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Chapter 5
The next day, El squeezed her eyes shut when she saw the flood of snow-white, extravagant furniture being carried in.
She thought her savior’s taste was rather peculiar.
These things didn’t suit her at all. Splendor and loudness had always been far from her life, and only felt foreign.
El preferred things that were simple.
Like furniture where dirt didn’t show even if you didn’t clean often, or clothes where a little mud wouldn’t be noticeable.
Things that could never exist in this mansion.
“Do you like it, El?”
Karon, who had come to check whether the furniture had arrived properly, asked half playfully.
He oddly seemed certain that El would like it.
El forced a smile.
Duke, I feel like if I touch it, I’ll only dirty it, so I can’t lay my hands on it.
But of course, she couldn’t say that aloud.
“It’s too much for me, my lord.”
“It isn’t. As I said, I’m not a philanthropist.”
“You give me things I could never repay… may I ask what it is you intend to take from me in return?”
“Your origin. Your very existence. I need it all.”
Karon’s voice was calm, as if there wasn’t an ounce of falsehood in his words.
“…Do you truly need me?”
“Of course. Among all the things I’m doing now, the most important one is… everything about you, El.”
Karon gave a faint chuckle and gently leaned his forehead against El’s head.
El stiffened like a startled rabbit.
Why am I like this? Do I still find the duke frightening? she wondered, feeling absurd even to herself.
That first day she saw him, when she looked into his black eyes, she thought he was a god. Or perhaps a devil wearing the face of one.
Whatever he was, Karon had been salvation to El.
He was the one who gave her the pretty name El in “Number 8,” and the one who provided food and shelter.
Yet even now, whenever he approached her without reservation and touched her like this, her entire body froze stiff.
She revered him—while fearing him. Paradoxically.
“El, what are you thinking?”
“…I was wondering how I could ever repay this grace.”
The thought that she might have to give something even more important than her own life—she didn’t dare say it aloud.
Two days later, the tutor meant to teach El arrived.
El quickly put on her neatest pale pink dress and ran down to meet her.
At the orphanage, you had to sense the mood and greet the highborn at the right time if you wanted to avoid being beaten.
When she reached the entrance hall, she saw a carriage pulling up at the front gate. El quickly straightened her clothes and bent at the waist in a sharp, right-angled bow.
The tutor who stepped out of the carriage was Madam Emilun, who had once taught the duke himself etiquette and refinement.
Madam Emilun warmly exchanged greetings with the duke’s household staff as she approached the mansion. Then she noticed—
A scrawny woman bowing deeply in greeting.
“…?”
El lifted her head slightly.
Madam Emilun passed her by without acknowledging her, without returning the bow, standing tall as if she had not seen her at all.
It was the stance of someone declaring she would not even associate with her.
El hurried after her, but by then Madam Emilun had already entered the duke’s study.
Left awkwardly at the door, El loitered uncertainly until the tutor finally emerged. Even then, Madam Emilun’s expression did not change in the slightest.
“I am…”
“I’ve been told. Let’s go to your room.”
Her tone was businesslike and curt, as though she had resolved to behave with strict rationality.
But her eyes betrayed her.
They were familiar—too familiar. The same eyes El had felt on her every day of her past life.
Eyes that looked at her as if she were filth. Filled with contempt, with scorn.
Yes. This was the normal reaction. It was Karon, who had approached her without hesitation, who was the strange one.
As soon as Madam Emilun and El entered her room, the door shut behind them.
Unconsciously, El flinched, her body trembling.
Because closed doors had never been a good omen.
“Do you know what it means to live in the duke’s mansion?”
Madam Emilun brushed her gloved hand across the new wooden table, without glancing at El.
Even the simple gesture looked dignified through her lace gloves.
“Shamefully, I do not.”
“It means you must have a use. So—what use do you have?”
“…None.”
“Not so. Every being has some use.”
Madam Emilun raised the corners of her lips in a graceful smile.
El stared at her back as she slowly surveyed the room.
Her straightened spine, her proud shoulders, the elegance of her gait shining brighter than the luxury of her clothes.
