6. Luna Herb (2)

The morning after Leo’s disappearance, the air in the Arne manor had visibly changed. Or, to be precise, the air at the servants’ morning assembly had.

“Tsk, tsk — fool didn’t know it was a rotten rope, and grabbed it anyway.”
“Leo was a moron. Betrayed Lord Valerian and threw his lot in with the other side, didn’t he? Got what was coming to him, that’s all.”

Until now the maids had given up trying to deal with Elli, worn out by that bright personality of hers. Now they turned on her with their knives drawn, as though they’d only been waiting for the chance.

“If you want, our side’ll take you in. You’re stupid, sure, but your face is pretty enough — you’d be of some use.”
“Lord Lucius likes a pretty woman, you know. With a little luck, you might get bumped up from maid to concubine?”

Mockery and ridicule rained in from every direction, and Elli was sturdily carrying on with her breakfast through all of it when Rel sat down across from her. The moment she laid eyes on that face, Elli finished her meal and tried to get up, and Rel spoke.

“Sit.”

A heavy pressure came down on both of Elli’s shoulders.

“Usually you shovel it all down without leaving a scrap. Where are you off to in such a hurry, hm?”
“The Runt Young Master sure likes to sleep in. Well — he’ll be sleeping forever soon enough, after all.”

The maids who’d been sexually harassing her pinned her down so she couldn’t escape, and with no choice left, Elli ended up sitting face-to-face with Rel. The color had drained completely from her face in that awkward situation, yet she clenched both her fists tight.

But that kind of attitude only made her an easier target.

“Still haven’t shaken the habit of digging in the dirt in some southern backwater, have you? How dare you clench those filthy fists in front of your betters?”

It was a malice even her trademark cheer couldn’t fully shrug off, and it washed right over her.

“Within a few days, your master will be dead, and you’ll be a kite with a cut string. And then two choices will be waiting for you.”

At Rel’s gesture, the maids seized Elli’s clenched left hand and pried it open by force.

“One — bow that dim-witted head. Kill that look in your eyes. You don’t know your place, daring to look up like that. And report the Runt Young Master’s orders to us.”

Elli bit her lip, but the prince on a white horse who’d rescue her from this crisis did not appear.

Rel gestured again. Elli held out stubbornly, but overpowering two people was beyond her, and in the end her other hand, the right one, was dragged out by force and laid open too.

“If, by some chance, that pathetic loyalty of yours is sincere—”

Rel placed two very small white pills on Elli’s right palm.

“Then die together with your beloved Young Master.”

Tick, tock.

Time slipped past relentlessly. Young Master Arden hadn’t let anyone into his room today, and that included her, of course.

Will he be all right? He’ll be all right, won’t he? He has to be all right.

The anxiety in her heart kept growing in proportion to the time that passed.

The sun set, a long, cool shadow fell over the Arne manor, and the worst harassment she’d endured so far set along with it. All day long she’d heard nothing but slander against Senior Leo and curses against the Young Master too vile to repeat, and by now she was honestly curious.

Why do they all spit out such nasty things?

Elli was, without question, pure-hearted. But being pure didn’t make her the type to swallow superstitions whole: the man-eating ghosts grown-ups used to scare children with, the gods who supposedly punished sinners, those kinds of stories.

She’d grown up in a mountain valley, where she’d had friends dragged off by bears or tigers on the mountain. The grandfather who’d been kinder than anyone else had been stabbed to death by a bandit’s blade, even though he’d said he would give him everything he owned.

So Elli was pure of heart, but her life had not been a smooth one. She had a bright personality, but that brightness hadn’t been forged from birth. Just as light exists alongside darkness, tension and anxiety and endless worry lived within her brightness.

And what always fought them and won was —

“I can do it. I can do it. I — can — do it! Aja-ja!”¹

The will to stay positive again, no matter how negative reality became. It was a mentality more overwhelmingly strong than anyone else’s in the world, one that sprang right back up like a roly-poly doll even after weeping, even after being shaken by lies. This was the secret behind Elli’s low DV, and even Suhan didn’t know it yet.

