Chapter 49 : Chapter 49
Volume 1
Chapter 49 : Life Was Full of Surpri… Frights
Although Muen had no idea what kind of changes Ann’s mentality had gone through over the years for her to turn raising a little boy into a full-blown imprisonment game, he knew that he had to escape.
Because he truly had no idea what other horrifying stunt Ann might pull that would make his vision go dark on the spot.
He had only been locked up for a few days, and he was already reaching his limit.
His heart was exhausted, and his kidneys even more so.
He wanted to live, and even more than that, he wanted to live freely.
If possible, he would prefer to live happily as well.
The yellow-haired villain had no intention of surrendering just like this.
“Come on, tatakae!”
…
The greatest advantage of recognizing this place was that it let him relax a little.
What Muen had feared most was that Ann might have locked him up somewhere unfamiliar and complicated.
If that had been the case, he probably would not even have been able to find an escape route.
Fortunately, Ann was his personal maid, and her movements were constrained to a certain extent.
So for her, converting an abandoned basement near the Duke’s estate into a prison was probably already the limit of what she could do.
Otherwise, Muen had no doubt that Ann would have built a castle in the middle of a lake just to imprison him there forever.
Turning him into a “princess” hidden away inside the castle, never seeing the light of day again, was probably what Ann wanted most.
“Sadly, I would rather be the prince.”
Muen casually rummaged through the junk piled in the corner and pulled out a rusty woodcutting knife.
Gripping it tightly, he advanced cautiously toward where he remembered the exit to be.
At the same time, he remained alert for possible traps and the like.
Fortunately, there were no traps.
That made Muen breathe a sigh of relief.
Right now, he had no ability to detect traps, especially magical ones.
If Ann had been a little more ruthless and installed all kinds of trigger-based traps or alarm systems in the exit passage, then Muen would definitely have been done for.
But on second thought, this place was still technically within the grounds of the Duke’s estate.
If someone from the estate accidentally wandered in and triggered a trap, it could very well cause a considerable commotion.
For Ann, who had imprisoned the Duke’s son, that was surely the last kind of trouble she would want to attract.
“Come to think of it, do the other maids in the estate know about this?”
“Has Ann kept them in the dark, or are they… accomplices?”
…
Muen was not walking very quickly, but the passage had clearly almost reached its end.
After turning a corner, the sudden light nearly blinded him.
But he was unwilling to close his eyes.
Even as tears streamed from the intensity of the brightness, he kept staring straight at the dazzling source of light ahead.
Like a dying man glimpsing hope.
The exit!
That was the exit!
He was about to escape!
At that moment, Muen thought of the sky, the sea, and himself galloping across an endless grassland on horseback.
Ah, freedom.
This was the scent of freedom.
Freedom was right there—
Tap.
A crisp footstep suddenly rang out.
At the same time, a shadow abruptly moved across that radiant place, blocking most of the light.
Muen, who had just been burning with admiration for freedom, instantly felt as if he had been teleported to an icy snowfield and doused with a bucket of freezing water.
He hurriedly hid behind the corner.
At a time like this, there was only one person that a sudden set of footsteps could belong to.
Ann.
But how had she come back so quickly?
Muen roughly estimated the time.
From the moment he picked the locks to the moment he reached this place, at most half an hour had passed.
Half an hour!
For a girl in love, half an hour was probably not even enough time to finish drawing her brows.
So how had Ann managed to bathe and change clothes in one smooth motion and be done so fast?
Was this the professionalism of a maid?
Washing herself clean and fragrant in half an hour so that her impatient master could summon her at once?
That sort of charming trait was not needed!
“Damn it.”
At this point, Muen had to admit that he had probably been too hasty.
Perhaps it would have been better to endure a little longer and wait until nightfall.
But there was no turning back after drawing the bow.
Even if he went back to the cell now and locked himself up again as though nothing had happened, Ann would probably still notice something amiss.
He could only look for another way.
