Chapter – 18
And the answer that came back was predictable, yet also beyond expectations, leaving Ashilly speechless.
“No, because it’s you.”
The response, uttered so calmly as if stating a self-evident truth, left her at a loss for words.
“You’re not doing this on purpose, are you?”
“What?”
“Never mind. You’re a real natural airhead, aren’t you? It’s scary. I feel like I might get an ‘axe disease’ like this.”
“‘Axe disease’? What kind of illness is that?”
Ludwig closed the distance between them in an instant.
His fingertips, stroking her rounded forehead, were rough yet exceedingly meticulous.
“If you’re in pain, don’t endure it and tell me.”
“Uh… Mmhm. I wasn’t planning on enduring it anyway.”
“Good.”
His sky-blue eyes, frowning yet smiling, were filled with nothing but concern for her.
Staring up at him intently, Ashilly belatedly realized.
So this is why they say natural airheads are scary.
He must have done that with absolutely no ulterior motives, purely out of consideration.
He was simply showing boundless kindness for her, who had suddenly fallen into the world of a novel—no, a dream world.
But when he kept talking like that, it was enough to plant misunderstandings where there were none.
Might he possibly have feelings for her? That is, like her as a member of the opposite sex?
Surely that couldn’t be the case.
As she seemed to know, he knew it very well too.
Ashilly.
Hadn’t even that name been given by Ludwig?
A dream.
The woman in the dream.
Really, who would fall in love with a character from a novel or a person from a dream?
It’s not like he’s Pygmalion falling in love with the statue he created.
Shaking her head, Ashilly steered the conversation back to its original topic.
“Anyway, I’m not saying I want to eat pie, I’m talking about the pie that was in that young lady’s room, the last one we visited in the annex. Remember?”
“Yes. We cleared away the leftover pieces.”
“That’s it! You cleared it away.”
Ashilly’s eyes sparkled as she sat up completely. Pushing the cushion aside, she raised her index finger.
“In the end, the only place we haven’t searched in the annex is right there.”
Ludwig stared at her intently for a moment before speaking.
“You don’t mean to suggest that the stolen jewels are inside that leftover pie, do you?”
“Yes. At the very least, I think it’s a possibility.”
“But it was leftover pie.”
“I know. But you see, there’s a saying.”
Ashilly lifted her chin slightly and crossed her arms.
“It’s a saying from that other world. A saying by a tremendously famous detective named Sherlock Holmes.”
“What’s a detective?”
“Well, I guess you’d say it’s a person who specializes in solving these kinds of cases. Anyway, it’s something he said. Umm…”
Ashilly tilted her head and groaned, stopping mid-sentence.
“Ashilly?”
“Ah, I don’t remember exactly. So, roughly, it was something like this.”
She tapped her chin and continued.
“‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.'”
“‘The impossible’ would be that the stolen items weren’t found anywhere in the annex.”
“Right. And the remaining ‘improbable’ thing is…”
“That they are inside the leftover pie?”
“Correct.”
Ludwig nodded.
“We’ll check it tomorrow.”
“Okay. It’s not like the pie has legs to run away anyway.”
Since the annex was sealed off, it would look much more proper to search in broad daylight tomorrow.
“If a necklace just pops out of the pie, that would be a funny sight in its own right. It’s not like a proposal or anything.”
Ashilly, her flickering eyes blinking slowly, let out a long yawn right then.
“Ludwig. I’m going to sleep a little. I still have things to do, so you have to wake me up, okay?”
“Alright.”
Before she knew when he had approached, a large, cool hand covered her eyes.
Even with her vision plunged into blackness, the darkness was反而 reassuring, and Ashilly gradually fell asleep.
* * *
The time when the chaotic daytime of the annex had passed and the crimson sunset was fading.
While Ashilly, with her fennec-fox-like face, was reviewing things she needed to know during her stay in this world…
The ear of a certain Count’s young lady staying in the annex twitched.
“Did you hear that sound just now?”
The maid, who was brushing the young lady’s hair from the ends, tilted her head.
“What sound?”
“Oh, come on, you can still hear it now, can’t you?”
The scolded maid held her breath and pricked up her ears, but couldn’t hear any particular sound.
That was only natural.
As it was the annex of a Grand Duke’s residence, the soundproofing was excellent.
But the Count’s young lady, with her exceptionally sharp hearing, caught the muffled sound of voices coming through the wall.
“It sounds like someone is fighting?”
As the Count’s young lady rose to her feet, the maid hurriedly draped a shawl over her slip.
Grabbing the slipping shawl roughly, the young lady headed towards the door.
