It was a face terrified to the bone. The butler seemed to hate even letting the word rut out of the mouth; with a voice full of hesitation, the butler barely managed to convey the fact to me.
"The main house will be sealed off. Once a day, you just need to bring the food and water made in the annex and set it in front of the Duke's door. ......Can you do that?"
"Only once a day?"
They couldn’t answer my words and shuddered. With a pale, blanched face like someone completely seized by fear.
I turned my head. A sound came from the direction of the main house. Fast. Someone’s shrill voice rang out to the point of sounding desperate.
Then came indiscriminate footsteps. It was the sound of servants—who normally moved so silently, as the butler demanded of me, like they were there and not there—running in a mad scramble. They dashed into their own rooms without caring in the slightest that the butler was watching. The butler, too, couldn’t hide the look of wanting to lock the door and barricade themself inside like the others.
"Once a day is enough."
The butler answered in a trembling voice. It was an answer I couldn’t believe, if I only recalled how faithfully devoted they had seemed until now. Could it be that once this rut ended, they wouldn’t remember what they did or said? Like the people at the tavern, who laughed and joked the moment the prince turned around.
"Understood."
The moment they heard my answer, the butler ran upstairs in a frantic hurry, where their room was.
The corridor fell silent again. The connecting passage that led into the main house, too, was tightly shut before I knew it.
Was it just my imagination? From far away, it felt like I could hear the cry of a beast.
※
My day became even simpler.
At 2 p.m., when the sun was highest in the sky, all the servants gathered in the dining room and ate. When the quiet meal ended without a single word exchanged, the servants took bread and cheese and pickled fruit, things the cook had baked and piled up all at once, and returned to their respective rooms. Even the cook. And then they didn’t come out again, shut up inside, until the next day’s mealtime.
I prepared the prince’s meal in the dining room they’d emptied. If I set down a tray of freshly plated food in front of the prince’s door and came back carrying the tray I’d left there the day before, my routine was over just like that.
When I was putting bread and cheese and pickled fruit—and stew with ingredients all mashed together, like something from an inn—onto the tray, a hollow laugh came out. The prince’s meal was the same as the servants’, or more precisely, it was the leftovers after the servants ate first.
If someone asked what the problem was, since we were all the same kind of person, I wouldn’t have a retort. But did the people working in this mansion really think the prince was the same kind of person as them? In ordinary times, he was a lofty lord whose face you couldn’t even dare to look at properly, and in this very moment, he was a monster that threatened your survival.
Even the one who came into this mansion later than I did acted like the other servants.
On the third day, I added one step to my schedule.
"You, why are you still here...."
The butler, coming into the dining room with unwilling steps as if they’d dropped something important, trailed off. Their gaze wavered as it flicked back and forth between the kettle and the dripper in my hand. They soon turned away from me. They picked up the pocket watch that had fallen by the seat they’d been sitting in and ran out.
I poured hot water into the dripper. It wasn’t the coffee pot inside the locked display cabinet; it was a kettle with a blunt, short spout, so I had to pay more careful attention to controlling where the water fell and how much.
Holding the tray with the last addition—a cup of strong-brewed coffee—I stepped out into the corridor. I stopped for a moment in front of the tightly locked door. I undid the three padlocks and went through into the main house. And then I locked the three padlocks on the main-house side.
What would happen if I left this door unlocked? All the servants were in their rooms, and the prince had locked himself inside his own room.
I couldn’t bring myself to carry out the question I’d briefly thought of. Because it felt like, even knowing I was in the main house, they’d hook the padlocks from the other side.
The main house, which used to boast a gleaming marble floor and broad windows, was dim even though it was midday. It was because before the servants fled out of the main house, they’d covered every window with blackout screens. The curtains, originally elegant in color, hung in a gloomy droop, swallowed by darkness.
The expensive lights that used gemstones were, as if it were only natural, all turned off. I walked forward relying on the candle flame set on the tray.
As I went higher, the sound of my footsteps, which had echoed in the empty space, stopped being heard. Instead, what filled that place was a groan. Or it might have been a scream. Or a wail.
Sounds the prince was making, locked in his room.
There was no locking mechanism on the outside of the door. And yet, I didn’t feel any attempt from within to open it.
Knock knock. Just as the butler had before going into the prince’s room, I knocked on the door. At the same time, the noise that had filled the dark corridor cut off dead.
"I’ll leave your meal at the door, my lord Duke."
