ITIWAFRBIAHS Chapter 28

Bothersome Rose Aubert.

The man muttered as he climbed over the wall. In his hands was a meat dish brought from the downtown area. It still hadn't cooled and smelled quite appetizing. The man unconsciously glared at the bag.

Surely she won't say this isn't enough too.

He couldn't understand why someone with such a pathetic build had such eating habits. It was clearly a body with terribly poor fuel efficiency.

If that girl had been born as one of the Moore family's illegitimate children, she would have surely been slaughtered before she could even learn to walk, her remains fed to livestock. Such an inefficient creature... why was she even here?

"Tonight is... sleeping rough?"

Rose Aubert was standing blankly at the garden's perimeter, spouting nonsense again.

In this mansion, black and red things had symbolism persistent enough to penetrate the unconscious. Because of this, even without any hints, anyone with normal senses would be very reluctant to cross the garden alone after sunset.

So that girl was definitely out of her mind.

The man called out to Rose Aubert without even realizing that just a few days ago, he himself had called her to the garden at sunset.

"Rose?"

"Oh? Lord Moore?"

Rose Aubert greeted the man happily, without a speck of the desperate relief that would come from a helping hand in a difficult situation. Then she rambled about going to look for food in the kitchen and accepted the food the man offered.

"Anyway, thank you so much. Let's eat together!"

What was even more absurd was that the man felt uncomfortable at those words.

It was faint guilt. But the man thought it was reluctance about walking across the garden to the mansion on this dark night. Even that was enough to make him quite bewildered. He couldn't feel such ambiguous emotions.

'Perhaps?'

The man ran his hand over the back of his gloved hand. He could still feel it. The strangely raised pattern was clear.

Still the same. The man reasoned it must be his senses reacting to the spell cast over the garden. He reluctantly discarded that small doubt.

In any case, the man didn't want to cross the night garden with deadweight. So with slight generosity, he offered the girl in front of him a choice to temporarily leave the mansion.

"If it's alright with you, I have my car outside, so how about taking it into the city? I'll arrange decent accommodations for you. I'll contact the mansion at dawn."

But the girl refused the proposal. It was a soft refusal without any regret.

Foolish Rose Aubert.

To think she'd refuse when he was offering to let her go outside, to give her breathing room. Even if all her memories had been bleached, was it possible not to feel rejection toward this gloomy mansion? Perhaps she was reluctant to go outside because she'd been unable to go out for too long, or... or maybe she just didn't want to go out with him.

Thinking that made a strange queasiness surge up.

He would never make such a proposal again.

The man decided that as soon as things were wrapped up according to plan, he would sacrifice that idiot without delay. He barely restrained the urge to kick the stone that caught his foot while being conscious of the idiot following behind him. It would be behavior that didn't fit the ideal fiancé image.

So everything the man did after that was all just part of sacrifice management.

"Um, instead, I was thinking of looking around the mansion at dawn tomorrow. Would you like to come with me?"

He accepted the silly proposal to explore the mansion together for that reason. He had accepted with the intention of making Rose Aubert sufficiently dependent by making her face the gloominess of this mansion.

Even when he dragged the girl out of the basement, where she had entered without any sense of crisis, it was the same.

"Why did you come in here?!"

"Huh? I just came in while looking around the first floor. There were stairs... I left the door wide open just in case."

"I see. If you've seen everything, let's go out now. The air is stifling. Won't we be short on time if we want to look at other places too?"

The purpose was to eliminate the possibility of losing value as a sacrifice. Contact with the transformed bodily fluids stored in the basement would accelerate transformation. At least that's how the man rationalized it.

But throughout all these processes, Rose Aubert's attitude was consistent.

She continued to be helplessly bright and positive, and didn't depend on or obsess over her fiancé enough to meet standards. Perhaps because she had lost her memory, it might have been easier for her to form relationships with other people in the mansion.

And finally, Rose Aubert wanted to talk to other people about the discolored teaspoon.

"Oh, I was talking about when the teaspoon changed color that time."

The man gradually began to find the entities parasitizing this mansion unbearably grating.

First, I should expel that thing from this mansion. The man thought while looking at Madam Sawyer's half-wit child.

'I don't want to let it go comfortably.'

Somehow he didn't want to use convenient methods like suggestion. He wanted to give it unbearable terror until the very end, making it unable to endure and driving it away. And that didn't seem like it would be very difficult. That imbecile seemed like it would be scared to death and commit suicide if the man just wiggled his finger.

Sure enough, that trash showed a reaction that it couldn't bear just being face to face with the man. It would probably run away soon, unable to endure. Maybe even tonight.

The premonition alone organized the man's mind.

Certainly the man was acting from a decidedly emotional place. But like the problems people commonly face in moments of passion, he lacked the presence of mind to step back and examine his own condition. Because of this, the man failed to recognize his own aberrant behavior. Since he remained completely unaware of it, there was no need for self-justification.

Thus the man was able to slowly extract Rose Aubert's condition in a much more peaceful state. On the surface, it probably looked like an affectionate conversation between fiancés.

"Rose, do you have any particular taste preferences?"

"I see. Then what about preferred colors?"

"Yes. When did you start preferring red?"

Through several inquiries, he realized this girl's transformation level was quite dangerous. It seemed more management was needed if there was to be any utility as a sacrifice.

That was probably why he was somewhat alarmed upon hearing that Rose Aubert had encountered the family head's spirit parasitizing the boy gardener.

