Episode 50
On nights when the moon rose and nights when it did not, Rose often went for walks with Ezekiel, whose eyes were covered with a thick cloth. They would walk along the path made of tightly wound cord, then naturally embrace or kiss at the places where the statues stood. Before long, Ezekiel had memorized the entire route; even without Rose’s explanations, he knew where he was standing and would draw her to him first.
“Wait, this isn’t the spot.”
Sometimes he played pranks. In front of the wrong statue, or even when there was nothing there at all, he would stop and steal Rose’s breath as he pleased. Rose would tap his shoulder to stop him, but when Ezekiel pressed his lips to hers, she did not go out of her way to avoid him.
They spent more time standing in one place, feeling each other’s warmth, than they did walking along the path. As a result, each step carried them endlessly far.
There were days when it was nothing unusual for them to spend an hour and a half strolling through a garden that could have been circled in thirty minutes. Today was no different. If anything, they were more often surprised together by how quickly the time had passed. Of course, the moon’s arc stretching long across the night sky gave some sense of the passage of time, but Rose made no effort to measure it. Tonight, once it flowed away, would never return. There was no reason to shorten precious memories by needlessly being conscious of the time.
“Wait, Major. This place is too open on all sides.”
To Ezekiel, Rose was far too cautious. Whenever he toyed with her waist and dropped kisses on her forehead and eyelids, Rose kept worrying about the empty surroundings.
“There’s no one watching, so what does it matter?”
“You’ve got the order backward. It’s not that there’s no one watching, it’s that no one can come out to the garden because of us……”
It was then. Suddenly, the sound of overgrown grass rustling as it bent brushed past Ezekiel’s ears.
Wait. Is there really no one here?
“Shh.”
The instant he gave the signal, he wrapped Rose’s head against his chest.
Again, sssht—the grass was swept aside. This time, he heard it more clearly.
He knew this kind of noise well. It was the signal nature sent when an enemy in ambush carelessly set down a foot. A faintly artificial presence mingled into the sound, creating an even stronger sense of wrongness that scraped sharply at his nerves.
The moment he sensed another person’s presence by instinct, Ezekiel immediately turned, hid Rose behind him first, and swept the ground with the tip of his foot in search of something that could serve as a weapon.
“Who are you!”
If it were an employee belonging to the mansion, they would naturally give their name. But no answer came.
“Major, what suddenly……?”
While Rose, who had no idea what was happening, looked bewildered, his heel caught on a sizable stone. He kicked it up with his heel at once and snatched it by feel.
He did not know the opponent’s height. He did not know their build either. In that case, aiming lower would increase the chances of a hit.
According to his experience as a famed marksman, eyesight was surprisingly unimportant in shooting. In truth, one should not expect a clear field of vision on a battlefield filled with blood, dust, and allies and enemies locked in combat. When the battle situation was poor, he had even placed himself behind cover, held only the muzzle out, and picked off enemies by relying on the footfalls shaking the ground. Everything came down to instinct. In fact, true marksmen reached a level where, the moment a bullet left the muzzle, they could tell by feeling whether it had struck the target or missed.
Ezekiel trusted his instincts.
The stone drew a long parabola toward the presence.
“Guh!”
A man’s scream rang out. Only then did Rose start violently. Moreover, because the man’s voice was familiar, she was even more shocked.
It was Merlot.
He had suspected that there was something being hidden from him, and in the end, unable to endure it, he seemed to have secretly slipped into the mansion under cover of night.
Rose hurriedly poked her head out from behind Ezekiel’s back and looked around.
It was a night with a bright moon for the first time in a while, so Merlot’s figure entered her sight at once. Unfortunately, perhaps because he had been crouching down to hide himself, the stone Ezekiel threw had struck Merlot squarely on the side of the head. At least his response of immediately clamping a hand over his mouth after leaving only a short groan had worked, allowing him to avoid a follow-up attack.
If he had so much as carelessly taken one step, Ezekiel’s hearing would surely not have missed his location.
Good heavens. Swallowing her shock, Rose glanced sideways at Ezekiel. The way he watched the other person’s movements with his ears while continuing to search for weapons with the tips of his feet was unmistakably a soldier’s habit. He glared fiercely into the darkness thick with weeds, never lowering his guard. Knowing that even the smallest sound would immediately bring another attack, Merlot held his breath and merely sent Rose a look pleading for help.
If that hand had been holding a rifle, Merlot might have lost his life on the spot. Recalling Ezekiel’s past as a marksman who had no equal as long as he had a gun, bullets, and gunpowder, Rose shivered.
