Chapter 124

At her words, I reflexively sucked in my breath and froze right in my tracks.

Sera strode without hesitation toward my roommates, followed by the sound of rustling and a bottle being uncorked.

‘What is she doing?’

My eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness, and her silhouette began to come into faint view. She was holding a small bottle right up to Io’s nose.

Smoke pouring from the bottle was sucked into Io’s nose with every inhalation.

‘It’s not poisonous gas or something, is it?’

I debated whether I should stop her, but decided against it.

It didn’t seem likely that the Duchess would order something as extreme as murder.

“That crazy Duchess. To think she’d actually come for you.”

Having made Isabella inhale the scent as well, Sera took a deep breath and spoke comfortably, as if there was nothing left to worry about.

“You can talk now. This medicine is pretty potent. Since it was held right to her nose, she’ll easily sleep for half a day unless you forcefully wake her up.”

So it was a sleeping pill.

Sera and sleeping pills. Unpleasant memories resurfaced.

Could that possibly be the same drug she sprayed on me during the prologue?

‘As expected of Carlo’s masterpiece.’

I accidentally found out that the source of the sleeping pill was Carlo, to boot.

Anyway, surely the reason Sera came here wasn’t…

“Did you come to help?”

“…Don’t you know by looking? I brought all the cleaning supplies, so you help out too.”

I had plenty to say, but right now Sera was my relief pitcher.

At the same time, it was an awkward situation. The conditions of Io and Isabella were clearly abnormal at the moment. Their clothes were shredded by a blade and they were covered in blood, yet they had no wounds.

It was the perfect setup for Sera to question me and demand to know what on earth was going on.

‘I need to somehow prevent Sera from getting close to these two.’

I first moved the two to a clean patch of floor free of blood and spoke.

“I’ll handle the treatment, so you clean up the blood on the floor.”

“Ha, still the same. Looking down on people and ignoring them. Guess people really don’t change easily.”

Whether she scoffed or not, I pulled the curtains back just a sliver and rummaged through my roommates’ wardrobes.

If there was anything fortunate, it was that all maids in the mansion were recommended to wear white nightgowns, and the styles affordable to commoners were all much of a muchness. If I just dressed them in roughly similar clothes, I could play it off with, “Huh? Did I wear this nightgown yesterday? I guess I did!” and brush it right past.

After finding spare nightgowns and changing my roommates into them, the thought suddenly struck me that this could have been an awkward situation, but I had been so focused on avoiding getting caught by Sera that I hadn’t had the spare capacity to care about things like that.

‘Let’s just clean up quickly.’

I gathered up the blood-stained sheets and put them into the laundry basket along with the pajamas.

Then I laid out the new sheets Sera had brought.

“Where’s the knife?”

“…Under the bed.”

“You crawl in there. My back’s been acting up lately.”

For someone in the blooming twenties around Belita’s age, whining about a bad back.
It was a poor excuse, but it actually worked out well.

Having a knife in Sera’s hands made me uneasy, after all.

While she wiped the bloodstains off the headboard, I lay flat on the floor and felt around under the bed.

Even if faint moonlight spilled in through the window, it couldn’t reach all the way under the bed, so I judged I had to find it purely through the sensation of my fingertips.

‘I think it was around here.’

When I couldn’t feel anything after groping around several times, I irritably swept my arm in a wide arc.

“Ah.”

The moment I did, a stinging heat and pain flared across my fingertips as if I had been grazed by a blade. The result of complacency.

Well, either way, I found it, so it didn’t matter.

When I pulled the knife out, the room brightened up instantly, and at the same time, Sera clicked the roof of her mouth.

“Tsk tsk, be more careful. You’re someone who’s usually good with your body, how do you go and get cut by something like that?”

“……”

The reason the room had brightened was the lantern Sera was holding.

Judging by the blackout cloth draped over the lantern, it seemed she had been peering beneath it to secure her visibility while keeping the light covered.

She naturally would have needed something like that to clean bloodstains in a dim room, but I had been so out of it that I hadn’t even realized what Sera was accurately doing or how.

“Why are you just standing there like a dummy? Take this.”

