Chapter 126: Family Is Sacred
"So, allow me to greet you properly. My name is Draco Black. These are my mothers, Narcissa and Bellatrix, and this is my grandmother, Walburga. Sitting beside me are my fiancées, Fleur Delacour and Penelope Clearwater."
"Nice to meet you..."
The red-haired girl looked at me, a storm of emotions raging in her silver eyes that defied description. The blonde, too, gazed at me with indescribable emotions. Only the platinum blonde and the catgirl remained calm, though, incidentally, we all found ourselves looking at the latter with far greater interest than at Summer's daughters.
"Well, this is... my elder daughter, Yang, and this is my younger daughter, Ruby..."
Summer pulled the girls close, making them grunt.
"...though I thought Ruby was still a bit young to join a Huntsman team?"
Summer threw a questioning look at her daughter.
"Well, I really haven't turned seventeen yet. I was fifteen when I entered, and I'm sixteen now."
"And your father simply gave permission for you to enter Beacon?"
Summer frowned.
"Well..."
Ruby's eyes darted aside.
"...right, you don't know the girls from my team yet! Yes, yes!"
She puffed out her chest.
"Exactly, my team, because I'm the leader! Weiss Schnee, she's my partner, and this is Blake Belladonna, she's Yang's partner."
"Hm..."
Fleur tilted her head almost imperceptibly.
"...wouldn't it be simpler to say beloved? Or fiancée? Because when you say partner, it sounds like you're embarrassed by your feelings."
"No! No! It's not like that!"
Ruby panicked, while Summer smiled from the corner of her mouth.
"We're partners, but not those kinds of partners, we... we..."
"Ruby, calm down. Apparently, your mother, by the way, pleased to meet you, and you as well..."
The platinum blonde nodded first to Summer, then to us.
"...so, your mother has already told them about our home, which means they're just teasing a little."
"Huh?"
And seeing our smiling faces, she puffed up.
"Not funny!"
"Well..."
Fleur shrugged.
"It's funny to us."
"So what can you tell us about what's happening?"
The girl they'd introduced as Blake looked at us with a questioning expression.
"Well, the Convergence of Worlds is happening. To simplify, two worlds are merging. We're lucky in that our world is being used as the base, and yours as the donor..."
"Can this somehow be avoided?"
The platinum blonde interrupted me.
"Maybe it can..."
I shrugged.
"...but we don't know a way. We remembered the Convergence by accident, because the last time it happened was a very, very long time ago. I would say it was so long ago that it has nearly been forgotten. So all that remains for us is to prepare, which is what we're doing. We're building Quarters surrounded by barriers, in the hope that the tears in space through which these Grimm of yours crawl into our world will not open inside."
"That's somehow..."
Weiss shook her head.
"It is what it is."
I shrugged.
"No, we have some fragmentary information that the barriers around the Quarters should hold, but we have no certainty."
"I see..."
Blake twitched her ear thoughtfully.
"...and can we somehow get home? Because if the situation is the same as with Miss Summer, then our relatives will consider us dead..."
"If we knew a way for you to move back, Summer would have returned home long ago. Or do you really think she would sit here knowing she could return to her daughters?"
Cissy raised an eyebrow as she looked at the catgirl.
Well... I had to ask, but I still haven't heard the answer.
"Because the answer is only theoretical..."
I shrugged.
"...theoretically, if you jump into such a tear, you should end up in your world. But where? Will it bring you to the same point where you fell into our world? Or will it be a random point in your world, or even that terrifying continent of yours entirely?"
I shrugged.
"Calculating that is impossible... which is actually why Summer stayed here. Here, she had a better chance of living to meet her daughters. If she passed through an unknown tear, she could end up anywhere, or die during the transition altogether. After all, our world is the base, so the tears may very well be one-way."
The catgirl's ears drooped slightly.
"So I suggest you settle in with us..."
"We have nothing here... no money, no knowledge of your world, not even the language."
"Well..."
I shrugged, looking at Weiss, who had spoken.
"...teaching you the language won't be very difficult. We'll hire a specialist who can implant the knowledge directly into your minds. As for everything else... I'll allocate an apartment to you, or several apartments if you take on certain obligations."
"And what obligations are those?"
"Well, Summer already teaches at the school, where she explains how to fight Grimm and helps unlock and master Aura. You can help her with that, and in return, you'll get an apartment and a salary."
"Um... can you even make decisions like that? No offense, but you might be Ruby's age... and even if you're older, still..."
"I can."
I nodded at Yang in understanding when she voiced her concern.
"Right now, you're in a Quarter being built with my House's finances. I'm the last male in the House, and in a few years, I'll become Lord, meaning I'll be the full head of it. At the moment, my mothers manage everything... but they let me make quite a few decisions..."
"To be more precise, we only implement his decisions and make plans with him while he's on vacation, then Bella and I carry them out while Draco is at school. So he has the right to make such promises."
