The Attendant in the Horror Game C5

Chapter 5

It felt strange—so terribly strange—that someone had said those words to him. No matter how far Ian searched his memories, he could not recall a single moment in which he had ever heard them before.

Perhaps someone had said them long ago, back when he was too young to remember. Perhaps that was why the words sounded so foreign, yet faintly warm at the same time. The voice that had spoken them—so gentle, almost fond—had lingered in his mind like a dream.

“…Impossible.”

Crouched beneath the window, Ian shook his head firmly, muttering to himself. The contrast between his cold, cynical tone and the restless movement of his hands was almost pitiful. Living alone had turned him into a creature of murmured self-conversations.

In his short twelve years of life, no one had ever spoken to Ian kindly. His uncle had taken over the ducal household when Ian was five, but even before then, there had been no warmth around him.

His father had always been busy, and his mother had died shortly after his birth—so early, in fact, that he didn’t even know her face. He had seen her portrait, but the servants said it looked nothing like her. And so Ian had never truly known what his mother looked like. The cold, sharp woman staring out of the painting was not someone he could ever grow fond of.

No—the warmth he had heard in that farewell earlier had to be an illusion. It was impossible for a servant sent by his family to be kind to him.

He must have misheard it. The long solitude had warped his senses. Ian decided it was better to think that way.

“…Mushrooms.”

He repeated the word Jade had muttered earlier, rolling it on his tongue. The man had looked odd—muttering about mushrooms, then wrapping himself in a curtain and running outside as if under a spell. Ian rose and stood on tiptoe again, peering out the window.

Jade, that was his name.

He was the first attendant ever to properly introduce himself to Ian.

For someone who’d marched out so confidently, Jade looked remarkably clumsy. Even now, wearing only thin leather shoes, he was trudging through the snow with no sense of caution, sinking with every step. In the North, that kind of foolishness could cost you your toes—or your life. And yet he had said he would “find food.”

“Foolish,” Ian muttered.

It was something his uncle had always said to him. Whenever they met, the man would click his tongue and spit the word like venom. Even when Ian hid, they somehow crossed paths every other day—and every time, he would hear it again.

Ian had never denied being foolish. He was foolish, after all—too weak to kill his uncle, too powerless to stop his own exile.

But this time, the word seemed far more suited to that servant outside.

“There’s no way he’ll find anything,” Ian murmured dryly.

The new attendant didn’t seem useful at all.

This was the third one the family had sent. The first had arrived, lamented his misfortune, and taken out his frustration on Ian—throwing objects at him whenever he pleased. The second had merely sighed the moment he saw Ian, disappointed that the boy was still alive and thus preventing his early return. He ignored Ian completely, hid all the supplies, and devoured what food there was for himself.

Neither of them had been of any help. The first died three days after arriving. The second lasted a week.

How should I kill this one?

Dealing with attendants was always bothersome. Ian’s small body made killing an adult a task of patience and calculation. He had to wait for the right moment.

And the aftermath was worse. He wasn’t strong enough to move the bodies easily. Even when he managed to drag them far into the snow, the corpses wouldn’t rot properly in the freezing cold. Luckily, the snow buried them deep enough to contain the smell.

Maybe I should lure this one into the forest. That would be the easiest. No blood to scrub off the floor, no corpse to haul away. This servant seemed simple-minded enough to deceive, too.

“Ahhh! It’s freezing!”

Ian’s thoughts were interrupted by a distant cry. Through the window, he saw Jade flailing in the snow—apparently having slipped and fallen.

“……”

Ian immediately revised his plan.

No, this one wasn’t worth the effort. Better to deal with him quickly. He didn’t seem competent enough to be useful, and worse, he was noisy. Ian despised noisy people. From experience, the louder they were, the crueler they turned out to be.

“…Maybe I’ll kill him while he’s asleep.”

That was usually the most reliable method. And judging by the man’s clumsy behavior, he would be an easy target—perhaps the easiest one yet.

He’d already let his guard down, smiling and reaching out his hand earlier. No one had ever done that before.

“…Strange.”

