Dreams Gleam, But Reality is an Abyss (2)
Just as the sky outside the window began to brighten, Emilia finally stirred from sleep.
...Where am I?
What she saw was an unfamiliar ceiling. The feel of the bed, the position of the window, the entire interior—it had all changed. This wasn't the room assigned to her. Her still-groggy mind dimly pieced together that she'd been moved while asleep.
I was definitely... with Mona...
Recalling last night's events made her face flush hot in an instant. To think she'd done something so embarrassing....
Thinking back, it seemed far more humiliating and shameful than being directly violated by Count Melrn himself. She'd experienced a whole new world.... To think something so lewd could even exist.... She'd realized just how much the world held that she knew nothing about. She'd come to that realization.
In any case, her memories from last night ended there.
At some point... right, when I looked into that woman's eyes...
Her consciousness had suddenly flown away, and she remembered almost nothing after that. She had a vague feeling of hearing various voices, but she couldn't recall whose they were.
The only other thing she remembered was, I dreamed of my parents after so long.
She'd dreamed of those innocent days, cradled innocently in her parents' arms. Normally, dreams of her parents brought only nightmares of that day when Count Melrn had taken everything from her.
For once in a long while, it had been a warm, happy dream. Maybe that's why her heart felt so at peace now.
I was held in such a warm embrace... that's the feeling.
She'd woken feeling incredibly refreshed, but now she regretted not sleeping a bit longer. Time spent lost in dreams was happy. If she could stay in that dream, she wouldn't have to face this dogshit reality.
...Well, turning a blind eye to reality forever wasn't Emilia's style anyway.
"...But no one's here today, huh...?"
Had she woken too early? Until now, Mona or Hilde had always been by her side the moment she opened her eyes, but today, the room was empty. Pondering what to do, Emilia decided to wash up first. After all her antics with Mona, her body was sticky with all sorts of fluids.
And so, Emilia stepped out of the room to clean herself.
She searched for something to wear but found nothing prepared, so after much deliberation, she wrapped herself in the thin blanket she'd slept under and headed out. She couldn't very well wander around naked, after all.
No one's around.
She'd half-expected to run into a servant or two, but the mansion's interior was eerily quiet. If someone had been there, she could have at least asked for directions to the bathroom.
Come to think of it, this mansion has illusion spells on it.
If there's no guide, you can get lost and never find your way back, or so they said.
Should be fine, right?
Was it boldness or fearlessness? Either way, Emilia wasn't without thought—she figured it was necessary to experience the mansion's spells firsthand. If she got lucky, she might even find an exit like this. If not, she could uncover some clue to escape.
Until now, someone had always been with her, so chances to explore freely on her own were rare.
...Worst case, she just needed to find the damn bathroom properly.
"Let's see, not this room... That one? Or this?"
She crept down the hallway on tiptoe, quietly opening doors as they appeared. An absurd number of doors, an absurd number of rooms. Marveling at each one, Emilia explored Count Melrn's mansion.
For some reason, the thrill and excitement of discovery made her heart pound.
Forgetting her situation entirely, wrapped only in that thin blanket, Emilia ventured on—until she discovered a certain room and felt herself drawn inside as if pulled by a magnet.
"Whoa... wow...!"
What she found was a room like a study. It was vast, housing a collection of books rivaling the royal library. Waterfalls cascaded intermittently like torrents, with channels carved across the floor where the water flowed like a spring.
Towering bookshelves stood in disarray. The walls themselves were bookshelves, packed floor-to-ceiling—far above Emilia's height—with tomes she'd never seen before.
The waterfalls were one thing, but trees were planted here and there in this enclosed space. Yet the air was fresh, the humidity not oppressively high. The shelves directly under the waterfalls looked drenched, but the books appeared perfectly fine at a glance.
――Preserved by magic, probably.
A space this mystical. Setting aside any demon contracts, it wasn't hard to guess that Count Melrn, an alchemist, had used magic.
No... but this many books...
This sheer volume of tomes. Even if one person devoted their life to it, they couldn't read them all. A space this grand, maintained by magic this vast... Perhaps it wasn't the current Count Melrn, but the count's family that had built and amassed it over ages.
Curiosity piqued, she pulled a nearby book, but it was in an unknown language—she couldn't make out the content.
"...Feels like a really important place."
She doubted they'd put this much effort into a mere study. Maybe something crucial was hidden? Something with deep significance?
Harboring such hopes, Emilia decided to investigate the study more thoroughly. The blanket got in the way of nimble movement, so after glancing around and confirming no one was there, she neatly folded and set it aside.
Wandering a study naked gave her a twinge of reluctance, but with no eyes on her, it was fine. The temperature and humidity were perfect—no chill even bare.
"Man, it's huge... Like a proper library...."
From outside, the mansion didn't look big enough for a study this size. Magic again, no doubt. Emilia knew little of magic, but she could tell it was some impressive technique.
How long had she been searching? It didn't take long before something eye-catching appeared.
"...A book...? No... this is..."
――A diary, or something.
She'd found it in the deepest part of the mystical study. At the far end stood a solitary desk and chair, isolated like a remote island. On it lay a worn notebook and a quill pen with signs of heavy use.
She couldn't tell the owner, but instinct told Emilia it was Count Melrn's. Everything here probably belonged to him anyway.
As she placed her hand on the diary, she found herself glancing around again—despite knowing she was alone. The tension made her check once more.
It's fine. No one's here.
No one to stop her, no one to see her touch it.
Heart pounding with tension, she tried to calm herself and flipped open the front of the notebook... the diary on the desk.
"Everything was a lie."
"Everything was a shitty lie."
"...What the hell...?"
Ink blots everywhere, a chaotic scrawl of words strung together haphazardly. The only proper sentence was that opening line. Below it sprawled a jumble of words steeped in raw hatred and sticky emotions.
Like a stream-of-consciousness rant, not meant for anyone to read—just vomited out to vent feelings.
She couldn't grasp the full content, but she could tell the writer had scribbled in a fit of rage to purge their hatred for something.
No... it's not just that...
There's remorse too... hated, then sorry... What the hell happened to make it swing like that...?
With the front mostly torn out, few pages remained. Flipping through, the rest felt the same: an emotional dumpster, scrawled carelessly.
But reading it filled Emilia with an indescribable unease.
...This has to be Count Melrn's diary, right?
Wonder what was on the ripped pages. ...What the hell happened?
She glanced beside the desk—no trash bin with torn pages. If there had been, she might've learned something.
For now, maybe something in what's left... some clue.
She didn't know what she wanted to learn. But she had a feeling there was something.
Pushed by this inexplicable urge, just as Emilia leaned in to scrutinize the diary more closely—
From behind her, a hand reached out toward her shoulder――