Episode 28: I Persuaded the Culprit.
Eric stood dumbfounded in front of the door.
Ilias, half-crazed, brandished a switchblade and lunged forward.
“Eric-sama, Ukemi!!!”
The moment I shouted, Eric instantly performed a forward roll on the spot.
Well done, Eric! Your independent training is paying off! Excellent reaction speed! The commander is pleased!!
Ilias’s hand, which had been trying to grab Eric, swiped at empty air.
Slipping under that hand with his forward roll, Eric stood up and turned back towards Ilias with a puzzled look.
I immediately grabbed Eric’s hand, pulled him close, and hid him behind me.
Ilias turned around unsteadily, knife in hand.
His eyes were unfocused.
Looking at him, the source of the déjà vu I’d felt earlier became clear.
This… isn’t this the same as the bad ending route for Ilias in the otome game?
I only played Ilias’s route to collect all the endings, so I couldn’t remember it right away.
When Ilias and the otome game protagonist swore their love to each other…
If you’d seen even one romance event with another character in the events leading up to that, you’d be thrown into a bad ending.
“So you won’t have to look at anyone but me anymore, let’s go together,”
he’d say, and then stab you in the womb. Suddenly.
After that, Ilias would commit suicide too, resulting in a double suicide ending.
It was such a shocking development.
Don’t put such a depressing development in an otome game, damn it! I remember throwing my controller.
And something else I remembered.
That’s right, that’s right. Ilias’s (this guy’s) past.
Ilias, wasn’t he almost killed by the woman he thought was his mother?
What’s more, Ilias wasn’t originally born because his mother wanted him.
For a long time, no children were born into Ilias’s family. So, Ilias’s father tried to have a child with a mistress, but—his methods were terrible.
He forcibly abducted a noble lady and, ignoring her protests…
Ilias was finally born after his mother was kept confined in the mansion.
As soon as Ilias was born, his mother was cast out.
Her purpose had been served, I suppose.
Ilias’s stepmother, his father’s legal wife, resented Ilias, who had been born under such circumstances.
And then one day—Ilias was poisoned by his mother. She tried to kill him.
He was overjoyed that his mother had made him tea for the first time—but that was short-lived—Ilias wandered on the brink of death.
He somehow survived. At the cost of his normal health.
His stepmother was divorced because of that incident, and his father remarried.
Then, a younger brother was born easily. Ilias’s half-brother.
Ilias’s father doted on his healthy younger brother more than Ilias, who had been weakened by being nearly killed. And of course, his mother doted only on her own child.
He even publicly declared that his younger brother would inherit the family headship.
Ilias’s reason for existence was denied.
From that point on, he became desperate to be seen.
That’s why he became a Yandere.
Well, I think there’s also an inherent psychopathic tendency. People don’t become psychopaths just because of their environment.
However.
Ilias’s father is awful, too. If he didn’t want the child, he could have adopted him out to a couple who wanted children and would definitely love him.
In this world, adoption is common among nobles. Especially for boys.
We got a lot of offers, too. Because we were a poor noble family with lots of children. But we didn’t give our younger sisters up for adoption. Our parents loved us all, and I doted on them too.
But Ilias’s father didn’t let him go, and even pushed him into the Andreu Estate as Eric’s tutor, hoping for the best.
What a nasty guy. Seriously, a nasty guy. May he wither away in illness and suffering.
After remembering all that.
I couldn’t help but look at Ilias with pity.
He, too, had lived a miserable life. It was too cruel a fate for a boy who was only eleven years old.
But.
That doesn’t give him the right to harm Ati.
Ilias staggered closer to Eric, brandishing the knife.
I sighed and raised my leg.
Clang!
I kicked the knife out of Ilias’s hand.
Then, grabbing the chest of the stunned Ilias, I dragged him into the room.
“Ilias, what’s wrong?”
Behind me, Eric was bewildered, unable to grasp the situation.
“Please wait a moment.”
I dragged Ilias by the chest and moved him to the corner of the room.
Then, I took the flowers out of the vase displayed in the corner and
Splash!
I dumped the water from the vase over Ilias’s head.
“Eh?!”
