Dirty Heart - Chapter 9

The corridor that had always been filled with maids’ chattering felt especially eerie today. It was because Head Maid Ella’s horrific death had frozen everyone.

More than anything, the most obvious change was that the maids who’d relentlessly tormented Courtney lowered their heads in front of her as if nothing had happened.

Worried they might even brush shoulders, worried they might even meet her eyes, they would hurriedly retreat with faces gone pale whenever Courtney passed by.

“Th, there… Courtney! If it’s alright, give me the mop! I’ll wipe your whole section too!”

Right then, someone approached with a friendly smile, and it was none other than the red-haired maid, Vicky.

Vicky was one of the women who’d harassed Courtney the most after the head maid, and maybe because she knew the sins she’d committed, she was acting pretty quick-witted.

A few days ago, Courtney had been dragged to the dungeon for the crime of not properly tending the oak tree. Everyone had clicked their tongues, saying that no matter how much the Young Duke favored her, she wouldn’t escape death, but the one who came back as a cold corpse was Ella, the head maid.

So through this incident, everyone realized it.

If you got unfortunately tangled up with Courtney, you were all fucked.

“Then I’ll take you up on that.”

Courtney smiled brightly and held out the mop. Since it was already do or die anyway, she’d decided to thoroughly enjoy the taste of the power the Young Duke had put in her hands.

Having gotten to suck the honey, Courtney returned to the servants’ quarters and flopped down on the bed.

“….”

She stared blankly at the yellowed ceiling, killing time, and then all of a sudden, a question came to her.

“Come to think of it, when was the surgery date again?”

Right away, one scene from the original work faintly resurfaced from deep in her mind. The very scene where Courtney willingly offered up her heart to save the sickly male lead….

“Lionel’s twenty-third birthday…!”

My God. There really wasn’t much time left now.

She sprang up and let out a long breath. The fact that there were less than 100 days left until the day she’d die made her spine stiffen on its own.

“Avoiding him isn’t going to solve anything….”

The worry only deepened when she recalled Lionel’s fierce gaze from the dungeon.

“You have another man? Don’t say that again. Yeah?”

If she tried to break up a second time, he looked like he’d chew her up alive.

Back then, she’d been too out of her mind, so when he said the head maid was the real culprit, she’d thought, I guess so.

But now that time had passed, thinking calmly, there were one or two suspicious points.

No matter how much the head maid hated Courtney, she wasn’t the type with the nerve to place a bet that big, killing even the Young Duke’s oak tree. She definitely had a mean streak, but at the same time, she was calculating and realistic.

The head maid was also the person who knew better than anyone how dangerous it was to harm the oak tree, which was practically Lionel’s lifeline, and what would happen as a result.

“Don’t tell me….”

What if everything was Lionel’s calculated act? What if it was an elaborate trap meant to tighten the noose around her even more?

As suspicion toward Lionel gradually turned into certainty, she thought she needed to change her strategy.

If she stirred up his anger by pointlessly trying to avoid him and ended up locked up somewhere for no reason, that would be a real disaster. It would mean losing even the chance to run away forever.

So for now, it meant her top priority was to act like she loved Lionel in moderation while searching for another way….

“Ah, could it be?”

In an instant, the place that came to mind as a sliver of hope was none other than the duke’s study. All kinds of reports and papers related to Lionel’s heart transplant were in that place. Somewhere among that vast trove of materials, there might be the only clue that could let her survive.

“How do I get in there?”

The duke’s study, as a place that stored critical materials, had extremely strict security. Servants couldn’t enter at all, and even if she set foot inside under the excuse of cleaning, avoiding the tight surveillance was close to impossible.

“Courtney!”

Just as her worries deepened, Vicky came running from the end of the corridor, panting.

“The Young Duke collapsed! Go right now!”

“…Ha.”

That damn fragile bastard again.

***

A quiet bedroom. Lionel was asleep, breathing softly, his face pale as paper.

“I knew he was overdoing it, tsk.”

After having sex like that in a prison reeking of mold, there was no way that fragile bastard could be fine.

Courtney, who’d slapped a wet cloth onto the man’s forehead like it counted as nursing, muttered with a deliberately grave expression.

“What if I just kill him right now and run…?”

She knew perfectly well it wasn’t possible. The moment she harmed him in the ducal residence, she’d be caught on the spot and shot dead immediately.

And yet Courtney’s hand slowly moved toward the back of Lionel’s neck. Her whole body was trembling like an idiot, but maybe because she’d suffered so much, she thought she might as well strangle him once to her heart’s content.

