Possessed as a Crazy Bastard's Maid (2)
02
As if he would ever let it slide. This was a man thorough to the marrow, and there was no reason he would leave a loose thread like the maid who saw his hobby dangling. At this point, I decided to come clean. One way or another, it was clear I couldn't simply slip past this.
"I saw it. All of it."
At the word all, Rihardt's face curled into something scornful.
"That's overstating it, Lucy. All you saw was me passing through this wall, wasn't it?"
Overstating it? Your conduct is what's excessive. You were prepared to dispose of me over a single glimpse.
I wasn't fool enough to spit any of that out loud. I only spoke as far as the line where I wouldn't sour his mood.
"That is the truth of it."
"You talk as though you know everything."
"Forgive the presumption, but I wonder if I might venture something further, my lord."
When I trailed off like that, curiosity stirred in him—Rihardt's red eyes took on a glint of interest, close to the look of a man who had stumbled upon an unexpected pleasure.
"Permission granted. Speak freely. Hold nothing back."
"I know what is troubling you at this very moment."
"You know?"
"You would rather not see your leisure activities suspended on account of some tiresome commotion."
Perhaps it was the word leisure. In an instant, every trace of feeling drained from Rihardt's face—and a face stripped of emotion was the gravest of warning signs. Sensing that dallying here would spell disaster, I hurried on.
"That said, I am not one to gossip, and I cherish my own safety far too dearly. The misfortune you fear will never come to pass—no sign of it will ever show. I am not so witless as to set in motion anything that would harm me."
Without warning, his hand clamped around my jaw.
It happened in a single breath; I couldn't even react. No—even if I had seen it coming, I doubted it would have changed anything. His hand was that swift, that precise. Those cold eyes seemed to say, However heavy your mouth may be, do the dead ever talk? His grip was crushing, too. Well, young lord or not, he was a man who had trained in the martial arts without pause, so the gulf between our bodies was only natural. His family was an old military house that had produced exceptional knights for generations, and Rihardt's own talent was outstanding on top of that.
Why would an elite like that end up with such a twisted hobby?
As I silently cursed him every way I knew how, Rihardt spoke.
"Anyone listening would think I was up to something truly monstrous."
Utterly composed. Not so much as a tremor in his voice. But that was precisely what made the air grow taut—wasn't it as good as announcing he could end my life whenever he pleased?
"And aren't you doing something monstrous, my lord?"
The moment I said it flat out, the hand gripping my jaw slid down and closed around my throat. Breathing grew a shade harder for it.
"Do you truly know what it is I do?"
"Didn't I tell you? I saw everything."
"Then be specific, so that I don't labor under any misunderstanding."
Rihardt demanded proof. He seemed to think I was spouting empty boasts.
I rifled through my memory of the novel. Before he had made a maid his scapegoat, who had been kept in the basement? The stable keeper's daughter, as I recalled. Her name was probably...
"Now that Bianca has stopped resisting and started behaving herself, you must be growing bored of her. But please—don't think of staking her in with a stallion in rut for the sake of stimulation. That would raise a far greater storm than the basement being discovered by a maid like me. I suspect you would come to regret it yourself, my lord. 'If only I had handled that a little more wisely'—that same sort of feeling."
For the briefest moment, Rihardt wore a blank, dumbfounded expression. I felt a faint, petty thrill of satisfaction at the sight of it. But I was apparently not the only one who found it satisfying. Before long, Rihardt burst into bright laughter and released his hold on my throat.
"You really did know everything, Lucy."
At a glance it looked as though his attitude had flipped like a turned palm, but it was nothing of the sort. His eyes studied me with utter dryness.
Did I overplay it? I had only spoken so sharply because he didn't strike me as the type to spare my life without a shock of exactly this magnitude.
"How could I ever speak falsely in front of you, my lord?"
"Don't you have any shame, saying things like that?"
"Would it suffice if I found some now?"
"Enough. More to the point—how did you know? I was certain there was nowhere the information could leak from. There wasn't even a trace of anyone but myself coming or going. Ah, you'd best set aside the possibility that I passed by without noticing; I'm quite thorough on that front. I simply cannot believe you managed an infiltration that refined, Lucy. You've never received professional training in stealth, after all."
Rihardt had turned positively cordial. He'd grown rather talkative, too. I wasn't so blind as to miss that all of it was aimed at drawing information out of me. To him, I was no longer a mere maid named Lucy; I was being reclassified as a potential unknown variable.
"Or were you a witch?"
Unlike the world I had lived in, this world held a peculiar power called mana, which meant that mages and witches, rare as they were, actually existed here.
I'd almost prefer that, honestly. Unfortunately, the novel had never mentioned the maid he tormented possessing any magical gift. Besides, if she could wield a power like that, would she have been working as a maid in the first place?
"Hardly. You of all people would know better, my lord—you, who handle mana yourself."
Seeing and wielding mana was not the exclusive province of mages. Exceptional knights could do the same, and in that sense, the protagonist standing before me had more than enough mettle to become an exceptional knight indeed.
"True. And yet, I find it genuinely fascinating."
His large hand stroked the hair at my temple, then my cheek. It felt dreadful—like being prodded by the paw of a bear. This was a creature who could crush my skull outright if the mood took him.
"A Lucy who cannot so much as touch mana, whose only redeeming feature is a passable face—how did you arrive at a truth about me that even my father doesn't know? I'm dying to know, truly."