She handed the lantern over to me and spoke gruffly.

“Use that good pair of eyes of yours to check thoroughly and make sure it’s clean. Missing even a single speck will be a big problem.”

She wasn’t saying anything wrong, but I really wished we had shared the task from the get-go. Instead of talking back, I brought the lantern closer and inspected every nook and cranny of the room.

Sure enough, there were a few spots Sera had missed.

Blood that had lightly splattered on the wardrobe handle and a smudge on the headboard decoration. I meticulously wiped them all away clean.

However, there was something that wouldn’t come off no matter how much I scrubbed: the floor discolored by blood.

“Blood soaked into stone leaves a trace no matter how much you scrub it. Let’s just say you spilled something like wine. It was already a bit mottled to begin with, so it’ll be fine.”

When I nodded, she tossed a basket filled with blood-soaked rags at me and said.

“You can finish up by yourself, right? I’m heading off now. Ah, and thanks for dealing with that crazy Duchess.”

…Wiping down the room one more time from top to bottom, I tossed the blankets, sheets, pajamas, and the rags she used to clean the room straight into the incinerator set up at the back of the mansion.

As I blankly watched the scraps of cloth crackle and burn away into nothingness, I was finally able to let go of the tension gripping me.

“Wake up, Isabella. Io, you too.”

“……”

“Isabella, Io!”

“Mm, just five more minutes…”

“I said wake up!”

“Hwaaam~! Who on earth is waking someone up in the middle of the night—huh? Warm sunlight. The sound of chirping birds. A strangely refreshed body. Oh no, this must surely be being late…!”

“…Is not the case. I woke you up right on time. Stop the weird sleeptalking and hurry up and get up.”

“W-what’s the occasion? For Belita to wake up before us!”

Anyone listening would think I overslept every single day, but that wasn’t the case. It was just that my roommates happened to be early birds a few more days than I was.

“Isabella! Oh my goodness, what is wrong with this girl? Hurry up and get up! We’re going to be late!”

Io shook Isabella’s shoulders vigorously, but Isabella didn’t budge an inch. When Io even started worrying that something might be wrong with her, I brought a basin of cold water and splashed it refreshingly right onto Isabella’s face.

“W-well, you sure don’t lack vigor, Belita…”

Io said, giving me a thumbs-up. A fleeting look crossed her face as if wondering why I had to go to such lengths. Well, I did it out of a genuine sense of worry.

Besides, wouldn’t it be a major problem if someone under sleep anesthesia failed to wake up on time? I had been taught that in such situations, you had to wake them up by any means necessary.

Cold water was a relatively gentlemanly method, all things considered.

“Achoo! Wh-what the!”

“Pwahahaha! You’re finally awake, Isabella! Guess you don’t even need to wash your face, huh!”

“Was that you?”

“Eh? Not me! Lita did it!”

“How dare you try to blame Belita? It was totally you! Hey, you, you’re gonna get it too. You coming over here or what?”

“I’m telling you it wasn’t me!”

If they had practiced proper conduct in daily life, they wouldn’t have kept running into misunderstandings. I considered it just desserts.

Leaving the two of them bickering behind me, I stepped out of the room.

There were a bunch of messages from Mo Je-won left over from the night before. Should I send a quick reply on my way to work?

[ Mo Je-won: So did it get sorted out well? ]
[ Me: More or less. Nobody’s dead, at least. ]
[ Mo Je-won: Are you okay? ]

Naturally, I was okay. I had died to unfair bullshit in the previous playthrough, but my actual physical body had never truly met its end. I could always just pop a potion using my overflowing shop points.

Meaning as long as it wasn’t instant death, there was no chance of me kicking the bucket.

Come to think of it, to prepare for emergencies like this, I shouldn’t blow all my points on traits the moment I hit two thousand points. It would be best to keep enough saved up for at least two potions.

“Ah, Belita.”

For once, Robert was standing right outside his room dressed in sleepwear. This was usually the time Villero should have been helping Robert get dressed.

Wondering if I was late, I hurried over and stood in front of Robert, only to hear a soft chuckle.