The coldness brought Ilias back to his senses.
After confirming that his eyes were focused on me, I let go of his chest.
“Did you come to your senses? Do you remember what you were about to do just now?”
I knelt down and looked straight into Ilias’s eyes as he looked around in confusion.
“I… um…”
I swung my right hand at Ilias, who didn’t understand the situation.
Smack!
It was light, but it made a good sound.
Ilias covered his struck left cheek and looked surprised.
“You were about to stab Eric with that knife over there.”
At those words, Ilias looked at the knife on the floor. He rummaged through his pockets and seemed to realize it was his.
“I… I wouldn’t…”
He looked at his hands and trembled slightly.
“Ilias got hit! What are you doing, Commander!”
Behind me, Eric raised his voice in anger. He tried to swing his toy sword at my back, but I stopped him with my hand.
“Even if it’s a toy, don’t swing a sword at someone’s back. Swords are for protecting someone, not for revenge.”
When I spoke in a quiet, angry voice, Eric shrank back.
Ilias’s eyes welled up at Eric’s actions.
I grabbed his chin firmly.
“Don’t get all emotional, brat. You tried to kill Eric, whom you admire so much, right? Do you think I can leave such a dangerous person by Eric’s side?”
When I asked that, after a moment of hesitation, Ilias shook his head.
“But you want to be by Eric’s side, don’t you? That’s why you dropped the lantern on Ati, who was going to be his fiancé.
—Because you thought your position was being threatened.”
Ilias nodded silently. Well, he couldn’t speak because his chin was grabbed and his mouth was being squished.
“I understand wanting to be needed by someone, wanting someone to acknowledge your existence.”
Because my brother was sickly, I was raised relatively neglected. I’m not a man, so I can’t inherit the family headship. I can understand some of the loneliness of not being cared for.
Well, thanks to that, I was able to do whatever I wanted, though.
“But that doesn’t mean you can eliminate people around that person and try to make them focus only on you. If you do that, there will be no one left around you and that person.
Besides, even if you and that person were the only two people in the world, there’s no guarantee that the other person would look at you.”
At my words, Ilias’s face became stern.
He seemed to be saying that he was fine with that.
“You probably think that’s okay, but you don’t realize what’s wrong with your thinking.”
I sighed wearily.
I wonder how many times I’ve had this conversation with someone else.
“You only see Eric as someone who will look at you. You’re ignoring the other person’s will.
Have you ever thought about what the other person wants?”
When I said that, his eyes widened. See? It’s always like this.
“You don’t love the other person, you just want a bobblehead that will acknowledge your existence.
You just want an automatic response function that will always affirm your existence.”
That’s why he fired his tutors and housefolk one after another.
Some of them probably noticed Ilias’s psychopathic tendencies and advised him.
But he thought he was being rejected and eliminated them.
That way, he won’t develop social skills.
In society, there are people who have different opinions than you. There will be conflicts of opinion.
You shouldn’t surround yourself with only YES-men and shut yourself in a narrow world.
In the first place, this guy has the potential to become the prime minister who will run this country in the future.
If a country doesn’t have diversity, it will eventually decline and perish. We must incorporate various opinions and adapt flexibly to the times.
He needs to acquire that quality.
“Besides, you don’t care who the other person is. Because you’ve taken away the other person’s choices.
You yourself might switch from Eric to someone else.”
When the heroine of the Otome Game appears, he’ll switch his allegiance to her without a second thought. That’s just how it is.
I noticed that Ilias’s strength had completely left his body, so I released my hands.
He slumped to the floor, limp.
“Then… what should I do…”
Ilias muttered powerlessly.
The madness had completely vanished from his face.
Hmm.
Well, I guess it would turn out this way.
Certainly.
This is a difficult problem.
I crossed my arms and pondered.
When I noticed, Eric, who was supposed to be cowering behind me, was also imitating me, crossing his arms with a difficult expression. Though he wasn’t really doing it. He’s just crossing his arms in front of his chest. And you’re just pretending, aren’t you? You’re not thinking about anything at all. That’s what’s cute about you, though.
After twisting my head this way and that, I finally opened my heavy mouth.