Fret's Background

“Tch!!”

Fret Full couldn't help clicking his tongue.

Before him, a grubby old guy who called himself a mage and an eerie cursed child who had crawled out of a pitch-black cocoon sat at the same round table as Fret, glaring at each other.

“For now, standing around talking is no good.”

The one who had suggested moving to this sun-drenched dining table was the eerie cursed child.

“Hey, you wretch!! How dare you act like the homeowner!!”

Fret objected to that remark, just on principle.

But he had walked a good two days from Zenalini to get here.

He was young, and like everyone in this world he could strengthen his body with magic power, but as a white-collar type, he didn't have much stamina.

His mouth could still run a mile a minute, but to be honest, his body was ready to drop.

So, grumbling all the while, he went along with the cursed child's lead and took a seat at the table with the other two.

(How the hell did it come to this!?)

Dreaming of a “one-shot comeback,” he had recklessly set out into the forest alone...... miraculously found the house he was after, and right after he'd jumped for joy, this.

Just when he thought he'd reached his goal, there appeared...... obstacles.

And those obstacles were the two people in front of him.

(Why won't anything go the way I want!! Why must I, of all people, go through this!!)

Fret knit his brows and glared at the grubby old guy and the eerie cursed child.

His body felt heavy, and his chest tightened with anxiety.

Fret was irritated.

(Everything...... it's all his, Success's fault!!)

The face of his hateful little brother, with that carefree smile, flashed through his mind......

◇ ◇ ◇

“Fret...... I am removing you...... as heir to the Full Trading Company.”

Unlike the downpour the day before, that day had been perfectly clear...... and the sunset was truly beautiful.

Zenalini at dusk was dyed a deep red.

In the midst of that.

Fret had been summoned to his father's office, unnaturally dark for some reason, without even the magic lamps lit.

There, his father, the current company president, had told him that.

What kind of face had his father been making then?

With the sunset streaming in through the window behind him, Fret could make out almost nothing.

But that voice was unusually stiff.

“Ha, hahaha!! Hahahahahaha!! What are you saying!? Surely the record I've built, is worthy of the next company president!!”

Not understanding what his father meant.

Thinking it was a joke, or something.

Fret laughed loudly.

I mean, wouldn't you?

Until now, he had expanded his network, been recommended for the Trade Association's board, won a real say in how the city was run, and of course grown the company's sales.

And at this age!

“That those achievements...... are nothing but a facade. That is what I take issue with.”

Still, his father's voice remained stiff.

“A facade!?”

“The portable stove you patented, the hair dryer...... and the improved washing machine, and all the rest...... all of it...... was really Success's idea, I hear......”

“............”

And to the words that came next...... Fret had no quick answer.

His mouth flapped open and shut as he tried to argue, but nothing meaningful came out.

Because his father's point, was the truth.

All the flagship products that had powered Fret's...... the Full Trading Company's rise...... had originally been made by his youngest brother, Success, together with a friend of his who ran a tiny magic tool workshop.

“......But!!”

Only now, at long last, did Fret's mouth move.

“In their hands, those things would never have sold!! I can state that with absolute certainty!! They sold because I sold them!! Who has what it takes to be company president!? It is I!! Not Success!!”

That was what Fret truly believed.

Making good things?

So what.

What mattered to a merchant was how you sold it, and how much you made.

As far as Fret was concerned, his fool of a brother's work was always nothing more than “play.”

Success was careless; left to himself, he'd have had nearly every profit and right sucked away and exploited by some other company.

If others were going to steal it, then better that he did.

That way, the profits of the Full Trading Company would be protected.

What was wrong with that!?

“I do understand what you have contributed to the company. But your methods, by any measure, are unethical.”

“Father!! I did it for the sake of the company......”

“If you were thinking of the company, why hide the truth from me, its president!?...... There must have been any number of other ways! And yet you, passed off all of Success's achievements as your own! Not for the Full Trading Company's gain, but your own!”

At this point, his father, the company president, flew into a rage and shouted.

His father was gentle, and if anything, he was too good-natured to be a merchant.

This was the first time Fret had ever heard his father shout like this.

“I, it's a misunderstanding, Father!?”

“What's more, Fret. You...... have dealings with the Dongozugozu Society, I hear......”

The Dongozugozu Society...... an underground organization that threw its weight around Zenalini.

A pack of criminals who didn't think twice about breaking the law or using violence.

“That's...... not as big a deal as you're making it!! I just funneled a bit of money!! It was a necessary expense to become a board member!! Everyone does it!!”

“Silence!! What is our mission, Fret!! To make people smile through business!! And yet you...... of all things, siding with an underground organization!! Have you no shame!!”

“Shame......!?”

To have the work he'd done all this time, declared outright to be a ‘shame’.

Fret's mind went blank.

Why was his father rejecting him, this utterly?

His mind was blank, not working properly, and he couldn't understand.

“What's more, Fret. You...... have a bad reputation with the magic tool workshops we depend on and with our regular customers. They say you're overbearing, and high-handed......”

“That is, simply the natural attitude for someone at the top......”

“......It seems that what you aim for is different from what the Full Trading Company aims for.”

Here his father broke off for a moment.

Drew a deep breath.

And said it once more.

“Fret. I am removing you, as heir to the Full Trading Company.”

◇ ◇ ◇

“............”

Afterward, Fret sat on the bed in his room, staring blankly.

“How on earth did it come to this......?”

