SIWALL Ch 20

However, since hesitating or stammering here would naturally arouse suspicion, he opened his mouth first with the thought of just babbling anything.

“I got to know Mr. Generwin through a certain lady.”

Since maid Helen had once delivered a note and ghostwriting love letters was work related to ladies, it wasn’t strictly a lie.

“A lady, you say.”

“Yes, yes, she introduced us. Mr. Generwin isn’t the kind of person to discriminate against others based on status, right? So we naturally grew close.”

Arzen’s expression grew enigmatic. Unsure of what that expression meant, a suddenly anxious Elliot hastily continued.

“Because Mr. Generwin is such a kind, warm, and even sociable, true gentleman of our era. Though I’m really just a servant who merely crossed paths with him.”

“…So that’s how it happened.”

Arzen nodded as if convinced.

“Is he Generwin Tulion’s lover?”

“Yes, yes… wait, what? No?”

Elliot jumped straight up in place. But Arzen seemed to have already reached a conclusion.

“Indeed, Generwin Tulion has no reason to plant a spy on me. Unless it’s that brother of his, perhaps.”

“No, no, of course I’m not a spy, Grand Duke. But I’m not Mr. Generwin’s lover either~”

“As long as you’re not a spy, I don’t care whose lover you are.”

“No, I mean, I’m not a spy… well, I am not a spy, but whose lover I am—I’m not, I’m telling you, rrrrgh?”

Ugh, this is so frustrating. It drove him so crazy his tongue got all tangled up. Elliot’s face flushed bright red. With the urge to claw at his chest with his fists, Elliot emphasized it one more time.

“I am simply Elliot Brown. The Grand Duke’s bedtime servant.”

“I see.”

Arzen gave an indifferent, perfunctory nod. Then, clearing his throat, he rubbed the corners of his mouth with his large hand.

“You seem to be smiling right now, am I right? You’re making fun of me, aren’t you?”

He was pretty sure he had just caught the corners of his lips curling up between his fingers.

Elliot rolled his eyes wildly. However, the face of Arzen, who had lowered his hand back down, was the picture of sternness. With a handsome yet completely humorless expression, Arzen said as if displeased,

“Elliot Brown, do not overstep your bounds.”

Since that aura was somewhat terrifying, Elliot coughed awkwardly and averted his gaze.

Overstepping my bounds for what, exactly?

Giving a secret middle finger underneath the tea table, Elliot pretended to admire the greenhouse. The greenhouse, personally directed by Arzen and lovingly decorated by Benny, was boasting magnificent landscaping even amidst the darkness.

Then, a familiar flower caught his eye. It was salvia, with its clusters of long, reddish blooms packed closely together.

“Oh? Snack time.”

Elliot muttered to himself. When Arzen looked at him strangely, he laughed awkwardly and made an excuse.

“Ah, it’s a flower my father taught me about when I was little. He said if you suck the tail, honey comes out. Salvia… right?”

“…It’s sage.”

“Yes, yes, that’s right. I think they called it that, too.”

Salvia was the only flower he knew.

When Lim Seongsik was young, he and his father would go outside on holidays and suck the honey straight out of the salvias.

And that wasn’t all. They would pick plump, green jujubes from the trees lining the street, wipe them on their sleeves, and eat them. Catching a piggyback ride from his father, Lim Seongsik would open wide and devour wild berries from the trees. Sometimes they even shared wild strawberries picked from beneath the fence of some unfamiliar apartment complex.

They used to call all those activities ‘snack time.’ Instead of buying snacks or candy like other kids, Lim Seongsik filled his sugar cravings that way. His father would point out things you could eat right on the city streets, just like someone hunting for hidden treasure.

Young Lim Seongsik had wanted to go to supermarkets or convenience stores, but watching his father’s eyes light up with mischievous playfulness and subtle nostalgia was also nice. So whenever his father asked, “How about snack time?”, he would jump up and down with excitement and cling to his tree-trunk-like waist.

He had turned into the worst kind of human being now, but there had been a time when even with a person like that, things were fun. Truly hating someone completely was a genuinely difficult thing. Whenever he suddenly found himself missing his father like this out of nowhere, Elliot simply couldn’t understand himself at all.

Was this also due to that ‘blockbuster empathy skill’ his former colleagues and friends had praised so much? Or was he just a sentimental, lingering fool?

The look in Elliot’s eyes, lingering on the salvia flowers, grew steadily darker and heavier.

Arzen stared openly and fiercely at the servant who had suddenly lost his voice. Unbeknownst to Elliot, a faint murderous aura was welling up from Arzen.

