Zak pressed firmly on his throbbing head.
“Anyway, Your Highness. Please don’t go in there again. Can we please look after ourselves, alright? We’re going to actually die like this.”
“Even if I do, I can’t just leave him alone.”
But the prince said it firmly and rose to his feet. Zak’s hands and feet were still trembling — and yet the prince, who had always been more timid and faint-hearted than Zak, looked entirely unbothered.
“If I die doing it, that’s my Karma.”
The way he said it so matter-of-factly made him look like a sage who had transcended life itself. Terribly ill-fitting — but there it was.
“More than anything, he’s not the type to kill someone over something this trivial.”
“Pardon?”
Zak involuntarily blurted back at that last line.
What do you mean, that evil spirit? Did you not just see him glaring like he wanted you dead? Hello?
Zak, who had been on the verge of grabbing the prince by the collar while firing off his protests, couldn’t carry it through with his hands and feet still shaking as they were.
Casioth Mordian — who was he? A warrior and Hero who had defeated the Demon King, but a man whose reputation was so thoroughly stained by his unhinged temperament that his popularity among the people had all but scraped the bottom.
A personality wreck who smashed apart anything that irritated him.
And yet, having been flung away so violently by that very man that his body had gone flying — Milano Mortiel, of all people, was coming out with an evaluation this generous.
“He’s kinder than he looks.”
Zak, who had been at a complete loss, heard what Ranok said next and belatedly arrived at one realization.
Our prince has finally lost his mind. No wonder he seemed like a changed person after the assassination attempt — it’s because he’d gone mad.
Kinder than he looks — kinder than he looks! As if he were rating some neighborhood stray dog!
Zak replied in a voice that was almost on the verge of tears.
“……Yes……”
There’s no point reasoning with a madman. Zak lamented inwardly.
He never should have come back to the prince’s side, even if it meant dragging himself along in rags to beg for scraps.
But unfortunately, no amount of regret was ever anything but too late.
Even so, Zak clung to one modest hope. The prince had always been impulsive, prone to strange whims — so surely this was just a one-time thing, and it would end there.
But Zak’s expectations were completely off the mark.
The prince went on to storm into the mad duke’s room every single day, without fail.
Exactly once a day — no more, no less.
“Get out.”
At first, the duke sent the prince flying with a look of absolute irritation on his face, just as he had on that first day.
“I said, get out.”
After that repeated for several days, a vein had appeared on his forehead.
“Prince, is something actually wrong with your head? Want me to recommend a physician?”
Around the one-week mark, he began treating the prince like a lunatic.
“If you head outside and walk toward the plaza, you’ll see a big, white building. It’s a temple. If you say you’re royalty, they’ll probably see you for free at least once — they love royalty.”
When it stretched past the ten-day mark, the man — famously known for his dislike of temples — began earnestly recommending he go to one.
“This damn…”
By the fifteenth day, what came out of that mouth was a curse.
After that, he stopped saying anything at all — whenever the prince came barging in, he would simply shove him outside, hurl one or two objects at him, and slam the door shut. That became the daily pattern.
Zak was astonished.
He was astonished that the thing the prince was stubbornly pursuing, without fatigue or boredom, was none other than cleaning the duke’s bedroom. He was astonished that it continued day after day without fail. He was astonished that the prince kept smiling even as he was treated like a plague that had crawled into the room…
But more than any of that — he was most astonished that the prince was still alive!
“Your Highness, are you alright?”
There were other candidates — aren’t you sick of this or have you gone mad — but Zak settled on just that for now. The prince answered without missing a beat.
“Yeah, I’m fine. If anything, I’m rather excited about what might come flying at me today.”
“……”
Around that point, Zak retracted the thought that the prince might have lost his mind.
Opposites attract, as they say — the prince wasn’t crazy at all.
He was pretending to be!
Perhaps right now, for the very first time in his life, the prince was operating on maximum survival instinct.
Because Milano Mortiel was a prince who had been driven out of his kingdom. A hostage, yes — but a worthless one, the kind an assassin had already come to openly target.
There was no telling when the next assassin might descend upon them. And no matter how recklessly someone might want the prince dead, surely there wouldn’t be an assassin bold enough to come looking inside this madman’s den of a tiger…
So that’s why he’s playing mad and sticking close to the duke.
No wonder! I’d been wondering why he chose the home of a duke he had no connection to! He calculated that this place would be better than the imperial palace, better than any noble house!