Over and over he muttered it to himself, emptily, not that he expected any answer.

I made all that profit.

I'm this capable.

So why, won't Father understand.

He grieved, and grieved, and grieved...... and at the end of it, a smiling face flashed through his mind.

That happy-go-lucky face, of his fool of a brother, Success......

He hated studying, and yet he was clever, with a knack for coming up with brilliant new ideas.

He was athletic, too.

And for a little brother, he was taller than Fret.

......It was that hateful face, Success's face.

“That's it...... it's him......”

Fret's face turned beet-red with fury as he stood up.

“Everything...... is his fault......!”

Thinking back on it later, Fret had been in the grip of a rage so fierce it was as if he was not himself, and he had lost all his composure.

Fret stomped over and violently opened his desk drawer!

In it lay...... a custom-made magic gun, for self-defense!

Fret slipped it, gleaming in the light of the magic lamp, into his jacket, and was about to head for Success's room...... but then!

Suddenly, in the desk drawer where the magic gun had been...... an old “diary” caught his eye.

“This is......”

That diary, if he remembered right...... was from when he'd left Zenalini on a business trip...... something he'd picked up on a whim.

The one who had it was Rongi, a peddler covered in green scales.

A former business rival who had once worked in Zenalini.

He'd run into him by chance in the town he was visiting...... his old rival, fallen on hard times, reduced to a poor peddler.

Fret had gone up to him, meaning to laugh in his face.

But Rongi...... was doing business with an oddly refreshed, cheerful look on his face, of all things.

Somehow, that didn't sit right with Fret.

So he picked a quarrel and squeezed a few of Rongi's wares out of him for next to nothing.

One of those was this diary.

“That's right...... I had this diary!!”

This diary, which Rongi said he'd “picked up by a fluke.”

Its binding was oddly grand, and it looked like it would fetch a good price, but inside it was nothing special, just an old man's daily life written down.

......Or so it seemed.

In fact, Rongi himself had thought of it as nothing more than “just some old person's diary,” and when Fret demanded it, he'd smiled wryly and asked, “This is what you want?”

But Fret's instincts told him there was something to this diary.

Which was exactly why he'd bought it.

And his instincts had been right.

This diary...... had codes hidden all over it, and when he decoded them, what emerged was...... for Fret, the ‘location of a treasure’!

His work kept him busy every day, and he'd had no time for treasure hunting, so until now he'd never actually started searching for the ‘treasure’......

“Now!! Now is the time!! Now, this ‘treasure’...... is mine for the taking, the time has come!!”

Fret screamed!

In that moment, a fierce rage he couldn't believe was coming from within himself mixed with the thrill of finding a path to a one-shot comeback, ‘getting the treasure’...... and produced an explosive drive to act that even the gods could not have foreseen!

“If that's settled, then right away!!”

And so Fret scraped together the bare minimum of spare clothes and preserved food, and though it was already night, he dashed outside and plunged into Karumuetto Forest.

It was utterly reckless.

But, if he could just get the ‘treasure’...... if he could just turn that into business......!

Returning as the heir to the Full Trading Company would be a piece of cake!

“Just you watch, SUCCEEESS!! That luck of YOOOURS!! Ends right HEEERE!! HAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!”

Those screams and that roaring laughter echoed through the forest at night.

My, my, honestly.

No matter how well he'd cracked the code and pinned down the location...... in that state, the fact that Fret reached the ‘treasure’...... the house in the forest, without running into any serious monsters, can only be called a stroke of miraculous luck.

◇ ◇ ◇

But that luck alone, wasn't enough.

For Fret to achieve his goal...... to win back his place as heir to the Full Trading Company, there were still problems left to solve.

Namely, the ones claiming ownership of this house just like Fret...... the two in front of him, the grimy old guy and the eerie cursed child.

From the old guy, he could feel something like “the menace of a cornered man.”

Types like that were scary, because you never knew what they'd pull.

Gone desperate, he might take everyone around him down to ruin...... he could turn out to be a bomb.

As for the cursed child...... she was incomprehensibly eerie.

Fret, a mere merchant, didn't have the senses to gauge how strong she was, but......

Even so, common sense was enough to tell him that a girl who had sprung out of a cocoon on the ceiling was nothing ordinary.

Either way, both of them were trouble.

But.

(I...... will absolutely, have it!)

For Fret, giving up had never been an option to begin with.

Because for him, all that lay beyond giving up was ruin.

The fire of fighting spirit blazed up in his sly-looking eyes behind those glasses, and sweat ran down his cheek and fell onto the table, potari!

(This...... ‘hideout of the legendary magic tool craftsman Gyashikinu’!! And...... all of his knowledge, hidden in this house!!)

【Rongi】

Appeared in Arc 21.

A man covered entirely in green scales, who wears a wide-brimmed fedora pulled low.

Driven by an obsession that suddenly arose for some reason, he attacked the Full Trading Company, and failed.

He was arrested and lost everything as a merchant.

Afterward, he was about to throw himself into the Great Waterfall of Rakkasunakra, but just before he did, he had a certain encounter, and got back on his feet.

That encounter, and his recovery, were a small irregularity for the world......

In other words, Fret getting his hands on the diary wasn't written in “fate” either.

【The Magic Tool Craftsman Gyashikinu】

A comrade of the Great Mage Majurog Majugam, with whom he pursued magecraft research.

Deceased.

Mentioned in Arc 25.