CH 7

“By the way, Senior will be very comfortable wherever you go.”

I laughed as if I was envious of Day.

“What?”

What does that mean? As she furrowed her eyebrows to check the meaning of his words, he bent down and whispered in her ear as he lowered his face.

“You have a whistle don’t you, Senior? Right behind you, behind Senior, there’s one of the strongest slaves here.”

Confidence permeated the whispered voice. Day seemed to think that I had come this far after shackling Deon through the whistle.

Slave.

My mouth was shut on the unexpected part. I had never thought of treating the male lead like a slave. In particular, as a reader who read the original novel, I tended to believe that Deon was right for hating and punishing Lemony.

When I didn’t say anything, one of Day’s eyebrows went up.

“Did you get dragged around?”

That’s possible. I just possessed Lemony, and I could be dragged around.

“…the power to give orders to first-class prisoners is the most powerful force in this prison.”

I know that.

“It’s inhumane to give orders like that… Of course, you have to take that into consideration, right?”

I mumbled quietly and stared into the sky in embarrassment, but his voice, which had stayed in my ears, hardened as if he couldn’t believe it.

“…Senior, was this your original personality?”

The implications of this question were accurate. Lemony’s usual personality was famous not only to Deon, but also to others.

Usually, in novels, the person who possesses the villain pretends to be the villain. After thinking about acting as Lemony for a while, I shook my head, realizing that this place was not a novel, but a reality.

I swallowed a sigh with a miserable heart, and licked my lower lip.

I even knew what Day was saying was right. I know you can’t talk about morality in this situation. No. Day was right.

I’m sorry to think of bothering him like the real Lemony, but I wasn’t stupid enough to sympathize with the man who tried to kill me.

With difficulty, he raised his voice and stared clearly at the golden eyes. I gave Day a rather solid look, but he didn’t seem to think so.

“…Senior, are you that kind to the prisoner in charge?”

Oh, did I look like a pushover? I raised my eyebrows at the question that seemed to be concerned me.

“Do I look kind?”

“No. If I were a prisoner, I wanted you to be the prison officer in charge.”

His expression darkened somewhat as he raised the corners of his mouth as if he were joking. He was obviously smiling the same way as before, but I felt his stare staring at me strangely sharp.

Could this be my mistake again?

“…Just in case, you can order first-class prisoners 10 times a day, so be careful.”

“What?”

Of course, it must be an illusion.

As soon as I blinked once, worry seeped into my golden eyes.

Oh, wait. That wasn’t the problem.

“The number of times you can command ten times a day?”

My whole body has cooled down.

This information had never come from the original. It is also true that the main character of 『The Shackles on My Hands』 was not a prison officer, but a prisoner. Of course, the whistle setting of the first-class prison officer, which was an extra, was not mentioned in the original.

But how does Day know that? 

“He said he had only been with the prison for a month….”

Feeling something strange, I turned my gaze to where he was.

“…Day?”

There was no one. Where he was supposed to be, only a torch lighted the rough stone wall was burning intermittently. I turned around and looked around, but I couldn’t feel the presence of anyone, let alone a man. I felt like I saw a ghost.

Perhaps because I felt empty, I got goosebumps.

“Is the conversation over?”

It was then that I heard the terrifyingly low bass voice. Come to think of it, I forgot Deon because I was talking to Day. But with Deon’s personality, he would have been able to interrupt our conversation.

Wait a minute.

It was then that I realized that Deon had deliberately not joined our conversation. Did he hear it? The fingers that fell from the air trembled slightly. Important conversations were deliberately whispered in my ear, but if he had listened closely from this distance, he would have been able to overhear it.

My head is spinning rapidly. Come to think of it, I did command magic on Deon several times.

The first command, was to stop him when we first met. Two, telling him to follow me and to enter the cell. And when Deon turns into a black panther. And if you add up the three times I was told to remove the shackles and the three times, I was told to stop…

I swallowed dry saliva and folded my last finger.

….nine times.

The drool that had been swallowed by itself.

A slight irritation permeated from the gaze, looking down at the top of my head. Perhaps he didn’t want to say the same thing twice, but the original low tone subsided even more.

Did you hear it or not?

Now was not the time to worry about the disappearing Day. I felt like I couldn’t breathe because of the increasingly sticky and tight air. It was better to pretend not to know for now. I didn’t have to incite an uncomfortable conversation in the first place.

“Yes. Suddenly, Day disappeared.”

For now, I pretended not to know and turned my head, but my face, which I thought was pretty good, hardened at the announcement.

“Right.”

Strangely relaxed blood-colored eyes were looking down at me. It was similar to the eyes of a beast waiting for the right time, goosebumps ran down on my back and penetrated my brain.

