Nothing Happened
"...line."
"...line!"
"Hey, Celine!"
"Huh?"
Celine, who had been staring blankly at nothing, snapped back to her senses. A familiar face stood before her eyes.
"...Anne?"
"Yeah, it's me."
Anne narrowed her eyes as though exasperated, then curled her lips into a smirk. "Sounds like someone had quite the eventful night. You haven't managed a single clear thought since breakfast."
Then she giggled and jabbed a finger into Celine's side. "You came in awfully late last night, didn't you? Thought we'd all be asleep, did you? Laura saw you staggering in through the door."
"Heh heh."
Even Laura, standing beside her, wore a wicked little grin. "That perfume I lent you yesterday. Did it... see some heroic service?"
Laura paused for a beat, then hurriedly added, "No, no, I'm not asking what exactly you got up to! I just wondered whether the scent... put Her Majesty in a better mood, that's all."
Anne and Laura met each other's eyes and snickered. The two of them had conjured the scene entirely on their own: Celine catching the Emperor's eye, drenched in the perfume they had picked out for her, returning from a night straight out of a dream.
Under any other circumstances, Celine would have flushed red and laughed along with them.
But what hovered at the tip of her nose now was not the fresh scent of roses. It was a raw, fishy reek. A foul stench laced with bile. The odor of last night, which felt as though it would never wash away no matter how she scrubbed, revived before her like a phantom. Laura's treasured rose perfume had merely mingled with filth and turned into something far more sickening.
In an instant, Celine's mouth went bone dry. The laughter of her friends, so familiar to her ears only moments ago, suddenly receded, droning at the edge of her hearing like distant noise.
"Uh..."
Celine forced the corners of her mouth upward. "It wasn't bad."
She didn't want to disappoint Laura. This was the friend who had parted, with great difficulty, with a perfume she had hoarded so preciously. So Celine tried to smile as if nothing were wrong. But she could not hide the tremor in her voice.
A short silence fell. The mischief drained from Anne's and Laura's faces at the same instant. The two of them traded a brief glance.
"Good grief!"
Anne suddenly swept her gaze around the room with theatrical exaggeration. "Is that the time already? The Head Maid will have our hides at this rate." As she spoke, she gave Celine's shoulder a couple of light pats. It was a clumsy gesture, but unmistakably kind. It meant: I won't ask.
Laura, too, picked up Anne's cue at once. "Celine, hurry and get ready. Today's the day we wipe down the window frames in the West Annex, remember?"
"...Yeah."
The two of them slipped out of the room like people deliberately rushing off somewhere.
Click.
The door closed. In an instant, the dormitory fell silent. Not only Anne and Laura — the other maids who shared the room had all already left for their duties. Celine was completely alone.
She raised a hand and traced her lips, her jaw, her throat.
"..."
Nowhere her fingertips touched felt wrong. The searing agony that had arrived with that tearing sound last night was gone without a trace. Her mouth and throat held no sensation of anything foreign. She had been too terrified to register it when she fled the bedchamber, but not a single wound remained on her body. She had understood it at the water tap in the back yard, where she had gone to wash the wreckage of herself: a strange, perfect healing. It had to be one of the Emperor's powers she had only ever heard tell of.
Celine drew a slow breath. Right, she soothed herself. Think of it positively. At least I'm alive.
Her jaw had not been shattered. She had not suffocated to death. She had greeted the morning with both hands and both feet intact. That alone was a stroke of enormous fortune. And above all—
I never lost my chastity.
It was a small mercy amid the ruin. It was true that she had endured something horrific, but at least she had protected the one thing she had treasured to the very end. She wanted to believe it. That her body had not been defiled. That nothing truly beyond repair had happened to her.
"I'm all right."
Celine murmured the words quietly in the empty room. "Nothing happened."
Once. And then again, like an incantation. "Nothing happened."
As though saying it could make it so.
Celine wrenched her heart back into order and left the room for the day's work.
That day at lunchtime, Celine stood in the serving line of the Servants' Dining Hall with Anne and Laura. The hall was packed with servants finished with their morning duties, the clatter of bowls and the babble of voices filling the air. It was an ordinary scene — the same everyday sight she had witnessed countless times until yesterday.
At last, Celine's turn came. The maid at the ladle tipped the day's food onto Celine's tray with an indifferent flick of the wrist.
Splat.
A pale, thick liquid sloshed in the bowl. The color drained from Celine's face.
"...Ulp."
Oatmeal porridge. A dish she had eaten any number of times before. An ordinary lunch of nothing more than oats boiled soft. Her mind knew that perfectly well. And yet the memory of last night pried its way up into her head unbidden. A mouth forced open. The horrific intrusion. The hot, brine-slick sensation sliding down her throat.
"Celine? What's wrong? Are you feeling ill?" Anne asked anxiously from behind her, but nothing reached Celine's ears. Bile surged up from the back of her throat.
