Chapter 14: The Spring That Never Comes

At Moma’s question, as if he truly knew nothing, Dale asked with a surprised face.

“You really don’t know anything? How long have you been living in some backwater, not to know a rumor so widespread it’s reached beyond the Kingdom of Rodelln?”

A peculiar emotion flickered briefly across Dale’s face, but before Moma could notice, that familiar smile had returned.

“I don’t know the rumor. Not a curse. Wrong.”

“Not a curse…… ah, no wonder it seemed strange. If everyone knew how terrible the duke’s curse is, no one could do such a thing.”

At Dale’s reaction—scratching his head as if he’d expected this—Moma’s lips pressed firmly together. He couldn’t understand the baseless aversion to Dale he’d felt from their first meeting, but perhaps it was because Dale’s feelings toward Leupen had been faintly perceptible all along.

‘A human who hates Leupen.‘

Because of humans like this, Leupen had to live in loneliness until now. That he’d changed to the point of being afraid to fall asleep alone—it was all because of the humans spreading false rumors.

“No. It’s not a curse or anything like that!”

“Even looking at that snowfield right now? Because the duke’s curse even affected neighboring kingdoms, the Kingdom of Rodelln is completely isolated. And yet the king hasn’t been able to kill the duke all this time because every time he tried, an even greater calamity befell them. Do you think that’s all?”

Dale looked ready to recite every false rumor circulating about Leupen.

Ignoring his words, Moma kindly explained to Dale, who seemed not to understand an obvious truth.

“Spring will come. Then the snow will disappear too.”

But Dale tilted his head as if to ask what nonsense he was saying.

“You really think so?”

It was no longer worth responding to. Moma clamped his mouth shut.

“Spring won’t come.”

At Dale’s firm words, Moma spun around and quickened his pace. Toward Moma’s back, Dale spoke in a low voice.

“Unless spring takes notice of winter. Though I doubt it would have the will to seek it out even if it did.”

At Dale’s incomprehensible words, Moma headed toward Leupen without even looking back. But something about his words stuck with him.

Hearing humans murmur about curses and ill omens, he grew all the more worried for Leupen, who would open his eyes alone in loneliness. In Moma’s mind, fear had vanished before he knew it. If the humans wouldn’t take Leupen’s side, he could take it for him.

His wet pants kept slipping down, but Moma hoisted the heavy pant legs and headed to Leupen’s bedroom. He had no time to notice the profuse traces of melted snow he was leaving on the floor. Fortunately, Dale didn’t follow—perhaps he’d lost interest in Moma.

Throwing the bedroom door wide open, Moma saw Leupen sitting by the window. Judging by his indoor clothes, it seemed Moma had come earlier than usual.

Leupen was looking at the door as if he’d known Moma would come. His gaze slowly swept over Moma’s hands, then his feet, and finally turned toward the window.

It was no different from the gaze Dale had sent earlier, but Moma felt ashamed under that gaze, which regarded his dirtied hands and feet.

Fidgeting with his fingers and toes, reddened by the cold, Moma belatedly noticed the puddle on the floor and panicked. Only then did he realize he had no towel in his hands.

“The towel…… I forgot.”

It was a simple task—delivering a towel to Leupen—yet he’d made a mistake, and he felt needlessly embarrassed.

‘It’s because of Dale’s nonsense.‘

Biting his lip firmly, Moma deliberately blamed Dale. Grumbling inwardly that it was because of him that he’d forgotten to stop by the adjoining room, Moma nodded.

After deliberating for a moment, Moma stripped off his dripping pants. Eden had firmly insisted that he must wear clothes, but Leupen didn’t seem to particularly care.

“I’ll bring the towel right away!”

Moma, hiding the discarded pants behind him as if to conceal them, wore a reassuring expression as if to say, don’t worry. But Leupen couldn’t take his eyes off the precarious boundary between Moma’s barely-covered top and his bare legs, so he didn’t see that expression.

There was no particular meaning in his gaze toward Moma. It was just that he couldn’t understand Moma, who kept stripping off his clothes.

“I’ll be back!”

It was Leupen who stopped Moma, wearing only his top—fluttering with every step—as he tried to leave the room.

At Leupen’s hand suddenly grabbing his arm, Moma stiffened and froze. He didn’t know when Leupen had come from the window to the door, but Leupen was right behind him. Watching from a distance was one thing, but being this close was still unfamiliar.

‘Moma is on Leupen’s side.‘

Worried Leupen might be hurt, Moma tried to relax his body, but he couldn’t go against his instinctive reaction. Unable to even turn to look at Leupen, who held his arm, Moma barely mustered his courage, swallowed, and asked.

“W-Why? What is it?”

Glancing sideways, he saw that in Leupen’s hand was the blanket Moma loved most. His own blanket was nice, but Leupen’s was the biggest, fluffiest, and most luscious.

He stared quietly at the blanket in Leupen’s hand, but Leupen said nothing, only holding Moma’s arm.

Following past the blanket, his gaze slowly moving to Leupen’s hand, Moma soon asked haltingly, as if unable to believe it.

“Is this…… a gift? Are you giving this to Moma?!”

That Leupen would give him a gift was unbelievable. And of all things, to press into his hands the very thing he loved most. Moma felt as if he could fly right up into the sky.

