The Unyielding Flower (5)
Any sane person would probably have quit right then and there.
Truthfully, that might well have been the correct answer.
But somehow, giving up like this felt too much like running away, and I hated it.
I hadn't done anything wrong, so why should I be the one to flee?
More than anything, now that I'd left the tavern, there was only one path left for putting food on the table.
The moment I thought that, the conclusion came quickly.
The conclusion being that I would have to charge straight through the front door.
"Good day, my lord. It's a pleasure to see you again."
"······!"
Confusion bloomed plainly across the Marquis's face.
It was the face of a man silently asking, Why on earth are you here?
So he hadn't expected me to come back.
The instant I laid eyes on that handsome face, my breath caught in my throat.
Yesterday's events came flooding back, and my body tried to lock itself down.
But I couldn't afford to panic here.
I secretly pinched the back of my own hand behind my back and barely clawed my way out of it.
"Why is that woman—"
"Did you not instruct the Marquis yesterday to attach me as a maidservant?"
"Ah. Right. Yes, I did."
"Then I shall take my leave for now."
"······."
The butler had no idea what had passed between the Marquis and me yesterday.
That was why he could react so casually.
Once the butler withdrew and the door clicked shut, the room held only the two of us — me and the Marquis, alone together.
I ground my teeth against the tension.
There was no guarantee whatsoever that yesterday wouldn't simply repeat itself.
"I didn't expect you to actually return."
"Don't get the wrong idea. It's not because I like you."
I said it flatly, cutting off any chance of misunderstanding.
Being taken for a woman with some kind of rape fetish would have been a disaster.
"Hahaha. I imagine not. Shall I close the window? It's a touch chilly in here."
"······."
The Marquis laughed with perfect composure, pulled out the chair at his desk, and sat down.
The bewilderment that had lingered on his face moments ago had already vanished entirely.
Shameless bastard.
He'd done what he'd done, and even with his victim standing right in front of him again, not a single word of apology.
It wasn't that I couldn't understand it.
From the Marquis's perspective, a commoner woman with no family name was probably nothing more than an object.
And who ever apologizes to an object?
But understanding a thing and accepting it were two entirely different matters.
I had been trying my hardest to stay calm, yet the anger was rising past the boiling point and threatening to overflow.
"Have you nothing to say to me?"
"Hmm······."
Thud.
I shut the glass door leading out to the veranda as I said it.
The Marquis seemed to mull it over for a moment, tapping his lips with his pen, before speaking.
"Ah. I forgot to offer you compensation."
"Do you take me for a prostitute?"
"That wasn't the intention."
Madman.
He meant to settle it with money?
Did I look like some cheap street whore who'd bend over the moment coins hit her palm?
"If you swear never to lay hands on my body again, I'll agree to a settlement."
"A settlement?"
"Yes. In exchange, I too will promise not to file charges."
"Ha······."
Absurd, wasn't it?
Crushing my lawsuit with sheer power would be trivially easy for him.
But I suspected plenty of people would take a keen interest in a scandal involving the Marquis of Dragonia — famous for his integrity and his spotless reputation with women.
I may be powerless, but I at least had the strength to put a scratch on the Marquis's good name.
"Very well. Then let us settle this."
"The settlement will be three hundred million."
"Didn't you just say you wouldn't take money?"
"When did I say that?"
"······."
What kind of settlement comes without payment?
Come to think of it, he was a genuinely funny man.
Where in the world is there someone who hates money?
I only hated the money he pressed into my hands like charity, while calling me a whore.
"Three hundred million? Fine. I'll write you a check right this moment."
Three hundred million.
To a commoner, it was an absurd sum that would take decades of labor to earn; to a marquis-level noble, it was dust.
This much wouldn't seriously offend his pride, and I could take it without any ugly haggling over the amount.
That was my judgment, and as it turned out, I was right.
"So are we agreed, then?"
"You've forgotten your promise."
"Ah. I swear that I shall never lay hands on Miss Yulia again."
"Yes. And in return, I will withdraw the lawsuit I was preparing to submit to the courts."
"······."
I pulled out the complaint I'd written in advance and tore it to shreds right before the Marquis's eyes.
Had the settlement failed, I'd planned to run straight to the courthouse.
I'd intended to summon every noble aligned against the Marquis and press the charges with their backing, too.
That was no longer necessary.
"So are we to forget everything between us now?"
"I won't forget. I won't forgive, either. We've reached a settlement, so I'm simply choosing not to pursue it."
"Hahaha. Fair enough."
"And, my lord — please speak casually with me. That isn't the tone one ought to use with an employee."
"I'm comfortable with this. I'll simply keep talking this way."
"······."
