MDBYF ~ 08

Chapter : 08

How much time had passed?

Being confined somewhere that received no sunlight at all had naturally caused Clara to lose her sense of time.

Clara lay turned away on the old bed without moving, doing her best to avoid making eye contact with the man named Mikhail.

He was not only the person responsible for kidnapping her; he was also a strange man.

Simply being trapped alone in the same room as a man she knew absolutely nothing about was more than enough to make the situation feel threatening to her.

She did not want to provoke him.

She was even afraid that if their eyes met, he might start talking to her.

I should have stayed quietly inside the mansion.

She bitterly regretted insisting on going out.

The regret was all the greater because she felt that she had brought this entire situation upon herself.

When will Josef come looking for me?

Is he even looking for me at all?

Clara curled her body up like a shrimp. Judging by the hunger beginning to gnaw at her stomach, more than half a day seemed to have passed since she had been kidnapped.

She even began imagining that she could smell food.

She missed the dinners prepared by the servants. It was almost laughable now that she had once thought her life at the marquis’s residence was nothing but dry and joyless.

Perhaps because of her growing hunger, her mind became hopelessly tangled with worries.

What if Josef has decided not to look for me?

What if he has decided to give up on me…? What will I do then?

“Miss.”

Clara flinched at the man’s voice.

As she wondered whether she should turn around, one side of the mattress suddenly sank.

Startled, she abruptly sat up and pressed herself against the wall.

Mikhail was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring intently at her.

His blond hair glowed reddish in the light from the fireplace across the room.

Fortunately, he was wearing a shirt.

If he had climbed onto the bed bare-chested, Clara would truly have screamed.

“Aren’t you hungry?”

“……”

“You should eat something. It seems about time. Why haven’t you asked for food?”

Clara’s gaze cautiously dropped.

He was holding out a loaf of bread and a bowl of soup.

So the smell of food she had imagined was not an illusion after all.

Surprisingly, the soup looked appetizing.

Its fragrant aroma tempted her.

She wanted to reach for it immediately, but her wariness of Mikhail prevented her from doing so.

“Eat. You’re not going to?”

“……”

“I don’t want to starve you. What am I supposed to do if you wither away and die?”

At the very least, Clara now knew exactly how Mikhail saw her.

A troublesome, fragile creature who might die at any moment.

She would not actually die from skipping a single meal, but Clara hesitated, not particularly wanting to argue with him.

Apparently, her hesitation presented Mikhail with quite a difficult problem.

He narrowed his eyes and wore a serious expression.

“What’s the problem? Don’t like the food? Or are you afraid I might have poisoned it?”

A faint sigh escaped his lips.

“If I wanted to kill you, I would have done it long ago.”

It was as though he were saying that killing someone did not require such troublesome methods.

Ultimately, he seemed to mean that there was no poison in the food and that she could rest assured.

But Clara’s face only grew paler.

“Or do aristocratic ladies need to be fed directly, like children?”

As if he truly intended to do it, Mikhail scooped up a spoonful of soup and started to hold it out to her.

Clara finally managed to force out her voice.

“I-I can eat by myself.”

“That’s good to hear.”

Even after Clara finally accepted the bowl of soup, Mikhail did not leave her side.

His unwavering gaze resting on her was painfully distracting.

Trying to eat the soup he had given her in front of a strange man sitting on the same bed was enough to make her mouth refuse to move.

She knew it was an absurd thought, but somehow…

She felt as though she were doing something improper.

Something indecent.

The soup was thin.

Compared with the food Clara usually ate, it could even be considered rather meager.

And yet, why did it seem so delicious?

She wanted to taste it immediately.

She wanted to put the spoon into her mouth and feel the warmth and flavor of the soup spread across her tongue again and again.

But in this situation, she simply could not bring herself to do it.

Not while that dangerous man sat on the same bed, staring directly at her.

“Is there a problem?”

“W-well…”

Clara suddenly found herself resenting the man before her.

Did he truly have no intention of exercising even the most basic amount of consideration?

Gathering her courage, Clara protested in an uncertain voice.

“Doesn’t it occur to you that you might be sitting too close?”

“What?”

“I’d like you to move farther away.”

Perhaps he truly did not understand what she meant.

Or perhaps he was merely pretending not to.

She wished he would simply do as she asked, but Mikhail did not.

After seeming to think for a moment, he asked instead:

“How far?”

“F-farther away than this…”

“I said, how far?”

Clara felt as though the tips of her ears were burning.

He had to be deliberately teasing her.

“You need to clearly state what you want.”

“You understand perfectly well, so why…!”

“I roughly understand what you’re trying to ask. You have a fiancé, so being this close to another man makes you uncomfortable.”

A mocking smile suddenly appeared on Mikhail’s lips.

“Does it feel like you’re betraying the Colonel? Sitting here with me like this?”

“……I don’t want to answer that.”

“Miss. I simply want you to eat that. I have no other intentions. Well, perhaps if I were even slightly more unhinged, things might be different…”

He glanced at Clara’s expression and continued, as if reassuring her.

“I’d prefer it if you didn’t think of it in that way. I didn’t bring you here out of any personal desire. I’m the type who keeps business and personal matters strictly separate.”

It was as though he were offering her a hint about why he had kidnapped her while simultaneously revealing absolutely nothing.

Mikhail remained seated on the bed.

“Eat. If you finish the entire bowl while I’m watching, I promise I won’t come anywhere near the bed for a while.”

Glaring at him and protesting would accomplish nothing.

And if she continued being stubborn, there was no telling how he might suddenly change.

In the end, Clara lowered her gaze and lifted a spoonful of soup to her mouth.

Avoiding his unwavering stare as much as possible was the last act of defiance available to her.

The thin soup was just as delicious as she had expected.

But Clara did not want to appear overly delighted by the soup he had given her, so she deliberately moved her spoon slowly.

“You’re enjoying it.”

“……”

“It would have been nice if you’d done that from the beginning.”

Apparently, she had made the wrong decision.

Clara changed her mind and decided to finish the food as quickly as possible.

Then Mikhail would stop staring at her as though she were some animal locked inside a cage.

The soup was not the only thing he had given her.

Mikhail’s demand presumably included the bread he had handed her along with it.

Unlike the soup, the bread looked somewhat hard.

It seemed she would have to soak it in the soup before eating it.

Mikhail quietly watched Clara tear pieces from the bread and eat them.

It was hardly an entertaining sight, yet strangely, he had no desire to look away.

Suddenly, Clara’s throat caught Mikhail’s attention.

The movement of her throat was certainly more noticeable when she swallowed the bread than when she drank only the soup.

For a moment, an utterly pointless thought crossed his mind.

Why had Josef Kirchner chosen this woman as his fiancée?

Was it an arranged marriage?

Or had he chosen her of his own will and taken her for himself?

These days, it was not unusual for engaged couples to sleep together before holding their wedding ceremony.

A trivial question briefly crossed his mind.

Has this woman been touched by the Colonel as well?

Josef Kirchner was a Sentinel like Mikhail himself.

Perhaps Clara was a Guide capable of satisfying the Colonel.

Of course, there was something that did not quite make sense.

Was Josef really the sort of man who would manage his own Guide so carelessly?

“Unless he intends to discard her, it makes no sense.”

Mikhail muttered quietly.

Clara cautiously raised her eyes.

Her vivid emerald-green eyes looked utterly innocent.

He knew that expression.

A gaze so blindly devoted that it bordered on loyalty.

Perhaps the two of us have one small thing in common after all.