Though the man had indeed spoken of the gardener before, that had been when he was unaware of her degree of transformation. Now circumstances were different.

If the transformation advanced any further, the family head would surely sacrifice this girl by flaying her alive. Rather than lose the ability to sacrifice her entirely should she become completely inhuman, he would hunger for the symbolic completion of his revenge, even if it meant settling for diminished gratification.

So an experience was needed that would have no risk of transformation but would make this crisis-unconscious girl horrified and terrified.

The man placed carefully selected books in a conspicuous spot in the library that the girl frequented.

The book, written by someone who had flayed himself, had been discovered in Madam Sawyer's secret space that the man had made a complete mess of, and was presumed to be Moore family artifacts that had been stolen from the abandoned mine by that woman.

The writing containing horrible records about the old lords would surely give anyone who read it creepy fear. It would definitely have an effect no matter how mentally unsound someone was. Besides, he had carefully removed the fatal parts, so there shouldn't be major problems.

The man meticulously removed items about the old lord sleeping beneath this mansion. Records of that faceless old lord the Moore family had served before their downfall could cause transformation just by reading them directly.

And just in case, he erased one other item. Records about the old lord the Moore descendants had served in the other region they had fled to.

Because... the medicine bottle he had given to Rose Aubert bore that old lord's emblem. When he first gave her that medicine bottle, he hadn't erased the emblem, intending to deliberately cause greater suspicion and suffering within the mansion.

An emblem of overlapping whips and hooks.

'The Kinfolk Torturer.'

A base and vulgar old lord. He had earned such an explicit epithet because he took particular pleasure when followers offered up their own blood kin as agonizing sacrifices. That brazen cruelty was almost primitive in its crudeness, which only made it feel all the more visceral.

The man unconsciously pressed his hand to the back of his hand. He could still clearly feel the raised pattern made of burn scars.

It's fine. That airheaded girl couldn't possibly notice.

And even if she did notice, wouldn't it be fine? Just erase the memory and stuff in new ones. Manipulating the mind of a girl who wasn't in her right mind due to medicine wouldn't be difficult at all...

The man regained his composure after several breaths without even realizing he was taking deep breaths.

"..."

Come to think of it, it was time to prepare meals again.

Last time too, she had seemed like she could eat more but the amount was insufficient. To buy enough to satisfy that fuel-inefficient body, it would probably be better to bring a whole chicken. It was still quite a bothersome task.

Even while criticizing like this, strangely no irritation welled up. No, rather, after buying the food, his mood became quite good.

'That idiot should be satisfied with this much.'

And that mood plummeted vertically when he met Rose Aubert.

The girl's complexion was pale beyond anything he had ever seen before.

The man reflexively cast a suggestion on the girl. He only thought he wanted her to calm down immediately and get rid of that damn unpleasant pallor.

"Are you alright? Your complexion looks very pale."

When he reached out his gloved hand to grasp the girl's hand, hot warmth soaked through the leather glove to his palm. Somehow, it was a shuddering sensation.

The man almost said something unnecessary in the surging elation.

The suggestion was successful as always, and the girl's complexion quickly improved. But seeing those sparkling eyes looking at his face made his mood sink instead.

She must really like this exterior.

And when Rose Aubert brought up stories about her parents, his already sunken mood completely crashed to the bottom.

Had she perhaps realized the hell that awaited her? She seemed greatly shocked after reading that book. Seeing how much memory had returned.

Perhaps... perhaps it would be better to restrain from instilling fear too. She might become too frightened and difficult to handle. Thinking that far, the man conceived a somewhat radical idea.

Should I just take her away?

Right. Continuing to bring food here was tiresome in any case. Having to apply magical treatment each time to protect it from the transformation effects only compounded that burden.

The family head's spirit was supposed to be captured, eliminated, or appropriately dealt with when the time came anyway. If he spirited this girl away, it would surely go berserk and take rash action, so he'd have to eliminate it in advance. The man calmly reorganized his plan. No matter how he thought about it again, it didn't seem like it would deal any particularly fatal blow to him.

Then he could cast suggestions tonight and take her away immediately. And if he executed the plan right away...

"..."

Somehow he didn't feel like it.

The man suddenly imagined Rose Aubert thoroughly agreeing with this opinion, accepting the proposal with a completely willing heart and readily agreeing to leave this mansion with him.

Right. That would be much more convenient in the long run too. The effectiveness period of suggestions lengthened when goodwill and agreement were premised. The man felt satisfied with Rose Aubert's attitude change as she began questioning him about himself, and openly made a proposal about relocation.

"I think it's a good idea!"

The girl's answer was readily given. His satisfaction intensified. Though there was an addition about Madam Sawyer's son afterward, it didn't matter. That would disappear before long anyway.

Even including the girl, the man's plan was going very smoothly. He welcomed midnight that day with great satisfaction.

And that satisfaction transformed into more intense fulfillment when Rose Aubert suggested an outing the next day.

He was thoroughly steeped in confidence and peculiar motivation. He would expose the girl to genuine worldly pleasures and indulgences for the very first time, making her feel such tremendous temptation and excitement that she would be consumed with desire to abandon this mansion.

Having lived desperately and suffocatingly himself to avoid returning to his former vermin-like condition, the man could guess with firm resolve that others had similar desires. Lucas Moore had been like that until the moment the man killed him, so probably all humans were similar!