TRHK Chapter 19

He gave a short snort of a laugh. I couldn't see his face well, but it didn't seem like he was laughing at me again this time. Not that I was thrilled about him laughing instead of answering me, either.

"Nngh."

My body was lifted, weightless for a moment, and then my back met something that was probably a bed. The hands prying my shaking legs apart moved with a practiced ease. Thinking it was over no matter what it was, I'd gone completely limp—and then I bolted upright in a panic.

"Wh—what are you doing right now?"

"Still finishing up."

"Finish what? What's left to finish?"

I knew if he caught me again I wouldn't be getting free a second time, so I rolled off the bed with everything I had left in me. More precisely, I rolled straight off the edge and hit the floor.

"Agh!"

My knee cracked against the frame and my whole face twisted up. I lay there on the floor, groaning.

"……."

I heard Kahron get up from the bed. He crossed to somewhere and lit the lamp.

The room went bright, and there I was—laid out on the floor, my knees clutched to my chest, wearing a shirt torn open clean down to my chest, for all the world to see. Whatever heat had been in Kahron's face a moment ago had vanished already. He asked, blank-faced:

"This your taste?"

Was there really someone out there with a thing like this? I shot back, my face a mess of tears:

"N-no, hic, it's not."

Once the crying started there was no stopping it, and the tears just ran down my face. On top of the whole strange, frightening, bewildering experience of it, now my knee was hurt too, and all the grief I'd been holding welled up at once, sudden and complete.

Kahron came over and crouched down in front of me. Looking down at me, his eyes carried plain, unmistakable pity—the kind that thinks you're pathetic.

"I just, hh—hadn't seen you in so long, and, hic, got scared, and—missed you, too, and——"

Whatever was in my chest came pouring out with no order to it at all. It was hard even for me to tell whether it was words or just crying, so Kahron surely understood even less of it. And the fact that even that made me feel wronged had me pounding the floor and wailing properly.

"Hey."

"Waaahh. Hah... hah..."

"……Maylin."

"Hic—what."

"……."

He'd had to say my name before I managed even that much of an answer, and he looked at me like he couldn't believe it—but I ignored that. He sighed, and hauled me up by the arm. He lifted a grown woman with one hand and made it look easy.

"They say the black market's opening in two days."

"……."

"Going?"

My eyes went wide. The black market! Hadn't I been thinking, ever since we kept failing to find the herbs in the forest, that we ought to go there?

I'd thought he wouldn't bother with anything beyond walking through the forest with me—dangerous as it was—and here he'd gone and found out about the black market on his own.

"Yes. I'm going!"

I hadn't known I was this simple a creature. Or rather, I'd known, but I hadn't known it was this bad. Whatever grief I'd had a moment ago vanished in an instant, and I grabbed Kahron's arm and started firing off questions.

"Where should we meet, two days from now? Same time, probably, right? What should I wear? I heard you need to wear black to even get in——"

I was pulling from what I remembered reading in the original, and as I asked, Kahron pried my hand off his arm, pulled something from the wardrobe, and threw it at me. A black robe.

"Oh, wear this? This'll definitely work."

"You need it now, don't you."

At that, I blinked, went still, and looked down to check myself. My pale nipples were sitting right out in the open. I felt my face go hot and scrambled into the robe. It was enough to cover me.

"If you're not doing more, go on."

Kahron waved a hand like it was a bother and lay back down on the bed. Whatever he meant by "more" was obviously that—the thing from a minute ago. If we went further than that, what was he even planning to—I shut that thought down fast and grabbed my dress, dropped near the door.

Behind me, Kahron said one last thing.

"Two days from now. This time. Back gate."

The castle had a back gate, separate from the front, that the staff used.

"Got it."

I opened the door to leave, and then, on impulse, glanced back. Kahron lay on the bed with one arm across his eyes. Was his head hurting again—The worry made my mouth open, but what came out was something else.

"I'll turn the light off on my way out."

Only after I'd put out the lamp he'd lit did I walk out into the dark room beyond.

The night had gone deep and dark, and sneaking out of the knights' quarters felt strange, deeply so. I glanced toward where Eifel had disappeared, but she wasn't there. She'd either already gone back, or she was still in that room.

……Maybe I should have stayed a little longer, too.

There was something I'd actually wanted to ask Kahron. What we were to each other.

But if I said something like that, this time he really would laugh at me—so I stopped myself. That would only end up hurting me a little.

