How a Knight Treats Beasts (2)
On the surface, Mordred's manor was perfectly ordinary, nothing like the grim rumors surrounding it.
Nothing like the ominous talk of ghosts walking even in daylight, or of human screams that never quite stopped ringing...
The thick fog made the castle look a little darker than it ought to, but it was a lord's castle no different from any ordinary manor, and contrary to the ghost stories, the servants went about their work as if nothing were amiss.
There was, however, one peculiar thing.
"Unnie, there's something I've been wondering."
"What is it?"
"Um... I think I've been working here about three months now, but I don't believe I've ever seen the lord or his family. Have they left the domain and gone traveling?"
The lord's household. Even the servants had never laid eyes on the people who were, in a sense, their employers.
The newest of the maids put the question with genuine puzzlement, and the senior maid—who looked as if she had been here forever—answered with nothing but silence, her eyes half-lidded.
"......"
"Unnie?"
"...Don't be curious about that."
"Pardon...?"
"I said don't be curious. No—don't show even a scrap of curiosity. Don't take the slightest interest in where they are, or in what they're doing."
"Uh, unnie...?"
The senior maid had always been kind. She answered any question, and never stinted on warmth. But the moment that same woman turned an ice-cold gaze on her for the first time, the younger maid flinched.
"I'm saying this for your sake. Don't speak carelessly about them. If you're not careful... you might draw their 'attention.'"
"What?"
"Curiosity isn't such a good thing, dear."
"Unnie...?"
The maid's face stayed full of questions to the end, but the senior maid only wore a bitter smile and gave her no answer.
...And the next morning.
"—So I told you not to be curious."
The senior maid let out a sigh, pity written across her face.
Drip. Drip.
"Hee... heeheehee..."
A woman was laughing. Her eyes blinked without rest, and her body jerked like a patient in a fit. Ask her anything and she answered only with that strange laughter, as if there were already no answer left in her. It was the youngest maid, laughing like a madwoman, her mind gone—and looking at her, the senior maid showed only weariness.
"Haa. How many does this make now..."
Sixty-six. The number of victims who had gone mad this year.
Well. Fortunately.
"Fewer than last year."
That there were fewer victims than the year before felt, if anything, a little positive.
...Looks aren't everything.
Adults say it often enough, a phrase steeped in the profound truth that a person's charm lies not in the outside, but within.
And yet.
"M-Mr. Santa, you really don't have to push yourself."
"H-here, have some of this first."
"I-if you don't mind, would you have dinner with me tonight? A-at my place, if you can..."
...Watching this, one started to think the outside might be everything after all.
Was living in this world always this easy?
It was unbearably strange, this situation in which everyone was kind to him. Every last one of them so desperate to do him a kindness they could hardly stand it. Truly...
The world is unfair.
What kind of world had the handsome ones been living in all this time?
The man who went by the sloppily invented alias of Santa Rihan laughed in hollow disbelief, even as he clenched a fist where no one could see. He was barely holding back the urge to get violent.
And why, exactly, did he want to lose his temper and start swinging?
Damn it, that is not my taste!
......Because the one who had just asked him to dinner was not a woman, but a man.
Getting into Wales, Mordred's domain, had not been difficult in itself.
Unlike everything that counterfeit Hao Sect Leader had told him—closed off, dangerous, every fear the man did and didn't have—the people here were strangely kind to outsiders.
"Well now, you came all this way looking for work? ...Figures. A commoner with a face like that, life must have been hard on you."
"Poor thing..."
"The work will be a bit rough, but try the lord's castle. There ought to be a job for you there."
So is a pretty face just plot convenience now?
The domain folk accepted him so easily that the excuses and papers he had carefully prepared were rendered pointless. So easily that the days he had spent getting ready felt wasted...
My prime. Still goes over pretty well, doesn't it?
He called it the Bone-Compression Art and the Reverse Circulation Art, but put simply, it was nothing more than putting the principle of Tendon-Splitting Bone-Dislocation to use. Nothing but forcibly compressing bone and flesh.
In other words, Lee Han had not transformed, nor changed his face. He had only made his body a little smaller—returned to the days before his muscle and frame had thickened—and yet this appearance seemed to land very well with other people.
