SIWALL Ch 44

It’s bloody exhausting.

Elliot slumped and sprawled out haphazardly on the hallway floor, panting heavily.

“Ghostwriter, why is your stamina so trash? Get up.”

Generwin was like a doll in a horror movie that kept coming back no matter how many times you threw it away.

This morning, he had pounded on Elliot’s door asking for a tour of the mansion, and then he had roamed every nook and cranny of the estate that even Elliot had never seen.

Hanging out with Generwin was much harder than working at a department store. It felt like being the personal attendant of an extreme social butterfly who toured a massive department store from the first floor to the sixth, stopping at every single shop—and not just stopping, but trying on clothes and even chatting up the store clerks.

The place where Elliot collapsed was the fourth-floor hallway. The dead skin on his lips was peeling white and all the moisture had been thoroughly sucked out of his entire body, making him look virtually like a skeleton.

“Water… Water…”

“Water? Let’s head down to the basement kitchen! That kitchen maid with the chubby cheeks from earlier was cute, you know. Should we ask her for some water and make snacks together?”

“Huk… I’ll just swallow my spit.”

If you said one word, having ten words thrown right back at you was another one of Generwin’s supreme talents. Though Elliot wanted to call it a curse rather than a talent.

“Let’s go into that room, too. You know, right? The Grand Duke told you to treat me with the utmost hospitality as a guest.”

Generwin said boastfully.

Because of what Elliot said last night when assigning him a guest room, it seemed the servants, spearheaded by Henderson, had been treating Generwin exquisitely. Elated by this, Generwin had persistently clung to Elliot, demanding ‘guest treatment’ from him as well.

“Yes, yes, understood, customer.”

Elliot stood up unsteadily and braced himself against the wall. Strength was gradually draining from both legs. As he took a step forward with his legs shaking tremblingly, the door of the room they were about to enter creaked open.

And out came the masked, black-haired Elliot.

“Your Grace the Grand Duke! So you were here! I actually came looking to give you my morning greetings, but I was so disappointed to find you had already stepped out.”

Generwin walked up to Elliot in a familiar manner.

However, Elliot’s gaze was not directed at Generwin, but was reaching toward Elliot.

“Why are you walking like a newborn calf? Are you sick somewhere?”

Ever since last time, it’s been ponies and now calves… Really bringing out the whole menagerie of livestock.

Gritting his teeth fiercely on the inside, Elliot straightened his back to stand properly.

“Sick? I am healthy and robust.”

Elliot smiled. Then Generwin started chirping in from the side.

“Healthy and robust, right. Ghostwriter, you were huffing and puffing all the way from the first floor earlier.”

“The first floor? You dragged Elliot Brown all the way up here from the first floor?”

Elliot’s eyebrows twisted in displeasure.

However, Generwin failed to notice and gave a cheerful reply.

“We’ve been hanging out together since the second basement floor. Because our ghostwriter promised to give me a tour of the mansion, you see.”

Generwin winked toward Elliot.

That annoying customer… You’re the one who asked for a mansion tour.

Elliot wanted to push Generwin right off the fourth floor down to the second basement level. However, strength wouldn’t enter his arms and legs right now. If he’d had the strength, he might have actually done that. It wasn’t absolute fear of his aristocratic customer keeping him still. Absolutely not.

“So you mean you dragged him up a total of six floors.”

Elliot said in an eerie voice. Crossing his arms like the guardian gatekeeper of hell, he scanned Generwin up and down. It looked like an attitude of gauging where to beat him, making Elliot’s heart pound heavily. It wasn’t quite clear whether it was out of fondness or terror.

“Elliot Brown has legs as fragile as a newborn deer. To drag such a person up six floors, the Tulion family’s humanity must have died out ages ago.”

Attacking the ancestors. Elliot displayed the absolute pinnacle of unfilial behavior right from the first strike. Furthermore, while it seemed like he was taking Elliot’s side, it didn’t feel good in the slightest.

However, Generwin went a step further and flashed an endearing smile. Generwin, too, belonged to the camp of people whose ‘spirit is damn strong,’ much like Loran.

“Well then, ghostwriter, even though you’re that fragile, you did it because I asked you to? You really like me a lot, don’t you, ghostwriter?”

Elliot opened his mouth to deny it with an absurd expression, but Elliot cut in first.

“Elliot Brown does not like you. Not only is his body weak, but his disposition is soft and yielding, so he must have simply let himself be dragged around by you.”

“Your Grace the Grand Duke seems to know the ghostwriter’s heart very well. Are the two of you very close?”