SMACK!

The blow to my back nearly knocked me out cold. Eifel—her slaps stung—grinned mischievously and asked:

"How was yesterday?"

We were in the party hall right now, putting up flower arrangements. It was busy work, but the housekeeper was busy too, which made it a good time for us to gossip while we worked. Thinking back on the night before, I felt my head go all scrambled. So I deflected instead.

"Y-you. How was yours?"

"Me? Heh heh heh."

Eifel colored up, like are you even asking. She looked around, confirmed no one was paying us any attention, and leaned in to whisper.

"Yesterday was seriously the best. Felt like the early days of dating, you know?"

I didn't bother asking what exactly was the best. I felt like I already knew.

"He was so happy. Said next time he'd sneak over to my room himself, or something like that. Who does he think shares a room, then, if not me? So I told him absolutely not."

"Sounds like you had a good time."

"You? You had a great time too, right?"

Kahron? A great time? He had seemed a little worked up while touching me, maybe. Beyond that, though, nothing had been much different than usual. Meaning he'd been just as indifferent as always.

Though the black-market information he'd found out did suggest he wasn't entirely uninterested—but even that felt more likely to be about the transaction than about me. He probably just wanted his condition cured. That was all.

Wasn't that true of me too, though? My whole goal was to break the servitude contract as quickly as possible and leave this territory—so being hurt by Kahron's attitude was, if anything, stranger of me.

"……No?"

At my failure to answer right away, Eifel said, a little awkward:

"I can't tell if he liked it or not……."

At my lack of confidence, Eifel patted my shoulder.

"What man wouldn't like it, if a woman like you snuck into his room at night? If it were me, I'd be thanking the gods."

Fairly high praise. Eifel went a step further and started egging me on.

"If he's really that hard to please, go find yourself a different man. It's not like those two are the only red-haired men in the world. I've got a red-haired cousin. He's still young, though."

Was it because I'd gone after Seylon before Kahron? Eifel seemed to have decided I had a deep and specific taste for red hair. While I was trying to figure out how to correct that, the housekeeper came walking toward us. Eifel gasped, startled.

"Quick, pretend to work hard!"

We scattered and started moving arrangements around fast. The housekeeper came striding over and stopped right in front of me.

"Maylin. That's enough. Go to the study."

"The study? It was just cleaned, though——"

"Do as you're told!"

Her voice snapped down like a rare thunderclap. But her expression looked strange, somehow. Complicated, maybe was the word.

I shrugged at Eifel, who was watching me with concern, and headed for the study. I couldn't work out why I needed to clean it again, but since it had come to this, I figured I'd sneak in a bit of reading while I was there.

But when I got to the study, Joel was waiting for me.

"Maylin. Come in."

"……."

I was seized by the urge to open the door back up and run. If I actually did that, would I get punished for disrespecting a noble, or something like that? If the punishment were breaking the contract, I'd run in a heartbeat—but somehow it didn't feel like it would be, so I held myself back.

"Work's been hard on you lately, hasn't it. I'm sorry. This party's one we have to hold."

Thinking back on what happened at the last party made me plenty reluctant about this next one too, but holding a party was entirely a matter for the nobility, and my opinion didn't factor into it. I answered as a maid should.

"It's fine, Young Master Joel. It is my job, after all."

"……."

Joel studied me with an unreadable look. It felt uncannily like he was observing me, and it set my nerves on edge. He smiled, warm.

"You really do seem a little changed, don't you. Maylin."

I'd noticed it before now—he seemed to know very well how the original Maylin used to work. Something in me flinched, but I made myself act unbothered and made an excuse.

"I think I'd been too full of myself before……. If you felt that way too, Young Master Joel, I'm sorry."

I bowed my head deep as I apologized, and Joel looked flustered. He reached toward my shoulder like he meant to touch it, then stopped short, hands raised, like he'd caught himself unable to. If he'd actually touched me, I'd probably have gotten chills.

"Full of yourself. Don't say that. No one thinks that."

I wished the Count and Countess thought so too. Joel, it seemed, had a weak spot for me looking downcast.

"I called you here so you could rest, even just a little. Not so you'd apologize."

Like I could rest at all with you here.

Of course, the sentiment behind it was touching. But—this from the man who'd ultimately gotten Maylin killed by his own parents. And he'd even had an arranged marriage waiting for him besides.

If you were only going to play with her, why be this good to her. Anger rose in me like I'd been the one betrayed.