Chapter 70
Rinoa's bedroom lay under a blanket of darkness.
Only a thin thread of moonlight seeped through the gap in the thick blackout curtains, dimly lighting the room.
Rinoa's face was pale as she lay in bed. Her breathing was faint and uneven.
Sitting guard beside her sleeping mistress was the personal maid, Bibi.
She carefully reached out and wiped away the cold sweat beading on Rinoa's forehead and nape with a towel.
With exquisitely careful, tender movements, so as not to wake Rinoa.
The way she looked at Rinoa was no different from a loyal retainer fretting over the safety of a cherished master.
To stay up through the night willingly for her master. That was the duty of a subordinate serving her master.
-Knock, knock.
The knocking echoed through the silent room.
Bibi put down the towel she had been using to wipe Rinoa's forehead and rose soundlessly.
She approached the door and asked in a lowered voice.
“Who is it?”
“It's me.”
It was Leon's voice from beyond the door. Bibi quietly opened it and stepped outside.
“What brings you to the Young Lady's bedroom at this late hour?”
“I was looking for Bibi.”
“You mean me?”
“I was feeling uneasy and had no one suitable to talk to, so if you're not busy, would you keep me company for a moment?”
Bibi thought for a moment before nodding.
“Very well. A little while should be fine.”
Leon and Bibi left the manor and began strolling through the night streets.
“How is the Young Lady's condition?”
“Her fever won't go down. It's probably not an illness like a cold, but rather because her spirit has collapsed.”
“She can no longer use magic, and she may even lose her sight. It's hardly ordinary stress.”
Bibi nodded heavily.
“Magic was everything to the Young Lady. She drove herself every day, telling herself that to survive, she had to become a greater mage than anyone else. But...”
Bibi couldn't finish the sentence. Her voice had sunk into melancholy.
Leon looked at the dispirited Bibi for a moment before speaking again.
“How long has Bibi been serving the Young Lady?”
“Before I was even old enough to know better. If I remember correctly, it was probably around when I was five.”
“More than ten years, then. At that point, she's practically family.”
“The weight of the years we've spent together probably isn't all that important. Especially not to someone like our Young Lady.”
That was true.
Rinoa was ruthlessly strict in her relationships. She never allowed anyone to cross the line she had drawn.
Only those whose interests matched hers could walk beside her.
“But Bibi is different. The Young Lady entrusts Bibi with everything, big and small.”
“Perhaps.”
“You can tell just by watching from the side. That the Young Lady trusts Bibi more than anyone else.”
“...”
Silence filled the space between them again. In the dark alley, only the regular sound of footsteps echoed.
“It wouldn't be good in many ways to keep talking about depressing things.”
Leon raised his voice slightly and smoothly changed the subject.
“I drank the tea that was in the study earlier. Was that what the Young Lady has been drinking lately?”
“Yes.”
“It was incredibly delicious. I had no idea grass could taste that good. I think I understand why the Young Lady seeks out tea so much.”
A faint smile touched Bibi's lips.
“I'm glad it suits Sir Leon's palate as well. I'll prepare some for Sir Leon from now on too.”
“Thank you. But what is the name of those tea leaves?”
“Are you interested in the tea leaves?”
“Yes. I'd like to recommend it to the friends I made at the academy, and tell His Highness the Crown Prince as well.”
Bibi, who had been answering smoothly, fell silent for a moment.
“Bibi?”
“I'm sorry. I received it from an acquaintance as well, so I ended up forgetting its name.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. I only know that it's a rare tea leaf cultivated in very small quantities in the southern part of the Empire.”
“I see. I wanted to share the taste with my acquaintances. What a pity.”
Another silence fell.
Only the sounds of shoes and the night wind could be heard.
“Sir Leon, it's late. I'm worried about the Young Lady as well, so perhaps we should head back now...”
“Bibi.”
“Yes.”
That was when it happened.
Leon stopped walking.
The voice he spoke next was cold as an abyss.
“Do you really think it makes sense not to know the name of the tea leaves the Young Lady drinks?”
-Tap.
Bibi stopped in her tracks.
She slowly turned her head. Her expression was as unreadable as ever, blank as always.
“I'm sorry. But as I said, I've forgotten the name. I'm not particularly good at remembering things.”
“You didn't forget it. You just can't say it because it's Seokrinhwa, can you?”
“...”
The moment those three syllables left Leon's mouth, the night wind drifting through the alley seemed to hold its breath.
Bibi stood with her usual neat posture. Yet beneath that mask of expressionlessness, a cold current seeped out.
“I'm sorry. I don't know what you're talking about, Sir Leon. What is Seokrinhwa?”
“Let's not pretend now. I already confirmed that the tea was water brewed with Seokrinhwa leaves.”
Right after Leon drank the tea during the day, his status ailment resistance proficiency increased.
Unless there was some invisible poison straight out of a wuxia novel in it, his resistance proficiency had no reason to react.
By elimination, he could only conclude that the tea had been poisoned.
To confirm it, he immediately brought the leftover tea on the ground to Iscalon for appraisal, and the result was exactly as expected.
That the tea was Seokrinhwa.
And.
“You were the one who fed the Young Lady poison.”
That the person who had given Rinoa the poisonous herb was none other than Bibi.
Leon had privately placed Aither high on the list of suspects, but the more he pieced things together, the more it failed to add up.
If he assumed that Rinoa was now addicted to Seokrinhwa and would eventually, in her despair, reach for black magic...
In the original story, the time when Rinoa falls was around summer break.