The servants who came here never sought him out—if anything, they pretended he didn’t exist. Not only because he was exiled here, but even when he’d still lived in the Duke’s mansion, no one had treated him as human. His uncle had branded him as unwanted, and everyone had followed suit.

Ian had long since grown used to being invisible. Even his father and nursemaid had shown him little affection.

But indifference did not mean he deserved cruelty. He knew his life would end soon in this place, but he didn’t want to give his uncle the satisfaction of seeing him die easily.

Perhaps, like his cold-hearted father, spite ran in his blood.

“……”

Turning from the window, Ian knelt and pulled a sword from its hiding place beneath the stairs. Even in the dim light, its polished blade gleamed, marred only by dried flecks of old blood.

Blinking his wide, innocent eyes, Ian gazed quietly at the weapon. He imagined driving it through his new servant’s neck. The sensation of gripping the hilt, the resistance of flesh, the tearing of sinew and muscle.

It wasn’t pleasant—but necessary.

“Be back soon…”

He murmured the same words Jade had spoken before leaving. They still felt strange on his tongue—but not unpleasant. He’d spent his life fearing the unfamiliar, yet this… this felt different. It tickled somewhere deep in his chest.

“……”

Ian sat for a long while beside the sword, lost in thought. He should have been planning how best to dispose of the new servant, but instead, he kept remembering Jade’s broad smile—the easy curve of his lips, the dry warmth of his gaze.

Maybe it was because of his kind face. Or maybe it was the way he had laughed, open and unguarded.

Bang—!

He didn’t know how long he’d been thinking when the villa’s heavy doors slammed open. Ian quickly hid the sword, returning to his innocent façade. It was easier to kill people when they thought him harmless.

“Young Master! I found it!”

At the door stood Jade, shivering violently, holding something in both hands. The cold air followed him in like a ghost.

“Look!”

He knelt before Ian so their eyes were level, then proudly opened his palms.

“…Mush…rooms?”

Indeed—mushrooms.

Against all odds, the man had returned with food. Just as he’d promised.

And not poisonous ones either. They looked completely different from the bright, deadly fungi Ian had seen before—small, dry, and branch-like, the kind that grew beneath snow. He had read about them but never seen one in person. It wasn’t much, but after two days without food, it felt like a miracle.

“Uh…”

But what caught his attention more than the mushrooms were Jade’s hands. They were raw and red, nearly frozen to the bone. His skin was so cold it looked ready to crack.

“Let’s roast them!”

Jade, however, was too pleased with himself to notice. Beaming like a hunter who’d brought home a prize, he marched toward the kitchen, ignoring his near-frostbitten fingers.

“……”

Ian blinked slowly and glanced down. A small puddle had formed at his feet—the melted snow dripping from Jade’s clothes.

He sat there quietly, staring at it until Jade returned with the cooked mushrooms.

It seemed he wouldn’t be killing his servant tonight after all.

“What kind of cursed villa doesn’t even have proper kitchenware?”

Jade muttered irritably, rubbing his frozen hands against his trousers.

He’d just learned the true cruelty of this world. The [Identify Poisonous Mushrooms] skill did exactly what it said—no more, no less. It merely told him whether a mushroom was edible or not.

Sure, it vaguely indicated the direction of nearby mushrooms, but the range was absurdly large. He had ended up digging through half the snowfield to find them. The small trowel had been useless, and finding anything before freezing solid had been pure luck.

Still, maybe it’s not all bad.

After harvesting the mushrooms, a new notification had appeared:

>> Exclusive Skill <<
Lv 1. Identify Poisonous Mushrooms
Upon reaching Lv 2, an additional skill will unlock.

That line had made his heart leap. So there were other skills. Of course there were. Surely this ridiculous “mushroom identification” was just the start.

Then came the next screen:

>> EXP <<
10 / 1,000

Each mushroom harvested gave him ten experience points. He needed one thousand to level up.

In other words—he had to pick one hundred mushrooms before gaining another skill.

“…Damn it all.”

The curse echoed through the frigid kitchen, swallowed by the sound of the wind outside.

1. Bo-geom (보검) — Literally “precious sword”; a family heirloom from Ian’s late father, now repurposed for murder.