I Want to Help You (1)
The new room was built on the same bones as the last. Only the walls had changed. Every one of them was white.
"I had the wallpaper changed, just in case there's a mouse hole. So we'd be able to see it."
The furniture had all been done over in a different palette. The bed, just as Yusia had once said, no longer bore gold embroidery; diamonds were set here and there through the ornamentation instead. The teacups and the rest had been swapped from a craftsman's work for whatever was fashionable and mass-produced, and most of it was white. Not only the cups. The chairs, the table, the wardrobe—all of it white. Taken altogether, my room was white, a clear and colorless wash of light, as if to declare that the mouse hole from before would never be permitted again.
"You'll need time to get used to the room. Today and tomorrow, you're free to do as you like."
With that, Yusia shut the door quietly and left. I sank to the floor.
A room white on every side brought back the psychiatric ward of my previous life. She couldn't know what a mental hospital even was, so there was no malice in it. Even so, I felt as if I might lose my mind. I had lost Mick, and now I was meant to go on living in a room like this?
The one small mercy was that something came afterward to comfort me.
"Fren. Did something bad happen?"
"Fren. You look unwell."
At every teatime, Kailin and Aphron worried over me without fail. When I showed them the wounds multiplying on me day by day, the two of them clenched their teeth. Between Mick's death and a room fit to drive me mad, my mind was worn so thin that the act was getting through. It was working.
A few more months of this, and Kailin and Aphron would come, all on their own, to feel something ugly toward Yusia.
"Ah."
The carving knife I had been holding to my throat slipped from my hand and clattered to the floor.
"Ahaha... I'm such an idiot."
I had truly never thought it. Not once in my life had I thought I wanted to die. I only wanted to live. And yet look at the state of me. A little suffering, and my hands did a thing like this without my even knowing? I had no face to show the people who had died trying to help me. If Mick had seen it, he would have beaten me senseless with those wrinkled front paws.
Right. I mustn't think that way. I know I mustn't.
"Hic... sob..."
Even so, I couldn't stop the tears.
A month had passed since I moved into the white room.
How to put it. I had gone listless.
I had even paused, for a while, the business of cutting my own body. Pile on wounds without a plan, and someone would grow suspicious. Kailin and Aphron were pleased. Ah—Aphron sighed, for some reason. A sigh of relief, surely. Yusia was unchanged, aside from fretting even more over my cleanliness. Finding Mick must have shaken her badly; mousetraps had appeared all through the mansion.
A passive escape, leaning on the other members of the party. It would take a very long time, and patience beyond even that. Yes. I had simply worn myself out. This small body refused any further stress, and so I was listless. Living out the rest of my life locked away by Yusia might not be so terrible. A hollow name would bear down on my shoulders until I died, but if I turned my face from it just a little, I could live at ease. This small room, and a mansion I was allowed to wander only at appointed hours—that alone would become the whole of my world. Give up freedom, and I could live more comfortably than anyone alive.
If I only spent the rest of my life in this garden made for show...
Seung-won... I'm sorry. A mother who puts you through so much... I'm so ashamed.
"Ah."
My mother's words from that previous life, flashing through my mind.
No, Mom. That isn't true.
I was never ashamed of you. Not once. You were always kind. The only time I ever resented you was when you left me behind and went first.
I wiped away the tears that had slipped free.
Yes. When Mom said those words in my previous life, I swore I would not become like her. At the very least, I would not feel shame before myself. That was the resolve I made. To grow content with this place now would be a shame that ate me to the bone. I was not someone meant to live here in comfort.
"Pull yourself together. There has to be a way. There has to."
However much Sword of Trust was the Hero's Party, in the end they were human. They all looked as if they had stepped past the limits of humanity, but the limits were certainly there. They too had to eat, and breathe, and rest, or they could not go on living. That meant a gap existed in them—the same gap every human has. Perhaps even now, in this very moment, something capable of standing against them might appear.
Yes. If I refuse to give up and keep trying—!
It was the very instant I steeled myself.
A hard wind swept in and scoured the room. I was sure I had shut the window. Wondering what was happening, I looked—and a man was sitting astride the frame, a man in a white mask, whistling.
"Did you call?"
"Wh-what? Who are you?"
"Oh dear, oh dear. You don't recognize me?"
The man dropped lightly from the sill and came toward me. A suspicious person. And yet, for some reason, he felt terribly familiar. He stopped in front of me, caught my hand, and spoke.
