The Serpent of Paradise - Chapter 5

After finishing their meal, the servants hurried back upstairs. Once Anastasia confirmed that everyone had gone up, she picked up the dish and spoon she had used and headed toward the sink.

Fortunately, the kitchen servants had also gone to the storage to fetch ingredients, so no one was in the kitchen. Not caring that water splashed onto her clothes, Anastasia quickly washed the dish clean, then placed it in the corner of the cupboard before heading toward the staircase she had come down from.

The stairs Anastasia used were the servants’ stairs, designed so they could move without being seen by the masters. Dragging her feet as she hurried up, Anastasia opened the back door and went out into the rear garden.

Under the pouring morning sunlight, the dawn fog was gradually lifting.

‘I should hurry.’

Feeling the morning air growing warmer, Anastasia moved quickly. To the servants who occasionally saw her, her gait looked like she was walking strangely on purpose, something they openly mocked. But none of them noticed that the shoes beneath her skirt were far larger than her feet.

“Ha… ha….”

Only after reaching the forest beyond the mansion’s rear garden with her labored steps did Anastasia finally stop, wiping the sweat from her forehead. After catching her breath for a moment, she stepped into the forest without hesitation. Though she had not walked far, the mansion was already hidden by the trees.

“Phew….”

Only then did Anastasia take off her hat and lift her head. The morning sunlight filtered through the leaves, scattering fragments of light along the forest path. Anastasia took off her shoes and held them in her hands.

These were the only shoes she had left, so she had to save them. Holding her hat and shoes in her arms, Anastasia headed to the place she always went. The dry leaves left from winter crunched beneath her feet.

Normally, she would have looked up at the sky or examined the newly blooming flowers as she walked, but today she couldn’t.

‘A new master is coming….’

The servant’s words she had heard in the kitchen lingered in Anastasia’s mind. The servant who had cautiously spoken those words had continued talking about what he had heard.

The new master was said to be someone who calculated profit and loss carefully, and might dismiss the servants of Edenhurst. The countess had said she would try to ask the new master to take everyone in. But Anastasia knew. She knew that she was not included in that “everyone.”

‘What will happen to me?’

Her arms tightened around the shoes and hat she held. Even though she wore countless layers of clothing, a chill spread through her body.

Anastasia tried to recall each person who lived in Edenhurst. Among those who remained, there was not a single one who wasn’t needed. Even the dog tied in front of the stables. If one were to gather all the people, animals, and things in Edenhurst and choose the most unnecessary….

“You little snake!”

The countess’s furious voice from long ago surfaced in her mind, and Anastasia clutched her cheek. It had been a long time since she was last struck, yet her cheek still throbbed as if it remembered the blow. It wasn’t that she resented the countess. It was only natural that she hated her.

When she was younger, there had been times she resented her a little, but after coming to Edenhurst and encountering a wider world and more people, Anastasia came to understand. Why no one liked her. Why the count had brought her here. And….

As Anastasia recalled the past, her body began to tremble. In the end, she stopped walking and sat down by a nearby stream.

After setting her hat and shoes beside her, she dipped her hands into the stream, and the cold was sharp enough to snap her senses awake. Even so, spring was still spring. There was running water in the forest, and she could wash with it. In winter, she couldn’t wash outside, so after the servants were done, she would secretly slip into the bath at night and hurriedly wash with water that had already turned cold.

After carefully washing her face and limbs with the stream water, Anastasia sat on the fallen leaves, waiting for her body to dry, and looked up at the sky. The worries she had just been thinking about continued to pile one after another.

To think she might have to leave Edenhurst.

Just the thought made her skin crawl and filled her with dread. Anastasia couldn’t even imagine leaving this beautiful land.

Even if the countess hated her, even if Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of the count’s family, ignored her as if she didn’t exist, she wanted to stay here. Wasn’t this the paradise she had always longed for?

The only world Anastasia knew was Edenhurst and the barren village where she had lived as a child. She couldn’t imagine any other place, and she didn’t want to. Then she remembered something Catherine, the count’s second daughter, had said.

