Chapter 12

***

Yuneria Ganel Disson’s room possessed the exact same floor plan as Lino’s, yet it was decorated with an almost suffocating level of ostentatious luxury. He had aggressively ordered the removal of every single piece of standard-issue furniture provided for the knights, replacing it entirely with obscenely opulent pieces tailored precisely to his own flamboyant tastes.

Consequently, unlike Lino’s room, the available floor space was claustrophobically tight. It was a natural outcome; every piece of furniture Yuneria had dragged in was at least one and a half times larger than the originals, and the aggressively protruding, excessive ornamentation only exacerbated the problem.

Furthermore, perhaps desperate to flaunt his “refined” artistic eye, he had imported pieces from his mother’s massive art collection, cramming them onto every available wall and shelf. Examined individually, each piece was a breathtaking masterpiece capable of evoking profound awe. However, violently hoarding all of them into a single, confined space transformed the room from a gallery into the chaotic, suffocating den of a deranged hoarder.

Inside that very room, a man as breathtakingly beautiful as a flawless painting was currently scowling ferociously, nervously gnawing on his fingernails.

“You’re telling me he only ate the bread?”

Yuneria fired the razor-sharp question at the servant, who was currently bowing so deeply his spine was practically parallel to the floor, trembling violently. The servant had just delivered the infuriating report that Lino had briefly visited the kitchen before returning to his room.

Yuneria should have been asleep hours ago to ensure his skin remained perfectly radiant and supple for the next day. However, because Lino had remained holed up in the study until late at night, Yuneria hadn’t even been able to approach his bed. Forced to settle for violently slapping an essence-soaked sheet mask onto his face, he had angrily demanded a detailed report.

“What about the stew? The fruit?”

“H-He didn’t touch a single drop of either, my lord.”

“He just shoved that bone-dry bread down his throat?!”

Is he mentally deficient? Unable to fathom such bizarre behavior, Yuneria scowled deeply, only to quickly and gently massage the corners of his mouth and eyes to prevent his furious expression from creasing his expensive sheet mask.

Earlier that day, before heading out for a morning excursion with the Duke, Yuneria had explicitly instructed a servant to slip a “special drug” into Lino’s meal. He had handed over the drug—meticulously prepared in advance by his personal valet back at the Marquis estate—to the bribed estate staff, commanding them to ensure that filthy bastard consumed every last drop.

He had aggressively emphasized that the bread must be baked as dry and hard as a brick, specifically so Lino would be forced to heavily dip it into the drugged stew just to make it swallowable.

He had been so profoundly moved by his own brilliant, flawless strategy that he had spent the morning mentally praising his own genius. Yet now, he was being told that Lino, that lowly, pathetic orphan bastard, had casually snatched up the only untainted item on the tray and eaten it dry. It was enough to make Yuneria’s blood physically boil.

He had called it a “special drug,” but in reality, it was just a painfully ordinary, garden-variety sleeping pill. The only “special” aspect was that the dose dumped into the stew was lethally higher than the recommended prescription. He had labeled it “special” purely because of the highly special atrocities he planned to inflict upon Lino once the drug knocked him unconscious.

Considering the sheer magnitude of malice Yuneria harbored toward Lino—though orchestrating such elaborate torment simply because Lino couldn’t suppress a brief laugh felt less like malice and more like borderline psychosis—the actual plan was rather mundane.

He intended to have Lino’s body absolutely and thoroughly devastated while he was trapped in a drug-induced coma. Naturally, the ones doing the devastating would be the servants Yuneria had bought off with heavy coin. The moment he put out the word that he was looking for bastards willing to ruthlessly plow a man’s ass, four or five eager volunteers immediately materialized. Getting paid to fuck? Sign me up. Watching them snicker and leer, they looked like absolute dogs in heat. Of course, Yuneria himself—the mastermind who had deliberately hired them with his own money—was the most sinister and vile of them all, yet he stared at the snickering men as if they were repulsive garbage.

Since absolutely no one utilized the study except Lino, Yuneria figured they could easily execute the deed right there on the floor. Having sneaked into the study a few nights prior for reconnaissance, he had noted the soft, ambient lighting, the plush mattress, the scattered cushions, and the massive sofa. It truly felt as though the heavens themselves had perfectly arranged the optimal stage for his brilliant scheme.

However, the fatal flaw in the plan was Lino himself. Unlike Yuneria, who was a pampered aristocrat from the absolute second he drew his first breath, Lino had been abandoned at birth, survived a brutal orphanage, endured a superficial, traumatic glimpse of noble life as a captive at the Haklan estate, and subsequently plummeted into the violent slums—a realm exponentially more horrific than the orphanage. An impossibly vast, unbridgeable chasm existed between their core survival instincts and thought processes.

For Yuneria, it was a fundamental law of the universe that food must only be consumed the second it was freshly prepared, and that bread must be eaten with stew. In stark contrast, Lino had survived the slums—where even scavenging a filthy breadcrumb off the dirt was considered a profound luxury. Consequently, Lino could consume bread whether it was bone-dry, hard as a rock, or blooming with mold, without a single complaint.

Furthermore, operating under the baseline assumption that Yuneria would inevitably tamper with his food, Lino naturally refused to touch the stew or the peeled fruit, as they were by far the easiest mediums to hide poisons or drugs.

Ultimately, Yuneria’s grand masterplan failed spectacularly. The hefty advance he had paid the servants to enthusiastically plow Lino’s hole vanished into thin air. He desperately wanted his money back, but his aristocratic pride vehemently forbade him from asking. No, what truly made his eyes burn with scalding, furious heat was the humiliating reality that his flawless scheme had imploded before it even managed to start the engine.

How dare a filthy orphan play the part of an unemployed freeloader instead of fulfilling his escort duties? While I’m out here working my ass off until I feel like dying?!

The initial spark for Yuneria’s fury was Lino failing to overlook his embarrassing vocal crack and daring to laugh at him in front of the Duke on their very first day. But now, the primary source of his seething hatred was the glaring disparity in their lives: while Yuneria was desperately offering his liver and his gallbladder, trying anything and everything to win the Duke’s favor, Lino was lounging around the estate living an unbelievably peaceful, carefree life. That brief laugh had merely been the tiny catalyst required to ignite a burning hatred.

***