In any case, Merlot was an errand runner dispatched by the main family. His identity was certain, and he was not someone who had come in with the purpose of harming Rose or Ezekiel. Considering the aftermath, too, it would be troublesome if they inflicted a serious injury on him.
“Ah!”
There was no time to think it through. Rose deliberately collapsed, pretending she had been so flustered that the strength had gone out of her legs.
“Rose? Did you trip on something?”
It was a somewhat clumsy performance, but it succeeded in drawing Ezekiel’s attention.
He immediately found Rose where she had fallen and lowered himself to one knee. His hand moved without hesitation over the leg exposed beneath her skirt, which had ridden up.
“Let me see. Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine, I’m fine.”
He had to pay attention to Rose first, but he could not neglect his vigilance in every direction either. Since the handkerchief half covering his ears was in the way, he removed it to sharpen his hearing, then kneaded downward with his large hand from Rose’s calf to her ankle. It was a body he had touched so often that he was confident he would notice at once if even a slight swelling changed the feel of her skin.
“You’re hurt.”
It was not mere swelling. The skin felt damp and sticky—this was definitely bleeding.
This was the problem with an untended garden. Fine grit and sharp blades of grass were scattered everywhere, so even a slight knock of the knee could easily scrape the skin raw.
Ezekiel hurriedly searched through what he had on him for a cloth to wrap the wound. As it happened, the handkerchief he had just removed was in his hand. He had performed simple first aid countless times while serving as a soldier. He wrapped the handkerchief around Rose’s injured knee and tied it, applying pressure to stop the bleeding.
“Rose, tell me if you see someone nearby.”
Even in the midst of that, Ezekiel did not forget the intruder. Rose hastily spun a lie.
“I-I think they left. I don’t see anything around us.”
“Was it a petty thief?”
Petty thieves and swindlers who chose to rob enormous mansions could be found anywhere. Even at the crowded main estate, nighttime visitors aiming for valuables had appeared several times. Though he could not know for certain, this mansion too had naturally been targeted many times. It was also one of the reasons Mrs. Serva, who had looked after the mansion all this time, gathered the valuables on the second floor and inspected them every day.
Ezekiel narrowed his brow.
“We should wake the servants and have them search the area.”
Rose limped as she entered the mansion with Ezekiel’s support. When she glanced back, Merlot was crouched down, desperately holding his breath with his injured head clasped in his hands. Though he had suffered some injury to his head, his limbs were intact, so he should be able to escape on his own before the servants came out. That was enough.
More importantly, there was something else Rose had to concern herself with first.
The cloth he had wrapped around the wound on her knee was the handkerchief that had been covering his eyes.
Her heart began to beat violently.
❖ ❖ ❖
Dr. Briman gazed intently into Ezekiel’s eyes. The man’s eyes, which anyone—man or woman, young or old—would consider beautiful, had sunk into a deep, opaque blue-black because they could not perform their proper function.
They were like a cave that endlessly drank in light. Staring into that darkness, Dr. Briman spoke first.
“As expected, you don’t feel anything in particular?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t know. There’s nothing different from usual.”
Ezekiel’s reaction was ordinary. Rose, who was seated with them, exchanged a glance with Dr. Briman.
The day before yesterday, Ezekiel had faced the bright moonlight and yet had felt no pain at all. It was proof that the poison no longer had any effect on his body.
Dr. Briman nodded toward Rose. Then he said to Ezekiel,
“I have been holding up a lamp this entire time. You no longer feel pain from light.”
When he groped around with his hand, Dr. Briman placed the lamp he had been holding into it, proving his words directly.
Ezekiel closed and opened his dim eyes a couple of times. It was strange. There was only the ache one felt when looking at a strong light; there was none of the pain that gnawed into his brain.
“Then why can I still not see?”
He had thought that once the pain disappeared, his sight would naturally return as well. But now only the pain was gone, and his vision remained colorless.
“If you no longer feel pain, then it would be correct to say that the poison has been neutralized. Even so, if there is no change in your vision, there is likely another reason. Would you open your eyes a little wider?”
Dr. Briman carefully examined the surface of his eyeballs with a magnifying glass. Until the doctor finished his diagnosis, both Ezekiel and Rose maintained a deathly silence.
At last, Dr. Briman set down the lamp and magnifying glass.
“First, let me ask you something. You said that when that woman harmed you at the time, she sprayed poison into your eyes, correct?”
Ezekiel searched his memory. It was a scene he had repeated hundreds, thousands of times with the aid of opium’s hallucinations, so the answer came quickly.
“She scattered the contents of a bottle into my eyes.”
“Then the cause of your blindness may not be the poison alone.”
Dr. Briman gave his diagnosis.