True Feelings
"If what you need is someone to drink with, I'll go brew a pot of tea for myself instead."
"...Do as you like."
Esmela's answer was sharp with irritation, and her voice had settled back into its usual register.
"Then please wait just a moment."
I offered a light bow and slipped out of the office. The door shut with a dull thud. I leaned my back against it and let out a long breath.
"Haa..."
The tension drained out of me all at once.
"That startled me..."
Muttering to myself, I trudged down the corridor.
"Esmela was nothing like her usual self... Did something shift in her?"
The haughty young lady of a ducal house I saw every day had been nowhere in that room. In her place had sat a gentle, tender Esmela, and watching her had stirred something in me I had never felt before, rising all at once. I had grabbed at the excuse of being underage and fled just to calm down, but the aftershock refused to fade.
"..."
A thought struck me. What if I had taken the wineglass she offered? If I had drunk with her, and then... what came after that? Surely not—
"No. No way."
I shook my head hard and slapped both cheeks, dragging back everything that had happened today until my mind was steady again.
"Get a grip."
With that resolve, I walked quickly toward the kitchen.
Knock, knock.
"...Come in, then."
The latch clicked.
"Excuse me."
A small tray of tea things balanced in one hand, I stepped back into the office. Esmela sat with her chin propped on her right hand, gazing out the window. Moonlight fell across her there, and she was beautiful. How to put it? She looked like a picture that could have been dropped straight into the game as an event CG.
Thinking that, I approached and set the tea service on the table.
"I'll pour you a cup as well, my lady."
"Don't bother."
Somewhere along the way she had slipped back into her usual prickly manner. A relief, in its way. The changed Esmela of a moment ago had been lovely, but the version who acted like herself was easier to face.
I poured tea into only one of the cups I had brought and sat down across from her again. Lifting it close to my face, I breathed in the fragrance rising from the cup. Hibiscus, bright and fragrant. I had grabbed whatever leaves came to hand in the kitchen and steeped them in a hurry, but it had turned out better than I expected. I took a sip, set the cup down, and studied her complexion. Her gaze was still turned toward the window.
"My lady."
"What."
Even when I called, she answered only briefly and did not look at me.
...Sulking again. A truly difficult young lady. Nothing for it. Tending to one's master's mood was part of a butler's work.
"The head maid told me what happened afterward."
"..."
She went on staring outside in silence.
"I am grateful for your consideration, my lady."
"What are you talking about?"
"I heard that you explained the zombies to the servants in my place, and that you defended what I did."
"With Father away, I only did what the master of this house ought to do."
Her eyes still were not on me, but I could tell her expression had loosened a little.
"After that, Gillot..."
"Once they confirmed he was dead, the servants buried him in the backyard. When this settles, we plan to move him to the Herta family cemetery."
"...Thank you."
"One thanks is enough."
To my second expression of gratitude, her voice had eased.
"My lady, might I ask now why you summoned me?"
At that, Esmela finally looked at me. Her face was blank and yet somehow complicated, and unlike usual, I found it hard to read what she was feeling.
"Follow me."
She rose from her chair and walked back toward the work desk. She sat in the chair before it, and I took my place standing opposite her—the same arrangement as when I received my orders. Her way, I supposed, of declaring that from here on this was no longer person to person, but master and servant again.
"First, the incident from this afternoon."
Her tone had turned businesslike as well.
"I confirmed that the beings from the superstition you told me about are remarkably similar to the things that appeared in the royal capital. Even the part about infection by bite. They don't have a proper name yet anyway, so from now on I'll call them zombies."
"Understood."
"Once the situation settles, I'll dispatch investigators to your homeland. We'll need to clarify why that tradition arose, and what relationship it actually has to the zombies."
"..."
That's dangerous. My lie would be exposed at once, and then Esmela would interrogate me for certain.
"You look like you have something to say."
"No. Not at all."
But I had no way to handle it now. All I could do was pray she forgot.
"Hmm... And there's nothing else you know about the zombies?"
I thought it over again, but it seemed I had already told her everything I could. Zombie lore changed from story to story in the first place. If I went beyond the traits everyone associated with them and started volunteering specifics, I might plant the wrong assumptions.
"Yes. All I ever knew was a superstition the grandmother next door used to tell me."
"I see... Then that's fine."
Worry shadowed her face as she answered, and I understood. We had secured a brief safety by returning to the mansion, but that was all. We had no information whatsoever about why the outbreak had happened, or what state the royal capital was in now. In that ignorance, the weight on her—responsible even for the servants left behind in the duke's stead—had to be immense. Thinking of it that way, the Esmela before me looked somehow exhausted.
"Tomorrow I plan to discuss what comes next with Arit and Elina. You attend as well."
"Yes. Understood."
"Then that's all I have to say to you. Go back now."
"Ah, yes..."
