Chapter 16
Whoooosh. A chilling sandstorm whipped up.
I stood alone atop an endless wasteland.
[Save me…….]
In a daze, I looked around. The barren landscape stretching in every direction felt less strange and more familiar.
……Ah, this was the Imperial Southern Archipelago.
Queen Island.
My ruined hometown. A hell where the bodies of my comrades piled up like mountains.
Yes. The ground beneath my feet was a hill of corpses.
Grip!
No sooner had I realized this than a bony hand shot up from the ground and seized my ankle.
[S-save me, Anderter…….]
The face emerging from beneath the sand had clumps of melted flesh clinging to its skull, a sight no longer fit to call human.
[Anderter…….]
It was a voice I’d heard somewhere before, but I couldn’t recall the face or name.
A familiar voice. An unknown face.
There were many such existences for me. On the battlefield, we never asked each other’s names. Remembering names meant more people to mourn.
[It hurts, save me. Save me.]
[Sir Anderter. Why didn’t you help me? Why did you let me die?!]
These were the soldiers who had met their ends in the war.
Perhaps that’s why. I couldn’t bring myself to shake off the man’s hand.
Soon a second arm reached out. Then a third, a fourth…… up to a tenth arm sprouted from the earth, grabbing at my limbs.
Before long, I collapsed onto the wasteland, too drained to resist, and the skeletal hands groped their way toward my face.
[No, you’re not.]
[You’re not Anderter!]
The hands that had screamed shoved my body away.
They pointed at me accusingly, berating me.
[Who are you?!]
I answered that I was Anderter, but the dead didn’t hear my voice.
[Don’t lie. Say your name.]
[Shed Anderter’s skin!]
[Who are you?!]
I’m Anderter.
I’m the real Anderter Farger. I held swords and guns alongside you all under this name! I endured ten years of hell under this name!
[Tell us your real name.]
[How dare you use Anderter’s name!]
[You’re not Anderter! Who the hell are you?!]
I am.
I am not Anderter Farger.
Anderter is my little brother.
Then, who am I?
My shoulders trembled as if scorched by fire, and I forced my body upright.
I gasped in a desperate breath, but instead of the wasteland’s dry air, a fresh and serene breeze filled my mind.
Before I could grasp where I was, the voices lingering in my brain blurred my vision.
[Who the hell are you?!]
That was exactly what I wanted to know.
……Who am I?
“Who are you?”
I nearly jumped.
Reflexively turning my head, I saw the Head Maid standing by the bed.
She glared at me with cold eyes, then continued in a voice dripping with frost.
“I’ll gladly answer that. You’re a maid who overslept like a champ, Miss Daizy. And even after sleeping in, you’re still wandering in dreamland. Pull yourself together before I dump a bucket of cold water on your head.”
Ah, overslept.
‘It was a dream.’
What a rotten dream to have, of all things. And I slept in on top of it?
I recalled the contract clause: a second tardy meant a pay cut. My mood, already gloomy from the nightmare, sank even lower.
On top of that, my throat was parched. Like I’d crossed an actual desert. Halfway through changing into my maid uniform, I knelt down.
“My throat is so dry.”
The Head Maid shook her head in disbelief and turned toward the door.
“Haa. I can’t tell if I’m raising a scatterbrained niece or training a maid. I’ll fetch some water, so get dressed.”
“Yes.”
Thud. As soon as the Head Maid left the room, I headed toward the window.
Rising from the bed, I spotted a small note neatly tucked between the window frames.
The note read:
『Pub. Anytime.』
No more details, but it was unmistakably from the Butler Assassin.
It meant he had something to say and to drop by the pub whenever.
‘Has he already found Dian Ket’s Legacy?’
I tucked the note into my personal drawer, finished preparing for work, and headed down to the first floor.
Stepping out through the wide-open front door, I saw the Head Maid, who had gone to fetch water, standing frozen at the main gate.
She was scanning a letter with utmost seriousness.
“A threat?”
Her face was so grim I couldn’t help asking about it.
She flinched, looked at me, and hurriedly pocketed the letter as she replied.
“Ah, Miss Daizy. No. It’s just something a bit concerning…… Let’s head inside. Have you drunk the water?”
“I’m about to.”
After downing the water she’d ladled into a pot for me, I began my morning chores.
Sometimes I think the Head Maid really sees me as a workhorse.
