SN Chapter 5

The servant attending the meal also turned sharply away while approaching Rosaline to pick up the dropped bread. His hands naturally smoothed the tablecloth instead. He looked precisely like someone who had been bothered by the wrinkled tablecloth from the start. It was quick thinking born from several days of caring for Rosaline in her poor condition.

Edelweiss blinked rapidly, thinking, 'Is this really happening? Is someone playing a terrible prank on me?' But no matter how much she tried to deny it, her daughter had definitely picked up bread from the floor and eaten it. Very deliciously, at that.

"...Rose?"

Rosaline chewed the retrieved bread thoroughly, swallowed, and dabbed her mouth with her napkin. Then, with a rather haughty expression, she answered.

"Yes."

It was textbook perfect etiquette, one hundred points out of one hundred.

Kallix explained—borrowing the words of the maid and Alter—that his sister had become less intelligent and her mind had grown somewhat adorable. Edelweiss's expression grew increasingly confused.

"So... there was a need for her to become a little less intelligent... so she became a little less intelligent... and when one's mind becomes a little adorable... one picks up food dropped on the floor and eats it?"

Of course, that wasn't it. Kallix carefully selected his words and leaked a few pieces of information to soften his mother's shock. She had injured her head, so her behavior wouldn't be as before. According to the physician, she would recover soon.

Edelweiss burst into tears and pulled Rose into a tight embrace.

"Our poor Rose... Even if she wasn't a beauty, I was relieved she was intelligent... Now neither her face nor her mind..."

"...Mother, it's not quite that bad..."

All of Edelweiss's plans to proceed with an engagement while Rosaline rested at home were completely scrapped. Swallowing her tears, she ordered a servant to return the engagement stone she had obtained from some count. She couldn't marry off a child who picked up food from the floor and ate it. She had thought it was physical illness—but it turned out to be mental illness. She had never imagined such a thing.

"Does your father know?"

"...He knows she injured her head somewhat."

"That our Rose is slightly... that..."

Edelweiss chose her words as carefully as possible while watching her daughter continue eating.

"That she's become slightly less intelligent...?"

Everyone had been postponing using accurate expressions like mad or deficient. Kallix quietly shook his head. Edelweiss rubbed her thin hand across her forehead. She rambled incoherently in her confusion, then said she needed to rest and went upstairs to her room.

Edelweiss and Kallix had barely eaten anything, but many plates showed their bottoms. This was thanks to Rosaline's vigorous appetite. She cleanly finished even the cake that came out for dessert. In the distance, the count's household cook watched the scene with satisfaction. He wore the expression of a grandfather watching his grandchild's antics. Kallix exhaled. Phew. The long, long mealtime had ended.

After the chaotic lunch, Kallix received a bundle of papers from Alter at the antique wooden desk where he'd been working industriously. The amount of material was pitifully insufficient. When Kallix made a surprised expression, Alter snorted indignantly.

"What do you think this is?"

"...The material I told you to find?"

"This is my blood, sweat, and tears."

Kallix lightly ignored the nonsense. Alter bristled with outrage. Still, this was his best effort... It wasn't the work of someone who, when ordered to investigate someone, could discover what color underwear they'd thrown away three years ago. It meant the information was that difficult to obtain and that unknown.

Alter's expression when he first received the order had been truly worth seeing. A grown master asking him to investigate an absurd ghost story that would only circulate in children's mouths—it might have been natural. His expression might have been due to the instruction not to use subordinates or information guilds, but regardless. When told to do something, doing it was a subordinate's fate.

And while gathering information, Alter learned. That this ridiculous order wasn't simply meant to torment him. That bone-chilling sensation that pierced from toe to head in an instant. His master was clearly gauging the truth without having seen it himself.

Kallix read the material Alter had brought word by word. He read the short volume—readable in ten minutes—meticulously, taking a long time to peruse it thoroughly.

Alter watched Kallix's expression change moment by moment. His eyebrows twitched and he rubbed his chin roughly. The moment the last page fluttered closed, Kallix pressed his forehead and breathed heavily.

The material began with the famous ghost story:

『If you enter the deep forest, you'll be devoured by the shadow.』

He too had heard this story often as a child. It was a kind of countermeasure to prevent fearless children from climbing mountains recklessly. Kallix had also thought it was something like that. However.