Muen swept his gaze across the area and spotted an abandoned cabinet in a dark corner.
“Perhaps…”
Muen’s eyes lit up.
…
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
In the dead silence, the crisp footsteps drew closer and closer, every step seeming to land directly on Muen’s heart.
He did his best to control himself and keep his heartbeat from racing too fast.
At the same time, he clamped a hand tightly over his mouth and nose, temporarily holding his breath.
He was currently hiding inside the cabinet.
The abandoned cabinet was about the height of a person, just enough to hide him inside.
He had no idea who had left it here, but it truly was an enormous help.
After all, there was only one path here. If there had been nowhere to hide, he definitely would have run straight into Ann face-to-face as she came in.
And that would have been the end.
Thank you, oh mysterious Cabinet God, whether you existed or not.
May every imminent moment of being caught always come with a wardrobe to hide in.
Muen prayed silently in his heart.
“She’s here.”
Sensing Ann’s approach, Muen observed her movements through the gap in the cabinet door.
Ann slowly entered his field of vision.
Her posture was as upright and elegant as ever, each step exactly the right length, no more and no less.
She had clearly just bathed and changed into a fresh maid outfit, but her hair had not been pinned up as usual.
Instead, it hung damp down her back, carrying a different sort of alluring charm.
But as Muen looked at Ann, his heart rose straight into his throat.
At this moment, Ann was not a lovely and beautiful maid in his eyes at all.
She seemed more like some ferocious, man-eating monster.
And he was the pitiful soul forced to hide inside a cabinet to escape that monster.
If she found him, he was dead!
Thinking that, Muen’s heartbeat quickened by several more beats.
He stared at Ann without blinking, watching her walk step by step from the right side of his view toward the left.
“Hmm hmm hmm…”
Ann seemed to be in a rather good mood, softly humming an unfamiliar tune.
Muen remembered that tune. When he had trouble sleeping as a child, Ann would hum it gently for him.
How nostalgic.
It felt like Ann had not hummed in a very long time… no, was this really the time to be thinking about that?
Miss Ann, stop humming your little tune already.
Do you not want to see me terribly?
Walk a little faster, will you? I am in the very back!
Muen kept pleading desperately in his heart for Ann to hurry her pace, because every second of this was sheer torment.
“Hm?”
Ann suddenly let out a surprised little sound and stopped.
At the sight of that, Muen nearly felt his heart leap straight out of his throat.
Huh? What? Had Ann discovered him?
But he was hidden so well. How had she found him?
It was over, it was over. If she discovered he had tried to escape, she would definitely chop off all four of his limbs and turn him into a human pig!
My freedom, my galloping across the plains, my life is over!
“How strange. Why has my shoelace come undone? I clearly remember tying it.”
Ann suddenly bent down and tied her shoelace.
“…”
“So… it was just her shoelace?”
Seeing that, Muen could not help but let out a long breath.
He had nearly been scared to death.
Fortunately, none of the tragic fates he had imagined came to pass.
After tying her shoelace, Ann once again continued forward with graceful steps and disappeared from Muen’s sight.
Soon, even the sound of her footsteps vanished.
“Did she leave?”
It seemed like she had.
“So that means… I survived?”
A wild surge of joy at surviving the disaster spread across Muen’s face.
For a moment there, he had really thought he was done for!
Heaven be praised, the worst outcome had not happened.
“If you survive a great disaster, blessings are sure to follow. Things will definitely go smoothly from here on!”
Muen thought happily to himself, then prepared to push open the cabinet door and leave this hellhole.
“Huh, that’s strange.”
Muen’s smile suddenly froze.
“Why won’t the cabinet door open?”
Could it be…
With a stiff neck, Muen slowly raised his head, only to see—
At the very gap he had just been using to spy through, there was a beautiful eye staring at him through the crack.
When it noticed Muen’s gaze, that eye curved at once into a crescent moon.
“Young Master~ what are you doing in a place like this~”