Just the Two of Us Beneath the Moonlight
A night when everyone else had sunk into deep sleep.
Faran opened her eyes and rose from her bed.
True to the principle of noblesse oblige, the Gilbert family treated their servants well. Rooms were provided for every two or three maids — a comfortable arrangement, but one that meant Faran had to wait until her roommate drifted off.
The breathing beside her evened out. Her roommate was asleep. Faran immediately began gathering what she needed, and as she did, moonlight spilled through the window and caught on the dagger she was packing away. It was the dagger Alvin had given her as a gift.
A dagger, for a maid. By any ordinary logic, it made no sense. When she had first received it, Alvin had looked at her as if he already knew she was an assassin.
Impossible.
Faran lingered on the thought a moment longer, gazing at the blade, then slipped it back into its place. She would not be using this dagger.
At this hour, Alvin would normally be asleep. The plan was simple: introduce the poison and let him slip into a sleep from which he would never wake. The moment it entered the body, every muscle — the heart included — would seize, and breathing would stop. And if he happened to still be awake? It would not matter. The same poison would do the job either way.
Faran slipped quietly out of her room. Footsteps echoed down the corridor — patrols making their rounds. It did not concern her. She had already mapped the guards' routes, and she knew exactly who was on duty tonight.
Sir David in command, and the rest of the night watch.
Ordinary guards were no threat. Sir David, as a knight, had sharper senses than most — but Faran had slipped through security tighter than this more times than she could count. He would not be a problem either.
And even if she were caught, she had been a maid in this household for years. Alvin had summoned maids to his room before. If she happened to cross paths with a guard, she need only say she was answering his call.
At last, she stood before Alvin's door. Killing him stirred nothing in her — no sentiment, no second thoughts. She would open this door the same way she always had, as a maid going about her duties. She was an assassin. Alvin was a target. That was all.
It was a beautiful night for the moon. And a fine night for someone to die. I, of course, had no intention of being that someone.
After seeing Faran's face today, I couldn't sleep. I'd known, in some vague way, that a moment like this would come. Until now, I'd been able to rest easy — trusting the relationship level, checking in on her thoughts now and then.
But today she'd seen something she couldn't simply overlook. Irene's treatment. The fact that I knew how to cure that disease would have struck her as unnatural.
Curing the illness itself wasn't the problem. But she was an assassin, trained to eliminate unknown variables. I'd written her backstory so that she would kill her master before becoming a full-fledged assassin. Tonight, I suspected, was that night.
And for reasons I still couldn't pin down, every time I acted differently from before, she would look at me with that uneasy expression. It wasn't as if I hadn't thought about Faran when I decided to treat the disease. But winning Sir Jacqueline's loyalty had felt more important — and I'd wanted to settle the matter of Faran once and for all, while I had the chance.
Come to think of it, in the game, Faran was...
In the game, Faran had been an assassin in the truest sense of the word. A ruthless woman who would do anything — anything at all — to achieve her objective.
It had happened during the war against the Demon King, back when I was playing as the Hero. One of the Four Heavenly Kings of the Demon King's army — a succubus — had seized a fortress. We'd gone to relieve it, but by the time we arrived, it had already fallen.
The succubus wasn't particularly strong in a fight, so surrounding the fortress hadn't been the issue. But she understood human desire — and the twisted things people hid — better than anyone, and she wielded charm and hypnosis like weapons. She used the hostages. She held them close and sent hypnotized allied soldiers out in front to block our path.
Playing as the Hero had its advantages — you were strong, and you had a lot of skills. But there were drawbacks, too. Kill a member of the allied forces and you'd take mental damage. Stack enough of it and you'd pick up a debuff. Those debuffs hit hard, so you had to manage your mental state carefully.
So I'd been stuck. If I gave the order to advance, the damage would come. And we needed to push through this place and move on to the next battlefield immediately — exactly the kind of moment when you couldn't afford to lose your composure.
