Chapter 44
'Hm?'
As I sank into a deep sleep, lulled by the growing drowsiness and Mist's body heat, I tilted my head at the sudden change in my surroundings.
A prison filled with the musty smell of mold.
A prison that was very familiar to me.
'Ha...'
Of course.
This was the prison I had returned to every day in my past life after being tortured and interrogated.
Even among the operatives in the unit I belonged to, it was exceedingly rare for them to know one another's identities.
I was the same, and the other operatives I occasionally met and exchanged messages with were in much the same situation.
So I let my guard down for a moment.
When I infiltrated a country that seemed on the verge of civil war due to a clash of ideologies.
I never imagined I would be betrayed and captured by an operative from the same country who had entered through another route.
'Ah, it still pisses me off whenever I think about it.'
I have no idea why that bastard betrayed me.
There may have been some sort of deal, or perhaps he was being blackmailed.
But I was the victim, so why would I bother thinking about something like that?
I just had to get my revenge and get it out of my system.
'Ha...'
If there was one problem, it was that even after I succeeded in getting revenge, I had lost any way of learning the truth.
The bastard couldn't withstand the tightening noose around him and committed suicide almost immediately.
As I recalled that unsatisfying revenge once again, I quietly watched my past self lying collapsed in this lucid dream.
[Ugh...]
Back then, I had been so weakened by all kinds of torture that I could barely speak.
'Ah, if it's this point in time...'
I roughly estimated the date I had carved into the wall in blood and frowned, having anticipated what would happen.
My field of vision gradually changed.
Eventually, the scene changed to the face of the interrogator looking down at me as I bled from torture.
[Your homeland abandoned you, too. Are you still going to keep your mouth shut?]
So my homeland had abandoned me...
I had been prepared for that from the moment I became an operative.
No matter what anyone said, I knew better than anyone that what I had done was a violation of the law.
So even when I was tortured and interrogated in a country I had never seen before and told that my homeland had abandoned me, I had accepted it.
But.
[Now, look. At how your family is being treated.]
A bundle of papers handed to me as I lay sprawled out, exhausted from the harsh interrogation.
That bundle of papers laid bare how my family was being systematically erased.
My father and mother had immediately reported me missing when the son they thought had found a job at a foreign company disappeared.
But the police listened halfheartedly to my parents and did not even begin an investigation.
When the police remained lukewarm, my father desperately used his connections, crying out on the internet and on television for them to investigate me.
But the situation only grew worse.
It was all laid out in stark detail: they had manipulated public opinion online with all kinds of incitement and rumors to turn me into trash, then encouraged people to curse my parents for raising such a piece of trash.
[...]
[Come on, look. Your homeland is abandoning you and trying to erase your parents, too.]
There was no proof that this information was true.
Even with my mind ravaged by torture and interrogation, I was not weak enough to fall for such a paltry attempt to drive a wedge between us.
[Stubborn bastard...]
When I kept my mouth shut without saying anything, the man left the prison after leaving those words behind.
But the man did not give up.
Starting the next day, it became a pattern for him to hand me information about my parents after I collapsed from torture.
The information about my parents that I received that way was appalling.
My father had been forced to retire under pressure from his company.
My mother's restaurant was on the verge of going under because of subtle information manipulation.
But I did not particularly believe it.
Rather than trusting my homeland, it would have been stranger to trust the men interrogating and torturing me.
Besides, even an objective assessment revealed serious errors in this information.
Would they really abandon an operative's parents instead of protecting them?
If an operative betrayed them and spread classified information, they would obviously be the ones in trouble, wouldn't they?
With such common-sense reasoning, I refused to believe their information.
And so time began to pass.
A year passed.
By then, it had been a long time since the tendons in both my arms and feet had been severed.
The window for treatment had long since closed, and based on what I knew, it was certain that I would never be able to stand again for the rest of my life.
They thrust information at me that my parents had begun suffering direct financial hardship.
Three years passed.
Perhaps because I had gradually grown used to the torture, I felt as though my threshold for pain had risen.
Or maybe my brain had simply gone haywire from feeling too much pain.
They thrust information at me that my parents were running around desperately searching for me while receiving psychiatric treatment because of the abuse they faced online.
Four years passed.
One thing had changed.
Perhaps they had decided that I could not even stand because my tendons had been severed, but they removed my handcuffs.
They thrust information at me that my parents, now excluded from government assistance, were suffering even greater financial hardship.
Five years passed.
Strangely, it was a day without interrogation or torture.
I heard the news that the country that had tortured me had collapsed.
It had always been a country where civil war was rampant because of clashes between ideologies.