“Young lady…”
The maid called out as if to stop her, but the young lady didn’t even look back and just waved her hand.
– *Click*.
She had never specifically listened for it, nor had she ever heard the sound of a door opening here before, but it was precisely at times like this, when a sound shouldn’t be heard, that it rang out loud as thunder.
The Count’s young lady, frozen for a moment, soon unable to contain her curiosity, stuck her face outside.
Not in the brightly lit corridor, but from the shadowy side, three—no, four figures were swaying.
Narrowing her eyes, the Count’s young lady strained her ears in that direction.
They were arguing, just as she had faintly heard from inside her room.
“Uuum.”
It wasn’t clear enough to make out, but…
“A thief? A witness? Perhaps it’s because of that commotion today?”
As the Count’s young lady tilted her head in curiosity, she flinched.
Because two of the four figures in the dark suddenly moved.
“Aren’t those the Lemerre twins?”
No matter how briefly she saw them, there was no way she wouldn’t recognize two people with identical faces—that is, the young ladies of the Lemerre Marquisate.
“Then are the other two perhaps those country bumpkins?”
After the Lemerre twins disappeared and the corridor quieted down, the Count’s young lady scrutinized the area a bit more before shrugging and returning to her room.
She had only stepped out briefly out of curiosity about what was happening; she had absolutely no intention of finding out exactly what it was.
Around the time all the doors in the annex were closed and the hem of night was being pushed back by the pale light.
A rough breath, piercing the quiet dawn, echoed from a corner of a certain room in the annex.
“Hah… Hahk, Hahk. HahkHahk!”
The younger sister, who had been gasping for breath, soon covered her mouth and began retching violently.
For a long while, she stayed propped on the floor, retching and drooling, before raising her head with tear-filled eyes.
“Uhh… uuuh, uuuhuhuk.”
Letting out something between a moan and a whimper, she fell back on her bottom and scrambled backward.
Her body, trembling like an aspen leaf, showed no signs of calming down, and the tears that had welled in her eyes dried up completely upon seeing the scene before her.
Blood.
A pool of blood, vividly visible even in the dim room, gradually grew larger and brushed against the tips of her feet. Startled, she immediately pulled her legs in.
But her hands, trying to avoid even getting blood on her toes, were already covered in blood.
To be precise, her hands, her chest area, and even her cheeks were all stained a bright red.
How long had she been scrambling backward like that, trying to escape the blood? A cracked voice escaped her parted lips.
“Si… Sis? Si… si… si… si…?”
But the one who should have answered was already breathless, leaving only silence. The younger sister gaped soundlessly and shook her head.
This wasn’t the plan. This… this wasn’t supposed to happen.
It was just a petty argument, that’s all.
—
*’I told you to steal just one!’*
After overcoming the crisis once, the younger sister had gotten angry at her older sister.
It was because her sister had laid hands on other things, contrary to the original plan.
*’But I couldn’t just pass by all those sparkling jewels lying around. If you saw money lying on the street, wouldn’t you pick it up?’*
At first, the older sister, who had been somewhat cautious, soon grew irritated at her younger sister for getting angry even though *she* was the one who had brought back more.
*’That’s not the point! And why didn’t you tell me?’*
*’Ah, well…’*
*’Don’t tell me… you were planning to keep it all for yourself?’*
—
The older sister didn’t answer, and the younger sister was flabbergasted.
She knew her sister was greedy by nature, but to be stabbed in the back like this, at this very moment…
The argument that followed grew increasingly heated.
Both were tightly wound, their nerves stretched to a razor’s edge.
No matter how delicious the pastries were, ones they might never get to eat again if not now, shoving that much quantity down their throats was probably also due to that tension.
In such rapidly escalating arguments, the younger sister was always the winner, so the older sister, as always, laid hands on the younger.
The younger sister, struck on the head, saw stars for a moment and gritted her teeth.
And what happened after that, she didn’t remember well.
The only things that came back in fragments were her sister’s contorted face and the object she had brought down on her head….
“No… No, no, no.”
The younger sister shook her head frantically, denying reality, before suddenly stopping dead at some point.
Her pupils began to gleam grotesquely.
Wasn’t there an old saying?
There’s no honor among thieves.
Taking a deep, shuddering breath, the younger sister slammed her trembling legs down and forced herself to stand up.
Even though her legs gave way several times, causing her to fall repeatedly, the greedy glint in her eyes didn’t fade.
It only grew stronger.
If she couldn’t walk, she had to crawl to find it.
The younger sister’s gaze was fixed not on the corpse of her older sister lying before her, but on something else.
The root cause of this disaster, the jewels that sparkled and shone even in this night…
