The door clicked shut behind me, and I was alone in the hallway.
Figure it out, Scholarship Boy.
Fine. Challenge accepted.
I'd spent three years navigating Hartwell's labyrinthine campus. Before that, I'd memorized every back alley and shortcut in Kensington. Mapping a rich person's house? Child's play.
Treat it like a dungeon crawl. Note the landmarks. Mark the exits. Don't die.
The guest wing hallway stretched in both directions, lined with doors that probably led to more rooms worth more than my entire neighborhood. I picked left. Arbitrary choice. The carpet beneath my feet was so thick I couldn't hear my own footsteps.
Stealth bonus: plus ten.
The first landmark I passed was a painting. Massive. Oil on canvas. Some dead aristocrat staring disapprovingly at anyone who dared walk past. A small brass plate beneath it read "Henri Valentine, 1847-1912."
They have ancestors on the walls. Like a museum. Except the museum is their house.
I kept walking.
The second landmark was another painting. Same size. Same style. Same disapproving stare. Different dead guy.
Third painting. Fourth. Fifth.
By the time I reached the end of the hallway, I'd counted seventeen identical portraits of identical disapproving ancestors arranged at identical intervals along identical wallpaper.
They bought seventeen paintings of old guys looking disappointed. On purpose. With money they could have used for literally anything else.
This was a different kind of rich than I'd seen at the Velvet Lounge.
The customers there were wealthy. Some of them obscenely so. But their wealth was new. Flashy. They wanted you to notice their watches and their cars and their bottle service orders.
This was old money. The kind that didn't need to show off because showing off implied you had something to prove. The Valentines had nothing to prove. They'd been proving it for generations. The proof was hanging on their walls in gilded frames.
Fuck you rich. That's the term.
Not "I have money" rich. "I have so much money that I've forgotten what money is for" rich.
I turned a corner and found myself in a wider corridor. More paintings. More carpet. More air that smelled like lemon polish and expensive silence.
And vases.
So many vases.
They lined the walls like soldiers in formation. Blue and white porcelain. Probably Chinese. Probably ancient. Probably worth more than my apartment building.
I counted them as I walked. Twelve on the left. Twelve on the right.
Cassidy almost face-planted into one earlier. They probably would have just replaced it from storage without blinking.
The corridor opened into a wider space. I paused.
To my left, a set of double doors stood slightly ajar. Through the gap, I could see what looked like a formal dining room. A table long enough to seat thirty people. Crystal chandeliers. The works.
To my right, another set of doors. Closed.
Straight ahead, the corridor continued toward what I assumed was the main part of the house.
I went straight.
I passed more rooms. A music room with a grand piano that gleamed under soft lighting. A sitting room with furniture so pristine it looked like no one had ever actually sat in it. A smaller parlor with portraits of four little girls with wine-red hair, probably painted when they were five or six years old.
Then I found the aquarium room.
I stopped. Stared. Blinked.
The wall was fish.
Not "the wall had an aquarium built into it." The wall WAS an aquarium. Floor to ceiling. Wall to wall. A living breathing ecosystem of coral and tropical fish and things that looked like they belonged in a nature documentary, all swimming lazily behind what had to be six inches of glass.
A manta ray glided past at eye level.
A manta ray.
In their wall.
They put an ocean in their wall.
I stood there for probably thirty seconds, watching a school of yellow fish dart between coral formations. Somewhere in the back of my mind, a small voice was doing math.
Maintenance costs alone. Filtration systems. Temperature control. Salt levels. Food. Veterinary care for the fish. Do rich people have fish doctors? They probably have fish doctors.
This single wall costs more per month than my entire block makes in the same period of time.
I tore myself away. Kept walking.
The corridor curved. I followed it, noting another set of stairs, another cluster of rooms, another intersection of hallways that all looked identical.
Mental note: the aquarium wall is near the music room, which is three turns from the guest wing, which is—
I rounded a corner and almost walked into two women.
They froze. I froze.
Maids. Both of them. Black dresses with white aprons. Classic uniform. They'd been polishing a suit of armor.
The armor stood in an alcove like it belonged there. Like every proper hallway needed a medieval knight standing guard over the expensive carpet.
"Afternoon."
I kept my voice casual. Friendly. The same tone I used with the bodega owners back home.
They blinked. Exchanged a glance with each other. Surprise flickered across their faces.
Then, hesitantly, they smiled back.
"Good afternoon, sir." The older one. Slight accent. Maybe Filipina. "Are you the new assistant?"
"That's me. Isaiah."
"Welcome to the manor." She seemed genuinely warm about it. "If you need anything, the staff quarters are in the west wing. Just ask for Mrs. Tanaka."
"I'll remember that. Thanks."
I gave them a small nod and continued walking.
They signed NDAs too. I wonder what their version looks like. Probably the standard "don't talk about the crazy rich people" clause rather than the "potential romantic interest" clause.
