391 - Gardener Boy's Perspective - There's Nothing But a Catch to a Good Deal
May be slightly gory for some people.
At the center of the Uhlenfurt territory stands a castle named after a woman called Augusta. Compared to the home of a commoner like me, it's an unbelievably huge castle, but apparently to those who know, it's considered a "cozy little castle." The front garden alone is large enough to fit the entire town where I live, yet the nobles who call this small... I can't understand their thinking. Our worlds are different, so I suppose what we see is different too. It's a world I'll have no connection with for my entire life.
That's what I thought, anyway. But through some stroke of luck, a job as a gardener at Augusta Castle came my way. Under normal circumstances, a job like this would never come to a newly-adult, unknown gardener like me, but it seems the previous gardener had to quit due to a sudden illness. Since they couldn't leave the garden untended during the peak blooming season until a replacement gardener was found, I was hired, even if only as a temporary fill-in. I've also heard that if my work is good, they might keep me on permanently, so I really do think this is a stroke of luck.
...Compared to the menial workers who work inside the castle, a gardener doesn't have many opportunities to run into the noble lords and ladies.
I won't say it's an easy job, but compared to the servants working inside the same building as the nobles, there's somewhat less to worry about. If you carelessly let a noble see you, you'll be whipped for appearing before your master as a servant, and if you're a good-looking girl, it's not uncommon to be taken by force. Nobles and commoners really do live in different worlds. Even if you're employed at the castle as a servant, the iron rule is to finish cleaning and meal preparations before the master wakes up, and to behave so as never to dirty their field of vision. If a noble happens to be walking toward you from the opposite direction while you're cleaning the hallway, you hide before they notice you, and if you can't, you just get whipped.
...It's a well-paying job, so I need to work hard so they'll keep me on.
The truth is, I don't even know my employer's face. I'd heard rumors that this castle was occasionally used by the young lord of the ruling family, but I didn't even know that young lord's name. Or rather, there's no need for a commoner like me to know a noble young lord's name. All I needed to remember was my employer's house name, Uhlenfurt-sama.
For the sake of my mother's medicine money, I couldn't afford to lose my job, so I threw myself into my work. Sometimes I'd see nobles looking out at the garden from the windows, but as long as I kept low, I'd be hidden by the garden trees and wouldn't be spotted. It would've been fine to finish the outdoor work in the morning while the masters were apparently still sleeping, but the garden, left untended for a few days due to the sudden departure of the previous gardener, had weeds growing in it. I figured there'd be no problem as long as I stayed bent over while working, so I kept pulling weeds even after noon, and that was my mistake. Just as I straightened up to stretch my back, a voice called out from behind me.
"...Teo!"
"Huh?"
Called by a name I didn't recognize, I turned around in surprise to find a girl in beautiful clothes grabbing hold of my clothes. When my eyes met the girl's blue eyes, the blue irises that had been trembling as if about to cry immediately shifted to a look of disappointment.
"...No. You're not Teo."
A faint, small voice reached my ears, and by the time a maid caught up from behind, any semblance of expression had vanished from the girl's face. That might have been the first time I'd ever seen someone close off their heart. All I understood was that I'd apparently been mistaken for a 'Teo' that the girl knew.
...My name is 'Teo' too, though.
It was a common name, 'Teo,' found everywhere, but what kind of 'Teo' was the 'Teo' called out by such an incredibly beautiful girl like the one before me? Thinking such idle thoughts, I found myself staring at the girl.
Her hair was black, but something about it felt unnatural. Her eyes were blue, and her face was simply adorable. I think this was the first time in my life I'd ever seen such a cute girl. And the clothes she wore were also beautiful and high-quality. A luxurious, glossy dress made with plenty of fabric, I thought up to that point, before finally realizing.
The girl was, from every angle, a resident of a different world from a commoner like myself. Given that she had maids and guards following behind her, there was no doubt she was a noble's daughter. And then, words flashed through my mind like a revelation.
— A noble's daughter walking through the garden.
— The previous gardener quit due to sudden illness.
— I was hired as his replacement.
The moment these words connected through intuition, a fear-choked scream escaped my throat. I tried to flee, to hide from the noble girl's line of sight immediately, but instead fell on my rear. The words that burst from my mouth as I instinctively shielded my head were a plea for mercy to the noble. That showing myself wasn't intentional, that it was my own carelessness. That I was deeply sorry for dirtying the noble's field of vision with my grubby appearance. That I would serve with even greater care from today onward so as never to commit such rudeness again. So please, forgive me.
Under no circumstances could I say something like "I never expected a noble's daughter to come out into the garden," putting the blame on the girl's side. When a noble and a commoner occupy the same space, if anything happens, all the fault lies with the commoner. Even if a commoner with no wrongdoing whatsoever were tormented to death by a knife-wielding noble of ill repute, it would still be the commoner's fault. Simply being a commoner in a place where a noble could see you is the crime.
At best, a whipping. At worst, disposal. Just as I was bracing myself for that, the girl was urged back along the path she'd come by the maid who'd caught up. The maid said nothing in particular, and there didn't seem to be any whipping or disposal in store. Just as I thought that, though, the men who seemed to be guards closed in around me.
"Haven't seen this face before."
"He's the newly hired gardener, isn't he? See, the last one..."
"Ah, that explains it. That gardener was unlucky too, huh."
"Can't be helped. The master is infatuated with that girl."
"Talking about her outside was also bad, you know."
They weren't exactly speaking to me, but their intention was clearly for me to hear. The words that reached my ears, spoken as if among themselves, were nothing but ominous.
