Chapter 9
<10화>
“The Lady is gone? What do you mean by that?”
The dining room, once filled with the clatter of silverware, was suddenly plunged into silence.
As if sensing something was wrong, the Viscountess frowned and asked.
“…They searched the entire area around the Pose Duchy, but the Lady was nowhere to be found. They’ve withdrawn for now, but…”
“What about the Duke? Is the Duke alright?”
“I only received a telegram saying he has arrived at the entrance of the Duke’s Castle, so I don’t know much more.”
…The Lady wasn’t there?
As I listened to the three of them talk, my face began to grow pale.
According to the original story, she should have been at an orphanage near the wetlands within the Pose Duchy.
The original plot shouldn’t be straying like this.
It was then. As my trembling gaze drifted through the air, I locked eyes with someone.
“You said for sure that the Lady was there….”
It was the maid’s eyes, filled with reproach.
In that moment, I realized.
The only thing waiting for me now was abandonment.
“…….”
When the Viscount and his wife followed the maid’s gaze and looked at me, I felt a sharp pain in my chest, as if arrows were piercing my heart.
My hands, resting on the table, began to shake uncontrollably.
The Duke had covered up the fact that I was a spy for only one reason.
‘The contract is still valid, kid.’
It was because I had given him the Lady’s location.
‘But if she wasn’t there…?’
My frozen heart began to pound with terror.
If the Lady couldn’t be found, the contract was meaningless. Calips had no reason to keep me alive.
I was a spy from the Pose Duchy, a mere foreign orphan of no importance.
“I must see His Excellency at once, Aisha—!”
Clatter—!
The startled Viscountess cried out, but I didn’t even notice my chair falling over as I bolted upright and ran out of the room.
Thump, thump, thump.
My heart hammered against my ribs, louder than my footsteps, like a heavy nail being driven in.
I could die.
No, I was bound to die now.
“Aisha?”
A familiar knight standing across the hallway tried to greet me, but I brushed past him, roughly wiping the tears from my eyes.
Even he, who had always been friendly, would surely despise me as a liar once he heard that the direct bloodline Lady was gone.
Click.
I ducked into a storage room and shut the door.
From the moment my infiltration into the Crost Duchy was planned, I had memorized the internal layout of the Duke’s Castle.
I had to run away.
I stood on my tiptoes and reached up.
“Please, reach. Just reach….”
I wanted to climb on top of the tall dresser, but my hands couldn’t reach the top.
Looking around, I saw a chair.
Thud.
Using the chair as a stepping stone, I first climbed onto the desk and then lightly landed on the dresser next to it.
My agile movements were unmistakably those of a spy.
Someone who shouldn’t be in the Crost family.
A target to be eliminated.
Clinging to a pillar next to the dresser like a cicada, I scrambled up toward the ceiling.
When I pushed against the ceiling panel with the top of my head…
‘…Just as I thought, there’s a ventilation duct.’
A dark, damp passage without a single light lay before me. It was a maintenance crawlspace that led to the garden.
I curled my body as small as possible and crawled inside.
Since it wasn’t meant for people to move through, even a small child like me could barely fit.
‘No one will think to look for me here.’
After crawling through the duct with great effort, the secret passage leading to the garden appeared.
I curled up there as tightly as I could.
But I couldn’t stop my body from shaking like a leaf.
I had to calm down. After all, my goal in this life was to survive.
Alright, good. I escaped.
No one will find me now.
After crawling for a while, I stopped once I felt I was far enough from the entrance.
I lay there, clasping my trembling hands over my chest, and the overwhelming fear slowly began to subside.
I’ll hide here until nightfall, then escape the estate.
But five minutes passed.
“…….”
Then an hour passed.
‘Am I going to have to keep running away like this forever?’
The thought suddenly struck me.
I stared silently down the straight, narrow passage.
The pitch-black tunnel gave no hint of where it led or where it ended.
‘I have to live the rest of my life like this, constantly running?’
Memories of my past life suddenly washed over me.
Losing my parents early on. Spending my youth living like a ghost among relatives who didn’t even feel like family.
Because of that, my only goal had been independence.
I worked so hard and finally got a job, but all I had to show for it were rent and utility bills. And a pittance for living expenses.
‘…Is this it?’
That was the thought I’d had while eating cup ramen at home.
Is this how I have to keep living?
In a room less than five pyeong, barely scraping together enough money to eat each day?
Without family, without friends?
“…….”
And now.
Staring into the endless tunnel, I felt the same loneliness I had felt in my previous life.
“…Heugh, ugh….”
I tried not to cry.
I knew very well that crying alone was a waste of energy.
But a sorrowful sob finally escaped through my clenched teeth.
Since I had been reincarnated, I wanted to do well this time.
I thought that since I knew the original story and had a bit of a “reincarnator’s buff,” I could live like a real human being.
But there was no such thing.
Even born into a different life, I was still just me.
“…Ugh.”
Swallowing my sobs, I rummaged through my pocket and pulled out a small bottle.
[Potion of Death]
It was a potion meant for spies to take before being tortured if their identity was discovered.
“…….”
I popped the cork off the bottle.
If I was going to die anyway.
Maybe in this life, I could die with a little less pain.
“Is this it?”
In Calips’s large hand was a single, tiny sock.
“Yes. There was nothing else.”
The orphanage they had reached after a week of travel was far more desolate than he had imagined.
A swampland where it was doubtful humans could even survive.
A lone shack sitting amidst a web of tangled vines.
He had mobilized his knights to search the surrounding area, but as he expected, they found no children, nor any living creature.
A knight who had arrived late held out a single sock, presumably belonging to a child, but that was all.