"Um..."
Yang was slightly confused.
"Daughter, Draco really is the one in charge here, though you were a little wrong about his age..."
"Wrong? Is he over twenty? But I thought you said he was in school?"
"You were wrong in the other direction. Draco is only thirteen years old."
"Thirteen?! So you're even younger than me?!"
Ruby appeared beside me, and rose petals scattered where she had been.
"How is that possible?!"
"It's simple... training from a very early age, plus a small anomaly that allowed me to develop mentally and physically a little faster than my peers."
I shrugged.
"Um..."
Ruby looked at me with disbelief.
"...but you said you have fiancées..."
"Well, yes. Fleur is sixteen, and Penny is seventeen."
"Um..."
Ruby was bewildered.
"Different worlds, different customs, daughter..."
Summer didn't dare let Yang go, but that didn't stop her from accelerating with Aura, immediately grabbing Ruby, and sitting back down in her place.
"Mom!"
"You... you don't want me to hug you?"
Summer's voice trembled with tears. I couldn't tell if they were feigned or not, but I assumed they were, though at any moment, they could become real.
"Mom, not in front of strangers..."
Ruby blushed slightly and immediately got a poke in the stomach from her sister.
"Rubes, calm down. If Mom considered the people here strangers, she would not allow herself to behave this way."
"Sorry, Mom..."
Ruby lowered her head.
"It's all right, daughter, I understand..."
"As for your question, your mother is right. It's simply that in our world, those who belong to noble families, like Draco, enter into agreements of intent..."
The door creaked softly, and Daphne entered the room with documents.
Master, these documents need to be reviewed urgently.
"Yes... thank you..."
I took the documents from her.
"...by the way, meet Daphne, my maid. And these are Ruby and Yang, Summer's daughters, and their friends Weiss and Blake."
"Very pleased to meet you... shall I order rooms prepared?"
"No need..."
Summer shook her head.
"...there is enough space in my apartment to accommodate all the girls. So for now, they can stay with me, or they can live with me entirely, although they will still need personal apartments."
"We'll arrange that..."
I nodded.
"...don't worry. And for now, I will step away from the conversation for a bit."
With those words, I immersed myself in studying the documents Daphne had brought me, and it turned out that while they were not exactly urgent, it was unwise to put off decisions on these matters. I frowned slightly when I saw documents that stated several of our suppliers from the Muggle world had suffered during this tear in space. And now they were requesting financial assistance from us in advance for future deliveries...
"Daph, I don't know how they managed to send requests so quickly, but are you certain the information is true? Only a few hours have passed since the tear closed..."
I shook my head.
"I sent several groups, and they confirmed that from what they saw, things are not very good there. Of course, it is possible they are simply pleading poverty, but they are not asking for money for nothing, they are asking against future deliveries..."
"All right, approved. They are not asking for that much... so..."
I signed the documents and handed them to Daphne.
"I thought you said she was a maid..."
Blake looked at Daphne with some doubt, while Daphne was already heading toward the exit.
"...but maids do not do that kind of work. And that form of address, Master... is she a slave?"
She frowned slightly.
"Though again, slaves are not entrusted with work like that... I don't understand any of this..."
To answer your question: in our world, there's a way to make contracts that can't be broken. Even before I went to school, Daphne and I entered into one. She became... my property.
"So still a slave..."
Blake frowned, and the other girls were not very pleased either.
"...well, by the contract's terms, yes. As for who she actually is, not quite. And her parents are to blame for her position. I was prepared to help on different terms, but..."
I shrugged.
"...her parents didn't appreciate such a soft approach and tried to... in short, it doesn't matter. I had to show them it was in vain. But if anything, I don't forbid her from communicating with her parents and sister. In fact, though she's listed as a maid, she's become something like my right hand, and I no longer imagine life without the quiet, silent girl who always knows exactly what I need."
The girls' gazes did not grow any warmer.
"Calm down, all of you."
Summer raised her voice slightly.
"But..."
Yang wanted to say something, but Summer grabbed her by the nose and pulled.
"I said calm down. First, watch their relationship, and only then judge. Believe me, once you observe, you'll understand that it only looks unpleasant on paper. In reality, everything is much more proper. Proper."
"All right..."
Yang sighed.
"...but if anything, my gauntlets are always ready to beat the shit out of... Ow!"
"Yang..."
Summer looked at her daughter.
"...Draco clearly hasn't deserved to be addressed with threats like that."
"Sorry..."
She lowered her head, while I took a deep breath and slowly let it out.
Forgotten...
Despite my words, I could see that Fleur and Penny were not pleased with the newcomers' behavior and were clearly intending to do something.
"...but I do ask you to watch your words. In this world, at least here, society is largely based on estates, and words like that can be taken quite harshly... especially by the residents of my Quarter, who have me to thank for living in a protected place."
"I will keep an eye on them... and punish them..."
Summer sighed, and the conversation went on and on.
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