A Coincidence – 1
When I looked into the mirror, a pale face stared back at me.
It was a face that had always looked sickly; seen like this, of course it would belong to a man on death's door. I could well understand why Adele had taken one look at me and thought I was about to die. Anyone who saw such a face would think that at least once. She was the very picture of health, so it stood to reason she'd find me frail.
Of course, her words had felt as though they pierced straight through to my true condition. Your eyes are empty, she'd said. The face reflected in the glass was no different from what I remembered — and naturally so. My mind might carry everything forward, but my body always returned to that summer day of my twentieth year.
They say the eyes are windows to the soul, don't they. Perhaps she was right, and my expression had changed a little. Come to think of it, how long had it been since I'd last smiled — truly smiled — since the regressions began? The corners of my mouth, forced upward, felt nothing but endlessly awkward.
Enough of that. I turned my head, and there stood Renald, looking thoroughly uncomfortable.
...How long has he been standing there?
"I told you not to enter without permission."
"I-I did have permission, Young Master. Didn't I explain today's schedule to you earlier?"
"...Ah."
I'd been so absorbed in my reflection and the thoughts it stirred that I'd completely forgotten Renald was in my room at all.
As for today's schedule — in truth, I didn't have all that much to do. Father and Yuria handled the family's affairs, and the vassals saw to the rest of the drudgery. It wasn't for nothing that I'd become something of an idle loafer drifting about outside. As if I weren't a member of the household at all, my name was always absent from anything done in this ducal mansion. If there was one difference today, it was that I would have to see Father in person.
"Is this about yesterday?"
"Most likely... I believe so, Young Master. The rumor has spread quite far. That you killed someone, ahem. Surely that can't be true, of course."
"If I'd killed someone at an imperial party, I'd be sitting in a dungeon right now, not here. Isn't their imagination running a little thin?"
"I-I didn't spread it myself. Some of the maids were saying—"
"Yes, I get the idea."
Fact one: a young lord with not a single wound on him, only blood on his clothes, had come home and shut himself in his room. I had a fair idea of just how much exaggeration and distortion had been heaped onto that single fact. Plenty of the servants disliked me to begin with, so a good number of the versions circulating would be laced with malice. Which of Yuria's dogs had kicked up the fuss this time? Just slightly, my mood soured.
"Y-Young Master?"
I had always noticed it — my actions drew an inordinate amount of attention. Merely stepping out of my room, and this many people reacted. I seized the chin of the maid standing before my door, and she flinched, squirming in alarm.
It was an unfamiliar face. It seemed vaguely familiar, perhaps, but that only meant it was a face I hadn't seen often, even across countless regressions. In other words, someone who had rarely crossed paths with me. So what did it mean, that a maid like that was standing blankly in front of my door of all places?
The possibilities narrowed to two. Either she really was newly employed — or she was someone's pawn. And what reason could she possibly have to be at my door? Renald had just walked in and was standing squarely behind me. The way she trembled like a frightened rat was suspicious enough on its own. If she'd merely been passing by, she would have been carrying something; her hands, inconveniently for her, were empty. Which made it look exactly as though she had business at my door.
"Who are you, standing in front of my room?"
"I-I'm a maid of House Taylor...?"
"Since when, exactly? Today is the first time I've ever seen your face."
I tightened my grip on her chin, slowly adding pressure with my fingers. Perhaps she felt it building, for her brow creased faintly at the ache in her jaw.
"I know every single maid in this ducal mansion. I've seen them far too many times. Faces I've watched dozens of times over aren't so easily forgotten. Where each of them works, even where they sleep — I knew it all."
Not once — dozens of times over. There was no forgetting those faces. I still remembered looking them up one by one, driven by the fear that they might have helped kill me, that one of them might kill me again. I'd never imagined that old obsession would prove useful now, but one thing was certain: this maid was suspicious.
Perhaps her legs gave out; the maid, her face still caught in my grip, crumpled where she stood. To think they would set someone with so little spine to such a task—
"The Young Matriarch certainly has a peculiar way of managing things. Sending a maid on her very first day of work to eavesdrop."
"T-that's not—"
"I don't much care for lies. Just keep your mouth shut."
I pressed her lips firmly shut, and she managed a strained nod. A glance at Renald's face found his eyes wide with what looked like genuine shock. Which meant, at the very least... that Renald, at least, was still of use to me.
She was no assassin. There was no reason for anyone to kill me at this point, and she'd probably just been handed an errand because she looked easy to push around. The maid said nothing. But the tears welling in her eyes made one thing certain, at least — she was no veteran of this sort of work. In that case, holding onto her any longer would only cost me.
I released her chin and shot Renald a look. It meant: handle this as you see fit.
"...Enough. I've no reason to take my anger out on you, after all. I take it yesterday's rumor must have troubled her quite a bit."
"Hhk... hnn..."
That was why I'd returned early yesterday — and I had no doubt she'd heard the rumor about me coming home stained with blood. Naturally, she suspected I'd done something. Her reaction was exactly what I'd expected, so much so that a laugh nearly escaped me. Disappointment, after all, requires some expectation to begin with — and Yuria... well. Her response was hardly original.
