SIWALL Ch 56

Elliot wiped the corners of his mouth with a face heavy with sickness. When he wiped his mouth with the handkerchief a fellow maid had given him some time ago, Arzen’s eyebrows twitched. Come to think of it, back at the Pentus shopping district, Arzen had even bought Elliot a new handkerchief.

Yet all of that had been “intended.”

Elliot let out a dry laugh. Arzen started to say something, but stopped and examined Elliot’s face. He seemed to be cautiously trying to figure out what Elliot’s expression meant. However, Arzen didn’t need to bother. Because Elliot opened his mouth right away.

“First of all, I’m sorry for vomiting at Your Grace’s feet. You got it all over your clothes, too.”

His voice was as rough as sandpaper. It was a polite tone, but an unmistakable thorn could be felt in his voice.

“But you see. I really can’t understand what Your Grace is saying.”

“If you tell me which part you don’t understand, I will explain it again.”

“When I say I don’t understand here, Your Grace, it means I don’t want to understand.”

Elliot folded the handkerchief over several times and put it in his pocket. He glared at Arzen with a pale face.

“I thought… Your Grace cherished me, which was why you bought me gifts. That you wanted to be with me, that you…”

He had thought maybe he liked him. Even if it didn’t go as far as the kissing or skinship Generwin talked about, he thought there might at least be a degree of fondness as a human being, and that was why they had grown closer.

“Actually, if I just quit my job as an attendant, the Emperor won’t have any reason to touch me, right? Isn’t that so?”

“What?”

Elliot had meant to say he would quit. But seeing Arzen look at him with such utter shock, with the look of someone who had never even imagined such an option in his life, Elliot simply shut his mouth.

Elliot turned right around and bolted in a random direction. Right now, he simply didn’t want to be with Arzen.

While his two feet aimlessly battered the ground, cut through the air, and struck the ground once more, Elliot’s stomach churned as if someone had thoroughly rummaged through it. After running for a long while, he vomited once again at the edge of the path.

The motion sickness was so severe that tears even came to his eyes. He pulled a new handkerchief from his chest pocket. It was the handkerchief Arzen had gifted him.

Elliot used that handkerchief to wipe away a few tears. Then he crumpled it up and threw it down onto the ground, which was smeared with gastric juice and saliva.

In the end, it was only to this extent. They were just days that were a little nice, and a person who was just a little nice. So it was nothing special. It truly was nothing special at all.

∞ ∞ ∞

Elliot reached a devastating realization in front of his own door.

Ah, I changed rooms.

The timing was astonishingly bad. Elliot trudged over to the new room on the third floor. His steps grew heavier and more sluggish by the moment, as if sinking into a swamp. After getting angry and returning home separately, he felt a bit awkward about going to sleep right next door through the connecting single door.

‘If he wants to avoid it, he should avoid it himself. Why should I feel awkward?’

Elliot pouted his lips, glared fiercely at Arzen’s bedroom door once, and opened his own door. The room had been freshly redone, and Camembert was also sleeping on the neatly arranged bed in a bread-loaf posture.

Elliot walked over stealthily and buried his nose in Camembert’s back. Camembert’s unique, pleasant scent tickled Elliot’s nose along with his fur. His mind felt a little more at ease.

It was then.

Knock, knock.

A small knock sounded from the door connecting to Arzen’s bedroom.

“Have you come in, Elliot Brown.”

“….”

I am so not in the mood to answer.

Elliot raised his body quietly, thinking that if the door opened on its own accord, he would genuinely run over and kick him right in the shin.

“If I hurt your feelings, I apologize.”

Arzen’s voice came clearly from beyond the door.

Yet why was it? The apology he had heard previously certainly seemed to touch his heart, but hearing an apology for the second time carried no particular emotional impact.

I must have gotten spoiled.

Elliot smiled bitterly. Apology words no longer lifted his mood or stirred his heart.

“The Emperor is… a vicious fellow. He specializes in secretly sending spies or pulling backend maneuvers.”

“….”

“Rather than that, meeting him head-on is a bit easier to deal with. I…”

“….”

Arzen didn’t finish the rest of his sentence. Whether he couldn’t or wouldn’t was impossible to tell. Because right after that, he said this.

“Sleep well. Today… you don’t have to come to work.”

And Arzen’s voice ended right there.

Elliot slowly lay down next to Camembert. Curling up on the edge of the bed, Elliot closed his eyes.

Even back when he was Lim Seongsik, there had been many times when he suddenly couldn’t go to his part-time jobs because he was being chased by debtors and loan sharks. And that usually meant it was about time to quit that part-time job soon. Days when alarm bells rang for his diligence tended to be his final days.

