IBFLS 06

“Yes! Please, ask me anything!”

I took a moment to catch my breath.

Then, in a voice so quiet it was almost a whisper, I asked as though I were about to share a very secretive matter.

“Do you know… what happened to the young lady?”

At my question, Sordi’s expression stiffened ever so slightly.

Although he looked as though he might burst into tears, he did his best to stammer out a reply.

“This situation came so suddenly that I haven’t had a chance to collect myself…”

Sordi avoided my gaze and clenched his fists. His lowered eyelids trembled faintly.

His reaction was almost as though he had heard something terribly painful.

“It seems the young lady passed away sometime last night.”

Sordi continued, speaking much more slowly than usual.

“We only received the tragic news early this morning, so we’re merely assuming it happened during the night.”

Just as I had at the funeral earlier, I suddenly found myself retracing the events of yesterday once again.

‘Then did something happen after I fell asleep?’

Was it even possible for someone to get past the Duke’s estate’s formidable security? And if so, who?

Who would be willing to take such a risk just to kill the young lady?

I pressed him for an answer in an even quieter voice.

“Do you happen to know anything about the cause of death?”

“I don’t know the details either. Perhaps the ducal household is keeping it a secret…”

I fell into deep thought.

Someone had infiltrated the young lady’s room and killed her. There were far too many holes in that theory. Getting past the security was one thing, but the existence of someone with a grudge strong enough to warrant murder was another. All things considered, it seemed highly unlikely.

Then could it have been a sudden death? But that made no sense either. The game hadn’t even begun yet, so the young lady dying at this point was impossible.

‘Besides, I still don’t know why I ended up in Roselina’s body.’

The young lady’s death and the moment I had opened my eyes in Roselina’s body.

There was a gap between those two events.

Something had undoubtedly happened, but I couldn’t even begin to guess what it might have been.

“…My lady?”

At the sound of his voice, I abruptly snapped out of my thoughts. Sordi was carefully studying my face.

I nodded, doing my best to appear unconcerned.

“That was very helpful. Thank you.”

“I’m glad I could help. But, my lady…”

Sordi started to say something, then hesitated for a long while.

Eventually, he sighed, scratched the back of his head, and glanced at the knights standing behind him.

“I don’t want to judge you based on rumors alone, my lady.”

“Pardon?”

“Simply because you maintained a good relationship with the young lady, you were already the target of a great deal of envy, weren’t you?”

Sordi closed his reddened eyes, then slowly opened them again.

“I think it was truly despicable of them to hold a grudge against you for building up your standing with the young lady’s help and spreading malicious rumors about you.”

“…”

“Of course, I don’t know very much about it, but…”

It wasn’t as though I hadn’t expected this.

I remembered the atmosphere freezing over the moment I, having become a beloved young lady, appeared in high society with the forgotten daughter of a baronial family in tow.

To be precise, I had simply turned a blind eye, thinking it had nothing to do with me.

If only I had realized back then that it could come back to hurt me now.

‘So that’s why those guys over there are hostile toward Roselina, too.’

She had been treated with such contempt in aristocratic society that they must have thought she was an easy target.

“But I don’t think there’s any need for me to know the details. The young lady cared for you dearly, so I want to believe in you.”

Yet Sordi’s next words were something I had never expected.

“You may not know this, my lady, but I owe the young lady a great debt of gratitude as well. Since you were someone who earned her affection, I believe you must be a good person, too.”

With that, Sordi took two steps back and bowed deeply.

“Thank you so much! I will never forget this kindness!”

As I watched him hurriedly turn around and run toward his companions…

‘Did I give birth to that kid or something?’

An inexplicable warmth swelled in my chest.

That little boy who never stopped crying, yet refused to put down his sword, no matter how much he wept. I could still picture his adorable face, especially whenever he made a miserable expression after I called him a little knight.

After watching Sordi run off, I turned around.

“Anyway…”

I came to a stop in front of the main gate of the mansion, which had fallen into a truly decrepit state.

