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Chapter 331: The emperor who lies down and the emperor who crawls

At his feet was a blindfolded and gagged half-Elf, tied with rope that was wrapped around him from his shoulders to his toes, making him resemble a bagworm.

Standing behind him was Dalton, who was giving a wry smile, as well as Lissana, Zorcodrio, and Merdin, who were bowing their heads in apology.

“It seems that you’ve suddenly decided that I’ll be responsible for this person, but who is he?” Vandalieu asked. “Given that you’re treating him like this, it seems that he’s quite the important person, in a bad way.”

Schneider was known to the public to be a knavish but good person, someone who was dangerous and an unmatched womanizer but didn’t do anything crooked. When he caused fights at restaurants, he would make sure to pay for damages (with the money he stripped from the people he fought with), and he didn’t coerce women into doing things that they didn’t want to.

And Vandalieu was also aware of what kind of person Schneider was, so he knew that Schneider wouldn’t do something like this for no reason. He knew that there must be a very good reason that Schneider had done something like this.

“Who do you think it is?” said Schneider.

“Let’s see… a relative of the former emperor?” Vandalieu guessed.

If it was a relative of Marshukzarl, who had stepped down from his throne… perhaps one of his sons, then it would make sense for Schneider to wrap him up in rope and bring him to Vandalieu alive.

“You were so close! The correct answer: It’s Marshukzarl himself,” said Schneider.

“Marshukzarl himself. I didn’t expect that… Couldn’t you have warned me beforehand?” said Vandalieu, not having expected that the person rolling around on the ground was the former emperor himself.

“I mean, well, there are times when haste wins over thoroughness, aren’t there? That’s the kind of situation it was,” said Schneider.

“I see,” Vandalieu said, accepting this explanation.

Schneider had learned information about the facility where Marshukzarl was confined. It was likely that he had needed to kidnap Marshukzarl before the enemy became aware of that and moved or disposed of him before Schneider could get there.

Marshukzarl was a common enemy of both Vandalieu and Schneider. But kidnapping him rather than killing him on the spot, making it unclear to the enemy whether he was alive or dead, would cause turmoil for the Amid Empire, which was still unstable due to the recent crowning of a new emperor.

Even though Marshukzarl had stepped down from the throne, it hadn’t been a peaceful matter. It could more accurately be described as a religious coup d’état staged by Eileek, the new Pope of the Church of Alda.

There probably were still nobles and merchants who adored Marshukzarl, and many would think that Schneider’s kidnapping of him meant he had successfully escaped, and that he would be biding his time and gathering strength so that he could reclaim the imperial throne one day.

Those who served the new emperor would be forced to divide their attention to suppress the rebellious groups that could be labeled as Marshukzarl’s faction.

That was likely what Schneider had been aiming for… or so Vandalieu thought.

Unfortunately for Schneider, his party members revealed that this was an overestimation of his wisdom and foresight.

“He’s lying, you know,” said Dalton.

“Yup. He was telling the truth when he said that we were looking into the movements of the Fifteen Evil-breaking Swords, though,” said Lissana.

“After that, we found a facility being protected by some of the Fifteen Evil-breaking Swords, and when we raided it, we found out that it was where this guy was being confined,” said Merdin.

“We are truly sorry for the trouble we have caused,” said Zorcodrio.

“… This is where I’d like to say that you should take him back to where you found him since you can’t take proper care of him, but he’s quite the important person,” said Vandalieu. “Would it be bad if I killed him right here and turned him into a Live-dead?”

“I don’t have any problems with that. Is that what you want to do?” said Schneider.

“Hmm… No, let’s leave him alive for a while. We might need him for something, after all. Well then, I’ll build a facility to confine him in, so please look after him for a while,” Vandalieu said.

“Vandalieu-dono, if possible –” began Zorcodrio.

“I know, Master. I will confine him in a place where he will never meet Sieg,” said Vandalieu.

And with that, he decided to leave Marshukzarl here and go home. He knew that Marshukzarl was conscious and was listening to their entire conversation. But he simply felt no need to pay any consideration to Marshukzarl’s state of mind.

Vandalieu had never directly met Marshukzarl before, but this was the person who had ruled the Amid Empire and its vassal states, and it was under his empire’s laws that his mother Darcia had been burned at the stake. It was he who had ordered the Mirg shield-nation to send the expedition army into the Boundary Mountain Range, and it was he who had sent ‘Five-headed Snake,’ ‘Light-speed Sword,’ ‘King Slayer,’ and ‘Insect Army’ of the Fifteen Evil-breaking Swords to the Sauron Duchy, which had been under the empire’s occupation at the time… though ‘King Slayer’ was now the ‘Head-hunting Demon’ in the former Scylla territory, and ‘Insect Army’ was now working in Talosheim’s bee yards and caterpillar farms.

