Chapter 02 …

The Villain’s Future Is Making Me Uneasy

I adapted to possessing her with surprising speed.

Fortunately, when I possessed this body, I naturally acquired the language and writing of this world, and I also retained all of Garnet Willinger’s memories.

Until I could safely escape this castle, I had to desperately avoid arousing people’s suspicions.

It would be troublesome if I acted differently than usual and people started saying, “The Lady of the Castle seems strange.”

So I began acting exactly like her.

Her personality, her manner of speaking, her attitude—everything.

While living this way, I came to realize something.

Garnet was a woman so miserable and pitiful that it could bring tears to one’s eyes.

I finally understood why, when Grand Duke Shiraz stormed in, she hadn’t even tried to run and had simply given up and died.

“No, what kind of Lady of the Castle lives like this?!”

Living as her, I found myself blurting out that lament countless times.

Since the matter is so unfair and upsetting, let me explain it little by little.

“Milady. Will you be visiting the stablemaster today?”

A maid asked me in a sullen tone. I didn’t even know when she had opened the door.

At least knock first!

I swallowed those words and quietly looked at her.

Her eyes were filled with irritation, as if asking why I kept involving myself in troublesome matters and making everyone’s lives difficult.

A normal lady of a noble household would never be treated like that by a maid.

If they did, they’d be whipped and thrown out immediately.

I quickly grew accustomed to the maids’ disrespectful attitude.

After all, I wasn’t planning to stay here long.

The distance between me and the servants might even make it easier to escape later.

I neatly brushed back my hair and stood from the dressing table.

“Yes. I should go right away. I heard his leg was cut.”

Leaving the grumbling maid behind, I walked steadily down the corridor.

Lady Garnet Willinger was living on borrowed time in this castle until the day Grand Duke Shiraz arrived.

And lately, my dreams had been becoming clearer and clearer.

That day truly didn’t seem far away anymore.

* * *

To reach the stable located in the most remote corner of the castle, I had to cross nearly the entire estate early in the morning.

Servants cleaning the floors, gardeners tending the grounds, and kitchen workers carrying ingredients all greeted me formally as I passed.

“Good morning, Milady.”

“Good morning, Anna.”

“Good morning.”

“Thank you, Tony.”

They politely bowed their heads.

But I knew.

I knew what pitiful and contemptuous looks they would give me after I passed by.

Some of them might even click their tongues in pity.

Why?

Because this castle already had a real mistress.

I was merely a decorative Lady of the Castle.

With a bitter smile, my gaze drifted toward the balcony of a nearby building.

There, in a lavish place decorated with flowers and luxurious ornaments, stood the true mistress of this castle.

With her abundant red hair elegantly pinned up, the woman was feeding a lark in a birdcage together with her adorable son.

“Hohohoho.”

Her sweet laughter spread through the morning air without restraint, as though she were the rightful lady of the estate.

When her eyes met mine below, she slightly lifted her chin and looked down at me with open disdain.

Then, as if reluctantly acknowledging my existence, she gave a tiny nod.

I responded with a gentle smile and continued on my way.

The moment I turned around, my face hardened as though I had bitten into something foul.

“How in the world did Garnet endure this insane situation?”

It wasn’t that I couldn’t understand the pitiful woman whose body I had possessed.

Her father, Aiden Kirkrum, had been born the second son of a noble family in the Duchy of Mahat.

Naturally, the title went to the eldest son.

Aiden left home to study medicine and wandered from place to place until he eventually settled in the territory of Lord Willinger.

After his wife died young, he worked tirelessly to raise his daughter with care.

Then one day, that shameless lord kidnapped her outright.

After losing his daughter, he fell ill from grief and eventually died.

They said that by the time he passed away, his hair had turned completely white.

“That bastard deserves to be struck by lightning.”

I ground my teeth as I thought about the lord.

With her father’s death, Garnet lost even her family home and became a pitiful woman with nowhere to go and no one to rely on.

She had been dragged here solely to hide the lord’s disgrace.

As a result, she was treated as an unwanted outsider even within the castle.

That woman who had just smiled at me so triumphantly was the lord’s sister-in-law.

His longtime mistress.

And the true mistress of the castle.

What a complete disaster of a family.

I couldn’t understand why the lord didn’t simply cast Garnet out and marry that woman instead.

Lord Willinger was a coward and a weakling.

If it became known that he was involved with his own sister-in-law, he wouldn’t be able to show his face anywhere.

So he kept Garnet as his official wife and used her as a shield.

“He probably killed his own younger brother too. And that child is probably his son, not his nephew.”

It seemed like a perfectly reasonable suspicion.

Of course, there was one advantage to this dreadful situation.

The lord couldn’t touch me.

The red-haired woman watched him constantly, and he was wary of her.