...The previous gardener was unlucky, huh. So that means...?
Too afraid to confirm, I silently listened to the conversation unfolding above my head. Nervous sweat broke out. From the information I could gather, it seemed the previous gardener had gotten involved with the girl from earlier and incurred the employer's displeasure.
"Well, we'll refrain from reporting this to the master for now, so..."
Do us a little favor, they said, and the ring of men around me opened up. I braced myself internally, trembling at what difficult task they might throw at me, but the favor they asked was a simple but strange job.
...Go dig up the ground in the back woods and bury it? What is it, I wonder.
Puzzled but following their instructions, I went around the castle's perimeter and out to the back garden. In the absurdly spacious back garden, similar to the front, I stepped into an area more like a forest than a woods.
...Ah, there it is. That's the spot.
I found a patch of ground that was clearly less even than its surroundings and felt certain this was the place the guards had indicated. The ground had bumps and hollows, as if it had been recently dug up, but the soil was dry.
"So I dig here and fill it back in, right?"
The unpleasant premonition that flickered through my mind made me mutter to myself, as if to distract from the anxiety. I knew it'd be faster to just shut my mouth and work silently, but somehow staying quiet made me more uneasy.
"Ah, the soil is soft."
Just as I'd sensed it had been dug up before, the shovel sank easily into the ground. As I roughly turned over the earth, wet soil emerged from within.
"Still, they're making me do a weird job, aren't they? I'd understand if they told me to dig out what was buried and bring it."
I thought about what might be buried there, and immediately regretted it. I somehow knew that something I didn't want to find was buried there.
"What is it? What's buried here?"
I don't want to. I don't want to dig any further. I don't want to find what's buried. That's what I thought, but if I didn't do as I was told, the men said they'd tell the employer about me meeting that girl. Since they said the previous gardener got involved with that girl and ended up 'unlucky,' I couldn't let the employer find out about today. I have a sick mother waiting for me at home. A good-paying workplace I'd stumbled into. I couldn't afford to lose it over something like this.
"Wouldn't it be hilarious if the gardener's corpse turned up?"
It was a prediction I hoped would be wrong. And it was also a prediction I was certain wouldn't be wrong.
The tip of my shovel hit something with a different texture from soil, and my hands, which had been moving mechanically, stopped. I swallowed hard, and still, I turned over the soil with the shovel.
I think the men's intent was a warning. They were subtly letting me know what the previous gardener had done. It seemed the previous gardener had leaked outside the castle that he'd met that girl. And that gardener was now sleeping in the woods of the back garden. Having me dig up and rebury the back woods was probably their way of teaching me what would happen if I incurred the employer's displeasure. If someone showed you something like that, anyone would keep their mouth shut. I don't want to leave my sick mother behind to be buried in the woods either.
...I thought it was too good to be true.
First of all, it was strange that they hired me, a newly-adult gardener with barely any track record, in the first place. The town I was born in was small, but I wasn't the only gardener there, and given the previous gardener's age, he should have had several assistants. There are other towns and villages in the territory too, so there was no reason to choose me. If I had to guess a reason, maybe it's that I live alone with my mother, making it easy to clean up if something happened. And another reason, I can't afford to lose my job because of my mother's medicine money. Maybe they chose someone easy to dispose of, someone who'd cling to their job and follow orders.
...So it's not just rumor or gossip. People really do get killed.
Nobles are terrifying. Never defy them, never displease them. Best of all, just don't go near them. The meaning of what the elders kept hammering into us, "hide your daughters if they're pretty," I understood it now, painfully well. I'd carelessly jumped at a workplace because of the pay, but by the time I realized the danger, I was already standing somewhere I couldn't escape from.
...I'll forget. I'll forget. I'll forget about that girl.
This was the kind of topic that would get me killed if I carelessly let it slip. To avoid being careless, I just had to forget the memory of today itself.
...But she did call me 'Teo,' didn't she.
I remembered the blue eyes that seemed about to cry, calling out to a 'Teo' who wasn't me, and closed my eyes tightly. Then, as if to drive away the lingering image behind my eyelids, I shook my head from side to side. That day, I went straight home, covered my head with a blanket, and slept. The thought that I might end up buried next to that gardener in the woods at any time made it hard to fall asleep, but I slept anyway. I forced myself to sleep.
I was scared, and I made up my mind to forget about that black-haired girl. Forget, forget. Whether it worked, after about a week, I stopped getting chills whenever I remembered the girl. The men never said anything to me either. Things went back to the way they were, and I continued tending the garden with an innocent face. My mother worried that I'd become less talkative, but that was all.
...Huh? Was there always a doll in that window?
One day, I spotted a large silver-haired doll displayed on a windowsill and tilted my head. The doll, which looked as if it were basking in the sunlight, seemed a bit too large to be considered a doll.
...More like, rather than a doll...?
I realized it was almost the size of a real human, and stopped thinking. I did not notice that the doll's face was the same as that black-haired girl's. I must not notice.
...Pretending not to notice is the right answer, isn't it?
I recognized the face of the guard standing as if to protect the doll. He was one of the men who'd told me to dig in the back woods. The man's gaze flicked toward me briefly, but I pretended not to notice. I also pretended not to notice that the doll's vaguely open eyes were the same color as that girl's from the other day.
This is the general thinking of commoners in the Empire around the castle and from Giselle's perspective. Also, Tina as she can't be seen from Giselle's perspective.
Will fix typos and errors at a later date.