9. People Who Change Suddenly Die

What we called rehabilitation was training in name only, and it grew more brutal by the day. A week after I’d started the exercises, I could run laps of the garden fairly smoothly.

Elli ran at my side now, no longer pulling ahead but matching me stride for stride.

“Young Master! Your condition’s looking great today!”

“As long as you don’t sing that cursed song of yours, my condition is always great.”

“Aww, but it’s thanks to my song that you’re running faster!”

Bickering the whole way, we actually looked like a halfway-respectable workout pair.

“Doesn’t he ever get tired of it?”

“Forget it, let’s go.”

Even when the servants cursed and pointed at us, I didn’t react.

Never give them a response.

I’d drilled this into Elli over and over, and it worked. The servants cursed at us noticeably less than before.

Elli must have noticed the change too, because she murmured at my side,

“Lately, they’re definitely doing it less.”

She sounded genuinely puzzled by their abruptly changed attitude.

“The way to dodge people’s attention, you see…”

I stopped mid-stride and picked up a stone, then let it drop casually onto the top of my own foot.

“…is to give no reaction even when a stone hits you.”

The stone bounced off the toe of my shoe and rolled limply across the ground. I didn’t so much as blink.

Elli tilted her head, as if to ask what on earth that was supposed to mean.

“That’s hard to understand. If it hurts, you should say it hurts.”

“That’s exactly what they want. For me to hurt, and rage, and grieve.”

I gave the stopped stone a light kick as I spoke.

“A toy’s only fun because it goes squeak when you squeeze it — push one that makes no sound and it’s just trash, right? To them, we’ve become broken toys. And nobody bothers playing with a broken toy.”

They torment and toy with someone utterly powerless, then giggle about it among themselves.

That’s what humans are.

“For the moment their interest in me has died down, but their eyes and ears are still permanently pricked toward me — waiting for me to do something, anything interesting… anything they could curse me for.”

“…”

I wiped the sweat from my forehead. Elli, whose own forehead wasn’t even damp, pressed a towel to mine with a dazed look on her face.

I laughed at the sight of her and said,

“Tonight, something interesting’s going to happen.”

“Something interesting?”

“Curious?”

“I’m curious.”

“Then stay by my side tonight.”

“Huh?”

“You said you were curious.”

“…Yes.”

Somewhere in the middle of all that, Elli’s ears had gone red. I had no idea why…

…not until I read Eve’s line and caught on.

“…From now on, I’d better think a little more carefully before I speak.”

The kind of “something” Elli had been imagining did not, of course, happen. Instead, face full of shock, she stood staring down at the man kneeling in front of me.

Leo knelt there, his head pressed to the floor, unable to lift it.

“Looking awfully unharmed, considering the rumor said you’d been dragged off to the dungeon.”

Leo gave no answer, holding his kneeling posture in silence.

I let Elli in on the truth I’d been hiding all this time.

“Leo never went to the dungeon in the first place.”

“…What? B-but Senior Leo was clearly…”

Elli looked at Leo, but he kept his mouth shut tight, eyes dropped to the floor.

I jerked my chin at him and started to explain for Elli’s benefit.

“Listen carefully, Elli. To this guy, I was nothing but a card in a gambler’s hand.”

“A card in a gambler’s hand?”

That one word, gambling, sent a shockwave through her. Of every expression I’d ever seen Elli wear, this was the deadliest.

Eve knit her brows too.

In any case, I went on with the explanation.

“You’ve faithfully kept taking her to the hospital, but the disease your one and only younger sister has shows no sign of getting better, and by now her body’s built up a resistance to the medicines she’s been on.”

At the mention of his younger sister, Leo finally raised his head. His expression said, more or less, how on earth did you know that?

“You came to me already stressed to the brink of bursting. You even made the mistake of tearing the head of the house’s letter to shreds. But then I heard, completely unexpectedly, about your sister.”

