Chapter 10

“The young lady of the main line wasn’t there? What does that mean?”

Silence had fallen over the dining room, which until then had been full of the clatter of tableware.

As though she had realized that something was wrong, Countess Frisian frowned and asked,

“...They say they searched all around Duke Pose’s territory, but the young lady of the main line was not there. They say they withdrew for now, but...”

“The Duke. Is the Duke all right?”

“We only received a telegram saying that he has arrived at the entrance to the estate, so I do not know either.”

...The young lady of the main line wasn’t there?

As I listened to the conversation between the three of them, my face gradually turned pale.

If things had followed the original story, then she absolutely should have been at the orphanage near the swamp in Duke Pose’s territory.

The original story couldn’t possibly be wrong.

Just then, while my trembling gaze drifted through empty air, it met someone else’s.

“She clearly said the young lady of the main line was there...”

It was the maid’s eyes, full of reproach.

At that moment, I understood.

The only thing waiting for me now was abandonment.

“......”

When even Count Frisian and Countess Frisian, who had naturally followed the maid’s gaze, started looking at me too, it felt as though sharp arrows had suddenly pierced straight through my heart.

The hand I had been resting on the table began to tremble violently.

There had been only one reason Duke Calypse Kreutz had covered up the fact that I was a spy.

‘The contract is still valid, little one.’

Because I had told him the location of the young lady of the main line.

‘But what if the young lady of the main line wasn’t there?’

My rigid heart began pounding with fear.

If he had failed to find the young lady of the main line, then the contract meant nothing. There was no reason for Calypse to keep me alive.

Because I was a spy from the Pose family, and a worthless foreign orphan.

“I need to see His Grace at once, Ai— Aisha!”

Bang—!

Countess Frisian cried out in alarm, but without even realizing that my chair had toppled over, I shot to my feet and ran straight out of the room.

Thud, thud, thud—

My heart pounded even louder than my footsteps, throbbing painfully as though nails had been driven into it.

I might die.

No, now I had no choice but to die.

“Aisha?”

A familiar knight standing across the corridor called out to me, but I rubbed roughly at the tears gathered at the corners of my eyes and passed him by.

Because even he, who had always acted friendly toward me, would surely hear that the young lady of the main line had vanished and hate me as a liar.

Click—

I went straight into a storage room and shut the door.

From the moment I had been slated to infiltrate the Kreutz family, I had already memorized the interior layout of the estate.

I had to run.

Standing on tiptoe, I stretched up my arms.

“Please, reach. Reach, damn it...”

I wanted to climb onto the tall chest of drawers, but I couldn’t reach.

Looking around, I spotted a chair.

Tap—

Using it as a stepping stone, I first climbed onto the desk and then landed lightly on the chest of drawers beside it.

The way I moved was exactly like a flying squirrel.

An unmistakable spy.

Someone who should not be inside the Kreutz family at all,

an unmistakable target for elimination.

Clinging to the pillar beside the chest of drawers like a cicada, I awkwardly wriggled my way upward until I reached the ceiling.

Then, when I pushed up against the ceiling panel with the top of my head—

...Just as I thought, there’s a circulation passage.

A pitch-black, damp passage with no light at all lay there. It was a circulation passage leading to the garden.

I curled myself up as tightly as I could and crawled inside.

It had not been made for people to move through, so even someone as small as me could barely get through it.

If it’s here, no one will even think to look for me.

Once I managed to crawl deeper inside, a hidden passage leading to the garden revealed itself.

There, I curled my body up as tightly as I could.

But I could not control the way my body shook like an aspen tree.

I had to calm down. No matter what, my goal in this life was to survive.

All right. Good. I ran.

Now they won’t be able to find me.

After crawling for a while, once I felt I had gotten far enough from the entrance, I stopped.

When I lay there and clasped my two trembling hands over my chest, the fear washing over me slowly began to settle.

I’ll hold out here until night falls, and then I’ll run outside the estate.

But then five minutes passed.

