My Husband Lives Inside a Painting Chapter 39

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After returning to the mansion with Claude, I headed for the studio.

Leaving him standing outside, I closed the studio door and gave him a stern warning.

“Under no circumstances are you to come inside. Absolutely none.”

“…Understood.”

I’d been rather forceful, but in truth, there was no need. Claude wasn’t the sort of person who would betray my trust out of some petty curiosity.

A little while later, I emerged from the studio holding Anne-Marie’s hand. Claude, who had been waiting with his back against the wall, startled and quickly straightened up.

“How on earth…?”

“……”

But I couldn’t bring myself to look happy.

Because nowhere inside the painting could I find any of the other children besides Anne-Marie.

“Why do you assume there must be exactly two hundred customers just because there are two hundred children?”

“Half of them were taken in by a single person, My Lady.”

Half of them were taken in by one person.

Could Pagoda himself have been the person that statement referred to?

Or…

I unconsciously bit my lip.

Am I already too late?

Just as my thoughts began to spiral, Johenn suddenly appeared from behind Claude.

“Big Sis!”

“Johenn!”

The moment Johenn threw himself into Anne-Marie’s arms, he burst into tears.

“Where have you been?! Do you have any idea how worried I was…?”

“Johenn… Johenn…”

“Sniff… Waaah!”

Watching the two children cling to each other and weep as though their little bodies had become one, all the questions clouding my mind evaporated in an instant.

To give them time to compose themselves, Claude and I stepped aside and continued our conversation.

“…Did you use magic?”

“Something like that.”

“You truly are… amazing.”

Strictly speaking, it wasn’t my ability that was extraordinary, but Camille’s. Still, I smiled without bothering to correct him.

Claude’s persistent gaze, which had been studying me, soon shifted toward the studio door.

His curiosity about what lay beyond the firmly shut door was unmistakable.

I parted my lips as though to say something, then stepped into his line of sight and slowly shook my head.

“Claude, I’m sorry, but you can’t come in here anymore—”

“I understand. I have no intention of prying, so don’t worry.”

“……”

“And don’t look at me like that. Trust doesn’t require us to share every last truth with each other, does it?”

As though to put my worries to rest, he made it clear that he had no intention of looking inside, now or in the future.

I couldn’t help but feel grateful for the consideration he showed by drawing that boundary himself.

“Now that we’ve safely rescued Anne-Marie, are you planning to report him to the Imperial Family?”

“Report him…? Well, I’m not sure.”

“You’re not going to let this go, are you? That bastard deserves to rot in prison for the rest of his life.”

I’d held back because the person I could report would soon be gone. But since Claude didn’t know the truth, I saw no need to add an unnecessary explanation.

Before long, news of Pagoda’s disappearance would spread everywhere anyway.

“…Then show me the evidence first. I’ll decide after I’ve seen it.”

We left the children in Romaine and Hope’s care for a while, then sat facing each other in Claude’s reception room.

Claude laid out the evidence he’d brought from the listening room, one item after another.

They were recording orbs.

But the number seemed woefully inadequate.

“Is this all of them? There don’t even seem to be ten.”

“That’s all I could find.”

The recording orbs were the clearest physical evidence of the number of women who had fallen victim to Pagoda.

But there are only this many?

It certainly wasn’t a small number. Even so, there should have been far more orbs than this.

“Perhaps he kept only the ones he particularly liked in that room and hid the rest somewhere else.”

“…No. That can’t be it.”

Pagoda was arrogant enough to openly maintain a listening room inside his own residence.

As the absolute master of the estate, why would he go to the trouble of hiding some of the orbs elsewhere?

“But… wasn’t rescuing Anne-Marie the goal in the first place?”

“……”

“Tell me. What’s wrong?”

After I’d remained silent for quite some time, Claude asked in a voice that sounded casual yet gentle.

But I shook my head.

“…It’s nothing.”

“Orb.”

“I’m going to get some fresh air.”

Claude seemed about to say something else, but I left the reception room, pretending not to hear him.

My footsteps quickened as I crossed the corridor. I couldn’t stop thinking about the number of orbs.

There were too few. Far too few!

If Anne-Marie was the only survivor, then at the very least, the number of victims should have been overwhelming.

Where are the rest? Should I storm the Buthier residence again, even now?

I was gnawing at my nails when I suddenly stopped walking.

“……”

A chilly breeze swept through the corridor.

I stared blankly at my hair fluttering in the wind, then let out a hollow laugh.

“…Here I go again.”

Everything inside me was becoming hopelessly tangled. I leaned my back against the cold wall and closed my eyes.

Find the remaining victims. Rescue the women whose lives and deaths were still unknown. And then?

What exactly are you trying to accomplish, Orb?

I slowly ran a hand down my face.

Perhaps I’d been mistaken from the very beginning.

I’d thought that rescuing Anne-Marie and the other women could somehow atone for the murders I’d committed.

But one person’s life cannot be balanced out by another’s.

I’d kept turning away from that simple truth.

“Orb. You made a contract with a demon. And the end of that contract is your death.”

That was right. I wasn’t a saint.

I couldn’t save everyone in the world, nor was there any reason I had to.

There was only one thing that mattered now: Camille’s revenge.

I clenched my fists tightly.

…I mustn’t drag Claude into this any further.

He didn’t know what I was carrying.

And I had even less intention of making him bear the weight of my guilt, too.

“……”

I slowly pushed myself away from the wall, resolving not to look back again.