“Since there’s only one closed door here, this must be it, you fool.”
Hearing the men’s gruff voices made my heart pound.
They are definitely not knights of our family. And if they aren’t our knights, they aren’t here to save me.
You can do this, Selena.
I muttered to myself while clumsily aiming the revolver at the door.
It was when my lips were drying up with tension and I was staring at the violently shaking doorknob.
“Are you still struggling to open just one door?”
Another voice overlaid the two men’s voices.
“Step aside.”
“But the doorknob is locked, so it won’t open easily, Your Highness.”
“If the doorknob is locked, then just break it.”
“Ah.”
As I eavesdropped on their somewhat amusing conversation and heard a loud noise from outside, I tensed up my shoulders.
Whether it was because the doorknob was broken, soon the damaged door started to open, showing a gap.
When the door fully opened, I saw him. A man who looked so much like Ruth, yet completely different in feeling.
“Little one, hello? Are you the hidden youngest daughter of the Obelton family?”
“……”
I glared at the man who had the audacity to smile and greet me cheerily after breaking into my room.
With hair a deeper shade of gold than Ruth and heterochromatic eyes, this man exuded a dangerous aura. Although he was smiling at me, it felt as if getting any closer would result in being sliced.
Without responding, the man simply looked at me holding a toy revolver, then chuckled.
“Scared?”
“……”
“Were you trying to threaten me with that?”
“……”
Even though I said nothing, the man seemed unfazed.
“But, unfortunately, your terrible stance isn’t threatening at all. You’ve failed to intimidate me.”
His sassy tone, even his looks, were similar to Ruth.
As I puzzled over the resemblances to Ruth I could see in this man, I promptly shut my mouth which I had inadvertently let fall open.
Could this person possibly be the ‘older brother’ Ruth mentioned before?
“So, what did older brother send you here for? To check if I was completely dead? Or to capture my dying moments on video?”
When I first heard about it, I thought there was no way someone would make another person do such a thing, so I didn’t think much of it. But looking back, he was someone capable of doing such things and more.
“Hmm. I don’t like it when you’re daydreaming in front of me.”
A man, kneeling to match my eye level, murmured with a mad smile.
Snapped out of my thoughts by his words, I gripped the toy revolver in my hand tighter.
Seeing this, the man burst into hearty laughter and easily snatched the toy revolver from me.
“Kid. When you hold a revolver,”
While speaking, the man stretched his legs and skillfully held the revolver, pointing it at me in an instant.
“you do it like this. Extend your arm straight, and wrap one hand around the other.”
“……”
I swallowed dryly, observing the man who seemed familiar with the revolver, and struggled to hide the disappointment that was about to show on my face.
As I was repeatedly clenching and unclenching my empty hands, the man spoke again.
“And, kid.”
What is he going to say this time?
As I looked at him with trembling eyes, the smile on the man’s face disappeared without a trace.
The man, having dropped the toy revolver on the floor, savagely stomped on it with his foot.
“A toy revolver like this can’t threaten anyone,” he said.
As if indicating the end of the jest, the man’s voice suddenly changed, and he commanded the two men standing behind him, “Take her away.”
“Yes.”
As I tried to back away to avoid the men coming to drag me away following the man’s orders, I fell onto my buttocks.
It seemed I sprained my ankle as I fell, as it throbbed with pain whenever I moved.
Eventually, unable to escape and with a terrified expression, I looked up at the men, one of whom then covered my eyes with a black cloth.
My breath hitched as my vision was obscured.
Soon, the men took me somewhere.
As I obediently followed where they led, I felt as if I were walking through pitch darkness.
***
The men who dragged me outside forced me on my knees to the dirt ground.
“Ugh.”
As I was pressured into kneeling by their strength, one of the men roughly removed the cloth blindfolding my eyes and instead tied my wrists.
The sudden brightness made me feel averse, but I soon got used to it.
The place where I was forced to kneel was the garden in front of the mansion. And beside me, Ian, my mother, and my sister were also kneeling, looking completely battered, just like me.
“Seri! Are you okay?”
“Sister!”
“Good heavens. What on earth happened…”
My family each had something to say upon seeing me being roughly dragged by the men.