In any case, there was no changing the fact that Marshukzarl was an enemy. Vandalieu didn’t feel as pressing a desire to kill him as Heinz and his companions because he was the former emperor, and because he had been captured by Schneider and his party.

Now that he no longer had any power, he was no longer a threat to Vandalieu or those he considered important to him. If he became a nuisance, Vandalieu, Schneider or any of his companions could crush him underfoot at any time.

Thus, Vandalieu had simply decided that Marshukzarl should be kept alive while he could still be of some use.

“So, now that you’ve met him in the flesh, what do you think?” asked Schneider once Vandalieu had left, removing Marshukzarl’s gag and blindfold.

Marshukzarl sighed. “I was blindfolded and gagged. Can you really say that I’ve ‘met’ him?”

“You fool. That’s my way of taking pity on you,” said Schneider, as if disappointed in Marshukzarl’s lack of gratitude. “I stopped you from saying anything stupid.”

Marshukzarl realized that Schneider was right. He had the vague feeling that if he had been free to speak, he would only have irritated Vandalieu, no matter what he said… even if he had remained silent.

“Now then, you just need to weed this area,” said the hospital worker, giving the young adventurer his task.

The hospital he worked at was not a hospital that treated those who had ordinary injuries or illnesses.

It was a facility to confine those whose mental scars caused them to have hallucinations, lose their memories, or call themselves by different names and behave like different people – the kind of people whose ‘Mental Corruption’ Skill Level was so high that it interfered with their daily lives.

… On paper, it was a place that aimed to treat these people. If someone were to ask any of the staff or their managers, or the clerics and doctors that were supposed to be administering the treatments, that was the answer they would get.

But almost no patients admitted to this hospital had ever made a full recovery and been discharged.

Those who had these patients admitted here didn’t expect them to make a full recovery. To them, this place was a prison to confine their family members and relatives who had gone mad.

In reality, even this hospital worker had heard rumors that there were people who would cause inconvenience to certain nobles if they were free, and the hospital was taking enormous bribes to admit these people as patients and imprison them.

He didn’t take these rumors seriously, but he did believe the hospital’s shadiness made it unsurprising that there were such rumors. The gods whose carvings decorated the walls were probably crying in shame. Well, it was said that the will of gods did not reside in statues that nobody prayed to, so perhaps the gods were unaware of the statues of themselves in this hospital to begin with… though the hospital worker didn’t know whether it was true or not, and he didn’t particularly care.

“Yes, sir,” said the young adventurer.

Shrugging off these unimportant thoughts, the hospital worker continued his explanation of the boy’s task. “Gather the weeds you pull into a pile over there. Once they’re dry, we’ll burn them. And because this place is outside the city, we get stray dogs wandering around from time to time, but you’ll be fine as long as you don’t approach them yourself.”

Merchants with the funds to spare, nobles, and public facilities often made commissions at the Adventurers’ Guild for miscellaneous tasks like removing weeds and sweeping leaves. Naturally, this was not because they wanted these tasks to be carried out swiftly by extremely physically capable adventurers. It was their way of doing a charitable deed, by giving work to F-class adventurers – those who were children, or those who had lost limbs.

But because it was charity, this work was boring, took a long time, and didn’t come with good payment. These commissions were unpopular, and this boy was the only one who had accepted this particular commission… In truth, the boy had familiars, but he had refrained from bringing them with him out of consideration for the patients.

Come to think of it, the bosses were fussing a lot over this boy. It’s true that he’s a Dhampir and the child of an honorary noble, so maybe that’s why, the hospital worker thought. Oh yeah, I was supposed to not let him come into contact with a certain patient, what’s-her-name. What a drag. I actually can’t even remember her name.

The hospital worker’s bar of professionalism was on the floor. Why did he have to watch over an adventurer who had been hired to carry out a miscellaneous task? Wouldn’t it be better for him to spend his time on his own work?

“And if the patients start talking to you from inside the building, just ignore them,” the man said.

And with that, he went back to do his own work rather than watching the young adventurer… Vandalieu. He simply assumed that the boy would do as he was told and ignore any patients that spoke to him.

But this was a big mistake.

