Chapter 7 …
A quiet mansion.
The tranquil noon sunlight slid over the glass windows, illuminating the hazy dust in the air.
Azel, shut away in the darkness, silently observed that peaceful scene.
His thoughts were tangled, and his insides were even louder than his mind—he needed time to think.
“I’ll make sure to give your life back to you.”
The woman who had said that was now in prison.
He had removed her from his sight, so she should no longer have crossed his mind—yet as time passed, her face grew clearer and clearer in his thoughts.
“Azel.”
She acted as if she knew him well.
She even said she knew about this place, didn’t she?
On the day Seymour reported in.
Hearing his subordinate say that she had wandered around the mansion with nostalgic eyes plunged Azel into even deeper contemplation.
“So that’s it. That’s what it was.”
A mind stripped of oblivion remembered every single word the woman had murmured, not missing a thing.
And yet, he could not remember the meaning of those words—or the woman herself.
It had been like that from the start.
He had merely asked who she was, but she alone had panicked, alone had realized something, and finally ended up hurt.
With unbearably painful eyes, with an unbearably sorrowful voice, she called out to him—yet she revealed not a single truth.
And still, the reason he could not simply turn away lay in her gaze.
Eyes that held faint resentment soon poured out an even greater sorrow in stifled silence. And strangely enough, what remained at the end was neither resentment nor sorrow.
Affection.
That dazzling affection—so worn it had nearly been rubbed away—was something even he could not pretend not to recognize.
Why can’t I remember?
Of course, he could not fully trust the woman’s words.
But.
But even so…
“Master.”
At that moment, a voice cut through Azel’s long train of thought.
“Are you all right?”
It was Seymour, who had been carefully watching his master’s condition.
“What about the woman?”
“She’s the same as yesterday. Still pounding on the walls, apparently. She seemed quite unstable.”
Hearing about her condition plunged Azel back into thought.
She really does know about this place.
The prison held a single secret.
A contingency built in by the mansion’s designer—an escape measure in case the owner were ever imprisoned by an enemy.
Only Azel knew about it.
And yet, the moment the woman was locked up, she had naturally begun searching for that mechanism.
If I hadn’t sabotaged it beforehand, she would have escaped immediately.
Should he just kill her after all?
Faced with a situation he had never experienced before, the savage monster inside him whispered that anything bothersome should simply be removed.
But I can’t do that.
If the woman truly was the only one who could free him from this dreadful shackle, then this impulse needed to be restrained.
And if she’s lying… then I can make her pay dearly for deceiving me.
Countless thoughts churned beneath his expressionless face when—
The door opened, and another subordinate entered.
“Master, I believe you should come see this.”
“What is it?”
“The woman has escaped.”
For the first time, a crack appeared in Azel’s impassive face.
*
This damn house. It’s needlessly huge.
If it felt like my language was getting rougher, that was just my mood.
More importantly, it hurts like hell.
After spending an entire day enthusiastically punching the wall with my bare hands, there was no way my hands would be fine.
But looking at my swollen hands only made me angrier for another reason.
If I’d known escaping would be this easy, I wouldn’t have gone through all that trouble.
The way I got out of the prison was nothing special.
In a fit of resignation, I used the silver pin of the brooch on my clothes to poke at the lock a few times—and the door opened.
That’s right. Just that was enough to undo the lock.
What I felt at that moment wasn’t joy at success, but fury.
My newly discovered acquired talent, my ass.
This was not how I wanted to discover a talent.
Fortunately, that anger didn’t last long.
“…So it really is pink hair.”
Because as I walked down the empty corridor, I finally caught my reflection in the glass window.
I already knew my hair color, since it brushed against my waist, but this was the first time I had properly seen myself.
“…Hmm.”
My impression of my reflected face was simple.
I was ridiculously pretty.
That jerk Azel—turns out he’s more of a looks guy than I thought.
A high-bridged nose and eyes like a still lake.
And what about that pale, clear skin that made the luscious pink hair stand out?
My haggard face from all the suffering only added to a pure, delicate beauty.
The kind of beauty that looks like it has a story.
No wonder he had calmly listened even when I suddenly showed up and spouted nonsense. It was all thanks to this face.
Possession isn’t as bad as I thought.
Just as my heart grew generous with this sudden goodwill, the person I had been waiting for appeared.
“You seem calmer than I expected.”
As anticipated, it was Azel.
“I thought you’d be running around like a panicked colt on fire.”
But the Azel inside me had long since turned into an ordinary looks-obsessed guy. I wasn’t scared anymore.
“I’m not planning to run away.”
“That’s not what it looked like. You caused quite a commotion.”
“I just wanted to get out of there.”
“Why? If you’d stayed put, I might have spared your life.”
For a moment, I almost told him to stop talking nonsense—but fortunately, I didn’t yet have the courage.
“I wouldn’t have been able to see you.”
“What?”
“I wanted to see you.”
“…!”
“I wanted to see you even a little more, to talk face to face—but you kept avoiding me. So I forced myself to come out. Because I missed you so much.”
Silence fell at once.
Unable to find a response to my calm words, Azel’s gaze wavered for a brief moment.
Huh?
It was only an instant, but I definitely saw it.
He was shaken by what I said.
A thoughtless remark had produced an unexpected effect. Based on that, I needed to revise my plan on the spot.
I was planning to negotiate more, but should I push the emotional angle first?
My mind immediately started spinning.
I had to avoid being thrown back into prison at all costs.
*
She missed me?
When the exhausted-looking woman said those words, Azel was momentarily flustered.
Why?
He didn’t even know the reason himself. He was simply left speechless.
“Azel!”
At that moment, the woman urgently called out to him.
Wondering what trick she was trying this time, he watched her—only for her to dash over and grab his hand.
“…!”
Startled by the sudden contact, he almost instinctively knocked her hand away.
But she ignored that and focused intently on his palm.
“What is this? You’re hurt.”
Only then did he realize she was talking about the wound on his palm. It was an injury from two days ago, when he had unconsciously clenched his fist after hearing that his eternal life would never end.
Why are you making that face over something like this?
A wound from fingernails digging into his palm couldn’t possibly be serious.
Yet the woman was beside herself with worry over a tiny blemish barely worthy of being called a wound.
And what about her own hands, swollen and bruised?
Perhaps because of that, Azel found himself asking this without realizing it.
“What’s your name?”
“Ah…”
He swore it was a mistake. It wasn’t a question that fit the situation, nor had he asked it out of genuine curiosity.
It was nothing more than a slip.
And yet, at that small mistake, the woman once again looked as if her world had collapsed.
Normally, watching her cry and laugh over a single word of his should have seemed foolish—but for some reason, he didn’t even feel like mocking her.
“So that’s it. Right… a name. You really don’t know my name.”
Countless conflicts circled the edge of her tightly pressed lips before disappearing.
Because of that expression, Azel now truly wanted to know her name.
“Tell me. What’s your name?”
*
…My name?
Cold sweat trickled down my back at the completely unexpected question.
I’d only just learned what I looked like—how was I supposed to know my name?!
Is Park Chun-bae an option?
I was the type who named every character Park Chun-bae1, Park Chun-bae1054, or Park Chun-baeDeliveryTribe119 whenever I played games.
There was no way someone like me had any talent for naming fantasy characters.
I can pick a prison lock, but I can’t come up with a name?!
I felt a wave of self-loathing, but with Azel waiting seriously for my answer, my urgency only grew.
“…”
As the silence dragged on, suspicion and wariness naturally rose in the red eyes watching me.
I really had to say something now.
In the end, my choice was—
“Then… will you name me?”
A perfect transfer of responsibility.
