# 6
6. The Viscount's Damned Master (6)
At first, he went out to get some fresh air and look around the village, only to be attacked by a boy who approached offering to sell something. He let his guard down because the boy looked young. The sharp blade tried to stab his chest, but Vincent quickly dodged and it grazed his waist. The guard who was with him caught the boy, but he killed himself the moment he was caught. Whether he was trained to do so, the action was without hesitation. Thanks to that, they couldn't find out who the attacker was.
After that, Vincent became reluctant to go outside. Strolling through the front garden of the mansion was the farthest he would go.
Then one day, Vincent who was alone in the garden was attacked again. A servant who was bringing something to wear because of the chilly wind heard a scream and ran to find a stranger dead with an iron bar stuck in his chest. Seeing Vincent sitting on the ground panting, his whole body dirty with soil, the servant hastily called people together.
The attacker was a strange outsider. They investigated his identity, but everyone said it was a face they'd never seen before. Vincent had fled to avoid the attack, struck the man's head once with a stone, and then stabbed his chest with a nearby iron bar, killing him. It could truly be said he was lucky.
However, even after strengthening the surrounding security and specially guarding against outsiders, he no longer went outside the mansion.
Another time, he suddenly felt pain and collapsed while eating. Fortunately, because he threw up everything he had eaten the moment he collapsed, there was no major problem, but later they found out that poison had been in the food.
Not long after, a maid was found dead in the forest. She was a maid who worked in the kitchen. It seemed she was killed while trying to secretly escape. They found out who the culprit was, but couldn't figure out why she had done such a thing, or who had killed her.
Vincent, who had barely survived, seemed to develop a fear of eating after that. For a while he acted sensitive at mealtimes, and at some point started refusing to eat altogether.
Since he didn't go out and refused meals, his condition worsened day by day. It would be good if he at least went out of his room, but many people visited the grand mansion, so even stepping out briefly made him noticeable to others. Indeed, there was a time he went out briefly and was seen. Fortunately, nothing else happened, but it seemed to have left a strong impression on Vincent as he immediately moved to the annex and stopped leaving his room.
Like that, guarding against everything around him, he gradually became emaciated, and I heard he fell into severe depression.
The fear that someone was trying to kill him.
The fear that he didn't know who it was.
If it became known that he had lost his sight, people would certainly start talking about his qualifications to lead the family. So he made the excuse of recuperating and shut himself in his room. Without meeting anyone or having contact with the outside world, he slowly withered away alone.
Hearing that, for the first time I thought he was pitiful. Illness of the body tends to spread to illness of the mind. Starving in crushing poverty, stealing bread, and then dying. A worn-out body soon becoming an illness of the mind was something I had experienced well.
He is a sick person. Because of that, I tried to understand and accept his sharpened temper.
But throwing away food like this was something I couldn't tolerate. I was angry at his actions. To me, that porridge was precious food that I could barely eat only after being beaten all over and begging while grabbing someone's pant legs.
But that man...
"Bad behavior can only be corrected by scolding. Whether child or adult, if you did wrong, you should be scolded. Did you not hear the saying to treasure food? Or did you learn that since you have so much, you can throw away things like this?"
"...."
As I pointed out each thing, my emotions surged up. I, I have to work until my body swells and bursts just to eat that one thing. It was so wasteful I felt like crying. But even in front of a blind person, I couldn't cry. It was shameful.
I clenched my teeth lest my voice be tinged with tears.
Don't do this. Confessing who is more miserable is the act I hate the most. Phew, I calmed my breath and picked up the fallen bowl. Fortunately, it wasn't broken. I roughly wiped the porridge spilled on the floor with my apron and stood up.
"I'll bring it again. If you're really worried, I'll eat first and then you can eat, Master. Can I not do that much for you who are a coward? If it's too hard to eat everything, eat as much as you can and I'll handle the rest. Then you'll be satisfied, right?"
"Won't eat."
"You're not going to say you won't eat, are you? I'm saying I'll sacrifice myself for the precious Master by tasting it myself to see if there's poison or rat poison in it, you won't ignore that sincerity, will you?"
Surely you wouldn't be that cold-hearted. I dragged out the end of my words, then left the room, patting the floor.
I went straight down and asked the cook for new porridge. The cook looked at me with pity and ladled out a new bowl of porridge. Carrying that, I practically ran back to his room.
I knelt in front of the bed again. Following my sounds, his face turned quickly this way and that. His eyes still couldn't focus, wandering in empty space.
I made a clinking sound so he could hear and took a sip of the porridge. Then I made smacking noises eating something that didn't even need to be chewed, took another sip, and offered it to him.
