Chapter : 19
“It was all my doing! I did it all on my own! I’ll accept any punishment willingly! So please… please spare my younger sisters…!”
As she spoke, thick tears streamed down Ellyn’s eyes and fell in heavy drops.
I watched her for a moment, then sank into thought.
I’d noticed long ago that Ellyn had something else on her mind.
It wasn’t that I suspected her from the very beginning.
But after settling in here and observing things little by little, Ellyn’s peculiarities started to stand out.
Compared to the other two sisters, she was especially eager to stay by my side.
Under the pretext of attending to me, Ellyn never left my side from morning until night.
There were three maids—she could have rotated duties—but instead, she stubbornly followed me everywhere.
That was when I first got a bad feeling.
So I quietly looked into Ellyn’s background.
Since neither she nor I could leave the island anyway, it wasn’t difficult to investigate.
Thanks to that, I learned several additional suspicious details.
For instance, Ellyn regularly sent secret letters through the magic mailbox to someone other than Harten.
Her younger sisters, Bellin and Selin, didn’t know the specifics about the debt their parents had left behind.
And most interesting of all was this:
Among the tea leaves Ellyn managed, there were some that were lethal to pregnant women.
Even a small amount could immediately induce a miscarriage.
Of course, these weren’t widely known tea leaves.
If you weren’t pregnant, they caused no particular harm, and they weren’t common either.
If I hadn’t practically lived in the library to acquire knowledge of this world, I wouldn’t have known about them either.
Tea leaves for inducing miscarriages…
That alone made it easy to infer who was behind Ellyn.
Who would fear Eani’s pregnancy the most?
Only Duke Seind and his wife—Harten’s parents.
In the original story, they were the very couple who tormented and abused Eani Nasel so relentlessly.
So when they learned she was on this island, it wouldn’t have been strange for them to hastily plant a spy or two.
The reason the duke was so confident that my legs were fine was probably information Ellyn gave him.
Even after uncovering Ellyn’s true position, though—
Suspicion alone wasn’t enough to tie her up and interrogate her right away.
Including me, there were only five humans on this island.
Three of them were those sisters, and making enemies of them would be troublesome in its own way.
More than anything… I promised myself I’d live this life a little differently.
In the past, I never let even slightly suspicious people off the hook.
I never bothered to find out what circumstances they were in, whether they acted intentionally or were merely being used.
I was always quick to cut them down without hesitation.
Like throwing away a part while assembling a toy just because it had something on it, immediately replacing it with a new one.
When in truth, it might have just been dust that would’ve blown away with a puff of breath.
Back then, I didn’t even have the余裕 to notice or understand that.
But now…
I turned my gaze away from the sobbing Ellyn and looked out the window.
Beyond the slightly open window, the beautiful sea greeted me as always.
When I closed my eyes and listened to the sound of the waves, my heart naturally calmed.
Not anymore.
I’d grown adept at observing people.
And to my eyes, Ellyn wasn’t someone inherently vile or greedy.
Earlier, when she worried about my injury, the look in her eyes was genuine.
So maybe, just once…
Listening to Ellyn’s story wouldn’t be such a bad idea.
I slowly turned my gaze from the sea back to Ellyn.
Sensing my attention, she looked up at me with eyes swollen from crying.
“Lady Eani… please, at least my sisters…”
Until the very end, Ellyn put her younger sisters first.
I stared at her for a moment, then smiled faintly.
“Start by telling me.”
“…Pardon?”
“Why you went under Duke Seind and his wife, and how much you told them.”
I’ll decide after hearing your reasons.
At my words, Ellyn’s eyes shook violently, and the tears she had barely managed to stop spilled out again.
It took some time before she could speak properly.
Among the three sisters, the eldest, Ellyn, had always been a responsible child.
Because in place of her busy parents, it was her role to care for, teach, and protect her younger siblings.
Was that why—
She couldn’t tell her sisters just how vicious the debt contract their parents had signed before dying of overwork?
Why she couldn’t tell them that even with all three of their wages combined, they could barely cover the ever-growing interest, let alone the principal?
Thankfully, thanks to the young duke’s offer, there came hope that the debt could be repaid—but…
How could she tell them that the loan sharks were deliberately avoiding her and postponing collecting the principal?
She’d heard that there were scumbags who intentionally avoided debtors, making it impossible for them to repay.
But she never imagined it would happen to her.
And since Ellyn was half-confined on Tadivna Island, she couldn’t even freely go looking for the lenders.
Still, the fortunate thing was…
Despite her failure to pay interest, the loan sharks never came looking for her.
Whether that should be considered fortunate or ominous, she didn’t know—but in any case, they didn’t appear.
Time passed fruitlessly, and just as life on Tadivna was starting to feel familiar—
An unexpected person sent her a letter.
Along with a debt contract where the interest had piled up like a mountain.
“I have purchased all of your debt, so you will obey me unconditionally from now on.
Otherwise, your sisters will spend the rest of their lives wallowing in the mud.”
The Duchess of Seind threatened her using the debt as leverage.
Ellyn wanted to shout that this was unjust, that the lenders had used tricks to make repayment impossible from the start—but she couldn’t.
Her opponent was a noble duchess whose shadow she dared not step on, while she herself was nothing more than a powerless maid.
All Ellyn could do was bow her head and say she would do whatever was asked of her.
Naturally, she couldn’t share any of this with her sisters.
And so, Ellyn became the duchess’s pawn.
“Wow, sis! Look at the sea! It’s so pretty!”
“But there’s really nothing here… I should’ve brought some books to read.”
“With what money would we buy books?”
“Oh, come on! The debt’s all paid off now! Just like when we were kids, we can buy all the things we want to read or have!”
Her younger sisters’ thoughtless words made her heart drop.
She nearly shouted that not a single coin of their debt had been repaid, that the money the young duke had given was still sitting untouched in her luggage—but she somehow held it in.
There was no need to burden her sisters with this weight too.
As long as I do well. As long as I do well…!
Then the duchess promised she’d erase the debt as if it never existed…!
Ellyn repeated those words to herself like a form of self-hypnosis.
Fortunately, the task the duchess gave her wasn’t difficult.
“Keep a close watch on Eani Nasel and report what she does.
Do not leave her alone with Harten Seind.”
Ellyn carried out that mission diligently.
From the start, Eani was an easy mistress to serve.
She spent most of her days sleeping behind drawn curtains or simply sobbing.
Occasionally she had seizures, but as long as those were prevented, there were no major problems.
And the young Duke Seind rarely came to the island anyway.
That was reassuring—yet at the same time, nerve-wracking.
She never knew when or how something might happen.
And the turning point came when Eani returned from the brink of death.
“I’m going to change! I’ve decided to live anew!”
The newly awakened Eani shouted in a bright, cheerful voice Ellyn had never heard before.
Ellyn wanted to beg her not to—but how could she?
She could only swallow her true feelings and remain obedient as always.
At least, don’t leave Lady Eani’s side.
With that resolve, she faithfully carried out her mission.
But at some point, Ellyn began writing her reports to the duchess as briefly as possible.
Why did I do that?
She didn’t know herself.
Perhaps, as she observed Eani, she instinctively sensed something.
That the changed Eani was always composed—yet at times, her eyes grew so sharp they sent chills down one’s spine.