“Thank goodness. Seriously.”

Just remembering the lord’s oily smile made nausea rise in my throat.

Lost in those thoughts, I finally arrived at the stable.

The maid who had followed me immediately started complaining again.

“I keep telling you, Milady, there’s no need for you to take care of people this lowly.”

I almost laughed.

She was a maid herself, yet she was calling others lowly.

“I’m doing it because I want to. If they’re Lord Willinger’s people, then they’re my people as well.”

“Oh, honestly. This is exactly why everyone in the castle looks down on you. You could just stay in your room doing embroidery and arranging flowers, but instead you come all the way to filthy places like this.”

A few days ago, she had been sobbing and dragging me away because her gardener husband had fallen from a tree.

And now she was saying this.

The inconsistency was astounding.

Not wanting to hear any more of her nagging, I quickly stepped inside the stablemaster’s shack-like home.

Ugh!

The moment I opened the door, a suffocatingly foul stench hit me.

“Ugh!”

The maid recoiled in disgust and immediately fled back outside.

A moment later, I heard retching noises.

Honestly, I wanted to run out after her.

But I held my breath and behaved as Garnet Willinger would.

At moments like this, Garnet would have ignored the smell entirely and attended to the patient first.

Having learned medicine while assisting her father from childhood, she possessed a genuinely noble character.

The more I learned about Garnet, the more I forgot she was merely an extra in the story.

Instead, I wondered if I had possessed the body of an extraordinarily remarkable woman.

It saddened me that someone like her had met such a rotten lord and wasted away in this castle.

“Bring me warm water and clean cloths. And fetch the medicine chest from my room.”

“Y-Yes!”

The maid seemed delighted to have an excuse to leave.

She fled from the stable the instant I finished speaking.

For once, I couldn’t even blame her attitude.

Now only the stablemaster and I remained.

I began opening the doors and windows of the shack one by one to let fresh air circulate.

“I’m glad I came.”

As I opened a window, I carefully surveyed the area around the stable.

Opportunities to observe the surroundings without attracting attention were rare.

Garnet’s medical knowledge and her habit of caring for the castle’s people were proving unexpectedly useful.

While treating patients and avoiding suspicion, I could also familiarize myself with every corner of the castle.

If I wanted to escape later, I needed a complete map of the estate engraved in my mind.

No matter what unexpected situation arose.

“Ugh…”

The stablemaster groaned in pain.

I approached his bed and examined the wound.

Up close, not only was the smell terrible, but the condition of his ankle made me frown automatically.

Blood and pus clung to his left ankle.

Fortunately, it wasn’t severe enough to require amputation.

“How did this happen?”

I pulled a clean towel from my waist and wiped away the pus as I asked.

“I was setting a boar trap and accidentally nearly blew my own ankle off.”

“So you got caught in your own trap.”

“Something like that. Stupid, isn’t it?”

He chuckled despite his condition.

“Fortunately, your ankle isn’t gone. But you’ll have to stay in bed for quite some time.”

“Still, I’m lucky to have my son. He’ll handle my work perfectly while I’m laid up.”

“That’s fortunate.”

“And I’m not saying that just because he’s my son…”

Even while his leg was rotting away, the stablemaster began boasting about his son.

As for that son—

I knew far more about him than anyone should.

To the point that I knew where a black mole was located on his backside, what positions he preferred in bed, and what sort of beast-like sounds he made.

Not because I wanted to know.

Not because I cared.

But because the maids giggled about those things almost every day.

Whether they didn’t realize that whispers outside the bedroom could be heard inside, or whether they simply didn’t acknowledge me as the lady of the castle, I couldn’t tell.

Either way, they constantly exchanged vulgar stories.

As a result, I had been forced to hear all about this son.

“Do you know what a notorious maid-killer your son is?”

Instead of asking that, I asked what I truly wanted to know.

“Were you setting boar traps because they frighten the horses?”

“That’s part of it. But more importantly, those beasts carry nasty diseases. I was worried they’d spread them to the horses.”

“Nasty diseases? Have many horses died from them?”

“They sure have. There was a time when I thought I’d die from exhaustion hauling away horse carcasses.”

“I see. But why have I never once seen dead horses being taken outside the castle?”

I asked casually while continuing to treat his wound.

The stablemaster didn’t find the question strange at all.

“Ah, that’s because there’s another road leading outside the castle. There’s a path through the forest behind the stable.”

As he spoke, I slowly lifted my gaze toward the window.

“I knew there was a forest back there, but I didn’t know it connected to the outside.”

“Hahaha. You’d be surprised how many people don’t know that.”

A breeze swept through the trees.

The quiet forest swayed gently, and the rustling leaves echoed with a lonely sound.

A remote forest that nobody ever visited.

My goodness.

It was the perfect place to escape.