Maid Luka and the Nightmare Estate
Luka Altran was the third daughter of Count Altran.
House Altran was a hereditary noble family of no small pedigree, yet it had never been particularly well-off. The present Count had wanted a son so badly that the family went on having children until a boy was finally born—four in all—and four children, unsurprisingly, cost a great deal of money.
Clever and quick to read a room even as a child, Luka grasped her family's circumstances at once. The moment she was old enough to work, she left home determined to earn her own keep.
The household that hired her was none other than that of Duke Ignis. For a maid, it was the equivalent of joining a major corporation.
"I'm Luka Altran! I look forward to working with you!"
By the time Luka entered service, Duke Ignis's second daughter, Riel Ignis, stood on the verge of entering the academy. For reasons no one explained, the Duke and Duchess and their son were already away from the estate, and the eldest daughter was working in the royal capital. Once the second young lady left for the academy, the mansion would be without its masters for a long stretch of time.
Of course, a house without its masters still had to be managed and maintained. There was no shortage of matters to review, and the servants were kept extremely busy. Even so, when a newcomer named Luka arrived, the senior maids threw themselves into teaching her with real enthusiasm.
It was during that training that Luka first caught a distant glimpse of the estate's mistress, Riel Ignis.
She was a girl whose hair, red as flame, fell past her shoulders. Yet her eyes were dark as a dead woman's, and her face was so utterly without expression that Luka felt a faint, creeping chill.
Beside the young lady stood her personal maid, who seemed prepared to follow her mistress to the royal capital. Luka, who had never once set foot in the capital, felt a small pang of envy.
Perhaps two weeks had passed since the second young lady left for the academy.
As Luka threw herself into learning the work of the estate, there was a name she heard again and again. That name was Alan Ludwig.
She had never heard the surname Ludwig before. It turned out to belong to the knight who served as captain of the estate's knights. Alan Ludwig was that knight's son; he had lived at the mansion and served as a conversation partner for the second young lady. He had gone with her to the academy as her escort as well, and so Luka had never once laid eyes on him.
That was precisely why she found it all so strange.
The praise and expectation heaped on Alan around the estate were excessive to the point of absurdity. The place was full of maids who adored him, and talk of him never, ever died.
Luka could not understand it.
He's just a commoner, isn't he?
Knight-Captain Ludwig was not a noble. He was a man who had been granted a knighthood. Had it been a life peerage, his children might have been treated as nobles until the titled man died or surrendered his rank—but knighthood was different. A parent who served as a knight could earn enough to live comfortably and open broader doors for a child's education, yet in terms of social standing they were no different from any other commoner.
Even if the boy was talented, a noble title was hardly easy to come by. What possible reason was there to dote on him to this degree? And to go so far as to tear down the young lady while they were at it?
Word had it that the eldest young lady had been tormenting the second, and that Alan's efforts had put a stop to it. Luka did not believe a word of it.
A mere commoner boy, stopping a noble young lady? He ought to say something that actually made sense. She decided it was the usual thing: a rumor that had grown fat in the telling.
A month had passed since Luka began working at the estate.
Receiving a wage for the first time in her life, she sent a portion of it home, and, granted a day off at last, she went out into the city. Brimton was the largest city in the duchy, and though it could not match the royal capital, it was a metropolis of impressive scale. Luka spent the day shopping with her pay and treating herself to things that tasted wonderful.
All sorts of talk reached her ears as she went, including rumors about the ducal estate where she herself worked.
"Where on earth is His Grace the Duke?"
"Still, it's rare for him to be away this long..."
The Duke of Ignis being absent was a common enough occurrence, but this was said to be the first time he had failed to show himself at the estate for more than three months. Luka had only been there a month and had not known; the news that it had been over three months left her stunned.
When her day off ended, she returned to the mansion and put the question to the senior maid who shared her room.
"Huh? It happens all the time. What's weird about it?"
"B-but even so, three months is strange!"
"Three... months? Has it been that long?"
The senior maid murmured it back as if tasting the words. People said you lost your sense of time when you were busy—but even so, you would not go dull to how long your master had been gone from his own house.
"Well... he'll come back eventually! Our job is to keep this estate running until then!"
"Th-that's true, but...?"
It was not only her senior. Luka asked the other servants as well, and every one of them seemed to think it was nothing worth fussing over.
Is this really all right?
But Luka was the newest person in the household. If the seniors said so, she had no choice but to swallow the unease and keep it to herself.
A week passed after that first day off.
"Eek!!"
The instant Luka realized she had overslept, she was so startled her soul nearly left her body. Ordinarily, even if she slept in a little, her senior would have shaken her awake—but this time, no one had. Finding it strange, she looked to the neighboring bed. Her senior was sprawled there, fast asleep.
"Senior! We're late! Wake up, Senior!!"
Luka shook her wildly. The senior's eyes opened. She stared at Luka with a vacant face—and then light came back into her gaze.
"Aaaaaah!! We're in so much trouble!!"