“Ugh.”

At that moment, a faint groan slipped out from between his red, red lips.

“Run away… Mother….”

With that pitiful whisper, the man’s brow pinched painfully. At the sight, Courtney’s hand froze.

“Ah, what the hell….”

A grown man, and a sickly one at that, calling for his mother like a little kid. In the past, she would’ve definitely scoffed. It was the obvious, stale maternal instinct bait cliché.

But why was it like this? Looking at Lionel’s pale face, something in her chest ached strangely. It felt like someone was gripping her heart tight and twisting it. She’d never felt an emotion like this.

“You’re insane. Get a grip, Courtney!”

At first, she tried to deny it, but the fact that her heart was beating this hard was clearly because Courtney’s feelings still lingered inside her body.

Otherwise, it couldn’t be explained. A heart reacting toward a man who was trying to take her life. It didn’t make any sense.

With the corner of her chest needlessly throbbing, unable to do this or that, Lionel slowly opened his eyes and looked at Courtney’s two hands suspended in the air, then asked.

“…What are you doing, Courtney?”

At that one line, Courtney’s mind snapped awake. To anyone, it looked exactly like she’d been caught in the act of trying to strangle him.

Her head went blank, but using her wits, she yanked Lionel into a tight hug.

“…I, I was so worried, Young Duke!”

She forced her voice to sound like she was about to cry, thinking of the saddest things she could. Since she needed to change her strategy fast, the first thing was to reassure Lionel by acting as if she loved him.

“That thing about breaking up… I didn’t mean it.”

“Courtney.”

A hot voice brushed right against her ear, heat carried whole. The man’s hand, stroking down her bony shoulder, was endlessly gentle.

“I’m glad you came back to me. I’ll do better.”

At those cunning words, Courtney could only clench her teeth.

***

“Looks like that’s the only way after all.”

A weekend as precious as gold. Having steeled her resolve, Courtney sprang up and left the quarters. The place her steps headed for was the laundry room, where Vicky was on duty.

In the fragrant scent of soap, Vicky, who was washing hundreds of mop rags, looked up at the sound of someone coming.

“C-C-Courtney? What are you doing here?”

“Vicky, I’ve got a favor to ask.”

“A favor…?”

After sweeping her eyes around, she leaned in and whispered in a secretive voice, “The duke’s study cleaning. That’s your assignment, right?”

“Huh…? I, I mean, it is. Why?”

“I’m thinking I’ll do that cleaning for you instead. What do you think?”

Courtney was smiling gently, but Vicky, instinctively feeling a chill, kept fidgeting with her apron strings.

“W-why would you do that for me…?”

“Why else? I’ve owed you a lot, so I figured we should help each other out, you know.”

 Vicky’s eyes widened as if she’d heard a ridiculous story.

“The duke’s study isn’t somewhere just anyone can go in! Only someone appointed by the head maid can do it, you know? Courtney, you know that too!”

As Vicky said, the study was a forbidden space the servants couldn’t come and go from easily.

But once a month, only on a set day, a full cleaning was permitted, and the only ones who could take that duty were the head maid and a maid she personally named.

Vicky, who’d built a close relationship with Ella over time, had been able to take on the study cleaning thanks to that, and she considered it a subtle point of pride.

“The head maid’s dead now.”

At Courtney’s indifferent wording, Vicky’s expression stiffened in an instant.

Since the next head maid hadn’t been chosen yet, on the upcoming full cleaning day, Vicky would have to take sole charge of the study by herself. Courtney dug right into that gap.

“S-sorry, Courtney. If I switch it out carelessly and get caught, I’ll really die…!”

Vicky’s voice trembled pitifully as she refused. If anything went wrong, it was obvious she’d be the only one who’d take all the blame.

“Yeah? Then it can’t be helped.”

The corner of Courtney’s lips, which looked like she was going to back down quietly, curled up crookedly.

“Then I’ll just have to tell the Young Duke that the maid who bullied me most after the head maid was you, Vicky.”

“…!”

At that one line, Vicky collapsed as if she were some tragic heroine. She looked so pathetic it seemed like she might piss herself any second, but in Courtney’s eyes, not even a single drop of pity showed.

“So you should’ve lived a little nicer.”

“C-Courtney….”

“If you’re going to bully someone for no reason, you should at least be prepared to go to hell later, Vicky.”

Whether it’s school violence or workplace bullying, this is what the perpetrator’s ending turns into.

And in that moment, Courtney desperately wished that this ending would come for the male lead, Lionel, too, without exception, someday.