I Possessed the Crazy Bastard's Maid (1)

Dizzy. Nauseated, too. It felt as though I had become a piece of laundry — whirled violently inside a washing machine and only just fished out. If the sodden heaviness dragging at my limbs was anything to go by, the comparison was disturbingly apt.

I didn't even drink last night. So why do I feel like this?

I gathered my half-scattered wits and surveyed my surroundings. An unfamiliar scene and an unfamiliar man slid into view. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't rattled.

Where is this — and who on earth is that man?

Anyone would have asked the same questions in my position, not just me. But I kept that bewilderment well off my face; I had no intention of letting anyone look down on me.

Straining my sluggish brain into gear, I tried to size up the situation. An unfamiliar place. An unfamiliar man. Had I been kidnapped? Judged on circumstances alone, it was kidnapping beyond all doubt.

But why, though?

It made no sense. I was neither wealthy nor a person of any note. What possible gain was there in abducting a perfectly ordinary civilian? And not a child or a woman, mind you — a grown man in the prime of health. However much effort this had taken, there wasn't a shred of profit in it. Unless someone bore me a deep personal grudge, no one would go to such lengths.

...And I'm fairly sure I've never done anything in my life that would earn me that kind of hatred.

Who would pull a stunt like this on me? Not a single face came to mind. If anything, I was the one who wanted to demand answers — what exactly was the point of abducting me?

Perhaps the relentless churn of thought had honed my senses, because that was when I noticed it: a strange, creeping wrongness.

I'd written it off as an unfamiliar scene at first, but the longer I look, the more oddly familiar it becomes.

Unfamiliar, yet familiar? I knew that was a contradiction in terms. But what am I supposed to do if that's genuinely how it feels? I couldn't say for certain where I'd seen it before. What I could say with certainty was that I had been through this exact situation somewhere, at some point.

As I went on cataloguing the scenery, one more thing dawned on me.

Come to think of it... hasn't my eye level gotten lower?

And not by a little, either — it had dropped so markedly that the difference was impossible to miss. I wasn't kneeling or crouching, yet I seemed to have sunk a good twenty to thirty centimeters.

That wasn't all. A subtle wrongness ran through my entire body, feeding a mounting sense of dislocation. It felt, quite frankly, as though this body weren't mine at all—

Because it isn't mine.

I knew it the instant I looked at my hands. There was no way those small, pale hands belonged to me. No — more fundamentally than that—

My fingers are intact.

Fingers that had been severed long ago were moving exactly as I willed them, and that alone stirred something close to awe in me. But awe was awe, and wrong was wrong. I was no salamander or planarian; severed flesh does not simply grow back. Hard as it was to take on faith, there was no escaping the inference: this body was not the one I had been born with.

Which left two possibilities. Either this was some absurd dream, or I had possessed another person's body.

Doesn't feel like a dream. Judging by this vivid, insistent reality, the scales tipped toward possession. Not that either answer was anything short of preposterous.

While I was still mired in those tangled thoughts, the stranger standing before me addressed me.

"Lucy."

Lucy?

That was a Western name, surely? Then again, one look at the man's features said he was nothing resembling East Asian. And from the way he used it while looking straight at me, 'Lucy' seemed to be this body's given name.

I lifted my eyes and looked the man over at leisure. Hair white as though bleached. Eyes drained of color to match, so pale the veins showed through. There is a word for someone with features like these, if I recalled correctly.

Albino. Or, to put it clinically, a person born with a congenital pigment deficiency. This was my first time seeing one in the flesh. But the man was so strikingly handsome that the look came across as mysterious rather than unsettling.

This is disorienting.

Had that confusion leaked straight onto my face? The man asked again.

"Did you see it?"

A question in a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠tone pitched neither high nor low. One thing was clear at once: those words were not Korean. The mere movement of his lips bore no resemblance to it.

Which meant they belonged to some other language. So why was I understanding them?

"See what?"

And on top of that, wasn't I producing those unfamiliar sounds with perfect fluency? I had never once in my life been good at pronunciations that rolled off the tongue like that.

At any rate, at my reply the man's gaze shifted — to the space behind me.

Is there something back there?

Following his eyes, I stared past my own shoulder. A clean, unblemished wall stood there, and across its surface ran the faintest trace of cracks.

Cracks?

They were in no way the wear of an aging structure. They looked natural, as though the wall had been built that way on purpose—

Ah. Right. That novel had a scene exactly like this.

At last I pinned down the source of the wrongness. The situation I was in bore an uncanny resemblance to the novel I'd been reading of late.

Have I possessed a character in that novel?

Everything snapped into place at once, like misaligned gears finally meshing. And I understood, too, why I hadn't caught on immediately — there is a world of difference between reading words on a page and seeing them with your own eyes!

That flash of intellectual triumph lasted all of an instant. Then, like ice water poured over the crown of my head, my thoughts went abruptly cold. Because I remembered what genre the novel I'd been reading belonged to.

A lurid, salacious erotic novel — about as far from wholesome as literature gets.