Salvia.

That was the name of Arzen’s mother.

Quite a few people knew the name of the former crown princess who had died giving birth to Arzen. If Elliot really was a spy sent in to deploy a honey trap, he might be trying to awkwardly win Arzen’s heart by bringing up salvia flowers. It wasn’t as if people hadn’t tried that before.

So Arzen waited. For Elliot to droop his eyebrows and squeeze out hypocritical tears. For him to desperately try to comfort Arzen, who had lost his mother the moment he was born.

However, Elliot said nothing. He didn’t put on his usual sycophantic grin. He just stared at the salvia for one minute, five minutes, ten minutes… He seemed to have completely forgotten that Arzen was even here. No, he seemed entirely unaware that he was just staring endlessly at the flowers.

The man who usually stuck to weird, ticklish ways of speaking yet never lost his smile no matter the situation—seeing him fall completely silent like this felt almost mysterious. He seemed like a completely different person from the one who had just been loudly bickering that he wasn’t Generwin’s lover.

His face when reading books to him in the bedroom must have been quite close to this right now.

Those dark brown pupils, normally moving about busily, would be calmly fixed upon the paper, and the corners of his mouth—so often lifted into an unnatural smile—would be straight and even.

Blinking occasionally at the hazy smudge of fingerprints reflected on his glasses, folding down his eyelashes as they drooped calmly downward, reading the sentences, turning the page, and checking whether he, wearing a sleep mask, had fallen asleep.

It was that same deflating feeling all over again. Arzen turned his head and cast his gaze back toward the salvia flowers. Whether the gardener had tended them well, the red blossoms visible even in the pitch-black dawn looked lush and full.

‘I should give the gardener a bonus.’

Rewards and punishments needed to be clear. He tried to recall the gardener’s name, but there was no way the name of a mere servant would take up space in his mind.

“Elliot Brown, what is the gardener’s name…”

Arzen couldn’t finish his sentence. It was because Elliot had fallen asleep.

“…I thought I told you I’d kill you if you fell asleep.”

“…”

“Truly a hopeless fellow.”

Arzen clicked his tongue softly. He unbuckled his sword from his waist and placed it, scabbard and all, right on the tea table. Then, he leisurely leaned his back against the bench’s backrest.

“Well, it doesn’t seem like he put sleeping pills in, so I suppose I’ll let it slide this time.”

It was a flat tone, yet loud enough for the sleeping Elliot to hear.

Arzen would probably end up spending the rest of this night alone, but strangely enough, that fact didn’t feel particularly unpleasant.

∞ ∞ ∞

“Hey, Elliot! Elliot! Wake up.”

Snort. Wiping away the drool from the corner of his mouth, Elliot blinked awake in a daze. Adjusting his glasses that had slipped all the way down to the bridge of his nose with a groggy mind, he saw Benny standing there with a long shovel slung over his shoulder.

“Did you drink alcohol yesterday or something? Why are you sleeping here?”

“Uh… eh? Did I fall asleep?”

“Go to the kitchen and ask for some soup. If they say no, drop my name.”

While Elliot stood there going uh, uh, Benny clicked his tongue and hoisted Elliot up, pushing him out of the greenhouse.

Leaving behind Benny’s rambling complaints—The guy’s already skinny as a rail, is he weak to alcohol too, I’m worried if he can even do his job right like this, hurry up and go get some solid sleep—Elliot stumbled his way out of the garden.

He remembered up until the point when he saw the salvia and grew gloomy thinking of his father, but after that, he really must have fallen asleep.

Then what about the Grand Duke?

A sudden chill made Elliot freeze in his tracks. Come to think of it, he was still wearing the Grand Duke’s pointed cap and neck-pillow. He quickly pulled off the cap and neck-pillow.

Since he hadn’t died despite falling asleep, could he assume he was at least cleared of being a spy?

He had crossed one major hurdle. But his heart was pounding so hard he felt like he wouldn’t live out his natural lifespan. Letting out a sigh, Elliot walked back into the mansion. Still, if he tried to quit his job right now, that Grand Duke bastard would definitely—

“Awoken at last, have you?”

“Gwah-ack-crap…!”

Startled out of his wits, Elliot hurled the cap and neck-pillow he was holding straight ahead. Leaning against the wall in the shadowed alcove near the mansion’s back entrance with his arms crossed, Arzen watched his own belongings scatter across the floor as he wore a bitter, cold smile.

“Crap?”

“Chewed, chewed, chewed up and spit out Elliot Brown, reporting for duty!”