"Your wish. Allow me to grant it."
"What?"
"You wish to escape this mansion. No. What you wish is to escape this capital, is it not?"
"H-how do you know that?"
"I am one who carries on a last will."
"A last will? Whose?"
"Thirty people."
Something like a lump of lead dropped through my gut. I shoved the masked man. He did not so much as shift.
"Go!"
"Why ever would you say that?"
"I—I decided I wouldn't take any help. You'll be put in danger!"
"Oh dear, oh dear. There's no need for you to worry."
"Hurry! If Yusia finds out someone is in here—!"
"Fren?"
A soft rustle. Yusia was standing outside the door. She had not come in yet. She never threw a door open all at once.
"The cookies turned out well, so I brought some. Can I come in?"
"J-just a moment!"
Having bought the barest sliver of time, I struck at the masked man again and again. He only went on smiling, bright as anything, and would not leave.
"Get out. Now!"
"I must be the one to save you."
"If you stay like this, you'll die!"
"It's quite all right. I will not die."
"The one outside is the Hero, Yusia! Yusia Frontline. Don't you know her?"
"Hmm. So that was her name."
"Fren."
Yusia said it quietly.
"I'm coming in. That's all right, isn't it?"
"Ah, ah, ah, wai—!"
I couldn't invent an excuse, and Yusia opened the door.
"I wanted you to try them. But what's wrong?"
"......"
"Why are you standing like that, Fren?"
"Th-that's. Y-Yusia?"
"What?"
Sweat poured down my back.
The masked man was facing Yusia head-on. And yet, for some reason, she did not react to him at all. Could it be she couldn't see him?
"Fren?"
"I-it's nothing."
"It isn't another mouse, is it?"
"N-no way. Where would a mouse even come from in this room?"
"That's true. More importantly, I tried making the cookies with chocolate."
Yusia fed me a cookie. It tasted good. But even as I ate it, my stomach turned. All the while the man in the white mask went on staring at Yusia and smiling—that was the feeling I got—bright as anything.
"Then I'll see you at dinner. We're having veal steak tonight."
She drew me close, stroked my hair, and left the room. Only then did I let loose the breath I had been holding under iron control.
"Haah!"
"A beautiful person. To think someone like that would keep you locked in a place like this."
"H-how did you do that?"
I put the question to the white mask at once. He tilted his head.
"Whatever do you mean?"
"The power to go unseen by Yusia! What kind of magic did you use to make that possible?"
"Because that is my ability."
"What?"
The white mask only went on smiling beneath the mask. I gave up on getting an answer and asked him something else.
"Then... are you going to use that ability to get me out?"
"Not quite. But I can offer help."
"Help. I see."
It would certainly be a help. But even now, thirty corpses wavered before my eyes, and Mick, run through with a dagger. What if the white mask ended the same way? Unlike Kailin and Aphron, if he were discovered, he would not be able to keep his life. I didn't want anyone else to die because of me.
Yes. It was a perfect chance, but it was a chance I had to let go.
"I'm sorry. You said you'd help."
"Yes? What do you mean?"
"I can't accept your help. This is far too dangerous. If you're carrying on the will of those thirty people, you know how dangerous it is, don't you?"
"Hmm."
"I don't want to add any more sacrifices. So please, stay out of this."
"I'm sorry, but that is impossible."
"What?"
The white mask took my hand.
"I have to save you, you see. So I will prove it."
"P-prove what?"
"You worry that I might be killed, so allow me to prove that I do not die."
"How?"
"I will follow you until just before you fall asleep. For a week."
"Excuse me?"
Surely that was nothing but bravado, no matter how you looked at it. Hiding himself for a short while in front of Yusia, I could just about accept. But staying with me for most of every day, for a whole week? That was the same as saying he would spend most of every day alongside Yusia. Even the Demon King could not manage a thing like that. And yet the white mask seemed utterly sure of himself. And besides—
"You're really not going to leave?"
"Your side is where I am meant to be."
Driving him off by my own strength was impossible too. In the end, I accepted.
Before dinner, I asked the white mask, who was juggling teacups.
"So what's your name?"
"My name, you say?"
"Yes. I can't very well call you White Mask."
"If you wished to call me that, it would be fine as well. Ah."
The white mask said it softly.
"Servant. Please call me Servant."
It was a very strange name.