Singling out Leo had been pure chance. Every servant in this manor was burned into my memory, so whoever happened to get snagged, I’d planned to dig my fingers into whatever weakness they had.

“You served me with real diligence. You treated me so well I had to wonder whether you were even the same person.”

I’d been watching Leo for weeks. He’d played the perfect senior to Elli while handling every task he was given crisply, the very model of a servant.

“But there’s a saying — I wonder if you’ve ever heard it.”

And yet Leo had never asked for any reward, never demanded any compensation.

“They say if a person changes suddenly, they die.”

On top of that, going by how Leo had treated me from the very beginning, he wasn’t the type to turn into that kind of saint. Which meant he’d been swallowing his real intentions the whole time.

When I’d finished, Leo let out a hollow laugh and said,

“You worked out my lie based on something like that?”

“You could say so, yes.”

Looking utterly drained, Leo went on.

“That nonsensical hunch of yours was right. Yes — I never went to the dungeon, not from the start. If anything, the day you ordered me to go to the herb storeroom, I came up with a plan of my own.”

I’d had my say; now it was my turn to listen. I sat in silence and gave his words my full attention.

“I went to Young Master Valerian. And I told him… that I’d kill Young Master Arden for him.”

For Valerian, it was an offer with nothing to lose. To him, Arden was a blot on the family he wanted erased as fast as humanly possible.

“How could you say something like that!”

Elli, with a face like an enraged goblin, was about to launch herself at Leo.

“Stop.”

I raised a hand to block her. Elli huffed and puffed, forcing her riled-up heart back down.

“Keep talking.”

Leo, deliberately avoiding Elli’s gaze, said,

“Young Master Valerian granted me permission to use his name.”

“Oh-ho.”

“But he set one condition.”

Leo’s eyes drifted into empty air, as if recalling the moment in question.

“If I failed, for any reason whatsoever…”

Leo swallowed dryly.

“…he told me to take my own life.”

Leo drew a dagger from inside his coat.

Clang.

“That was your last chance just now, you know. Your one shot at killing me and surviving.”

“Now I’ve thrown even that one away. No… from the start, I never had the courage to drive it home, did I.”

Leo stared with hollow eyes at the dagger lying at his own feet.

“Young Master! Let me at him!”

I physically blocked Elli, who looked ready to pounce on Leo at any second.

“Calm down. He didn’t stab anyone.”

“But still—!”

“Leo. Keep going.”

Without taking his eyes off the dagger on the floor, he opened his mouth.

“I drew up the plan together with Rel — the keeper of the herb storeroom. When the sudden shift in patrol rotations had the maids’ complaints boiling over, we borrowed Young Master Valerian’s name to shut their mouths. And at the entrance, we burned Dreamveil.”

The objective, most likely, hadn’t been to keep me from getting the herbs.

Leo’s gaze slid to Elli, cradled in my arms.

“Elli was the target.”

Leo nodded.

Elli was no fool either. She’d realized that she herself was the heart of this whole conversation.

“I was the target?”

I gently released Elli from my arms and said,

“If they captured you, then the only eyes and ears I had left would be blinded.”

Stunned, Elli stopped fussing. I decided to leave her be for the moment and pressed on with the conversation.

“But did it need to be that elaborate? Slipping poison into a glass of water would’ve been so much faster.”

Elli had mentioned once that Rel handed her some pill, which she’d thrown away on the spot; I’d remembered it, and now I put the question to Leo.

“Poisoning leaves traces. The corpse turns black, or a magic poison-check exposes it instantly. However much Young Master Arden is treated as the family’s disgrace, if a rumor spread that a direct-line blood relative had been poisoned, it would crack the family’s honor. An outside investigation might be launched, too…”

Leo paused, then went on,

“The same applies to the poison Rel handed to Elli.”

“Naturally.”

What came after that, I didn’t need spelled out. The plan would have been to isolate me, then let me die of “illness.”

