SIWALL 6

“Elliot, bring this to Camembert.”

Mary, a maid with cute freckles, handed a small pouch to Elliot and hurried away.

As she ran off to the other maids, oohs and Marys—sounding akin to teasing—burst out from over there.

Elliot smiled, pretending not to notice, and opened the pouch. Inside the pouch were dried fish fillets sliced thin.

“Thanks, Mary. Camembert will love it.”

Elliot shook the pouch toward Mary, who was hiding among the maids.

Mary’s freckles were once again hidden by a blush. The maids playfully giggled and tried to push Mary toward Elliot, but petite Mary scurried away a step ahead in a flash.

Elliot rolled the pouch as flat as possible and tucked it safely into his inner coat pocket. Since his outer pockets were already full of candy, handkerchiefs, cigarettes, new gloves, and the like, there was nowhere else to put a gift except the inner pocket.

At a point when he had barely been working for a month, Elliot had undeniably become the second most popular man in the Teron Grand Duke’s estate after the Grand Duke himself. Since the servants couldn’t even dare to eye the Grand Duke, it was practically safe to say he was the most popular man of all.

A young man with tousled dark brown curly hair and a pale, sensitive look. Behind the thin, sleek glasses that strongly resembled his sharp, intellectual vibe were eyes that smiled without any airs.

Yes, those eyes! Every time his affectionate, deep brown eyes crinkled alongside that familiar smile, a corner of everyone’s heart, regardless of age or gender, would willingly crumble away.

Starting the day after his first day of work, maids began coming up to Elliot one by one to strike up a conversation. Conversations that started with business to convey to Benny gradually shifted into trivial daily chatter. Before long, lately, a few of them even brought gifts and left them behind by tossing them at him.

Elliot simply figured he must be receiving tokens of appreciation because he was a good listener, but everyone other than Elliot all noticed the direction of this affection buzzing boisterously among the servants of the Teron Grand Duke’s estate.

“So, who are you going to settle down with?”

Benny, who had noticeably grown friendlier ever since he ghostwrote the letter to his daughter, spoke up bluntly. However, Elliot now knew this was just Benny’s brand of a joke.

“Let’s see. Shall we go with the person who packed a sandwich for me today for lunch?”

Elliot grinned. At that, Benny opened his eyes wide, then suddenly grabbed his belly and burst into laughter as if he had heard something terribly funny. He happened to have prepared a sandwich to share with Elliot today as well.

His menacing face was dyed bright red from the lingering aftermath of laughter.

“I sure picked a good one for a worker.”

Benny laughed and gave Elliot a hearty slap on the back. At that, Elliot’s paper-thin body collapsed forward in a flurry, but Benny just laughed boisterously.

Elliot rubbed his aching back and laughed along. When a reply came from Benny’s daughter, he had made up his mind to quit this place, but bewilderingly, the working environment at the Teron Grand Duke’s estate was top-tier.

The scenery of a garden straight out of a masterpiece painting from middle school art class unfolded before his eyes every day, and his boss was a good person to a degree Lim Seongsik could never have imagined. Benny did all the heavy lifting, and Elliot only had to handle light chores or relay requests from other servants.

His colleagues were also unusually welcoming. Back then he had been doted on by female colleagues too, but the maids here were much gentler and sweeter, probably because they were mostly younger.

Grand Duke Teron, who was the biggest problem, hadn’t even run into him once for nearly a month. Even with Head Butler Henderson, who had been beyond meticulous during their brief encounter, he hadn’t had any business seeing him since the first day.

At this rate… wouldn’t it be fine to just keep working here?

It was when Elliot, grown cozy with the complacency offered by a sweet part-time job, was stealthily trying to revise his resolve.

“Mister Benny. This lady came looking for you, do you know her?”

The footman Dave brought some woman trailing behind him and walked into the garden. Behind Dave stood a tall woman with a shabby appearance. In one hand she held a small duffel bag, and in the other, a tattered piece of paper.

“…Rachel?”

Benny widened his eyes in disbelief and dropped his jaw.

“Father!”

The tall woman, Rachel, burst into tears and leaped into Benny’s arms.

“What on earth is going on? Why are you here… and what’s with that state? I’d believe you if you said you were a beggar. What in the world….”

“I came here looking at this letter. If it weren’t for this letter you sent, Father, I might have died out on the streets.”

Rachel sniffled and handed the paper she was holding over to Benny. That paper was the letter Elliot had written about a month ago. She continued to shed tears mixed with sorrow and relief, and turned her head toward Elliot, who was standing next to Benny.

