Cowardice Doesn't Belong to Villains Alone (3)
"Sir Knight, I have a proposal. You wouldn't happen to need a well-behaved great noble who does exactly as he's told? Just one. We'll count him by the head."
It was a sudden offer, and a peculiar one — the sort no one quite dared to judge. The sort that made a listener pause, if only for a moment, over morality and the ethics of a life.
And yet.
"Sir Knight, this isn't a bad thing. I know perfectly well it isn't the sort of deed the world would praise. But Sir Knight — sometimes a little cowardice, and a little wickedness, matter more than law or ethics. Evil is best crushed with evil. Wouldn't the world be better off for it?"
There was no denying her, and Lee Han felt it all over again.
So they don't call her a villainess for nothing.
She could put a plan like that in her mouth and show not a flicker of guilt. Honestly.
Still…
I'm the one who ends up approving it. Does that make me just as rotten?
Lee Han was far too conscientious to play the hypocrite who alone stayed clean, and the man called Roses had crossed the line far too many times.
And so.
So I become a bit of a bastard. So what.
If it helped scour the world a little cleaner, what was the point of sorting the wicked from the good?
For now.
"The result had better be worth it."
Lee Han rolled a shoulder, as if he'd rather watch the show than sit around wringing his hands.
Fwaaaaah—!
It was, at a glance, a mystical sight. Soft as silk, a dreamlike mist — pink and violet blended in just the right measure — wrapped a man in an instant. To look at it was to feel reality itself slip away. Anyone might have wanted, just once, to reach out and touch it.
"Wh-what are you doing!"
The one being swallowed by the mist — no, eaten by it — could hardly have found the sight pleasant.
"It's nothing much, so please don't thrash. I'm simply taking hold of your body."
"…What?"
"I'm not doing anything so crude as devouring a soul. A Dream Fiend feeds on dreams and a person's vital essence to begin with. We aren't some impious thing that lives by eating souls. …That said, if I put my mind to it, I can manage something a little dangerous. Fufu."
For instance—
"Sealing your mind away for a while is well within reach. Or would it sound more convincing to say I'm putting the personality to sleep? It's rather complicated, and my head isn't good enough to explain it properly, but the point is this. You will sleep. A deep sleep, with no knowing when you'll wake, or how long you'll lie there."
A low thrum.
"Ordinarily this isn't something one can do so easily. The method is impossible even on a newborn. It's only possible because you're at death's door, liable to expire at any moment. If I could do this to someone who wasn't dying, that knight over there would probably have killed me, don't you think? This is an exceedingly dangerous power."
"S-stop…!"
For an instant Roses barked it like an order, commanding her to dispel the mist at once.
But—
"Don't you know the way of nature? Where have you ever seen a predator that listens to its prey? Fufu."
The Dream Fiend smiled, bright and easy. It was a smile of peerless beauty, and in this moment nothing could have been more chilling. Eyes and mouth alike held not a trace of pity.
"Haaa… I think I could get addicted to this."
The urge rose in her to drive him deeper into despair, to drop him all the way into the pit. The feeling of having found a new taste she herself hadn't even recognized. Pleasure came of its own accord.
And yet—
Thock!
"…"
"If you feel yourself starting to rot, say so. I'll cut your breath off without the pain."
"Ah, n-no. I haven't fallen at all, I haven't, r-really I haven't."
The axe that had sheared past her cheek was buried in the wall. The sight snapped her back to herself at once. She knew that knight was a man who did what he said he would, and the thought of talking back never even rose.
The beating that went on more than five hours the other day hurt that badly. If it happens again, I'll die under it….
Judia wanted to live. As healthily, as vigorously, and for as long as she could manage.
With that in mind—
"Don't worry, Sir Knight. I'm a good person who keeps her promises. Properly."
"You're a Dream Fiend."
"Y-you still misunderstand me so badly. Ahem. E-even so, from now on…."
…she probably wouldn't have to endure that sort of treatment anymore.
The frightened Dream Fiend couldn't quite bring herself to say it. It was no obstacle at all to doing what she had to do. If anything, from here on it was easy.
"Pierre. You can do this properly, can't you?"
"I know what I must do without advice from the likes of you."
"You know, I'm sure. But there's no turning back now. So…."
"I know. Let me out, quickly. I want to be gone even a moment sooner."
"…Honestly. Heartless to the very last, this child."
A soft thud.
Judia Pierre — the woman who bore two names — did exactly that.
"Gyaaaaaaah!!"
Taking a certain arrogant house head's wretched scream as her signal, she shoved Pierre out.
Fwaaah!
The butler paced the corridor, unable to settle.
"What in the world are they doing in there…."
Two hours already. Two hours he had waited outside, which meant two hours since the count and the unidentified knight had begun to talk. He could only grow more anxious, worried that something had gone wrong.
Perhaps—
Nothing's happened to His Lordship, has it….
He knew His Lordship's strength. Knowing it did nothing to quiet the worry. On the day His Lordship came to harm—
I could be dragged off as well, damn it!
Less a fear born of loyalty than the fear that the patron hiding his own crimes might vanish.
"…This won't do."
The butler steeled himself for the gamble of a lifetime. Even if a thunderbolt of a reprimand came down on his head.
I'm going in!
The moment he decided, his hand was already knocking, astonishingly fast.
"Your Lordship, it's me. M-may I enter?"
Silence.
"Your Lordship? Count, Your Lordship?"
Knock, knock.
He rapped more than two or three times. When no answer came, his face locked stiff and his heart began to hammer. Ordinarily His Lordship would have been furious long since. He was not.
