After the breakfast, she returned to her room and heaved a sigh of relief.
Acting as a noble was uncomfortable. It was hard to move in her clothes. And most agonisingly, her neck felt empty.
She longed for the weight of silver that she had gotten used to. It was proof that she was his slave, proof of their contract with each other, and a keepsake of their 11 years together.
Her master destroyed it. The mistake lay with her. If she could clearly remember what had happened in her past, her master would have been able to predict and prevent this incident. She believed in that.
Anrietta Pola Cartan is a ghost from the past, a person disconnected from the current her.
Now that things had gotten to this state, she could now recall the events that transpired in her past. The days she spent with her mother, the laughter of her father who came to visit once in awhile, and finally, the day when she was broken beyond repair.
One day, she and her mother were chased out of their homes. She was unaware in the midst of the chaos then, but she now knew that it had to be Joséphine’s plans. Her mother was assaulted by hired thugs and because of that, Joséphine could accuse her of adultery and banish her from her position as a mistress. The innocent and carefree Anrietta did not realise anything apart from her mother being in low spirits that day. Naturally, even if she was aware, she would not have been able to do anything as a six-year-old.
And then, they were expelled to a shack in the slums. Before they had time to get used to the inconvenient and rundown conditions, Joséphine appeared. Together with a group of disgusting men.
The fierce woman had no intention whatsoever to let the mother and child of Cartan’s lover off with just accusing them of a crime. She said so herself. A whore would always stay a whore, she said. As long as you continue living, you would just cozy up to another man to climb the ranks, she hissed. As such, she would take the wretched face she needed to maintain her business, she raged.
And then, upon her signal, they violated her mother. The wave of humans overwhelmed her and enjoyed their sacrifice like animals.
Just when she thought it was over, it was her turn. Unable to hold back after Anna Marie had been assaulted, Joséphine turned to look at her daughter who moved not an inch ever since the beginning. She violently attacked her.
She carefully and conscientiously destroyed her facial features. After fracturing her bones, she would purposely heal her with defective magic so that it recovered in a crooked way, resulting in her appearance as a raw piece of human flesh. And finally, Joséphine showed her, the failure of her face with a hand-mirror. Joséphine made sure to force open her inflamed eyelids so that she could have a good look.
Anrietta Pola Cartan probably died at that instance. Not when she was assaulted without reason, nor when her mother laid flat on the ground without moving.
She wanted to be a splendid woman.
She wanted to be in a wonderful love.
She wanted to be a beautiful bride.
This pure, innocent and dreamlike wish was entrusted to her from her mother. Such were the dreams the young girl vaguely held onto.
The moment she realised that it became impossible, she no longer thought of herself as a human being.
When she finally regained some form of consciousness, she found herself thrown and sold at a slave market like a slaughtered pig.
And then, they met.
“...You, what is your name?”
She remembered that she was troubled when a random boy asked her that while her mind was still in a thick fog. Anrietta was the name of a human. Definitely not the name of a dirty slab of meat like her. That was why she replied honestly that she did not know.
The moment she spoke, she lost her consciousness again as her last bit of energy left her.
The next time she awoke, she was in a dimly lit cellar. She was in a state where she could not move, and there was a boy single-mindedly working on her destroyed face. There was some pain, but she did not feel like telling the boy. She was already a dead person with a moving heart. She was the shell of a former human. That was why, even if she was cut into pieces, she did not mind. If possible, she wanted to slip away as quickly as possible. Not too long later, she smelled a strange scent and fell back to sleep.
This went back and forth for an entire week.
“――Yo, number 1. Today is the day I will remove your bandages!”
She did not know how to reply as she gazed up.
She did not understand the meaning behind his words.
The 6 years of her life experience that she accumulated had already been dispersed into fine pieces. At that point in time, she did not even possess the basic knowledge of responding like a human being.
As though he was moving a corpse, he pulled her to a chair to sit and made her face a mirror. Before this, Joséphine had made her stare into a mirror to crush her soul. After her heart broke, she no longer thought anything of it. She silently allowed him to do whatever he wanted. However, she was deathly avoidant of her reflection, so she kept her eyes shut.
“Wonderful...”
When she heard that, she opened up her eyes.
The face that she lost a week ago was facing her in the mirror.
She became overwhelmed with emotions.
Wait. She no longer had any attachments to her looks ever since she was destroyed and died. The truth was that this captivating person in the mirror was another person. Another person who was, at that moment, completely excited.
“It is okay for you to be here.”
“I am happy that you are here.”
The person in the mirror seemed to be whole-heartedly affirming.
Her day-to-day life had been disrupted, her very life was threatened, her dignity was stolen, her mother died, and she lost her looks. Thanks to him, she could once again breathe.
For the first time after becoming a relic of Anrietta, she felt the will to live on. In fact, that was not a revival, but a birth.
The underground cellar was the womb. With the boy’s delight injected into the pitiful girl, she was born.
Her voice trembled at the realisation.
“T-Thank you very much……!”
The first thing she said were her words of gratitude for him.
Thank you for helping me.
Thank you for your joy.
Thank you for being here.
After her clumsy appreciation, he hugged her.
“...Why, I should be the one thanking you!”
“You did a good job hanging on till now!”
“This was a valuable research experience!”
While being enveloped in both his warmth and his faint body odour, she etched his words into her mind.
Her broken heart was being repaired. Amidst all that, something foreign to the old her seeped in. Perhaps, that was the thing called love.
As she was reminiscing, her mind wandered to how they met.
It could not be helped, she thought.
She had been living as his property for more than twice as long as she lived as Anrietta, after all.
She was a piece of property that existed to make him happy, to satisfy his demands and to help him reach his goals.