After finishing the second-floor hallway mopping, I stepped out into the small garden before lunch and checked on Potted Lu, neatly lined up on the stairs.
“……Mm, looking good.”
Yesterday morning, it had finally sprouted for the first time.
The cotyledons from the seeds I’d planted were dicots.
The leaves were small but plump, and a total of 22 seeds had germinated. Clustered irregularly together, they looked utterly pitiful.
‘Cute.’
Even grass could be cute.
Lu, you’ve got 22 bodies. Twenty-two bodies, but one name: Lu. Nice. No matter what anyone says, you’re Lu.
“Thin them out.”
A dry tone shattered my musings, rubbing the top of my head.
“Or transplant them. But there are too many to transplant. No special spots to spare in the garden. Best to just thin them.”
Lifting my head, I met delicate features like a glass doll staring down at me.
Behind cascading blue hair evoking a waterfall, the noon sun blazed. But the sun was nothing compared to his face, which shone brighter.
“Why?”
“Pull the thin cotyledons first, the ones with weak, transparent stems.”
“So why?”
“If nutrition gets spread out in such a small pot, they won’t grow properly. Better to save only the ones worth saving.”
Such barbaric logic!
I gazed sadly at the pot. Barbaric or not, she wasn’t wrong. Crammed in this tiny pot, they’d just kill each other off.
‘Life is bitter. Even grass competes to survive.’
But thinning out the cotyledons I’d nurtured myself felt all wrong.
Sweeping my eyes over the garden, Lu warned in his icy tone.
“I said there’s no room in the garden.”
“No room? Look at all those empty spots? Just grass by the fountain, grass in front of the flowerbeds?”
There, there, there.
Forgetting the soreness in my lips, I pointed all around the small garden, only for Lu to snatch my finger and reply with a patient, pitiful look, like he was teaching an idiot.
“The aesthetic of emptiness. Beauty reaches its peak through void. The flowers in this garden aren’t refugees. No reason to shove them into empty spaces willy-nilly.”
In other words, no way in hell.
‘I can’t just dig up the ground by force.’
Weatherwoods Mansion handled all household chores collectively among the staff (cooking excepted).
So when Lu was busy, I’d water the garden, and when I was busy, he’d clean the fireplaces (cooking excepted).
But the garden’s aesthetics were firmly under Lu’s domain.
To transplant ten or more pairs of dicot cotyledons—potentially harming the garden’s look—I needed his permission.
“Tra…….”
No, I couldn’t say it facing my natural enemy Lu.
“Tra…….”
I turned my head away and squeezed my eyes shut.
“Transplant them for me.”
I barely got it out, but no response.
Peeking, he stared back with a face screaming he had zero intention of helping.
“For me?”
His expression said, ‘Am I your slave?’
“P-ple…….”
“Ple?”
“Please.”
His ecstatic face tilted sideways. Lu nodded at the pot teeming with cotyledons.
“Do you even know what flower it is?”
“It’ll be pretty.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Because its name is Lu.”
Lu’s eyes narrowed further.
With thin eyelids and sharp lashes hugging the corners, even his half-lidded glare was striking.
“You know how to flatter?”
His voice sounded more like a scoff than mockery.
Staring at me steadily, Lu glanced around with his head raised, then walked behind the fountain. He lightly brushed the grass near the wall base.
“In a row here. Mess it up, and I’ll bury them in dirt. I’ll inspect, so get to it properly.”
Oh, giving in just like that?
Before he could change his mind, I scooped up Potted Lu and hurried over. As I turned for a trowel, he blocked my path, tilting his chin in a command that wasn’t quite a command.
“Say thanks.”
“……Thank you, Mr. Lu.”
Savoring my gritted-teeth expression with evident delight, he strode off on those long legs. Such a stickler.
I grabbed the trowel and began digging up the firmly rooted grass.
……But once transplanted to the garden, would these Lus still be Lu? Lu was the pot’s name, but these cotyledons had left the pot for new spots in the garden.
‘Maybe name the offshoots “Branch Family Lu” or something.’
How much time passed as I separated and planted each cotyledon?
From beyond the wall came children’s bickering.
“I’m gonna be Raphaelo.”
“No way, I’m Raphaelo the Supreme Commander!”
“Hey, dummy. Your hair’s brown. So be Commander Anderter. Or maybe Her Excellency Natasha?”
“What? No to Anderter. Then I’d get killed by Archmage Mephisto. I’m Raphaelo!”
