Episode 15
The air was thick with the fishy smell of water. Because of the rain that had battered the estate all through early spring, they had been unable to ventilate often, and the air had grown stagnant.
“Major, the doctor has arrived.”
Yet another new doctor had appeared at the mansion. As she relayed the news to Ejekail, Rose swallowed a heavy sigh.
Ever since she had first witnessed his strange symptoms, she had carefully observed Ejekail for some time. Fortunately, after sleeping for a while and waking again, the man had returned to his usual self. He recognized Rose by the sound of her footsteps alone and went about his day as he always did.
But on the days he was examined, he emptied several bottles of liquor again and sank into hallucinations. He spouted incoherent nonsense that no one could make sense of, trapped in delusions all his own. Even when Rose spoke to him or deliberately made loud sounds to announce her presence, he did not react. It was as if his body and soul had been separated from each other.
When he drank too much, delirium came over him.
Liquor and medicine had the advantage of erasing immediate pain, but put another way, they were things a healthy person in mind and body would have no need to take. The growing number of empty bottles was an objective measure, showing that his suffering was increasing day by day.
Rose studied the man’s roughened face. These days, as he leaned on liquor and often skipped meals, his cheeks had grown hollow. Desolate and barren. It seemed as if his soul had become dry sand, scattering with a rasping whisper. He was precarious.
After going through three or four more doctors until she was certain, Rose immediately requested an interview with Mrs. Serva.
“I don’t know whether the medicine is the problem or the liquor is, but it’s dangerous. The amount he takes has more than doubled since the day I first arrived.”
Rose carefully explained the abnormal symptoms Ejekail had displayed. Mrs. Serva listened to her with a blank, stunned expression.
“I can hardly believe it. When I was attending him, there were signs that he was gradually becoming reliant on the medicine, but... well. Something like that...”
That could not be.
Mrs. Serva had been about to deny Rose’s report, but her words trailed off. In truth, “that could not be” was nothing more than a wish. As a woman in her seventies with bad legs, Mrs. Serva had had to care for her blind master, manage the servants, and oversee matters great and small within the mansion. Unlike Rose, who was responsible for Ejekail alone, she had not had the leisure to examine the changes in him so closely.
Moreover, Mrs. Serva had also been one of the first people to recommend Rodenum to Ejekail. When Ejekail had appeared along with the winter snowstorm in a shocking state, he had been so violent and savage that almost no one could approach him. Even Mrs. Serva, who had prided herself on having raised Ejekail with her own hands, had been at a loss before his sudden and distressing change.
“...I see. I likely failed to notice. Because I had already experienced Lord Ejekail after he had changed into someone else. Perhaps it is fortunate, rather, that you are at his side, Rose.”
At least because Rose had first seen Ejekail after Rodenum had left him in a relatively stable state, it must have been easier for her to notice the change.
“We must hurry and remove all the wine and medicine bottles from his bedroom.”
But when Rose reached the conclusion she had been agonizing over all along, Mrs. Serva fell silent with a complicated expression. Then she asked a subtle question in return.
“Rose, who else has seen the master like that?”
“For now, only I know.”
“Then that is enough. Be stricter about watching your tongue and securing the doors, so no unnecessary rumors spread outside.”
“...What about the medicine?”
“Leave it as it is.”
Startled, Rose’s eyes widened. She had assumed that Mrs. Serva, who cherished Ejekail, would immediately order those sinister things thrown away. That was why she had reported to Mrs. Serva first. Ejekail, who was already showing a strong dependence on liquor and medicine, would never listen to her opinion, so she needed the help of Mrs. Serva, the only person capable of persuading him.
But Mrs. Serva’s opinion completely defied Rose’s expectations.
“Lord Ejekail needs a means to lessen his pain. Whether that is medicine or liquor is not important. As long as he is not in pain, that is enough.”
“His mind is growing cloudier by the day. Is that not being ill?”
“You said he looked happy when he was lost in a world of his own. What is the problem?”
Delusion had transformed into a world of his own.
Rose was left speechless. She stared silently at Mrs. Serva. And she realized anew that the old woman before her was terribly aged and exhausted for bearing all this hardship.
“He wishes to be at ease, even if only in that way. Imagine Lord Ejekail, unable to endure the pain, trying to harm himself again or lashing out violently at others. There is no one here who can handle that. Even the servants we have now would all run away.”
Mrs. Serva did not reverse her decision. Her concerns had reason to them as well. How could Rose not understand his desire to enjoy intact senses, even by borrowing the power of hallucinations? It was also true that there was no one in this mansion capable of subduing him by force.
“Understood.”
Rose withdrew. Unless someone with authority imposed a prohibition, Rose, a mere low-ranking employee, could not act against the wishes of the mansion’s master and the head housekeeper.
