“Cough, cough! Gulp!”
Startled by the sudden movement, Ellie raised her head abruptly, her eyes widening in surprise as she looked straight ahead.
Her chest, which had been rising and falling rapidly as she held her breath, heaved roughly as she exhaled the breath she had been holding.
Ellie watched the scene for a while.
“Whew…”
Rutus finally seemed to calm down, exhaling a sigh and covering his face with one hand as he got up.
Perhaps too overwhelmed to walk all the way to the desk to ring the bell, he stopped his wavering steps in front of the bell stand.
Knock, knock.
“Duke, it’s Ailton.”
“…Come in.”
After a while, the butler, who had received Rutus’s call with his brow furrowed deeply, knocked on the door and opened his mouth.
The butler’s calm voice, which had been absent when Ellie was searching frantically, seemed almost irritatingly indifferent.
“It’s still very early, but… if you’ve been coughing, I’ll have a bath prepared for you, Your Grace.”
“No, it’s not for that.”
“Yes?”
“I didn’t call you for that…”
Rutus’ face, with his brows furrowed as much as possible, looked visibly upset at a glance.
Despite this, if he seemed hesitant to Ellie, it was probably because of his fingertips trembling slightly.
After a long while of just moving his lips without speaking, Lutis finally ruffled his hair roughly and began to speak.
“…Go to the annex.”
“…Yes?”
“You’re doing it again, just like last time. It seems to me that you’re really deaf, the way you keep asking me the same question over and over again. Should I start looking for a replacement?”
“……”
“I won’t say it twice. Move. I hope you understand what you’re supposed to check.”
“…Yes, I’m sorry.”
“You guys have a lot to be sorry for. Anyone who sees you might think I hired you to hear your apologies, don’t you agree?”
Do your work instead of apologizing. Rutus glared fiercely at the butler and said.
His tone was unmistakably reminiscent of a past event.
Ellie watched the butler quickly bow his head and leave the office, then glanced at Rutus, who was standing still in his place and seemed to be thinking deeply about something.
Rolling her eyes back and forth, Ellie quickly got up from her seat and thought.
‘I don’t know what’s happening, but…’
…Did it work? Did Rutus really just tell him to check on the child?
Ellie raised her hand and touched her throat. She had been desperately hoping for it, but she was still stunned by the series of events she didn’t understand. It felt like her skin was tingling.
-Oh. This isn’t the time…
Rutus remained silent and motionless, prompting Ellie to glance repeatedly at the door where the butler had left.
Suddenly, as if struck by a realization, she turned and left the room.
Since the butler was acting on Rutus’s orders, he was likely heading to the annex to check on the child.
Ellie needed to arrive first to explain the situation, ensuring the child wouldn’t be startled if awake.
“…Ha,”
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to her, Rutus was left alone in the office, recalling the voice he had heard just before waking up, his face buried in his hands.
Why are you doing this to me?
[Please, Rutus. Our child is sick.]
I had wished to see you at least once, even in a dream. When I earnestly wished for it, you never appeared. And now, nearly four years later, this is what you come to say.
……But she didn’t even show her face.
She was sent away before he could even say a word. That dream was not only merciless but also annoying in many ways.
“…I must be truly exhausted these days.”
Otherwise, he wouldn’t have heard Ellie’s voice mixed with sobs, which he had never heard before.
It was, in a word, a nonsensical dream.
Yet, Rutus felt compelled to call the butler early this morning. Ignoring the dream was not an option; it left him feeling unsettled. Even if it was just a dream, he couldn’t refuse Ellie’s plea.
That was the apparent reason.
‘I’ve done what you asked…’
Please, let me hear your voice once more, even for a moment.
The true reason was this.
“I can’t quite remember how your voice sounded anymore…”
While a portrait could help him briefly quell his longing for her face, there was nothing to help him recall her voice.
He knew it had a pleasant tone when she laughed, but he couldn’t remember if it was high-pitched or low.
He recalled that her voice often rose at the end when she called him, but he wasn’t sure about the times it was different.
He feared that someday, he might forget so much that remembering Ellie’s death wouldn’t hurt anymore.
That thought terrified him.
“……”
Rutus stood with his face buried in his hands for a long while before slowly moving.
Since he was now awake, he needed to wash up.
* * *
-Adi! Are you okay…?
Rushing back to the attic with the urgency of arriving before the butler, Ellie spoke with a voice more composed than before.
Of course, her worries hadn’t completely disappeared yet, but she thought that at least once the butler arrived, He would be able to see a doctor, so she had overcome a major hurdle.
‘…..?’