Your father doesn't know? Well. Hadn't he already known all along? He had simply written it off as a minor eccentricity and pretended not to see.
"It falls within the realm of simple deduction. The servants who have gone missing from this estate of late had deeper dealings with you than one might think. You descend to the basement through some concealed mechanism, and only at night, when the household is thin. And if I were to enumerate every other suspicious thing, we would be here until dawn."
Rihardt clapped his hands.
"So a tangle of factors combined, and you saw through me? Sharp. You're nothing like the Lucy I knew. I had always taken you for a clumsy, half-baked little thing."
Well, I wasn't Lucy. Being told I didn't live up to someone else's impression of me stirred nothing in me at all. Not that I could very well say, "It's because a person from another world possessed this body." It was far too absurd; he was bound not to believe it. Possession by a witch, perhaps—he might have swallowed that.
"And yet such a clever little Miss Lucifer shows herself brazenly before me even in this dangerous moment. I'd say it's fair to read that as deliberate."
Oh, Rihardt. Just how high do you intend to raise a mere maid in your estimation?
The truth was, I had no hidden design. I was simply a soul unlucky enough to be cast into the body of the victim destined to become his scapegoat. Left to the original story, my life was meant to become plaything number two—one more dried clot of blood in that basement.
Rihardt, knowing none of this, folded his arms and pressed the question again.
"What is it you want?"
Capable men were troublesome in exactly this way. They looked down on everyone by default, but the moment they judged someone worthy, they rated them absurdly high. Earning that recognition once was the hard part; after that, they trailed after you like a sunflower chasing the sun. I supposed it was proof of how much he trusted his own eye.
"...My purpose, you say."
Even so, I hardly dared shatter that expectation of his. A man starved of stimulation was infinitely less likely to harm something that stimulated him. In other words, becoming as stimulating a presence as I could manage was my means of survival in this pen.
Think. Why had I appeared before this man? If I had no reason, I had to invent one—if I wanted to live.
"Do you want wealth? Or would you like to become my mistress? Whatever it is, you must want something."
I barely strangled a hollow laugh. Honestly, the wealth tempted me a little. But the position of mistress to his house? I wouldn't take it if he paid me. I had no taste whatsoever for being run through by a man—and besides, he had misspoken. He meant pet, surely.
No, wait. In the first place... Dangling offers so sweetly, when he had no intention of granting a single one of them.
I pulled my thoughts into some semblance of order and gave him my answer.
"Nothing so grand. All I desire is to survive."
Come to think of it, I had never needed to fabricate a reason after all. My honest heart, spoken as it was, became the reason itself.
Rihardt lifted one eyebrow in doubt.
"Survive? Then wouldn't showing yourself to me be the last thing you ought to do?"
In the short term, yes. But viewed through a longer lens, the story changed.
"True, there is no great danger at this moment—you already have your toy in Bianca. But what if that toy's amusement, its durability, has worn dangerously thin? You would go casting about for a new one. And nowhere in this world is there a guarantee that I would not be the one chosen."
"So—since you may yet become my toy, you wished to settle the matter to some degree while we can still speak? Well, the next candidate was indeed you, Lucy. But someone as clever as you would surely have found some means of slipping away. Was there any real need to court danger?"
Oh. So the next candidate was me. Even had we never crossed paths here, I was fated to lay eyes on that basement soon enough. Perhaps I ought to count this meeting as a mercy.
"Game that slips a snare is still game, my lord."
Call it luck if I liked; if the other side kept up the chase, capture was only a matter of time. And how far could anyone flee across ground that sloped toward Rihardt to begin with?
"And doesn't the quarry that escapes only inflame you further, my lord?"
And you were never the type to release a target once you'd fixed on it, anyway.
At that undertone, the corner of Rihardt's mouth curled upward.
"Precise. You've read my mind exactly. It's as though you're reading my thoughts."
I had read them. In a novel, that is.
"So I merely felt that sooner or later, we would need to meet face to face to negotiate. The conditions and circumstances simply happened to be reasonably favorable now."
Even by my own judgment, I had talked a very good game. Surely that much reason and logic deserved a measure of belief, Rihardt?
"But you know—"
A single phrase. That one phrase turned the air on its head.
Rihardt's keen eyes swept over me from head to toe, and in the eyes that met mine, something nameless burned.
"You never stopped to consider that you might be the one devoured, did you? By your own account, you're a demented little piece of game standing defenseless before the hunter."
"...I have heard that a first-rate hunter does not take game that offers no resistance. Nor the young."
That my voice trembled was beyond my control. The atmosphere had turned that murderous. By my own standards, I had done my best.
"And if I told you I am no first-rate hunter—what then?"
I met him with the calmest face I could counterfeit.
"Then I would have to blame my own poor judgment."
The right hand that had been resting at Rihardt's chin dropped away. He looked like a man who had finished his deliberations.
"Very well. You do have something to propose to me, then? Consider it my largesse—I'll hear you out."
Whew. I let out a breath of relief.
Somehow or other, I had gotten him to the negotiating table. But getting him seated was all I had managed; whether he would actually accept was another matter entirely. Yes. The important part began now.
I brought out the proposal I had been shaping all through our exchange.
"I wish to become your accomplice, my lord."
How does game survive on a board tilted in the hunter's favor? There was only one way—be elevated from quarry to hound, and bask in the hunter's favor.