And then—
Bang!
"Ghk!?"
The door flew open without warning, caught him full on, and sent him sprawling across the floor.
"…What are you doing, you?"
"Y-Your Lordship?"
His worry proved pointless. There stood His Lordship, perfectly whole, having opened the door and stepped out. The characteristic sharp eyes, the twisted set of the mouth, and that arrogant air — all of it was the Roses Tura de Loengrin the butler knew.
"I asked what you are doing."
"Ah, it's nothing. Y-you were so quiet, and I, that is…."
"Don't play the fool, butler. We have a guest, do we not."
"Pardon?"
"I said we have a guest."
"…?"
A guest?
The butler's gaze slipped carefully into the office. There, legs crossed on the sofa, sat the knight who only two hours ago had looked ready to tear his master apart.
What in the…?
"Y-Your Lordship, what on earth happened in there…."
"And I am to explain that to you?"
"……."
"Since when were the likes of you permitted to question my judgment?"
"Th-that is…."
"Shut your mouth and bring tea and refreshments at once. I said we have a guest, did I not!"
"……."
"If you cannot understand plain speech, I suppose cutting off those useless ears and presenting them to that knight as a gift would do nicely."
"N-no! I understand! I-I'll bring the tea and the refreshments at once! Please wait…!!"
The butler vanished at a speed one would never have credited to that plump body. He knew his lord was a man who followed through.
Yes. That's our lord!
If the man weren't vicious, he wouldn't have been His Lordship at all.
"There isn't a wretch alive worse than that one."
Once he was sure the butler's presence had gone, Roses dropped onto the sofa and muttered something no one else could quite parse. His manner of speech and the look in his eyes had changed, as if he were another man entirely. Anyone with a sharp eye would have seen that his very air was a full half-turn from the Roses the butler knew. The voice and the face were unmistakably Roses, and yet he did not seem like Roses at all.
Watching him, Lee Han spoke.
"Don't let your guard down. You're going to have to live as that for the rest of your life, aren't you? Keep the wastrel act going. No — even if you change the persona, it can't shift overnight. You'll need three years of work at the least."
"Ha. Harsh."
"And if it is? Want me to put you back the way you were, even now?"
"…No. That isn't what I meant. Strange as it sounds, I… right now, for the first time in my life, I am feeling a thrill like true freedom. Like joy."
"…You look it."
Lee Han nodded. The man seemed to think he was staying cool about it, but the corner of his mouth kept climbing at every odd moment. That alone was enough to show how much he was enjoying himself.
Even so.
"You still can't afford to relax, Pierre. Even if more than half that flesh has been remade from Dream Fiend cells, the other half is still Loengrin's. When the original owner of the body wakes, you'll have to fight him. Get careless, and he'll take it back."
"…Spare me the petty worries. There is no chance of it being taken."
"Really? Sure you'll be fine without me looking after you? Hm? Daddy?"
"…Grkk!"
"Kyahahaha!"
The woman who had found a taste for teasing him — no, a girl who looked no older than her teens — laughed out loud. Roses, or rather the former inquisitor wearing the mask of the wastrel called Roses, glared at her as if he meant to kill her. Knowing full well that his life hung in that girl's hands, he could only clench his teeth and tremble.
Lee Han clicked his tongue at the sight.
One body or two, they're still on rotten terms.
Siblings, of a sort… no, they had been mother and child, and now they were father and daughter besides.
"Hm?"
Something about that was off.
…Damn, this is filthy complicated.
Lee Han decided to stop minding the split-off rabble. Paying them any attention only tangled his own head.
To put it simply, the one inside Roses's body now was Pierre. More precisely, it was Pierre's personality. Through the Dream Fiend's power, Pierre's consciousness had crossed over into Roses. The girl who had grown younger, conversely, was Judia.
Younger, yes — though only by about ten years. Younger all the same. A mature woman had become a girl. Anyone hearing it might have wondered what sort of grotesque business that was, and yet—
I saw it myself. Hard to disbelieve it now.
The mystic race, the Dream Fiends. There was nothing to say but that it was a peculiarity of the species.
"Please don't make it more difficult than it is, Sir Knight. I spent more than half a Dream Fiend's power restoring Pierre's consciousness and that body, and this is merely the price. My flesh has grown younger, yes — but I've also lost the power I once had to slip into other people's dreams as I pleased, or to seduce them. It isn't that I couldn't, if I set my mind to it. It simply won't be as easy as before. In a word…."
"So you've gone half-wit?"
"…Let's just say Half-Blood. It sounds more impressive."
A Dream Fiend's Half-Blood. A fair enough name for what Judia could do now. She had not lost her power entirely, but most of the Mystery that had been as good as omnipotent was gone. Her standing had dropped in a single stroke, and yet she showed no regret at all, as if this, too, were acceptable in its way.
Fair enough.
"…You got everything you were after, in the end."
"Oh my. Couldn't you say it profited us both?"
"Bullshit. I can't shake the feeling I got played."
"Hoho. Goodness, whatever do you mean…."
She hadn't the faintest idea!
The Dream Fiend — no. The girl who had succeeded in washing her identity clean, and who had agreed to enter the house under the cover story of Count Loengrin's hidden daughter. The girl who, as of today, had truly become Judia Loengrin only smiled, bright as anything, her eyes gleaming and sinister.
Truly…
There's a reason the rotten ones live so well.
The urge to smack her upside the head surged through Lee Han, and his fingers twitched. The quick-witted villainess was already gone.
…Because if that hit her now, she couldn't even regenerate.