The first time I stood in front of this door carrying food, the truth was, I was scared too. Because the sound—like it was spilling out because it couldn’t be endured—had cut off dead. Like it knew I was standing here. Even though I hadn’t made a single sound.
It’s a little funny. It’s the same situation, and yet unlike three days ago, right now I feel like the prince is hiding. Like a young beast burrowing into a cave to avoid a human hand.
The tray I’d brought the day before was left there, exactly as it was, cold. For three days, he hadn’t eaten anything.
"I brought coffee as well."
From beyond the door, there was still no sound. It was like the noise I’d heard until a moment ago had been a lie.
"The coffee I brew is good even when it’s cold, so drink it later, at least."
I set down the tray that still held warmth and lifted the tray with food that had gone completely cold. To the eye, they were set up exactly the same. Except for the one cup of coffee I’d brewed.
I turned around and retraced the way I’d come down. When I reached the landing, a huge sound rang out. A sound spilling out because it couldn’t be endured.
'You start wanting to make the other person submit and dominate them?'
I stopped on the stairs and looked back.
To my eyes, it looked like he was rejecting people. Like he wouldn’t let anyone come near him.
"What are you doing?"
At the butler’s horrified tone, I held up a sausage, nicely browned, with the spatula.
"Grilling sausages, like you can see."
"Why, this pointless thing...."
The butler would be right. I nodded.
From the third day onward, the food on the tray I brought to the prince was disappearing little by little. The remaining food clearly had marks of being gripped by hand and torn with teeth, and the amount missing was extremely small. The prince’s table manners were normally very elegant, but right now, it felt like he’d forgotten even how to use utensils. He clearly couldn’t properly taste the food, either. He was simply keeping himself alive, barely, enough not to die. So what I was doing was definitely a pointless thing that only wasted food.
And yet the coffee cup alone had been emptied clean for days.
"If I make you eat the same thing every day, you might get angry later, you know."
"You think you’re special."
The butler spat the words out as if chewing them up.
"That powerful strength, it’s something you can’t have unless you’re a monster."
The butler, seeming to feel revulsion at what they’d said themself, soon slammed the dining-room door shut and left.
The sausages I’d worked hard to grill would cool and be thrown away. The fried egg I made yesterday, the bacon I grilled the day before that—both were discarded without a single sign of being touched.
Still. If he saw a different menu every day, wouldn’t he be able to tell that the days were passing? In a place where not even a speck of light got in, you wouldn’t even know the flow of time.
That was the reason I was stubbornly doing this pointless thing.
Even if it was a different menu each day, simple grilling was all I could do. After grilling bacon, eggs, and sausages, I couldn’t think of any new menu items. After that, I rummaged through the food storage and changed up what I could serve with bread each day. Strawberry jam, grape jam, apple jam. When it came to food, I had no creativity at all.
It wasn’t only for the prince. I needed something to bury myself in, too. Letting time pass without thinking made me recall the memories from when things were at their absolute worst. The time when I spent each day meaninglessly. The time when I lost my entire family. Like the prince right now—curled up, only hoping time would pass.
So in truth, it was all for myself. Because I hated my wounds being poked.
But even the kinds of fruit jam had limits. When it became exactly two weeks since the prince entered rut, I picked up sweetened condensed milk instead of jam and made a cafe bonbon.
It was impossible to recreate espresso with hand drip, but I still brewed the coffee as strong as I could and let it cool thoroughly. Because I couldn’t guess how much temperature the glass of this era could withstand. When the coffee had cooled enough that it wouldn’t feel hot if it splashed onto my hand, I poured it into a glass, and then piled on a generous amount of sweetened condensed milk. It was a coffee with visual fun, where you could watch the pale condensed milk form layers with the dark coffee and then slowly melt down. For the prince in his normal state, it would be a taste that made him frown, saying it was too sweet.
Now even the butler didn’t interfere with what I did. I left the empty kitchen and entered the main house.
When I stepped up to the third floor where the prince’s room was, I could feel the glass window, covered with blackout screens, trembling. It was resonating with the sounds the prince was making.
Were the symptoms getting worse? It was already the second week. Without realizing it, my steps quickened.
Knock knock. I knocked on the door. The signal that used to erase every sound as if it were a lie—at this moment, it didn’t seem to have reached the prince.
Wooooong. The trembling of the window grew worse. The prince’s roar punched through the door and lodged itself in my eardrums.
It felt like the entire building was vibrating. Like there’d been an earthquake, the floor beneath my feet shook.