Chapter 8 …
That day, Azel ran away.
He made an astonishingly terrified expression, then turned his back and vanished on the spot.
Just when I thought I was inevitably headed back to prison, I was surprisingly led somewhere else—not to a cell, but to another place—by Seymour.
It was the very room where I had first opened my eyes after coming here.
“Please stay here for the time being.”
After personally seeing to my accommodations, Seymour disappeared, and just like that, I became a true guest of the mansion.
‘Well, at least I avoided going back to prison.’
But there was still a problem.
‘Aren’t I being a little too neglected?’
Azel—that jerk—was avoiding me.
“At this rate, a month? Forget it. It’ll take ten years.”
A sigh rose all the way up to my chin.
“Where are you going?”
As I opened the door, sighing heavily, someone immediately spoke to me.
The one looking at me with a sly smile was none other than Seymour.
‘This place should be crawling with people, but everyone moves around like ghosts. Why is the only person I ever see that bastard Seymour?’
There should be plenty of servants in the mansion, not to mention Azel’s followers, yet I hadn’t seen a single one besides Seymour.
It seemed they were all avoiding me, just like their master.
“I’m going to look for him.”
“Oh dear. Sounds like it’ll get noisy again.”
Of course, that didn’t mean I planned to stay put.
For the sake of what I had planned next, we needed to get closer—at least a little.
Around this time every day, Azel usually shut himself away in the depths of the mansion, staring blankly into space.
He had long since grown tired of watching the blazing sun or walking along sparsely traveled forest paths.
No—if he were to be honest, to him, the entire world felt like sitting on a bed of needles.
This mansion had been his long-standing refuge, and because of that, dozens of lifetimes were soaked into every place his feet touched.
A daily life where even reminiscing and getting hurt by memories had become a luxury was more than enough to drain Azel of all motivation.
But even so—
This kind of commotion was not what he wanted.
“I knew you’d be here.”
“…How did you even find this place?”
“There are ways.”
The grin on her face made it difficult to guess her age.
Despite her mature appearance, the guileless, tomboyish smile she wore felt oddly fresh.
The woman who had silently shed tears upon seeing Azel on the first day no longer cried.
Instead, she beamed at him so brightly it made onlookers uncomfortable, pestering him incessantly.
“So, what do you think?”
“About what.”
“The weather’s this nice—want to go on a date with me?”
Just like that.
‘That damn word—date.’
He almost let something decidedly un-aristocratic slip out.
The woman was needlessly bold. Shameless, even—she kept asking him out on dates no matter how many times he rejected her.
‘And she won’t even tell me.’
Azel still didn’t know her name or her age.
Yet she had the audacity to sit beside him and chatter away, as if seducing some innocent young man. It was infuriating.
‘Though in reality, I’m no innocent youth—just an aged monster wrapped in a fresh shell.’
That familiar self-loathing tightened around his throat.
Yet, amusingly enough, the woman didn’t even give Azel time to sink into his disgust.
“You’re ignoring me again? Fine, then today, you’re giving me a name.”
As she suddenly leaned closer, the scent of her skin brushed his nose.
“Calling me ‘hey, woman’ every time isn’t very nice. It feels distant. Doesn’t it make you uncomfortable too, Azel?”
“There’s no need to call you anything. You’re the one who came to bother me over something pointless in the first place.”
Had anyone else behaved this way, he would have already cut off their head. The lukewarm warmth of another person was repulsive.
But the reason Azel avoided the woman wasn’t so much because she was repulsive—more because she left him flustered.
She acted as if she had no concept of personal space.
Just like now.
“How is this pointless? That’s so mean!”
“Get away from me! What do you think you’re doing?”
“Why? I’m not even touching you!”
The woman hopped into the seat beside Azel.
She spread her hands to show a palm’s width of space between them, insisting there was plenty of distance—an utterly ridiculous display.
‘It’d be better to just leave.’
Thinking he’d be dragged into her pace again if he stayed any longer, Azel tried to stand up, only for someone to grab the hem of his clothes.
“Let go.”
“I’m sorry. Please don’t go.”
Just moments ago, she’d been raising her voice like a child throwing a tantrum, yet now her tone had dropped noticeably.
“I’ll stay still. Just… stay here.”
When Azel turned his head without thinking, his eyes met hers.
Her calm blue eyes gazed straight at him without wavering. Whenever he looked into her eyes, Azel found it strangely difficult to refuse her.
“You’re not planning to lock me up again, are you?”
“If you keep acting this recklessly, I might have to.”
“Oh. Then I really shouldn’t joke around anymore.”
“So you admit you’ve been joking this whole time.”
When he sat back down, the woman smiled quietly at him.
There was no hint of teasing in it. The innocence from before was gone, replaced by a different emotion altogether.
“Even if you lock me up again, I don’t want the basement.”
Her words sounded unusually sincere, making Azel pause for a split second.
“This place has a nice view outside.”
Had he imagined it? The woman had already turned her head, gazing out the window as she spoke.
“What do you think about, sitting here?”
It wasn’t an easy question to answer.
Once upon a time, Azel had sat here, staring out this wide window, thinking countless thoughts.
Most of them were about things he had lost—things he missed dearly. Things he no longer allowed himself to recall.
Time that had been stolen never came back, so thinking about it was meaningless.
“Nothing. I’m just resting.”
The woman let out a small laugh, as if she’d expected that answer.
Just as irritation began to stir, her gentle voice continued.
“When I look at windows, I’m reminded of the past. A wide-open view like this was something I could never even dream of, so it feels strange to look at.”
Confused, Azel turned his head, but her eyes were still fixed outside.
“I could see people’s feet passing by against gray walls. More precisely, only their feet. There wasn’t trash lying around, but watching those busy feet somehow made me want to see the sky.”
It was a strange thing to say.
‘A window where you can’t see the sky?’
What kind of architect would build such a horrible house?
‘Unless you were trapped somewhere…’
Wait.
…Trapped?
The thought struck him, and his parted lips froze.
“How is the woman?”
“She’s the same as yesterday. Still banging on the walls. She seemed extremely anxious.”
The woman who had looked especially unstable while imprisoned.
Her words about hating the basement.
‘Don’t tell me…’
As Azel began to consider a possibility—
“When I could finally see the sky, nothing really came to mind. People’s hearts are strangely fickle.”
Unaware of his thoughts, the woman continued her story.
‘What is it? Why is he staring at me like that?’
Thinking that pushing my luck any further might land me back in prison, I was trying to change the subject, but Azel’s gaze felt strangely intense.
That only made me more desperate to pretend I didn’t notice.
“Back then, every day in that chicken-coop-sized room, I kept thinking—if I could just get out of there, I’d do anything.”
Of course, this sudden oversharing had a purpose: bonding.
‘That’s how people get close, right? By sharing pointless stories from the past.’
Staring at such a wide window had brought back old memories too.
‘That damn semi-basement.’
I had actually lived in a semi-basement apartment back in college.
Trying to find a place near campus left me with very few options.
Back then, seeing people’s feet passing by had been an everyday thing—and that was when I learned just how many crazy people there were in the world.
“So when I finally got out of there, I was really happy. Like—ah, finally! I remember thinking that.”
Now that I said it out loud, it was technically a memory.
‘But not one I’d ever want to relive.’
And if it were an underground prison, all the more so.
As I finished reminiscing and turned my head, I immediately met Azel’s eyes.
It seemed he’d been watching me the entire time I spoke.
“…?”
For some reason, the look in his eyes was unnervingly fierce.
‘What the hell? What’s his problem?’
Did my earlier teasing really piss him off that much?
