Chapter 123

[ Mo Je-won: I looked it up, and though rare, cases like that do exist. In a state of sleepwalking, when an unfamiliar stranger approaches, people sometimes instinctively display defensive behavior. And sometimes that defensive behavior turns into an attack. ]
[ Mo Je-won: The causes are… um, there are tons. Sleep deprivation, stress, genetics, stuff like that. Generally, if you remove the source of stress or solve the sleep problem, it naturally improves. ]
[ Mo Je-won: But why are you asking about this? Do you sleepwalk? ]
[ Mo Je-won: What? Not you, but the Duchess sleepwalks? What kind of curse is plaguing that household? ]

The Duchess must have been constantly thinking about me lately. Her feelings toward me were naturally anger, and that subconsciousness seemed to have manifested during her sleep, driving her to walk all the way here.

The Duchess must have seen my roommates sleeping defenselessly.

Since my roommates were around my age and all the maids wore similar clothes, she probably projected me—the target of her anger—onto them.

‘And she must have swung the knife, mistaking them for me.’

If things had gone slightly wrong, I might have been fast-tracked straight into Playthrough 3 in my sleep without even knowing why.

“The one who launched a surprise attack on my sleeping companions is the Duchess. Do you understand? The Duchess has committed murder.”

“N-no… I didn’t mean to do that…”

“I see. Then I should head outside right now and call for people. I wonder whose side they’ll take once they see the state Her Grace is in.”

The Duchess looked the absolute picture of a murderer. After all, her face, hands, and clothes were drenched in blood from head to toe.

Startled by my words, she desperately tried to wipe the blood off her face, but it only smeared further and wouldn’t come off.

As I slowly turned my steps toward the door, the Duchess hurriedly called me back.

“You! You killed them!”

“Me? There isn’t a single drop of blood on my hands, though.”

“……”

The Duchess collapsed right there on the spot, as if all strength had drained from her legs.

‘Well, even if she really had committed murder, the Duchess wouldn’t be punished anyway.’

If she thought about it objectively, she would realize it immediately, but the Duchess, whose judgment was currently clouded by terror, failed to notice even that.

Robert Rubel already had a record of forgiving the Duchess when she had threatened him with a knife.

If he did that for someone who targeted him, it was obvious he would simply try to sweep it under the rug if she killed a couple of maids who were a dime a dozen in the mansion.
Perhaps in the process, he might even frame an innocent person as the murderer.

‘Just like back in the prologue…’

Wondering why I felt this strange sense of déjà vu, I realized the prologue and our current situation were following a remarkably similar pattern!

‘Could it be that even on that day, Sera deliberately left the Duchess unattended, had her kill Robert, and then pinned the crime on me?’

My deduction was this. Since Sera was her direct personal maid, she probably subtly dropped hints about Robert to keep the Duchess stressed.

The greater the stress, the higher the probability of it appearing in a dream.

Using her somnambulism disorder to induce her to seek out a specific person wouldn’t even be difficult.

‘Phew.’

Knowing the full story of the incident was good, but resolving the immediate crisis took priority.

I briefly tore my gaze away from Io and Isabella, who were breathing heavily in deep sleep, and approached the Duchess, who was glaring at me as if she wanted to kill me.
Calculating that it was almost time for my companions to wake up, I figured I needed to hustle her out of here soon.

“You’re in luck. It seems my companions are still alive.”

“What…? R-really?”

“Come over here. Can’t you hear their breathing?”

With hesitant steps, the Duchess slowly leaned her ear toward the roommates’ beds.

Huu-huu—

“It’s… it’s true. They’re, they’re alive! Haah… th-thank you…”

Judging by her genuine relief, the Duchess didn’t seem to have the sheer nerve to actually murder people. Her demeanor was sharp, that was all.

“I harbor no ill feelings toward Her Grace. Though Her Grace probably thinks otherwise.”

“Well, you… you deliberately approached my husband, after all.”

“Ah, that’s a misunderstanding, too. I was simply trying to transfer my assigned district to escape the maids who were bullying me, but I had no idea the Duchess would find it uncomfortable. Had I known, I wouldn’t have made that choice.”

“…Then you didn’t have to insist on taking the position closest to him.”

“I did have some ambition. As a maid in this mansion, isn’t the position right below the head maid the Duke’s direct personal servant? At a position like that, no one would dare bully me anymore.”

“…Is that true?”

Her expression softened a bit, seeming to half-believe it. I drove the point home to completely erase her suspicions.

“Besides, I already have a lover I’ve set my heart on.”

“What? Who?”

“Noah, one of the Duke’s footmen.”

“…How long have you been dating?”

…Reasoning that asking that was odd, a question popped into my head, but I answered obediently for now.

“It hasn’t been long.”

“I see, is that so. D-does he know you and that boy Noah are in such a relationship?”

“Ah, he figured it out right away. Even I was surprised. He had previously reacted as though Noah and I suited each other well and dropped hints hoping we’d get together, so I suppose that’s why he caught on to the change in our relationship so quickly.”

“Really? And after that, didn’t he say anything to you?”

“Like what?”

