Chapter 20: Other Side of the Coin
"Okay...she’s been there for a long time...moreover, I need to confirm if I’m wrong or not..." I murmur in front of Miss Evelyn’s room.
"Clarissa, what are you doing here? You’ve been standing in front of this door for almost 4 hours," another maid passing by says to me.
"Ah, I...I’m following an order from Miss Evelyn..." I lie to her. The order I received was simple and direct, to get materials and come back tomorrow, but I’ve already gotten the materials and I’m waiting.
"Haha, so it’s true that you’re with that loser? Is this some kind of trick to avoid the normal maid work?" She talks about the rule among the maids.
If you serve one of the candidates for the throne, you don’t have to do the normal maid work since you have an obligation to your master, who is your highest authority.
So in exchange, you have to serve any order from your master and take care of their basic things like getting food or washing their clothes, so I, as Evelyn’s servant, am the one who does this.
"It’s not a trick to avoid work, I’m really serving her," I say as the maid makes a disdainful face.
"Really? That girl? Honestly, what are you thinking? Are you going to try to extort things from her to continue being her servant or something like that?" She questions something that has been done in the past.
Although in the past, after a week, Evelyn expelled everyone who tried to do this, since in the first place, it’s not the master who pays our salaries, but the castle itself, and that’s why it’s us who choose the master and usually ask to be accepted.
"No, I’m really just serving her as a maid..." I’m paranoid at night, I can’t sleep well anymore, I’m afraid of being killed by her because I know she’s not weak.
"Of course...you weirdo..." The maid leaves, going away as if I had some contagious disease. I just sigh, I have something more important to do.
Today is the next day, but it’s still 3 in the morning, and I want to check something, what is Miss Evelyn doing that she wanted so much privacy? And why hasn’t she appeared outside the room at all.
I’m curious, and I want to know if she’s very strong, or just much stronger than me. Is she at the same level as the other candidates for the throne? Or is she weaker than them.
Knowing this will help me think about the future. If she’s as strong as the other candidates, then maybe I’ll have a good future serving her, since I’m her first maid and I could become a higher-ranking maid in the hierarchy.
But if she’s only strong, but not comparable to the others, then my future is bleak, reduced to maybe being killed, or after a while someone will kill Evelyn and I’ll become a neutral maid again.
’Let’s see, if I use this, I can open a crack,’ I don’t have the keys to Miss Evelyn’s room, she only leaves the key with me when she’s not in the room, probably to prevent invasions with her inside or something, even though it’s possible to clone the key with a bar of soap.
However, I have an item that I asked a friend for, with this item that my friend got from one of the other candidates, I can temporarily open cracks in doors.
The door itself won’t be open, but the magic of the item will create an altered perception of the door that will allow me to see as if there was a crack. I didn’t understand it very well, I just know that some maids use it to spy on things to gossip about later.
’Let’s see, will she notice?’ I use the item on the door, and soon on the side a false crack appears that will allow me to see the room. Since it’s 3 in the morning, I think she must be sleeping?
"..." I look through the crack and see that she’s out of bed, but there’s a lot of blood on the floor.
’She’s been attacked? Is she dead? That’s a lot of blood!!’ I can’t believe she’s dead, I don’t know if I feel relief or fear, but before I can properly assimilate it, she starts to move.
Blood dripping from her body as it contorts in an unnatural way, my legs tremble, giving in to fear as I fall to my knees watching the crack.
Her body starts to twist more and more at angles that would kill most demons, even with magic, doing such a thing would cause serious problems to the body and bones.
I see the blood dripping on the body as my body fills with the purest fear, this is the scariest thing I’ve ever seen, I rarely go out of the castle, so I don’t have much notion of scary things outside of books.
"..." Soon her body twists again as if restoring its original form perfectly, which spreads more blood around the room in a macabre display, the darkness of the room only makes the vision even more disturbing.
I see Miss Evelyn getting up, but she soon falls like a puppet that lost its strings or something.
’She’s bathing in blood!!!!’ This is the vision I have of her, not the other explanation, I highly doubt she just slipped and fell into this blood after that scary display.
’This blood...could it be from an enemy? Did someone try to assassinate her in secret and she killed her enemy violently, staining the room with blood and getting rid of the body?!’ My body trembles with bone-chilling fear.
Soon Evelyn looks this way, I know the false crack created by the item is not visible from the inside, but I feel she’s looking straight at me as a warning, the blood dripping from her body making everything even more frightening.
I get up and start running, I don’t want to be here anymore, it was a mistake to try to spy on her, I wish I had never seen that, I think I wet myself with fear and I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep for the next few nights.
...
...
...
’Ugh, it’s so hard to get up right’ After stumbling in the blood, slipping and falling straight on my chest in the blood, I tried to get up, but for some reason it was strange to move the joints and I could only look at the door for a few seconds.
Also, seeing these joints as if I were a doll is strange and I don’t like it, it’s good that at least I know how to hide it.
My body like a living puppet won’t differ at all from my previous self, I try to hide these strange joints and as if it were a factory manual I manage to do it.
Although this doesn’t make it easier to move the body, the strange folds still exist, they’re just hidden, so I can still move in a bizarre way even though I look completely normal.
’Tsk, now in addition to needing to learn to move my body properly, needing a long bath with products I don’t have to get rid of the smell of blood, I’ll still have to worry about not falling randomly’ I bet misfortune will still attack me a lot until I learn to properly control my body.
"Okay, no laziness, I’m the most beautiful and courageous of all, laziness is for the weak and Hikikomori who have nothing to do with their lives" I force myself to get up, managing while I see the golden apple I ate.
There’s only the one big bite, I move to pick it up and see that it has maintained its shiny and beautiful appearance even after hours of exposure to the air, although my hand is dirty with my blood, I take a bite.
"Hmm, delicious" Now there’s no risk of eating as many golden apples as I want, after all, what hurt me the most wasn’t the golden apple, but the monster core.
That violent and painful reaction was something that came mainly from the evolution to a living puppet that replaced the organs and the magic of the monster core that was violently released inside my body.
’The golden apple is still delicious, seriously I really want a tree of this fruit’ Maybe in the future, I would love to have a tree of this fruit, I don’t know the exact appearance, but it must be a beautiful tree.
’One day! One day I’ll try to have that cliché scene of the pretty girl reading a book under a beautiful tree’ Although usually this scene is with a cherry tree.
But who cares? I can make my own version, there are several phrases I want to use and several things I want to try, like that snobbish villainess line and arrogant laugh when winning something important against everyone else.
’Yeah!! If Esther is the all-powerful, mysterious final villain with the power to destroy this world, I’ll become some kind of secret final boss who can stop the final villain!!’ Although in the game, Evelyn has never been a boss.
After all, she was too weak to even be a villain, and neither she nor Esther are villains in the game, they’re romantic targets, and no romantic target is seen as a villain.
We have real villains, but those who have villains are not us, the romantic targets, but Grace, who will have some demons and humans trying to interfere.
’Looks like the secret final boss plan went down the drain...’ Lamentable, I have to be more realistic, maybe just being the heroine’s friend who secretly saves the world is good enough.