ORCA 37

While Niah might be a bit dim, it was fortunate that he was gentle, but Adrian was noisy and restless every time. The mansion’s atmosphere was already chaotic enough without her adding to it. Even with Luan, who had always taken her side, changing her mindset, it would have been better if she had just kept her mouth shut, but she insisted on taking the lead and stirring up trouble. She was of absolutely no help.

Luan set the fork she was holding onto the table with a clatter. Although she had been on good terms with Adrian, this was not the time to worry about such things. Lately, especially since yesterday, everyone had become a little more sensitive.

“Anne. That’s exactly why it’s a problem. Don’t you get it?”

“But I mean,”

“They said it was the young master who was hurt, not Niah. The young master, not Niah.”

Adrian narrowed her brows and turned her head toward Luan. Luan pretended to be nonchalant and spooned her soup, ignoring the silent question aimed at her. Even if she tried to explain, she couldn’t find the right words.

Moreover, she knew something the other servants didn’t. She hadn’t told anyone that she had seen Niah wake up after sleeping in the young master’s room. For some reason, she felt that she shouldn’t let that out.

She also couldn’t say that the way the young master treated Niah was—well, it was strange. After he had chased her out of the room, there was no way of knowing what had happened inside. And she couldn’t exactly ask Niah, either. She had served the young master since he was very young, but this was the first time she had felt this way. She had thought about it carefully all night, but she couldn’t find the right word for it.

Silence settled over the dining hall like dust. In the midst of that stillness, only the occasional sound of sniffling could be heard. Luan broke the silence again. Adrian’s face turned forward once more.

“Anne. Think about it. Who ever expected Niah would be able to go about serving the young master perfectly fine? Everyone said he would die within a day or two.”

“Ha, is that what you’re worried about? So, what about today? You said he told him not to come. That’s practically kicking him out.”

“Yes. He told him not to come. He told him not to come until he called for him again. And he said he didn’t need another servant to serve him after Niah.”

“Luan. What on earth are you trying to say?”

“Anne, imagine you were the one who went to serve the young master instead of Bailey. How would that have been?”

Adrian’s expression darkened in an instant. Just suffering from nightmares was draining enough; the thought of having to go see the young master several times every single day—it was worse than death. It would have been better to just die.

“But look at Niah. If he had been told not to come, he should have been jumping for joy, yet he’s like this. Even so, you don’t know what it means?”

“…”

“Don’t be stupid, Anne.”

At Luan’s rebuke, Adrian gnashed her teeth. She wanted to ask if Luan was trying to say the young master considered that goldfish piece of trash special, but she stopped herself. She was already annoyed enough that such a conclusion had been reached; if she had said it out loud, she might have foamed at the mouth and fainted.

While she had been practically living in hiding and walking on eggshells, the thought that someone like Niah—a stupid fool—had been running rampant throughout the mansion all this time made her blood boil. Furthermore, she was dumbfounded that everyone had changed their behavior so completely based on nothing more than uncertain speculation.

“So, please, just stay still. You don’t want to die either, right? Isn’t it true that you’re the one he holds the most grudge against?”

As Luan said this, she glanced at Pepe, who was sitting in a far-off corner. Pepe’s expression was just as bad as Adrian’s. Even if she didn’t know for sure, these two were undeniably the most precarious among the servants.

What had happened in the garden a few days ago had long since been circulating throughout the mansion. Thanks to that, the rest of the people could feel a little relieved. Suddenly, everyone’s gaze bound Niah. They desperately tried to comfort themselves by thinking that since the fool had a bad memory, he would have forgotten all about the times they had bullied him. As long as Adrian and Pepe kept it in mind, that was enough. Of course, it would be best if he were pushed out of the young master’s sight like this, so they prayed that it would be so, just in case.

Pepe, who had been listening in silence, could no longer endure it and stood up abruptly. His chair tumbled over with a clatter. He stormed out of the dining hall with a face like an angry bull. A few other garden servants followed him out, slowly rising to their feet.

