Chapter 9
“Why are you smiling?”
“No reason. I was just lost in thought for a moment.”
“Hah.”
Eden let out a cold, humorless laugh.
“You’re not taking me seriously after all. I suppose all nobles are just like you.”
“Hm?”
“Was promising to help me escape just another passing whim of yours?”
Eden glared at me with his golden eyes.
It was quite a menacing expression for someone his age, but…
‘His fur is standing on end.’
Why did he keep reminding me of a wild cat?
‘Is it because of his yellow eyes?’
The fact that I kept seeing Eden as nothing but a cat was becoming a problem for me too.
‘Comparing an adorable creature like a cat to that psychopath who becomes obsessed with imprisoning people in the game would be an insult to cats!’
The word ‘psychopath’ wasn’t merely a description.
Eden had been cursed in the heart from the moment he was born, and the setting stated that he genuinely couldn’t feel emotions.
It was certainly a fittingly demonic setting for a game called The Demon King’s Companion.
‘A curse in his heart…’
Without realizing it, I glanced at Eden’s chest. There was nothing particularly noticeable.
Well, of course. It wasn’t as though a curse would exist in a form visible to the naked eye.
‘Come to think of it, I wonder if I could get rid of that curse.’
The Eden of now might be quite rude, but he wasn’t exactly at the level where he could be called an “emotionless psychopath.”
Even now, wasn’t he glaring at me with those sharp eyes? At the very least, that meant he could feel the emotion of anger.
He clearly hadn’t been completely consumed by the curse yet.
‘If I could get rid of Eden’s curse and prevent the male lead from turning into a psychopath…?’
Wouldn’t the country I’d eventually have to welcome that brat into as its emperor become a much more peaceful place as well?
“Are you thinking about something else again?”
At that moment, the cat… Ah, no. Eden suddenly snapped at me again.
“Calm down. First of all.”
I held up both palms and made a soothing gesture.
“And don’t worry. I have a plan of my own.”
“Hah.”
Eden let out another cold scoff.
But his pupils widened slightly as he looked at me. Apparently, he was secretly interested.
His actions and his expression were so completely at odds that I almost burst out laughing again.
‘Ah, hold it in. Hold it in. He’ll get angry again.’
“First of all, you don’t seem to quite understand this, but getting you out of here is a huge project. Got it?”
“……”
“There’s no way to leave this place using ordinary transportation. Do you think there are carriage drivers willing to come all the way to a place this dangerous? I’d have to hire someone separately. If I asked them to come all the way here, they’d probably be terrified and charge me ten times the usual hazard fee. Do you have enough money to cover that?”
“……”
Eden pressed his lips tightly together and stared at me without saying a word.
I patted his shoulder.
“This isn’t going to be easy. But your big sister here has a plan for everything. You just have to trust me and quietly wait for the day you can be free.”
“……If it’s really that difficult.”
Eden finally spoke in a low voice.
“Why are you willing to go that far for me?”
“It’s not free, you know?”
I tilted my head.
“You’ll have to pay me back when you grow up.”
“……When I grow up?”
“That’s right. When you become an adult. I know a little about reading faces, and you’ve got the face of someone who’s going to make it big, you know? So make sure you repay me someday. Cash only.”
I was planning to run far, far away with Big Sister Eloise and live happily on some remote island, so he could just wire the money into my account.
Turning my gaze back toward Rossi, I began humming to myself.
“Hmm, hmm-hmm.”
I had a good feeling about this. I thought this makeover was going to go well.
The first color in the boy’s earliest memory was red.
The screams of people being torn apart and devoured by monsters. Their desperate cries. Their agonized groans.
For a child abandoned without either parent, the slums were a place where survival was nearly impossible.
If he wasn’t being chased by monsters, he was being chased by people.
When he had no food and resorted to chewing on the corpses of monsters, people called him a cursed child and pelted him with stones wherever he went.
Every time he closed his eyes, the boy never expected that he would be able to open them again the next morning.
His life had stubbornly clung on, but even this unwanted stroke of luck would not last much longer.
The boy had never once imagined a future.
A child grows into an adult as time passes.
But the boy knew that the world wouldn’t give him much more time as charity.
‘A child grows into an adult as time passes.’
‘That is, if he doesn’t get chewed up and eaten by a monster or die with his skull smashed by a stone someone threw at him before then.’
To the boy, “becoming an adult” was nothing more than a ridiculous joke.
It had been.
“You have to pay me back when you grow up.”
A noble girl had made that cruel joke.
“You’ve got the face of someone who’s going to make it big, you know?”
How presumptuous.
As though she actually knew something. With that arrogant attitude so befitting of a noble.
It was almost laughable how confidently she’d said it, yet for some reason, he couldn’t laugh.
Suddenly, a memory from several days ago surfaced in the boy’s mind.
A huge woman barging into the noble girl’s room and taking out a riding crop.
And the girl who had been about to obediently kneel before that woman.
More precisely, it was the familiar resignation that had appeared on the child’s face.
At that moment, thick, murky purple smoke began rising like a haze from the boy’s chest.
—You don’t actually pity that girl, do you?
The haze whispered ominously.
—You? Hahaha!
—There are levels to shared suffering, you know. Even if the head maid is a little arrogant, that girl is still a noble who lives in this splendid castle, while you are…
—A miserable, filthy piece of trash.
—Trash. Half-breed.
Multiple voices became tangled together chaotically within the haze.
“Shut up.”
Growling in a low voice, the boy clawed at his own chest until it bled.
—Kieeeek!
As if it were a lie, the haze groaned in pain before scattering into the silence.
The boy panted and looked around.
He couldn’t hear the voices at all.
Those voices that always gnawed at his mind until they were satisfied, only to disappear whenever they pleased.
“Huff…”
The boy breathed heavily and stared blankly down at his chest.
The ominous-colored haze had not disappeared. It was still wavering in place.
Still, what mattered was that he’d managed to silence those voices, even if only for a moment.
The boy gave a hollow laugh.
He couldn’t believe that the voices he’d been unable to drive away no matter how desperately he struggled had disappeared the instant he remembered what that girl had said.
As though her words themselves had given him some kind of strength.
But it had to be a coincidence.
‘I’ve never believed the boasts of someone like her.’
That’s right.
Not even for a single moment had he believed her. He had never been tempted by them.
He had never once allowed himself to place his hopes in such foolish boasts…
Even if they were the first words of hope anyone had ever spoken to him.
Amid the silence that had arrived like a miracle, the boy almost fell asleep without realizing it.
Had it not been for another sound coming from outside the door.
“Really?”
A real person’s voice could be heard from beyond the door.
“Another match is being held?”
“Yeah. Apparently, it’s starting soon.”
“Let’s go take a look. That girl, Lillian, must be participating too, right?”
“Of course she is. If she doesn’t even do that, the head of the household will dispose of her himself.”
“Do you think she’ll fail miserably again this time? Last year, she couldn’t even hunt a small monster, so they yanked out half her hair while she bawled her eyes out.”
“Hehe! That was hilarious.”
It was the sound of the servants passing by, joking and laughing among themselves.
“Who knows.”
One of the boys snickered quietly.
His voice was lowered as much as possible, but Eden’s keen hearing still caught it.
“Maybe she’ll actually die this time.”
Eden froze in place.
