"THE YOUNG LADY IS MISSING!"

It seems that I just saw an illusion, I and I wasn't the one chasing Dianne. There's an intruder.

And what I saw outside the open door was Dianne's ribbon and her one pair of shoe which was covered in mud.

It looks like it happened much earlier when I'm still counting. I slowly went outside to pick it up, the cold drops from the rain gave me shiver and pain but it doesn't matter as I was focused on the two objects. Or does it really not matter?

I must tell the maids— wait, would they believe me-?

"AHHHHHHH!"

After I turned around, a maid came screaming after seeing me. I was wet from the rain, and was holding a shoe and ribbon from Dianne.

And moments later, there came the whole people in the mansion.

Many gasped, many looked at me with that disgusted and scared look.

And when I looked on the small figure within the crowd, Larence has a dark expression or I just can't see his expression well because it was dark.

Then the head butler came.

"Did you do this, Charlotte?"

Wait— what!?

I-is he accusing me!?

I was about to shake my head to say no when a tall figure with a gloomy expression came in front of me. I can't look at him in the eye, he was just shaking while taking away the things I was holding.

He was about to cry when he looked at me.

Anger, his eyes are full of anger.

"Your g—"

I was about to say something when he turned around from me.

He immediately go to Larence and hold him, and he immediately ordered for a search of the young lady that gone missing.

What did just happened?

Then after all of the crowd decrease, I immediately felt pain after he hold both my shoulders tightly.

"What happened? Tell me! Did you do this!?" I shook my head helplessly.

I looked at Larence to give me help, but he's not looking at me.

What.. did just happened?

"Uncl—"

"Don't call me that! You're just like your father! Why did I even trust you? I should've not listen to Laura about matters that includes the family of you both, you and your father. Damn it! Take her to her room!"

I was forcibly taken to my room, I was reaching out my hand to Larence earlier but now I was just reaching my hand to nothingness.

'Thank you for being alive.'

'Whatever happens in the near future, always remember I'm on your side.'

Was that all lies? Why?

No. No. If I just explained what really happened they might hear me out.

'Will they hear you out?'

'They'll just think you're making excuses.'

'Who would believe you?'

'Besides you're alone in the first place.'

No!

'They're nothing when you're alone, do they matter to you this much?'

Stop!

I ended up crying on my bed. I told myself before not to rely on others too much when Leione left. Do I rely on them too much before?

That day, the happy yet rainy day turned into a disaster after the eldest young miss of the Froscheldt went missing.

And I, was locked up in my room. And I don't know much what happened after that incident, if they had already found the missing lady or not.

I was about to break down, when I remember my goal.

To survive, even when I'm alone. Why would I worry about others when I'm like this? And the time we spent together were short, we're strangers to each other in the first place. And I was the one who declared that.

But why? Why does my heart waver like this even though I felt uncomfortable from them in the first place?

The other side of my mind think otherwise.

Weeks later, the mansion came back to what it's like before. No maids came to me to 'dress' me up, but unlike before, no maids kept on pestering me instead I was left alone locked up in my room.

I don't know much of what's happening outside.

I became weaker than the weak me before. I lived like that, locked up, with nothing.

With no water.

No food.

No clothes.

Nothing.

I just kept on writing on that paper Larence gave me but, I always wrote on how pathetic I am right now. And I put the numbers of days I was locked up on that even though sometimes I can't hold the pen properly anymore.

So, I stopped writing on it when everytime I remember Larence. I just do kept on hugging and holding the stuffed toy that was gifted to me.

Sometimes I do sneak out through the window, afraid of being caught, I never went to other places where maids might be.

I don't have much stamina left, but I want to survive so I must get out.

But it seems that there's no people anymore, I witnessed that one day when I explored the insides of the mansion.

No maids. No butler. No chefs. No one.

They left a nine year old child in a rotting mansion.

The mansion came back to it's original state when I was still around 2 or 3, full of dusts, mud, everything seemed dark and dirty.

In the end, they left me to rot here together with the mansion.

Aren't they afraid I might be a ghost that'll roam in this abandoned mansion and haunt them? Aish, what am I even thinking?

And after those weeks, my condition worsen.

Even though they're not here, my wounds didn't heal like before.

I don't have anything to eat, no water to bath, no one to go at.

And now I'm eating anything edible I might find outside.

Water from the well that was filled up by the rain.

And that day, when I was about to go to the garden.

When I saw the closed gates that was about to welcome me.

Someone covered my mouth with a cloth.

I can't even resist because of my weak body, before I lost consciousness I saw men in black hoods and a crest of a rose stabbed with a sword.

It was a long sleep, I woke up with another dirty ceiling to welcome my vision after opening my eyes.

Why the hell do I always wake up with dirty ceiling?

I moved my hands, my feet. And I heard a clinging sound of metals.

It was a chain. I was chained.

There's a chain on my right leg and on my wrist. Why? Why is it like this?

If I didn't play hide and seek with them, would everything lead to this?

No. If I never accepted Dion's offer, this won't happen.

No. If I've never born in this world, this would never happen.

Why?

"Agonizing already? Well, that's quite good. The more you suffer, the more it'll be satisfyingly good."

This voice.

I looked outside the cell, the man who Leione met before that was said to be the Golden Knights Commander, was grinning mischievously from ear to ear.

"It's been awhile when I met those kind of gaze, that kind of eyes. Oh, when your father looked at me like this too."

He opened the cell, and came inside. Since both my hands are chained, I don't have any strength to move beside sitting. He held my chin tightly, that it hurts.

"Oh, the times when your father was chained like this."

"L-let me.. go."

My father?

"He was screaming in anger, even though his body was shaking too much. He was too powerful to hold." He closed his hand into a fist, and grinned again.

"After awhile, he gave up. He gave up everythinggg~ he lost his sanity, he became an emotionless bastard."

And then his gaze became fierce.

"And when we took him out for him to take some air because he might die, he met some pest, thanks to her his power weakened. That's what everyone thought, it was weakened for awhile and gone berserk when his people found him."

Then he came back to me, taking out something from his pocket.

W-what is that?

He took out a crystal ball, or similar to that. And something dark was lurking inside of it.

"See this power lurking inside? That's your father's that we able to maintain in our hands. That's how your father suffered by my father's hands, and now his daughter—"

He then gripped my neck, that made me gasp for more air.

"Will suffer by my hands."

He then spoke some words that even I can't understand, or I wasn't able to understand anymore.

My mind went blank, and when I thought I became numb. I was wrong.

"AHHHHHHH!"

I screamed in pain.