“......”

Then an hour passed.

Then am I going to have to keep running like this forever from now on?

The thought suddenly struck me.

With my mouth shut, I stared at the passage stretching out in a straight line.

The dark passage was so black that I could not even guess where it led or where it ended.

I have to keep living like this, running away?

At that moment, memories of my previous life came crashing over me.

My parents had died early. When I was still a minor, I somehow squeezed myself in among relatives who did not even feel like family and lived as though I did not exist.

Because of that, my only goal had been independence.

I worked hard and managed to get a job, but what came back to me was rent, utility bills, and barely enough living expenses to count.

...Is this it?

That was the thought I had while eating instant noodles at home.

Is this how I’m supposed to keep living from now on?

In a room not even sixteen square meters, barely scraping together enough money each day just to eat?

Without family, without friends?

“......”

And now, in the present.

As I looked down that endless passage, I felt the same loneliness in this life that I had felt in my previous one.

“...Hic, hic...”

I had not wanted to cry.

I knew perfectly well that crying when I was alone only put me at a disadvantage.

But in the end, sorrowful sobs began to spill out through my tightly clenched teeth.

Since I had possessed someone anyway, I had wanted to do well this time.

I knew the original story, and this time I had even gotten a little of that possession bonus, so I had thought I might be able to live like a proper person.

But there was nothing like that.

Even if I was born into another life, I was still me.

“...Hic.”

Swallowing back a sob, I rummaged through my pocket and pulled out a potion.

[The vial of poison]

It was the potion a spy drank before being tortured after their identity had been exposed.

“......”

I plucked the cork free from the potion with a soft pop.

If I was going to die anyway,

then maybe in this life I could die with a little less pain.

***

“Is this all?”

In Calypse’s large hand was a single tiny sock.

“Yes. There is nothing else.”

The orphanage they had reached after a week’s journey was far more desolate than he had imagined.

A swamp where one had to wonder whether people could even live.

A lone shack standing among tangled vines woven like a spider’s web.

He had mobilized the knights and searched the surrounding area as well, but just as he had expected, they had found not even a child, not even a living creature.

A knight who had arrived belatedly held out a single sock presumed to belong to a child, but that was all.

Could this be Eve’s sock?

Calypse closed his eyes slowly.

It might have been Duke Pose’s territory, but this was a place untouched by human hands.

Because after the war, it had become such barren land that no one could live there anymore.

If, as Aisha had said, the young lady of the main line had lived here, then there was no chance she was still alive now.

The torn, worn sock was proof of that.

I never even got to call your name properly.

How am I supposed to long for you?

When he forced his finger joints to move and clenched the sock in his hand, the tiny little sock disappeared in an instant inside his grasp.

It felt as though the small hope he had felt after hearing Aisha’s words had vanished along with it.

“We withdraw.”

“Yes, Your Grace!”

Stuffing the sock roughly into his pocket, he stepped into the carriage.

Without even greeting Duke Pose, the Kreutz family left the Kingdom of Doctia as they were and headed for the Frozen Kingdom.

Rattle—

The carriage jolted over the rough dirt road, but the man with the body as large as a mountain did not so much as flinch.

He could not even feel grief.

Things had merely returned to what they had been before.

To before he had heard Aisha claim that she knew the whereabouts of the young lady of the main line.

He had simply returned to that time when he had no reason to live.

...Now, completely,

He drew shut the curtain of the slightly open window.

I have no reason left to live.

He did not deserve to live.

That was the only way Calypse, who had failed to protect his family, could atone.

I can leave the succession of the Kreutz family to the collateral Lilith marquis’s family.

On the day he had met Aisha, when he had made up his mind to die, he had pictured what things would be like after he disappeared.

If he died, the Kreutz family would be thrown into turmoil for a while.

But the collateral branch of Kreutz, the Lilith marquis’s family, had always been prepared to take over the succession of Kreutz after the disappearance of his direct descendants.

They had been aiming for it all along.