“Yes, I understand,” said the boy.

Although he had been instructed to ignore any patients that spoke to him, the hospital worker hadn’t told him anything about speaking to the patients himself.

Among the various forms of practical training at the Hero Preparatory School, there was a task that involved accepting an actual commission at the Adventurers’ Guild.

Of course, even though the students at the Hero Preparatory School had strength equivalent to that of D-class adventurers, they were treated as underage while they were enrolled at the school, so they were not allowed to accept commissions to eliminate monsters or bandits.

Accepting a commission to escort someone who was traveling outside Orbaume wasn’t allowed, either.

Thus, many students chose commissions asking them to gather medicinal herbs in ordinary fields or forests, or hunt ordinary beasts that weren’t monsters.

Vandalieu had been thinking of doing the same, but when he went to the Adventurers’ Guild, all of those commissions had already been taken by the other students and adventurers.

Thus, he took the only commission that was remaining on the commissions board: ‘Weeding the back garden of a hospital.’

Amelia looked very happy as she smiled, wearing a crown and necklace of red flowers that someone had apparently woven for her.

“So you see, Eli, he came in through the window, bending the bars like jelly. I was so surprised!” she said.

Elizabeth and Mahelia looked at the window that the flower-decorated Amelia was pointing at, which had iron bars covering the glass.

“Wow, he bent these iron bars like jelly, huh?” said Elizabeth.

“… Madam, the bars do not look like they have been bent,” said Mahelia.

Amelia believed that these iron bars were there to protect her, but in reality, all windows in the hospital were fitted with these bars to prevent the patients from leaving their rooms.

The surface of the bars was covered in rust, but Amelia remained trapped in this room. There was no sign whatsoever that they had ever been bent.

“And then I said, ‘If you do that, the servants will be so troubled!’ And then he bent the bars like jelly again and made them straight, just like they were before. So funny, isn’t it?” Amelia said with a giggle.

“Oh my. I see. It really is quite funny, but it’s also rather ill-mannered, isn’t it, ‘Father?’” said Elizabeth.

“Indeed, Elizabeth-sama is right. Isn’t she, ‘Master?’” said Mahelia.

Amelia was smiling and enjoying herself, while Elizabeth and Mahelia stared fixedly at a certain person. There were four tea-filled cups in front of them.

Normally, only three of these would be consumed. But today, there was someone reaching for the fourth cup.

“Now that you mention it, entering through the window really is quite rude. I’ll be more careful from now on,” said Vandalieu, raising the cup to his lips.

The tea here is quite good, he thought.

He closed his eyes, reminiscing the events that had led to him being called ‘Dear’ by Amelia and having an invisible pressure placed on him by Elizabeth and Mahelia.

Vandalieu extended his claws and swung both hands around, cutting through the weeds like a lawnmower, then quickly carried them to the spot he’d been instructed to.

While doing so, he noticed a woman behind one of the windows, who was gazing at the outside world.

Her hospital room was on the second floor, and its window was small and had bars fitted over it, so Vandalieu couldn’t see her clearly. But he could guess that she was one of the patients – her eyes looked very lonely.

After swiftly completing his task of weeding the garden, he crawled up the hospital’s wall – he’d been instructed to not use magic, as it might scare the patients inside the hospital… though he’d misinterpreted this as meaning ‘You can do whatever you like, as long as you don’t use magic.’

“Hello, what’s the matter?” he said, calling out to the woman who was staring out the window.

The woman, who looked to be over thirty years of age, took a big step back in surprise.

“Dear?!” she shouted. “Dear, you can’t do that! It’s so dangerous! Whatever will you do if you fell and injured yourself? Hurry and come inside the room!”

“Oh. Alright,” said Vandalieu, realizing that she was right.

Doing as he was told, he decided to enter the room… the woman’s hospital room.

He turned the iron bars into Golems and bent them with the ‘Golem Creation’ Skill, and as the woman opened the window for him, he dislocated the joints in his shoulders and hips so that he could slither through it like a snake.

Lying on the floor, he popped his joints back into place with clicking noises. Then, at the woman’s instruction, he bent the bars back into their original shape.

And so, Vandalieu was welcomed into the room by the woman… Amelia. The two of them then began conversing.

“Dear, what kind of work did you do today?” Amelia asked.

“I was cutting the weeds,” said Vandalieu.

“Cutting the weeds? Dear, you don’t have to do something like that…”

“Someone has to do it, and I was asked to.”