But she still couldn’t stop the trembling at her fingertips. The darkness was frightening, and the horrible rumor that Leo had been dragged off covered in blood kept circling at her ear. The Young Master had said it was all lies, yet what the maids had passed on to her today was exactly what kind of torture Leo was being put through, and when she recalled those words, tears threatened to spill.

Dong, dong, dong.

The clock on the wall chimed midnight.

Smack!

She slapped both her own cheeks. She couldn’t crumble here. The heat of those cheeks, swollen and red, snapped her mind back to attention.

Calling to mind the one strategy the Young Master had taught her, she kept running through what she had to do in the ten-minute golden window, and what Luna Herb looked like, again and again. Then she took off her maid’s outfit, which looked something like a white dress, changed into a dingy black top and trousers, and didn’t forget to smudge soot on her face as camouflage.

At last, just before the long hand of the clock advanced one tick more, Elli took a deep breath and opened the window. Pitch-black darkness greeted her, and without a single moment’s hesitation, she threw her body into it.

The building where the maids slept was a fair distance from the herb storeroom, so task number one was not getting caught by the patrol guards. Elli was moving soundlessly as a cat along the shadow of the wall when her body froze. From far off came the faint glow of a lantern, and the sound of light ha-ha-ho-ho laughter brushed her ear.

This has never happened before.

For some unfathomable reason the maids were doing a patrol, a sight she hadn’t once seen since transferring in. She knew by instinct that this was Rel’s scheme, but her heart didn’t tremble at this variable, because those particular anxieties had already lost to her own self.

She scanned her surroundings desperately, and in short order she spotted the outer wall of a building lush with hanging vines.

“You should’ve seen that bitch’s face today — I about busted my gut laughing.”
“How should we torment her tomorrow?”

There was no time to hesitate, so it was time for the talent she’d once boasted of to the Young Master. Elli kicked off the ground, leapt as high as she possibly could, stretched out her hands, grabbed the vines and climbed.

In that instant —

“Who’s there!”

The maids aimed a light at the spot where Elli had been mere seconds before.

“Hey! Who’d even be out here?”
“Aish, yeah, this is embarrassing.”

Right above them, dangling there, was Elli. You might say the situation called for “above the vines is darkness” instead of “the darkest spot is under the lamp.”

“Honestly, isn’t Rel going a little overboard? You really think she’d slip out at this hour?”
“That’s what I’m saying. Let’s just do a lazy lap and head back to bed already.”

Once the maids had left and she’d safely climbed down, Elli let out a breath. But she didn’t have the luxury of relaxing, so her legs were moving at once. The time the Young Master had spoken of would arrive soon.

.

.

.

Elli arrived safely in front of the herb storeroom. The problem was Rel, standing guard out front.

Could it be that she’d taken too long? As far as Elli could see, there wasn’t the slightest trace of fatigue on Rel.

The Young Master couldn’t have been wrong.

Suppressing her impatient heart, she kept watching Rel from her hiding place in the bushes. It felt as if time were slipping past twice as quickly as usual.

Thu—

Could it be—

The sound of her stilled heart slowly began to drum at her ear.

—mp.

Did I fail to make it in time?

Thump.

What if she’s checked my room and found I’m not there?

Thump-thump.

Her heart was speaking to her like mad, and that pounding and trembling sounded almost as if it were saying this:

— How does it feel, to stand at the edge of the cliff of your life?

Thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump.

The Demon Seed dormant inside Elli writhed.

That was the exact moment Rel gave a wide yawn and stood up.

“Time for a cup, I suppose.”

She headed toward the main building, where the kitchen was, with the unhesitating stride of someone deeply familiar with the route.

The Young Master’s information was accurate to a hair’s breadth, just as I thought!

Elli confirmed that Rel’s figure had completely vanished into the darkness, then shot out like an arrow and stood before the herb storeroom door.

Creak.

The moment she opened it, the fragrant scent of medicinal herbs welcomed her nose. It was a world utterly unlike the outside, which had been packed with darkness and tension. For a country girl like Elli these were achingly familiar, welcome smells, and the dried herbs filling every shelf brought back memories of her childhood.

