How a Knight Treats Beasts (3)
Four days. Short, if one insisted on calling them short, and yet time enough to watch the ground around him and take the measure of the air.
In those four days, Lee Han gathered four pieces of information.
The first.
There's a trace. There is one.
He had confirmed that the vampire—Number Two, that perverted lecher—had left a trace inside this house. The man himself might not even know such a thing existed, but it was there all the same: a reek like a lump of tar, rotten past the point of nausea. Whether it was the stench of a vampire, or simply the rot of the life that wretch had lived, he could not say. Either way, the stench surfaced now and again within the mansion.
Finding the stench, however, was not the same as catching sight of the man, or learning anything about him. Was he simply well hidden? Or had he concealed what he was by some special means? Whatever the answer, it grated without end.
Still. That I found a trace is what matters.
He had gained the certainty that the man was here. For Lee Han, that alone meant the hardship had not been wasted, and the thought came with a strange freshness.
The second piece of information mattered more.
There is no vampire among the servants of this mansion.
A few unusual maids, and the groundskeeper, had learned Fighting Art, but that was none of his concern. What mattered was that none of them carried Number Two's trace, and that among the servants, at least, no one was working with the vampire.
Turn that around, though, and—
Then it may be tied to the masters of this house.
The masters of the mansion. The blood of Mordred might be sheltering the pervert. That, however, was something he could confirm only by seeing them with his own eyes.
And there lay the problem.
Are these people hibernating?
Which brought him to the third piece of information: the Mordred bloodline might be confined somewhere other than the mansion. In truth, he had not heard it from anyone. Rather—
Even the servants take no great interest in the fact that their masters are gone. That... isn't normal.
It was something he had reasoned out for himself.
A truly strange house.
Alien. Servants of a noble house—a great noble house, at that—ought to hold some loyalty toward the masters they served, and yet he saw nothing of the sort in them. They simply did the work assigned to them, mute as NPCs set to guard a lord's castle. Peculiar. Uncanny past all reason.
In his heart he wanted to remark on that strangeness outright. But—
It had been both counsel and warning from the head maid who interviewed him the day before he started, and Lee Han knew by instinct that if he ignored it and asked the others, he would be driven out without fail. Looks might lend a hiring its plausible excuse, but a senseless washout was something an organization would always throw out. That was simply how such places worked.
And so he could not lay any further flesh upon his guesses. Even if he wanted more, he would likely have to labor here for over a year before he barely scraped any of it loose.
He had not the faintest intention of wasting time that way.
Which was why—
The fourth piece of information matters.
His gaze shifted. The only blood of Mordred in this castle who did not hide her face, scampering about on small feet.
A flinch.
"Ah, my lady. Was there something you wished to say?"
"......"
"My lady?"
"......"
"...Hmm."
Louise Aipera de Mordred. Direct blood of House Mordred, and the only little lady who might know something that had been hidden. She might prove to be the fourth piece of information Lee Han had found. There was, however, one considerable problem.
A rapid patter of feet.
"...Quick on her feet, too."
The moment their eyes met, she ran, so there was never any time to speak, and it was giving him a headache.
"Haa..."
Sunk down in the mist garden, he let out a sigh thick with fatigue.
"Do not exchange a single word with Lady Louise."
"Pardon?"
"Don't ask why. If you're told not to take an interest, then don't. Treat her with indifference. Understand?"
"...Understood."
"Hm. A very fine attitude."
At a response that offered silent assent and no further questions, the senior servant nodded as if satisfied, then launched into an authoritarian mutter he seemed unable to keep to himself.
"Kids these days. If your elder tells you not to do a thing, you simply don't. I can't fathom why they keep asking for reasons."
Letting it in one ear and out the other—a trick worn smooth in his past life as a soldier—Lee Han turned his thoughts elsewhere.
They treat a noble young lady like this?
Were noble houses always this way?
Could she be a bastard, and not a trueborn daughter?
He called up a few of the commonplace romance-fantasy plots he had read in his previous life.
Is it that? The mother died giving birth, so the husband and his siblings shun the youngest? Or she was born without any ability, something of that sort.
Those were the stories he had seen most often, and every time, he had thought the parents and the siblings truly small. A mother dying in childbirth was pitiable, yes—but what wrong had the child committed? A lack of ability? And what crime was that? A child's possibilities were not decided by inborn talent alone. For a little one to be treated so unreasonably was really—
...No. Don't dwell on it.
Lee Han felt he had gone too far. Surely it could not actually be a story that rotten. And even if it were, that was no reason for him to step forward. He had come here with a purpose. He had not come to look after a child.
Don't get too immersed.
He had to keep his own purpose in mind.
A splash.
"...I knew it would come to this!"
Lee Han dove into the water without a moment's hesitation to pull out the girl who had fallen in.
"Achoo!"
"Dry what's left with the towel, and have some tea. That's how you keep from catching a cold, my lady."
"...Thank you."
