ORCA 36

Orca closed the book with a sigh and slipped out of the study. The orange-hued auditory hallucination, calling out to him incessantly, gradually faded away.

On his way back to his room, he ordered a passing servant to prepare his bath. A restless anxiety, as if he needed to do something, anything, surged within him.

As soon as Orca entered the bathroom, he submerged himself in the bottom of the tub without even removing his clothes. He paid no mind to his injured hand. As he listened quietly to the ripples of the water, his turbulent chest seemed to settle.

It was just a goldfish. A small, weak, trivial goldfish—that was all. It was so withered that you wouldn’t even notice if you ate it, and so fragile that it wasn’t even worth biting to death. It was a pathetic existence he had no need to be swayed by, and no reason to be, either. There wasn’t even room for doubt. It was merely one of the many things he had deemed bothersome all his life.

Orca sat up abruptly. The ripples of the water distorted and made a loud, splashing sound. He wiped his face, pushed his hair back, and climbed out of the tub. The water that had been absorbed by his clothes fell onto the tile floor with a noisy clatter. By arrogantly looking down on it as nothing, he felt a bit more comfortable. The goldfish was nothing to him. It was nothing more than a plaything.

He untied the cloth that had lost its function and stripped off the clothes that clung to his skin. The wound on his hand was still open, but it wasn’t bleeding. Orca approached the basket, holding his wet shirt and the cloth.

“Damn it….”

The basket for collecting bathroom laundry, such as towels and robes, was already full. Since he had left what he used this morning in the dressing room, it should have been empty. Yet, familiar garments looked up at him, huddled together. It was laughable to call them familiar. The clothes, socks, and underwear the goldfish had left behind were all tangled together, reminding him of last night.

Weeping and clinging, then giggling. Flinching in surprise, then quickly relaxing and leaning his back against him. Wiggling his fingers as if nervous and curling his toes because it tickled. Asking to be stroked even while being terrified. Despite being a coward, he had approached and hugged him, and had dared to worry about him with that frail body.

That was why he was annoyed. A goldfish the size of two finger-joints had too much presence. He wanted to snatch him up and devour him right now. On the other hand, he was afraid he might kill him in the process. He wasn’t sure if he could control himself. These emotions were unfamiliar.

‘Young master?’

He was dazzled by the orange-colored illusion.

☀️🌊

Adrian, who had been standing with her arms crossed and a crooked posture, approached Luan. She found the situation right before her eyes extremely disagreeable. The dining hall was noisy as usual, but an awkward air flowed through it. Everyone was busy whispering, observing Niah’s face.

Niah, the person in question, had no energy to care about such things. He wasn’t eating his favorite meal, only letting tears hang from his eyes. The lips he had been chewing on since earlier were a mess, stained with blood. A salty, bitter taste spread across the tip of his tongue. His eyes, reddened from constant rubbing, also stung. He hadn’t been in good condition since the moment he woke up.

His head ached from crying so much. He hadn’t even started his garden work yet, but he was already exhausted. He knew he would get scolded again if he stayed like this, but he couldn’t easily calm down. He hadn’t known that he would suddenly be unable to see the young master without even knowing what he had done wrong.

Harriet sat next to Niah and patted his shoulder repeatedly. By now, she, too, had fallen into deep suspicion. Of course, she didn’t go out of her way to ask. If she asked for the reason, it was clear he would cry even more, and she felt he might collapse immediately. She felt pity for his body, which trembled like a young animal abandoned on a rainy day.

The most she could do was try her best to soothe him. Harriet let out a regretful sigh as she watched Niah crying in silence. She could only secretly guess that she had been wrong to think he was crying because he didn’t want to go to the young master.

Adrian, having taken a seat next to Luan, glared sideways at the other servants nearby. Then, she threw a fit. She was displeased that no one was interfering, whether that idiot Niah was weeping or not. Normally, everyone would have been giggling and chiding him, but today, they were treating him as if he didn’t exist.