I looked at my family, kneeling beside me in a line, and belatedly realized that only our father was absent.
“Where is father?”
“…”
I quietly asked my sister next to me, and her face twisted terribly.
“Don’t be alarmed…”
It was the moment my sister hesitated for a long time before she was about to open her mouth to answer.
I saw a man, resembling Ruth, leading my father out of the mansion with a black cloth covering his eyes.
“Ah…!”
I almost called out to my father loudly but bit my lower lip hard enough to fill my mouth with a bitter taste.
Why is my father being led away so helplessly by that man? What is that man planning to do to our family?
Thousands of questions aimlessly wandered through my mind.
While following the man and my father with my eyes, I unintentionally saw the bodies of servants scattered around the garden.
“…!”
The ones who, until a month ago, were alive and moving before my eyes, now lay in a horrific state with their lives cut short.
Perhaps that’s why. The reality of death became tangible and, at the same time, frightening.
I forcibly suppressed the nausea that surged up.
I didn’t properly understand how dangerous my abilities were until I truly felt what death was.
But after saving Ruth, I gradually began to understand, and today, after witnessing this scene, I finally realized.
I also understood why my father always said that people outside the mansion are dangerous, now I’ve finally realized it.
“Damon Obelton.”
Suddenly, in the middle of the garden, the man who had knelt my father softly recited my father’s name. Then, with a leisurely motion, he removed the cloth that had been covering my father’s eyes.
As the cloth was removed, my father’s green eyes were revealed.
“Had you sided with me earlier, we could have avoided bloodshed and it would have been better, wouldn’t it?”
The man spoke in a serpentine voice and gestured to a knight standing beside him to hand over a sword.
My father, as if uninterested in what the man was doing, stared straight ahead and replied.
“The Obelton family has been loyal to the Emperor since the founding of the empire. To betray His Majesty now and join hands with a traitor is unthinkable.”
“Ha. To speak such upright words even in the face of death. I shall indeed respect your courage.”
The man mockingly thrust the sword into the ground as a threat.
“Do you have any last words to leave behind, Duke Obelton?”
“……”
My father hesitated at the man’s question.
Last words.
Hearing the man’s words, I clenched my fists tightly.
Doesn’t that mean he intends to kill my father?
The thought of my father dying…
The thought of my father, who always seemed like a huge mountain to me, dying, sent shivers down my spine. More accurately, it felt like bugs were crawling all over my body. It was when I was writhing with my wrists tied with cloth, captured by this terrible feeling, that my father, having finished contemplating, spoke in a determined tone.
“My family has nothing to do with this.”
“How can I be sure of that?”
“…I ask of you.”
The moment a playful voice escaped the man’s lips, I realized that sometimes, a great mountain can also become a blunt hill. The man let out a satisfied laugh upon seeing my father bow his head before him.
“Good. I was indeed concerned about killing too many. I’ll generously demote your family to commoners as a special favor.”
“Thank you.”
Finally seeming relieved, a faint smile appeared on my father’s lips.
“Well, then.”
After the conversation with my father, the man got up with a smile, raised his sword high.
“Farewell.”
No.
Having seen the sword positioned above my father’s neck, I violently shook my head. Perhaps he felt my gaze, piercing through him, because my father looked at me right before the sword was about to fall on his neck.
Then, he gave a faint smile and mouthed ‘shush’.
Before I could fully understand the meaning of that ‘shush’, my father drew his last breath.
“Aaaah!”
The sound of my sister, crying out like a wild animal after witnessing the scene, reached my ears from beside me. I think I also heard my mother’s sobbing occasionally.
“……”
I just sat there in the midst of that terrible scene, dully staring at my father who had stopped breathing.
How long had I been sitting there? My vision became blurry as tears that had welled up in my eyes fell one by one, and I covered my face with both hands.
I could have saved him.
But I shouldn’t have.
Contradictory thoughts suffocated me.
The ability that I had thought was purely good when I saved Ruth was, at this moment, detestable.
Just then, it began to rain.
The cold rain washed away my tears.
But it did not wash away the blood soaked into the earth.
…It was a horribly tragic end of spring.
i hate that bastard😡.. sgbjiffguhdhbjk🤬…!!!