But I had Eve.

Even if they did abduct Elli, so long as Eve’s Possession Stabilization buff didn’t disappear, I had no intention of dying that easily.

What I was curious about now came down to one thing.

“Does my brother know you’ve come to me right now?”

“No, he doesn’t.”

“Unexpected. If you came here because you wanted to live, you could’ve at least put a blade to my throat and tried to negotiate, or even fed me false information and played both sides.”

“Because I knew it would be meaningless.”

“Meaningless?”

“Because in the end, even Young Master Valerian is just dancing on the palm of your hand.”

A heavy silence settled over the room. Leo lowered his head, resigned, and waited for his sentence.

I picked the dagger up off the floor. Its edge was honed very, very keen.

“More than sharp enough to cut, anyway.”

Dagger in hand, I closed the distance until I stood right in front of Leo. Then, without warning, I swung my arm.

Slash—!

“Ngh…!”

Leo swallowed a short groan and flinched. A thin line opened across his left cheek, and a moment later blood welled up along it and began to trickle down. A fraction deeper and it would have found the carotid artery rather than the cheek. In all likelihood the wound would leave a scar that never faded for the rest of his life.

“Did you know?”

“…”

“On a continent very far from here, there’s said to be a punishment in which an indelible brand is carved into the criminal’s body, so that he remembers his crime for the rest of his life.”

Whether such a continent really existed, I had no idea. This was simply my own otherworld version of the scarlet letter.

“Remember this. From this moment on, your life is no longer yours. It is something I have decided to let live — my possession, nothing more.”

Leo, without even the presence of mind to wipe away the flowing blood, shook violently and pressed his head to the floor.

A physical brand was enough.

In the silence that followed, I took a worn letter out of the drawer and handed it to Elli.

“Read it.”

Elli took it hesitantly. Tracing the lopsided, childish handwriting, she slowly began to read.

“‘Young Master Arden, hello. Our Big Bro is a truly wonderful person.’”

“…!”

At that very first line, Leo’s shoulders, bowed as if dead, shook violently.

But Elli did not stop.

“‘I’m told he’s working hard for the family day and night. I want to hurry up and get better too, so I can become someone who’s useful to the family, just like Big Bro.’”

Elli’s voice rang through the room. It pierced Leo’s heart like a verdict being read aloud.

“S-stop… please, stop…”

Leo got the words out, almost a groan, but I signaled with my eyes for Elli to keep reading.

“‘Big Bro has a soft heart, so sometimes he gets clumsy or makes mistakes. If he ever upsets you, Young Master, please, please forgive him generously. Because Big Bro really is such a good person.’”

I gave a cold smile and looked down at Leo as he crumbled. His face flushed red, then went the gray of dirt.

From inside my coat I drew the most recent letter Rio and I had exchanged, and handed it to Elli.

“‘Young Master, I’m really sorry, but I have a favor to ask. Could you let Big Bro come home, just for a short while, on his next leave? I — I miss Big Bro so much.’”

Up to that point, it could still pass for a sick child’s ordinary plea. But the next line, the one Elli read out, made her voice suddenly thicken.

“‘Just this once. If you let him come just this one time… I won’t bother you again next time. I really mean it. I promise.’”

Elli clamped a hand over her mouth and looked at me. She’d felt it too, on instinct: the chilling resignation buried in that one sentence.

I spoke quietly to the dazed Leo.

“‘I won’t bother you again.’ Do you know what that means?”

There was only one situation in which a child would swear, as a sulking little promise, never again to ask to see someone she missed.

I dropped Rio’s letter at Leo’s feet. With violently trembling hands, he picked up his little sister’s letter.

“Ah… aahh…”

A groan tore free from Leo’s mouth as he read.

Drip. Drip.

Heavy teardrops fell onto the letter.

To him, drowning in grief, I handed the brutal reality.

“Rio will die soon.”

A brutal, cruel reality.