ORCA 10

He headed back to the mansion once more. He didn’t forget to grab the shoes that were strewn on the ground. Throughout all this, Niah merely slept soundly, limp as a hunted beast, on Orca’s thick forearm.

“Why is he here? Niah! Hey, Niah!”

Niah, who was curled up in the basement hall, flinched and pulled his back into a ball at the sudden loud shout. His trembling lips were ghostly white, and his complexion was pale. Hair matted with cold sweat clung to his forehead and cheeks. He gasped for air, interrupted by intermittent coughing fits.

One might think he looked pitiful, but Luan merely wore a look of annoyance. She looked down at Niah and nudged his shoulder with the tip of her shoe to wake him up.

“Wake up, Niah! Why are you sleeping here instead of your room? And what is with that state you’re in?”

She kept moving her foot with an expression full of irritation. Because she shook his body so much, Niah’s cheek was repeatedly scraped against the coarse rug.

Niah had to struggle immensely to try and wake up. He wanted to sleep more, but he didn’t want to be scolded. A pained groan escaped his lips. It felt as if his fingers belonged to someone else; even twitching them was a monumental effort. Luan, waiting for him to get up, eventually ground her teeth in a temper.

His swollen eyelids were so heavy he could barely open them, but thanks to that, his senses gradually returned. His throat was parched and sore, and a chill racked his entire body. He felt cold on the surface, but a fever was burning within. He was definitely suffering from a severe cold. This was a very difficult situation for him.

More than that, he couldn’t remember why he had been sleeping there. His head throbbed as if it might split, making it impossible to think deeply.

“Niah! You idiot!”

Another roar echoed. His eyes snapped open. Because his eyeballs felt dry and stiff, he squeezed them shut again before slowly letting his vision clear. Everything was blurry. Tears welled up in his eyes before he could stop them. He had never been this sick before. At least, not as far as he could remember. His joints ached as if he had been dragged off and beaten by someone. Yet, Luan did not show him any mercy and continued to shove his shoulder.

Niah forced his body upright. He pressed his palms against the rug he had been lying on and slowly straightened his upper body. Impatient at his sluggishness, Luan’s shoe tapped the floor aggressively. Niah flinched even at that muffled sound, which was swallowed by the thick wool.

He forced himself to sit up and let out hot, ragged breaths. Tears dripped down his cheeks. Every time he hacked with a dry cough, his throat stung and his head pounded in agony. Groans of distress leaked out.

“What are you doing? Aren’t you going to hurry up? To think you walked around the mansion in that state.”

At Luan’s final sharp warning, Niah rubbed his eyes as he listened to her footsteps leaving the hall. It was a struggle just to sit still; waves of pain washed over him. He held back his tears and slowly shifted his gaze. He needed to check what he looked like right now.

As he looked down, he saw dirt smeared all over the clothes he was wearing. His shoes lay at his feet, and his bare feet were also covered in grime. Just as Luan had said, he wondered why he was lying in the basement hall in such a state, and what on earth had happened before he fell asleep.

Niah went quietly to his room so he wouldn’t be spotted by other servants. The narrow, steep spiral staircase felt longer than usual. He practically crawled up, grabbed new clothes, underwear, and socks, and came back down. It took a long time to travel between the basement and the sixth floor. He had nearly lost consciousness several times.

For better or for worse, he didn’t run into any other servants besides Luan. That meant he was already late for his shift. Imagining Pepe’s terrifying face, Niah hurried toward the bathroom. He didn’t move fast, as he had to lean against the wall to keep from falling. Still, it was the swiftest pace he could manage at that moment.

When he finally filled the round wooden tub with warm water and slipped in, a wave of exhaustion hit him. He knew he didn’t have the luxury of enjoying a leisurely bath, but his hands wouldn’t move as he wished. Because he was pressed for time, he had only filled the tub halfway. Even so, the warmth brought life back to his ghostly pale skin, and the stinging pain subsided quite a bit. He felt that if he could just get a good sleep after warming his body, he would feel much lighter.