There are debtors over there, and the Emperor is here.

‘No matter where I go, my life is the same.’

Even down to the point where, despite it being someone else’s business, it somehow got entangled and shook Elliot’s life upside down—it was identical. He closed his eyes and courted sleep. It was a day he wanted to sleep a very deep sleep.

∞ ∞ ∞

However, while he might have been able to skip work for just a single day, skipping work every single day was out of the question even in this world.

He really thought about just quitting instead, but…

The fact that he would have to move again, the point that doing so might stress Camembert out, the fact that even if he quit this job he would still keep getting tangled up with Arzen over love letters, the fact that even Generwin was currently at this estate, and so on.

There were far too many reasons blocking Elliot’s declaration of resignation.

So he made up his mind to do only the bare minimum of work. Minimum bedding arrangement, brewing tea to aid deep sleep, lighting management, curtain adjustment, window management, reading books—about that much?

As Elliot punched a pillow repeatedly in vent-like fury to fluff it up, someone entered in a rush. When he looked back, Arzen was standing there with a look of apparent relief upon seeing Elliot.

Arzen was dressed in a blue dress-style pajama, but today he wasn’t wearing his sleeping cap or neck pillow.

What’s got into him?

Elliot thought bluntly. Of course, without the cap and neck pillow, he looked twice as handsome as usual. Truly, because he was a cool-tone, even the color of his pajamas brought out his beauty to the absolute maximum.

“Please lie down.”

Elliot said shortly. Perhaps noticing that Elliot was speaking more stiffly than usual, Arzen looked awkwardly at Elliot before walking over to the bed and lying down.

“Elliot Brown, yesterday—measuredly—”

“I will read you a book.”

“Wait…!”

“On March 28th, the rain fell fiercely. It was a downpour filled with the wrath of the gods, as if it would sweep away every living and inanimate creature in the world.”

“Elliot Brown.”

“Judy had to thoroughly secure the house. Piercing through rain streaks violent and unbefitting of the spring season, she drove all the sheep within the pasture into the stable.”

“…Just a moment.”

“Her loyal dog Buttercup drove the sheep diligently even while taking a beating from the rain. It was the moment a sheepdog’s true potential was displayed.”

“El… liot….”

“Sleep, sleep, go to sleep quickly, stop talking nonsense and go to sleep quickly.”

Elliot whispered in a low, calm voice, just as he did when reading books. If Arzen had heard, he might have used those words as an excuse to open the conversation, but unfortunately, he was once again falling asleep at a dazzling speed.

Swoosh-swoosh. (Soft breathing)

Listening to the Grand Duke’s breathing, which sounded like a baby’s breathing, Elliot quietly stood up from his spot.

Yesterday, Arzen had said he couldn’t sleep. Solely due to the reason that Elliot hadn’t come, he had suffered from insomnia just like usual. Having spent the entire day like that, it was only a natural sequence of events that he would fall asleep right away like this today.

Arzen needed Elliot.

Elliot looked down at the sleeping Arzen with a complicated face. The sight of him having gone off to dreamland without his cap, neck pillow, or eye mask was funny, pitiful, and annoying all at once.

“You troublemaker, you disaster….”

Elliot muttered.

Swoosh-swoosh.

Elliot glared at Arzen for a moment, then lightly pinched Arzen’s handsome nose.

“…Kk.”

With his airway blocked, Arzen parted his lips slightly and made a choking, gagging sound. Elliot didn’t stop there. He scrunched up both of Arzen’s cheeks, flipped his red and moist lips inside out, and even pulled out a single eyebrow hair. Every time he did so, Arzen slightly twitched his expression, but didn’t wake up.

“I hate Your Grace so much.”

Elliot said right into Arzen’s ear.

“You’re seriously driving me nuts.”

In truth, he was driving himself nuts. Cursing himself for being the kind of person who couldn’t easily leave Arzen behind despite hating him this much.

The reasons he had put forward earlier for not being able to quit his job were things he could have overcome somehow. But the fact that Arzen needed Elliot—he was so furious it felt like a curse toward himself for feeling a petty sense of pride and compassion in that insignificant yet all-encompassing fact.

Elliot glared at Arzen one last time with all his might, then crossed over to the next room through the door in the wall.

As soon as Elliot vanished, the soft “swoosh-swoosh” breathing vanished from the room. Inside the silent room, one of Arzen’s arms moved slightly. He covered his eyes with his right arm and let out a long sigh.

“Driving you nuts, is it….”

Arzen said slowly, chewing on the words.