Chapter 7: What Must Never Be Known

Urien’s shed was located close to the forest, outside the gardeners’ work area. But occasionally, one of the gardeners, Benno, came to check the nearby river.

Benno was a middle-aged man with white beard and a study build for his age. He used to have a stern expression on his face, but after they talked for a bit, he warmed-up to Urien, and told him that he used to live in this shed.

Nowadays though, he moved to live with his son and his son’s wife not too far from the estate.

“Yea, I started talking to him recently.”

“I see! Benno is an interesting man to have around!”

“So you know him too huh, Ella?”

The estate employed a considerable amount of servants, so it’d be impossible to track them all. Even the lord of the mansion, Rodrick, had to rely on the chief butler and head maid to manage them.

“Yes. I used to tend to the garden a lot and he used to give me a bunch of sweets.”

“I see.”

Apparently, Ela’s straightforward nature had rubbed the head maid the wrong way and the head maid often sent her off to do physical labor outside, such as helping out in the stables and cutting out the grass.

From that, it didn’t take a genius to guess that the head maid assigned her to him as a sort of harassment too. After all, the maids tended to prefer working indoors or tending to their masters directly.

“He’s a wonderful man! By the way, what do you usually talk about?”

“Mostly just about this place’s ecosystem—the plants that grow here, the forest, things like that.”

The vegetation in this place was slightly different from back at Martritz Barony. Since this was further in the south, there was more new vegetation that he hadn’t seen back at Martritz Barony.

Benno taught him various plants that could be used for medicine and other purposes. Recently, he took him into the forest while saying, “There are more interesting things here,” to take a look at the mushrooms and the cordyceps.

From that trip, Urien brought back some plants that he could experiment with for medicinal purposes. Back in the barony, he loved to play around with mushrooms and cordyceps to make medicines, so he was just doing the same thing here.

While Arnault spent his time playing with his parents, Urien spent his time reading books.

He’d often sneak out books from the library and read in the storage room he lived in, immersing himself with them. His passion in studying about insects and plants eventually led him to learn how to read and write in Rouleau’s, Belmania’s, and Barca’s official languages. He wasn’t confident in his speaking, but that didn’t matter as what mattered to him was reading the books.

Of course, he was also interested in the duke estate’s impressive collection. He’d like to go there at least once in the two years he was here, but he wouldn’t force it if he wasn’t allowed to.

Fortunately, there were some books that Benno left behind in the shed. The gardener seemed to be particularly fascinated by the creatures of the caves, cordyceps, and mushrooms, so he had been collecting books related to them.

Urien would often read those books, trying to learn something new, while playing with Marx. According to Benno, there was a cave deep inside the forest.

“The forest? The one across the river? That place is quite dangerous, so if you want to go there, please ask me or Benno to accompany you.”

“Mm. Will do.”

In truth, he actually had already entered the forest prior to this. Aside from going with Benno, he had also gone there multiple times to trap some food for Marx. Of course, he wouldn’t tell her this, he didn’t want to get into trouble.

For dinner, Urien had soup, chicken steak, bread, and salad. Ever since Ella started bringing him food, the quality of his meals improved dramatically. They still weren’t as good as the breakfast he had with Rodrick, the meals were still tasty nonetheless.

Ella stood nearby while Urien ate. As for the other maids who came with her, they just collected the dishes from the morning and quickly left the shed.

Despite him still being in the shed, she was practically treating him like a noble, which was a foreign experience for him. Though it made him a little nervous, it also made him feel like he was being treated as a child.

“Today’s chicken steak is served with berry sauce. How does it taste?”

“It’s tasty.”

“Wonderful, then. What about Marx? Has he eaten yet today?”

Urien also told her about Marx. He figured that if insects frightened her so much, then who knows what might happen if she were to discover Marx by accident.

Surprisingly though, the moment she saw Marx, she went, “So cute~!” and started doting on him. She couldn’t bear to watch him eat, but the fact that she liked the little lizard was enough for Urien.

“He doesn’t need to eat today. Just once every two or three days.”

“Oh my, I see!”

Of course, he asked Ella to keep Marx’ existence a secret.

He wanted as few people as possible to know his existence.

…The memory of that day was still vivid in his mind. That day when Marx fled to the ceiling after shedding his tail.

Back at Baron Martritz’ estate, his stepmother had found out about Marx and took his box away. Luckily, Marx shed his tail and ran away, but she didn’t spare Urien from her words that were filled with contempt.

——’Try to do anything unnecessary, I’ll feed that lizard to the dog.’

Urien couldn’t do anything but to press his head on the ground apologizing. He went on and on, until he didn’t even know what to apologize for and eventually settled on apologizing for his own existence.

It was unbearably painful, but he couldn’t just lift his head until he knew that Marx was safe. When his stepmother finally left, Marx, who had been hanging on the ceiling, let himself fall on Urien’s head.

He’d never forget how comforting the touch of his small hands were back then. His tail that had been shed eventually grew back, but if Urien could, he wanted to keep the shedded tail too.

After all, Marx was one thing that he’d never give up.

——’Stay out of trouble.’

At that moment, Rodrick’s words crossed his mind.

It wasn’t the first time he had said those words to him—he had repeated it plenty back at the baron’s estate.

Rodrick was one person that should never know about Marx. After all, he could easily snatch Marx away from him and feed him to the dogs if he found Urien’s attitude to not follow his liking.

And that was the one thing that Urien wanted to avoid no matter what.

‘…Hopefully, he returns when Marx is hibernating.’

“…When will Lord Rodrick return?”

“The duke?”

“Right,” Ella said with a serious look on her face.

“He has gone to Barca several times already. From the previous expeditions, he’ll probably be back in 6 months.”

“Will there be a war with Barca?”

“That I don’t know…”

Since the topic concerned the military, Ella didn’t seem to feel comfortable talking about it.

Sensing this, Urien decided to shift the topic with an “Anyway.” The topic that he came up with next was something that he figured would be a nice topic as a small talk, but it turned out that she was even more surprised to hear it compared to the matter with Barca.

“So, does Lord Rodrick have a lover?”

“Sorry?!?”