The Mush Barony was now an insignificant family whose fortunes had dwindled, but apparently, they had once been renowned for their immense wealth.

If I remembered correctly, the female protagonist’s grandfather had gambled away the entire family fortune.

‘The irony is that the mansion looks like a haunted ruin, as if that history has been preserved in its entirety.’

The iron gate in front of me was rusted in so many places that I felt as though simply brushing against it might give me an illness I didn’t already have.

“Ugh…”

I nudged the slightly open gate with the tip of my foot and stepped inside.

The sight that greeted me in the garden left me unable to suppress a sigh.

“Good grief.”

The garden was covered in grass and weeds that had grown wildly in every direction.

The trees, both large and small, had never been pruned. Their branches had tangled together, leaving the whole place in a dreadful mess.

Moss covered patches of the stones laid along the paths. I didn’t even need to step on them to know they would be slippery.

‘This place is in far worse shape than when I last came here.’

With every step, my feet sank into the thick, overgrown grass.

“Ahhh!”

Whenever I accidentally stepped on a protruding stone, I let out a shriek before I could stop myself.

I carefully watched where I was going as I made my way toward the entrance.

‘I gave him living expenses regularly, so what on earth has he been doing instead of repairing the mansion?’

The money I had sent him every month, separate from the funds for his escape, should have added up to a considerable sum.

‘Hiring a gardener regularly should have been no trouble at all. And he must have heard the carriage arriving, yet nobody came out to greet me.’

I had once given Roselina some living expenses and advised her to hire servants.

I had even explained what to look for when hiring people and introduced her to a guild that could help her find them.

After all, I hadn’t had any reason to visit this place since the day I first met Roselina.

I had always sent a carriage here to pick her up instead.

Which meant that today was only the second time I had ever stepped inside this decrepit old mansion.

‘The dust was absolutely awful the first time I came in.’

First, there had been the terrible smell of mold. Then, the moment I stepped on the creaking wooden floorboards, dust had billowed everywhere.

After preparing myself for a sneeze, I reached for the smooth doorknob, which looked as though it had been replaced quite recently despite the building’s dilapidated exterior.

But at that very moment—

“Master, welcome back!”

“Master, you’ve returned!”

I had merely placed my hand on the doorknob when the door suddenly swung open.

Behind the middle-aged man standing directly in front of me, I heard the booming voices of several grown men.

It sounded less like a greeting and more like a military shout.

“What…”

At least ten people stood lined up in a row. Every one of them bowed respectfully to greet me.

And, astonishingly, they were all greeting me.

But that wasn’t the only surprise.

‘What in the world is all this?’

The interior of the decrepit old mansion could only be described as the absolute pinnacle of extravagance.

Everything seemed to gleam as though it had been coated in gold. In all my life, both before and after possessing this body, I had never seen interior design so vulgar and utterly lacking in subtlety.

There were six enormous chandeliers hanging from the lobby ceiling, and every component except the light bulbs gleamed with a golden sheen.

When I lowered my gaze, I saw marble tiles engraved with intricate golden patterns instead of the rotten wooden floorboards I had expected.

“H-have you returned safely, Master? Did everything go well…?”

Looking around again, I saw that the walls, which had once been dented and broken in places and left unrepaired, were now spotless.

And contrary to my expectations of being greeted by layers of accumulated dust, a pleasant fragrance gently tickled my nose. It reminded me of the comforting scent of freshly washed and dried bedding.

‘What on earth happened here?’

Had he used the money I gave him to decorate the place like this?

It was true that I had provided him with a generous monthly allowance, but not that generous.

It certainly wasn’t enough to renovate the entire mansion’s interior so extravagantly.

Then what on earth had happened over the past two years?

“Master?”

As I stood there, dumbfounded by the unbelievable sight before me, the middle-aged man spoke to me in a trembling voice.

“Are you all right?”

All right?

“Or is there perhaps some kind of problem…?”

A problem? Could this situation really be summed up as merely a problem?

My mind went completely blank.