“You mustn’t overexert yourself. Your vocal cords were severely injured, so speaking will be difficult for some time. The attack on the carriage was most regrettable. To think it happened just before you entered our domain.”
A carriage?
Every so often, words that simply didn’t belong slipped into the conversation.
In this day and age, the only places where anyone still rode around in carriages were Disney World and tourist attractions.
And yet the man had just mentioned an attack as casually as if he were discussing the weather.
Ian’s neck was like this for an entirely different reason.
Frowning, he forced himself to sift through memories that, for some reason, already felt strangely distant.
It hadn’t even been that long ago.
And yet—
Right. It wasn’t because of anything like that.
I… I did this to my own neck…
“……!”
The realization struck him all at once.
Ian’s hand flew to his throat.
A chill ran down his spine when his fingers met layer after layer of carefully wrapped bandages.
He knew how deeply he had stabbed himself.
The memory of forcing the blade through his windpipe, driving the oil-painting knife into his own throat, remained painfully vivid.
Even if the blood loss somehow hadn’t killed him, the paint residue and rust on the blade alone should have earned him a spectacular case of tetanus.
And then there had been all that blood.
The crimson pool spreading across the floor.
There was no way first aid could have reached him in time.
He had deliberately chosen that place and that hour after calculating exactly that.
So how was he still alive?
Ian stared at the man before him in silence, his eyes dark.
Apparently mistaking the look for something else, the man creased the corners of his gently lined eyes into a pleasant smile.
It was the sort of perfectly reassuring smile a kindly older gentleman might wear in a movie.
Ian knew instinctively that it was fake.
“Ah, forgive me. I should have introduced myself sooner.”
The man inclined his head.
His name was Edward.
He was the butler of this mansion, though Ian could simply call him Ed.
What exactly was he supposed to say to someone who had just introduced himself as a butler with a completely straight face?
Ian had never been the sort to indulge the rich in their elaborate role-playing.
Unless—
Was this a dream?
The scenery certainly had a strange unreality to it.
Ian wasn’t particularly imaginative, so he had never dreamed of anything like this before.
Then again, he had rarely dreamed at all.
He had never been able to sleep deeply enough to let his guard down.
Unless, of course, he had fallen asleep for good.
As the dizziness in his head gradually faded, Ian began to calm down.
Come to think of it, he vaguely remembered dreaming before he woke up.
Something about an impossibly white snake…
“The master is currently away. His schedule could no longer be postponed.”
It took Ian a moment to realize that by master, Ed meant his employer.
The butler’s pleasant smile remained in place as he lowered his voice, as though confiding something not meant for other ears.
“He waited a very long time for you to awaken. It was the master who gave you the holy water, despite how difficult it is to obtain. Without it, I doubt you would have opened your eyes as you have now.”
Every nuance of Ed’s voice suggested concern.
But beneath it, Ian heard something else.
A reminder.
We spent this much on you.
Was he Catholic?
Ian briefly wondered whether Ed meant the sort of holy water he knew.
Then he dismissed the thought.
The image of people standing around a dying man and solemnly sprinkling holy water over him while praying was somehow worse.
Whatever Ed made of Ian’s silence, he gave no indication.
A knock sounded a moment later, and someone else entered.
The woman had orange hair braided neatly behind her head and wore what was unmistakably a maid’s uniform.
These people really do have refined tastes.
“This should ease the pain in your throat somewhat.”
A tea set rested on the tray she carried, its porcelain beautifully engraved with a flower Ian didn’t recognize.
He watched in silence as Ed poured something into the cup with smooth, practiced movements.
Never eat or drink anything someone else gives you.
The instant Ed held the cup out to him, Ian shook his head to refuse.
Ed’s hand stopped in midair.
His gaze lowered to Ian’s face.
He was still smiling.
But something was wrong.
Not even the corners of his mouth twitched.
It was as though the expression had been fixed onto his face.
Ian watched him and quietly continued thinking.
If they decided to force him to drink it, there wasn’t much he could do.
The thick curtains blocked his view outside, but he could sense someone standing near the door.
There didn’t seem to be anyone near the window.
Still, he had no idea what floor he was on, which made that route less than appealing.
And trying to escape blindly from a place he knew absolutely nothing about would be reckless to begin with.
Ian was weighing whether it would be safer to cooperate for now or seize the first chance to escape when his thoughts abruptly stopped.
“……”
Why am I even worrying about this?
I’m the one who put a knife through my own throat because I wanted to die.
Pain throbbed through his neck again.
All the tension drained from his body.
Ian stared at the cup still held before him and decided he was done thinking.
This was a dream anyway.
Trying this hard to stay alive would only make the whole thing more ridiculous.
As though he had never refused in the first place, Ian reached out and accepted the cup.
He could feel Ed watching him.
