Wow. There was a hideous sandstorm. I was left alone in the middle of a bottomless wasteland.
"Help me..."
I looked around in a daze. The landscape, empty in all directions, was more familiar than unknown. ...Oh, this was the Southern Archipelago of the Empire. It was Queen Island.
My fallen hometown. There was an infernal mountain created from a pile of bodies of my dead comrades. That's right. The land I was currently standing on was a hill of corpses.
As soon as I recognized it, a slender hand poked out of the ground and grabbed my ankle.
"H-Help me, Andert..."
The face revealed beneath the sand was flesh melted between the skull; it couldn't be called that of a living person.
"Andert..."
It was a voice I had heard before, but I couldn't think of a name or face. A familiar voice, an unknown face. I had many people whose presences were like that for me. On the battlefield, we didn't ask each other's names. Remembering names meant there were more people to cry for.
"It hurts. Help me. Help me... Sir Andert, why didn't you help me? Why did you let me die?"
They were soldiers who died in the war. Perhaps that was why I couldn't bear to get rid of this person. Shortly after, the second arm reached out. And then the third, and the fourth... The tenth arm came out of the ground and grabbed my limbs. Having no more strength to resist, I fell to the wasteland and bony hands fumbled near my face.
"No, that's not it. You're not Andert!"
Screaming hands roughly pushed my body away. They pointed fingers at me and signaled.
"Who are you?"
I answered by saying Andert, but the dead did not hear my voice.
"Don't lie or use someone else's name. Take the skin off Andert."
"Who are you?"
"I am Andert. I am the real Andert Fager. I carried a sword and a gun under this name with you! I went through hell for 10 years with this name!"
"Tell us your real name."
"How dare you use Andert's name?!"
"You're not Andert! Who the hell are you?"
I, I'm not Andert Fager... Andert was my brother. So who was I?
I stood up, my shoulders shaking and trembling as if they were on fire. When I gasped for air, what filled my lungs was not the dryness of the wasteland, but fresh air that seemed to contain peace.
Before I could discover where I was, the voice that remained in my head confused me. "Who are you?" I also wished to know. "Who am I?" "Who are you?"
Oh. When I turned my head by reflex, I saw the housemaid standing by my bed. The maid, who looked at me with cold eyes, continued speaking in a chilling voice.
"I'd be happy to answer that. She is a brave maid who slept late, Miss Daisy. It seems you are still wandering in your dreams because you fell asleep. Hurry up and wake up before I have to pour cold water on your head to make sure you do."
Oh, I fell asleep. It was a dream. Even if it was, why did I have such a bad dream? It wasn't fair to say I fell asleep, right?
A clause in the contract came to mind that said my salary would be reduced if I was late for work twice. I got even more depressed as the effects of the nightmare were already making me sad. Furthermore, my throat hurt a lot. It was as if I had really crossed the desert. Instead of putting on the maid uniform, I squat. "I'm very thirsty."
The maid, who shook her head with a look of bewilderment, turned toward the door. "Ah... I don't know if I'm raising a child or educating a maid. I'll bring it to you, so change your clothes."
"Yes."
As soon as the maid left the room, I headed for the window. A small note I noticed when getting out of bed was neatly stuck between the window frames. The contents of the note were as follows: [Pub. Time: when you are free.]
There was nothing else, but the letter must be from the butler-assassin. It meant stopping by the pub at any time because he had something to say. Have you already found Diancecht's relic? I put the note in my personal drawer, got ready for work, and went down to the first floor.
When I set foot outside the wide-open front door, I saw the maid, who had said she would bring me water, standing stiffly at the front door. She was looking at a letter with very serious eyes.
"Is it a threat?" I couldn't help but ask about the contents of the letter because it seemed very fierce.
The maid, who turned stiffly toward me, hurried to put the letter in her pocket and replied, "Oh, Miss Daisy. No, it's just something I was a little worried about... let's go in now. Did you drink water?"
"I'm going to."
I started my morning routine after drinking the water with which the maid watered the plants. Sometimes I think the maid really takes me for a working cow. After mopping the second floor hallway, I went out into the garden before lunch and checked the "Rue" pot that was carefully placed on the steps.
