“How pathetic. You won’t land a single blow.”
The man sneered, having wrested my cane from my grip in an instant.
Listen closely, though.
The cane was just a distraction, you bastard!
While he stood holding my cane, I drove a fierce kick right between his legs where he was entirely exposed.
“Ghk!”
A choked gasp escaped his lips as if the breath had been knocked out of his chest, and his grip on the cane loosened.
Seizing the opening, I began thrashing him with the cane.
“Argh! Ghk! Stop!”
His screams echoed through the woods as he writhed on the ground.
Now was my chance.
I had to run immediately.
There was no time to figure out which way to go.
Desperate only to put distance between myself and that man, I bolted forward without hesitation.
Yet before I got far, a tearing pain tore through my scalp.
He had gathered his senses, chased after me, and grabbed a fistful of my hair.
“You little bitch!”
“You bastard!”
Swinging my hand blindly, I snatched a clump of his hair in return.
Since things had come to this, there was no turning back.
It was either him or me!
I can’t see a thing anyway, so let today be the day one of us dies!
I yanked on his hair with every ounce of strength I had.
“Damn you!”
Just as he violently tried to shove me away, thrashing wildly—
“Huh…?”
Suddenly, the ground beneath my feet dropped out.
At the same time, my body and his, still entangled, tipped together in the same direction.
From the tips of my feet that had lost their footing, a chill of dread crept upward.
“Aaaah!”
The crushing grip that had held me a moment ago vanished.
In its place, the man’s shrieking screams pierced my ears.
Ah, don’t tell me…
Am I going to die here?
Like this?
And just like that, the two of us tumbled down toward the unknown.
“Hah… hah. Young Master!”
Brandon burst through the door in a fluster.
Callius, seated by the table, lifted his head with a frown.
“What is all this commotion?”
He asked coldly, returning his gaze to his book, but Brandon’s next words forced him to shut it completely.
“Miss Lizzy… she hasn’t come back here, has she?”
“What do you mean?”
Callius’s voice turned sharp in an instant.
“Lizzy went to the woods this morning with the other maids to gather raspberries.”
“Yes… but they say Miss Lizzy vanished there. The maids searched for a long time and couldn’t find her. That’s why I came to ask… wondering if she might have returned here?”
A sudden chill sank into Callius’s chest, and he rose to his feet.
“How… how did she vanish?”
“No one knows why. There was no beast attack, nor any suspicious tracks left behind. Ah, but one of the maids nearby said she heard a strange man’s voice.”
“A strange man’s voice?”
“Yes, she said it sounded like a man. So she assumed Miss Lizzy was speaking with a forest warden.”
Brandon’s words swirled chaotically in Callius’s head.
What did this all mean?
Lizzy, who had set out only hours ago with a bright smile, saying she would enjoy a pleasant outing—why?
“…Send search parties at once.”
Callius issued the command in a frozen voice, barely keeping himself composed.
“We have already dispatched four servants to scour the forest.”
“No, send more. Send every servant in this mansion. You must find her.”
“Understood, Young Master!”
Brandon answered swiftly and turned to leave the room.
…The voice of the man who spoke with Lizzy before she disappeared.
Could he have taken her?
Callius tapped his fingers against the table in anxious agitation.
Had someone deliberately intended to harm her?
Yet who would go that far?
There was no reason to go through the trouble of kidnapping an ordinary maid.
At that moment, two particular faces flashed across Callius’s mind.
The two maids who had openly spoken ill of Lizzy right in front of him.
“Wait, Brandon!”
He called after the servant just as he was about to step outside.
An ominous premonition washed over him.
“Why hasn’t there been any word? Night is almost here!”
Mary and Dorothy gnawed nervously on their ragged fingernails outside the ducal mansion.
Unease swelled relentlessly in their chests.
“Doesn’t it feel like something went wrong? He should have gotten rid of that girl and returned long ago!”
“We shouldn’t have trusted that fool Dean with this.”
Dean was one of the servants in the duchy.
He possessed an uncanny knack for mimicking other people’s voices.
“We only trusted him because he could imitate that servant, Brandon or whatever his name was, so perfectly!”
While racking their brains on how to get rid of Lizzy Swan from the mansion, they had happened to hear that she was going out to gather raspberries.
Wild beasts roamed the forest, and treacherous hazards like cliffs lined the way.
If they could merely lure Lizzy Swan deep into the woods, no one would suspect them no matter what happened to her afterward.
With that thought in mind, they had put their heads together and schemed.
‘How do we lure someone that cautious?’
‘If we take advantage of her blindness, maybe it won’t be hard at all… Ah!’
That was when a certain person came to mind.
Not long ago, Dean had mimicked Callius’s servant, Brandon, with such startling accuracy that anyone listening with their eyes closed wouldn’t have doubted it for a second.
‘The Young Master is asking for you urgently, Miss Lizzy!’
‘Perfect. That sounded just like Brandon.’
And so, promising him a reward, they had secretly dispatched Dean to the raspberry gathering site where they themselves could not go.
Then they sat waiting for his return to confirm the plan was complete.
Yet no matter how much time passed, he never showed.
Instead, terrified maids returned from the forest, carrying news that Lizzy Swan had vanished while picking berries.
Word reached the Head Butler in short order, and a search party was formed to find her.
Mary and Dorothy could not hide their dismay as they watched such a large contingent of servants mobilized just to find one maid.
“W-Why is this blowing up so much? It looks like we managed to lure Lizzy away, so why hasn’t Dean returned?”
“Let’s wait a bit longer. Maybe he finished her off hours ago and is lying dead drunk in some tavern.”
Mary said, trying to steady herself, but dread gnawed at her heart just the same.
If things went sideways and Dean was exposed, slipping out of this trouble would not be so simple.
“If that bastard gets caught, he won’t keep his mouth shut! He’ll spill everything and say we ordered him to do it!”
“What are you two saying?”
At the voice suddenly cutting in, Mary and Dorothy spun around in terror.
There stood the real Brandon, Callius’s servant.
Beside him stood Head Maid Melissa, her expression fearsome.
Having clearly overheard the entire conversation, pure disgust was written across their faces.
“…The Young Master told us to interrogate you two first, but I truly didn’t expect this to be your doing.”
At that very instant, the ducal guards surged toward Mary and Dorothy.
The moment they caught sight of the ropes in their hands, their faces turned deathly pale.
Ah, this sensation.
I had felt it once before.
Right before I reincarnated, when the truck struck me.
Back then too, it felt as though my body was suspended mid-air, just like this.
And in the next moment, I slammed into the ground.
So after a few seconds, would I crash down somewhere else?
Was I about to die again?
And if I died, what would happen?
There’s no way I’d reincarnate a second time, right?
…Why on earth was I pondering all this in the middle of dying?
With that thought, I opened the eyes I had squeezed shut.
To my astonishment, white fur materialized before me once again.
I was not hanging in mid-air, nor was I falling.
Rather, I seemed to be draped like cargo across the back of an enormous white wolf.