In fact.
"P-please teach me that! I beg you! I don't care what pain comes after!"
"Mister...? Ah—no, oppa?"
"Tina!?"
Simon, and the twins as well, had looked as if they had taken a serious shock.
"...I only did it because he asked. Wonder if that guy's woken up yet."
Lee Han shook his head, remembering Simon, who had passed out the moment he was given a taste of the Bone-Compression Art. Honestly. Couldn't even endure that much pain.
Some of us are living through it in real time.
Crack! Crrrack!
A sound from inside the body that no one else could hear—only Lee Han. Forcing the body into compression made it scream as it tried to return to its proper shape, and the pain was no joke. It amounted to torturing himself, and if he had not already endured the agony of the Fairy's Blessing—Bone Reforging—holding out would truly have been a struggle.
The pain he could bear. The question was how long he could keep this up.
Let my focus slip even a little, and it'll come undone all at once.
It felt like cradling a fuse against his chest, never knowing when the wick would burn down.
And yet...
"How do you split firewood this well? Dressing it, too—remarkable, lad."
"...I just picked it up doing all sorts of work. It's nothing special."
"Nothing special! It's outstanding, honestly...!"
...Watching people sidle up to him without the slightest sense of his unease, Lee Han broke into a cold sweat.
Why were these people so interested in him?
I wish they'd all just clear out.
It wasn't that he was anxious his identity might be exposed at any moment. Simply—
Don't these people work?
He was in the middle of working, and they kept interrupting, so of course it grated.
As the youngest laborer—playing the part of a new servant—Lee Han had to work hard. In any workplace, a newcomer who goes looking for work on his own is the one who gets favored. So Lee Han sought out tasks of his own accord and threw himself into them. He rose at dawn to clean, helped the maids with the laundry, and, making a specialty of the carpentry he had picked up as a part-time job and a hobby, fixed a great many broken things around the place.
Working from so early, it took less than four days for him to be recognized as a quite capable, agreeable servant.
...The problem was that whenever he did anything, people came attached.
Even today.
"Why is a man's skin this fair?"
"My, but he does have some muscle on him, for a man."
"Here, eat this while you work."
"......"
Like this. People kept following him while he worked, as if they were keeping watch, and a sigh nearly escaped him. What tormented him more was that he couldn't even let the sigh out...
Should I have gone for special-effects makeup instead?
Lee Han was seized by the urge to return to his original appearance.
Ha. This damn gigolo—no, this courtesan's face is the problem...
The convenience of good looks wasn't nothing, but drawing attention like this only left him stifled, the stress piling up. Worse, among those who kept showing an interest in him were men, and on top of everything else his killing intent kept rising.
Damn barbaric Middle Ages...
It was just the sort of era when there were plenty of men inclined that way, and times like this made his skull ache.
Even while feeling stifled and irritated, Lee Han worked in silence, vowing that once his business here was finished he would crush the jaws of those greasy bastards.
...Then.
"Oh..."
"Ahem."
"W-we ought to get back to work."
Sensing someone's presence, the servants scattered at once. People who had been doing nothing, idlers to a one, suddenly pretended to be busy and vacated the spot at speed. It was a thoroughly baffling scene, but Lee Han had already felt the presence, so he understood why they reacted that way. In the four days he had spent in this manor, there had been only one occasion on which people grew so awkward.
He flicked a glance that way.
Flinch!
"......"
...She might have thought she was hiding, but to anyone else it was obvious. A girl was crouched behind a tree, using it for a shield, and hair of that peculiar pink-bronze belonged to only a few people in this manor.
Lee Han considered pretending not to notice, but he wasn't bad enough to treat a little girl as if she didn't exist, the way the others did.
"Is there something you need, my lady?"
"!?"
"Is there an order you'd like to give? Or something you wish to say?"
The kindest expression he could manage. He wasn't particularly fond of children, but he could show at least a minimum of courtesy.
"......"
"My lady?"
"......"
"...?"
The problem was that, for all his kindness, there was no answer at all...
As expected. I really don't get along with kids.
A fact he was realizing all over again.