BDTIE 08

Chapter 8

How Not to Be Abandoned by a Beautiful Master

“I don’t know.”

“How can you not know? It’s because my master might abandon me!”

Enrick had started blaming me in earnest.

“You make me worry myself sick, then pretend you had nothing to do with it? You said you’d kick me out if I didn’t know my name and wasn’t useful!”

Enrick huffed in an aggrieved tone.

I didn’t find him rude or annoying.

If anything, I felt like I was about to laugh.

When I stubbornly kept my mouth shut, Enrick crossed his arms.

“I know my name now, so you won’t kick me out, right?”

His attitude was boldly demanding, as though he were asking for a reward.

Knowing his name proved nothing. There was still a possibility that he was a spy from the Colonaatus Empire.

There was no gladiator arena in the Imperial Palace. And I certainly had no need for a slave who was so handsome that he would distract the maids from their work.

The rumors surrounding Enrick and me, however, were growing more vicious by the day.

There were countless reasons why I should drive Enrick away.

And yet, I was still hesitating.

Enrick seemed genuinely hurt by that.

“You’re still thinking about it? That’s really too much!”

“I have no need for a gladiator slave.”

I said it more to convince myself than him.

I expected him to get angry, but Enrick immediately walked over to the window he had climbed through earlier, as though he had been waiting for me to say those exact words.

Then he pulled up a large, black sack.

“I figured you’d say that, so I prepared this.”

“What is that?”

“A rat that was secretly spying on my master.”

What Enrick dropped onto the floor wasn’t a sack.

It was a man wrapped tightly in a black cloak.

The man was unconscious, his nose broken. Enrick lightly nudged him with his foot and grinned.

His golden eyes sparkled like a hunting dog waiting desperately for praise.

“I caught him. While your guard knights were dozing off.”

“I thought you couldn’t fight.”

“I can. I’m actually pretty good at it.”

“Then why did you keep running away in the gladiator arena?”

“If I fight, I have to kill someone. If I want to win without killing anyone, running away is the only way.”

That was the first time I had seen it myself.

A gladiator match that ended without anyone dying.

Enrick had offered his own body up as entertainment and saved another man’s life.

Why would a man who had stood so arrogantly even before the sword of an elite knight go out of his way to save the life of a slave?

“Those old men were kind to me.”

Enrick smiled without a trace of guile.

A child abandoned by his mother.

A child who had suffered in the name of God and survived as a black worm in the gladiator arena.

And yet, that child was smiling.

His smile was so pure and untainted that, for a moment, I felt as though I had been saved.

It was probably an illusion.

But it was an illusion I was willing to accept.

“Is this enough for me to become your master’s guard knight?”

Enrick’s golden eyes were filled with burning hope and anticipation.

So this was the way you had found to keep the master you finally found from abandoning you.

Enrick had remembered the name he had forgotten and found himself a new role—not as a gladiator slave, but as something more.

And while he was desperately trying to find his place…

I had been trying to die.

Is suicide really the best you could come up with? You’ve already died once, and now you’re going to die again by swallowing the deadly poison given to you by a husband who was no husband and a father who was no father? How foolish, Stella! No wonder you spent your whole life being used!

Even after being given another life, I had believed I could never escape the fate surrounding me.

Because I couldn’t use my legs.

Because I had never learned what happiness was.

Those weren’t lies.

But they were excuses.

Excuses that meant I didn’t have to run away from the things I was accustomed to.

Excuses that meant I didn’t have to give up the elegant, lavish life I had always known.

Excuses that meant I didn’t have to resist or fight.

It was so easy to curl up like a wounded child and resent the empire and Clifford for ruining my life.

I had pretended to be a proud slave, pretending to sacrifice myself for my country and pretending to shoulder every responsibility.

When in truth, I simply didn’t have the courage to fight with everything I had.

What are you so afraid of, Stella? Are you really going to throw away even this second chance you barely managed to get?