‘Leupen likes Moma too!‘

Moma knew better than anyone right now how difficult it was to notice what someone liked and give it as a gift.

“Th-Thank you! Moma will treat this as precious. I’ll wrap it around trees too!”

And at the same time, he felt sorry, thinking he still hadn’t discovered what Leupen liked. Moma burned with determination to observe Leupen even more diligently.

Moma, having stripped off even the dirty pants and damp top he’d been holding and set them on the floor, carefully received Leupen’s blanket. Leupen held onto the blanket for a moment, then, seeing Moma blinking at him, soon let it go willingly.

“So cozy. I love it.”

Moma’s bare body was wrapped and hidden by the blanket. Leupen, who had examined that sight thoroughly, finally headed to the bathroom.

“I’ll bring a towel—the softest towel! Wait here!”

Moma, rubbing his face against the plush blanket, shouted toward Leupen’s back and headed to the adjoining room with light steps, as if he’d never been tense at all.

And naturally, the rumor about ‘the attendant who walks around wrapped in the duke’s blanket while naked’ spread far more widely than ever before.

Eden, clutching his throbbing head, looked at Moma, who was carefully clutching the blanket before him.

“Where did you get that blanket…… no, why are you carrying it around in the first place?”

“It’s Moma’s precious thing. Someone might take it. Everyone wants it.”

He knew it was a little large to carry around. But recalling how the blanket had been switched out on its own several times before, Moma couldn’t bear to leave this blanket—the one Leupen had given him as a gift—in his room.

“Even so, are you going to work while carrying that? Something so big?”

“Moma can do it.”

“Carrying that…… never mind. I’ll keep it safe, so give it to me.”

Moma looked at Eden with suspicious eyes.

‘Maybe Eden is after this amazing blanket.‘

“I have no intention of stealing it, nor do I want it. I’ll keep it safe and return it to you at night. Put on these clothes.”

As if reading Moma’s mind, Eden pressed his forehead and promised, and Moma had to hand over the blanket. Even at the last moment, Moma couldn’t let go of his worry.

But Moma had quite a lot to do today. There wasn’t much he actually did, but his original schedule was already busy, plus he had to dig out the snow at dawn and pour life force into the frozen ground, and on top of that, there was one more thing he had to do today.

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In the quiet office, with Eden away, only the sound of Leupen turning pages echoed.

Moma, positioned a little closer than yesterday, muttered as if making an excuse. He was afraid Leupen might misunderstand that he’d thrown away the gift.

“……Moma took good care of the blanket. Left it safely with Eden so it wouldn’t disappear.”

Perhaps Leupen hadn’t heard Moma’s barely audible words. His gaze remained fixed on the documents.

‘I need to give Leupen something he likes quickly.‘

A while later, arriving at the kitchen, Moma cringed under the gazes of the other servants pouring onto him and scanned his surroundings.

A man busily moving in the depths of the large kitchen spun around at the murmuring. At Moma, hesitating and watching his reactions, the head chef Jerry barked.

“What? I’m busy as hell.”

His sturdy back looked somewhat similar to the pig-human’s, and Moma couldn’t step inside. He’d been intimidated by the bigger-than-expected build.

“Um……. Moma came to get the master’s meal. And I need red things, stinging berries.”

“What?”

At the noisy commotion inside, Moma raised his voice even louder.

“I’m looking for something that makes tears go splash!”

Once, in the Demon Realm, he’d touched something like a berry and then rubbed his eyes with that hand, and tears had poured out. The Demon Realm’s berries had no taste or scent, but they had an unexpected stinging pain. It wasn’t poison, but it was as agonizing as poison.

He didn’t know if he could find that berry in the human world, but he thought there would be something similar. If he could get a similar berry, and if he could cry profusely like before, he could obtain a gift for Leupen.

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The day Moma mistakenly believed he’d successfully gifted the fresh leaf. Leupen, for the first time, demanded information about Moma from Eden.

“Bring me the files on that spy.”

Even at Leupen’s unclear command, Eden didn’t need to confirm who the spy was. The documents on Moma were what he had already investigated when Moma first arrived at the mansion, so he could prepare them immediately.

But the documents Eden handed over on Moma were very thin. To be precise, it was ambiguous to even call them thin. There was only a single page.

“There’s no information at all.”

He didn’t bother conveying the opinion that Moma might be a hidden illegitimate child. Unless Leupen requested his opinion, Eden had no authority to voice it. Even without him saying so, Leupen would know better.

But Eden couldn’t help but voice his concern in the end.

“We can’t determine his identity. I think it might be best to dispose of him.”

Above all, the most suspicious thing was that no matter how much they dug, there was only a single page of records. Whether s*ave or illegitimate child, he’d lived somewhere, and if he’d moved, the records couldn’t simply not exist.

But as if someone had deliberately erased the traces, no trace whatsoever could be found. Unless he’d dropped from the sky, the probability was high that someone had intentionally concealed the information.

And Leupen seemed to share Eden’s thoughts, studying the single-page document for a long while.

“Check who’s backing him, and whether anyone connected to him is inside the mansion.”

Between Leupen’s fingers, slightly crushed but still fresh, a leaf was visible.

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