"Don't be formal with me. I'm nothing but a servant."
"Okay."
"......"
"Ah..."
The girl, hair fluffed like a puppy soaked to the skin, went round-eyed and shut her mouth, as if she had spoken formally after being told not to. Lee Han only smiled bitterly at it, and said nothing more.
Instead—
What am I even doing.
He wondered what on earth he was doing here. Why was he looking after a child, and why was he brewing warm tea? The situation was enough to curdle into self-reproach.
Then—
"...Why are you here?"
"I told you not to be formal."
"I-I'm more comfortable this way."
"......"
"Th-that aside, an answer, please."
"...I just happened to see you. Going off to fish alone."
"Oh, I see!"
The child nodded, satisfied. It could hardly have been answer enough, and yet she simply accepted it. Naive, perhaps—but it was not strange for a child that age to be so simple.
I didn't lie to her. I answered honestly, so it's fine.
It was no joke. He really had only happened to see her taking up a fishing rod. He had also happened to notice a drizzle coming on, and thought that fishing now might end in an accident. So he had followed her to the river on a whim, and sure enough, the little one had slipped and was drifting helplessly downstream.
What would have happened if I hadn't pulled her out.
Lee Han was beginning to think the girl was a time bomb. Like other children, she did not recognize that danger was danger. Courage born of ignorance—was that the way to put it? Take your eyes off her, and an accident would come at any moment.
"...My lady, I'm not asking to be thanked for saving you, but may I ask one question?"
"Yes, you may."
"How long have you been fishing?"
"Since I was six!"
"......"
"Ah, but until last year, the grandfather who used to look after me went with me!"
"Then that grandfather..."
"He said he'd come later, once I'd slept a thousand nights. Hehe."
"......"
"Hm? Why are your eyes all wet?"
"...I think I'm coming down with a cold."
"Oh!? Th-then you mustn't..."
"Haa. Sentimentality..."
This was why growing older was a frightening thing. Did tears come so cheaply? Lee Han barely dried the moisture gathering at his eyes and pressed his fingers hard between his brows.
But no sooner had he forced them dry—
"...Um, Santa."
"Yes?"
"You know, um..."
"?"
"W-would you maybe be my friend?"
"......"
"I-if you'll be my friend, I'll give you this too. I saved it up selling fish. Hehe."
A soft clink.
"W-with this, can you be my friend?"
"......"
"Santa?"
"......"
...So this, it seemed, was why growing older was frightening.
Lee Han had heard the child's answer, and he felt that the thought behind it was at once utterly innocent and unbearably pitiful. How could it not be? She endured that harsh labor, even the cold that froze her feet solid, and the reason she earned the money was not so she could run away from home. It was simply so she might obtain someone of her own.
He found it wretched beyond words, and at the same time he thought reality cruel. What had the child done, that she should have to live a life like that?
"Hehh..."
"......"
Lee Han looked at the child asleep on his back. Perhaps because it had been a long time since she felt another person's warmth, her face was truly glad, and bright. He found that happiness a comfort, and he walked all the more carefully, so the child would not wake.
"—Did you not hear the order? You were told not to involve yourself with the young lady."
And yet, for all his care, there was a man raising his voice with no sense at all.
"......"
"Mind your own business, and know the limit of it. A fool who'll bring disaster on himself with needless pity."
"...Groundskeeper."
"Heh heh. You will call me Groundskeeper, sir, you ill-bred wretch!"
The groundskeeper. A middle-aged man who looked to have learned Fighting Art planted himself in the way and poured out his presence along with the warning.
"There's always one of your kind. Fools who put on a pathetic little show of sympathy. Idiot. That sympathy only makes things harder for the young lady. If everyone simply ignored her, she would give up on everything soon enough—haa! Enough. What more is there to say to a worthless thing like you? A waste of my time."
"......"
"Set the young lady down and get lost. Don't show yourself before me again. The next time you appear in front of me, then I'll—"
He meant to spit out some further warning. No—not a warning. A threat. He had been about to raise his voice and browbeat the man before him.
He had been.
"—Hey. Shut up. You'll wake the kid."
A wet, grinding crunch.
The man's mouth was forced shut.
"Mmph—!!"
"I said shut up. You'll wake her."
Crunch.
"!!!!?"
The middle-aged man thrashed. A hand he had not even seen approach clamped over his mouth with brutal force and caved his cheekbone in where it stood. He wanted to scream with the pain, but the pressure of the hand sealing his mouth only grew fiercer, and though he struggled with his whole body, he could not shake it off.
And what the middle-aged man saw, as his consciousness slowly dimmed, was this.
"You'd better not pass out. The way I wake people is never gentle."
"!!?"
"If you're curious about the method, go ahead and faint."
"Mmph!"
"Shh. You'll wake the kid."
Having looked into that murderous gleam, the man had to thrash again with all the strength he had left, if only so he would not lose consciousness. And well he might.
For that warning had not sounded, in the slightest, like empty words.