A Mad Lady’s Confession - Chapter 75

“What do you eat to grow this big?”

She spreads her pale, slender fingers wide, compares them with his, and chatters away.

“You’re tall, your hands are big, and also….”

Her voice fades as her face turns red.

He refuses to pretend not to notice and insists on confirming it.

“My cock is big too?”

She draws a small, shocked breath and exclaims that she can’t believe a nobleman would say such a thing.

When he wraps an arm around her waist like a brute and pulls her close, she repeatedly squeals and bursts into laughter.

“I love you. Matthias, I love you.”

“I’ll make you happy.”

You shouldn’t have said those things. You should’ve left me unaware instead.

I’m sorry…. I’m sorry….

Did you really say that too?

“….”

His question drifted away without an answer, and he opened his eyes.

The moment he became aware of the black ceiling, a vicious headache spread through his skull as though splitting it apart. Clenching his teeth, he gripped his temple and sat up in bed.

He opened the silver flask on the bedside table and brought it to his lips, but only the strong scent of whiskey spread from it. Nothing came out.

With no other choice, he pulled the bell cord.

Pitch-black night still lay beyond the terrace. Judging by the number of times he’d drifted into shallow sleep and awakened, dawn would soon break. He thought it would be fine to begin the day around now.

Aware that their master’s day had already been brought considerably forward, the entire estate soon awakened.

In the depths of winter, the butler approached his master with concern as he stood on the terrace without a coat, dressed only in indoor clothes. White vapor rose from the man towering like a mountain.

“Master.”

The face that turned at the call had a sharply defined jawline. After pressing his cigar into the silver tray on the terrace railing and extinguishing it, he asked the butler, “Have any letters arrived?”

“Here they are, Your Grace.”

A large hand took all the various letters the butler offered him at once. Reject this one, reject this one too… and this one as well….

At the end of the year, nobles competed to host banquets. The parties that had been postponed one after another due to Prince Rüntgen’s sudden death and the emperor being confined to bed regained momentum from the day the crown prince announced that he would hold a banquet.

Even Matthias would ordinarily have attended one or two of them out of courtesy, but he declined every invitation he received.

“Reply to the New Year’s cards as you see fit. Don’t report them to me separately.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“I’d like a glass of glögg.”

The butler’s eyes filled with concern as he watched the duke ask for heated alcohol so early in the morning.

From what he could see, his master wasn’t in his right mind.

He appeared to handle the family’s affairs and businesses efficiently, but he put no care into any of it. Sometimes it even seemed as though he’d abandoned everything to whatever fate awaited it.

Irreverent though the thought was, the butler sometimes wondered whether some other being had donned his master’s skin.

“…Your Grace, forgive my presumption, but perhaps you should pay a little more attention to your health.”

“Why?”

Why? It was something he naturally ought to do, yet he asked as though genuinely puzzled, like a man who cared nothing about such matters.

“Just bring me the glögg.”

Unable to defy his master’s wishes, the butler suppressed a sigh and withdrew. Matthias leaned against the terrace railing.

His white breath spread through the still-dark night, pushing it back. As always happened whenever he was alone like this, a question was cast into the emptiness of his mind.

Where could that small body be?

Throughout the previous autumn, he’d scoured the entire empire. He desperately wandered in search of the woman, to the point that it was fair to say he’d searched everywhere within his reach.

No matter how vast Römern was, once he resolved to find something, there was no chance he would miss it. Yet there wasn’t a trace of the woman anywhere.

He’d even doubted his own memory, wondering whether she had truly existed. Just as the woman had created the imaginary existence called “Del,” perhaps he too….

“Where is Eleanor Brynhill now?”

In that context, storming into the Brynhill estate had been an entirely natural course of action. He’d been on the verge of truly losing his mind.

He doubted his own memories and the woman’s very existence…. Had he perhaps been living with an illusion?

“Why are you asking us?”

Count Brynhill, the woman’s brother, answered with utter indifference. His sister was missing, and no one knew where she was or what she might be suffering, yet he showed not the slightest concern.

Matthias ground his teeth at the man’s heartlessness. Even so, he had to ask again.

“…If you cared so little about her, why in the world did you summon your sister to the capital? You even threatened the crown prince by invoking his honor.”