I shook my head hard.

A sensation like being pierced through by a red-hot spear swept through my body.

I had never wanted to regress in the first place.

But now that I had been given another chance, I couldn’t waste this time meaninglessly.

My life might end in a few months at the earliest, or a few years at the latest.

How should I make the most of the time I had left?

What was it that I truly wanted?

“The heart is the most important thing. Once it’s wounded, it leaves a scar that can never be healed.”

The man who had said those words was looking at me.

I clenched my fist tightly and listened to my heart.

It was small and fragile, like a firefly drifting beneath the night sky, but it was unmistakably alive.

For the first time, I gave it room inside me.

It felt awkward at first.

But as time passed, that tiny light grew clearer and clearer.

Then it began to shine.

And before long, it became a tremendous radiance that seemed capable of illuminating the entire world, washing over me in its brilliance.

Just once, I want to live freely. I want to live for my own happiness, not because I feel responsible for everyone else…

After losing my precious family and being abandoned by Clifford, I had lost the purpose of my life.

But so what if I didn’t have a purpose?

I could find one from now on.

Something hot and unfamiliar welled up in my throat.

Feeling the powerful beat of my heart, I looked up at Enrick.

If I found happiness I had never experienced before, it would all be thanks to Enrick.

For this sense of fulfillment and this realization alone, I owed him a hundred times over.

“Thank you, Enrick.”

Perhaps he thought I was praising him for capturing the spy, because Enrick puffed out his chest proudly.

“Master only needs to give me an order. I’ll catch them for you anytime.”

“Lower your head toward me.”

Though his expression showed that he had no idea what I meant, Enrick obediently bowed his head.

I reached out with my bruised and swollen hand and placed it on top of his head.

Then I solemnly declared,

“Enrick, I appoint you as the First Imperial Guard Knight of the Angel Empress.”

When Stella’s small hand touched his head, Enrick felt as though his heart were about to burst.

It wasn’t because she had appointed someone who was nothing more than a slave as a knight.

It was because the joy of being acknowledged and the pride of having accomplished something bloomed within him at the same time.

Why did I want this woman’s recognition so badly?

He had asked himself that question countless times, but there had never been an answer.

Enrick didn’t know who he was.

He wasn’t even curious.

He hadn’t realized that his memories were gone.

When he was hungry, he ate.

When he was sleepy, he slept.

When he was told to fight, he fought.

A sword was as familiar to him as a part of his own body.

He fought, but he never wanted to kill anyone.

Then, in the gladiator arena, he met Stella.

The moment he saw her devastatingly beautiful face and clear, blue-violet eyes, he felt as though her image had been branded directly onto his soul.

I know that woman…!

A fragment of his memories, bleached completely white, throbbed painfully.

It was something that hadn’t happened even once during the six months he had been alive in the arena.

It was a face he had never seen before, yet somehow it felt familiar.

I can’t lose her. I have to get close to her, no matter what.

His instincts screamed those words at him.

That was why he had been unusually bad at avoiding attacks during that gladiator match.

All of his attention had been fixed on Stella.

Was it merely coincidence that Stella had chosen him?

Enrick had never believed in fate.

But at that moment, he became certain.

Because if it wasn’t fate, there was no other explanation for something like this.

“Her Majesty the Empress is your new master. Serve her well.”

Her Majesty the Empress.

My master.

Though she relied on a wheelchair to move, an untouchable radiance surrounded her.

A perfect and noble woman.

And at the same time, a woman so fragile that she seemed as though she might shatter at the slightest touch.

After meeting Stella, Enrick realized something.

I was nothing more than a moving straw puppet. I had been living without any purpose at all.

He wanted to see her.

He wanted to obey her commands.

He didn’t know why.

And he didn’t mind being blindly devoted.

Like a lost shepherd following a star, he simply loved the only light he could see.

“I don’t want to call you a black worm. Tell me your real name.”

