“Ugh…!”
He was trying to recall the past when a headache came over him. It was the most intense pain he had felt in a long time. Killian hurriedly took out a headache pill from his desk drawer and ate it. And just then, someone knocked on his door.
“Who is it?”
“Young master, Samuel wants to see you.”
“Samuel…?”
It hadn’t been long since Edith told him to let Samuel go. Why did he want to see him again?
“Let him in.”
As the pain reliever slowly spread, the headache gradually subsided. And Samuel came in hesitantly from outside.
“Sit down.”
“Oh, no. The precious furniture would get dirty.”
Killian sighed and sat down alone in his chair.
“Is there anything else to say?”
“That, that…”
“I don’t like procrastination very much. I think you know.”
“So, sorry! I swear it wasn’t me who loosened the screws on the cockpit. I definitely checked all the parts the day before and went back.”
“You’re not here to repeat what you said for three days, are you?”
“Yeah, but… Looking back, I suddenly remembered one thing…”
Only then did Killian’s eyes turn bright.
“Something?”
“The night before the accident… Master Cliff has come to visit me. He said he had something to take out from inside the yacht, so I followed him out, but in the meantime, I left my cabin unlocked.”
Samuel lived alone in his cabin near Lake Everton, and all the keys to the Ludwig family’s yacht were kept in it.
“It’s hard to believe that someone stole the key and tampered with my yacht’s steering wheel during that time… Well, how do they know you’ll be away like that.”
“Yeah, that’s right. Just… I remember not talking about that… That, but it’s my fault for not properly locking the door and not checking before departure. I am really sorry.”
Having confessed his own sin, Samuel was trembling on his knees on the floor.
“But why are you confessing that? If you had kept your mouth shut, I would have let it go.”
Edith said he would forgive and let Samuel go, so if he had kept his mouth shut, he wouldn’t have been so scared.
“Eh, sorry… Miss Edith, I couldn’t stand it. She is such a kind and merciful person… I am… Because I did something stupid… sigh… sorry…”
A man in his 50s begged for a mistake while shedding tears. He said she felt sorry for Edith… Edith’s forgiveness brought out the ‘memories’ that could not be brought out even with caning and threats. Killian smiled lightly, thinking of Edith, who insisted that commoners were the same, and that uneducated people should rather be forgiven.
“Stood up, Samuel.”
“Hey, hehe…”
“Edith believed you couldn’t have done anything bad or been bribed on purpose. So… I will believe you.”
“Young master…!”
“The past three days of torture will replace the punishment for your mistakes.”
“Go, thank you!”
“Ah, but…”
Feeling strange, Killian belatedly asked one more question.
“What did Cliff bring from the yacht?”
“I’ve been looking for something for a long time, but it’s not there, and I think he was mistaken, so I just passed away.”
“Okay? …okay. Go in and rest.”
Samuel thanked him several times as if he was about to hit his head on the floor, and then went back. Seeing that, Killian was convinced that he didn’t do it on purpose. However, the newly acquired information was belatedly creating a strange afterimage.
‘Cliff stopped by the lake the night before… he spent a lot of time on the yacht and went back without finding anything…’
He felt strange. Although he and Cliff had quarreled because of Lise, their relationship was not bad. They were brothers who supported each other. So he wouldn’t have deliberately touched the control stick hoping that he or Edith would die.
‘But… It’s definitely weird to pass it up.’
If he asked Cliff, there’s no way he’ld get an answer. But it kept coming back to him that Lise Sinclair was the only one who could wield the upright and rational Cliff Ludwig. Even though he thought it couldn’t be, the smoke of disbelief was rising in Killian’s heart.
* * *
Her nose, throat, and stomach hurt for a few days after she fell into the water, but she improved faster than she thought. But Killian couldn’t easily shake off the memory of the moment she stopped breathing. It gave her the luxury of reclining on the bed and tasting the dessert he brought.
“Samuel came late and told me that he had gone out the night before with the door unlocked. It looks like someone stole the key and broke into my yacht’s control stick… Anyway, Samuel told me to tell you he’s sorry.”
