Chapter 3 - Quarantine

Chapter 3 – Quarantine

“There’s a bathroom here…” Benya commented as he sneaked up behind me.

The bathroom was big enough for a servant like me, but for these nobles… It was quite small.

“Does the room downstairs have a bathroom too?” I asked, dropping all sense of formality. Whenever there were no adults around, I tended to talk to them casually. This is how it’s always been since we were little. We grew up together and felt no need to be formal with each other.

“Yes, at first I thought it was a different room, but it turned out to be just a bathroom.”

Ah, as I’d expected… An indescribable feeling began to gnaw at me and my heart began to race as I grew anxious. My eyes fell on the door next to the closet. I closed the bathroom door and approached the other door.

Letis stepped behind me and yelled out in warning, “Be careful. Who knows what’s in there!”

In any other situation, the rest of us would’ve laughed at him and his paranoia. But considering our current predicament, no one was in the mood to do so. Even Benya, whose sole purpose of breathing was to tease others, chose not to comment on it. In fact, his reaction was probably warranted. The situation was so strange that even if we found a slumbering dragon behind the door, we wouldn’t be surprised.

Of course, there weren’t any dragons inside the room. But in hindsight, a dragon might’ve a better option.

Lettuce stepped up as the oldest and bravely opened the door. We held our breaths, preparing ourselves for whatever surprise would be revealed. In the end, it just turned out to be another ordinary room.

The siblings were unfamiliar with it. They’d never seen this room before.

“What is this place? A restaurant?”

The room wasn’t a bedroom or a bathroom, but a kitchen lined with cupboards that were filled with utensils. The dishes looked old and dirty and the wood on the cupboard was chipping away. Just like the bathroom and the shoddy room, it wasn’t a place befitting of a noble’s status.

Benya was the first one to enter. He walked around the kitchen without a care in the world, as if the situation we were currently in didn’t bother him at all. He turned around and smirked at us.

“Estelle, doesn’t it look just like your dollhouse? You and Sasha can play here all day.”

Letis chuckled at his lame joke, finding it easy to laugh at our expense. I glowered at them, causing them to immediately try and change the subject. Letis put on a serious expression.

“Alright. Let’s stop joking around.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Sasha, did you plan this prank with the other servants? I wouldn’t put it past you to do something like this.”

What… Did he think the other servants went and hid themselves under a boulder to pull off this prank? Why did he think I planned all this? I was about to say something to him, but I guess it was a good thing when Estelle, who up until now had been clinging to my arm, interrupted me.

“Sasha… It’s too stuffy in here.”

“I feel the same way.”

“I don’t like it here.” She muttered softly.

I knew what she wanted to say. It didn’t matter what this place was and why we were there. She just wanted to get out of there. I wanted the same, but…

“I think the way out is downstairs.”

Letis spoke up as soon as I was done, as if he was expecting me to say that.

“There’s no door leading outside down there.”

“We were probably brought here to prevent us from being infected. What did they call it… quarantine? Maybe they moved us while we were asleep because they thought we would get scared.”

I thought he was joking around again, but his calm demeanor surprised me. I hesitated for a bit, wondering whether I should ask him a question. In the end, I decided to give it a go.

“Yesterday… At the family meeting, what did your relatives say?”

The mischievous look in his eyes died the moment I mentioned his relatives as a gloomy feeling took over him.

“Because of the current situation, they considered it best if we moved to Fjeya for a while. They said that after what happened to our parents… They couldn’t bear to lose us too.”

Ah, that’s exactly what the book said. The heir to the Cervantes family was only fifteen year old right now. His circumstances were quite bad, so no one would blame him for temporarily entrusting everything to the adults and going abroad, just like the other children of nobility. It was a natural thing to do.

Then this place really was—

“You didn’t talk about anything else?” I asked.

“What else would I say? Ah, I told them that we couldn’t leave without you, so don’t worry. Who’ll take care of that crybaby if not you?”

I appreciated his sentiment, but that wasn’t what I was worrying about. Something seemed off about the situation.

More memories popped up in my mind. I don’t why I remembered it at this very moment, but I realized that all of the sibling’s relatives passed away suddenly after a few years.

One died from a chronic illness, the other died after being poisoned, another died in a fight fuelled from rage, and then another…

All of the deaths were suspicious in one way or another. There was a rumour that the vipers were behind all of it… At least, that’s what I remembered.

“What are you two talking about?”

“Sasha was worried that we were going to leave her behind.”

“Really? I thought she’d like that.”

…What in the world does Letis think of me?!