ORCA 34

Niah, left standing alone in the hallway, reached out with trembling hands and pulled the door handle. With the metallic clatter of the lock, his tears burst forth. It was a sound that reminded him of his position once again. If the young master didn’t allow it, there was nothing he could do. He couldn’t meet him as he pleased, nor could he touch him as much as he wanted. It was only natural.

He hurriedly circled the room and opened the door leading to the bathroom. Fortunately, this side was not locked. As he came close to the bathroom door leading to the bedroom, tears streamed down his face. His chest ached as if it had been cut by a knife, and he felt a sense of terror. His fingers, unable to reach where he wanted, fluttered in the air. He was afraid that it wouldn’t open this time, either.

“Young master…. Young master, I, I…. I’m here. Why, sob….”

The only answer given to him was silence.

Niah was powerless. No matter what happened, he had no choice but to blindly beg for forgiveness. To Niah, this felt like a punishment. It had to be a severe punishment for something he had done wrong. Otherwise, there was no reason for the young master to suddenly act like this.

He searched through his memories to find the reason. But no matter how hard he tried to remember, nothing came to mind. All he had were the happy memories of the young master holding him tightly in his arms. At least, that was what remained in his head. If a fool like him had done something wrong and forgotten, he would have preferred to be called over and scolded. Being left alone like this was too painful.

Niah cried and sobbed for a long time before finally leaving the center of the mansion. He had already forgotten all about his chores or what he had intended to do. He could think of nothing but meeting Orca.

He hurried his steps toward the distillery. If he brought the tea set, perhaps the young master would open the door. Even if he couldn’t go in on his own, he thought it might be fine if he made an excuse about serving tea. It was a simple conclusion. However, he soon lost hope for this, too.

“Niah? Are you okay? Is something wrong?”

“Harriet…. Look, I was going to see the young master, I, um….”

Harriet, who had been waiting in the distillery on purpose, patted Niah. Yesterday, he had come to her covered in blood asking for medicine, and today, seeing him trembling and covered in tears, she felt pity for him.

She didn’t know much about Niah. They rarely met unless she was preparing for the afternoon tea time. She had heard a few things from other servants, but they were all malicious remarks, so she hadn’t paid them much mind. Judging only by what the servants said in unison, Niah was nothing more or less than a “stupid goldfish.”

Because of this, Harriet was even more concerned about Niah. Although she had been hired as a servant of the mansion not long ago and didn’t know him well, she could easily tell that Niah was being bullied severely. On top of that, it seemed he was being bullied in the same way, or even worse, by the young master who had returned after a long time, to the point where she was worried about him all day. She wanted to protect Niah, who was like her youngest brother, as much as she could.

“It’s because of the pre-meal tea for the young master, right? You don’t have to go today. No, wait—it’s fine if you don’t go for a while.”

“What? Why, why is that?”

“Because he told you not to come. So you don’t have to go. How about that, good, isn’t it?”

“Oh…. But why…. Why? Why on earth….”

“Well, I don’t know the reason myself, but…. Bailey came by earlier and said so, didn’t he? In any case, you don’t have to go at all until you receive instructions from the young master. Isn’t that a relief?”

Harriet, completely misunderstanding the situation, smiled broadly. She was convinced that Niah was crying because he didn’t want to go to Orca. She firmly believed in her own assumption.

“Let’s go eat together today. Stop crying now. I told you that you don’t have to go to the young master, didn’t I?”

Niah moved his legs as Harriet led him. He couldn’t think of anything. The thought that he didn’t have to go to the young master anymore, that he couldn’t go for a long time—it was terrifying. It was the moment he realized that his arrogance in thinking he could stay together until the young master left was just his own delusion.

If he had known this would happen, he would have forgotten everything from the very beginning. Happy memories that would eventually be forgotten were, after all, a luxury for someone like him. Since he had been hated by the young master, he couldn’t even wait for him to return. Even if he did return, he wouldn’t be able to remember anyway.

Then, it was obvious that the young master would dislike him just like the other servants did. He might even curse at him, calling him a stupid goldfish. Perhaps the young master didn’t open the door because he had come to dislike such a stupid person like him, even now.

“Niah, you have to stop now. Okay? Why are you like this? Was the young master that scary?”

Harriet soothed Niah as if he were her own youngest brother. She wiped his shoulders with a worried expression.

Niah wept, regretting that it would have been better to forget everything about the young master. Sorrow spilled out from between his trembling lips. His throat ached terribly from his habit of trying to stifle his sobbing. His head, filled entirely with the young master, was unbearable.

He came to hate himself tremendously for knowing what it felt like to be happy and excited without knowing his place. A stupid goldfish was of no help at all in moments like this. Instead, everything just became clearer, and he couldn’t forget a single moment.

He wanted to be held by the young master and beg for forgiveness. He wanted to be together, if only until he left. The regret that it would have been better to forget everything was actually all a lie. If he could, he would have fled from this sorrow right then and there and run into the young master’s arms.

Of course, he knew he couldn’t do that. Because he knew, he couldn’t stop crying even more. He didn’t want to hear the young master tell him directly not to come anymore.

☀️🌊

Even if he swept through the hunting grounds and killed dozens, the moment his desires were satisfied was at most a fleeting instant. Since their lives were extinguished the moment he applied a little pressure, there was no time to enjoy anything. The servants who followed him were always terrified as they buried the piles of animal carcasses. They would cower, their eyes filled with the certainty that he would eventually murder them, too.

That suspicion was bothersome. He had sometimes thought about just killing one of them as they feared. He always had the readiness to turn those suspicions into reality. It would certainly be more enjoyable than killing deer or wild dogs.

The reason he didn’t was purely because he didn’t want to create troublesome work for himself. It was certainly not to uphold the minimum level of morality or decorum that had been forced upon him to the point of brainwashing since he was young. Above all, if his parents were going to talk about morality, they shouldn’t have released new animals into the hunting grounds every time it emptied. It annoyed him that, despite that, they treated him as if he were the only one who was unusual.

In any case, the noble reputation of the Wair family came from brutal acts of slaughter. The reason he was now praised for slaughtering soldiers from an invaded nation followed the same principle.

The Wair family was one of the families that produced members for the Border Guards and the Imperial Knights. Those born into the clan all had a mission to be more exceptional than other families. They prioritized only obtaining high positions to stand above others and elevating the honor of the family. No one revolted against this. Including him, none of them were normal.

When he first realized that there was such a thing as a “welcomed death,” a sense of ridicule outweighed any enjoyment. He found the ambiguous moral view—where killing a human was considered taboo, but killing an animal was readily permitted—all the more absurd. Apart from that, it was a good thing for him, as he had been suffering from pent-up frustration. At least if one only considered the results, that was so.

Thus, on the boundary between righteous death and unjust death, he had always been an ambiguous murderer, and once he realized that, peace became all the more boring. The excitement and stimulation he craved were not to be found here in Rosselia. He had only stopped by with the intention of staying for a few days at most before leaving. If it weren’t for the letters that arrived about once a week, he might never have come at all. He hated things that were troublesome.

By the time he came to his senses, a long time had passed, to the point where arriving at the mansion felt like a distant memory. Even realizing that, he had no heart to turn back. Desires he had yet to resolve were binding him and refusing to let him go.

He hadn’t anticipated that things would become so tangled. Of course, even if he had known in advance, it was uncertain whether he would have made a different choice that day. Perhaps it was because he knew that he couldn’t have endured not going to the lake. The trivial memory of catching the naked goldfish and holding it up to the moonlight was enough to make him hungry and whet his appetite. It was a reaction so unfamiliar it was frightening.