Episode 38
Recently, little things had begun to bother him. They were not conspicuous enough to be called problems, but they pricked unpleasantly at his mood like a hangnail.
“Rose. Did someone come into the bedroom?”
Again.
Rose looked around the bedroom. To her eyes, nothing seemed different, yet for the past few days Ezekiel had been pointing out that something in the bedroom felt out of place.
“They probably came in to clean. They asked about the time earlier.”
But at Rose’s guess, Ezekiel shook his head.
“That’s not it. It’s ever so slightly different from the way you or the others put things in order while cleaning.”
Even after hearing Ezekiel’s explanation, Rose could hardly perceive the difference. It was only natural. No matter how hard she tried, she could not keep up with the instincts of a man who had risked his life detecting and analyzing traces of enemies. He alone sensed an incongruity most people would not even notice.
“Could it have been a thief?”
“Surely not. Nothing is missing.”
It was far more likely that a servant had accidentally brushed past the furnishings while cleaning than that a thief had broken in. But Rose did not voice her guess. There was always the possibility of the unexpected.
If someone really had searched the bedroom, how could they catch him?
“What about this floor?”
“I’ll ask Mrs. Serva to check. She looks over the valuables every day.”
Even with her bad knees, Mrs. Serva never neglected the valuables kept on this floor, tapping along with her cane as she went. And since she had said nothing by evening, everything must have been safe. Ezekiel knew that better than anyone.
And so, while suspecting the intrusion of an uninvited guest, he also acknowledged the possibility that the servants had left traces by mistake and withheld judgment.
“Lemon tea again today?”
“Yes.”
Rose skillfully brewed the lemon tea and handed it to him. Ezekiel accepted it with equal familiarity and drank.
“Why does it keep getting tastier?”
Ezekiel tilted his head after gulping down the tea.
“Was it bad before?”
“It was good. Now it’s even better.”
She knew it was an empty compliment he did not truly mean. Even so, she liked the fact that this man, who had lived his whole life in a position where he had no particular need to consider other people’s feelings, was showing her this much sincerity.
She should not like it, but her heart kept flowing in a direction she could not control. Now she understood why people said they did not know their own hearts. Rose lifted the lemon tea left over from what she had made for Ezekiel and took a sip.
It was sour.
It was sweet.
Just like her mood.
“To think I’m enjoying a midnight tea time this peacefully. I never imagined this in the past.”
Setting down his teacup, Ezekiel let out a light laugh.
“It’s all thanks to you, Rose. The day I fled down to Derosa in the middle of winter, I thought I had been exiled. Looking back now, it seems I had come on vacation.”
Danger came from unexpected directions when one’s guard was down. Ezekiel had learned that through Akenaus. And through Rose, he had learned that flowers could bloom even in despair.
His greed grew more and more.
When he had first pressured Dr. Briman into promising to treat him, practically by force, he had intended to settle things once and for all with this sickening darkness, even if it was a gamble.
But now, he desperately wanted to regain his sight no matter what. There were too many wishes he wanted to fulfill.
Ezekiel imagined himself with his sight restored.
On the day his sight returned, he intended to tear down every black curtain in this mansion first, so that Rose could watch him standing tall beneath the light.
And then he would look straight into her eyes as they made love, and take in every aspect of her that until now he could only grasp indirectly by hearing, touching, or tasting.
Looking back, it had truly been a disastrous winter. He had met Rose while drunk on liquor and medicine, and even afterward, he had neglected himself for a time. Consumed by self-loathing and despair, he had acted weak and pathetic. Only now did he regret the helplessness of those past days.
“I never thought the day would come when my heart would feel this peaceful.”
Sitting on the bed, he pulled Rose toward him. When she came along obediently, he lifted her up and seated her on his thigh.
“Rose. You make me want to become a good person.”
He wanted to become a good man to her.
He wanted to arrange a new school for her, somewhere not too far from home and with better teachers, so she could finish the studies she had left incomplete.
He wanted to caress and examine the body that, for a time, had never been free of bruises and wounds because she had nursed him, and apply medicine to it.
Just as she had done for him all along.