And the most dangerous thing of all was the white-haired, red-eyed man who could only be called the novel's protagonist. His name was Rihardt de Line. A man whose emotions ran shallow — who committed outrageous acts for no reason other than to feel a greater thrill. Early in the story his transgressions ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠stayed comparatively light, but as the pages turned, the stakes climbed higher and higher.

Protagonist in name only. In practice, he was no different from a villain.

Before I knew the truth, I'd dismissed him as nothing more than a bastard so handsome it was aggravating. Now that I knew what he was, it felt like standing before an incomprehensible natural disaster. If things went even slightly wrong, I had the feeling these newly restored fingers might end up severed all over again.

"Hmm."

Rihardt's bleak gaze swept over me. I hadn't known human eyes could be that cold, that sharp. I swallowed drily without meaning to. Presently, he stroked his chin, lightly.

According to the novel, that was a habit the man showed whenever he was deep in thought. In the flesh it looked even more convincing — and the weight of it was considerable.

Hold on. If that was the case, then the man was contemplating something at this very moment.

Contemplating what, exactly?

"What am I to do with you?"

How kind of him, answering my question for me. He was pondering how to dispose of me.

Why? What on earth had I supposedly done? I rapidly replayed everything Rihardt had said. Fortunately, the man was not one for long speeches, so the review took no time at all.

Lucy. Did you see it? Hmm.

Three utterances in all. Could I really infer the man's state of mind from so little?

Oh. Of course. He thinks he's been caught.

Fortunately — ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and, at the same time, most unfortunately — I could. Had I not known Rihardt's circumstances, I never would have found the problem in that short string of words. But I knew the man very well indeed.

It was a phrase that appeared again and again in the novel. It wasn't that the man particularly enjoyed lingering in dank, dark basements. But desires that sordid, that twisted — they had to be indulged somewhere far beyond the reach of other people's eyes, didn't they?

He thinks I saw him coming out of the basement.

My gaze drifted, unbidden, to the cracks in the wall. The cracks look natural? Of course they do — they were engineered to look that way from the blueprint stage onward, precisely so no one would find anything amiss. In other words, that wall was a secret door. A passage leading down to the place where Rihardt indulged his deeply unpleasant hobbies. For some reason, I could almost smell blood lingering at the tip of my nose.

At length, he held my gaze and spoke.

"You saw it — and now you'll play ignorant. Is that it?"

A soft smile. A face that seemed to insist he was perfectly harmless. To me, who knew exactly what lay beneath, that expression was more menacing than any snarling beast. Well, naturally — as far as he was concerned, I had seen what was never meant to be seen.

My instinct and my reason cried out in the same breath: that man will kill you, if it comes to that.

Besides, he hadn't asked because he genuinely didn't know whether I'd looked. The eyes studying my reaction were already certain. Even if I said no, Rihardt stood to lose nothing. If anything, he might well be pleased to find himself one more toy to play with.

Come to think of it, the episode I'd read had been exactly that. The one about the maid who happened to witness Rihardt's comings and goings, and the hideous state to which she was subsequently reduced. She was subjected to sexual torture that went beyond the erotic into outright sadism — the descriptions so viscous, the methods so vicious, that my palms sweated just reading them.

A man with abominable tastes hidden behind a pristine face. Fortunately for most, those tastes skewed rather heavily toward one sex. As long as you weren't a woman, he generally couldn't be bothered to—

A chill shot down my spine. If I had to name the feeling, I'd call it déjà vu. The lowered line of sight. Hands far smaller than the ones I'd always had. A voice gone strangely thin. And above all — the name 'Lucy.' A name, as far as I knew, most often given to women.

No way, I thought, and lowered my head. A maid's uniform — or something close enough to one. And, adding insult to injury, a modestly swelling pair of peaks that no man could lay claim to, blocking my view straight down. Anyone could see it was a woman's body.

Well. I'm fucked.

I thought back to the scene of Rihardt handling his maid. Even as a mere reader, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I'd found it deeply unpleasant — and now I was on the verge of starring in it? Wouldn't it be better to just bite down on my tongue and die? I gave the question serious consideration.

"Well?"

Meanwhile, Rihardt was quietly urging an answer out of me. His expression was positively hateful.

How shall I torment this one, I wonder? I had a feeling that was more or less the shape of his thoughts.

How was I to get out of this situation unscathed? A clumsy excuse would only make things worse than silence. First, I needed to shave Rihardt's displeasure down to the bare minimum. He did know, at least, that his hobby was wrong — that was exactly why he reacted so sharply.

"I humbly beg your forgiveness, Young Master Rihardt, for ruffling your temper with my wicked curiosity."

I bowed my head with all due formality. And I did not raise it again until Rihardt granted me leave.

Had the reaction caught him off guard? His eyes narrowed a degree.

"Come now, Lucy. Do I really look like someone who'd fly into a rage over a little thing like this? It must be a strain on you — lift your head, won't you?"

Oh? Was he letting it slide?

Only once he'd given his permission did I slowly raise my head. And for a moment, my breath stopped — because Rihardt had closed the distance without a sound, and his eyes were right there in front of mine.

Crimson eyes, rippling with something sinuous and unsettling.

"So — which is it? You saw, or you didn't?"