More than that, it looked as if everyone had shut their mouths to keep from drawing attention to themselves. She wondered if everyone had lost their minds, worrying about what that stupid goldfish was thinking. She didn’t like the look of that newcomer, the one called Harriet, either. What annoyed her most of all, however, was Luan’s attitude.

“Luan! Say something! Why on earth are you acting like this?”

Contrary to her sharp tone, Adrian squawked in a low voice. Since the day the teacup had been thrown at her, she had broken her habit of screaming at the top of her lungs. That incident still haunted her dreams sometimes. The sharp, fragmented glass and Orca’s piercing glare would mingle to torment her.

Having had unsettling dreams for several weeks, she wasn’t in a very good mood. In the midst of all this, the servant in charge of Orca’s service had changed from Bailey to Niah. For Adrian, who had always snatched Niah up and made him do her own chores, it was a very inconvenient change.

As the menial tasks she had always pushed off became her responsibility again, she was twice as tired as usual. She would be so exhausted that she would fall fast asleep as soon as she lay in bed. Even though it was her own work, her irritation skyrocketed. Crude curses spilled out without hesitation. Whenever she was washing dishes or sweeping with a broom, Niah would suddenly cross her mind, making her feel even more stifled.

Eventually, she wasn’t satisfied unless she found out Niah’s location whenever she ran into the garden servants. He wasn’t easily visible except at mealtimes, so she couldn’t know where he was without asking. On some days, he didn’t even appear long after mealtime. But, with no reward for asking on purpose, the answers were always the same:

‘He went to the young master.’

‘He must have gone to the young master, what else?’

‘He probably went to the center.’

The more she heard that, the angrier she got. She was wasting away, breathing carefully each day since that day, so it was unbearable that Niah was alive and well. It wasn’t just anyone, it was that stupid goldfish. She had predicted that he would surely make the young master angry and die young, not in a day, but in less than half a day.

The servants had even placed trivial bets. Some shouted that he would last a day, others that he wouldn’t even last that long, giggling as they made fun of it. Luan, of course, had been part of that group. Not just Luan, but most of the mansion’s servants thought Niah would die.

“Luan!”

“Anne! Stop it and just eat, please.”

Despite everyone having been that way, they had completely changed their attitudes overnight. Only unpleasant words flowed from Luan’s mouth. Adrian glared sideways at Niah, who was still crying.

The food assigned to Niah didn’t look any different from that of the other servants. However, if one looked closely, it seemed a bit better. The bacon was grilled golden without a single burnt spot, the dinner roll had a particular sheen, the scrambled eggs were golden, and the potato soup had twice as many croutons as the others.

This represented Luan’s changed opinion. It was the strongest possible expression of intent from her, the head of the kitchen.

“Yes, Anne. Stop it now.”

“What? Stop what?”

“…Anne. Look at how things are going in this mansion.”

“So, what on earth does that mean? Don’t tell me, are you really doing this because that idiot wandered around in that state yesterday?”

To Roanna’s observation as they sat facing each other, Adrian retorted as if she couldn’t understand at all. She poked and pointed at Niah with her chin.

Niah, lost in his own thoughts, didn’t notice, but Harriet didn’t miss it. Harriet glared sharply at Adrian. She didn’t like how she picked a fight over every single thing when it came to Niah. However, it required quite a lot of courage for her, who had just been hired as a servant in the mansion, to be the first to start a fight.

“They said that wasn’t even his blood, didn’t they? Right, Bailey? You said so. Isn’t that right?”

“Eh? Uh…. Well, that’s so. It was the young master who was hurt. Well… that is true….”

“See.”

Bailey, who had been quietly tearing at his bread, choked out an answer. Adrian met Luan’s eyes with a triumphant face. Luan shook her head at Adrian’s stupidity. She had thought Adrian was only good for screaming, but she was a total fool. Moreover, since the young master had arrived, she couldn’t even do that anymore, so she was just an idiot.