Interlude (7)
I have always leaned toward pessimistic observations over optimistic ones. That way, when the situation actually comes crashing down, the shock lands a little softer.
This time, though, for once I wanted to be optimistic. Because I hoped Bianca and Sean had gotten away safely — even if that meant I was the one hugging every ounce of the risk to myself. If their lives went on, it would have been a modest comfort, at least. Something to carry me through tomorrow, and the day after that.
But every piece of evidence before my eyes pointed in exactly the opposite direction. As if to tell me to fold up my clumsy hope and optimism and put them away for good.
Bianca and Sean were murdered by Rihardt. That has to be the truth of it.
Grrk. I clenched my teeth down hard.
It was torment. If only they had escaped unharmed. In the end, was there truly no escaping Rihardt?
A self-mocking laugh kept threatening to rise before I could stop it. After all, my own actions had ended up as the noose around my neck.
"Lucy, you haven't gone and turned into a mute, have you? Keep your mouth clamped shut like that and I get bored — and a bored me starts wanting to play tricks."
It was dripping with meaning. His attitude, his tone — and above all, that veiled, knowing glint in his eyes.
"...Just what answer is it you wish to hear from me, Young Master?"
I barely managed to force the words out. At that, Rihardt's eyes curved into a smile.
To think I had to be on the receiving end of a grown man's smiling eyes. My stomach churned past discomfort and into a genuine urge to vomit.
"Well, who would know better than you, Lucy?"
Rihardt's large hand stroked gently along my cheek. His hand smelled of earth and blood, mingled together.
"But since you asked so pointedly — all I want is for you to tell me what you're hiding from me."
I stared at Rihardt.
"Something I'm hiding from you, Young Master?"
"Because if I say it aloud, there'll be no taking it back."
Those conviction-filled eyes bore into me as though they would devour me whole. What was it that couldn't be taken back? Whatever it was, I doubted I would welcome it.
It was odd, come to think of it. Looking back, there had been no need to dispose of Bianca in such a hurry. No one else had discovered she was staying in the Basement — she could have been dealt with quietly after Rihardt's knighthood ceremony, no problem at all. So why decide to handle it beforehand? The answer was obvious.
It was a trap to test me from the very beginning.
He was hardly a man with poor instincts; he must have accounted for the possibility that I couldn't bring myself to dispose of Bianca coldly. Which meant he had likely left the estate the moment I started to act and lain in wait at the outer passage — then run into Bianca and Sean as they tried to flee, and dealt with them. Putting the knighthood ceremony entirely on the back burner.
I had never imagined he would go to such lengths on my account.
What do I do? One careless lie slipping out, and I could all but see Rihardt's hand closing around my throat.
Under ordinary circumstances, I had meant to leave the disposal of Bianca entirely in Lucifer's hands. Only, the movements of Sean — Bianca's blood father — had been far from ordinary.
If he intervened, the odds of Lucifer failing to dispose of Bianca grew steep. Lucifer was not a woman tempered in combat the way Karen Florence was. For her to best a grown man was a hopelessly distant prospect.
If it went wrong — no. She would die. Inevitably.
I would have welcomed Lucifer's failure, mind you, but her dying in the course of it was never part of the plan. So I tailed them, ready to step in and save her if it came to that. The knighthood ceremony? As if that mattered. All work has its order of priority, and to me a ceremony was nothing more than a matter of supreme indifference.
Far ahead, I could see Lucifer with Sean. Her face was stiffer than usual, and that expression alone was enough to read her mind.
Planning to lure Sean into the Basement and kill him? It was a heavy burden of a plan, and reckless to boot — reckless enough that I wondered whether she needed to see it through at all. If she would only say the word to me, I could clear the man away with ease. Why insist on handling it alone...?
Aha.
Was there something I must never be told? Something held by Sean — something I might stumble upon in the course of dealing with him? If so, then Lucifer acting unilaterally rather than asking for my help made perfect sense. An secret Lucy had to keep from me.
How fun.
A peculiar thrill sent my heart racing. Grinding another's pride to dust, or leaving them thrashing in great agony — either was pleasure enough on its own, but of late nothing repaid me like the business of Lucifer. Reshaping her, little by little, exactly to my taste. In that act I found an extraordinary euphoria, and a deep sense of accomplishment.
And what if Sean's existence let me learn Lucifer's secret? Might I not dye her that much deeper in my own color? The mere thought brimmed over with delight. Draping her in the hues I chose. Honing her into the shape I desired. An accomplice sculpted by my own two hands — what could be more magnificent than that?
As I trailed the pair, I kept chewing over the question of Lucifer's secret; it felt as though a little more thought would shake the answer loose. For instance — why had I run into Lucifer in my room that day? There was no conceivable way she had come to me out of a genuine wish to become my accomplice. However clever her head, her disposition itself belonged to the plainest, most ordinary sort. On this much I was certain: unlike me, she had not looked the least bit as though she enjoyed the act of breaking people.
Naturally, I knew her words that day had been a lie, nothing more than a scramble to escape the situation. What else could explain that expression when she met my eyes — the one laced with panic? In short, Lucifer must have had some other purpose from the start.