For Aither, an outsider, to continuously poison her while she remained at the family manor was physically impossible.
Then there was only one person, past or present, who had blended into Rinoa's intimate daily life and could make her swallow poison naturally without raising any suspicion.
No one remained but her personal maid, Bibi, who had moved like her hands and feet for so many years.
Leon's presence in the alley sharpened even further.
“Answer me. Why did you poison the Young Lady? Why you of all people?”
His certain gaze bound Bibi tight. It seemed any further denial would be useless.
Bibi let out a shallow sigh.
“Because that was the best I could do.”
Leon frowned.
“The best? You knew better than anyone how important magic is to the Young Lady. And taking that away was the best you could do?”
“Yes.”
There was not a trace of hesitation in Bibi's answer.
Rather, she was unnervingly calm, meeting Leon's attempt to pierce through her head-on without avoiding his gaze.
“Leon. You don't know. That magic is a double-edged sword that threatens the Young Lady's life.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well. That's all I can tell you. I don't know whether the day will come when you'll understand this.”
The moment she finished speaking, Bibi bent her upper body and braced one hand on the ground.
“I'll leave the rest to you.”
“What?”
Before he could demand an answer, the ground flashed. Acrid smoke and light erupted together, enough to blind his vision.
Leon reflexively drew the sword at his waist and unleashed a sword wind.
The smoke that had filled the alley without a single gap was torn apart along the blade's trajectory and scattered in every direction.
But once the view cleared, only thick silence settled over the alley.
At the spot where Bibi had been standing just moments before, only a scattering of dirt and dust remained, drifting on the night wind.
It had happened in an instant.
“Tch.”
Leon clicked his tongue harshly.
He had suspected Bibi wasn't an ordinary maid. In fantasy, battle maids are practically a given, after all.
If he had tried to catch her, he could have caught her.
Even so, the reason he hesitated for a brief instant was probably the not-insignificant amount of time he had spent with her, and the shallow attachment that had accumulated in that time.
More than anything, the words she left behind just before disappearing into the darkness were still rattling through his head.
‘I'll leave the rest to you?’
Those were not words one would ever expect from a traitor who had wrecked the mana core, the heart of a mage.
Moreover, her expression had carried deep sorrow rather than killing intent or malice.
Almost like the attitude of someone worried about Rinoa.
‘What on earth is going on?’
The more he thought about it, the more it felt like wandering through fog. Nothing was easy to resolve.
Above all else.
“How am I supposed to explain this to Rinoa...”
Bibi was almost the only person Rinoa ever let her guard down around.
Rinoa, who distrusted even her family and treated even others' goodwill like a poisoned apple, had let this retainer by her side without any guard at all.
And now that Bibi, of all people, was actually a traitor who had taken away what you treasured most.
“How am I supposed to say this...”
Leon had no confidence he could withstand the fallout. But keeping quiet wouldn't solve anything either.
The next day.
Leon told Rinoa the truth.
“Bibi... is the culprit?”
“Yes. The tea the Young Lady was drinking was water brewed with Seokrinhwa leaves. Apparently it has narcotic effects too, so the addictiveness she felt was probably...”
Rinoa's pupils trembled violently. The fact that the retainer she had trusted was a traitor was a considerable shock.
“Bibi... where is she now?”
“She's gone. Last night.”
“...”
Rinoa's lips opened and closed several times. As if betrayal beyond imagination had even tightened around her vocal cords.
What if she ended up losing her mind? Just as Leon watched her anxiously, that thought flashed through his mind.
“Pffft.”
Ironically, what burst out of Rinoa's mouth was laughter.
“Puhuhuhuhu.”
Rinoa buried her head deep in the crumpled blanket and shook with laughter. Her breathless cackling rang through the room.
“Ah, seriously...”
After laughing for a long while like someone out of her mind, Rinoa slowly lifted her head.
Her eyes were even damp at the corners, as if whatever she found so funny had brought tears.
“You crawled up from the bottom as a bastard child, and just when you finally thought you could get your hands on something of mine, this is where it all ends.”
“...”
“I knew better than anyone that there wasn't a single person on my side in this world to begin with. And yet I trusted you just because we spent a few more years face-to-face? Disgustingly stupid.”
It was truly a fitting line for a bird that couldn't read the room and had struggled to escape its cage.
Rinoa's empty pupils groped through the air before stopping in Leon's direction.
Even that gaze was slightly off. It hovered around the area beside Leon's eyes, not on them.
“Leon, isn't it funny even to you?”
Her tear-tinged voice trembled miserably.
“Even a street mutt won't bite its master after being taken in for ten years, so how ridiculous must I have looked, struggling to sit in the head family seat while unable to read a single person.”
“...”
“There was no need to despair over losing a little sight now. Even with my eyes wide open, I couldn't even notice poison being mixed right in front of me. What's the point of having these decorative eyeballs? I was practically blind from the start. It might have been better to gouge them out long ago.”
With a crazed smile, self-mocking words that shredded herself poured out without end.
Rinoa's laughter, after panting for a long while, soon faded. Only a heavy silence lingered in the room.
Having spent all her strength, Rinoa leaned her head weakly against the bedhead and closed her eyes.
“Leon.”
Her voice, now devoid of moisture, crumbled dryly.
“You were always asking to be freed too.”
Leon's brow furrowed. Without waiting for a reply, Rinoa continued.
“I'll set you free.”
A hollow voice with no lingering attachment whatsoever.
“Don't stab me in the back later. Get lost in front of me right now.”