She reminded herself that she was such an existence.
However, such days were over.
The collar to represent that she was his possession was not on her neck anymore.
As she felt grief and loneliness, she remembered what her master told her at the end. The voice she heard as she left the reception room at Oubeniel’s residence.
“...Yes, yes! Right! If we are going back, we might as well go quickly!”
He seemed to be addressing Due and Marquis Lavallée, but in truth, the message was for her, as Cartan pulled her with him down the hallway. For somebody who hated inefficiency and excessiveness, he would not have raised his voice like that.
If we are going back, we might as well go quickly. Basically, it meant that she would not be recovered and they would use the retreat plan. And since he went as far as to inform her of that, it would mean that he wanted her to know in advance that plan D would be executed since she would be separated from him.
And the instruction was for her to die without making it look like suicide during the chaos when the plan was in operation.
Her chest tightened at the thought of it.
Ahh, my master is such――
(――such a compassionate person.)
That he would take the risk of being found out by the Marquis and grant her the honor of taking her own life since she has degenerated into a useless person who would only bring harm to her master. And to allow for it, he created a situation where her death would not be considered suspicious by others.
Now, there is no need for her to have a protracted life of meaningless. She did not want to die quickly, but to keep living while being of no use to her master was a life worth less than trash, even if she could live a hundred or thousand years. A mountain of trash was still trash. As a maid, she should have been quickly exterminated. It appeared that her master understood her and was showing his gratitude.
Having received this much favour despite her incompetence, she had to hinder the plans of Count Cartan to attack her master as much as possible. It was her final duty to do her best before she killed herself. She firmly decided.
Even though she no longer wore the collar, she would definitely accomplish the task given to her.
For that, she has to…
“Excuse me.”
“Ah, yes. How may I help you, Lady.”
She called out to her maid attendant, and she replied on the spot.
“...I feel cooped up in the room, it should be fine for me to walk around the house?”
“Yes, yes! Please do so! Please feel free to do so. As the master has said, the house is the Lady’s home.”
Firstly, she verified that it was not a problem.
It would be better for her to walk around the house so she does not appear to be brooding to the Count, and also, she would be able to grasp the layout of the house if anything occurs. That was the judgement she made.
The maid took her hand and opened the door.
“This must be the first time Lady is living in the mansion?”
“......Yes.”
She came to this house before, but that was during the aforementioned scandal. Thus, yesterday night was the first time she lived in the mansion.
“May I impertinently suggest that I guide you?”
“Thank you.”
The Cartan residence was not much bigger than a viscount’s, as one would expect from a new Count. Broussonne was the capital but it did not have much land. One might even call the streets cramped due to the walls surrounding the capital in four directions. While Cartan was conferred the rank of Count, there might have not been sufficient land space to build a large mansion for a newcomer.
And this might explain why the Cartan family gets a very good salary from the Court. The residence was well-stocked with things like furniture and art pieces. The largest masterpiece they have was a portrait of the Count painted by an up-and-coming artist that they had to pay very well to hire. There was a small signature at the corner of the portrait. She remembered coming across the name. It was the name of a person who studied human anatomy in order to create realistic portrait paintings. In one of her master’s personal research books, there was an illustration that this person was responsible for. He was prejudiced against her master for carrying out experiments on slaves, and yet, he employed a person of his kind to paint his portrait. However, she did not feel like laughing and sighed instead.
Furthermore, there was a lack of uniformity among the artworks she could see, as the other paintings hung in the corridor did not match with it. It was all for show. The only possible explanation she could think of was that these expensive and trendy art pieces were bought at random. She tried asking the maid about it.
“......Who bought these paintings?”
“These are the madam’s… Does Milady think they are in bad taste too?”
She could see why now. Joséphine had been wedded to Count Cartan a long time ago. That is to say, she would have an equivalent status to an illegitimate child of a baron. She was probably much closer to being a commoner rather than a noble then. And when her husband became successful, she became the wife of a Count. She could easily understand her interest in art as a nouveau riche and her jealousy and hatred towards women of low status because of the similarity.
“I am no expert in the arts.”
Openly expressing such an opinion would be cause for trouble in the future. Of course she answered evasively.
“Oh, there is something that Milady is unfamiliar with?”
“Naturally. Since I am human.”
In truth, a person’s affinity to art was unrelated to whether one was human or not. Opus-4, who puts on airs of a noble all the time, did not appreciate art. Fem would be entirely ignorant of everything except for combat. For the long lived Drei, she would be familiar with Dark Elf culture. She soon realised that among the people she knew, possibly only Victor and… her master would be familiar with such things.
Her master remained indifferent to aesthetics and decorations but was extremely talented when it comes to making things. He was so good that he could easily come up with a finalised design sketch for equipment. Also, his creations like Fem were so well-made that Fem’s eyes could mesmerise others.
As she became sentimental, the maid brought her about the residence. Well, it was not that impressive of a home. It was an ordinary home furnished with expensive and labour-intensive fixtures. When she asked to look at the servants’ section of the house, the maid told her that it wasn’t a place fit for a Lady to enter, but she could tell that it was not because she was being humble. For a small house like this, the servants were likely squeezed too. Perhaps even the slave-maids at Marlan lived more comfortably than them.
On the other hand, there was a plain mixing room in the residence, unlike most other homes of nobles. That made it appear like a former court magician’s house, but even then, that room was shoddily made. The underground basement that her master had when he bought her was, as a matter of fact, somewhat larger than this. She noticed it when she was in Gallerin; indeed, magicians did not seem to place much emphasis on alchemy.
While she was walking and pondering over such things,
“――That’s why! Start reconsidering from now on!”
A hysterical shout could be heard.