“Pathetic. If you hadn’t been in Edenhurst, you would already be dead. How could an ignorant fool like you survive outside? You’d be lucky if you didn’t end up in trouble or starve to death within a few days. Here, take this.”

Knowing that Anastasia still couldn’t read or count and had no skills at all, Catherine had let out a sigh as if she found it truly hopeless, then gave her a pair of shoes that had become too small for her. Those were the shoes Anastasia had set beside her now.

It wasn’t just Catherine. The servants also said there was no place in the world as good as Edenhurst. Anastasia looked around the forest. They were probably right. Where else in the world could there be a place this beautiful?

She didn’t dare wish for a room in the mansion. If she could just hide herself at the edge of this paradise and continue to breathe, she would want for nothing more.

‘Should I hide?’

Edenhurst was vast. And the forest where she spent most of her time had become a place no one entered except Anastasia, since the countess had dismissed the forest keeper after the count died. So if she lived hidden here, no one would find her. As proof, she hadn’t encountered a single person in the forest over the past few years.

Thinking she had found a good solution, Anastasia felt a brief sense of happiness, but her shoulders soon slumped.

She could live in the forest through spring, summer, and autumn. But could she survive there in winter as well?

Impossible. No matter how much of Edenhurst it was, she couldn’t endure the winter outside.

While Anastasia was lost in thought, her body had mostly dried. As she stood up to return to where she had originally been heading, she put on her hat and reached for her shoes.

At that moment.

Rustle.

From a short distance away came the sound of leaves being stepped on. Startled, Anastasia turned around. A man she had never seen before stood there, looking at her.

“Ah….”

Her feet froze as if nailed in place, unable to move even a little. Anastasia stood stiffly, staring at the unfamiliar man who had suddenly appeared.

His platinum hair, cut short, was neat, and his face was clean as well. Between strands of hair lightly swaying in the wind, sharply defined eyes framed deep blue irises. The sharp ends of his eyes gave him a cold impression, yet Anastasia thought it suited him quite well.

Though the lines of his face were sharp, the lines that ran from his jaw down his neck and along his body were broad and open. Anyone could tell that the body wrapped beneath his expensive suit was wide and solid.

Absurdly, Anastasia thought he was beautiful. Until now, the only thing she had ever found beautiful was Edenhurst, but for the first time, something that could rival it had appeared.

As Anastasia stared at the man, forgetting even her own situation, he opened his mouth.

“Who are you?”

A deep, low voice mixed with the sound of leaves rustling in the wind. It was a voice far heavier and deeper than one would expect from such a refined face, creating a momentary sense of dissonance. But that gap only made his presence feel even stronger.

Anastasia’s fingertips tingled, and her body trembled. How long had it been since someone spoke to her? But this feeling wasn’t only because he had spoken to her. Then why….

“…!”

Then Anastasia realized it. Just as she was looking at him, he was looking at her as well. From the beginning, those blue eyes had been directed straight at her. And in those eyes, instead of the contempt and disgust she was used to, there was only curiosity.

At that unfamiliar gaze, Anastasia realized what situation she was in.

Her eyes, which quickly avoided his gaze, shook wildly. Noticing her agitation, the man spoke again.

“There’s no need to be so afraid. I only want to ask which way the Edenhurst estate is.”

At the man’s question, Anastasia raised her hand with difficulty without lifting her head and pointed in the direction of the estate.

“The estate is… the estate is….”

She just needed to say that he should go that way. But perhaps because it had been so long since she spoke to someone else instead of to herself, the words wouldn’t come out properly.

At that moment, the man suddenly moved. He only took a single step, but with his long legs, he closed the distance in an instant and was suddenly standing right in front of Anastasia.

“Would you mind taking off that hat for a moment?”

The man said that and reached his hand toward Anastasia. At that moment, a sharp scream rang through the forest. Startled, the man flinched, and Anastasia turned her body and ran deeper into the forest.

She could hear his voice calling out to her from behind, but Anastasia couldn’t look back.