The Marquis smiled pleasantly without changing his speech one bit.
Absolutely willful, through and through.
He used banmal with his butler but insisted on formal speech with me.
It amounted to a declaration that he had no intention of treating me as an ordinary maidservant.
So even with his promise in hand, I could never let my guard down.
Who knew when this bastard might break our agreement and pounce on me again?
"If I'm reading the terms of our agreement correctly, only my touching Miss Yulia's body is forbidden — but nothing about Miss Yulia touching my—"
"My lord. I thought you'd understood well enough, but I see I was wrong. I'll be adding further detail to the terms of our agreement."
"Ahahaha! A joke, Miss Yulia, merely a joke. Naturally, I shall do nothing whatsoever that would bring you shame."
He makes that kind of joke to the woman he brutally raped last night?
My insides churned and seethed.
Right up until I'd seen him at the banquet hall yesterday, he'd been a man brimming with dignity and charisma — one glance was enough to think him noble.
But facing him like this now, the only impression left was perverted bastard.
Leopard had the sharper tongue, but when it came to the sleaze that leaked out of his mouth nonstop because he simply couldn't hold it in, the Marquis was far, far worse.
"It's been a rocky road, but welcome all the same. I expect I'll remain in the Imperial Capital for about a month before departing. Miss Yulia, you will attend to me in the meantime, and once I've gone, you'll take your orders from the butler."
"Yes. Understood."
"Our duties begin early in the morning, so commuting will not be permitted — you'll take your lodgings and meals here at the villa. Have you been assigned quarters?"
"Yes. I was given one double-occupancy room, and I've just finished unpacking."
"Good. Oh — hm? A double room?"
The Marquis tilted his head.
He stared blankly into space for a moment, as if pondering something, then looked back at me.
"Come to think of it, you have a child, don't you? You look so young, it slipped my mind entirely."
"······."
Why would this bastard suddenly bring up my child?
A chill of dread flashed through me and froze my body solid.
"My lord. Let's make one more promise."
"What promise would that be······?"
"A promise that you will not touch my daughter."
"Oh, come now! What exactly do you take me for!"
"A shameless degenerate who violated a woman he'd just met behind the banquet hall and then ran."
"······."
The Marquis's mouth clamped shut.
There was no law saying that brazen rapist couldn't also be a predator of children, so I decided to make absolutely certain.
What he did to me was one thing.
That could be smoothed over with a settlement of three hundred million.
But if he so much as laid a finger on Tia, I would use every weapon at my disposal to bring House Dragonia crashing down.
"Surely that goes without saying — it's basic human decency. There's no need to swear an oath over it."
"Spare me. Swear it. Now."
"You look impossibly young — and yet you have a daughter. How old are you, exactly?"
"Stop changing the subject and swear it, my lord!"
On my very first day of work, I already wanted to write my letter of resignation.
Naturally, after a long, tiresome back-and-forth, I did manage to extract the oath in the end.
And so I came to work in the house of the man who had raped me.
***
Evening, as the sun sank low.
Leopard, the Hero, walked slowly through a village that had been reduced to ruins.
Every building had burned to its foundations, and all that remained were scorched stretches of wall. Here and there, uncollected bones lay scattered where no one had gathered them.
"There it is."
Passing through the village, a small house came into view atop a distant hill.
Leopard climbed the hill and stepped inside.
The door hung loose on its hinges, creaking with a skin-crawling whine, and every window had been shattered — the place reeked of abandonment. Yet the fire demon had never reached it, and the house stood in reasonably fair shape.
"Now, where would it be······."
Leopard began ransacking every drawer and every shelf.
The object of the search was a single ring.
The ring Ariel had kept safe all this time.
That woman, Yulia, almost certainly hadn't known the ring even existed when she left it behind here.
"Ah."
Deep into the search, Leopard noticed that one plank beneath the bed was made of a slightly different material.
Shoving the bed aside revealed a hatch leading downward.
Leopard crushed the lock barehanded and opened it. In the small storeroom that appeared, a single ring lay all alone.
Leopard lifted it carefully and laid it on an open palm.
Then, carrying it toward the window where the last light of day still filtered through, the dull black gem set in the ring finally revealed itself.
"Ah······."
The color Leopard remembered was unmistakably red.
A red as fierce and blazing as the Saintess's own passion.
Now, it had lost every last trace of its light.
That could mean only one thing.
The death of its bearer.
Ariel's soul had been annihilated completely — gone beyond any hope of return.
"Aaaaah······!"
To Leopard, that truth was cruelty beyond bearing.
A part of him had wished never to know — but it was far too late for that now.
Clutching the ring in his hand, Leopard wept until the sun went down.