Chapter 171
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 171
“…The butler of House Hosaquin, you mean?”
“To be precise, it was the demon inside Rico that set the fire. Demons can borrow other people’s faces.”
Gabriel had visited the Duke’s estate before, so he must have been familiar with Rico. He looked curious as to how things had come to this, but this wasn't the right place for a full explanation.
Rico, in Gabriel’s form, bowed to the real Gabriel. It was a bizarre sight—Gabriel bowing to Gabriel—the kind of spectacle you couldn’t pay to see anywhere else.
Still, telling them apart wasn’t difficult. If you stood Gabriel and Rico side by side and asked me to guess who was who, I could have picked them out without a moment’s hesitation.
I already knew there was a subtle wrongness to Rico’s stolen appearance, but comparing her directly to the real Gabriel made the difference starkly obvious.
“Seeing you side by side, you actually look quite different,” I murmured softly.
Gabriel tilted his head. “Is that so? …To me, he looks chillingly identical.”
Perhaps a third party could spot the differences, but to the person being copied, the resemblance was terrifyingly uncanny. Come to think of it, when Rico had transformed into Canna, I had felt that same sense of dissonance, but Canna herself had been utterly horrified.
Was it the fear of an entity shattering one’s uniqueness? Or was it the sensation of having your very self stolen by something that looked exactly like you?
Either way, the urban legend that meeting your doppelgänger leads to death or madness didn’t exist for nothing.
“Different? Wait, just a moment…”
My comment seemed to strike Rico as a serious issue. Still in Gabriel’s form, she stared intently at the real Gabriel, as if dissecting him, before her head snapped up in sudden realization.
What on earth did she realize?
As I watched in curiosity, Rico began to replicate Gabriel’s wounds on her own body. Starting from the ankles, the injuries slowly crept upward until they marred his face.
Flesh split open and dried bloodstains materialized. It was like watching a time-lapse video of Gabriel’s suffering. To think all those wounds were inflicted after he met me… A heavy weight pressed down on my chest, making it hard to breathe. It felt as if I had pushed Gabriel into an abyss just to save myself.
“How about now…? Do I look like Sir Gabriel?” Rico asked, scanning my face for a reaction. When I didn’t answer immediately, she turned her gaze to Pudding, who was looking at her with open admiration.
“That’s actually quite impressive. At this rate, even the Servants of God won’t be able to tell.”
Since even Pudding acknowledged it, Rico seemed to expect a positive answer from me as well.
I felt a little sorry for her, having gone to such trouble, but the difference I’d noticed had nothing to do with injuries. Anyone who met Gabriel’s gaze, even once… anyone who caught a glimpse of the suffocatingly raw emotions he laid bare in his eyes would feel the jarring disconnect instantly. But there was no way I could voice such an embarrassing truth out loud.
So, I settled for commenting on the mimicry itself. “Unless someone looks very closely, they won’t be able to tell.”
I softened my words, glossing over the fact that her copy still felt crude compared to the original. Rico sighed in disappointment.
“I thought I could do better. It was much easier than mimicking Lady Rohanson, though…”
“Me?”
“Yes. Well… the sensations from the demon still linger. Whenever I tried to mimic you, my lady, I felt a powerful resistance, as if I were defying the natural order of things. It was quite difficult.”
So that rat who calls herself my mother went out of her way to suppress that resistance just to mess with me, committing arson and running amok on top of it all.
“But why did you transform into me?” Gabriel asked, glancing at Rico after a brief hesitation. Since he hadn’t been fully briefed, he was still wary of her.
I wanted to ease his tension with a light joke, but this was hardly the time to spout nonsense like, “Two handsome men means double the joy.”
“Rico is going to stay in the dungeon in your place, Sir Gabriel.”
Before coming to rescue him, I had asked Rico for her consent to use her ability to act as Gabriel’s double. In truth, it had been closer to coercion than a request. Yet Rico, despite not being the one who set fire to the Rohanson mansion, willingly accepted her role as if it were a fitting penance.
“So, please, come with me, Sir Gabriel.”
We were heading to Duke Hosaquin’s estate, so saying “come back” didn’t make perfect sense. But that didn't matter. Regardless of our destination, the one place Gabriel didn't belong was this damp, gloomy basement where not a single ray of sunlight could reach.
“With you, my lady…” Gabriel savored the words as if they were a delicacy.
His body was a wreck, and with holy water having no effect, his wounds might never heal. I had offered too little, too late. I couldn’t understand why a simple phrase could move him so deeply.
Gabriel looked up at me without blinking, his gaze full of a tenderness I couldn’t comprehend. Lost in those sweet words for a moment, he suddenly shook his head, snapping back to reality as if waking from a dream.
“But if Bishop Marik were to find out, it would be incredibly dangerous for her.”
Gabriel spoke out of concern for Rico. He can’t even move his own hands and feet properly, yet look who he’s worrying about.
And I was well aware that Rico would be in grave danger if Bishop Marik caught her.
What was I supposed to say? That I was merely making better use of Rico’s life, which was forfeit anyway? That it was just to buy time, so it didn’t matter if she got caught? To Gabriel, who held human life sacred, I couldn’t bring myself to say I was using a person’s life as a tool.