"Say ah—"
But once again the bowl rolled on the floor.
"Disgusting."
Tang, tang, tang, with the sound of the bowl rolling, my reason snapped.
About half the porridge had spilled. I picked it up and returned to the bed. He was quietly looking down at the floor. He seemed to be watching for my presence.
I took another spoonful of porridge and calmly set the bowl on one side of the bed. Then I pushed Vincent's shoulder and knocked him down.
Vincent, unable to resist in time, was laid on the bed. I quickly climbed on top of him. I grabbed the neck of Vincent who was frozen in surprise and put my weight on him so he couldn't escape. I shoved my thumb into his mouth that was open in panic. Then, into his wide-open mouth, I shoved a spoonful of porridge.
"Keuk, keuk!"
Vincent struggled. I pressed down on his resisting body with all my might and personally fed him the porridge. Because of that, I almost lost my balance several times, and one hand that escaped while he was thrashing grabbed the back of my head. My head was jerked back. At the pain of feeling like my hair was being ripped out, tears trickled, but I clenched my teeth and endured.
He shook his head to avoid the spoon. But my finger was still bitten in his mouth, so he couldn't close it.
I kept my eyes down and quickly inserted the spoon following the contortions of his face. Then when the spoon was empty, I scooped porridge again and put it in his mouth, repeating this. All of this was done quickly and accurately. I ended up holding in my hand the bowl I had brought to the side for easy feeding. The hand holding the spoon trembled so much it was a mess.
"Master, I'm so happy you're eating so well!"
"Keuk, you, cough cough!"
"Yes, you're eating very well!"
One spoonful, two spoonfuls, three spoonfuls, I shoved the spoon into his mouth until the half-remaining porridge was all gone. Actually half went in his mouth and half was spilled, but I didn't care.
When the bowl was empty, my body fell backwards. Because the moment I relaxed with the accomplishment of having fed him everything, he shoved me away.
I obediently got off the bed with the empty bowl and spoon. I thought my hair was going to get pulled out. When I stroked the still-tingling back of my head, a handful of hair came out. As I let out a hollow laugh and turned around, Vincent, clutching his pressured neck, shouted with a flushed red face.
"You're fired right now!"
"I merely attended to Master's meal."
"Ha! This is truly a crazy bitch! Do you not know what you just did? How dare you lay hands on someone's body! You must really be desperate to die!"
"Who saw it?"
"What?"
I calmly answered his questioning remark.
"There were only Master and me here, just the two of us, so how would others know? That I dared to stick my finger in Master's mouth and spoon-feed you porridge."
Of course, what I did was truly something deserving death. If someone had seen it, my head would fly off immediately, but right now there was only him and me here. It was the same outside the room. Because he reacted sensitively to even the slightest presence since he couldn't see, there wasn't even anyone passing by on this floor.
Moreover, that man's nasty temper was well-known to anyone who could know before I even came. The opponent was a patient who had become as sharp as could be anyway. He had the qualification to fire me, but relying only on his word to fire a servant had quite reduced effectiveness.
"Ah, there was a gun. Master could have killed me with that. But Master, is there even a bullet in that gun?"
"...."
He clamped his mouth shut. For a very brief moment, a panicked expression crossed his face. Just as I suspected. It was clearly a time when he should have shot, so I wondered why he didn't. I struggled to hold back a snort and continued speaking.
"For your information, recently there's a rumor going around that Master is very difficult, so it's not easy to hire people. Including the already employed servants, everyone shakes their head at the mention of attending to Master, so there's no one suitable to do it. Even if you fire me, there's no one to replace me immediately, so you'll have to stay with me until an attending servant is found. From now on, continuously—if one isn't found, forever!"
I blew out a breath. My messy bangs lifted slightly in the wind and fell back down. Through that gap, I could see Vincent gritting his teeth. It was a face of indignation.
Looking at him like that, I smiled radiantly.
"Please take care of me from now on too, Master."
From that day on, our power struggle continued.
I forcefully shoved food into his mouth when he said he didn't want to eat, and had to have long struggles every time I changed his clothes or the sheets and bed covers. One day, I tried to coax and persuade the smelly him to wash, but when that was useless and I tried to take him to the bathroom by force, I got hit in the face by his forearm and had a nosebleed.
Coming out while clutching my bleeding nose with my apron, I met Isabella. My body stiffened, and she scanned me emotionlessly as I clutched my nose, then turned around without saying much else. How long had she been standing there? Did she hear the sounds from the room? No, from her demeanor I realized that she had already noticed my actions like this.