‘Is this Eve’s sock?’
Calips closed his eyes tightly.
Though it was within the Pose Duchy, this was a place untouched by human hands.
Since the war, it had turned into a barren land where no one could live.
If the Lady had lived here as Aisha said, there was no possibility she was still alive.
The torn and tattered sock was proof of that.
‘I never even got to call her name properly.’
How was he supposed to even mourn her?
When he struggled to move his fingers to grip the sock, the tiny thing vanished instantly within his palm.
It felt as though the small spark of hope he’d felt after hearing Aisha’s words had vanished along with it.
“We’re withdrawing.”
“Yes, sir!”
Tucking the sock into his pocket, he stepped into the carriage.
Without even offering a greeting to the Duke of Pose, the Crost family left the Doctia Kingdom and headed back toward the Frozen Kingdom.
Rumble—
The carriage jolted over the rough dirt road, but the man with a physique as large as a mountain showed no sign of being unsettled.
He didn’t even feel sadness.
He had simply returned to how things were before.
Before he had heard Aisha’s claim that she knew the whereabouts of the direct bloodline Lady.
Back to that time when he had no reason to live.
‘…Now, completely,’
He closed the curtains of the slightly ajar window.
‘I have no reason to live.’
He had no right to live.
That was the only way for Calips, who had failed to protect his family, to atone.
‘I can leave the succession of the Crost Duchy to the branch family, the Marquis of Lillis.’
On the day he met Aisha, having decided to die, he had imagined what would happen after he was gone.
If he died, the Crost Duchy would be in turmoil for a while.
However, the Marquis of Lillis, a branch of the Crost line, had been preparing to take over the succession ever since his direct family went missing.
They had been watching for their chance, eyes gleaming with greed.
He didn’t like them, but the Marquis of Lillis would likely do a good job.
Unlike Calips, they were a family always full of ambition.
As thoughts followed one after another, the Crost Knights arrived at the Duke’s Castle before he knew it.
“Your Grace, we have arrived.”
Calips, wearing his mask listlessly, opened the carriage door.
The butler, who had been waiting, bowed with a dark expression.
“I have heard the news. I believe it would be best for you to rest for now.”
“I will do that.”
As he gave a compliant answer and walked past him, the butler looked at him with surprise.
The butler hadn’t expected the Duke, despondent over failing to find his daughter, to accept his suggestion so easily.
It didn’t matter.
The head of the Crost family would be replaced soon anyway.
The bright and lively people around him would no longer have to walk on eggshells because of him.
The young son of the Marquis of Lillis would bring laughter back to the castle, and that sound would fill the halls.
This was right.
He had no reason to live.
“Y-Your Grace.”
Just then, a knight guarding the castle entrance ran over.
Something had clearly happened, but Calips didn’t want to hear it.
“If it isn’t urgent, I’d like to—”
“Sir, it seems that kid has run away.”
Calips’s footsteps stopped right then.
Suddenly, Aisha’s face, which he had forgotten, flashed through his mind.
Blonde hair tied in twin tails like a fountain.
Blue eyes that took up half her face.
Even her cheeky way of speaking and her expressions.
That child was gone?
“Find her immediately.”
“Yes, sir!”
His heart, which had been prepared for death, began to race.
Instead of going to his bedroom, Calips threw his thick fur cloak aside and strode into the castle.
The butler, chasing after him, asked in a panicked voice.
“W-what are you planning to do…”
“I have to find that kid first.”
“Pardon? We will find her. Your Grace should…”
“No. You won’t be able to find her easily.”
Because she was a spy.
“Your Grace!”
It was then.
A knight coming out of the storage room approached with a tense face and handed something to Calips.
It was the Potion of Death.
“This potion was found on the floor of the storage room. We searched the room, but the kid…”
A potion a spy takes to end their own life before being tortured.
Could it be?
“Y-Your Grace!”
Suddenly pushing the knight aside, Calips commanded.
“I will be resting in my bedroom, so keep searching. Do not let anyone into my room!”
There was no time.
Hurriedly taking off his mask and throwing on a robe, he disguised himself as a gardener and ran out of the castle.
“Aisha! If you’re there, answer me!”
His deep voice, which usually seemed so calm, cracked.
“Aisha, come out if you’re there! There’s no one here but me!”
Aisha couldn’t have made it out of the castle grounds yet.
The entrance to the Crost Duke’s Castle was more heavily guarded than anywhere else while the head of the house was away.
“Aisha!”
She was just a kid.
Yet the fact that she had run away made him feel an overwhelming fear, greater than death itself.
“Aisha! It’s the gardener mister!”
But no matter how much he searched outside the castle, he couldn’t find a single blonde hair, let alone a child.
Could it be?
His legs came to a sudden halt as he walked frantically.
What if she had already taken the Potion of Death?
No. That kid wouldn’t do that. She was someone who struggled so hard because she wanted to live.
“…Aisha, please…”
It was then.
“M-Mister….”
He was covering his face with his hands in a rush of despair when he heard a sobbing sound from somewhere.
Calips, who wouldn’t miss such a sound, jerked his head up.
Deep in the garden.
In a secluded corner.
Without hesitation, he ran toward the spot and saw a drainage opening behind a pile of fertilizer and soil.
And inside that damp drain.
“M-Mister… I’ve done so many bad things, so I was going to die….”
Aisha was huddled there, crying.
“Aisha.”
“…But I want to live.”
At her low, whispered answer, Calips felt something crumble inside him.
It felt as though he had found a reason to live.
Though he had so many reasons to die, with the single thought that he had to save this little girl…
Calips felt a desperate urge to live.