El lowered her gaze. Her own bony, scarred hands peeked out from her fine dress—hands that did not belong. She quickly hid them in her sleeves.
Was this longing? Envy? Or shame?
“I heard you cannot read.”
“…Yes.”
“My, how base and vulgar. There will be much to teach.”
“….”
El swallowed dryly again and again, her throat tightening as if blocked. The air itself felt like needles stabbing her.
“I am your teacher, so you may speak more freely with me.”
“Yes, if you wish.”
“You don’t need to learn much. Just the basics—letters, etiquette, a little refinement.”
Madam Emilun opened and closed drawers of the vanity as if testing, judging something, moving about the room as though it already belonged to her.
After finishing her inspection, she sat on the sofa and motioned for El to sit opposite.
El quickly sat down, placing her hands neatly on her knees.
“How do you feel? To seize such fortune, to be in a place you could never have even seen in your life?”
“…It’s an honor.”
“Of course. These are not things that were ever meant to be granted to the likes of you.”
“….”
Her voice was soft, cultured, elegant.
“Still, you must never show it. You must be the duke’s lovely little doll.”
“….”
“Why? Does that upset you? Ahaha, El, listen well. In my mansion, I have a most adorable, lovely little dog.”
She laughed cheerfully.
And El instantly knew what kind of words would follow.
She wanted to block her ears.
Living a wretched life didn’t mean she was numb to humiliation. If anything, it had made her more sensitive.
“Her name is Marie—I gave it to her. I adore her dearly. Even when she scratched my shin with her claws and scarred me, I did not kill her.”
“….”
For nobles, not killing was considered great mercy.
Even El, who should be grateful just for being spared, who owed the duke her very life for rescuing her from the forest, couldn’t help but feel something tighten in her throat.
Was it anger? Hurt? Or sorrow?
She didn’t know her own heart. She had never looked inward before.
“But Marie needed training. To obey my words, to sit gracefully on my lap all day.”
“….”
“Do you think my comparison is too harsh? But unlike you, our Marie has a pedigree certificate. She’s better than you. If anyone should be offended, it ought to be her.”
“….”
“Oh my, you do seem quite upset.”
Madam Emilun leaned forward gently, stroking El’s cheek with her gloved hand.
El only kept her gaze lowered, lips pressed shut. In this moment, she could do nothing.
It was all too familiar—their words, their eyes. No matter how cleanly she dressed or how prettily she adorned herself, they always seemed to see the lowborn blood inside.
El hadn’t feared nobles from the start. As a child, she had admired them.
Beggars on the street sometimes told tales of princes and lowborn girls, and received alms in return.
One night, after hearing a story about a cinder-covered maiden and a prince, the orphanage children had gathered to chatter excitedly.
“Nobles must never go hungry, right?”
“They say they eat until they burst, then make themselves vomit just so they can eat more.”
“How do you become a noble?”
At that innocent question, the oldest child in the orphanage had answered coldly:
“You need noble blood.”
Noble blood.
“How do you get noble blood?”
“You have to be born with it. And if you drain it, people die.”
“….”
“It means no matter what, trash like us can never be nobles.”
El slowly closed and opened her eyes. She had to get a grip.
The place she had to live in, adapt to, was a noble’s mansion.
The god who had saved her was also a noble—the Duke of Pheros.
And even this tutor before her was a noble.
El lifted her head with a frozen expression and finally met Madam Emilun’s gaze.
“I’m not upset.”
In fact, she was relieved—reminded of what she had been forgetting.
Number 7 and the carriage.
Number 8 and Madam Emilun.
How could she have forgotten?
“Good. Then get up and turn around slowly.”
At her gesture, El rose and spun slowly in a circle.
“No, El. You must take everything off.”
“…Pardon?”
El stared at her in shock. But Madam Emilun’s eyes carried no malice. Only the air of someone doing what was necessary.
“Has the duke not told you what your usefulness is?”
El thought of Karon for a moment. That strange man—aloof, yet somehow considerate.
Somewhere deep in her chest, something rusty and stiff gave a slow, creaking sound.
Slowly.
(To be continued in the next episode)