“Dear… You’re right. We need to put up with it for now. And yet, I… I’m so sorry, dear.”

“No, no. Please don’t blame yourself like that.”

During this conversation, Vandalieu was starting to sense that Amelia’s ‘dear’ had a different meaning from what he’d originally thought.

Come to think of it, this facility specializes in treating mental illnesses. In other words, this person is likely mistaking me for her husband… Her illness seems to be quite serious, Vandalieu thought.

He didn’t know what kind of person Amelia’s husband was, but there was no doubt that he didn’t bear the slightest resemblance to Vandalieu.

Despite that, Amelia was continuing this conversation with Vandalieu without any sense that anything was wrong. Her mental illness was clearly very severe.

“Thank you, dear… For some reason, I feel like it’s been a very long time since I talked to you like this. Even though I spent yesterday and the day before with you, right here in this room!” Amelia said.

“I’m sure that’s because I did something as childish as coming in through the window,” said Vandalieu.

Because Amelia seemed to be very mentally ill, Vandalieu decided to go along with this conversation. He didn’t know whether she was hallucinating or simply deluded, but he knew that he shouldn’t refute her statements. If he did, the anger and confusion could cause her to go out of control, or it was even possible that she would faint from the shock.

He had learned this from spirits and Ghosts that had lost their sanity… though he didn’t know how to cure such illnesses.

“I wonder if you’re right… Yes, I’m sure you are. Come to think of it, are there flowers blooming outside?” Amelia asked.

“There are flowers like these growing at this time of year,” said Vandalieu, holding out his hands towards Amelia and making several plants sprout on them. These plants, which had been grown with the ‘Shadow Group Binding Technique’ Skill, matured in the blink of an eye. Within moments, they were producing flowers of all colors.

“Oh my! What an amazing magic trick!” Amelia exclaimed. “It’s like a tiny flower field. It really takes me back… Back to when I was a child, and I was playing in the fields of flowers with you, dear.”

There was no chance that Amelia had met her husband – the former Duke Sauron, Elizabeth’s father – when she was a child. The age difference between the former Duke Sauron and her was like that between a father and his daughter.

Elizabeth faintly suspected that the person that Amelia referred to as ‘dear’ was not the former Duke Sauron, but her image of an ideal husband. But even if that suspicion was correct, perhaps her memories and her fantasies were quite far along in a process of blending together.

But Vandalieu was completely unaware of any of this.

“Yes, I remember that,” he said, continuing to go along with what she was saying and making even more flowers grow.

He then produced some tentacles to pick out the red flowers, then used them to weave a necklace and a crown.

“Dear, haven’t you got more fingers than before? Why have you grown more fingers?” Amelia asked.

“For making a crown and necklace of flowers so that I can give them to you as a present, of course,” said Vandalieu.

“Oh my, thank you so much!” said Amelia. “Then I shall also… Hmm? These flowers seem to be growing directly on you. Why are there flowers growing on you?”

“For showing them to you, of course,” Vandalieu replied.

“For me? Ah, thank you, dear!” said Amelia in delight, picking Vandalieu up. “Hmm? Have you always been this small and light?”

But Vandalieu wasn’t particularly fazed. “I’ve been having a hard time lately. Perhaps I’ve lost a little weight.”

Selen, the Dhampir girl who was under the care of the Five-colored Blades, had sent him a heartfelt letter, and the S-class adventurer Schneider had kidnaped the former emperor of the Amid Empire with no prior warning. Vandalieu’s struggles seemed endless.

In response to the letter, Vandalieu had written two of his own… One was addressed to Selen, and its contents were harmless. The other was addressed to the Five-colored Blades, and in it, Vandalieu had wished all the curses in the world on them. At the end, he had included a warning that if he received another letter, his next reply to Selen would include a description of what had happened in the Mirg shield-nation.

As for Marshukzarl, the former emperor of the Amid Empire, he intended to lock him inside an Inner World different from the one that Mei and the others were in, and turn the whole thing into a confinement facility. Inside it, Marshukzarl would never be able to escape or gather information, and nobody would be able to interfere from the outside. It would be a perfect prison.

Vandalieu was thinking of having Schneider do some posing for him, though Schneider would likely try to refuse and jokingly ask, “What’s so fun about looking at the body of an old man like me?”

“I see!” Amelia said, shocked. “And yet, I’m still ill… Ah, I’m so sorry, dear. I’m so sorry for causing so much trouble for you, and even for Eli and Mahelia!”