When I weighed Gabriel against Rico, the scale tipped decisively in one direction. But to him, the mere premise of weighing lives would be repulsive. He was a self-sacrificing man who had thrown himself on the line without hesitation to protect the people of the mansion.
Since I remained silent, the answer already decided, Rico spoke up in my stead.
“I have all my limbs intact, so I will be much safer than a knight who is too injured to lift a finger.”
“Is there any need to court such danger?”
“You were only injured because of me, Sir Knight.”
“In a worst-case scenario, it is enough for me alone to be hurt…”
“Sir Knight,” Rico cut him off firmly. “If you remain in this dungeon, you will truly hold Lady Rohanson back.”
The moment my name was mentioned, Gabriel fell silent as if she’d struck a nerve. “I… have no intention of becoming a shackle to her ladyship,” he finally said, his tone defensive. “And to her, I don’t possess that kind of value anyway.”
His eyelashes trembled, and he looked incredibly pitiful. Hearing his self-deprecating words made my conscience sting as if stabbed by a sharp blade.
Worthless. There certainly was a time when I had thought of him that way.
Like everything else in this world, Gabriel had felt like nothing more than a character in a novel to me. I had considered everything about him—his appearance, his actions, his speech, his beliefs—to be a fabrication. It was laughable when something engraved in black ink on a white page crawled out and told me it felt emotions. It had actually been nauseating, irritating, as if my own value were being degraded by association, dragging me down to his level.
But things had changed. Though I didn’t want to admit it… I had grown quite fond of Gabriel. I realized it when I felt a surge of rage upon receiving the letter saying he was injured and imprisoned.
Realizing my feelings only after nearly losing him… Am I some kind of RoFan male lead?
The quick-witted Rico used that very fact as her leverage.
“Lady Rohanson… was furious when she heard the news of your imprisonment. If it were me, I wouldn’t pour so much emotion into someone meaningless. At least, that’s how I see it.”
It’s the same from my perspective. By the way, hadn’t I just said some cheesy words about treasuring him? I was sure he’d liked it, so was my memory playing tricks on me? Why didn’t he believe me? If Jelly had been here, he would have already laughed and asked if I’d developed early-onset dementia.
“So when you said you treasured me… it wasn’t just empty words to comfort me.”
Ah. He hadn’t trusted me in the first place. He must have thought it was just lip service to console an injured man.
Even without me, Gabriel was an undeniably brilliant person. He had no reason to cling to me. Even putting my personal feelings aside, he was a valuable person. If someone so upright, who strived for good and willingly sacrificed himself for others, wasn't valuable, then who on earth was?
Fortunately, he seemed to accept Rico’s words to some extent. It felt a bit strange, as if he trusted her more than me, but still.
“But… even so, I do not wish to sacrifice someone else in my stead.” Gabriel remained stubborn, still hating the idea of sacrificing Rico for his sake.
“I am no longer human, so it is fine,” Rico said quickly, before he could argue further. “Having become a demon’s host, I can perform tricks like this. I am far safer than a knight who cannot even move his body.”
She pressed on. “Above all, if I stay at the Duke’s estate, I fear I might lose consciousness at any moment and harm my daughter. I would feel much more at ease locked up far away. And if I can help you and Lady Rohanson in the process, all the better.”
In the end, Rico explained her circumstances—that she was a demon’s host who had only temporarily reclaimed control and could lose it again at any moment. Gabriel finally relented, but it was clear that deep down, he still believed he wasn’t worth saving. He only accepted her sacrifice because he judged it to be the most advantageous option.
I had made Rico convince Gabriel to let her sacrifice herself for him. My conscience screamed. There were three people in this cramped cell, and I was the only villain among them.
“Can I bind him now?” Pudding rattled the chains, asking if he could restrain Rico.
Somehow, it brought me a sense of relief. Perhaps because he took after his human companion, or maybe because he was going through puberty, the cat had a rather nasty personality. Thank goodness my humanity wasn’t the only thing hitting rock bottom.
For some reason, Pudding looked incredibly cheerful as he chained Rico up. It wasn’t just my imagination, either. Gabriel remarked that Pudding looked happy, to which the cat replied that it was vicarious satisfaction.
Vicarious satisfaction? For a moment, I thought I had misheard. Did my kid have some strange preferences? …It was all because of puberty.
Pudding’s unwelcome hobby quickly came to an end. Bound in chains, Rico looked exactly as Gabriel had when I first entered the cell. Though the person had changed, the darkness of the dungeon would delay any discovery.
Gabriel called out to me quietly. “…My lady.”
“Yes, Sir Gabriel.”
I answered, but when no words followed, I turned back to him. Gabriel, who had been staring at his own wretchedly bound double, shifted his gaze to me. He hesitated, wavering, before finally speaking.
“…There is a scar that can distinguish me. It is not a mere wound, but more like a mark.”
“A mark?”
“…Yes.”
Gabriel closed his eyes, as if ashamed to expose his own disgrace. When he opened them again, they were clouded with resignation. He slowly moved his arm. His fingers wouldn’t cooperate, causing his hand to repeatedly miss its target. Fumbling, he continued.
“It’s a mark used to identify members of the imperial family.”