You’re Mine
The door swung wide open.
“Go on in.”
At the knight’s prompt, I stepped into the room.
It was my first time entering a young lady’s room, so I was a little tense.
The view inside was, in its own way, perfectly ordinary.
It looked exactly like the kind of room one would imagine a medieval noblewoman to have.
And at the edge of my senses, I caught a sweet fragrance.
A soft floral scent.
So this is what my new master smells like.
As that thought crossed my mind, she spoke.
“Derick, you may go back.”
“Yes, Lady Medeia.”
My new master.
That was when Medeia ordered the knight who had brought me here to leave.
Wait, hold on a second.
If the knight left, then the only people in this room would be…
Just me and Medeia?
Was that really allowed?
Leaving a lowly slave, of all things—a male slave at that—alone in a noble young lady’s room?
In the year I’d spent studying this world, that was the sort of thing I’d learned was absolutely not supposed to happen.
And yet—
“Understood. Please call if you need anything.”
Without a second word, Derick obediently withdrew.
Honestly. Had I been the one who’d been undereducated about common sense?
I was scratching my head in disbelief when Medeia asked, “What’s your name?”
“Kael.”
“Hmm.”
Medeia slowly came toward me.
I couldn’t see the color of her hair, eyes, or lips, but
every sense I had beyond sight was screaming the same thing.
She was just insanely beautiful.
If I hadn’t been a slave and had instead been some prince on a white horse, I would’ve charged in with a confession right then and there.
But I was Kael!
A proud human target of the Penwise Circus, a man who had learned how to live in perfect accordance with his lot in life.
I never crossed the line.
Because if I crossed it in the wrong direction, my head would be the thing crossing first. Why the hell would I do something that stupid?
“Are you really blind?”
“Yes! I’ve been unable to see since birth.”
A blatant lie.
I’d seen perfectly fine since the day I was born.
The only reason I couldn’t see right now was because the body I’d possessed was a little unusual.
Even that, though, would clear up once night fell.
Of course, even during the day my senses were so sharp that I could perceive most things just as well as anyone else.
For example—
I’m going to lose my mind.
Her breath, now close enough to touch, and her scent.
Those two watermelons were driving me absolutely crazy.
Unaware of my inner turmoil, Medeia studied me with obvious interest.
“That blindfold is bothering me.”
She pulled at the black blindfold covering my eyes.
And then, for a while, she said nothing.
Had something gone wrong?
Had I forgotten to wash my face this morning?
Had she found eye boogers or something?
While I was worrying about all kinds of ridiculous things, Medeia frowned and said, “You.”
“Yes!”
“Keep wearing the blindfold from now on.”
“Understood!”
She’d just pulled it off, and now she wanted me to put it back on.
It was absurd, but trying to understand what a villainess was thinking was the sort of thing only amateurs did.
In moments like this, it was better to follow the question exactly as asked instead of trying to divine the examiner’s intent.
It’s definitely not because I’m a slave and have no right to refuse.
“You said you came from a circus troupe.”
“That’s right! Until yesterday, I was proudly working as the Penwise Circus’s human target!”
“A target?”
“Yep! You can think of it as a human target.”
“……I-I see.”
Medeia drew back a little, wearing a look that suggested she’d just been thoroughly horrified.
“Whatever you were doing before, forget it now. From this moment on, you’re my butler. First, you need to wash up. I’ll have a maid waiting for you, so bathe, change clothes, and come back.”
“Understood!”
As instructed, I left the room, where a maid was already waiting to lead me to the outdoor bath.
An outdoor bath at a villa, too.
The Astellia family really did have money.
“Here’s soap and your clothes. Have you used soap before?”
“Yes. I understand it’s for washing the body. Thank you.”
Just as I was taking the soap and clothes from the maid and about to enter the bath, she stopped me.
“W-wait. Are you planning to go in alone?”
“Who else would I go in with?”
At my question, the maid looked at me as if I were a lunatic.
“I heard you can’t see. If you go in like that by yourself, you might fall into the bath and drown.”
Oh.
Come to think of it, from her perspective I was just a blind man.
When I thought about it that way, it was a perfectly reasonable reaction.
That didn’t mean I wanted to show my naked body to just anyone, though.