Then, all at once, a hypothesis brushed across my mind. What if Sean had asked Lucifer to find Bianca for him? She had been relatively close to the girl — the two had often kept company — so a request like that from Sean was entirely plausible. So that was why she'd been hunting for traces of Bianca in my room. And then I'd caught her red-handed, and she'd spun that lie. A theory whose pieces fit together snugly.
Around then, Lucifer and Sean made for the Basement. If Lucifer fell into danger, I intended to move at once and dispose of Sean. But no moment of danger came for her — sooner than I'd expected. So I simply watched. Every last bit of it.
How she abandoned her intent to kill and drove a blade into the back of her own right hand. How she crumpled into Sean's arms, letting out those frail, helpless sounds. And even the sight of her weeping.
My body flushed hot, as if boiling blood had been injected straight into my veins. A violent emotion I had never once felt before. This was euphoria. The sight of Lucifer falling apart set a fire alight in the man I was.
This. This is it. This was the feeling I had always craved — this pounding chest, this breathless ache. I couldn't tear my eyes from you, try as I might. I stared as though to drive your image into my mind like a nail.
You truly are special to me, Lucy. You make me feel things I could never feel tormenting anyone else. Why you, what made it you, why — of all people — you? The reason didn't matter in the least.
Lucy. I want to break you, thoroughly. Resist me for all you're worth — and in the end, let that stubborn will of yours be bent and shattered, until you wail.
I recognized, fully and finally, just how precious a being you are. And at the very same moment, I was furious. Why? Because consider it. What if Sean hadn't gone easy and had buried that dagger in Lucy? What if I had failed to grasp the situation and never followed after her? I had come within a hair's breadth of losing someone as special as you — carelessly, for nothing.
The thought made the boiling rage nearly impossible to bear. And that rage, in turn, cooled my fevered excitement in an instant.
They must die, then. Even without having harmed Lucy, Sean and Bianca were not to be spared. Because they might someday trouble me? No. It made no difference whether they denounced me or laid my doings bare. It was simply that killing them would carve Lucy's heart into something lovelier.
A part of me mourned all the same. So this can't be used as leverage after all. Well, of course it couldn't — dragging you down into the role of my toy over a reason this shabby would be miserably dull.
I watched Lucy smiling her satisfied smile there in the darkness. My anticipation climbed higher by the moment — for the day I could savor Lucy, slowly and thoroughly. And what if I couldn't hold back, and came to crave you before then? I shook my head, and moved.
I killed Sean and Bianca at the outer passage, just as they came out to mount their horses. It was easy. Once I had done away with the two bodies well enough, I returned to my room — where Lucy waited, dressed up for the part of a maid who had disposed of Bianca. She looked adorable as anything.
She wore the look of someone startled to find the room empty. She must have assumed I was buried in preparations for the ceremony. Catching her off guard stirred a heady, uplifting rush. We traded this remark and that, and I pressed her, lightly. And so we arrived at now.
"...I could not dispose of Sean and Bianca."
Whether she knew she was cornered or not, I finally pried a confession out of those heavy lips.
"So you lied to me, Lucy. And failed to see the job through properly, besides?"
"Yes. That is so."
Even her white-drained face was beautiful. Say what you would — Lucy had a lovely one.
"How do you imagine I'm feeling right now?"
"That is..."
I kicked Lucy in the stomach. She never even registered the movement before the blow slammed into her abdomen.
WHUMP! It was a sound like a drum being torn apart.
"Kehk—hukk—kgh—gheh!" Rough coughing burst out of her. Unable to pull in a proper breath, Lucy could only gag out one ragged gasp after another.
I had metered my strength to just the right degree — and still she laid on the theatrics.
"Ah — I don't recall giving you leave to speak. Do keep that mouth shut."
I walked slowly over to Lucy, who lay doubled up clutching her belly, sank to one knee, and gazed at her.
"I made you my personal maid because I was so charmed by a girl who touted her own usefulness. And that maid, far from proving her worth, showed nothing but negligence — she couldn't even complete the single order given to her. If your aim was to test my patience, then I'd call it a masterstroke, Lucifer."
Her pupils wavered, sudden and unbidden. No — it wasn't only her pupils that trembled. Feeling the threat to her very life, perhaps, Lucy's entire body shook like an aspen leaf.
"By now, surely you wouldn't mind if I tore you limb from limb as I pleased?"
"Had the variable called Sean not existed, I would have faithfully executed your order, Young Master."
I rose to my feet — then drove my foot into Lucy's stomach once more.
"It's results that matter, Lucy. Results only. And the result is that you didn't execute it, did you?"
At my words, Lucy's ash-gray eyes glared up at me. Yes — those eyes. Eyes that felt terror yet would not be cowed by it, that burned instead with defiance.
I want to see those eyes steeped in despair. But today is not the day I snap that resistance of yours.
"Well, I didn't know Sean would involve himself either. So I can't call it entirely your fault."
"...And that means...?"
"Since the fault lies partly with me as well — turning you into my toy wouldn't be going too far, would it?"
After all, you were still too unripe to savor. Far better to let you ripen a little longer before the feast. Everything has its season.
"Still, the fact that you did wrong remains. You'll accept a light penalty for it, yes?"
"...Yes."
"I'll summon you separately once the ceremony is over."
Lucy. I do hope you'll do your utmost. Because I will be doing mine — my utmost to drive you into a corner.