“Is that person the one? The one who wrote this letter?”

Following Rachel’s question, the gazes of Benny and Dave also focused on Elliot.

What, why, what is it this time.

Elliot felt cold sweat trickling down his back once again. A red light flashed in his complacent heart.

Something… was going wrong.

∞ ∞ ∞

The garden, which was always peaceful and quiet, was bustling with people. They were passing a single letter from hand to hand as if perusing a rare and fascinating book. The letter, which had been written barely a month ago, was precariously worn like a relic from being handled so much. And Elliot stood there with a sheepish expression, for no reason just staring up at the sky.

Whatever the circumstances were, Rachel seemed to have suffered terribly over the past few weeks. Benny asked the head maid for understanding and took Rachel to the servants’ quarters. Even as she went, Rachel kept expressing her gratitude to Elliot. Saying that the courage to make it all the way here was thanks to Elliot’s postscript.

And those words stimulated people’s curiosity. Dave was the first to bravely ask Rachel if he could take a look at the letter, and Rachel readily handed it over. The letter, which she claimed was the only thing she relied on lately, contained the following content.

{To Rachel Weiss Garrett, daughter of Benny Weiss.

Rachel, it’s your old man.

As you know, I don’t know how to write, so I’m asking a newly hired assistant to write this letter for me. Since I’ve got an assistant now, I should be able to take a brief break from work. Call me if you need me. Send a short reply.

Benny Weiss

P.S. Hello, Rachel. I’m Benny’s assistant writing this letter. Benny strictly instructed me to write only the business briefly, so I’m sneaking in a few words I couldn’t otherwise write as a postscript.

Today is my first day on the job, and Benny packed me bread for lunch. I thought it was strange because he ate such dry, flavorless bread with such relish, but he told me it was bread you’ve liked ever since you were little.

Whenever he talks about you, Benny makes a very soft expression. Even though he doesn’t seem to realize it. Every time he eats that dry bread for lunch, he must always make an expression like that.

The reason I’m telling you this is because I wanted to let you know that Benny genuinely misses you. He says he waits for your letter every day, but he hates showing it. He’s pressing me to just write exactly what I need to tell him.

I don’t know much about Benny yet, nor do I know much about you, but I think I know just this one thing.

Your blunt father loves you. No matter what kind of news you bring him, Benny will still love you.

If things are hard, it’s fine to come back. Because a father who will accept you is right here.

P.S. 2. Please send your reply to the address of the Grand Duke Teron’s estate written on the envelope. I have to read the reply to him anyway. Sorry for the long postscript.}

“Elliot, how did you know Benny’s daughter was in a tough situation?”

Dave asked with admiration.

“I just took a shot in the dark. If a daughter who regularly sent news through letters suddenly stops sending letters one day, unless some kind of accident happened, it means it’s her own decision. I figured… maybe she was having a hard time writing because she didn’t want to break the news of something bad. Either way, it felt like a situation that called for those kinds of words.”

At Elliot’s words, Dave was amazed.

“Elliot listens to what we have to say really well too.”

When one of the maid girls nearby said that, the maids standing next to her chimed in one by one.

“Right. He’s different from ordinary guys.”

“Talking to Elliot makes your mind feel at ease.”

“I understand Benny’s daughter. Sometimes when you don’t have the courage, you just hope someone will push you from behind.”

Elliot scratched the back of his neck sheepishly.

“It’s not anything that great. I just… thought that if it were me, I’d want to hear words like that….”

However, the maids were not listening. Whispering among themselves that they should show this letter to Mrs. Megan as well, they vanished in the blink of an eye.

Dave sent a smug smile toward Elliot—an unpleasant smile containing a meaning of cheering and praise for effortlessly chatting up women—and went off to work.

Left alone all of a sudden, the protagonist of the praise had no choice but to stand there awkwardly and out of place.

And leaving the protagonist behind, the praises for the letter gained wings and spread far and wide.

To the head maid and maids of the mansion, to the few footmen and maids, and even to the man with whom one of those maids was spending a hot night.

“Elliot… Brown, you say…?”

That man was Generwin Tulion, the second son of the Marquis Tulion family.

“He completely ignored my commission and went AWOL, only to be flirting with the gardener’s daughter, is that it?”

Generwin wore a bitter smile. He hugged the Teron family maid who had told him the story of Elliot and gave her a light kiss.

“So, my little lark of a lady, where can I go to meet that Elliot Brown?”