But where did she go…?
Ellie’s face quickly hardened as she searched for the figure that should have been on the bed. Compared to the five times she had searched around the mansion, it hadn’t taken that long to get back this time.
Had it been a little over ten minutes? In that short span, the child had vanished without a trace, leaving Ellie anxiously scanning the empty air.
‘N-No way… did he go outside already? In that condition?’
Having come in through the window, Ellie hadn’t checked the stairs the child usually used. If he, weak as he was, attempted to go down the stairs and missed a step…
The horrifying thought of such an accident now dominated Ellie’s mind, imagining the child crying with a twisted arm, covered in blood.
‘First the roof and now this!’
At this rate, Ellie wondered if she was just an idiot for not learning from her mistakes. Despite experiencing firsthand how crucial it was to keep an eye on the child, she seemed to repeat the same mistake.
Ellie was about to rush out the door in a panic when…
“…Maa.”
Ellie quickly turned his head at the sudden faint sound that reached his ears. But she still couldn’t see the child.
-A-Adi? Are you there?
How many seconds passed like that?
Ellie noticed that the lump of blankets that had fallen to the floor was wriggling slightly and quickened her pace towards the pile of blankets.
-…Adi?
Calling out the name once more with a hopeful heart, she soon saw a little a black bean-like head popped out of the top of the wriggling lump of blankets.
If that was all, she could now just wait for the butler to arrive. But Ellie, who had briefly felt relieved, was quickly plunged into another worry by the child’s words.
“D-don’t g-go…”
-Adi. Are you okay? Goodness, Why are you on the floor like this-
“D-don’t go, d-don’t go, Mommy…”
…Huh?
What did I just hear? Frozen in place as she crouched to meet the child’s eye level, Ellie’s eyes widened. Did the term that just came from the child’s mouth really refer to her?
Shaking her head slightly, Ellie spoke softly. She must have misheard.
-Adi, look closely. I’m not your mother―
“Not again, don’t leave me…”
-I won’t go. I’m not going anywhere. Remember our promise? I said I’d stay with you until you told me to go. Right?
“….”
“Now, open your eyes wide and look at me. Can you see who I am?”
“Mommy…”
Oh no, that’s not it! Ellie covered her eyes with her hand, looking exasperated. It seemed that what she had heard earlier wasn’t just her imagination.
This meant the child was very sick, unable to recognize people properly.
This wasn’t a situation where she could feel relieved. Feeling troubled again, Ellie bit her lip and looked worried.
Then, something completely unexpected came out of the child’s mouth.
“If I… if I become a ghost too…”
“What?”
“Then I can keep… calling you Mommy… forever…?”
“What?”
Involuntarily lowering her voice, Ellie saw the child trembling and holding out something with shaking hands.
If it touched her hand, it would fall to the floor immediately, so the child was showing it to her.
…It was the inside of the pendant necklace she had seen when the child had fallen before.
-……
“Marie said… this is Mommy when she was little, but… but there’s no recent portrait of Mommy h-here…”
-…….
“……So she told me to ke-keep this instead.”
As the child said, inside the pendant was a tiny portrait of Ellie from her childhood.
Even though it was from her younger days, the portrait had been made not long after she graduated from the academy, just before her debut, so it wasn’t very old.
By the time of Ellie’s death, it had been less than five years. In other words, it was a slightly younger version of her current face. For a child, it wasn’t a significant enough difference to not recognize her.
TL/N: SHIT.
Ellie asked in a trembling voice, trying not to show her agitation, but it was difficult.
-When…did you get this?
“For my th-third birthday…”
-……
“She gave it to me, saying my hair resembled Mommy’s…So, I liked it so much that I didn’t want to take it off…”
-……
“I was scared… sob… that if I pretended to know, you might leave me again… so I pretended not to know…”
-…Haa.
A short sigh escaped. It wasn’t entirely meaningless, but it wasn’t a significant sigh of resentment or blame either.
The child, with her neck hunched and a voice barely audible, urgently spoke.
“I… I’ll listen well. I’ll cut my hair and finish all my meals. I won’t call you Mommy…either…”
-……
“Don’t leave me… Don’t leave me alone again…”
I’m sorry for lying, sob, sob… The child’s weak voice, contrasting with the sobs Ellie had heard the previous evening, reflected his illness.
The thin, trembling sobs seemed to tear at Ellie’s eardrums. It sounded so loud that she wanted to leave the room immediately.
But even in this moment, seeing the child’s feverish, tear-streaked face, she couldn’t bring herself to do anything.
“……”
She was in despair.
* * * *
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