Renald gathered up the maid, bowed his head to me, and disappeared. I'd noticed it since yesterday — he seemed to be treating me with marked deference. Perhaps because he knew I held his leash, but I didn't consider the attitude a bad thing. So long as he kept it up, it was nothing but profit for me.
Yuria moved too hastily.
I didn't know just how lightly she took me, but to sow all manner of rumors and then sit back to watch my reaction... The amusing part was that the me of the first cycle would have walked straight into it. What she had failed to account for was that she didn't know I'd been through this dozens of times over. Well, no one but me knew that. It was only natural.
With that thought, my steps toward wherever Father would be came to a sudden halt. The footsteps behind me were moving rather fast. As though I were their target, the headlong rhythm slowed a touch the moment I stopped.
"Robert Taylor."
A cold voice, no different from any other day. For an instant, it felt as though a bitter wind had swept past. It was unmistakably the height of summer, yet Yuria's eyes alone always radiated a chill.
"And the reason you returned to the ducal mansion alone yesterday is, hm? I do believe I told you not to do anything rash."
"You did say that. Quite clearly."
"I'm asking you now. Why did you come back to this mansion drenched in blood?"
A short laugh slipped out of me. Wasn't it funny — interrogating someone without even bothering to confirm the facts? For all her posturing as the perfect Young Matriarch, she was far from seasoned herself. Pressure backed by nothing but a title doesn't always work, does it? This was exactly one of those moments.
"You're mistaken, Young Matriarch. It seems a servant has fed you a false rumor."
"You're mistaken? Ha. Robert. You can say that with evidence like this?"
From somewhere she produced a shirt stained with blood at the collar. Had she ordered someone to dig through the laundry? There was certainly blood on it. But that was all. No one who looked at it would call that shirt drenched in blood. Yet Yuria's bearing was utterly self-assured — as though everything she said were gospel, radiating conviction in a 'hypothesis' of her own making.
"You call that much blood 'drenched in blood,' Young Matriarch? That differs somewhat from my understanding."
"That's not what matters right now. Where exactly did this blood come from? If your body has no wounds, then this must be someone else's blood. Don't tell me you actually killed—"
"Haah..."
Exasperated, I let out a sigh — and Yuria's expression hardened in an instant. I had planned to listen quietly, apologize a few times, and be done with it, but the misunderstanding she harbored was far larger than I'd imagined. Murder? Surely she knew better than anyone that I had never so much as held a sword. This was nothing but a pretext — a pretext to seize on the fact that I had moved alone and blow the whole matter up. With her authority, making it an established fact and burying me along with it would be simple enough. Even if the truth surfaced quickly and the rumor died, Father, having heard it, would still berate me for staining the family's honor. The goal of casting me out of Father's favor would be accomplished splendidly.
"You trusted a servant's word over mine?"
"...I never said I heard it from a servant."
"Then did you see it yourself? Where I was hurt, where I was in the ballroom, whom I met, how this blood got on me. Did you see any of it? Of course not. Yes — because there's no way you could have."
My measured voice had grown considerably sharper without my noticing. My mood, I supposed, was the cause. She kept overlapping with the old memories I'd dredged up as I fell asleep. The hands that had squeezed my throat. The face that had sneered down at me as I died. The cold eyes that had personally overseen my torture. They were needling me.
"After all, you've never had the slightest interest in me. Have you, Young Matriarch?"
To Yuria, I was not a brother. Merely someone who shared her blood — a rival who might snatch away the position of Young Matriarch the moment she stumbled. That was why she kept me in check. Berating me for missteps, tormenting me for wrongs — in the end, it was because she saw me not as family, but as a competitor.
The heat in my voice gradually drained away until it regained its original calm. If anything, it had grown colder still. Whatever emotion remained in me had scattered completely; my interior was a lake that no longer rippled at anything.
Yuria was still staring at me. But unlike before, cracks had clearly spread through that rigid expression. Her faintly trembling lips, her subtly wavering eyes, were proof of it.
"You're saying you were hurt..."
"I met Lady Igrit. She cut my throat."
At the name Igrit, Yuria's eyes narrowed. Igrit — that family name pointed to only one person. She looked doubtful, but even that doubt died when she saw the crest on the handkerchief I held out. Wasn't it laughable? Still doubting the word of her own flesh and blood, yet believing without question the crest of a Grand Duke she had never once laid eyes on.
"I was the one who was hurt. Surely you don't think someone who has never held a sword could kill a man."
"......"
Looking hollowed out, her tightly sealed mouth could produce no further rebuttal. The face that had been flinging glares at me was gone. I watched the small crack that had opened. Her eyes flickered back and forth in confusion, and quietly, I spoke.
"If you don't know, then it would be better to say nothing at all. And if what you want is for me to disappear, I would rather you simply say so."
To her, still unable to manage a word, I turned away and added:
"I will make myself scarce, quietly. Young Matriarch."
And I walked toward the room where Father would be. Talking with Father had been my purpose from the start; this had merely cost me time. So as I set my steps forward, Yuria murmured, barely audible.
"...It's not that I have no interest in you."
I turned back to retort — and my words caught in my throat. Because Yuria was looking at me. With an expression so badly contorted it seemed it might shatter at any moment.