“You didn’t punish him, did you?”
“I decided to follow your will this time.”
“Thank you.”
She ate the canelé he served with a fork. At first, she was going to eat it herself, but after cutting the canelé in half and missing the knife, Killian cut it into bite-sized pieces and put it in her mouth. Crispy on the outside and moist on the inside, the sweet canelé was like Killian, and she felt better every time she took a bite. However, Killian’s expression was not good the whole time. This was because even though it was an accident caused by someone’s malicious intent, no evidence could be found.
“Killian. There’s nothing you can do about it.”
“I don’t like that ‘cannot be helped’.”
Yes, but who was to blame? In an era where fingerprint matching was unimaginable, only eyewitness testimony and evidence left at the scene could support the investigation, but this time there were no eyewitnesses or evidence. From Samuel’s testimony that he had briefly mismanaged the key, he could only guess that someone had stolen the key and gone into hiding.
‘Well, that’s a bit strange, isn’t it? How did Samuel know how to empty the cabin at that time and wait?’
It was a story that would not benefit Samuel. But he preferred to confess rather than keep his mouth shut, so he ruled him out as a suspect. However, Killian added a nasty story.
“By the way, strangely… It was Cliff who visited Samuel the night before.”
“Yes? Are you Cliff?”
“They say they have something to look for on their yacht. He and Samuel searched for something on the yacht for a long time, but he said he was mistaken and just went back.”
Dry spittle dripped from his throat.
“If that’s the case, I’m sure… It must not have been a lack of time for someone to commit a crime.”
“But Cliff wouldn’t have wanted me or you dead…”
Next to Killian, who was deep in thought, she remembered the voice she heard when she lost consciousness.
[Part of the flow of the original work has collapsed due to the original author’s excessive intervention. The original was further damaged. The original author’s dominance is weakening.]
The original author intervened ‘excessively’, but what kind of format was that? Could it be that the character was moved while ignoring the original setting? Seeing that there was no attempt to kill her directly, it seemed that the characters were moving…
‘If that happened, there would have been a big problem with probability, so it’s understandable that part of the flow of the original work was broken. Fortunately for me, this incident has weakened the original author’s dominance.’
Apparently the original author gambled… and that failed.
‘It should also be noted that the character the original author moved was Cliff, not Killian right next to me. Maybe Killian… He seems to have deviated considerably from the original author’s control.’
She thought so while looking sideways at Killian. Killian has been showing behavior that was quite different from the original work. Killian feeding Edith a canelé cut in half for example.
‘If it’s like this… I can trust…!’
Even as the original author, there was no way to have multiple incidents that were burdensome. She cried out to herself that she could live once again. Then, she grabbed Killian’s hand as he tried to cut the canelé in half.
“Killian. Thank you for protecting me.”
Killian hesitated at the unexpected thanks, then gradually reddened his ear lobe.
“Keep it. I should have stayed closer to you… I was sorry the whole time because I thought you were drowning because I was careless.”
“It was an accident. No one could have done anything. But Killian.”
“Yes, Edith.”
“Next time, if something like this happens again, then you can’t just jump into the water to save me. Either way, we’ll both die.”
It was a word that concerned him, but Killian frowned at once.
“Then, are you saying I should just watch you drown?”
“Then will you die with me?”
“…I won’t let you die. In the future.”
Ah! This was the declaration she was hoping for.
‘Please don’t change your mind…!’
She was so thrilled that she was about to shed a few tears when Anna announced the visit of some guests.
“It’s Master Cliff.”
Her eyes met Killian’s. She nodded her head at Anna and straightened her hair. And while Killian was watching, he pulled the blanket over her chest and covered it all the way up.
“Did I interrupt your intimate time with Killian?”
Cliff approached with a playful greeting in a voice thicker and warmer than Killian’s. In his hand was a large bouquet of flowers. She just smiled, but Killian was open-mouthed.
How do you feel?