"I'm sorry..." Celine clapped a hand over her mouth. "I-I'm not feeling well..."
Leaving only those words, she slipped out of the line. Anne called something after her, but Celine was already bolting out of the dining hall.
And so several days went by. Celine threw herself into her work like a woman possessed, because the wearier her body grew, the more the nightmare of that night blurred at the edges of her mind.
"Hey, Celine! Beautiful weather today, isn't it?"
"It really is."
Idle chatter with her coworkers under the sun. A cup of cool water drunk after a sweat. Such small, ordinary moments were stitching Celine's wounded heart back together, little by little.
Of course, the wound had not fully closed. On days when thin soup or porridge was served, Celine skipped her meals entirely; the mere sight of a thick, sluggish liquid made her throat clamp shut and her stomach acid crawl upward. Still, one mercy remained. The Emperor had not sent for her again since that day. At first, the mere sound of someone calling her name had been enough to stop her heart; but as three days passed, then four, Celine began, little by little, to let herself relax.
Right, Celine thought as she wrung out the laundry. To her, I was nothing more than a single night's vent for her temper.
She had been noisy in the daytime and had provoked the Emperor's wrath. So she had been punished. That was the whole of it. To the Emperor, she had simply been a bug that had briefly crawled across her sight. No one goes searching for a bug after crushing it underfoot.
Forget it, Celine thought, closing her eyes. Just forget the whole thing.
And then, quite naturally, another face rose in her mind. Come to think of it, what might Linne be doing right now...
Since her brush with death, Celine had thought of her little sister constantly. If she had truly died that day, Linne would have been left alone in the world without ever knowing why her big sister never came home. The thought alone made her chest go heavy and hollow.
I have to go see her this holiday.
Celine resolved to obtain leave for the coming holiday and visit her sister. The moment she decided, the weight that had been crushing her for days seemed to lift, if only a little. With noticeably lighter steps, she gathered her cleaning tools — the familiar water jug, the rag. Work she had always done.
Out in the corridor, warm sunlight streamed through the great windows. Celine narrowed her eyes for a moment and let the light wash over her. Everything was sliding back into its old groove. Her ordinary daily life. The days when the Emperor had nothing whatsoever to do with her.
And at that very moment—
"There. A moment."
Celine's legs stopped. A voice from behind her. The very voice that summoned her nightmare.
Ah...
The water in the jug shivered in her grip. Her whole body shook like an aspen leaf.
No. It can't be...
Just because the same person called her name did not mean it was for the same reason. The Imperial Palace held a thousand affairs. It could be an instruction about cleaning. It could be word that her assigned section had changed. Perhaps it was some trivial errand of no consequence whatsoever. Telling herself this, Celine slowly turned around, praying that she was being summoned for some other business entirely.
And at last, a figure entered her view. Celine took a step back without thinking.
Please.
There was no telling whether the high-ranking official noticed the fear blooming on Celine's face, or noticed it and simply did not care. With a face as dry and impassive as it had been days before, he spoke.
"Tonight, an order has come down for you to enter Her Imperial Majesty's bedchamber."
The water jug nearly slipped from Celine's hands. The same command as that day. And to Celine, it was nothing short of a death sentence. If she went to the Emperor like this, that day would simply repeat itself. No — this time, she might not return alive.
"I......" Her lips quivered. A sound like iron scraping came from her constricted throat. Survival instinct swallowed her reason whole. Forgetting entirely that she stood before a high-ranking official, Celine opened her mouth.
"M-must I... really go?"
A silence fell over the corridor like cold water flung across it. The official's mustache twitched, ever so slightly. His eyes narrowed, fixing on Celine and boring into her. The instant she met that frigid gaze, Celine's mind snapped awake as though she had been struck across the head with a blunt instrument.
Refuse the Emperor's order? Her? A mere maid? Every drop of color gone, Celine's legs wobbled beneath her. She flattened herself against the floor and began to babble.
"I-I'm so sorry! I must, I must have lost my mind for a moment! I would never dream of defying Her Majesty... I-I only meant that I am not worthy, not prepared, to appear before her...!"
Her tongue tangled and her breath came ragged. She poured out desperate excuses without knowing half of what she said. Darkness swam before her eyes. It felt as though soldiers would come running at any moment to drag her away.
"Forgive me! I dared to speak above my station...!"
"Hmm."
A low hum cut her off. Celine flinched and screwed her eyes shut. She had braced for the imperial displeasure to come crashing down on her head. But the words that returned were not what she expected.
"I shall pretend I heard nothing."
"...Pardon?"
The official studied her for a long moment, the way a man might appraise a jewel. "It appears Her Majesty wishes to grant you... special treatment."
"..."
Special treatment? Her? The words made no sense at all. Celine stared up at the official in a daze, her mouth half open. But he offered no explanation. He simply turned and vanished down the far end of the corridor.