There was only one way. All I had to do was hold out for 24 hours without him noticing and make the number of orders 10.

“Aren’t you hungry anyway?”

I hurriedly changed the topic and took out a map from my pocket, and unfolded it. There was a part where the situation became urgent earlier, but on the map, next to Deon’s cell, there was also Lemony’s private room.

There was no way there was no food in the pantry. Deon must have starved for a few days, so he could last 24 hours.

“There seems to be something to eat on the 7th floor, would you like to go?”

Of course, my plan would go ahead if Deon listened to me completely.

“Is it an order or a suggestion?”

“It’s a suggestion.”

I thought it was a good answer, but I became stiff in an instant.

“Really? Too bad.”

He smiled as if he was disappointed, then pulled on the taut string and moved on. Deon knows.

“Then let’s go up to the seventh floor.”

I know I can only use command magic once. Something I was nervous about to snap. I lost all strength and was dragged along by him like an abandoned doll.

◆

“The level of humans is also obvious, seeing that they worked hard on meaningless things.”

Deon clicked his tongue in front of a solid iron door made of melting iron. Even at a glance, the door to the tea room, which looked quite thick, was engraved with lobelia, the symbol of the Western Empire, and sycamore, the symbol of the Southern Empire, in harmony.

It seems to have been made as hard as possible to resist the first-class prisoner, but looking at Deon’s prison, where the iron bars were broken, I could see that it was meaningless.

The room was small enough to be used alone.

Wooden shelves were lined up on the roughly applied ivory wallpaper. Like sunlight found in a cave, intense light illuminated the food arranged on the shelves.

As soon as Deon saw the food, he walked with a big stride that made me overwhelmed and tore the bread roughly. The sight of a man over 190 years old eating bread resembles a hungry predator devouring the carcass of its prey with its huge fangs.

Maybe that wasn’t enough, he lifted the whole basket of bread and beef jerky. This was the opportunity. I scoured the room quickly while Deon was immersed in the food.

It’s Lemony’s private pantry, so there must be a lot of things to use.

Next to the shelf was a coat hanger for winter, which Lemony wore often. I thought there would be fancy clothes because she was a noble, but all the prison officers’ clothes seemed to be that.

A pipe that seemed to be made for communication was connected upstairs along the wall on a simple single-person desk.

Where does it lead? I was rolling my head thinking about the map I saw earlier, but suddenly the shackles were pulled, and my forehead hit a huge and hardback.

Deon stood still. With a stiff face as his body, staring into a room.

This was Lemony’s bedroom.

Unlike a prison cell without a blanket, her room had a bed filled with goose down on an antique-decorated lavender wallpaper. The lamps that had not yet turned off were shining like small jewels made by refining the harsh light of torches.

It’s extravagant.

It was completely different from the barren Dreys Prison.

“…As expected, you’re from a noble family.”

Deon had a similar impression as me, or his hatred for Lemony was raging even more. When he saw a room like a room for the first time in five years, he stood still as if he were facing an unfamiliar world.

“I thought it was a room for a princess of a great kingdom.”

Then, staring at the bed, he walked without hesitation and sat down on the bed. In an instant, my heart froze.

In the original story, Lemony dragged Deon with command magic and made him kneel down on the bed. Deon must have stayed up all night in that position while she was sleeping. Then Lemony got up, put on her shoes, and stepped on his knees, using them as her footrests.

“Are you going to keep standing there?”

My shoulder shrank on its own. Deon was munching on the beef jerky with his legs spread comfortably, perhaps because of his extravagant posture, but the tight thigh muscles were clearly visible in the creases of the stretched pants.

That means the body itself is a weapon.

What does sitting on the bed mean? Could he be trying to get revenge by copying what Lemony did?

Now, as I was fiddling with the whistle, which I couldn’t carelessly blow, the bloody eyes I met stared at the whistle quietly.

The air became noticeably colder. Even if he didn’t say anything, I could tell. If I don’t answer this man’s words, I might die.

“….that, where to sit…”

Let’s hold out for 24 hours. Swallowing my saliva, I looked around for no reason.

Are there any other places to sit besides there?

My whole body collapsed instantly from the sudden pull of my feet. Taking a deep breath, I put my palm on something hard and wide, and realizing that it was Deon’s chest, I hurriedly raised my upper body and sat down next to him.

Deon seemed to have no intention of narrowing his comfortably spread legs. His horse-like thighs touched my legs, causing my body to flinch.

What the hell. Why did you ask me to sit down?

I was trying to infer the intention of his action, recalling the various atrocities that Lemony had committed against him, but something came into my sight.

It was beef jerky.

“Are you going to starve to death?”

He gave a low command, raising one eyebrow as if it bothered him.

“Eat.”