I was about to answer properly when a question flashed through my mind. Had she really called me to the office in the middle of the night, alone, just to ask me that? No matter how I turned it over, there had to be some other purpose. And then the answer struck.
If I'm right...
"Heh."
The smile came on its own.
"What? Why are you suddenly smiling?"
"It's nothing, my lady. I simply wished to thank you once more."
"...?"
"I presumed to guess why you called me... and I wondered if perhaps you summoned me to encourage me."
"!"
She startled.
"W-well. I have no idea what you're talking about."
Judging by the way she even stammered in her fluster, I had hit the mark.
"Thank you, my lady. Thanks to you, I've come back to my senses."
The worries I had wrestled with in that room a moment ago had not vanished. The zombies had once been people. That fact would not change, and I might go on suffering over it. But I understood now that this was not the time to stay tangled in such thoughts. I would keep thinking about it, of course, and I would keep apologizing in my heart to those I had had no choice but to kill. I would not, however, cling to that worry more than necessary and abandon my duty—the duty of protecting the former villainess before my eyes, always putting on a proud front and yet somehow full of gaps. Esmela Herta. As her exclusive butler, and as a fan of Roina.
I smiled and looked her straight in the face.
"...Wh-what. Do you think a mere butler is allowed to look at me with those unsettling eyes?"
"My apologies."
My mouth apologized. My face kept smiling.
"Then, my lady, I'll see you tomorrow morning."
I bowed deeply and left her office. My steps down the corridor were light, nothing like a moment ago.
"..."
Esmela was still seated at the desk. After Renit left she tried to hold on to her composure, but a faint blush colored her face.
"Ahem. Ahem."
She cleared her throat, struggling to recover her calm. Once her expression was in order, she spoke into an office where she ought to have been alone.
"Elina."
"Yes, my lady."
And yet the voice answered from a room that should have been empty. From the shadow pooled in one corner, where neither the moonlight at the window nor the candle on the desk could reach, the head maid stepped out toward her.
"You called."
"Renit?"
"I confirmed that he returned to his room."
Esmela showed no surprise at all at that unreal entrance. She spoke with her as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world.
"How did he seem?"
"His expression was much brighter than before he met you, my lady."
"I see... Then that's fine."
Her tone was flat, but a faint smile rose at the corner of her mouth.
"I'm sorry, my lady. I should have escorted you all the way to the wedding after all."
"Enough. I'm the one who told you not to come. It was a wedding attended by people from every circle in the capital. If someone from the Ladain Faith or the magic tower had sensed you, it would only have made things worse."
The head maid affirmed her with silence alone.
"But are you truly certain black magic isn't involved in this?"
"At least as far as my knowledge of black magic goes, yes. Commanding the dead is a method black magic often uses, but making corpses act on their own, and on that scale, is impossible. A curse transmitted by a bite, of all things, is absurd."
She answered in her usual dry way.
"I see... If you say so, the chance that black magic is tangled up in this is vanishingly small. How many people on the entire continent know black magic better than you do? But if that's the case, this has become truly troublesome. Aside from what Renit told us, we have no clues about this incident at all..."
Esmela let out a low sigh.
"I'm sorry I couldn't be of help."
"Don't blame yourself. For now, carry on your duties as head maid and look into this alongside them. The moment you learn anything new, report to me."
"Understood."
"Good... Go and rest."
At that, the head maid gathered her skirt in both hands, curtseyed with perfect courtesy, and walked back toward the corner she had come from.
"Wait, Elina."
Esmela stopped her again.
"What is it?"
The head maid turned back.
"That... the advice you gave me."
Unlike before, embarrassment colored her voice.
"Advice... Yes. You asked me how you might comfort Renit."
"Yes. I was sure he'd been shaken by what happened this afternoon, but nothing suitable came to mind, so I tried it the way you told me..."
Esmela looked down at what she was wearing. It was an ordinary everyday dress, modest enough to cover her to the chest, and yet the collarbone and shoulders were left bare over an oddly generous expanse.
"W-wearing something like this and drinking wine alone together... Is this really the proper way for a master to encourage a servant? And Renit wouldn't even touch the wine. He said he was underage..."
"Tsk... What a knight."
"What did you just say?"
"Nothing."
"In the end it's a relief he perked up, but no matter how I think about it, something's off. You really did give me proper advice for my sake, didn't you?"
"I did."
"If I don't do at least this much, the two of them will go on like that until they grow old and die..."
"You've been muttering this whole time. What is it?"
"Nothing. I'll take my leave, my lady."
"Wait, we're not finished, hey!"
The head maid bowed and walked briskly into the dark. Once again Esmela was alone in the office. With a peculiar expression, she laid a hand over the left side of her chest.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.
Even now, after meeting Renit, the heartbeat would not settle, and Esmela had yet to understand what it meant.