“Hah……”

The feeling that things were getting more tangled by the day was giving me a headache. Who could possibly help me in a situation like this.

Who……

[My instincts were right.]

It was probably not a coincidence that Rodion’s face came to mind just then. He was the first person in this world to have asked something of me.

In other words, he needed me. In other words, receiving a little help from him in return was nothing to feel guilty about.

“Mariya!”

“What?!”

“Go deliver a letter for me!”

The moment the words left my mouth, Mariya went thundering off to the maids’ room. Off to put on lipstick again, no doubt. But this time the letter wasn’t going to Dmitri, so what could she do.

I was in the middle of writing the letter in the drawing room when Olga drifted over and made a strange noise at the address written on the envelope.

“……What?”

“Are you sending a letter to Count Morozov?”

What?

She could tell it was Rodion’s house just from the address? Even for a small town, how far had the rumors spread?

Apparently mistaking my bafflement for something else, Olga scoffed.

“Don’t tell me you don’t know? That address you’re writing, that’s the house where Count Morozov is staying right now!”

“I didn’t know that.”

Olga beat her own chest with her fist.

“Goodness, to be this ignorant of the world! The rumor is all over town that when the Count Morozov of Moscow died, his title and entire fortune went to his only grandson!”

Well, Olga’s whole existence revolved around getting a share of Shatov’s wealth, so of course she would be sensitive to rumors like that.

By this point I was starting to feel a little sorry for Olga. I had heard she was struggling because of her brother’s gambling debts. That was part of why I had never been able to be truly cruel to her in previous loops.

Though Shatov’s estate wasn’t anything remarkable to begin with. And it wasn’t going to last much longer anyway.

I wouldn’t explain it to Olga, but the old man was going to find a new lover before long. Once Olga realized her name would never appear in the will, she would give him a thorough beating and walk out.

What became of old Shatov after that was never mentioned in the original story, but it wasn’t hard to guess.

Because the old man’s new lover was none other than Nastasya. The maid Nastasya, who was simultaneously carrying on with Katerina’s uncle, that is Shatov’s older brother, and his son Dmitri at the same time.

Not two-timing but three-timing within a single family. I had never even met her, but at this point she deserved to be called a woman of remarkable ability.

“So, did you get that address directly from Count Morozov?”

Olga pressed.

“That’s right.”

“Then don’t tell me he…… courted you? Something like that?”

“Courted……?”

Ha, courted. Of course, the courtship Olga meant was courtship by nineteenth-century standards. Exchanging meaningful glances, passing flowers with hidden meanings, that sort of thing. But the image that came to my mind was nothing like that.

[Good night, Katerina Vladimirovna.]

Thinking of the look in his eyes as he watched me, I shivered without meaning to.

“Hm? Why aren’t you answering? Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten, Katya?! You have a fiancé! What was his name again? That…… Pyotr, was it?”

You’re the one who’s forgotten.

Even so, Olga had a point. Whatever the circumstances, I already had a fiancé, and I lacked Nastasya’s particular brand of nerve.

“It’s nothing like that.”

“Ah, I thought as much.”

Olga smiled with a peculiar expression. It was unmistakably a smirk.

“I mean, Count Morozov is hardly someone a girl like you could aspire to.”

“……”

I was too dumbfounded to respond, and Olga grew even more insufferably smug.

“They say a woman grows more beautiful the more she is loved, don’t they? But what man would want someone as downtrodden as you.”

Poke. Olga jabbed my cheek playfully with her fingertip, as if to needle me. And that was where my patience ran out entirely.

“Tch……”

“……?”

“Aaaargh!”

I let out a sudden shriek and Olga threw both arms up with a flinch. She must have been afraid of getting hit in the face again.

“Wh, what are you……”

“Olga.”

I pulled her arms down. I stared into her face with eyes that had completely lost their composure.

“……”

“Please. Just stop. Talking nonsense.”

I ground the words out through clenched teeth, and Olga’s face went pale before flushing scarlet. I raised my arm and pointed to the far end of the corridor.

“Go.”

“But I……”

“I said go.”

Olga opened and closed her mouth without a sound, then finally turned and went clattering down the stairs.

Ah, I should have done that from the start. What was the point of all that tiptoeing around.

The door at the end of the corridor creaked open, probably because of the commotion just now, and the old man poked his head out. But when I fixed him with my completely unhinged stare, he promptly pulled the door shut again.

Ha. The old man and Olga were nothing special after all. Then again, if a mad Russian woman is frightening, a mad Korean woman is no less so.

If the real Katerina ever came back, she might actually thank me. Not that I knew whether that day would ever come.

* * *

He was not in uniform today. He was waiting for me in what was commonly called German-style dress in Russia, a suit and frock coat.

Walking across the square toward him, I adjusted my parasol for no particular reason. Perhaps it was the clothes, but he looked somehow more…… languid today than his usual ascetic self.

Looking at him, I remembered a rumor I had long since forgotten. Of course, the Rodion I had seen so far seemed far removed from anything like a rake, but a rake didn’t go around with the word written on his forehead.

“Rodion Nikolayevich.”

He held out his hand. When I hesitated and offered mine in return, he pressed his lips lightly to the back of it.

“Katerina Vladimirovna, did you walk here alone?”

“I left my maid waiting with the coachman. Today we’re going to have a rather…… private conversation, aren’t we?”

I said it with a light laugh, but my voice came out slightly unsteady.

Rodion gave a brief nod.

“Would you walk with me for a moment, if you don’t mind?”

We walked together through the shopping district. Private as the matter was, it was around noon and there were plenty of people passing by. It was a small town, so there were a few familiar faces.

But I had no other options. I had no home to invite him to, and I couldn’t very well show up at a man’s house uninvited or call him somewhere secluded.

“Um, how did things turn out that day?”

Before leaving Samsonov’s estate, I had asked Rodion not to inform the police that I had been attacked.

I had given the excuse that I was afraid of the damage to my reputation, but the real reason was to prevent things from becoming any more complicated.

If it got back to the old man that I had been threatened by a serial killer and had personally tried to track down and interrogate the culprit, I would certainly be confined to the house.

That would have been the best of it. There was a chance I might be dragged off and locked away in a psychiatric hospital, as had happened in the second and fourth loops. And as was widely known, the psychiatric hospitals of this era were as dreadful as prisons, if not worse.

‘Getting caught once or twice is experience. Getting caught a third time just makes you a fool.’

I looked up at Rodion. From what I had gathered, he was on reasonably familiar terms with the chief of police in this town.

He had promised to investigate the scene with the police and pass along whatever they found. It was more than I could have asked for.

“The police are doing their best to search the area. They seem to believe the man’s hideout is somewhere nearby, but…… as you may know, the police in this town are…… rather lax in their duties.”

I quietly agreed. Speaking from experience, every last officer in this town was both rotten and bone idle.

It was around the seventh loop, I think, when Ivan suddenly disappeared and I went to the police station to report it, only to nearly lose my mind from sheer frustration.

[Your fiancé went missing? Oh dear, how dreadful. But…… are you sure he’s missing? He didn’t just run off because he got tired of you?]

[Ah, I’m joking, don’t be upset. I only said it because you looked so terribly sad. I was trying to cheer you up.]