"Senior! We have to go, now!!"
The two of them scrambled to get ready and rushed out, and the head maid scolded them within an inch of their lives. As it happened, a great many other servants had been late that day as well, just like Luka and her senior, so the lecture ended sooner than it might have.
Fine for me... but have the others gone slack because there's no master in the house?
Luka told herself that and tried to let it go. A corner of her heart remained uneasy all the same.
From that day on, the uneasy feeling in Luka's chest only grew. Servants oversleeping, or standing vacant with their minds somewhere else and getting scolded for it, was no longer a once-or-twice affair. Even the head maid and the butler—the very people doing the scolding—began committing the same lapses themselves.
No matter how often a person made mistakes, constant scolding usually corrected them, if only for a little while. But when the same thing repeated every single day, it was simply frightening.
And the situation was sliding, steadily, toward the worst.
"Senior! Please wake up! Senior!"
"Nnngh... Lu...ka?"
"Yes! Senior! We have to go to work!!"
"Uh... yeah... I should go... have to work..."
It was no longer only the senior Luka was shaking awake. As the days wore on, the entire household staff drifted into the same state. They could not get up properly in the morning. Even when they seemed to come to their senses, they would stand there vacant, their minds set down somewhere out of reach. Dropping things mid-carry because their focus had simply gone became an everyday occurrence.
What is this...? What's going on?
Had some unidentified rare disease broken out? What if it was contagious—what if she caught it too?
Luka trembled with fear.
Time passed. Around two months after she had come to the ducal estate, the only person still walking the halls in her right mind was Luka.
"Senior! Senior!!"
She called until her voice frayed and shook the girl who shared her room, but her senior only stared into empty air with unfocused eyes, showing no reaction at all. If Luka struck her hard or pressed down, she would let out a faint groan—proof, at least, that she could still feel pain.
"I'm scared... I'm so scared...!"
Terror and panic took her. In the end, Luka tried to flee the estate.
She got out of the mansion and ran without thinking, and what met her eyes was the main gate, shut fast and locked. The key was in the butler's possession.
She went back inside and sought him out, but the butler was no more in his right mind than the rest. She searched his belongings in secret while he sat unresponsive. The key was nowhere to be found. She did come across a small strongbox, but it was sealed by magic. It would never open without its owner's mana. Breaking it by force was out of the question for Luka, who had neither the strength nor any magic of her own. She had no choice but to abandon the idea of unlocking her way out.
Neither the locked gate nor the high walls encircling the estate were anything Luka could climb. Even if she screamed for help, soldiers might be posted nearby, but ordinary townspeople almost never came this way.
Luka understood, then. She was trapped inside this house.
She could not have said how much time passed. Luka lived on in the estate alone. She kept herself presentable; cleaning and laundry were what she had been taught here, after all. She ate by taking what she needed from the pantry. She could not cook, but there was no shortage of food that could be eaten as it was.
"Senior..."
There was no answer. Starting with the senior maid who would not come back to herself, Luka began to care for the servants.
One day, while she was going through the mansion in search of some way out, she found that one of them had finally died. The cause was starvation. The dead man was Red the gardener, who had always been so busy he ate only the bare minimum as it was.
It was the first time Luka had seen a person die. She panicked.
Did he die because I neglected him...?
There was nothing she could have done. Resting afterward in her room, however, she discovered one thing. The people sitting vacant as if their minds had gone would eat on their own if she set food or water in front of them. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, they put their hands to the meal without a word, just as they always had.
From that day on, Luka moved every servant into a room and distributed food and water. They were human beings, without question—and still she fed them as one would feed livestock. She had to handle their waste as well. It was grueling, backbreaking work. She simply could not bear to watch another person die.
Then, one day, a thought struck her.
Ah... the barracks!!
Soldiers were stationed at the barracks. Had the same thing happened there? Were they all right? She remembered the men who had treated her kindly when she first arrived at the estate. But there was nothing Luka could do. She could not even get out of the house. She had no choice but to swallow the worry and keep it down.
A week passed, perhaps two—and then she heard the main gate of the estate groan open.
Luka, who had been tending her senior, glanced out the window toward the gate.
Who is it? Has someone finally come to help?
She looked at the people coming in, and her face went rigid. Armed knights, and others who looked like mages. So long as she did not know who they were, men with weapons were a threat.
What if this really was some unknown plague... and they had come to dispose of everyone?
Panic seized her, and she fled. She ran for the pantry, hid herself inside, locked the door, and held her breath.
She could not have said how long it was before she heard someone try the door—and then a pounding, as if they meant to force it. She had to be quiet. She had to hold her breath. Terror took her anyway, and she screamed.
"Is someone there?"
A man's voice. Luka only screamed harder.
"Hey! There's someone in here! Hey—it's all right, calm down!"
"Aaaaaaaaaah!! Aaaaaah!!"
"Tell Lady Eve! We found someone who can still talk! Help me get this door open!"
Luka's nightmare was about to end.