“I heard that bastard followed me again.”
Young Lady Lifros, who had learned of Baron Moss’s detention, had a clearly displeased face. She quietly chewed her lips.
“I’d already received an unpleasant letter.”
Looking at her face that clearly showed signs of suffering alone, I couldn’t help but ask.
“Does Leon know too?”
“No. I couldn’t tell him because he’d immediately cut that bastard in half.”
“May I ask what the contents were?”
“A marriage proposal.”
Young Lady Lucia summarized the letter’s contents in one word.
Taking advantage of my stiffening, she clapped her hands together and tried to speak cheerfully.
“This kind of thing really doesn’t suit my temperament. Is he in prison? I should meet him directly and tell him.”
“You can’t!”
That was a method I had already failed at long ago.
“Absolutely, that’s absolutely not emotion based on affection. That’s—constantly monitoring and persistently tormenting!”
Young Lady Lucia had just answered that Baron Moss had ‘proposed.’ That she’d received a marriage proposal.
She only said that much, but in truth, from the words the Baron chose, from the context in between, she must have sensed something very unpleasant. That’s why she couldn’t show it to Leon.
Baron Moss’s ‘marriage proposal’ was essentially an ultimatum. I didn’t know he’d already advanced to that stage.
I looked at Lucia seriously. If Baron Moss somehow slipped away like a loach from this investigation.
“Joachim!”
Just then, Sir Lifros came running.
Catching his breath and about to say something to me, he paused when he discovered Lucia.
“Could you go into the tent for a moment? I have something to discuss with Joachim.”
“Why? Can’t I listen too?”
“It’s about the Meyer family.”
Young Lady Lucia gave up her seat, and Sir Lifros hurriedly led me toward the hunting grounds.
“Baron Moss has been detained again.”
The violet eyes that always held warmth were shaking. He looked back at the tent his younger sister had entered, standing at a distance.
And the charges against Baron Moss that I heard from Sir Lifros were.
As expected, utterly horrific.
* * *
That day.
The day I never dreamed would be my last at the Meyer household.
When I vaguely regained consciousness, someone was carrying me on their back while running. With my shaking head, I knew it was Baron Moss.
Strangely, my mind was hazy. I remembered Rilke had forcibly made me swallow a black pill while I lay there.
I was aware that my eyes were open, but in truth, I couldn’t tell if it was reality or a dream. I just felt like I was being carried on the back of that strange Baron who had been hovering around me, endlessly passing through a black corridor. Around the time I felt a sense of déjà vu about my surroundings, I lost consciousness again.
‘Hurry up and regain consciousness.’
‘Why won’t you wake up?’
I only heard Baron Moss’s voice.
…….
And when I regained consciousness again, I was in a dim room.
Only blazing firelight illuminated the room in red. The Baron, with his back to the crimson flames, was stained with black shadows. In both hands he held buckets dripping with water. Only then did I realize I’d been drenched with water.
‘Hello? Is this our first time talking?’
He bent his waist low. He whispered to me as I gasped for breath.
I wanted to wipe my wet eyes, but I couldn’t. My wrists and ankles were tightly bound behind me as I sprawled on the floor. Deep darkness lay around the edges of the room. Right beside my body, the fireplace was blazing fiercely.
I had a seizure from the sudden heat I encountered. When I came to my senses, Baron Moss was violently slapping my cheeks.
‘Why…… why,’
‘Pretty voice.’
The hand striking my cheek stopped.
Though my face had hardened from burns, it hurt so much. I couldn’t understand why Baron Moss was in front of me.
He was someone who should have been on trial. Baron Moss had been identified as the person who sent me the cursed earrings.
‘You. Why don’t you smell now?’
‘……’
‘Is it because you’re nervous?’
Calling pheromones a smell, he grabbed the nape of my neck.
He buried his nose in my wet nape. Though I felt rough breath touching my skin, I couldn’t move at all because of my tightly bound wrists and ankles. When I twisted my body, I was slapped again. In the end, I just trembled. Baron Moss’s head went down. Haah, he exhaled a sticky breath. It was horrible how he kept pressing his nose to the overlapping parts of my body, making me feel his breath through the fabric.
‘Whoa— I really didn’t send those earrings though.’
‘……’
‘If I had such earrings, would I have? This very moment! I would have put them on with my own hands!’
The Baron threw me down. For a while in an agitated tone, about the difficulties he faced, about the feast he’d enjoy before dying, and about what he’d done until now. He spewed out, and everything was horrible enough to be unbearable to hear.