And so nothing changed.
When the doctor finished his meaningless examination today and left, he would shut himself in his bedroom again and wander through the world within his delusions. A world that should have been his but had never become his, that would scatter like a phantom once he woke from his deep intoxication, and yet which he had no choice but to thirst for.
The world that had been taken from him.
“It is a pleasure to meet you. I am Doctor of Medicine Breeman.”
The doctor had arrived first and was sitting in the empty reception room. He was a man whose half-gray hair showed a maturity that made him seem past middle age, yet whose keen intelligence, still vigorous, made him seem not quite old.
“I have already heard an explanation of the major’s symptoms from the head housekeeper. However, I will need to examine his eyes once more myself. Would that be all right?”
Dr. Breeman asked for permission in a grave manner.
Ejekail sat loosely in a chair with its backrest reclined. His consent was brief and indifferent.
“Do it.”
His tone sounded closer to obligation than expectation. Rose glanced sidelong at him. Deep fatigue lay around the man’s eyes. Anyone would be the same after repeatedly enduring painful examinations only to receive the same diagnosis every time.
Dr. Breeman naturally took out a lamp. The lamp, emitting a piercing light, looked especially bright today. Rose turned her head away for a moment to avoid the light. It seemed she had adapted far too deeply to the rules of this mansion. The lamp’s brilliance was unwelcome.
It was the light that would lead him into hallucination.
Into a world vainly radiant and grotesque.
Ejekail’s eyes distorted for an instant as he faced the lamp head-on. The light was definitely stronger than usual.
“Doctor, one moment.”
Rose stopped Dr. Breeman. Then she searched her pocket and took out a handkerchief. When she draped it over the lamp’s glass chimney and tied a knot, the thin, loosely woven cloth dimmed the lamp’s brightness.
“You are very attentive, miss.”
Dr. Breeman marveled.
Conscious of the man’s hand, Rose stood one step away. The first time she had held his hand and soothed him had repeated once, then twice, then three times, and recently it had become fixed as a habit.
Surprisingly, he did not shake Rose off even when she took his hand. Seen another way, it meant that though he did not show it outwardly, he was lonely and tormented enough to need someone who would endure alongside him.
The shadow cast by the light leaned long. Rose counted the numbers and measured the time.
The man’s large-knuckled hand gripped tightly in the spaces between her fingers. From the pressure he exerted, she could guess something of his endurance.
Usually, the examination itself ended quickly. The doctors often came in after hearing the symptoms and circumstances in detail from Mrs. Serva, and the doctors themselves found it burdensome to hold a lamp for long before a patient who showed such obvious signs of pain.
But Dr. Breeman took his time and examined his eyes with great care. Rose, who had been calculating the seconds and minutes, thinking it would end soon, grew inwardly anxious at Dr. Breeman’s examination, which showed no sign of finishing.
Her mouth dried out completely.
His pain did not dull. Naturally, those who watched did not grow used to it either. Usually, it was suppressed with painkillers, but on days when a doctor’s visit was scheduled, he could not lie around drugged, so the dosage was adjusted to let the medicine wear off to a suitable degree. If the light he so desperately avoided was added to that, it must feel to him as though he had returned to the day he first injured his eyes.
For Rose, it was also a time to revisit her sins. Watching the suffering man at his side, she was consumed by memories she could neither erase nor have erased. The spring in her head wound up, and scenes unfolded with a click, click, click. Akenaus’s voice calling her an accomplice, his smile full of ridicule, the heartbeat that had surged as if it would burst the instant she scattered the medicine into this man’s eyes, and even the grip of the hand that had strangled her throat as if to kill her.
Suddenly, her breathing grew ragged. A brutal sense of suffocation washed over her anew, even though the marks his hands had left around her neck had long since vanished cleanly.
Rose exhaled in short, shallow breaths.
The lamp was only extinguished after a long while. Just before it was covered by shadow, Ejekail’s face, glimpsed briefly, had also lost all color and turned deathly pale.
No one spoke first. Each of them was occupied with gathering their thoughts and steadying their breathing.
Ejekail slowly raised one hand and covered his face with it. But the feverish heat filling his palm did nothing for the headache that seemed to peck at his brain. Rather, it only intensified the unpleasant throbbing.
He needed something cool. Without thinking, he lifted whatever his hand had caught and covered his eyes with it. The feeling was perfect. A cool and soft sensation steadily cooled the heat pooled inside his head.
Only after the boiling heat had somewhat subsided did Ejekail realize that the cool thing he was holding was Rose’s hand. With her fingers neatly gathered together, she was stroking the area around his eyes with only enough weight to tickle.