A violent shake roused me from the edge of sleep.
To me it felt like I closed my eyes, sank into the sea of blankets, and just as I was about to lose consciousness, I was caught in a net and pulled up.
The hand shaking the person’s shoulder rudely was Shade.
“……??”
I was startled by the attack of someone I didn’t want to encounter when I first woke up, and woke up quite clearly in an instant.
“Wh-what?”
Shade was standing next to my bed, breathing heavily.
I couldn’t call him a pervert or anything, because his appearance was obviously not normal. His white face, illuminated by the dim light at the bedside table, was pale like a ghost.
“Is something wrong?”
“My, my father…”
“Uncle Narcissus?”
Shade pleaded with me with a more desperate look on his face than ever before.
“Give me your eyes.”
Shade’s words were so unexpected.
But I felt like I had heard it somewhere before.
It’s in the game.
“When I was a child, my father asked me to give him my eyes, and he chased me.”
There was no other explanation for this incident, and it was portrayed in such a way that neither the users nor the heroine were sure whether it was a joke or not.
But I had already seen a glimpse of it in this reality. In my uncle’s obsession with the “Red of the Duke of Lilia House.”
“You mean… my uncle is chasing you right now?”
That was all I could hear, and Shade nodded several times.
At that time.
A knock echoed through the room.
I dragged Shade under the covers and pulled the covers over him.
I cover the magic lamp next to my pillow with a special cloth and turn off the light.
The knocking continues.
“Y-yes. Who is it?”
I clasped my trembling hands together, praying from the bottom of my heart that it was Wolf.
“Lycoris. It’s me. Narcissus. Sorry for calling so late, but has Shade come by?”
“He hasn’t come.”
After I said it, I regretted it. It was too unnatural for someone who had just woken up to reply. I should have asked what was wrong.
“I’m coming in.”
Without asking permission, my uncle came into the room as if it were his own business.
It’s dark inside the room.
I waited, clutching my heart, for my uncle to come over to the side of the bed, then I grabbed a pillow and threw it at him.
I threw it with all my might and fortunately it hit my uncle in the face, throwing him off balance. I took Shade’s hand and ran to the door.
The idea of escaping to Wolf’s room crossed my mind, but his room was in the opposite direction from the stairs, and I thought it would be better to let Shade escape rather than drag Wolf into it.
“Let’s run outside!”
Shade and I ran down the stairs to the door leading outside.
But the big door was locked in a way that we kids couldn’t possibly have managed, even from the inside, and there was no time to look for the key.
I asked Shade if he had any idea where I could get out, but he shook his head, breathing heavily. Even though I had played around this mansion before, I had never thought of a way to get out from anywhere other than the door.
For example, we could have run into a room and opened a window to escape, but we didn’t have the courage to run into the rooms lined up along the corridor. For example, if the window shape was such that we, being short, couldn’t use it to get in or out, or if the lock was not shaped properly, we would have been trapped in a dead end.
Unable to decide what to do, we ran to another staircase, driven by approaching footsteps, and headed upstairs, to the attic, the only place I knew of in the Rankrats mansion where it was possible to barricade ourselves in.
We ran up the stairs as fast as we could and into the attic, and together with Shade, I barricaded the door with whatever items we could find, then I told him to climb the ladder in the corner.
This attic has a two-story structure. The first floor is the room you normally enter through a door. From there, you can climb up a simple ladder to the second floor.
After Shade climbed up, I followed suit and pulled the ladder up from above so no one could get up.
Panting and gasping, I sat down, coughing even more because of the bad air.
We quickly opened the window, but there was no wind so there wasn’t much ventilation, so Shade and I ended up sitting by the window.
“Will he come this far?”
“…Probably. The enemy has the advantage of the terrain. Our location will be revealed. The barricades are haphazard, so I don’t think they will last long. If he does break through the barricades, let’s just throw anything we have here at him.”
As expected, since it was a place that was usually used as a storage room, there were a lot of things stored there. For example, even if my uncle tried to climb up using a ladder, I would be able to get in his way and buy him some time.
“How on earth did this happen?”
Looking at Shade from the front again, his complexion was terrible. I just noticed that there were thin scratches on his pale skin lit by the moonlight. They were different from the scratches I had made during the day.
My wariness of Shade hasn’t disappeared, but if this was all just an act, then I’d say he deserves praise.
“After you handed me over to that man, I was locked in my room by myself, but then at night, he came to my room. He said he wanted to have a proper talk with me.”
Apparently I wasn’t the only one who thought, “Finally!”
“I thought, why are you asking me this now? My mask was almost coming off, and I thought it was about time to let out all the frustration I had been building up.”
“For example?”
“I called him incompetent. I called him someone I couldn’t respect as a father. I asked him if he really believed I was his son, and if I was of his blood, I’d be a much stupider person too… Of course, the words I actually used were much fouler than that.”
“Eh? So you’re not related by blood to my uncle?”
“No. Unfortunately, I’m probably that man’s son.”
In other words, he was so frustrated that he wanted him to tell him that he wasn’t his father.
“So… ‘Give me your eyes’?”
“Yeah. He told me to give him my eyes and get out of the house. That was the first time I’d ever heard him get really angry.”
An unpleasant sweat ran down my spine. It may have been because the sweat had cooled, but I still felt chilly.
And at this exact moment, the door leading to the corridor slammed open.
A series of horrible clanging noises echoed throughout the room.
“Lycoris. You’re in there, aren’t you? Come out. I’m not mad at you. You haven’t done anything wrong.”
Of course, I kept quiet, determined not to leave.
Desperately trying to hide my presence, I even tried to hold my breath.
But the barricades were not as strong as my resolve.
Clang, clang, clang, clang
The door was pushed ever so slightly, opening the gap between it and the barricade by about ten centimeters, after which it became fragile.
My uncle stepped into the attic.
My uncle seemed to be searching for a while for the shadow of a large package in the attic, making a soothing noise.
“Shade, if you are sorry, come out now and I will forgive you. Then you will marry Lycoris and have a child. A child with red eyes. He will surely be born with great talent. Grandmother, the one who will fulfill your wish will not be Kafir, who you loved so much! It will be me, who you have despised and shunned!”
His voice rose in an excited tone, then suddenly went quiet.
“Oh, I see. I told you it’s dangerous for children to go up there alone.”
Has my uncle ever said something like that to me before?
In fact, it was my aunt who was constantly interfering in such matters, and my uncle probably had no interest at all in what kind of games we played.
That’s right. My uncle has never had any interest in us.
Not even Krinum, not even my aunt, was of any interest to my uncle.
Even Shade wasn’t someone who really interested my uncle.
I was boasting that I would throw things at my uncle from above, but I couldn’t move from the window. Shade was cowering, just like me, or maybe even more frightened than me. No matter how many people he had hurt, he was still a child.
Neither of us could muster the courage to peer through the gaping square hole into the room below, where the moonlight did not reach, so we just huddled together, shivering. We seriously suspected that if we looked down, we might see a monster there, looking completely different from my uncle.
There’s a clanging sound down below.
I was getting more and more scared. It occurred to me that an adult could climb up there using just a slightly high step stool, without the need for a ladder.
I realize that it was my aunt and father’s kindness that left me and Krinum alone when we fled here as children.
I closed my eyes tightly, covered my ears, and shrank my body so that I was covering myself with Shade. I probably called out for help in a strangled voice.
There was a loud bang and crash below.
It was a sound that could reach even blocked ears.
Next comes the voice.
“Don’t make the children your toys! And especially my daughter!”
My father’s powerful words brought tears to my eyes.
I hope you enjoyed this chapter and thank you for reading!