“Don’t worry,” said Vandalieu. “Eli, Mahelia and I don’t think of anything that we do for your sake as being troublesome.”

And it was then that he finally noticed that Amelia looked very similar to Elizabeth.

And just as he gave the finished flower crown and necklace to Amelia, Elizabeth knocked on the hospital room’s door.

Having been dragged outside Amelia’s hospital room into the corridor by Elizabeth, Vandalieu explained the events that had led up to this situation. Mahelia remained inside so that Amelia could have someone to talk to.

“I see… I understand the reason you ended up in Mother’s hospital room,” said Elizabeth.

“It’s very fortunate that you understand,” said Vandalieu.

Elizabeth understood the situation, but she was wearing a difficult expression with her arms crossed as she wondered what she should do.

“Dislocating all the joints in your body so you could come in through the window, doing magic tricks to produce flowers… Quite flexible and deft, aren’t you? You’d make quite a good scout, don’t you think?” Elizabeth muttered. “But leaving that aside… Vandalieu, please don’t speak a word about this to anyone!” she pleaded.

“Very well,” said Vandalieu.

“… Really? You won’t go telling Duke Alcrem or anything?” Elizabeth asked.

“I won’t, I won’t,” said Vandalieu, shaking his head.

He’d never intended to carelessly spread the news about Amelia’s illness in the first place, even without Elizabeth making this request of him.

If Elizabeth only wanted to keep it a secret to maintain her own image, then he might have suggested something else.

“You want to keep this a secret for your mother’s sake, don’t you? Then I will cooperate with that,” said Vandalieu.

Prejudice against those who developed abnormalities in their minds was firmly rooted in society. That was perhaps less true among adventurers and mercenaries, but it was particularly true in the society of royals and nobles.

Elizabeth had kept Amelia’s condition a secret partially for the sake of maintaining her own image. But she had also done so in order to protect her mother from such prejudice.

Perhaps she was moved by Vandalieu’s promise to keep this secret, and she began speaking the secrets she kept in the depths of her heart, secrets that she had never shared with anyone other than Mahelia.

“… There are even people spreading stupid rumors that the only reason we were able to escape from the pursuers sent by the Amid Empire despite barely having any guards with us was because Mother offered her body to the soldiers. Though I only learned about that after she was admitted to this place,” she said. “I have a pretty good idea of who started those rumors. Nobody other than Rudel and my other older brother, Veedal, would benefit from them. I’m sure they wanted to crush any chances of my widowed mother remarrying. The Sauron house would be troubled if some strange nobleman were to become a distant relative of theirs, after all.”

Elizabeth was an officially-recognized daughter of the Sauron house. If her mother had remarried, her new husband would not quite become a member of the Sauron house, but people would consider him as having a certain amount of influence. It was likely that whoever had spread the rumors had despised the idea of such a thing happening.

Their goal was to prevent a scandal before it even happened, and it was unlikely that they had expected the rumors to cause Amelia to become mentally ill and admitted at an hospital, but… that was probably an even more convenient outcome for them.

In reality, Earl Reamsand was involved in Amelia’s admittance to this facility, but Elizabeth wasn’t yet aware of this.

“That’s why I’m scared of people finding out that Mother is in this state, which will only cause her to be hurt even further,” Elizabeth said. “I’m so scared that she’ll even forget who I am…”

“Indeed, she appears to be quite severely ill,” said Vandalieu. “When was she admitted here?”

“I suppose this year makes it five years… and she’s been gradually going downhill, getting worse and worse the whole time.”

“I see. It might be best to investigate just what kind of treatments they’re giving her.”

“I’m not sure about the details, but it seems like they’ve prescribed her a medicine that she takes every day… Wait, why are you worried about that?”

“Because I want to help treat Amelia-san, of course.”

It took time to treat a mental illness. Some mental illnesses could be recovered from after a counseling session and perhaps a few positive events, but there were others that could never be recovered from during the patient’s lifetime.

Thus, it wasn’t unusual that Amelia hadn’t recovered after five years – at least, that was how doctors would think on Earth and in Origin, where the field of psychiatry was well-developed.

In Lambda, where treatment methods hadn’t yet been established, it was only natural to be suspicious of whether the treatment methods being used for Amelia were truly effective or not – and the hospital had apparently not even explained the treatment to Elizabeth, even though she was a relative of the patient.

“Are you sure you want to help? You don’t have to go that far, just because we’re in the same party. I won’t even be able to do much to thank you,” said Elizabeth.