That was the first time he realized that “black worm” couldn’t possibly be a name.

It was also the first time he had ever seen a master who tried to respect a slave.

What was my name again? Who were my parents?

Stella wanted to hear about the past Enrick had kept locked away for so long that he had forgotten it was even there.

By doing so, she was telling him that she saw him as a human being, not as property or livestock.

“Someone stabbed what belongs to me, made what belongs to me bleed, and struck what belongs to me, insulting me, its master. What should I do with such a person?”

Stella had called him hers.

She had scolded the knights for failing to protect him.

A shiver unlike anything he had ever experienced coursed through his entire body.

He had shed only a few drops of blood, yet Stella had become furious on his behalf.

She had even given him her expensive handkerchief.

If he could experience this kind of happiness again, he was willing to shed as much blood as necessary.

But then his master told him she had no need for an unnamed gladiator slave.

“I’ll give you emancipation papers and enough money to settle somewhere. Take them and leave. That is the last kindness I can offer you.”

Enrick couldn’t leave Stella.

He didn’t want to become a straw puppet again and return to a meaningless existence.

But he had said he would obey her command.

Enrick had seen countless times what happened to slaves who refused to obey.

He had to obey.

But he also had to find a new way.

A way to keep his master from abandoning him.

A way to remain beneath the light of his star.

And thanks to that, he remembered the voice of the mother he had thought he had completely forgotten.

“You ruined my life, Enrick! You cursed child. You should never have been born.”

His mother, a traveling merchant, had been holding the goddess’s cross upside down.

Until the black-robed priests dragged Enrick into the temple.

Where had his mother been when they stripped him naked and experimented on his body with whips, iron rods, and branding irons?

Had she not heard him screaming for someone to save him?

Did she know that Enrick had been surviving as a gladiator slave?

Did she know that he had killed countless people?

That surviving had been more painful than dying?

Why was it that, despite remembering nothing from those twelve years, the final voice of his mother remained so vivid?

There were too many things Enrick didn’t know.

And he didn’t want to find out.

He hated things that were vague or complicated.

So he decided to focus on things that were clear and radiant.

Stella.

His star, more beautiful and brilliant than anyone else.

His master.

“Your position will not be hereditary, but you will be treated as a noble. You will receive a salary equivalent to that of the Imperial Guard.”

Though she lay sick in bed, the dignity that no one could dare approach remained unchanged.

Wanting to see her more closely, Enrick stepped right up to the front of the bed.

He smelled the faint scent of medicine mixed with the sweet fragrance of flowers.

It was a strange scent that made his nerves stand on end and dulled his reason.

Ignoring the heat spreading through his body, Enrick asked Stella,

“Is it really all right to give a slave a knighthood?”

“I have enough authority to do that.”

“But I don’t want my master to get into trouble because of me.”

“No one can cause trouble for me. I am the Empress.”

Stella’s voice took on a slightly haughty tone.

Rather than frightening, it was cute.

The slight furrow between her brows and the pout of her lips were especially so.

My master can make expressions like this, too. She’s really pretty.

He nearly reached out and touched Stella’s face.

If he hadn’t sensed someone approaching outside the bedchamber, Enrick might have committed another offense that would earn him a scolding.

“Someone’s coming.”

Enrick immediately straightened and positioned himself protectively in front of Stella.

Stella didn’t seem particularly surprised.

“There are quite a few visitors tonight.”

“They’re small and their footsteps are slow. One of the attendants who was sleeping has woken up. I don’t think it’s an assassin.”

“If someone wanted to kill me, they would have sneaked in like you did.”

“I couldn’t help that because…”

Before he could come up with an excuse, the attendant’s hurried voice rang out.

“You wish to see Her Majesty the Empress at this hour? Absolutely not!”

As though already exhausted, Stella squeezed her eyes shut.

Just from hearing that much, she seemed to have guessed who had come to see her.