“We are not close at all. However, I am confident that I know Elliot Brown better than you, an obsessive fanboy.”

“Ho-oh, I don’t know what a fanboy is, but contextually it sounds like a compliment. Well, I suppose I’ve known the ghostwriter even before he got a job here.”

A battle of nerves suddenly flared up between the two. The momentum was truly worthy of being called a dragon and a tiger fighting for supremacy. Elliot was glaring menacingly at Generwin, while Generwin was smiling brightly yet sharply receiving Elliot’s gaze.

“No, first of all… could both of you please be quiet?”

Elliot wore the smile of a Buddha and rested one hand on each of their shoulders.

“Take your hand off.”

“You can hug me entirely if you want. Touch me to your heart’s content, ghostwriter.”

Elliot smiled amiably and

quickly pulled both hands away. Truly, they were two people who were unlikable in completely different ways.

Swallowing a sigh, he grabbed Generwin’s arm and yanked him over to stick right beside his own side.

“First of all, Your Grace, I am neither a newborn calf nor a deer. I am not that weak.”

And then he looked over at Generwin.

“Lord Generwin, I’m sorry, but I understand we aren’t that close of acquaintances~”

Elliot continued.

“We will conclude Lord Generwin’s mansion tour right here. I’ll be heading back to my room now, so I must ask both of you to stop fighting.”

Elliot gave a polite, deferential bow and hurried down the stairs lest anyone catch him. Every time he stepped on a stair, his legs shook like rippling water, but he didn’t stop.

Though he had no clue why the two of them had waged a battle of nerves over him, it was terrifying, simply terrifying…

It was a maxim forged from experience that whenever your name randomly got dragged into conversations, nothing good ever came of it.

Elliot quickly opened his door and stepped inside. As he was panting for breath and rhythmically thumping both legs with his fists, a strange sound drifted from somewhere.

“Hikyagak! Hihyagak!”

“W-what is this…”

In the direction Elliot looked with a start, Camembert had puffed up his fur to the max and was hissing furiously at Elliot.

“Camembert, what’s wrong?”

Elliot straightened his posture and walked over to Camembert with a worried expression. However, Camembert scurried to hide behind a desk leg and kept right on hissing.

“Do I have some unfamiliar smell on me or something?”

Was it because of a new scent clinging to him on account of Generwin? Just as he was thinking that.

Thwack.

A heavy impact struck the back of his head, and the world in front of his eyes violently wavered. Soon, a hazy, hot sensation began to spread outward, centered around the back of his head.

Elliot collapsed straight to the floor. Through his spinning, dizzy vision, someone’s black shoes came into view. Fluttering his eyelashes frantically as he raised his gaze upward, he saw a person wrapped from head to toe in black cloth, exposing only their eyes. A very unpleasant and ominous aura radiated intensely from that person.

I need to call the Grand Duke…

However, Elliot ended up fainting right then and there.

The masked intruder hoisted the unconscious Elliot up onto his shoulder, pulled a scroll from his robes, and tore it. The sound of the scroll ripping tore through the room. Shortly thereafter, the masked person and Elliot vanished like smoke in an instant.

All that remained in the room was a black cat hiding behind the desk and shivering uncontrollably.

∞ ∞ ∞

By the time Elliot regained consciousness, nighttime had already fallen. He had a sack thrown over his head, but judging by the smell of damp, rotting wood and thick moss, it seemed he was trapped in an abandoned barn on the edge of a forest.

Both hands and feet were tied tightly with rope, the back of his head was throbbing dully, and bouts of dizziness kept welling up, making it extremely difficult to assess his current situation. Having a sack hooded over his head certainly didn’t help matters. In a state where absolutely nothing could be visible, the hooting sound of an owl echoed fearfully.

Kidnapping…!?

Circumstantially, it looked like a kidnapping, but the real question was who on earth would pull such an absurd stunt on a mere servant. In this world, he simply couldn’t think of a single figure hostile enough to kidnap him.

Hadn’t he been getting along reasonably well with Loran, Generwin, and even Elliot, who killed him in the original work!

However, as a little time passed and his mind grew calmer, a few figures worthy of kidnapping him came to mind.

Dalin, Theseus, the Emperor.

Talk about a surplus of candidates.

My brain must really be fried. Why on earth did I think everything was going swimmingly…

He must have lost his grip on reality amidst his cozy lifestyle.

There was Dalin, who had framed him and fled without getting caught yet; there was the dual-personality Theseus, who had deemed Elliot insolent last night; and there was the Emperor, the mastermind of the original work excluding Elliot.