“Acting unusually friendly, or something like that…”

I had been thinking the conversation was drifting off in a strange direction, but at this point, it was impossible not to know.

The Duchess knew.

She knew about the Duke’s deviant tastes!

‘Should I let on that I know?’

However, if the Duchess leaked that I was aware of this fact, Robert’s affection would plummet drastically.

Given how intensely guarded Robert already was, we could practically kiss any future growth goodbye.

The Duchess’s affection, or the Duke’s affection? It wasn’t even a dilemma worth pondering.

Let’s play dumb.

“I’m not sure what you mean…”

“Not yet, huh?”

With trembling hands, the Duchess grabbed both of my shoulders. Since she didn’t seem to harbor malice, I didn’t dodge.

“Listen carefully. I’m telling you the truth because you still seem like a steadfast child. The fact that someone who has worked here since the previous head is still around means their lips are exceptionally tight. He is thorough when it comes to things like this.”

…Society evaluated the Duke and the Duchess as exemplary figures of high moral character who would shoulder the future of the Rubel ducal household, while within the mansion, the Duchess was regarded as an object of terror—a woman driven mad by jealousy.

‘So what you see isn’t everything, after all.’

Perhaps both of those notions were wrong. Or maybe, tangled up and twisted over and over again, every single bit of it was the truth.

“He is drawn to women who already have lovers. You are in a very dangerous position right now, as well. Besides, he is fiercely persistent; whether the other person rejects him or not, he eventually gets his hands on them.”

The Duchess seemed to shudder just at the thought. Her clenched hands and tightly sealed lips trembled.

“There were plenty of women who deliberately approached him, but not all of them. And the common thread among those women was that they all had spouses or lovers. Several of them even came to me for help. So I tried to quietly send them away, but unable to bear it, one of them committed suicide the very day before her escape!”

“Did Her Grace offer to send them away?”

“That’s right! Secretly in the middle of the night so he wouldn’t find out, by hiring a carriage…”

“Is it really suicide?”

“Are you doubting me? I never tried to kill anyone!”

“No. I am doubting the Duke.”

…This proved that the Duchess was telling the truth.

If she viewed me as someone trying to fleece the Duke and was scheming to push me away, her affection score surely would have been negative.

Affection never lies.

I could safely conclude that the Duchess was genuinely worried I might fall prey to Robert.

“Many people in the mansion told me this. Weren’t you afraid of the Duchess’s retaliation? They even tried to scare me by saying people who acted like me ended up dead. But after hearing what you’ve just said, I suspect they might have been mistaken all along.”

“……”

“The Duchess actually wanted to save them, didn’t you? Is that why you deliberately put on an act of acting jealous?”

“……”

The Duchess kept her head bowed in silence, but thanks to the system, I had gotten the answer I needed.

“Umm…”

A faint groan came from my roommates’ side. It seemed to be a precursor to them waking up. While a startled Duchess stood at a loss, I quickly shoved her out of the room.

Closing the door and drawing the curtains plunged the room into pitch darkness in an instant.

“Hwaaaam~!”

Io woke up with a refreshing stretch.

“Oh, who closed the curtains? I can’t see a thing.”

Clutching my pounding heart, I gripped the curtains even tighter so not a single sliver of moonlight could leak in. The blankets rustled a few times, and before long, steady breathing followed. It seemed they had fallen back asleep.

I had been wondering what to do if they woke up completely, but it was a miraculous stroke of luck.

‘Now what do I do, though?’

First of all, I needed to clean up the aftermath.

Things like the blood-soaked blankets and the knife I had kicked away under the bed earlier.

‘I need to do this carefully so the two of them don’t wake up… but is that even possible?’

The hard difficulty forced a groan out of me. I had just barely managed enough presence of mind to send the Duchess out and close the curtains in a rush, but I hadn’t thought at all about what came next.

For now, I calmly headed to the bathroom and soaked a towel in warm water.

‘…If they get cold, they might wake up again.’

Wiping down Io and Isabella’s bodies and faces clean with the warm towel made it look surprisingly passable. Except for the blood-soaked blankets and sheets, that is.

…My mind felt faint, but I cleared away the tattered bedding and brought out extra blankets from the closet to cover them instead.

‘How on earth am I supposed to change their clothes and swap out the sheets?’

Talk about troubles piling up on troubles.

It wasn’t a matter of embarrassment or anything like that. I simply couldn’t think of any way to handle all of that without waking the two of them up.

It wasn’t like they were dead drunk and completely out of it—there was no way to change someone’s clothes without waking them!

Screeech—

Oh, dammit.

Lost in thought, I hadn’t even noticed someone approaching.

As the door swung open abruptly, I scrambled back toward the bed, trying to pretend to be asleep…

“It’s me.”

Someone whispered in a low murmur.

‘Whose voice is that?’

“The Duchess sent me. Because you’d be in trouble.”

Though her face wasn’t clearly visible due to the shadows, the name tag Sera glowed brightly amidst the pitch-black darkness.

“Your flustered look is entertaining, but let’s deal with the cleanup first. Hold your breath for the next thirty seconds.”