Ezekiel wrapped both hands around Rose’s back and head and leaned backward, lying down on the bed. Even though the period in which he had suffered from withdrawal was long past, Rose’s weight showed no sign of recovering. He could not put any real strength into his grip, afraid that if he touched her even a little too firmly, something might go wrong.
Even holding her forearm made him feel that way. He did not think she had been this thin before, but now her arm was so slender he could feel the bone.
When he took her arm and pulled her closer, Rose, who had been lying atop him, slid upward. Ezekiel pressed his forehead against Rose’s.
“You’re not going to keep getting thinner and then suddenly vanish like smoke one day, are you?”
Feeling strangely uneasy, he frowned and complained lightly.
Rose let out a soft laugh.
“Of course not. How could a person vanish like smoke?”
“Because you keep losing weight, Serva seems to be quietly looking at me as if I’m some kind of beast.”
“……I think that might be true.”
Rose agreed cautiously. There had been times when, while using contraception, she had wondered whether today’s precaution might turn out to be wasted effort, but in the end, it had been needless worry. Contraception was always, always necessary.
“A beast, is it.”
Ezekiel repeated.
For a moment, Rose flinched inwardly as she recalled the nickname that had once swept through the area. The servants who had been driven out of the mansion had spread malicious gossip out of spite, and Ezekiel had been saddled with the ill name of a beast, while this mansion had been called the beast’s mansion.
Had she said something that offended him?
As if to render her brief worry meaningless, the man instead curled the corner of his mouth in a broad grin.
“Fine, then eat properly so I can act like a beast without guilt. According to Mrs. Serva, you hardly eat enough to count. If you can’t eat much rice, then at least fill yourself up with fruit you like.”
To be honest, the reason she was not gaining weight was most likely psychological. Compared to her days at Milena Girls’ School, the quality and taste of the food were incomparably better, and yet it simply would not go down her throat. At times, she even felt an inexplicable indigestion.
Instead of answering, Rose was about to bury her face in the nape of his neck when she suddenly lifted her head.
……Fruit?
Rose looked across at the lone piece of lemon left in the teacup.
❖ ❖ ❖
“Aren’t you mocking me a bit too much? Leaving a note with nothing but eight o’clock and Masterpiece written on it beneath a bottle of Merlot wine with a single rose stuck in it.”
The question she had raised just in case ended, after all, exactly as expected.
Rose stared quietly at the man who had been coming and going from the mansion every other day under the pretext of delivering fruit. The merchant, whose name was pronounced the same as Merlot, the grape variety used to make wine, had immediately understood the meaning of the note she had left and appeared at the time and place she had specified.
“Why are you testing people like this?”
Although he grumbled in a sullen tone, he did not look truly offended. If anything, his reaction was closer to interest.
Rose replied calmly.
“Partly to confirm who had been sneaking into the Major’s bedroom. While I was at it.”
There had been no need to narrow down any other suspects.
Ezekiel had begun sensing something out of place in the bedroom only after Merlot started coming in and out of the mansion. Moreover, Rose had even witnessed the man sneaking into the drawing room. The culprit was so obvious that she paid no attention to anyone else.
In fact, the place where she had left the wine bottle and the note had also been Ezekiel’s bedroom. Most of the servants who entered to clean could not read, so it was safe, and even if Mrs. Serva came in, Rose intended it to look like a suitably romantic decoration.
In that way, Rose had deliberately left a message aimed at the merchant, and the merchant had come, as if to show off.
Merlot smiled playfully.
“You have sharp eyes, miss. I tried to be very careful.”
“I didn’t notice. The Major did.”
“Aha, as expected. ‘Major Valdemaera of the 37th Regiment’ isn’t an empty name.”
Even after hearing the warning that Ezekiel had detected his traces, the merchant did not seem particularly shaken.
“But what were you going to do if I couldn’t read and didn’t understand the message you left?”
“Why would that assumption be necessary? You read it.”
“What if I had pretended not to know?”
“That wouldn’t have mattered either. I thought about it…… and I realized who sent you here.”
And under the judgment that he would at least be unable to harm her, she had called the merchant out.
“And who would that be?”
Rose took two or three steps back from Merlot, securing a safe distance.
“Akenaus Valdemaera.”
She spoke aloud the name of the sin she could never escape in the end.
“He’s the one who sent you, isn’t he?”