Shivers of Doubt
“Hoo...” I took a deep breath. I am calm. Serenity is peace itself. Anxiety only breeds more anxiety, and that road always leads somewhere ugly. A tranquil mind is basic survival gear for any modern person. Sure, my body had been dumped into this fantasy world, but my soul still belonged to a guy from the twenty-first century. The flesh could never defeat the spirit. At my core, I was still a modern man.
Shiver, shiver, shiver.
So even though the time I’d given Beatrice was almost up, I wasn’t anxious. Not even a little. I believed she would come to me.
Shiver…
I could keep my composure…
“Could you stop shaking your leg, please?”
“Uwaaaaah—!!!”
Composure? What composure? I screamed inside the inn room and raked my hands through my hair.
Two days. That was how long I had stayed cooped up in this inn, waiting for Beatrice. On top of everything, I seemed to have caught a cold—my whole body kept trembling, so I’d been forced to stay wrapped up tight in blankets the entire time. I wondered if Beatrice had any idea how painful every single hour had been, or that I was enduring all of this for her.
“Didn’t you catch that cold precisely because you gave away your umbrella and walked around soaked?”
“Ahem.”
I inwardly cursed at Lyn, who was still nitpicking without understanding my grand design. The reason I kept the curses inside my head was simple: explaining every little thing out loud wouldn’t look cool at all. True good deeds always hit harder when someone else discovers them rather than when you brag about them yourself. Me, silently placing my only umbrella over the head of a girl who had been abandoned in a back alley after a gang fight, then walking away drenched in the rain. If I performed the act with zero ulterior motive, wouldn’t that be more than enough to make Beatrice reconsider?
If I spelled all that out, the maid standing in front of me would clearly think I was pathetic. So I simply used my authority as her master to shut her up with one authoritative grunt. It had nothing to do with the fact that she was one of the most skilled assassins in all of Divia. No, nothing at all. On the surface, she was simply my personal maid.
“It’s almost time now…”
“Where did the young master go? The one who was cheering so confidently, saying there was no way she could refuse after you got soaked to the bone for her?”
Look, at first I really did think it would work. Honestly, I believed I had done everything possible. I couldn’t imagine anyone else offering better terms than I had.
“Honestly, what could be better than telling her she doesn’t have to do anything and can just do whatever she wants?!”
“Nothing. Among normal offers, it’s the best.”
Normal offers. The deliberate choice of that qualifier implied that if we stepped outside normal boundaries, there were even better options. When I shot her a look that asked what she meant, Lyn simply opened her mouth as if the answer were obvious.
“You could have just taken her by force and settled the matter.”
“……”
“No matter how many things you’ve given up, the power of the Elias Count Family hasn’t gone anywhere. Dragging one little back-alley brat here would be nothing.”
She was right. That back-alley brat might one day grow up to become the Owner of Noble Blood, one of the bosses who ruled the continent, but that was a matter for the future. Right now, she was exactly what Lyn said—just a kid from the slums. The power of the Elias Count Family. Hell, I wouldn’t even need to go that far; if I had simply ordered Lyn, taking Beatrice would have been easy.
“People can never forget the first taste of warmth they receive. If the reason they had to return was stronger than that warmth, maybe it would be different, but that child didn’t seem to have any such desperate attachment. If you had brought her and given her the warmth she wanted, you wouldn’t need to worry like this.”
You already know that, don’t you? That this method was the easiest and fastest.
Lyn’s gaze seemed to ask exactly that. I nodded, but answered without hesitation.
“It would leave a scar.”
“……”
“Forcing her might be easy and convenient, sure. But the process would definitely leave a scar on that child. A huge scar that says I’m someone who can treat her violently if I feel like it.”
My goal was to prevent every single boss from undergoing the Fall. To do that, I had decided to target Beatrice first, since she was connected to all the other bosses. And once I made up my mind, I poured in every bit of game knowledge I possessed to do my absolute best.
That was why.
“I don’t want to leave even the smallest scar like that.”
A voice echoed inside my head.
The tearful, broken voice I had heard right before falling into this damned world. It had been so cracked from desperate screaming that it sounded like it might split apart. That voice was what had steeled my heart. Taking her by force and leaving a scar was not my best. Even if it meant failure, doing my absolute best and then falling was the right path.
“…Sigh.”