『Many people used it to warn children about mountains. It's presumed they expressed the ferocious beasts or the danger of the mountain itself as a shadow.

That ghost story takes slightly different forms in each territory and region.

If you enter the deep forest, you'll be devoured by the shadow. The forest's shadow moves when people aren't watching. In the deep forest, there's a shadow that imitates people. The forest's shadow speaks.

Their common points were the specification of location as 'deep forest' or 'places untouched by human feet,' and the confirmation of the existence called 'shadow.'』

And on the paper were the accounts of people who claimed to have witnessed that 'shadow.'

『Aldes Pater (66 years old) Herb gatherer. 23 years ago, deep in the Ranshuve Mountain Range, collecting herbs growing on a cliff when he slipped.』

.

.

.

"I lost consciousness without realizing it. It had definitely been noon, but when I came to, the morning sun was rising. I didn't even have the strength to get up, so I just lay there staring endlessly at the dense forest... That's when it appeared."

"?"

"The shadow, I mean. That shadow I'd only heard about from senior herb gatherers. I thought it was a made-up story to scare me, but it was really there... It was on a different level from seeing a starving beast. My hands and feet trembled and I felt chills all over my body."

"?"

"At first, I thought it was just the ordinary shadow of a tree. The inside of a dense forest is as dark as the deep sea... But as I kept watching, something was moving in that darkness. Very slowly, very sluggishly, slower than a hundred-year-old man, slow as a snail... It came through the dawn fog. A truly eerie and terrifying sight."

"?"

"Well, I've never heard of such a beast. But it's famous among herb gatherers. They say there's a shadow that's uncannily good at smelling death. They say if you see it, you should know death is near. So I looked frantically around, and the only one closest to death was me. It had come smelling my scent."

"......"

"I watched it stand towering at my bedside just looking down at me, and I thought it was waiting for me to die. So I ate those precious herbs, chewed and applied them, did everything I could to hold on. Fortunately, after two or three days, the bleeding stopped and the swelling in my splinted leg went down a bit. Ah, I'll survive now, I thought—and then the thing that had been looking down at me from my bedside slowly disappeared toward the forest!"

"......"

"I'm telling you it's true! Exactly 23 years ago! I remember it as vividly as if it were yesterday!"

"?"

"Ha, anyway, it's still scary to think about now. Ah, and I thought about it! Why they call it a shadow. I thought it was because its whole body was pitch black..."

"?"

"When it first approached, it looked like black smoke clumped together, you know?"

"?"

"But after a few days passed, it had a form exactly like a person. No facial features, but it was the same shape—you'd believe me if I said it was my shadow."

"......!"

The Redvielle county household had many guests. The current count held the Emperor of Illavénia's great trust due to his outstanding military prowess, and the territory itself was large and prosperous, with many merchants coming and going.

That burning popularity didn't cool when night fell, which was quite troublesome. The count, who had the record of serving as commander-in-chief in a great war, held significant voice in military councils. Night visitors were very curious about what was written in the letters exchanged between Count Redvielle and his son. Sometimes three or four came in a single day, and some even infiltrated as servants trying to steal them secretly.

However, the contents of the letters they exchanged really contained nothing special. They were written with consideration that spies from other territories or nations might see them.

『Are you doing well? I'm quite fond of venison these days. The Cobaltlant Duke's parrot cries poorly. They say it learned from a street cat—isn't that curious?』

Nothing but truly useless information like that. Though the contents were harmless for anyone to see, they couldn't be carefully delivered into spies' hands.

When Kallix appeared on the balcony, the patrolling knight sent a signal that one had entered the study. Kallix moved carefully, holding his sword. The moment he opened the door, he drew his sword and aimed it at the throat of the person before him. The window opened by an uninvited someone. Through that gap, the wind pushed back the curtain, and moonlight seeped into the dark room.

"!"

The silhouette of a woman with black hair reaching her waist stood revealed before the window. Kallix's eyes wavered at their meeting gazes. The face calling his name, walking in the garden during the day—it was his familiar sister's face. She merely blinked as if Kallix's actions and threats meant nothing at all.