Looking back, the signs of trouble began to appear around lunchtime.
‘Your Imperial Majesty. We brought the candidates for Lenox’s dedicated servants to the waiting room, but they say one is missing.’
‘Missing, what do you mean by that?’
‘The head of Sting Trading Company reported that there were four servants between the ages of eleven and twenty. But when we actually called them, there were only three.’
‘…Mm. First, check those three thoroughly. Once you confirm there are no problems with entrusting them with Lenox, let them meet him.’
‘Yes, Your Imperial Majesty.’
Normally, I would have examined more closely the whereabouts of that one person who had disappeared in the middle. Because the trading company head had reported directly, and the total number of people who actually crossed the castle gates and entered here hadn’t changed.
It would be an excuse, but I had become somewhat complacent. Even though one person had disappeared, I simply thought they must have had a change of heart and run away. I didn’t think they were deliberately hiding their tracks to do something bad, or that they had disguised themselves with that intention from the start.
Even though this world couldn’t possibly be that kind to me.
“…”
Lying in bed, I opened my eyes wide. As if cold water had been poured over my entire body, all my senses sharpened to a point.
‘Someone is in this room.’
It wasn’t a mistake. I definitely felt a stealthy, unfamiliar presence, as if rustling. It had been a short while since exhausted me had turned off the lights and lay down, so they must have thought I had fallen asleep.
Someone I hadn’t called for couldn’t have been hiding in the middle of the night with good intentions.
I tensely rolled my eyes. My head, which had been slumped as if asking when it had ever been alert, began spinning tautly, pondering how to deal with this intruder.
Soon I got up. Pretending to know nothing, I staggered toward the table as if I had just woken up looking for water. Fortunately, my exhausted body swayed on its own, saving me the trouble of acting.
Holding a water glass, I secretly scanned the darkness. It was to find out where the intruder was hiding.
But I couldn’t find a clear answer. No matter how much I exercised, I couldn’t keenly detect another person’s presence.
‘You’d need at least one of either superpowers or magic for that.’
The only superpower granted to me was teaching frenzied elementary schoolers the joy of spinning kicks.
‘Wait. I have magic, don’t I?’
Come to think of it, that was right. I wasn’t just a simple taekwondo instructor now. I was none other than Achille Lowyn Fel Betius. Even if not as much as Lenox, wasn’t I still evaluated as someone with useful magical power?
I quickly began rummaging through the information about <Pavane for a Dead Princess> that was sleeping in my head.
The protagonist, Lenox, becomes filled with distrust and hostility toward people through a certain incident. Having come to trust no one, he always lived while being wary of his surroundings, and there was a setting that he would thinly surround himself with magical power to prevent ambushes.
That meant it was possible to detect others’ presence using magical power.
“Oh dear. I think there was a document I forgot to process, but where did I put it?”
I deliberately muttered while rummaging through the small drawer beside me. While doing so, I concentrated on the power sleeping inside me.
I just had to do it as I’d learned. The power at the very center of the body, supporting and protecting the lower part of the heart. Push it out to both fingertips. Then, instead of gathering it.
‘Make it like fog and spread it throughout the room.’
When I tightly closed my eyes pretending to be dizzy and sent out magical power, the magical power that responded to my will swept through the room. Behind the curtains, under the bed, below the table.
And.
‘Found you.’
Inside the slightly open wardrobe, someone was crouching among the clothes. Even though I hadn’t seen it with my eyes, that scene was clearly drawn in my mind.
I considered getting my sword but stopped. If I showed myself getting a weapon, the opponent would realize they’d been discovered and attack first.
So I’d pretend to slowly return to bed, then suddenly turn around…
“You bastard!”
“…Tsk!”
The wardrobe door opened and the person hiding inside burst out. There was no hesitation in their action of swinging the dagger they held in their hand. The blade made a sharp sound as it cut through the air.
Several exchanges passed in an instant. I leaped backward to avoid the dagger.
