Nox asked even though he already knew.
“Khalid?”
“...He’s not the sort of child who would do such a thing.”
At Maeta’s words, Nox smiled bitterly to himself.
That’s right. Khalid is not that kind of child.
And yet from this moment on, Nox intended to make him into exactly that kind of child.
“Why are you deciding that on your own?”
“Pardon?”
Maeta looked startled. She knew very well that Nox usually treasured Khalid.
Nox descended the stairs slowly. He could see the servants gathered below. They were murmuring among themselves, all staring toward the center of the hall.
“The young master is here…!”
At someone’s small cry, the servants hurriedly parted to make way. At the end of the path they opened, Nox saw Khalid kneeling in the middle of the hall. One of his mother’s maids was pointing at the child and shouting. Her voice was so sharp and loud it rang through the hall.
“I saw that child stealing Her Grace’s brooch!”
His mother had come outside for the first time in a very long while and stood with her back straight. Sickness was written plainly across her face, but her pinned-up hair was arranged perfectly. His father stood beside her, doing nothing but watching her mood.
A hollow laugh escaped him.
His father would never defeat his mother. Not even in a situation like this.
“N-no! I didn’t steal it!”
Khalid cried out in protest. The child had been forced to his knees, held down by the servants.
Then, all at once, Khalid looked at Nox.
At that pitiful gaze, Nox lowered his eyes to the floor for a moment. He did not have the courage to meet those eyes.
“I took Her Grace’s brooch from that child’s hand myself! He’s lying!”
The maid raised her hand high, displaying the blue brooch. Set in a golden frame that cradled the blue gemstone, the brooch looked more expensive than anything else in the room.
Khalid looked at Nox with pleading eyes, trying to meet his gaze.
But Nox did not look back at him.
As though sensing something ominous, Khalid called to him in a trembling voice.
“Y-young Master…”
“……”
“Young Master, you sent me on the errand. Y-you asked me to bring you Her Grace’s brooch. Didn’t you?”
“……”
Nox said nothing.
No—it would be more accurate to say he could say nothing.
His throat had closed.
Regret, over whether he could really do something like this to the child. Doubt, over whether this truly was the best way to get him out of the estate. And then the rationalization he had built on top of all of it.
His lips moved several times.
And in the end, he forced the words out.
“……I never asked you to do such a thing.”
The words came out broken, one by one.
The instant he said them, Nox clenched his teeth without realizing it.
Khalid’s eyes widened so far it looked as though they might split apart. He struggled against the servants holding him and called out to Nox.
“Young Master, Young Master…!”
Nox deliberately turned his head away.
Once the child was driven out like this, he would have another servant place him with another house. He could send word to that house separately. The young Nox believed that everything would proceed according to his will.
But there was something Nox had overlooked.
Olga’s watchful gaze over both him and Khalid. And the state of a woman whose illness had sharpened her temper to its furthest edge.
Olga looked down at the child with a grim expression and pronounced coldly,
“For the crime of daring to lay hands on your master’s property, and for the crime of using another master as your excuse.”
At the chill in his mother’s voice, Nox felt tension seize him before he knew it. He had a premonition that something was about to go terribly wrong.
“Because your intent is insolent, he is to be whipped one hundred times with a lash braided from thorn vines, and then expelled from the house.”
“Mother!”
Nox called out to Olga at once. His eyes shook, unable to hold steady.
“That is far too severe.”
“Too severe?”
Olga’s eyes gleamed with anger and madness.
“He dared to steal his master’s property and then use his master as an excuse, and you call it severe.”
“He is still only a child. Expelling him from the house alone would be enough—”
“My son.”
Olga called to him, her voice calmer now, almost unnervingly so.
“I know very well that child is your servant. But one must not hand down such an ambiguous punishment out of private feeling.”
“But—!”
Without thinking, Nox contradicted her, and as she saw her son’s wavering gaze, she shouted,
“Be silent!”
With a look that made clear she would tolerate no further defiance, Olga gave the order.
“Administer the hundred lashes at once.”
“Yes, Your Grace!”
Nox’s whole body trembled.
The young Nox had never wanted anything like this to happen. If his mother cast the child out, then his father—conscious of her eyes on him—would not dare bring him back in. In the meantime, Nox had meant to place him with another house. Then the child would be completely safe.
But the plans of a child were only ever the plans of a child.