“You’re not late. I sent Villero and Noah out on errands.”

So that was it.

For a second, I thought I had misread the time.

“What happened to that hand? Did you get hurt?”

Robert gestured toward my bandage-wrapped fingertips with a nod.

“I got a slight nick from some paper. It won’t interfere with my work.”

“Really? That’s a relief. I was hoping to see your handiwork a bit today.”

Pardon?

“Come on in and serve me breakfast.”

What kind of scheme was this now?

My fists clenched, but it was also a prime opportunity to raise his affection.

Gathering my resolve, I was just about to follow Robert into the room with a confident stride when—

“Do I really have to look at this kind of sight first thing in the morning?”

A familiar voice brought Robert and me to a halt.

“…Rachel.”

Having clearly been through a lot of emotional turmoil, the Duchess—who looked noticeably gaunter overnight—was standing right behind us! Frowning at the interruption, Robert narrowed his brows.

“I have something to say regarding Hereis. I’d like you to dismiss the people around us for a moment.”

“……”

I tactfully stepped back, and with that, the Duchess and Robert disappeared into the bedroom.

During that brief moment as the Duchess brushed past me, a gaze harboring a shred of warmth swept over me.

It seemed the Duchess had developed a subtle sense of camaraderie with me.

Could I finally rest easy knowing that the threat of being murdered by the Duchess had seemingly vanished?

‘No, she might come try to kill me in her sleep again.’

I’d better start locking my door securely before going to bed starting tonight.

“Hey, what was going on last night? I couldn’t ask because things were too hectic, but the more I think about it, the weirder it gets.”

Thanks to Robert dismissing everyone, we were the only two in the hallway. Realizing this, Sera sidled up to me and asked.

“With a bloodbath like that, at least someone should have bought the farm, but it’s way too quiet.”

“……”

“First aid shouldn’t have been anywhere near enough for that kind of mess—are your roommates actually still alive?”

“……”

“There she goes clamping her mouth shut again whenever things get inconvenient for her.”

She was the one being impatient. Glancing at Sera with a look of mild pity, I replied.

“They weren’t badly hurt, so bandaging them up was enough.”

“How on earth do you not get badly hurt when there’s blood spraying everywhere like that?”

“Because three of us were bleeding, obviously. We all got minor cuts while trying to subdue the Duchess, who was running around threatening us with a knife. And you’re exaggerating way too much. It wasn’t a bloodbath or anything. Didn’t you just missee things because it was dark?”

The evidence had already been burned to ashes. Since I was claiming she just imagined it, there was no way Sera could verify the truth now anyway.

“It was hard to see properly, but… wait, then why were those two lying there like dead bodies?”

“They just fainted from shock. Ah, I’ve already explained it properly to the two of them, so you can tell the Duchess she doesn’t need to worry about anything.”

She still looked unconvinced, but since she couldn’t find any flaws in my answer, she just twisted her mouth in a pout.

“Ah, come to think of it. You must have been really scared, right? I’m sorry. I should have kept the Duchess under control better…”

“You left me there on purpose, so why are you acting like this?”

“…What?”

“You said it yourself. You were flustered because you didn’t expect her to head to my room.”

Sera had clearly said that yesterday.

Then where on earth did Sera think the Duchess was headed?

‘Toward Robert, obviously.’

“Wh-what kind of nonsense are you spouting!”

“What? It’s not like I’m making things up.”

“Ha! You’ll say anything. You’re going to bite off more than you can handle one of these days if you keep this up. Watch your mouth.”

The real Belita had already bitten off more than she could handle with Sera, considering she got brutally backstabbed and killed.

Though I had turned the tables and paid her back in kind after possessing this body.

If I saw even a hint of that happening in this lifetime, I intended to return the favor the exact same way.

“You might want to lower your voice, unless you want the Duke to hear, too.”

“…Ugh. Why are you so sharp with your tongue these days? I seriously can’t get used to it.”

Even when I tried to get along, I just couldn’t bring myself to speak nicely to Sera.

Ding!

‘It’s been a while.’

The Omniscient Viewer Perspective had finally turned on after a long time.