"...it seems to be fine." Yesterday morning it sprouted for the first time. The cotyledon of the seed I planted belonged to a dicot. The leaves were small but plump and a total of 22 seeds germinated. The irregularly curled appearance was no minor matter. "So cute."
So grass could be cute too. Rue, you have 22 bodies. I'm glad I called it "Rue," even if it has 20 different bodies. No matter what they say, you are Rue.
"Thin it out." From above my head came a dry tone that broke the sentimental scene.
"Or you can transplant it elsewhere, but it's too much to just replant it. There's no room in the garden. We'd better cut it back."
When I looked up, delicate doll-like features were looking back at me. The midday sun shone behind the blue hair that reminded me of a waterfall. But I couldn't focus on the sun. This guy's face shone brighter.
"Why?"
"Pull out the ones with thin leaves and weak stems."
"But why?"
"It's hard for nutrients to be properly distributed in such a small pot, so the plant won't grow properly. It's correct to keep the ones that are most likely to survive."
How dare you apply such barbaric logic to my plant? I looked at the pot with mixed feelings. It was a barbarity, but it wasn't wrong. Even if they huddled in this small pot, it would only turn into a tragedy if they killed each other. Life is bitter. Even grass competes with each other to survive. However, I don't feel comfortable thinning out the leaves I grew with my own hands. Looking around the garden, Rue warned in an insensitive tone, "As I said, there's no room in the garden."
"What do you mean? There are so many empty spaces. There's a lot of grass next to the fountain, and grass again in front of the flowerbed. There, there, there." Ignoring that my lips were dry, I pointed to spots in the garden and Rue squeezed my fingers, answering with a friendly but compassionate expression, as if teaching a fool.
"The empty space is for aesthetics. Beauty is maximized by leaving it empty. The flowers planted in the garden are not refugees. There's no reason to blindly plant anything in the empty space."
"Then you don't want it to die."
"You can't dig into the ground by force."
The Weatherwoods mansion basically shared all household chores with all its employees (except cooking). So when Rue was busy, I watered the garden and when I was busy, Rue cleaned the fireplace. However, the garden's beauty was definitely in Rue's jurisdiction. This meant I needed his permission to transplant more than ten pairs of dicotyledonous plants, which could damage the garden's beauty.
"Let..." No, I couldn't bear to say it while looking at the face of my nemesis Rue. "You..." I turned my head and closed my eyes tight. "Let me plant it." The words barely made it out of my mouth, but there was no response.
When I opened my eyes and looked at him, I wondered with a face that looked as if he didn't want to let me plant them at all. "Do you want me to cut it for you?" He seemed as if he were asking, "Am I your slave?"
"Well, I..."
"Well?"
"Please."
His amused face tilted at an angle. Rue tapped the pot full of cotyledon. "What flower do you think it is?"
"It'll be pretty."
"With what confidence?"
"Because its name is Rue."
Rue's eyes narrowed. Perhaps due to the thinness of his eyelids and the sharpness of his eyelashes, even when he opened his eyes he looked like someone in a portrait. "Do you even know how to flatter?" His voice sounded more like a laugh than a sentence.
Rue, who was looking at me, raised his head and looked around, walking toward the back of the fountain. Soon he touched the grass under the fence. "In a row, here. If it's dirty, I'll cover it with dirt. I'll check later, so move steadily."
Ah, like that? Before he could change his words, I moved to pick up my pot. When I turned my back to bring the shovel, he stood in my way and raised his chin, giving something that looked like an order but not an order. "Thank you?"
"...Thank you, Mr. Rue." After enjoying looking at my face while chewing my words, he waved his long legs and disappeared. What a demanding guy.
I picked up a shovel and began to dig into the hard grass. But if I transplanted them in the garden, was it still Rue? Rue was the name of the pot, and these sprouts had come out of the pot and would be newly established in the garden. "Would it be okay to give them a new name? Do you like singular units?"
How much time passed like this while I transplanted each of the plants? Over the fence several children's fights could be heard.
"I'll be Raphael."
"No, I'm Commander-in-Chief Raphael!"
"Hey, idiot. You have brown hair. So become Commander Andert, or would you prefer Natasha?"
"What? I don't like Andert. Then I'd have to die at the hands of the Great Mage Mephisto. I'm Raphael!"