MPBAGS Chapter 26

Night had fallen upon the Rohanson estate. All the employees had gone home except for those working the night shift.

The night staff had to draw the curtains and turn off all the lights everywhere except Count Rohanson's study and the third floor before their work was done.

The assigned areas rotated, and today was Olive's turn to take care of the fourth floor. A colleague who had been to the fourth floor beforehand encouraged him, saying it wasn't as scary as he had worried and that Lady Evangeline never came out of her room, so he just needed to focus on his work.

Why had his colleagues bothered to lie to Olive?

From earlier, the sound of someone gasping in pain had been echoing in his ears. Olive tried to ignore the sound and concentrate on his assigned task.

He walked down the corridor relying on the lantern light. As he moved forward, turning off the lights one by one, the sound grew closer. The moaning sound harmonized with the sound of some clumped liquid mass writhing. When the sound seemed to come from right near his left ear, Olive glanced to the side.

The left side where Olive had stopped was Lady Evangeline's room.

Olive tried not to guess what this sound was and stepped forward again. As he took one step, he heard a splashing sound from under his feet.

When he shone the lantern light down, he saw that liquid seeping from under the door had pooled into a puddle. Olive attributed the particularly dark red color to the lantern light and hurried his steps again.

He had turned off all the lights on the fourth floor, so his work was now complete. Olive breathed a sigh of relief and went down the stairs. Because it was excessively dark around him, he could get seriously hurt if he stepped wrong.

As Olive walked looking only at the floor, shoes came into his view. Startled as if his heart had dropped, Olive staggered and barely regained his balance by grabbing the stair railing.

"Are you alright?"

At the voice that followed, he was startled and raised his lantern. In the dim light, he could see the estate's uniform. The person seemed to be a maid working the night shift like Olive. Olive breathed a sigh of relief.

"I'm sorry. I was startled."

"That's what happens when you walk looking only at the floor. Be careful walking around at night, it's dangerous."

The maid covered her mouth with both hands and smiled shyly. The sound of laughter melted away Olive's tension. He had been too tense because he hadn't expected to meet anyone. When he calmed down and looked around, he was at the landing where the first floor was right in front of him. He really had been absent-minded.

The maid seemed to have business upstairs and brushed past Olive to go up the stairs. Surely she wasn't going to the fourth floor? Olive thought about going with her, but then swallowed his words as he recalled the moaning that still seemed to echo in his ears. That couldn't be. She was probably just going up to the second floor.

When Olive entered the office on the first floor, Lantana, who had been keeping watch, approached angrily and snatched the lantern from him. Then she put the lantern in its place and glared at Olive with sharp eyes.

"Why are you so late? I'm tired of waiting when all I need is for you to return yours to finish up. I wanted to get off work early!"

That couldn't be right. There should be someone who hadn't returned their lantern yet. Olive recalled the name tag on the uniform's chest. Although it was messily embroidered, it clearly read "Kanna."

"But Kanna hasn't come back yet?"

"What nonsense are you talking about? You're the last one, and there's no one with that name on today's night shift."

No one? Olive clearly remembered the maid covering her mouth with both hands and laughing.

Both hands? Come to think of it, when he passed by that maid, he didn't seem to see her carrying a lantern either...

"Did you dream it? Don't say such things because it's scary."

A dream? Olive wondered if he had really been standing and dreaming, so he checked the soles of his shoes. The bottom of his shoes still had traces of stepping on something.

It would have been nice if it really had been a dream. Lantana led Olive, who seemed to be in a daze, out of the office. Because she had to wait for Olive, she was 30 minutes later getting off work than usual.

"Why does the butler bother us with things like this?"

Lantana grumbled, cursing the butler. While he felt sorry for Lantana who had waited because of the lantern, Olive realized that the instruction to carry a lantern was the butler's consideration.

Things that are not human and wander around the Rohanson estate at night don't carry lanterns.