Episode 11
“My age…… do you mean?”
Blinking her eyes wide in surprise, Rose let out a startled look.
Ezekiel quirked the corner of his lips slightly.
“Then is there anyone else here?”
Rose keenly realized anew just how little interest her master took in his employees. When she had been hired at the mansion, she had disclosed simple personal details—her name, age, hometown, and such—to Lady Selva.
“I’m nineteen.”
As she answered, Rose swallowed a flicker of anxiety. Ezekiel was currently tracking a woman in her late teens to early twenties. It was difficult to predict what emotion her age, which fit his criteria exactly, would evoke in him.
Perhaps doubt,
perhaps displeasure.
Perhaps discomfort.
Perhaps……
“You mean you haven’t graduated even at nineteen?”
But Ezekiel pointed out something entirely different.
Rose had been one of the oldest students at school. It wasn’t her fault, of course, but she felt embarrassed nonetheless.
She rolled her tongue dully.
“……Yes, I started late…… and because of the tuition.”
“It must be a shame that you won’t be able to graduate this time either.”
Rose quickly shook her head from side to side. The headscarf wrapped around her heavy locks rustled loudly as it shook.
“No, I’m not sorry. Not at all.”
Force entered the tail of her words as she emphasized “not at all.”
Ezekiel’s face remained nearly expressionless. His unfocused pupils wandered slowly around her vicinity. No matter how much she looked, the strange sensation that their eyes would never meet was disorienting.
“What do you look like?”
In the brief moment she was chasing that empty gaze, an unexpected question came again.
“Pardon?”
“Didn’t you say you saw me at Milena Girls’ School? The battle you mentioned vaguely comes to mind, but I don’t remember the faces of any of those students at all.”
“Ah…….”
It was only natural. Rose could be certain that the teachers and students had all been staring blindly at Ezekiel alone. After all, he had stood at the forefront, commanding the operation as an officer—an impressive sight they could not tear their eyes from.
It had even been a distance so far that one had to squint and focus to barely make out his features. Moreover, he had been busy concentrating on commanding his subordinate soldiers; he would have had even less leisure to look at the faces of students clinging tightly to the windowsills and rooftops.
“Just an ordinary face.”
Ezekiel let out a short laugh.
“I can’t tell if it’s humility or deceit. Selva never holds back praise whenever she sees you, calling you a pretty, kind, and diligent young lady.”
Rose’s words choked up abruptly. To him, it might have been nothing more than an expression chosen in jest, but for Rose, standing in a position that was anything but upright, every word the man threw out felt as though he were testing her, making her anxious. She knew it was a case of the thief with a guilty conscience, yet she couldn’t help it.
She struggled to appear composed.
“The Lady must be seeing me too generously.”
“Well then. Shall we see if that’s true?”
Ezekiel spoke in a tone devoid of inflection and tipped his head.
At the gesture laden with obvious meaning, she hesitated for a moment. It was not because she recalled how coldly and mercilessly he had opened and rummaged through every secret corner of her body last time. She had been the one to suggest the search first to escape suspicion, and she had resolved to endure whatever might happen, moreover……
More than anything, she had no rights whatsoever.
The right to feel wronged, the right to be afraid, the right to feel humiliated—none of these rights, nor any other rights at all, existed when facing him.
Because she herself was the one who had turned this man into a ruin.
But now, worry took precedence and made her hesitate.
Could he recognize her face just by touching it?
Rose hurriedly closed her eyes and fumblingly traced her own face with her hands. She traced the structure of her face, the shape of her eyebrows, and the bridge of her nose from between her brows to the tip, touching them this way and that.
A bitter smile suddenly escaped her. Here she was acting so suspiciously right beside him, yet he knew nothing. It was deceit in its truest form.
Amidst a subtle sense of self-loathing, Rose took a step closer to him.
Sensing her movement, the man’s hand cut through the air. She placed her face near his hand.
If last time the hands had been searching the secret corners of her body, today’s purpose was different. Fingers bearing the man’s warmth slowly traced Rose’s face from the outer edges.
“Is this your cheek?”
“Yes.”
The woman answered as if whispering.
Ezekiel slowly brushed against her soft and tender skin. It was impossible to delicately draw out Rose’s face using only the sensation beneath his fingers. In truth, that would be a realm possible only for a painter or sculptor of tremendous talent—the realm of some great artist who said he merely took out the figure trapped within the marble.
Yet there were also parts newly felt through touch. They were new aspects that hadn’t been particularly apparent last time.
A face small enough to fit in one hand, soft skin, plump earlobes that somehow made him want to roll them round and round, eyelashes tickling his palm at the same speed as the minute trembling of her eyelids from having her eyes closed, and furthermore……
As his hand groped along the contour of her forehead, the headscarf fell off with a soft plop. Her rolled-up hair tumbled down all at once.
A soft sensation brushed the back of his hand. He grasped a handful of her hair.
“Your hair is long.”
He had known it was long, but it was beyond imagination. The clump of hair he gripped only slipped free after sliding down for quite a while.
“I have to grow it long and coil it up to wear a headscarf, so it’s more convenient.”
“What color is it?”
Her heart gave a sudden, sharp thump.
Rose glanced sideways at her chestnut-brown hair.
“To be honest, if Rose’s hair color weren’t red, I might have suspected Rose as the culprit.”
Lady Selva had called her hair red.
Unlike ordinary brown hair mixed with yellowish tones, her hair was a brown blended with purple hues. Most called it chestnut-brown, like Ezekiel did, though some called it reddish-brown depending on the person. But it was far from the red hair spoken of in general terms.
Had Lady Selva been mistaken at a glance because she came on a dark night, or could she not properly distinguish colors?
There had been one such student at Milena Girls’ School as well. A person who saw the world in different colors than others.
That student’s peculiarity had been discovered by a truly chance occasion. Even before friends detected the strangeness, the student hadn’t realized that their own vision was different from others’. Because by that student’s standards, they themselves were perfectly normal.
It was possible.
Lady Selva could very well be the same.
“My hair color is……”
Suddenly, her pulse gave an ominous thump.
“……I’m looking into that woman with chestnut-brown hair and hazel eyes, in her late teens to early twenties, of a beautiful appearance, that you mentioned.”
Her lips did not move.
If he asked about her hair color, next he would ask what color her eyes were. The colors that most distinctly identified a person’s face were usually these two.
“Even you, Lord Ezekiel, witnessed the woman’s face directly yet have no way to describe her, so you can’t catch her. How hellish that must feel. The culprit might be very close by.”
She had already revealed her age with her own mouth earlier.
The woman with chestnut-brown hair and hazel eyes at nineteen was right within his grasp; she had more or less gotten away with it earlier, but would she get away with it again this time?
“Do you know who ruined my eyes? It was a maid exactly like you.”
She had finally found the chance to atone to him.
For the first time, she had seen a side of the man that wasn’t jagged.
For the first time, they were having a proper conversation.
“……It’s red.”
The answer popped out almost unconsciously.
If he were to ask someone about her, that someone would undoubtedly be Lady Selva. Ezekiel did not engage in unnecessary conversation with any employee other than Lady Selva.
“If it’s red hair, are your eyes green? That happens quite often.”
Her heart pounded wretchedly.
“Yes.”
“So that’s why your name is Rose, I see.”
He didn’t doubt her in the slightest. On the contrary, his reaction seemed somehow intrigued.
Rose nodded to indicate her assent. She didn’t dare open her mouth, for she couldn’t guarantee her voice wouldn’t tremble.
The lie had begun.