Lucas agreed without much complaint and picked up a toy wooden sword lying on the ground.
Leon shouted.
“You have to block me well!”
That hardly sounded like something a destructive dragon would say.
Leon flapped his arms like wings, mimicking a dragon.
Then, he pushed over one of the chairs arranged around a table set up for tea time, sending it crashing to the ground.
“Rawr! I am a dragon!”
It was a pretty decent performance.
Not to be outdone, Lucas put on a fairly vivid performance as the hero.
“No! Stop tormenting the people!”
Lucas blocked the path in front of the fallen chair and slashed at Leon with the toy wooden sword.
Leon dodged it swiftly and mimicked breathing fire with his mouth.
Lucas acted as though he had been hit by the attack.
I decided I had seen enough. I quietly slipped out of the garden.
If it wasn’t the knight order and it wasn’t Leon, then who was tormenting him, and when?
I walked over to the shade of a tree a short distance away from the garden and sat down.
I set the broom down on the ground too.
I intended to wait here until Lucas came out.
I should have brought something to read.
As I was staring blankly at the sky out of sheer boredom, I sensed a suspicious presence.
Some unfamiliar people were loitering around the entrance of the garden.
‘I feel like I’ve seen them somewhere before.’
The two individuals were men.
They didn’t seem to be knights.
Their bodies weren’t trained well enough to belong to knights.
They weren’t faces I recognized either.
Even so, they looked strangely familiar.
Just as I was tilting my head in confusion, a face I actually recognized appeared.
It was a servant who attended to me.
He was one of the servants who regularly entered my bedroom.
The people who provided close attendance rotated in shifts, and he was one of them.
The servant was holding a wooden club in his hand.
Once I saw the servant’s face, I remembered who the other two were.
The other two were servants who worked under him.
Because I rarely had cause to interact with them, I hadn’t remembered them right away.
‘Why?’
I had discovered who the perpetrators were, but it made no sense.
What reason could those people possibly have to bear a grudge against Lucas?
A moment later, Lucas stepped out of the garden.
As if their roles had been decided beforehand, the two servants moved in perfect unison, grabbing Lucas and dragging him off somewhere.
The one holding the club followed closely behind.
‘How are they so fast?’
They were perfectly coordinated, looking like people who had done this many times before.
I hurriedly gave chase.
By the time I finally found them, they had already beaten Lucas to a pulp and were spitting on him.
Among them, the servant holding the club spoke.
“Didn’t I tell you? Stop wagging your tail at our Count.”
I was bewildered.
What on earth did that mean?
“Take your male whore acts somewhere else. If you dare enter the Count’s bedroom with that filthy body of yours again, I’ll make sure you lose the use of your arms next time.”
The servant spat on Lucas’s face one more time before leisurely leaving the spot with the others.
Lucas lay collapsed on the ground as if dead.
My heart dropped, wondering if he had actually died.
‘No. His chest is moving. He’s breathing.’
I desperately tried to make sense of the situation.
To think they were retaliating because they disliked Lucas entering my bedroom—what on earth did that mean?
Could it be… is it that?
‘How dare someone like you approach the person I admire! Get lost!’
That trope?
‘There’s no way that servant actually likes me… it’s probably just admiration for the master he serves.’
My attempt to appeal that I cherished Lucas by intentionally leaving marks on him had completely backfired instead.
A wave of belated regret washed over me.
Lucas only stood up after the three men had vanished entirely.
He then wiped the spit from his face with his sleeve.
He rotated his wrists and moved his arms to check if they were intact, and after carefully standing up, he checked his ankles before leaving the area.
The way he examined his physical condition was so natural, looking like this wasn’t something that had happened just once or twice.
Watching that scene only left me more confused.
‘No, why on earth won’t you just tell me?’
The perpetrators weren’t people who would be difficult to deal with.
I could just kick them out of the castle.
I had even instructed the butler early on to make sure no one mistreated Lucas.
The butler would have certainly conveyed my words to the servants working in the mansion.
Since they had disobeyed a direct command, there was more than enough reason to dismiss them.
Whether they admired or respected me, they hadn’t followed orders, so I felt no pity for them.
I thought everything would be resolved as long as I figured out who the culprit was, but Lucas’s mind became even more of a mystery to me.
I returned to the office with the broom.
Seeing my disheartened face, the butler offered words of comfort.
“You did your best, My Lord. Shall I assign someone to look into it?”
“I found out. It turns out who is doing it isn’t the problem.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. It was the servant and his subordinates. I want you to handle it.”
The butler looked surprised by the unexpected revelation.
However, upon hearing who it was, he accepted the order with a firm expression.
The butler would take good care of them now.
While he wouldn’t be able to have them beaten in return, they had been fired for committing a wrongdoing in the castle, so making a living would be difficult for them for the foreseeable future.
Noticing the heavy worry etched on my face, the butler asked, “Are you alright?”
“I don’t understand why Lucas didn’t say anything.”
“Wouldn’t that mean he has a reason he wishes to keep hidden? The issue seems to be that we do not know what it is he wants to conceal.”
The butler was right.
Why Lucas refused to speak was the real issue.
I had no choice but to call him in and ask.
“Please call Lucas to the office right now. And bring some medicine along with him.”
“I will call him once you have changed your clothes first.”
The butler helped me change back into my usual attire.
After changing into my work clothes, I sat on the sofa and massaged my neck.
Perhaps due to the stress, my neck felt incredibly stiff.
“It is Lucas. May I enter?”
“Come in.”
Lucas walked in dressed impeccably and sat on the sofa.
There wasn’t a single trace of him having rolled around on the dirt floor.
It seemed he had destroyed the evidence in the meantime.
“For what reason did you call me?”
“Let’s have some tea before we talk.”
The butler brought out tea and refreshments.