The succubus had threatened us with the hostages. Open a path through the encirclement, she'd said, and withdraw. Honestly, even if we opened the path, I doubted she'd keep her word. Part of me had wanted to just charge in.
I was still turning it over when a soldier came running, out of breath. The target gate was on fire. When we checked, it turned out Faran had infiltrated the fortress with a handful of NPCs who shared her mindset. The hypnotized hostages had tried to stop them. Faran and her group had slaughtered everything in their path — hostages included.
Unfortunately, the succubus had used our hesitation to slip away on her own, so we never caught her. But because the situation had been resolved so quickly, we'd been able to move on to the next battlefield and take the victory.
And Faran had said this:
"The moment they became hostages, they were nothing but dead weight."
She'd been an NPC designed to hunt the Demon King, so her passion for the hunt made sense. But she'd shown a madness that went beyond that — as if it had been drilled into her. Faran had clearly been dreaming of something beyond the Demon King's death. Come to think of it, she'd said as much. That by killing the Demon King, she could be free.
Creeeak—
The door opened with that sound. Just as I'd expected, Faran stepped inside. And she found me sitting in a chair, looking out the window.
Finding me awake should have startled her, at least a little. But she was a professional. Not a flicker. Perfectly natural.
"Young Master, you haven't gone to bed."
"Yeah. The moon looked especially pretty tonight, so I was watching it."
I turned my head toward her as I spoke. She approached slowly. I knew she was going to try to kill me. I just didn't know how yet.
Ah. So that was it. She was going to lace the tea.
"If you cannot sleep, Young Master, might I offer you a cup of warm tea? It should help you rest."
That "rest" meaning the eternal kind, I assumed.
"Yeah? Then I'll take you up on that."
She was planning to poison the tea, apparently — but this was also a woman whose body itself was a weapon. I'd need to stay careful and ease her into conversation.
Faran walked over to the tea service waiting in the corner. The room was always stocked with tea, dishes, and refreshments, ready whenever I wanted them. A touch of mana was all it took to bring the water to a boil. She added the leaves and set the water heating.
"Faran, look — isn't the moon beautiful?"
"I did not know you were fond of the moon, Young Master."
"Neither did I, actually. I guess I must be. It just looks especially pretty tonight."
And so the idle conversation went.
Bubble, bubble—
The water began to boil in earnest. As it came to a full boil, Faran quietly slipped a small vial from inside her clothes.
"I have prepared the black tea you favor, Young Master."
"Have you?"
She poured the tea into a cup. Then she opened the vial and let a few drops of poison fall. And quietly, she brought the tea to me.
"Come to think of it, Faran — why did you come to my room at this hour?"
She seemed to hesitate for a fraction of a second as she set the cup down, then continued as if nothing had happened.
"Ah. Don't tell me you've finally decided to open your heart to me?"
Faran just smiled at that. I looked quietly into the cup. Thorough as she was, she wouldn't have made a mistake like that — and sure enough, the color and the aroma were indistinguishable from ordinary black tea. I made a show of smelling it and looked at her.
Free?
The words she'd spoken in the game flickered through my mind again. By killing the Demon King, she could be free.
Freedom. Freedom from what, exactly? What had driven Faran into this kind of obsession?
Well then. Time to poke at it.
Even so, I couldn't pretend I wasn't tense. One slip and I could die. To settle my nerves, I secretly felt for the weapon I'd stashed inside my clothes — a little insurance — and let that calm me down. If this went well, I'd have the most powerful assassin anyone could ask for. That made it more than worth the risk.
I set the cup down on the desk without drinking.
If I hadn't been able to read her thoughts, I would have drunk the tea without a second thought — and died. She had no idea. Not even in her wildest dreams.
It was all right. And because of that, the fear that had been sitting in my chest began to settle. I met Faran's eyes. Same as always — her face gave nothing away. And I opened my mouth.