How many staff work here? Dozens, probably. Groundskeepers. Cooks. Cleaners. Security. All of them invisible. All of them maintaining this mausoleum of wealth so four teenage girls can live in impossible luxury.
The staff could be allies. Or at least neutral parties. In a house full of unpredictable heiresses, having people who might warn me about incoming disasters could be valuable.
Strategic asset: acquired.
The corridor opened into a grand foyer. I recognized it from earlier. The fairy-tale staircase. The portrait of Richard Valentine. The entrance to the main parlor where I'd been interviewed.
Good. I've mapped a loop. Guest wing to aquarium to foyer. Now I need to find—
The library.
Miranda had mentioned it during the initial tour. Floor-to-ceiling books. I'd caught a glimpse through an open door.
If I'm going to survive one month in this gilded cage, I need to find the one place that might actually feel like home.
I backtracked. Took a different turn. Passed more rooms, more paintings, more evidence of generational wealth.
And then I found it.
Double doors. Dark carved wood with intricate patterns that looked vaguely Celtic. A brass plate that simply read "Library."
I pushed them open.
Holy shit.
The word "library" didn't cover it.
Cathedral. Sanctuary. Temple of dead trees and old ideas.
Two stories of books rose around me like canyon walls. Spiral staircases curled toward the upper level where more shelves waited, packed with more spines, more knowledge than I could read in a lifetime. Rolling ladders attached to brass rails allowed access to the highest reaches.
Sunlight poured through an arched window at the far end. Massive. Probably fifteen feet tall. The light caught dust motes floating in the air, turning them gold.
The smell hit me next. Paper and leather and something else. Something old and comfortable. The scent of stories waiting to be read.
Iris.
The thought came before I could stop it.
Iris would lose her mind in here.
I could see her clearly. Curled up in one of the leather armchairs scattered throughout the space. Sketchbook in her lap. A stack of books piled beside her. Eyes wide with the particular hunger of someone who loved stories more than sleep.
She'd build a nest in the poetry section and never leave. She'd find the art books and the manga and whatever fantasy novels they have hidden in here, and I'd have to physically drag her out when it was time to go home.
The pang hit sharp and sudden. Not envy for the wealth. Not awe at the scale. Just longing. Pure and simple.
I want to share this with her.
Not the mansion. Not the money. Just this room.
Could I check books out for her? Does this job come with library privileges? Is that a thing I can negotiate?
I walked deeper into the cathedral of knowledge.
My fingers trailed along spines as I passed. Philosophy. History. Literature. The classics organized by period. Leather-bound first editions that probably cost more than cars. Paperbacks mixed in like afterthoughts, suggesting someone in this family actually READ rather than just collected.
Good taste. Whoever built this collection had good taste.
I stopped at a familiar section. English Literature. Victorian era. My eyes scanned until they found what I was looking for.
The Count of Monte Cristo.
Not my first pick usually. That honor belonged to the Cowboy Bebop manga adaptation I kept hidden in my bag. But Monte Cristo was a close second. The ultimate revenge fantasy. A man wronged by the system, gaining power, and systematically dismantling everyone who hurt him.
Relatable content.
I pulled the book from the shelf. Heavy. Leather-bound. The pages were thick and creamy, the kind of paper that felt expensive between your fingers. I opened it to a random page, admiring the typography, the margins, the sheer quality of the thing.
"A story about a man who gains immense wealth and uses it to systematically destroy the lives of those who wronged him."
The voice came from directly behind me.
"A bit on the nose for your first day, don't you think?"
===
Author's Note
Yo.
Rikisari here. The guy behind the curtain. The idiot who decided writing a harem romance about a broke scholarship student and four rich sisters was a good use of his limited time on this earth.
First things first.
CHARACTER PROFILES ARE NOW LIVE ON THE WEBNOVEL APP.
Yeah. You read that right. All four Valentine sisters. Isaiah. Iris. The whole crew. Go check them out.
Now for the real talk.
If you're reading this on a site that isn't the official Webnovel app? I appreciate you. Genuinely. The fact that you found this story at all means something to me.
But here's the thing.
I need your help.
People told me this wouldn't work. Urban romance on Webnovel? A slow burn harem with actual character development? They said the platform wasn't built for stories like mine. They said I should write cultivation novels or system isekai or anything else that fits the algorithm.
They said Four of a Kind would fail.
I want to prove them wrong.
So if you've been enjoying Isaiah's suffering, if you laughed when Cassidy fell into him twice in ten minutes, if you felt something when Iris gave him that blue tie she'd been saving for months...
Go to the Webnovel app. Read it there. Leave a review. Drop some power stones/golden tickets if you've got them.
Every review matters. Every stone counts. Every reader who shows up on the official platform is another middle finger to everyone who said this couldn't work.
Let's get Four of a Kind to the top.
Thank you for reading. Thank you for supporting. Thank you for being here from the beginning.
See you in the next chapter.
— Rikisari