Hair the same color as the woman’s, and a mask-like pallid face that looked nothing like hers. As Matthias struggled to find some trace of the woman in that cold face devoid of blood, an indifferent answer returned.

“Because it was necessary.”

“Are you saying you used Eleanor?”

“Used her? She wanted you too.”

“….”

“When we told her she would be marrying you, she accepted. Perhaps she was the one who used you.”

“…Do you know Del?”

“No. I know no one by that name.”

That was the end of it.

Afterward, Count Brynhill refused Matthias Nielsen’s requests to speak again. He said there was nothing more to discuss, and since she was a daughter who had married out of the family, there was nothing he could do.

As though it were only natural for the woman to disappear from the world.

As though it were already certain that no one would search for her if Matthias didn’t….

“…Eleanor, where are you?”

No answer returned when he asked the empty air. Even so, he spoke and allowed himself to hope. Perhaps someone might answer him. Perhaps God would tell him where the woman was.

Only then did he feel as though he could live. As though he could finally breathe freely again. He had to know where she was.

“….”

Did he have the right?

Did he have the right to search for a woman whom not even her family sought?

He no longer knew. He knew only why he wanted to find her.

It wasn’t to demand answers about the secrets she held, nor to press her about what in the world she’d plotted. Nor was it to ask whether she’d accepted the marriage to use him, as Count Brynhill claimed.

The truth was, he wanted to make sure. He wanted to know whether the woman was safe. Whether she was crying.

How the woman who’d said she loved him felt now.

He had to know.

Matthias lowered his gaze to the sole invitation remaining in his hand.

There was one more thing he needed to confirm there in order to find the woman.

***

If a god who protected Römern truly existed, that god would never tolerate the sight of the imperial banquet hall now.

The god would send down a ball of fire and burn them all to death, or raise a wave and sweep every one of them away.

Half the residents of Catalman had been slaughtered in the imperial family’s armed suppression. Yet only a few weeks after witnessing that bloodshed, they held an extravagantly lavish banquet.

As though those deaths were both natural and insignificant.

Nor was the conflict within the empire the only issue. A child of the imperial family had died before reaching his first birthday.

No one failed to understand the crown prince’s intentions in ostentatiously holding a banquet instead of properly mourning his own blood brother.

See it with your own eyes. Confirm who the next ruler of Römern will be.

Even so, no one criticized him. Instead, the banquet hall teemed with nobles who pursued the primitive sensations that stimulated their eyes, ears, and tongues, praising the crown prince and showering him with empty flattery.

If the god who created them saw this spectacle, that god would surely be enraged, Alicia thought quietly.

Furthermore, the banquet was unbearably vulgar. It was so devoid of dignity that it was difficult to believe it had been hosted by the crown prince of a nation.

Among the nobles concealing their faces behind masks and wearing suggestive smiles, she spotted someone familiar.

“Matthias.”

“…Your Highness.”

Alicia quietly looked up at his face and frowned.

“What happened to your face….”

How did it get that bad? Alicia was about to point out how gaunt and sharp the man’s face had become, but asked something else instead.

“Why aren’t you wearing a mask?”

“What about you, Your Highness?”

“Well, I… didn’t come to this banquet to enjoy myself.”

She’d come to see just how appalling a spectacle the banquet would be.

“Did you know? I heard that woman called Madam Carnival was invited too. She must be one of those masked people over there….”

Despite attaching all sorts of absurd justifications to the event, the crown prince had held a banquet imitating Madam Carnival’s Lewd Summer Garden. He’d heard about it somewhere and copied it in the most vulgar way possible. Alicia whispered quietly.

Matthias’s eyes moved over the somewhat familiar figures wearing animal masks.

“Why aren’t you wearing a mask?”

“…I didn’t come here to enjoy myself either.”

He’d come to hear it directly from the person involved.

Alicia studied his expression before cautiously speaking, “You know, you…. Ahem… At Solvikviche, with Daphne….”

Matthias’s previously indifferent eyes suddenly widened.

“Matty?”

Leaving Alicia’s worried question behind, he began walking toward what he’d just spotted.

More precisely, he pursued the cyclamen-colored hair disappearing from the banquet hall.