That was why I had infiltrated this place—to obtain its information.
Trapped in that country after its collapse, I miraculously survived and managed to escape the prison.
[Ha...]
And the very first thing I did after escaping was verify whether the information about my parents was true.
[Hahaha...]
It took about two years of begging and a bit of good luck to scrape together enough money to return to my homeland.
But I did not return directly to my homeland; I went to a small neighboring country instead.
My homeland had already abandoned me. There was no way I would head straight there.
I used a computer in the small country to obtain information.
[Hahahaha!]
The truth that emerged began to cruelly tear open my chest.
Every bit of it was true.
The circumstances they had described, and the actual events showing that the state had tried to erase my parents, matched perfectly.
The only information about my parents that I bought with every last bit of my money was this:
[Deceased.]
It was disgusting.
Every single thing.
And the most disgusting part was that all of this had happened because I became an operative.
That fact had transformed into a blade that brutally carved up my body and stabbed me.
'It's a memory that's unpleasant no matter how many times I see it.'
Looking at my despairing self from one step behind, I could only mutter that.
It had all ended long ago, and my emotions had disappeared after I took personal revenge and thoroughly screwed over the homeland that had abandoned me.
Even so, seeing that memory again, I couldn't help but feel disgusted.
***
'What is this?'
Mist blankly watched Abel, who had fallen into a deep sleep under her touch.
Abel was sleeping peacefully, breathing evenly—and he had personally placed her hand against his forehead?
"???"
Mist was thrown into confusion.
Her eyes and mind accepted the situation, but her heart could not understand it.
"Umm..."
The warmth of Abel's hand, which tightly held onto hers with a frown as though something was uncomfortable, finally brought an end to the confusion that had continued.
Judging from his even breathing and relaxed body, he was clearly asleep.
But the fact that he did not let go of her hand even in that state clearly suggested that something was wrong.
Seeing Abel like that, she banished every silly thought from her mind.
"...Has something happened?"
It was merely a small murmur to herself.
Swoosh.
Mist gently stroked Abel's head.
Her touch was a little bolder than before.
"Umm..."
Perhaps thanks to her touch, her master grew much more comfortable.
It was quite different from the image of her master that she wanted and longed for.
She had been born and raised in a family whose lifelong aspiration was to place itself under someone else's command.
The problem was that the conditions she wanted in a master were higher than she could have imagined.
A master who was relaxed and unhurried, who could pressure others, and, when necessary, display decisiveness.
Mist had entered the Nebula ducal family in search of such a master.
The king of the underworld.
She had thought that, in this place—one of the Empire's four great ducal families—she would find the master she wanted.
But once she actually joined the ducal family, she honestly could not hide her disappointment.
The head of the ducal family she had believed worthy of serving had already been poisoned by an unknown poison before she arrived, and his health was rapidly deteriorating.
Even among the direct descendants, Mist could not shake the feeling that they were, how should she put it, slightly lacking.
It was then that she met a man named Abel.
His actions, personality, attitude, nerve, stature, and strength. She liked every bit of him.
No, saying that her master was someone she liked would be irreverent.
Yes, she had found the master to whom she could devote her loyalty, the one she had sought all her life.
A master to whom she could offer her body, her heart, and even her soul.
Her master looking so vulnerable...
'Umm, this is...'
The feeling she had first experienced toward Abel had been nothing more than loyalty.
She had met a master just when she was beginning to think she would never meet one in her lifetime, so some of her feelings were showing, but...
She believed that her feelings stemmed from loyalty.
'Quite.'
Of course, she had not expected that this master would be a young man in the prime of his life!
A man who sometimes deliberately acted as though he were seducing her!
A man who so perfectly embodied her tastes that it would be a lie to say such thoughts never crossed her mind at times!
With a mind like steel, she suppressed every desire and served Abel with nothing but loyalty.
'I like this...'
She truly thought so.
Swoosh.
Of course, even now, her hand was stealthily moving around his nape and collarbone.
***
[Long time no see, Sebastian.]
"Hm? Ah, it is a pleasure to see you, Lady Velias."
When Sebastian tried to be excessively formal, Velias immediately waved her hand to stop him.
[Ah, enough. You don't need to be so formal.]
"Understood."
Excessive courtesy could instead be perceived as rudeness.
Knowing this well, and understanding Velias's personality better than anyone, Sebastian straightened his back and slowly began brewing the black tea she had liked for so long.
"So."
Sebastian prepared the tea with very familiar movements, then carefully spoke as he looked at her sitting quietly in her seat.
"How is the investigation into the unidentified people who poisoned the Duke going?"