I had to stay calm. I needed to avoid with minimal movement without losing sight of the enemy’s movements, then find an opening.
We rolled on the floor tangled together in a mass. The vase on the table fell and fragments flew in all directions, and a body that had been pushed landed on top of them. Glass shards pierced my back and shoulders, causing stinging pain.
It wasn’t easy to subdue an opponent charging with the resolve to kill. Perhaps thinking someone would come soon since the vase had shattered making noise, they even attacked recklessly.
Eventually, the dagger cut across my shoulder.
“Kuk!”
At the sensation spreading hotly, I bit my lip. A stinging pain arose at the wound site as if carbonated water had been poured on it.
But since I felt better after a moment, I quickly rolled my body with my uninjured shoulder against the floor and got on top of them. With one hand I gripped their collar and with the other I struck hard at the arm holding the weapon.
Soon the dagger flew away from the intruder’s hand, and startled, they opened their eyes wide.
“…Why?”
“Hm?”
Why what? It flew away because I hit you.
“This shouldn’t be happening…”
Were they surprised that the good-for-nothing His Imperial Majesty the Emperor, who was supposedly as thin as paper, wasn’t as easy as expected?
“The paralysis poison should have been absorbed…”
“Ah, poison.”
Since they’d made a wound with a poisoned blade, they seemed to have let their guard down assuming it would naturally take effect. But since far from being paralyzed, I was flipping them over like a pancake and subduing them, they had reason to be puzzled.
And knowing why the poison didn’t work, I could only smile awkwardly.
“Unfortunate, isn’t it?”
After that, things went smoothly. I twisted the intruder’s arms behind them and brought over a curtain cord from nearby to tie them tightly. When I pressed down firmly on their back, the wriggling person eventually gave up and went limp.
Despite making quite a commotion, no one had come during all that time. It seemed I’d have to go out myself and call a guard on patrol, or bring Billy who would be staying downstairs.
“You said paralysis poison?”
Getting up, I picked up the dagger that had been sprawled on the floor. When I held it close to the lamp, indeed, on the part where blood hadn’t smeared, I could see something faint coating it and glistening.
“Just paralysis? It won’t kill?”
“…Won’t kill.”
They muttered with their face against the floor.
“There’s something I need to confirm before death…”
“Hmm.”
There was no way to confirm whether those words were lies or not, but it didn’t matter anyway. Whatever they’d hoped for when sneaking in here had become useless.
I lightly twirled the dagger in my hand and said.
“You’d better hope your words aren’t lies.”
“What do you… Aaaah!”
The intruder who had been struggling from the pain of their cut shoulder soon stiffened rigidly.
After dusting off my hands, I moved toward the stairs at the end of the corridor. Since no guards were visible, it seemed faster to call Billy to handle this.
And that’s when it happened.
“Hyungnim.”
The moment I heard the familiar voice, my body stopped abruptly. Lenox, holding the fox in his arms, was walking toward me pitter-patter.
“Hyungnim… Why are you out here?”
“No, I…”
I couldn’t say I was going downstairs to find someone to handle the person I’d beaten up in the middle of the night. I turned my gaze to something like the boy’s disheveled hair and asked back.
“Why aren’t you sleeping and wandering around at this late hour yourself?”
“I had a bad dream.”
“A bad dream?”
I was about to say it was nothing since dreams were just dreams.
“A huge wyvern attacked Hyungnim, and Hyungnim was badly hurt. There was this much blood… I still feel like I can smell blood. Why?”
I pretended not to hear the boy’s murmuring and fell into thought.
‘A wyvern… Is that past incident appearing in dreams repeatedly?’
No matter how much I’d covered his eyes with a cloak, that didn’t erase the memory of that time. It had been excessively dangerous and cruel for a ten-year-old to experience, so those memories could have left scars on his heart.
I should probably manage whether Lenox had developed trauma. As I was thinking that, the small boy asked in a tiny voice.
“So… Can’t I sleep in Hyungnim’s room with you?”
