Episode 5
'What if there was someone to pay our debts and save us? A very strong and strong person.'
The words of the freckles were words that I would have laughed at in the past. But now, those words gripped Elisha's heart.
'Anyway, I can't get out of here even if I die on my own.'
Elisha touched the nape of her neck. There was a small tattoo on the side. It is a crest indicating that she belongs to the Duke of Cartier. As long as there is her, no matter where she disappears in the world, they will come after her.
Elisha had seen the last of the collateral she was caught on the run when she was sixteen. It's been 2 years since she ran away and she was eventually recaptured.
'Oh, I hate it. Scared…….'
It was the first time I had ever seen such a terrible and brutal death. She had nightmares several times.
'How much did I owe before I died? I paid a lot, but……. It didn't even matter.'
It was just a form of owning a debtor to the Cartier family. However, the form alone was enough to make people's lives crumbles and break them. Elisha serves as Jacob's secretary and entourage at the end, and she earns one hundred gold coins a month.
It was a huge payout, but……. It didn't matter anyway. I've never actually been paid money under the pretext of debt relief. In addition, 30,000 gold coins were not enough to get rid of the debt.
'In the end, it's money. Even if I'm a count……. After all, if you don't have money, you become a slave.'
All the women who were held as collateral for the mansion had a bad end. Elisha in her previous life was a miserable death among her dogs. At least the other women didn't die struggling like Elisha.
'Will I live this life like that?'
Becoming Jacob's subordinate will extend your life by a few more years. However, that meant nothing.
Elisha bit her lip. It wasn't that nothing had changed from the previous life.
'But I……. Now I know some secrets and information about this family.'
Anyone from the Duke's family would covet that information. In her previous life, Elisha had seen the bottom of all the Cartier family members. She knew about them as well as she did.
She said, 'Who has a grudge against Jacob. And someone with great power to deal with Jacob. Who will pay the ransom of 30,000 gold coins…….'
The answer was obvious.
'Furthermore……. The only person in my family who didn't trample on me in my previous life is Lucerne.'
Elisha recalled the face of Lucerne she had seen during the day.
'Can I convince that man?'
She had a stomach ache and she was creepy. She recalled Lucerne's reputation. People were afraid of him.
'But he is known to his men as a gentleman. What if I beg you to use the information I gained in my previous life as bait to serve as your subordinate?'
I heard that Lucerne raised several famous knights regardless of their status or gender. The Black Lion Knights under Lucerne were renowned throughout the Empire.
'He is known to be a person who hires even the lowest class.'
Elisha cleared her mind.
'The information I have……. It's information that will change all the game-changing aspects of this family's war for succession. Maybe it's information that can make that man a family head. If I convince them well, I can make money for them.'
Elisha evened her breath.
Just one problem…….
'That man is dangerous. He's a man who conspires with the imperial family and plans to destroy the family just because he can't become the head of the household.'
However, no matter how many times I thought about it, there was no other way. If you don't want to die drowning in debt, there is no other way than to commit yourself to Lucerne…….
'After all, as long as Jacob is alive, I will never leave my possessions. The man who will play Jacob. I have to go to him.'
* * *
“Are you really okay? You've been holding on to your notes for the past few days. Uh, what is this Have you sketched a maze garden?”
With her short pencil, Elisha scribbled for several days in an old, now empty notebook. If you look closely, she looks like a map of a labyrinth. Elisha closed her notebook to hide her drawing.
“Lotty.”
She remembered The name of her freckles was Lottie.
“Uh?”
“If you seduce someone, it's not Jacob. He doesn't even take care of the women, he just uses them as playthings. I used to think you were stupid, but now I know. Of all of us, you are the one who tried the hardest to get out of the situation.”
Elisha knew the future of freckled Lottie. She seduces Jacob. Jacob was crazy about a new woman. Lottie becomes Jacob's concubine and she finally moves out of this little outbuilding.
'It was a long time ago that we were close. Don't pretend to know It's embarrassing.'
Some people turn steep in pain. Lottie was such a person. Lottie pretended not to know and laughed at Elisha, who became Jacob's mistress and became her ugly appearance.
'You understand. At that time, I was a shabby woman who covered my body with a cloak and only sought shade.'
Elisha in her previous life suffered from gastritis and couldn't eat properly. She was as dry as her corpse, and her face became lifeless. She always lived in anxiety, barely holding on to her nerves. Her expression was frozen and she never smiled.
Jacob said Elisha was like her witch. She later called Elisha the devil's grandmother, following Jacob.
'Because I started wearing fancy clothes and eating good food, I must have been contemptuous of myself.'
However, it was all pointless.
Lottie lives as her concubine for three months just like that, and then dies alive at the hands of Carola, fed by wild dogs.
No matter how many women Jacob had, his only wife was Carola. Armed with her narcissism, her bitch-like madness, and her wealthy parents, Carola was no match.
'Yeah, no one escapes after all.'
Still, Elisha was bitter about Lottie's death. That is her memory of Lottie's end.
“Understand. Remember my words And if I disappear one day, you can take all my things. I secretly saved up some silver coins. It's under my bed, in the empty space on the floor, so take it.”
Maybe if you turn back time, the inside of a person will also come back as it was in the past.