What was this situation now?
“Your Grace!”
At that moment, Khalid tore free of the servants’ hands and rushed to throw himself at Olga’s feet, bowing his head low.
“Your Grace, Your Grace. I was wrong. I repent what I did. So please, please…”
Tears fell from Khalid’s eyes in heavy drops as he begged.
“Please do not cast me out of the house. Please, please…”
“So you still have not come to your senses. Head Maid—what are you doing?”
“Y-yes!”
Maeta took the whip one of the servants brought over. The lash, braided from thorn vines, was thick with thorns. It was never a thing meant to be used for a hundred blows in the first place.
Nox tried to speak to his mother. To tell her that it was true, that he had ordered the child to do it. That if punishment was to be given, then she should punish him instead.
But the instant he tried to open his mouth, Olga’s dark green eyes flashed with a grim warning.
“Keep your mouth shut.”
His mother approached him, set a hand on his shoulder, and whispered in his ear.
“Did you think I would not know that you were the one who sent that child?”
Nox’s eyes flew wide open.
“So in the end, you truly do take after your filthy father. Did you think I would fail to notice that you hold feelings for that child that go beyond mere fondness?”
Nox realized then that his mother stood above him still.
What he had failed to see because he was so used to dealing with his foolish father. The price of the stupidity that had made him forget there was someone above him simply because he had always been praised as more capable than others his age.
“I need that creature removed from before my eyes. Watching first your father and now you make such a spectacle of yourselves is more than I can bear.”
At that moment Maeta clenched her teeth and raised the whip high.
Crack!
The thin fabric of the child’s clothes did nothing to shield him. A scream tore through the hall.
It was Khalid’s scream, his voice just beginning to change with adolescence.
Nox’s shoulders jerked.
Olga pressed hard on his shoulder and turned his body so that he would have a clear view of Khalid being whipped.
Then she whispered again.
“Look at the foolish thing you have done. In the end, you are only a filthy half-breed of your father, but I will make a proper human being of you.”
The grip of Olga’s hand tightened. Her nails dug in, and it hurt.
Nox bit down on his tongue inside his mouth.
Crack!
The child kept screaming.
Nox bit harder. Harder still. The taste of blood began to spread through his mouth. Even so, not a single tear fell from his wide-open eyes. But the burst vessels stained the whites a raw red.
His whole body shook uncontrollably.
At once, Nox wanted to flee from this place and to save the child. But each time he tried to take even a single step, there was his mother’s hand, pressing down hard on his shoulder.
“Look well. This is your sin. Your foolishness. Your fault.”
“M-Mother. Mother…”
Nox spoke haltingly.
Khalid kept taking the blows, and his screams rang through the hall again and again. Nox did not look at his mother even once. He stared only at Khalid, collapsing and bleeding under the whip.
He could not tear his eyes away.
“I was wrong. I was wrong. Please, please make it stop.”
“My son.”
At last Olga’s nails pierced through the cloth and scored his skin beneath. The spot burned.
“What you set in motion, you must endure to the very end.”
Olga’s voice was like a sharp icicle. Cold, piercing, and painful.
“That poor child has suffered for your sake alone.”
After saying that, Olga removed her hand from Nox’s shoulder. Then, looking coldly at the child who was still being whipped, she said,
“Do not let that thing come before my eyes ever again.”
Those words were meant for Nox.
“……”
And they were also meant for his father, who stood there bent low, watching the situation.
The moment Olga left, his father fled to his own room without ever straightening his shoulders. Only Nox remained rooted in place.
Khalid no longer moved at all. He must have fainted under the beating.
Nox rushed toward Maeta, who was still striking the unconscious child.
“Stop—please, stop!”
“Y-Young Master…”
“…Maeta. Please. Just this once, listen to me.”
“……”
Head Maid Maeta knew very well how dearly Nox cared for Khalid.
She immediately began shouting at the others around them.
“What are you all standing here gawking for? Back to your places at once!”
“Yes, ma’am!”
The servants scattered in a rush, and soon only Maeta, Nox, and the unconscious Khalid remained in the hall.
With bloodshot eyes, Nox looked down at him.
That back, which had always been held so straight as he followed after Nox, was now covered in blood from end to end.
Nox stared at Khalid’s ruined back and clenched his fist tight.
And then he remembered what his mother, Olga, had said.
What you set in motion, you must endure to the very end.