He did not like it, but the Lilith marquis’s family would be able to handle it well enough.

Unlike Calypse, they had always been a family full of ambition.

As those thoughts led one into another and several days passed, the Kreutz knights at last arrived at the estate.

“Your Grace, we have arrived.”

Wearing his mask without strength, Calypse opened the carriage door.

At once, the butler, who had been waiting in advance, lowered his head with a dark expression.

“I heard the news. I think it would be best for you to rest for now.”

“I will.”

When he answered obediently and walked past him, the butler looked at him in slight surprise.

It seemed the butler had not expected the Duke, heartsick from failing to find his daughter, to accept his suggestion so easily.

Nothing mattered.

Before long, the head of the Kreutz family would be replaced anyway.

Now the bright, lively people around him would no longer have to watch themselves because of him.

The young heir of the Lilith marquis’s family would bring laughter, and would that sound not fill the castle grounds?

This was right.

He had no reason to live.

“Y-Your Grace.”

At that moment, one of the knights guarding the entrance to the castle came running over.

Something had clearly happened, but Calypse did not want to hear it.

“If it is not urgent, then first...”

“M-my lord, I think that little one has run away.”

That was when Calypse’s steps stopped.

Suddenly Aisha’s face, which he had forgotten, rose in his mind.

Twin tails of blond hair springing up like a fountain.

Blue eyes that took up half her face.

Even her impudent way of speaking and expression.

That child had vanished?

“Find her first.”

“Yes, Your Grace!”

His heart, which had been facing death, began to pound.

Calypse, who had been about to return to his bedroom, flung off the thick fur coat he had been wearing and strode inside the castle grounds.

Then the butler hurrying after him asked in bewilderment,

“W-what are you trying to do...”

“First, I need to find that little one.”

“What? We will find her. Your Grace should—”

“No. She will be hard to find.”

Because that brat was a spy.

“Your Grace!”

Just then.

A knight who had come out of the storage room approached with a face taut with tension and handed Calypse something.

It was the vial of poison.

“The potion was lying inside the storage room. So we searched the storage room, but that little one...”

The potion a spy could use to end their own life before being tortured.

If that was the case—

“Y-Your Grace!”

Suddenly shoving the knight aside, Calypse gave an order.

“I will be resting in my bedroom, so continue searching. Do not allow anyone into my bedroom!”

There was no time.

Quickly removing his mask and draping a robe around himself, he disguised himself as the gardener and ran outside the castle.

“Aisha! If you’re there, answer me!”

His deep voice, which always seemed as though it should be quiet, split in two.

“Aisha, come out if you’re there! There’s no one here except me!”

Aisha could not have gotten outside the castle yet.

Because the entrance to the Kreutz family, when the head of the house was absent, had tighter security than anywhere else.

“Aisha!”

She was only a little brat.

And yet simply because that child had run away, he felt a fear greater than death crushing his entire body.

“Aisha! It’s mister gardener!”

But no matter how much he searched outside the castle, he found not even blond hair, let alone a child.

Don’t tell me—

His legs, moving frantically, came to an abrupt halt.

Don’t tell me she had already drunk the vial of poison?

No. That little brat would never do that. She was the one who had struggled so desperately because she wanted to live.

“...Aisha, please...”

Just then.

“M-mister...”

Overwhelmed by rising despair, he had covered his face with both hands. Then, somewhere, he heard the sound of someone sniffling.

There was no way Calypse would miss it, and he jerked his head up at once.

Deep in the garden.

Somewhere in a secluded corner.

Without hesitating, he ran there and saw, beyond a pile of fertilizer and dirt, a drainage passage.

And inside that damp drain—

“M-mister... I did so many bad things that I was going to die...”

Aisha was crouched there, crying.

“Aisha.”

“...I want to live.”

At that quiet answer, Calypse heard something collapse inside him.

It felt as though he had found a reason to live.

There were far too many reasons to die, but for the sake of one thought alone—that he had to save that little brat—

Calypse desperately wanted to live.