Elisha, right before her death, was a person with no feelings, let alone compassion or sympathy. After turning her back on her time, however, her normal aristocratic daughter, Elisha's personality, returned. At the same time, her poise added to her made her a more mature character.
“What's the matter? Like someone who will die tomorrow.”
Elisha just said that and turned her head away. Her favor for Lottie was just that.
'Tonight, let's approach Lucerne.'
Fortunately, her sewing distance was small depending on the day. Elisha felt her eyes dark and she quit work early. And she waited for everyone to fall asleep, curled up in the covers, and waited for the dawn to come.
* * *
It was early morning when everyone went to bed. Elisha carefully raised herself.
She called the original residence of the Cartier family, and she called it the Castle of the Night. They lived twice as long as everyone else.
It was because the whole mansion was lit up by magic crystals that glowed permanently and did not go out even at night.
It was a mercy that was not given to an outbuilding the size of a nostril where the lowest class collaterals like Elisha lived. Elisha took her stolen candlestick from under the bed.
The girls sharing the room with Elisha were quietly asleep. Intermittently, only someone's snort could be heard.
Elisha couldn't even afford to change her clothes. It's a big deal if someone wakes up while making noise. Elisha slung the cloak Lucerne had given her over her shoulders. Even saying she came to return the cloak might be an excuse for her to talk to Lucerne.
Elisha went outside, still wearing her nightgown underneath her cloak. She tossed the notebook, from which she had torn only the necessary pages, into the still-lit fireplace. It was a notebook in which memories from her past life were written down as they came to mind.
Steeply, kills the steps. In the evening, the porch of the outbuilding is locked from the outside with a triple padlock. Not a single mouse could get out.
'If I remember correctly…….'
Elisha knew a lot of the secrets of the buildings inside the Cartier Mansion from the future. The structure of the outbuilding was the same.
'Lucerne heard that when she comes to the mansion she always stays in the room she grew up in.'
Lucerne is said to have been treated poorly in her childhood and grew up in a room near the stairs.
Jacob's father, now dead, said that one day he would fix Lucerne's habits, and he had nailed the door and locked him in the room for several days.
Even now, after taking military service and changing his status, he said he would only stay in that room. And he always did.
'Lucerne, are you staying there to protest against me?'
There was a time when the householder was angry with Lucerne and jumped to the brink of collapsing. Since the commotion was quite a big deal, she heard it even from Elisha.
The problem was that even though Elisha knew where Lucerne was, she couldn't just walk over and knock on her door.
Lucerne is……. Although he was an illegitimate child, he was Cartier. In the world of the Cartier family, a being like Elisha was the one whose throat would fly off just by saying the wrong word to Lucerne. She said that was the status system within the Cartier family.
'If Lucerne tore me to death tonight……. I guess I can just ask Jacob for reparations.'
Perhaps Lucerne will be charged not with murder but with damaging his cousin's property.
'I have to do it anyway.'
Elisha thought calmly.
'He'll regret it too if he misses the information I'm selling.'
The Cartier family is a gold-mad family that does anything for money. Elisha looked sideways at many things beside them who distributed and sold all the goods around the world.
'The Cartier family is a merchant family. I learned something from watching them.'
A good merchant knows how to sell even if he has nothing. In three tongues he dances between fraud and gain. Elisha learned their way of speaking.
She muffled her footsteps and climbed the stairs to the hall on the second floor.
'Please, my memory is correct. Stay here…….'
Right above the stairs on the second floor. A huge painting hanging in the living room space. Elisha lit it with a candle.
It was a picture of pure white snakes entangled like human bodies.
In the middle of the picture, a black snake, twice as thick as the other snakes, is depicted. The snake opens its mouth wide and raises its head as if to catch and eat other snakes.
The title of the painting was 'Gaju'.
'Know? A ghost lives in this mansion. They say that I can hear ghosts wandering through the walls every night, making uh-uh-uh-hums.'
On the first day I came here, a girl said. A long time ago, this shabby outbuilding was said to be the place where the most beloved wife of a family head committed suicide.
Elisha in the past didn't know what those rumors meant or what this painting meant. But now Elisha knew her secret. She tapped the black snake.
Squeak, a very small sound came from beyond the painting. Elisha sighed. I should have been more careful……. Elisha pushed the picture.
Beyond the painting, a black space like a snake's mouth was open. It was a hidden secret passage.
'There is, there is. My memory is correct!'
Elisha quickly ducked into the narrow passage and entered. Soon the aisle door closed.
The narrow and long passage was like the body of an endless snake. Elisha slowly lit the surroundings with a candle. It smelled of damp water and something rotting.
'Why, who made such a secret passage?'
Even though the future Elisha accidentally found a secret passage inside the mansion, her questions, then and now, remain unanswered. However, the answer was easy to imagine.
'Because this is a very old mansion…….'
Some nobles made a passage for escape in case of emergency. Secret passages that can only be passed down through the mouths of householders and householders. She said that many secret passages are forgotten by their masters because they are told so secretly.
Elisha walked cautiously down her dark aisle, holding the hem of her nightgown and the cloak draped over her shoulders.
The Elisha in her previous life shuddered every time she walked down this aisle, but the current Elisha didn't. She walked down the aisle very familiarly.