This scent—?

Amid the countless herb fragrances, one sweet and dizzying scent in particular wormed its way into her nose. It was a dangerous feeling, her head going hazy and her mood lifting.

Dreamveil!

She held her breath so no more of the scent could get in, and quickly raised her sleeve and clamped it over her nose and mouth. Taken in small amounts, Dreamveil helped calm body and mind, but inhaling it in large amounts brought on powerful hallucinations and plunged you into deep sleep. In the countryside where Elli came from, it was so powerfully hallucinogenic that people burned it to keep bears and wild boars from raiding their farms.

…What on earth is the Young Master.

She felt the gooseflesh rise on her arms.

— Rel is a thorough sort. Which means even those ten minutes she steps away to drink her coffee, she’ll have some kind of safeguard in place.

Just as the Young Master had predicted, Rel had laid a trap.

— Rel will use herbs to set her trap. People always reach for the weapon they’re most confident with, after all. And it’ll definitely be Dreamveil. Why Dreamveil, you ask?

And just as he’d said, she’d used Dreamveil for it, as if the two of them had compared notes beforehand. When Elli had asked why he was so sure it would be Dreamveil, the Young Master had answered with a sly grin —

— This humble Young Master knows it a~all. There’s a thing called that, you see~

Enduring the scent of the Dreamveil, she moved toward the shelf where the Young Master had said the Luna Herb would be.

Found it!

At last she’d found the Luna Herb she had so longed to see. Luna Herb, just as the name said, carried the essence of the moon within it, and unlike the other herbs it gave off a distinctly deep blue color and a cool, chill aura. She put it into the pouch she’d brought.

Pack it in tight, as much as I can get.

The joy of being able to bring the herbs to the Young Master rushed over her, and she succeeded in cramming the pouch full of Luna Herb. All that was left now was to slip out of this place.

I’m about at the limit.

The breath she’d been holding was reaching its limit, and pain crashed in. She wanted to gulp down fresh air that very instant, but if she did, she’d just become the offering of this sweet poison.

No time!

She braced her mind once more. How long she could keep holding her breath because of the Dreamveil, and how long until Rel came back: a double countdown was tightening around her throat.

Forced to draw breath despite herself, she clung by force to her blurring vision and made for the entrance she’d come in through. A few more steps, that was all. Open that door and slip out, and she could save the Young Master.

“…!”

A faint thread of light leaked in through the gap of the firmly closed door. If it had been moonlight coming through that crack, that would have been lovely, but no matter how she looked at it, that was lantern light. Someone outside was opening the door.

Creak.

“Rats labor under the delusion that the night will hide them. But what the rats don’t know is that, ironically, night is when we catch and kill the most of you.”

The door swung wide open, and there stood Rel with the lantern light behind her and, on her face, the cruel smile of a hunter who’d brought her prey to bay.

“Honestly, you couldn’t be more of a rat. Hiding already, are you?”

Because Elli had hurriedly hidden herself toward the inside of the storeroom, Rel hadn’t caught her in her line of sight. But the situation was no different from a rat in a trap.

“You may have slipped past the patrol, but it looks like you didn’t have time to hide your footprints. I’ve got flat feet, you see. Quite different from the usual footprint.”

Elli moved inward, making as little sound as possible.

Thud, thud.

But Rel was advancing precisely toward the shelf where Elli had hidden, and closer and closer came the dead-end wall, with nowhere left to hide and nowhere to flee. So as not to let her face be seen, Elli had given up even on fleeing soundlessly.

Crash!

In the end she tripped on her own foot and fell.

“Pwuhahaha! How pathetic.”

Rel laughed out loud, then shone her lantern toward the sound of the fall.

“Time to catch the rat at last.”

The lantern light finally lit up the figure collapsed in the corner, and the smile vanished from Rel’s face in an instant. In place of the girl who ought to have been weeping there in terror, a man with cold, arrogant eyes was slowly rising to his feet.

Without realizing it, Rel took a step back, and without realizing it, she breathed out the name of the existence before her.

“…Lord Valerian!?”