Lyn let out a long breath after hearing my answer.
“If you truly believe you did your best, then just sit quietly and wait. If you really did everything you could, an answer will surely come.”
“That’s exactly the part that isn’t easy at all…”
“…So you’re waiting here, right?”
She was here. She was here, she was here!! I could tell just from her voice. I flung off the blanket wrapped around me, dashed forward, and yanked the door open.
Beyond the door stood the girl I had waited so desperately for, holding a black umbrella.
Rattle, rattle.
Inside the swaying carriage, Beatrice stared blankly at the passing scenery. The landscape whipped by so quickly that the carriage must have been moving at tremendous speed, yet inside there was almost no discomfort aside from a faint vibration. The seat was so plush it seemed to swallow her hips the moment she sat down. It was already astonishing.
The man who had taken her in—her godfather—had boasted that many even more surprising things awaited her. He claimed there were countless things that would amaze and delight her, just like this carriage created through magic engineering. Watching her godfather grow more excited as he spoke, Beatrice secretly felt glad she had signed the contract.
Two days. To someone else it might have been an endlessly painful time, but for Beatrice it had been an incredibly short period of hesitation. What had come to her at the very last moment was the black umbrella the man had left behind. As if to support every proposal he had made, the umbrella he had thrown to her while getting soaked himself had pulled at her heart. If she hadn’t remembered that umbrella, she might have squeezed her eyes shut and let the opportunity slip away.
Sending off her completely departed past along with the flowing scenery, Beatrice thought to herself.
“…So.”
“Hm?”
“Where did you say we were going again?”
The destination of this incredibly fast carriage suddenly made Beatrice curious, so she asked. She still wasn’t used to speaking politely, but her godfather had told her it was fine to ask anything she wanted to know. Still, she wasn’t entirely sure if that was really okay. Even so, she had thrown out the question with a faint hope.
“You will know the moment we arrive. That’s what I told you.”
“…Ah.”
Her godfather, Yulian von Elias, answered as if it were nothing.
“Since I didn’t tell you the destination, it’s only natural to be curious. A perfectly normal reaction.”
He even added that her action was natural so she wouldn’t blame herself. Such small consideration was a kindness Beatrice had never experienced before. To her, who had grown used only to hostile glares, it was the most awkward treatment imaginable.
“We have arrived.”
The maid who had been driving the carriage spoke, and the strangely awkward atmosphere inside broke.
“Let’s get off.”
Her godfather rose naturally, opened the carriage door, and stepped outside. Following him, Beatrice’s eyes fell on a dense forest. Trees grew so thickly that anyone who entered carelessly would surely lose their way. It looked like a maze.
“From here, it will be just the two of us.”
“…Understood.”
At the words that she would enter the forest alone with her godfather, Beatrice’s eyes widened. Enter? Into that forest? Just the two of them?
Beatrice looked at the forest once more. It was still incredibly dense. There wasn’t even a single proper path, as if no human hand had ever touched it. All she could see were fallen leaves covering the ground. There were occasional gaps a person could squeeze through, but calling them paths felt questionable.
Crunch, crunch.
Her godfather walked forward without hesitation, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“Follow carefully, Beatrice.”
He even looked after her as she followed behind. He moved as skillfully as someone who had entered and exited this forest hundreds of times. Staring at his back, Beatrice followed in a daze.
They had been walking like that for twenty minutes.
“Beatrice.”
Her godfather, who had been silent until now, slowly opened his mouth.
“Yes? Y-yes…”
“You were curious about where we’re going, weren’t you?”
At his question, Beatrice nodded. In truth, her curiosity had only grown stronger since entering the forest. No, it would be more accurate to say it had multiplied. Anyone would feel the same after seeing her godfather treat this completely uninhabited forest like his own backyard.
“The reason I didn’t answer even though I knew you were curious is because I thought showing you directly would be far easier than trying to explain it in words.”
“……”
“There’s an old saying in the Eastern Continent: a hundred words don’t equal a single glance. Seeing once is better than hearing a hundred times. What I’m about to show you is the same.”
A fishy smell. The moment her godfather’s words ended, the entire forest suddenly filled with the metallic scent of blood. There was no change in the surrounding mana or environment, yet the smell of blood that gripped her senses was thicker than ever before. At the same time, it was shouting at her.