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chapter 07
“Greta’s completely lost her mind! She’s been biting her own flesh and spouting nonsense all night!”
The frantic footsteps and near-screams of the senior maids echoed through the quarters. Listening carefully, Elysia realized that Greta had apparently gone mad because she could no longer withstand the terror of the hallucinations.
If she had just left me alone, none of this would have happened to her.
Elysia lay quietly on her bed, following the commotion with her ears. All she had done was show them what they feared. How they chose to interpret those hallucinations was up to them. She did feel a little sorry for Greta, who had lost her mind, but it was her own fault.
As soon as dawn broke, the atmosphere in the laundry room had completely changed.
Normally, Greta would have been the first to arrive at work and would have immediately begun intimidating the new maids. But today, she was nowhere to be seen. Instead, in one corner of the laundry room, the maids were gathered in groups, whispering with pale, terrified faces.
“They say everyone saw the same thing in the basement yesterday. They said there were headless corpses grabbing Greta by the legs and trying to drag her away…”
“Martha collapsed with a high fever this morning, too. She kept screaming that she could see something.”
“…Shh. Look who just came in.”
The moment Elysia walked into the laundry room, the maids who had been gossiping fell completely silent, as if they had rehearsed it together. Their eyes held nothing but fear and terror as they stared at her.
“L-Lisea?”
At that moment, another senior maid—the one who had piled all sorts of filthy chores onto Elysia yesterday—quietly approached her with a tray. Until yesterday, she had held her chin high and sneered at Elysia, but now her hands were visibly trembling.
“Um, here… This morning’s freshly baked bread and some warm soup. I heard you haven’t eaten anything since yesterday.”
Elysia stared at the tray the maid held out, then smiled sweetly.
“Thank you, Senior. I was just getting hungry. I’ll enjoy it.”
“Eek…! Y-Yes. E-Eat as much as you want!”
Faced with Elysia’s chilly smile, the maid swallowed a scream as though she had just seen a venomous snake, then hurried away.
And so, a rumor began to spread throughout the laundry room on the outskirts of the Imperial Palace: that blood-soaked corpses and evil spirits appeared there every night.
Along with the terrifying tale that anyone who even approached the red-haired maid would be cursed and driven insane.
The rumor spread throughout the entire maids’ quarters faster than wildfire.
In just two days, the outer laundry room had become the most avoided place in the Imperial Palace, and Elysia had been branded as the maid who must never be touched.
By then, even the open whispering had stopped. Whenever Elysia passed by, the senior maids hurriedly lowered their eyes to the floor, and whenever she approached the laundry tables, the gathered women split apart left and right as if by the parting of the Red Sea.
This isn’t so bad either.
Elysia was quite pleased with the situation. Complete isolation meant having the safest fortress imaginable—one that no one could invade.
The problem arose afterward.
The contagious nature of fear was far more dangerous than she had expected.
Martha and the senior maids who had witnessed the vivid vision of hell in the basement that day all came down with high fevers. As for Greta, she repeatedly bit and mutilated her own flesh every night until she was classified as mentally ill and expelled from the Imperial Palace.
Up to this point, everything had been exactly as Elysia intended.
The problem was that the rumor had grown far beyond her expectations, gathering embellishments until it became completely uncontrollable.
“You know that new maid in the laundry room? Apparently, she’s actually a witch who worships demons.”
“I heard Greta tried to bully her and was cursed, and every bone in her body was broken!”
“The kitchen maids heard it too. They say headless ghosts wander around the basement of the laundry room at dawn every day, wailing mournfully…”
The Imperial Palace, being such a closed-off environment, was the perfect soil for ghost stories to grow in. The timid hearts of the maids were easily overtaken by superstition and fear.
As a result, the rumors spread throughout the Imperial Palace in an instant through the mouths of the kitchen maids, laundry maids, and garden maintenance staff.
And eventually, that fear led to an absurd consequence: a mass resignation.
“I can’t stay here anymore. Forget the salary. My life is more important.”
“Exactly. Besides… this place must be crawling with the vengeful spirits of people who died unfairly because of that incident last year. The entire Imperial Palace is definitely going to be cursed soon!”
Before dawn, people began stuffing resignation letters through the laundry room door and fleeing.
When the maids discovered that their coworkers’ beds were empty, they began packing their own belongings like falling dominoes. By noon, even the head chef threw off his apron.
“I can’t cook in a kitchen that’s been cursed by a witch! If anyone suspects that I put poison in the food, I’ll lose my head!”
“Chef, please calm down! What about His Majesty’s meals today?!”
“I’m the one who’s going to die! Why should I care about that? Out of my way!”
Within a single day, half of the palace servants packed their belongings and fled under cover of night.
The following day, even the kitchen assistants and the low-ranking maids responsible for cleaning the central palace threw down their resignation letters and fled the Imperial Palace as though escaping for their lives.
It took less than three days for the palace’s entire operation to become paralyzed.
“Head Maid! We’re short on people to light the fires in the kitchen, so preparations for His Majesty the Emperor’s breakfast are being delayed!”
“There’s no one left to clean the western side of the central palace! Dust has been piling up for three days!”
“The laundry room is even worse! Even the maids who stayed behind absolutely refuse to go anywhere near the basement. We’re desperately short-staffed!”
As screams of panic erupted from every direction, the chamberlain and head maids seemed to gain handfuls of gray hair by the hour.
The Imperial Palace, which had been so terrified of even breathing too loudly under Kaiel’s reign of terror, had somehow been brought to a standstill by nothing more than a ghost story.
Naturally, the effects eventually reached the master of the Imperial Palace as well.
The door to the study opened, and the chamberlain timidly stepped inside. In his hands was a tray holding a few pieces of toasted bread and a cup of completely cold tea.
“…What is this?”
Kaiel asked in a low, subdued voice without taking his eyes off the documents.
The atmosphere in the room instantly grew heavy.
“I-I humbly apologize, Your Majesty! At present, the maids in the kitchen and laundry room have been resigning and fleeing in droves, leaving the Imperial Palace desperately short-staffed. So…”
“The reason.”
“Th-That…”
The chamberlain couldn’t bring himself to tell the Emperor the absurd truth—It’s because of rumors about ghosts.
As Kaiel stared at him with an icy gaze, the chamberlain eventually threw himself facedown on the floor and confessed.
“Ever since a new maid entered the laundry room, a rumor has spread that anyone who touches her will be cursed. After that, the maids became overwhelmed by fear and terror and resigned in large numbers… As a result, the palace’s maintenance has come to a complete standstill.”
“Ghosts, you say.”
One of Kaiel’s eyebrows rose with interest.
“What is the name of this new maid?”
“They say it’s ‘Lisea.’”
“…Ah. You mean that audacious and insolent laundry maid from before.”
“Y-Your Majesty, you must immediately have that witch bound and executed, or drive her out of the Imperial Palace! Everyone is so terrified that they can’t even do their jobs!”
“No.”
Kaiel leaned deeply back into his chair and gave his order.
“Bring that maid here immediately.”
His eyes gleamed coldly.
“I want to see the face of the witch who has turned my palace into this mess with my own eyes.”
