Raising his hand to his chest, Franz tried to calm himself, but the uneasiness did not fade. As Franz approached closely, he bent his waist and lowered his face over mine. Shadows cast over his face as he drew closer.
“If you want to escape, there is only one way.”
His voice alone could intimidate someone. Franz’s tone, which was usually cheerful, was now threateningly different.
“W-What…?”
His hand supported my chin, then forcibly raised my head. With my head held up, his face, bent over mine, was right in front of my nose.
“Death.”
His breath tickled my cheek as he spoke. I had never felt someone’s breath this close before. I tried to move my face away from his grip, but I couldn’t. His grip on my chin tightened.
“In other words, there is no way you can escape from me before you die.”
I felt dizzy and struggled to breathe, my head spinning. Soon, a severe headache and stomach ache set in.
This feeling…I’ve felt it before. It was similar to the agony I experienced when eating pie with Karl on the train from Urentum and having indigestion. It felt like someone was thrusting a dagger into my stomach.
“Ugh…”
Cold sweat formed as my fingertips grew cold. I was breathing heavily, my chest heaving. Only then did I realize something was wrong as Franz took a step back.
“Wait…I…”
I wanted to call for help from outside, but I couldn’t speak as if a lump was stuck in my throat. I covered my mouth with my hand and collapsed to the ground.
“P-Pl…please…”
I wanted to call for help, but as I felt my breath being cut off, immense fear took over. As the ground seemed to draw closer, everything faded to black.
***
In a dark basement, a single lamp shakily illuminated the surroundings. Spider webs hung in every corner of the dry, almost gold-tinged stone walls. It was a place where even rats might unknowingly die without a trace, a place that exuded such implicit threats.
“Name.”
“Al, it’s Alfonso.”
“Age.”
“Twenty… one years old.”
Karl scrutinized the young man sitting across him. Only 21? He seemed much younger than expected.
“Occupation.”
“Detective.”
These were details already known. Alfonso had been brought from the city of Urentum with Celeste to investigate the explosion and the case of Valerie’s disappearance. However, upon their arrival, they found themselves overwhelmed with urgent matters delaying their investigation inadvertently.
A month had passed since their arrival in the capital. It was only now that they were going to interrogate the detective brought from Urentum. An apologetic feeling arose within Karl towards the detective who had been ignorant and imprisoned in the cell all this while.
“Alfonso. Your primary charges include illegal possession and distribution of magic elixirs, as well as forgery of documents. Are you aware?”
But he hadn’t been unjustly imprisoned without any wrongdoing. Firstly, possessing a significant quantity of unreported magic elixirs illegally was a crime in itself, punishable by at least six months to a year of imprisonment.
Furthermore, upon further investigation, it was found that Alfonso lacked a detective license. His detective agency was inherited from his father, who was a genuine detective, but Alfonso had failed the licensing exam as he revealed.
The certification hanging in his office was a forged copy he casually made, from illegal possession of magic elixirs to document forgery. These were serious charges.
Yet, Karl didn’t need to be involved in this investigation to this extent. His presence in the interrogation room was solely to delve into the sudden collapse of Celeste’s home due to a bombing.
While sporadically receiving investigation reports on the explosion from the Urentum investigation team via the Louisette communicator, nothing substantial had been uncovered yet.
“How did you come to know Countess Louisette?”
In response to the investigator’s sharp question, Alfonso began sweating profusely. Karl, seated beside the interrogating officer, carefully observed every subtle change in Alfonso’s expression.
“Madame Rebecca… Is that who you mean?”
“It’s Count Louisette in here.”
“Count… I didn’t know that she was a count. She just came in suddenly, saying that someone had left a child in front of the house and asked to find the child’s parents.”
This is what I heard when Urentum met Celeste.
“But since child abduction cases have increased, it has become a law to take children with unknown identities to the police station to help find their parents and family. So, before taking on the request, we did a paternity test between Madam, or rather the Countess, and the child.”
“Where did you get the potion you used then?”
“I didn’t get it separately. As I mentioned, Alfonso’s detective office has been a family business passed down for three generations from my grandfather… So, we had plenty of those magic potions in the office for a long time. When my grandfather was alive, selling magic potions wasn’t legally restricted.”
Tap, tap, tap. The investigator quickly typed on the typewriter, recording all of Alfonso’s answers without missing anything.
“Is that Madam, or rather the Countess, really the owner of the Louisette family?”
Seeing such a question in this situation seemed naive. The investigator let out a short sigh.
“Yes, she is indeed the owner of the Louisette family as Countess Louisette, and this person is the Duke of Albrecht’s consort.”
This was a subtle warning to focus on the matter as someone even higher than a count was present. Alfonso realized this and immediately apologized, promising to focus more.
“So, the child is the count’s baby, making her a little countess.”
“Since it’s mentioned, how far have you investigated the task the Countess Louisette requested?”
“Oh, yes. The Countess’s request involved two things.”
“Two things?”
“Finding the child’s biological father and finding the person who left the child in front of the house.”
“And what were the investigation results? Did you find them?”
Tap, tap, tap. The investigator’s typing on the typewriter became busier.
“We couldn’t find the biological father but did find clues about the person who left the child in front of the house.”
Karl remembered the moment he first saw Alfonso. It was when he reunited with Celeste after two years, and his guard went up against the sudden appearance of a foreign man. It was etched clearly in his memory. He remembered how the man had come looking for Celeste.
“He mentioned coming to give an answer to the task entrusted by the lady. Yes.”
“You do remember! Yes, that’s right. But in the face of a gun pointed at us, we couldn’t say a word. Oh, I really thought I was going to die without being able to move.”
The person who left the child in front of the house had asked to find out who it was. They even paid a detective to take on the task. Celeste’s claim of having lost all her memories seemed to be entirely true.
Karl found it hard to believe Celeste’s claims of memory loss, as there were sporadic moments where she remembered things.
But if she didn’t even know she had a child, her memory loss was clearly a serious condition.
“Who brought the child?”
“I couldn’t identify the person accurately.”
“So you haven’t solved either of the two tasks given to you?”
“But we found a witness!”
“A witness?”
“Yes, we found a witness who saw a man lurking near the countess’s cabin with a large basket covered with a cloth. We found this witness after a week of thorough investigation, and I rushed to inform the countess as soon as I heard the news.”
A man with a large basket covered with a cloth. The person who brought Valerie. Karl, leaning back, stood up.
“Describe the man’s features in detail.”
“Yes. He was not very tall, had an average build… and brown curly hair.”
“…with such a description, there must be tens of thousands of men in the empire.”
To have rushed to the client in excitement to provide such information, Karl seemed like someone who could figure out why Alfonso didn’t pass the detective qualification examination.