“I don’t mind,” said Vandalieu. “I’m doing it because I want to. Even if you asked me not to do it, I’d do it anyway, Elizabeth-sama. However, I can’t promise that she’ll make a full recovery, and I don’t know if she’ll return to being the Amelia-san you know.”

Treating a mental illness was something that was difficult even for Vandalieu. It was even possible that removing all of someone’s trauma would cause their mind to collapse, turning them into a disabled person who wasn’t even capable of speaking.

That was true for recently-inflicted mental scars, and it was even more true for older mental scars.

Thus, Vandalieu needed to take his time. In the case of the ‘Metamorph’ Mari, it had taken years after he transplanted a fragment of his soul into her. It was possible that Amelia would need several years to recover as well.

“Thank you… but please stop referring to people’s mothers by their first names,” said Elizabeth, moved by Vandalieu’s kindness but still pulling his cheeks for calling Amelia by her name with ‘-san’ as the honorific.

“Ohaay,” said Vandalieu.

“And besides, what do you mean by ‘help?’ People normally aren’t allowed to visit patients here unless they’re family,” Elizabeth said.

“I’ve given it some thought. First of all, I’m thinking of taking a week off school, starting tomorrow. I’ll leave the special training to Pauvina during that time.”

“You’ve given it some thought? But –”

Before Elizabeth could hear the details, a hospital worker began rushing over from the other end of the corridor.

“You! You’re not supposed to be here!” he shouted, panicking.

This staff member at this hospital that had its shady secrets had received orders from Earl Reamsand not to let Vandalieu go anywhere near Amelia.

But the earl’s orders had come after he’d already put up the commission at the Adventurers’ Guild, and Vandalieu had accepted that commission. The subordinate that he’d assigned to keep an eye on Vandalieu was slacking off, and after hastily searching the facility, he’d discovered Vandalieu in front of the room of the very patient that he’d been ordered not to let him come into contact with. He couldn’t help but panic.

“You may be the son of an honorary noble, but you will receive no special treatment here! Get out, right this instant! If you do as I say and leave now, I won’t report this to the Adventurers’ Guild!” the hospital worker shouted.

“Very well,” said Vandalieu. “Elizabeth-sama, please give Amelia-san my regards.”

And so, he gave himself up and allowed himself to be dragged out.

“He’s given it some thought? Is it really going to be alright?” Elizabeth murmured, watching Vandalieu leave with a dazed expression.

She felt anxious, but she knew that she could just ask Pauvina about it tomorrow, so she returned to the room to tell her mother that ‘Father’ had left because he had some urgent business to attend to.

Meanwhile, the hospital worker wiped the cold sweat off his brow after banishing Vandalieu from the hospital and sighed with relief.

“Phew… Things turned out alright. Just in case, it might be best not to administer the medicine today. He might have done something in the room,” he murmured to himself.

It was common to use familiars to eavesdrop and secretly observe things, so he decided to report that Amelia’s medicine should only be continued after ensuring that there were no such familiars in her room. Putting her medicine on hold once or twice shouldn’t have much effect on her.

With these thoughts running through his mind, the hospital worker went back inside.

The next day, Vandalieu was sitting in the reception room of the hospital that Amelia lived in.

“So, you would like to have your son admitted to this facility…” said the hospital’s director with a stiff smile.

“Yes! My poor son Vandalieu’s mind seems to be suffering lately, and I would very much like to have him admitted here,” Darcia insisted forcefully. “Isn’t that right, Vandalieu?”

“Mom, I can see shining people, a person made of water, and a person made of fire, spinning and dancing. And I can hear singing voices from inside my body,” said Vandalieu.

“Director, this is how he’s been since yesterday,” Darcia said.

Vandalieu was unoccupied, so he was watching the Ghosts practice their dance that they would be performing for Mei later, and listening to the lessons that Kanako was teaching inside his Inner World. He was describing what he was really seeing and hearing, but to the director, this seemed like nothing other than clear signs of mental illness.

“I-it seems quite severe. You have a letter of introduction from the honorable Duke Alcrem as well. I shall admit your son to this hospital,” the director said.

Naturally, the director was well aware of the request that Earl Reamsand had made of him. But because this was a hospital, he had no choice but to admit Vandalieu to the facility. He couldn’t turn away a patient… and certainly not a patient with a letter of recommendation from the house of a duke.

I have no idea what they’re thinking, but I’m sure it will be fine if I put him in a room that is far away from that patient, and have guards watch over him, the director thought.

It was only much later that he would realize what a big mistake this was.