“It’s fine. I’ve bathed alone often enough to manage. If it really seems dangerous, I’ll scream, so I’d appreciate it if you came running.”
“……Very well.”
Fortunately, the maid didn’t seem particularly interested in my naked body and readily accepted my proposal.
So I enjoyed a proper human bath for the first time in a while, dried myself off, and changed into the clothes the maid handed me.
“So this is a butler’s uniform.”
The fitted black uniform was more comfortable to move in than I’d expected.
Honestly, after wearing clothes that were basically rags, I probably would’ve been satisfied with anything they threw at me.
Still, this was nice.
Content, I headed back outside where the maid was waiting.
“You’re fin—”
She stopped mid-sentence and stared at my face.
What was she looking at so intently?
Did I have something on my face?
“Is something the matter? Did I fail to wash properly?”
“N-no, not at all. I just lost focus for a moment. The lady is waiting, so we should hurry.”
“Oh, one second. I just need to put this on.”
The ragged clothes had been taken away by the maid to be burned, but the black blindfold Penwise the director had given me remained.
Medeia had said I should normally wear the blindfold around the villa.
Once I put it on, the maid stopped staring at me quite so often.
Did I really have something on my face?
What the hell was with that look?
“L-let’s go.”
“Understood.”
***
After Kael left to bathe, Medeia was left alone and found herself recalling what had just happened, a smile tugging at her lips.
“What a strange slave.”
The blind slave Kael.
He was unlike anyone Medeia had ever met.
Ordinary people were afraid when they looked at her.
That was partly because her family was a ducal house, one of the pillars of the Empire, but the greatest reason was her eyes.
Her green eyes, which she had possessed since birth.
They stirred an inexplicable fear in anyone who saw them.
At first, the ducal house had tried every method imaginable to solve the problem, but nothing had worked.
An unbreakable curse.
Medeia hated that curse.
Everyone she looked at feared her, and it had even caused her family to abandon her.
“It’s been a long time.”
Abandoned by her own family and trapped in the villa as if exiled to the academy, Medeia had lived through days that were nothing short of hell.
Every time the servants looked at her, they cried and begged to be spared.
Even the knights kept their distance, afraid of her.
She could endure that kind of reaction if she had to.
But the fact that no one remained at her side—she could not endure that at all.
That cruel loneliness.
No one had ever once reached out a hand to her.
And then there had been one man.
A man who had not turned away from her.
A month ago, she had slipped out of the villa without the servants or knights knowing.
It had been nothing more than a whim.
She had thought it would be better to get outside and breathe fresh air than remain in a villa where no one even spared her a glance.
But it had been a mistake.
“G-give us everything you’ve got!”
She had run into bandits.
Even though the bandits had trembled at the sight of Medeia’s eyes, they had not fled.
Instead, as if they meant to eliminate the source of their fear, they had charged at her with the intent to kill.
Cursing her own mistake for having gone outside without escorts, Medeia closed her eyes.
Perhaps it would be better to die this way.
So when do I die?
But no matter how long she waited, she felt no pain.
Instead, she heard a man’s playful voice.
“You can’t go waving something dangerous around at people!”
Bang!
A man wearing a black blindfold, appearing from nowhere, had subdued the bandit trying to kill Medeia.
“Are you all right?”
Then he approached the prone Medeia and held out a hand.
A hand…?
She couldn’t even tell how long it had been since she’d last taken someone’s hand.
The warmth coming from that man made Medeia cry without realizing it.
“Are you crying? You must’ve been really scared. Uh, hmm. I don’t have anything clean to wipe your face with, but will this do?”
What he offered was a filthy handkerchief, caked with sweat and grime.
It was impossible to tell when it had last been washed, but the warmth of another person after so long was enough that Medeia didn’t care about such things.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it. Be careful on your way back in. Ah, just toss the handkerchief anywhere when you’re done. I’ve got work to do.”
Even after the man left, Medeia remained there for a long while.
And from the day she returned to the villa, she began searching for him.
At last, she found him.
The blind slave Kael.
That was the true identity of the man who had saved her.
“I’m glad he was a slave.”
Medeia smiled, beautifully and terribly.
“If he hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have been able to make him mine.”