It made him a little sad that he couldn’t do that. His throat was still stinging, and his nose was blocked, making it hard to breathe. Most of all, he worried about how much Adrian would scold him later, as he surely must have been looking for him.

Niah got out of the tub and hurried to get ready to go to the garden. He fetched his scrubbing brush and soap, letting out feverish gasps the whole time. If he spent any more time idling, he would not only be scolded by Adrian or Pepe, but he might even be kicked out of the mansion.

Huh? Kicked out?

His eyes, which had been half-closed and dull, suddenly widened to their full size. His mind was in total chaos. A sense of anxiety surged as if someone had scrubbed away things he shouldn’t have forgotten.

He decided to put his wandering thoughts aside for now and poured water over his head. He lathered his hair and red, flushed skin with soap. As he scrubbed his calves with the coarse brush, his eyes landed on his wrists, which were bruised a deep blue. Both wrists had the same marks. They didn’t look like bruises from bumping into something or falling; they looked like marks left by being gripped firmly.

Niah carefully retraced his memories step by step.

Last night, he clearly remembered being unable to bear his hunger and sneaking out of the mansion. He also remembered arriving at the lake without being caught by anyone, jumping in, and transforming into his beast form. After that, he had eaten a lot of water plants and transformed back into a human, but… but… after that, he couldn’t recall anything well.

As he kept probing his memories of yesterday, they didn’t become clearer; instead, they became even more jumbled. After rewinding through them over and over, even the memories he had believed to be certain started to feel suspicious.

Stupid goldfish…

No matter how hard he tried to piece the scattered fragments together, it wouldn’t work. He couldn’t tell if it was because he was suffering from a cold, if he had simply tried to forget, or if he had wanted—or not wanted—to forget. In the end, he had lost the entire night. This was the first time in a while that his memory had vanished so completely.

Niah made a sorrowful face and scrubbed his body fervently in his frustration. He resented his own stupidity for forgetting everything without his permission. There was nothing left in his head. At this point, he felt it might be better not to try and remember at all.

Niah let out a small sigh and barely managed to finish his bath with sluggish movements. Even if he had to put off yesterday’s events for later, going to the garden was the most urgent thing right now.

As he got dressed, he habitually smelled his hands and arms. He could detect a faint floral scent from the hands he had washed with soap made in the mansion’s distillery. The clothes wrapped around his arms only smelled of dried sunlight. There was no fishy odor.

Sometimes, he wondered if he couldn’t smell his own fishy scent simply because he was a goldfish. He had never asked anyone, as he didn’t think they would give him the right answer.

Niah sniffed a few times and left the bathroom. Everything in front of him was still spinning, and his body felt lethargic. Even as he climbed to the first floor, leaning on the stair railing, his coughing wouldn’t stop. When he finally arrived and opened the door to the mansion’s backyard, the bright, sunny sky greeted him. A fresh breeze blew in.

It made him want to cry. He felt as if he were the only person in the world who was completely detached from everything else. Niah gnawed at his lips and started walking. His heart hammered as he neared the garden and the voices of the other servants grew closer.

“Where have you been, showing up only now? I went to your room earlier, and you weren’t there.”

As soon as Pepe spotted Niah walking toward him from a distance, he strode over and grabbed him by the collar. He pushed Niah hard against the wall with his savage grip before firing his question. His voice was heavy with evident rage.

At the menacing demand, Niah immediately burst into tears. He was terrified of Pepe’s face, as Pepe pressed his knuckles hard against his breastbone. Yet, no one nearby paid him any attention. Not a single person came to pull Pepe away or shield him. It was a situation no different from any other day, but for some reason, he felt especially heartbroken and lonely.

“I was sick… I overslept… Ugh, I’m sorry… Pepe. Tomorrow… tomorrow, sob… I promise I won’t be late.”

“I went to check your room, so now you’re even lying to me.”