‘You’re the most peculiar of my targets. An omega at that. I don’t usually target things like you…… but that day was special. Really special. It was like fate.’
Behind the Baron’s back, I could see a small wooden door. A red and black door. The small door that seemed to reach waist height held eerie stains in places.
Below it, the same red stains were dried and stuck in a long trail. Traces of something once soaking wet being dragged along long ago.
‘It’s where my brides sleep.’
I too would soon enter the red door. He declared.
‘But which bastard left a mark on you?’
The Baron repeatedly spewed cursing words while striking the burn scar covering half my face. I thought it fortunate that I couldn’t properly hear his words because my head kept shaking and it hurt too much.
‘I’ll cover that hideous mark with mine.’
While the Baron was selecting firewood, I desperately looked around. Please, please,
‘After spending a very enjoyable time with you,’
Then suddenly. I realized the Baron had stopped speaking.
With his back to the flickering flames, his face shadowed by backlighting stared down at me intently.
‘By now you should be despairing and giving up.’
The black face became angry.
‘Why do you have eyes that say you’ll survive!’
The Baron grabbed me by the collar.
He said things like me didn’t need mercy. From my lips split open from being hit, not even a scream came out. My throat below was suddenly grabbed and I was dragged in front of the fireplace.
As if to annihilate my vision, a fireball blazed before my eyes. Feeling my eyes rolling back, I desperately pulled myself together. My face, my nape felt hot enough to cook.
Something sticky, whether blood or tears, flowed steadily into my mouth. Trembling, I urged myself that I absolutely must not lose consciousness.
And really, just as I was about to be shoved into the fire.
‘Come out right now!’
I recognized that the voice heard from afar was the voice of the family knight, Sir Lifros.
‘If you don’t come out immediately, I’ll break down the door and enter!’
Baron Moss held onto me for just a very brief moment. Gasp. Gasp. By the time I was drenched in cold sweat and panting for breath, Baron Moss’s slow voice could be heard from outside. A wad of cloth had already been stuffed in my mouth.
‘What’s the matter.’
There’s no time.
I looked around the room like crazy.
Suddenly, I rolled toward the nearby fireplace I’d been so afraid of. I rushed at it. I squeezed my eyes shut and bit down hard on the wad of cloth filling my mouth. Enduring the terrible pain of my wrists cooking, I burned the rope. In my anxiety rather than pain, even wretchedness receded. The blood in my body ran outside my heart and screamed. Thump thump, my heart pounded. Please, please.
‘Yesterday, as soon as you left the court, Young Master Joachim Meyer went missing.’
There’s no time. No, it’s okay. Stay calm. It’s okay.
‘There was also testimony from a witness who said a carriage that passed near the count’s residence stopped in front of this house today. They said they saw you unloading something like a sack wrapped around a person.’
‘You’re really accusing an innocent person!’
‘You sent cursed earrings to Young Master Meyer!’
No, it’s not okay! Tears burst out without me knowing. I urged myself. It’s okay! It’s okay!
‘That! Ha, I’m telling you I didn’t send it!’
Because Baron Moss suddenly shouted loudly, Sir Lifros didn’t respond immediately.
‘The trial isn’t over yet. I’ll send a protest letter to the court. Even if you’re the Meyer family… you can’t rashly treat me as a criminal!’
And when I heard up to there, finally, snap, the rope on my wrists broke.
The smell of cooking pressed against the tip of my nose. Suppressing my churning insides, I stubbornly selected one piece of firewood. Enduring the pain of my ankles burning, I likewise broke the rope. Instinctively, as if possessed, I picked up the remaining firewood. I threw it toward the red door where a foul stench rose. Wildly, all of this happened in an instant.
Finally, all the ropes came undone.
Holding the firewood burning like a torch, I flung the door open.
The thought of going to Sir Lifros didn’t occur to me at all.
Going home is dangerous. Too, too dangerous.
I already had fireplace oil in my hands. I made it seep into the corridor quickly and quietly. I swept the firewood I was holding like a large match here and there. Whoosh, the old carpet, the wooden furniture began to burn quietly. It was devoured by the flames. In an instant, the narrow corridor was blocked off as a pit of fire.
There was no need to break a window. The Baron seemed to have been ready to flee at any time, living in a house with a back door. I opened it as if breaking the locking mechanism and ran straight into the dark back alley.
After rolling several times and coming quite far away, I could already see the blazing fire and smoke well even from a distance. Like the single candle lighting up the night, only the area around Baron Moss’s mansion blazed with flames above the night’s head.