“What are you doing? Why aren’t you eating? Aren’t you going to go work?”

Luan, who had been staring at the dining hall entrance for a moment, cut through the increasingly stagnant atmosphere. Soon, the sound of spoons scraping plates began to rise from here and there. Luan, who had unintentionally gained a secret she couldn’t talk about, continued to shove dinner rolls into her mouth. She wished that every time she swallowed the dry bread, the secret that felt stuck in her chest like a lump would slide right down. But no matter how much she forced herself to eat, it was useless; it only made her confusion deeper. It was baffling that the entire mansion was in such an uproar over a single goldfish.

Harriet, who had been closely observing the conversations and the crossing gazes, racked her brain. She had learned many new facts. All she had known were simply Orca’s social standing or the terrifying anecdotes passed down from servant to servant. That was only natural, as she hadn’t been employed by the Wair family for long.

In an unfamiliar mansion, just figuring out the internal currents took enough effort. Furthermore, as a servant in the distillery, she had no particular reason to see the young master, so she had simply thought, ‘He’s probably not an easy person to deal with,’ and left it at that. That was the case until Niah had intruded, and until she had become close to Niah.

In any case, there was one conclusion everyone alluded to but was reluctant to voice out loud:

In their eyes, the goldfish, who had always been easy prey and a fool, was not only not dead by the hands of that young master, but was walking around perfectly fine. To make matters worse, he was even crying because he had been told not to come. This was definitely problematic.

“Niah. Don’t be like that, just eat a little. You’ll collapse at this rate. Okay?”

Harriet forced a spoon into Niah’s hand. She didn’t know what the young master was thinking, but if that speculation was true, this wasn’t the time to be crying like this. He had to do something.

If anything, Niah wanted to just faint right then and there. Thinking of the young master was both joyful and agonizing. The more he thought, the more he was swallowed by a sweet nightmare. Tears kept falling. He wanted to forget, yet he didn’t want to forget. It felt like he was swimming alone through dark water, chasing a vivid flash of light.

Harriet couldn’t bring herself to leave until the very end. She was worried about Niah, who hadn’t even managed to eat a proper spoonful of soup. Since their work areas were different, she couldn’t take care of him closely. She wouldn’t be able to check on his condition again until the afternoon.

While she had naturally made these assumptions now, just yesterday, she hadn’t been able to gauge when she might see him again. Usually, it was just a matter of meeting briefly in the dining hall or the distillery to exchange a few words. After that, unless they happened to run into each other, there were times she wouldn’t see his face all day.

Even then, in the morning, Adrian and some other servants would intimidate Niah, and during tea-time preparations, Niah was so frantic that they would part ways quickly. In the evenings, he would more often than not fail to show his face in the dining hall.

Since the West Wing, where the distillery was, and the greenhouse, located on the far outer side of the large garden, were far apart and had almost no related work, there was little interaction during their shifts. Occasionally, they would meet when he stopped by the vegetable garden to pick herbs. Of course, just because he went to the vegetable garden didn’t mean Niah would be there.

Even if it wasn’t strictly for these reasons, he spent so much time with the young master that he was usually almost never seen. On top of that, when she was busy with her own work, Niah was just as busy, making it even harder to run into each other.

The strange thing was that even after the day’s work was over and they had scattered to the basement hall and their respective rooms to rest, he could never be found. When she had only heard that there was a ‘goldfish’ in the mansion, she hadn’t actually had any questions, but it was different after she got to know him. As he reminded her of her youngest brother back home, her interest grew significantly.

The more she thought, the heavier her chest felt. Niah was as precarious as a fern covered in frost throughout the winter. It felt as if he would melt and crumble away if touched improperly.

It was a few days ago that she had asked Pascal, whom she was quite close to, about this while pondering it alone:

‘Pascal. Are there servants’ rooms in other places besides here?’