Ignoring it, he raised the tea to his lips.
It had cooled to the perfect drinking temperature.
Sweetness and bitterness spread across his tongue at the same time.
It certainly didn’t taste like anything that was supposed to be good for him.
“Get some more sleep. And then……”
Ed seemed to say something else in the same gentle tone, but Ian could no longer make out the words.
A crushing wave of drowsiness washed over him.
The last thing he remembered was his eyes closing before he even realized it.
Truthfully, none of it mattered.
Hoping that this time everything really would end, Ian let his wavering eyes fall shut once more.
Can a dream really last this long?
Ian stared at the butler—at Ed—as he placed a wooden tray across his lap, unable to hide his bewilderment at the absurdity of the situation.
This same scene had been repeating itself for nearly two weeks.
At every meal, Ed appeared at exactly the right time with warm soup or stew, the ingredients chopped into pieces small enough for Ian to swallow easily.
He seemed kind enough.
But only on the surface.
He had worn that same pleasant expression when the doctor informed Ian that his vocal cords had been damaged so badly that he might never speak again.
How unfortunate, Ed had said.
His face had not looked unfortunate in the slightest.
Even an idiot could have seen that.
Then again, Ian himself had looked equally unimpressed, so perhaps the two of them were no different.
The only person who had seemed genuinely unsettled was the doctor.
Apparently, being told that you had suffered a permanent disability was supposed to provoke more of a reaction.
The doctor had probably assumed Ian was too shocked to process it.
On the first day, Ian had hoped everything would finally be over.
Instead, when he opened his eyes again, he was still in the same room.
The towering ceiling.
The chandelier.
Nothing had changed.
Half in disbelief, Ian pushed himself up.
If he could fall asleep and wake up again in the same place, did that mean this was actually reality?
The pain that tore through his body when he put one foot on the floor certainly felt real enough.
First, he needed to find out where he was.
And if these people really had saved his life—
why?
After making sure no one else was in the room, Ian pulled back the thick, layered curtains.
An enormous glass window, taller than he was, opened onto a small terrace.
Without hesitation, Ian opened the door and stepped outside.
Cold air brushed across his cheek.
Then he looked ahead.
There was nothing beyond the mansion.
Nothing except forest.
A forest of thick black leaves.
Forest.
More forest.
“…?”
Are trees actually capable of being that black?
Ian blinked.
The view remained unchanged.
He fell silent.
It wasn’t a trick of the light.
For that to make sense, it would have needed to be dusk or the middle of the night.
But it was noon.
The world was flooded with sunlight.
And yet, as though mocking the brightness overhead, darkness lay across the endless forest.
It surrounded the entire estate like a black sea.
Ian had opened the window expecting some bleak cityscape.
He had no idea what to make of a view unlike anything he had ever seen.
The strange forest captured his attention first, but the mansion itself was nearly as remarkable.
Calling it a mansion felt almost misleading.
It looked more like a castle.
The grounds alone were enormous, but the wall surrounding the estate rose so high that even from where Ian stood, it looked excessive.
He was frowning, turning his gaze this way and that over a place completely unlike anything he had ever known, when he suddenly felt someone staring at him.
Blatantly.
Ian looked down.
His eyes immediately met those of someone standing below.
The terrace was far too high for an ordinary person to survive jumping from it.
Even so, the man below wore the expression of someone absolutely convinced Ian was about to throw himself over the railing at any second.
“The wind is cold. Please return inside.”
The words themselves were perfectly polite.
The glare accompanying them was anything but.
Open hostility stared back at Ian.
Still, there was something else that bothered him even more.
The man’s clothes.
Unless Ian’s eyesight had suddenly deteriorated—
that was armor.
And it wasn’t just one person.
Several people were casually walking around in armor, carrying actual spears.
In the twenty-first century.
Ian could only arrive at one conclusion.
So I really am still dreaming.
And it’s an absurdly detailed dream for no reason whatsoever.
Just to make sure, he opened the door leading into the hallway.
There were people stationed there too.
Their expressionless faces barely differed from those of the guards outside when they instructed him to return to his room.
“You must rest.”
When Ed arrived with his meal shortly afterward, he repeated the same words like a broken machine.
Rest.
That was certainly a pleasant way of putting it.
In reality, Ian was being confined.
“……”
There wasn’t much to do in the enormous but nearly empty room.
It was the first time Ian had ever stayed somewhere so luxurious.
It was also the first time he had ever spent days doing absolutely nothing.
Looking back, he thought he had spent most of those first few days asleep.
When was the last time he had rested this deeply?
No work.
No vigilance.
Nothing to worry about.
Ian searched his memory.
Nothing came to him.
Only a pale, hazy fog.
Sometimes, when he woke before dawn, he heard strange, unidentifiable sounds coming from somewhere far away.