of visionary."
Reidward slapped a heavy, greasy hand on Patrick's shoulder. "But look at you now! You wake up, you have rizz, your silhouette is the talk of the factory floor, and you've managed to talk to Valeria. I'd say the pendulum did you a favor, Master."
Patrick looked at around him, the workers and the large machine being fixed. He knew zero things of it, neither how to run a company.
"Reidward," Patrick said, leaning in. "I need you to tell me the truth. Am I... am I actually a complete idiot?"
Reidward stared at him for a long beat. He took a final, deep swig from his flask, wiped his mouth, and leaned into Patrick's ear.
"Master," Reidward whispered, "you are a merchant heir. In this world, as long as you are rich and handsome, being an idiot is simply called being 'eccentric.'"
Patrick nodded slowly. It made sense. In any era, wealth acted like a giant shock absorber for stupidity. If some nobles had weird fetishes or spent their days hunting invisible foxes, his own lack of brain cells could just be marketed as a creative temperament.
"How about my personality before?" Patrick asked, his curiosity rising. "What kind of person was I? Really?"
The old man paused, resting a greasy hand on his well trimmed bearded chin as he looked back into the fog of the past. "You liked smut, certainly. Your collection was... extensive. But strangely, you never touched a hair on the heads of the maids or the male butlers. You were a gentleman of the imagination, so to speak."
Reidward's gaze turned to a flicker of genuine respect crossing his bloodshot eyes. "And you had a business intuition like your father. You were the one who suggested the union with Lady Valeria. You told your father it was the only move to make our gadget empire truly untouchable. You had a cold eye for a deal, Master Patrick. Even if you couldn't do some things, you knew where the power was."
Patrick felt a chill. The original him sounded like a horny genius. That was a high bar to clear.
"Follow me," Reidward said, turning abruptly.
Patrick trailed after the butler as they left Sector 4.
They navigated a series of winding hallways until they reached a heavy, reinforced door leading to the basement. As they descended the stone stairs, the air grew cool and damp, smelling of old copper and stagnant oil.
Reidward reached for a lever on the wall and yanked it down. With a series of thunks, a row of glass bulbs overhead flickered, casting a yellow glow over the cavernous space.
It was filled with broken chairs, shattered prototypes, and massive mechanical devices that bore deep dents. Gears lay scattered, and the skeletal remains of failed inventions gathered dust in corners.
"This," Reidward announced, his hand waving to the metallic wreckage, "is where you spent your nights."
Patrick stepped over a mangled brass arm, looking at the sheer scale of the mess. "Why are we here, Reidward?"
"Because you need to remember the weight of your own tantrums, Master," Reidward said, his voice echoing off the cold stone walls.
He kicked a mangled brass casing that had a dent in it. "Whenever a prototype failed to meet your... ambitious standards, or whenever the world didn't bend to your will, you came down here to break things. You were an arrogant prick, Patrick. You treated these machines like servants and the servants like machines."
Patrick looked at a pile of shattered glass tubes. "I was that bad?"
"Worse," Reidward grunted, leaning against a pillar. "But you were also grieving. Your father, the Great Merchant Bidi... he died just one day before your accident with the lightning rod. The company was in a panic, the creditors were circling like vultures, and you were spiraling."
Patrick's heart did a weird little skip. He narrowed his eyes, trying to piece together the plot of this new life. In every novel he'd ever read, a rich dad dying right before a 'coma accident' meant only one thing.
"Reidward," Patrick said, stepping closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "Tell me the truth. Who was behind it? Was it a rival merchant family? An assassin? Did someone poison his tea and then sabotage my laboratory to finish off the bloodline?"
Reidward stared at Patrick for a long, silent minute. He blinked slowly, took a massive swig of gin, and then wiped his mouth with a look of pure, unadulterated pity.
"Master... your father had Stage 4 lung cancer. He'd been smoking those crystal infused cigars for forty years. He died in his bed, surrounded by weeping accountants,"
Reidward explained flatly. "As for you, you didn't have an assassin. You just couldn't accept he was gone. You got high on grief and cheap chemicals, locked yourself in the lab to prove you were better than death, and blew yourself up because you forgot to ground the wires. There is no conspiracy. Just a very sad, very stupid series of choices."
Patrick froze, his mouth slightly open.
Are you fucking kidding me?
He thought, his inner monologue screaming.
I was expecting some high-stakes mystery shit! I thought I was in a Who Done It thriller where I'd have to outsmart a secret society.
But no. My dad just had a medical condition and I'm just a guy who blew his own brains out because I was sad and horny for science?
This is so mid. This is actually the most embarrassing backstory in the history of reincarnation.
He felt like a loser twice over. Once for his past life, and once for the original Patrick's lack of a cool, dramatic tragedy.
"So," Patrick muttered, kicking a stray gear. "Uh, I guess I'll be going back to my private office."
"See ya." Reidward answered smoothly.