It was a tremendous misunderstanding — but there was no one to correct it.
And so Zak decided to pray for exactly one thing.
Please let our prince go back to normal…… well, he was never normal to begin with, but at least to before he went this mad…… actually, wait. Is now better than back then? No — anyway, please, just bring him back to enough of a normal state that he won’t get murdered by that lunatic duke.
Please. Goddess.
The Faerie, who had been watching from the air the whole time as the man made a spectacle of himself weeping and praying, shook her head and clicked her tongue.
— What a sorry sight. Truly.
Pleading like that isn’t going to reach the goddess, you know.
As she said that, the Faerie had in her hand, as ever, those white snacks.
The Faerie watched the man who, each day without fail whenever Zak left to do the laundry, had shadow figures he’d made from dark energy cleaning, repairing, and tending to the estate piece by piece.
The man who, since coming back to life, had been wearing a lifeless face and putting on airs of elegance just as he used to — staying still, particular about cleanliness — was now taking the lead himself, scrubbing dirty corners one by one, smiling without a single complaint.
She propped her chin in the air and murmured.
— ……He really is completely unpredictable.
In one way or another, he was so different from what she had initially thought.
This man called Ranok.
“Scrub every corner clean.”
When Ranok gave the order, the shadow figure that had been polishing the banister until it gleamed worked its cloth even more diligently.
Around him, shadow figures Ranok had created from dark energy were busily cleaning the estate.
After roughly three weeks of steady cleaning, the interior that had been grimy and neglected in every corner had come to look quite presentable.
The filthy carpets and laundry that had been piled throughout the sprawling estate were being washed clean by Zak every single day, and the broken areas were being repaired by the shadow figures.
Although he rarely left his room under ordinary circumstances, each time Casioth did step out, he would simply raise an eyebrow at the estate’s interior undergoing its transformation — and say nothing more.
Still though — isn’t he getting far too little sunlight?
Ranok clicked his tongue, forgetting entirely that sleeping in a dim, sunless space had been his only hobby back in the days when he was one of the Demon Clan.
Ranok had always been concerned about Casioth cooping himself up in that room doing absolutely nothing — which was why he was still barging into his room every day. Just once a day, so as not to be too much of a burden.
Of course, he was thrown out every day. Cursed at every day.
But even so, Casioth had not driven Ranok’s party out of the estate.
No matter how reckless a noble Casioth was, he could not throw out guests who were staying in his home with no less than the Emperor’s approval within less than a month.
Although, judging by the expression that kept growing more severely crumpled by the day, the Emperor’s dignity seemed to be the one thing keeping him in check — and it felt as though one month might very well be the breaking point.
Well, I can think about that after one more week, once the full month is up. Ranok thought, perfectly at ease.
That day was no different.
The day they had finally reached a full three weeks since arriving at Mordian Manor.
Zak had gone off to the washing area with a mountain of laundry still ahead of him — “Now the women and servants who come there to do laundry greet me when they see me? Can you believe it! Honestly!” — and the shadow figures were busily sweeping and scrubbing away at whatever still needed tending, all through noon.
Ranok headed for Casioth’s room as a matter of course. It had become part of his daily routine by now.
Knock, knock — he even knocked, out of courtesy.
But as always, there was no response from inside.
This much counts as basic manners, I’d say.
“I’m coming in.”
Saying that, Ranok pulled open the door — its handle was broken — and stepped inside.
Casioth’s room was dim even in the middle of the day.
The moment he entered, the thick smell of liquor hit him — the kind that had only been kept from seeping out by the broken door barely holding it at bay.
One entire wall of Casioth’s room was a liquor cabinet. Even that looked less than elegant now, sparse and gap-toothed like a missing-toothed grin, with many bottles absent from their places.
Empty bottles rolled about across the floor, and heavy curtains were drawn over the windows.
The room, where the only light was a single faint shaft of sunlight filtering through beyond the curtains, was dreary enough that any ordinary person would likely find themselves growing depressed after just a few days spent inside.
The only thing that thin strip of light between the curtains illuminated was the dust drifting through the air.
He must have drunk a staggering amount today — for a while, Casioth didn’t even notice that Ranok had come in.
The man sat slumped in the room’s sole intact chair with a blank expression, and only became aware that someone was standing before him after Ranok had been watching him for quite some time.
