"Sir, it’s time for dinner. Should I send someone to fetch our guests? They might not know their way to the dining room."

Collin reminded Rin while grabbing the papers Rin was reviewing and putting them away. Rin frowned as his work was being taken away, but his butler’s reminder made his stomach growl.

"Has it been that long already? There is no need to send someone else to get our guests. I will get them myself."

Rin stood up and walked out the door. His butler followed behind him and they entered the guest wing.

"I will go alone from here. I don’t think this group would appreciate having a large group escorting them."

Rin told his butler and Collin stopped walking at the end of the corridor.

The rooms selected for their guests were the best quality in this mansion so their comfort was assured.. Amelia had also informed Rin about the additional room their guests had requested and he headed toward the leader’s room first.

"Excuse me! I am here to guide you to the dining room since it’s dinner time. May I come in?"

Rin knocked at the door, only to find it already open. He had not knocked with a lot of force, but the door opened fully and Rin saw a glimpse of bare skin..

"Get out!"

That loud yell was quickly followed by Alex throwing a vase at him. But Rin dodged the vase and blinked, taking in Alex’s half-naked form.

But the surprise was not that Alex was half-naked or Rin was being flashed, but the flat chest of the ’daughter’ of Madam Yao.

"Are you trans?"

Those were the first words Rin was able to speak and Alex let out a frustrated sigh, pulled her (his?) clothes up and dragged him inside and slammed the door shut behind him.

Rin felt his back touching the now-closed door and he looked up to see a flustered expression on Alex’s face.

"Hey, you did not see anything. You’d better keep your mouth shut if you know what’s good for you."

That was clearly a threat, but Rin did not feel as threatened as he should have. His calm expression made Alex bite her (his?) lip in agitation before deciding what she (he?) should do.

After a moment of thought, Alex came to a conclusion.

"Since mother said you are a trustworthy person, I will trust you with my secret. But before that, can you take a vow not to tell anyone my secret?"

Alex asked and Rin nodded. It did not ease the tension but Alex finally felt comfortable telling Rin her (his?) secret. And the first thing Alex did was pull down his dress.

That flat chest immediately became noticeable and Rin was shocked at how the dress managed to pad his chest out.

"As you have already noticed, I am a guy posing as a girl. The reason behind this...you can probably guess why. Our settlement does not take well to men. It is mostly made up of women who were abused by men or had biases against them. Mother told me that I would have to leave if anyone found out that I was a guy. So I have no other choice but to cross-dress."

Rin had figured out that something like this was the reason. But that didn’t make it any easier to process

"I see. So you are a boy?"

"Mentally and biologically, yes. I am just cross-dressing to survive. Now, I would appreciate it if you don’t tell this to anyone else."

Alex adjusted his dress and the tension between them faded. Rin nodded at the request Alex was making.

He had nothing against cross-dressing and even less against anyone trying to survive. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

"I will keep your secret. I will head out and wait for you in the hallway. Please get your group ready so that we can have dinner."

Rin backed away smoothly. His actions made Alex frown.

"You are backing down...just like that? You hold my weakness in your hand. Are you sure you do not want to use it?"

"Use your weakness? Can you tell me one way in which I could use your weakness that would benefit me? It won’t make your settlement see me in a better light. At most, it will create friction between the already established order."

That and Rin had no time for messy situations with task 3 so close

Alex fell quiet and Rin headed out of the room.

It took their guests ten minutes to get ready and they headed to dinner.

Rin had made sure dinner was a little fancier than usual, but the ugly expression on their guests’ faces made him wonder if he went too far.

"Do you always eat food this fancy? Tsk, some people out there are dying for even the smallest bite and here you are, feasting on all of this. This feels so unfair."

"Reri, don’t say such things."

Someone yelled, but Reri just scoffed and went back to eating.

Honestly, she felt like bad news and Rin marked her as someone he needed to keep an eye on.

Except for that one outburst, dinner was uneventful and it was time for night training. They all gathered at the training ground where weapons were already prepared.

"We will start with testing your group’s proficiency with weapons. Please pick the weapon that suits you best. But please be careful since these weapons are enhanced and can easily harm someone."

Rin warned as he gestured toward the pile of weapons. These were his earlier enchanted weapons that were not particularly strong, but their guests let out gasps as soon as they touched them.

"Where did you get these weapons from? I have never seen anything like this before. There is a 10% chance to paralyze small prey?"

"This one has a small chance of freezing the enemy."

"Isn’t this cheating? If we had weapons like this, then we would have had a much easier time..."

Rin and this settlement had gotten used to his weapons so they had forgotten how powerful even these small effects were. But hearing all about it made Rin feel a sense of pride.

Alex examined his sword with a keen eye before he turned to look at Rin.

"Where did you get these weapons?"

"I enhanced them. Your settlement would get these weapons as a part of our deal, so there is no need to feel left out."

The GBF team did not look happy about Rin’s words, but they kept their mouths shut because they had realized the importance of these weapons.