There were several taboos in the Rogato household.

Among them, the one considered most important was this: do not provoke the temperamental duke. To that end, all the servants arranged their every movement around the duke’s schedule.

If the servants were to pass by chattering while he was active, simply being quietly dismissed would be considered lucky.

There were a few other rules besides, though none of them were particularly difficult to follow. And there were also rules that had come into being for the sake of the servants’ own physical and mental comfort.

Those concerned Vincent, the servants had made a pact among themselves to do their best to keep the young, pitiful, yet wicked young master appeased.

It was common knowledge among the household staff that the master of the family despised his own son. Under the guise of education, he inflicted terrible physical punishment, after which it fell to those beneath him to soothe Vincent’s mood.

The young master of the estate would torment the servants until his frustration was spent. Many had thought, how much trouble could a little child cause, but those who actually experienced it were left utterly exhausted.

Setting traps in the hallways, pouring ink into the water used to wring out mops, slipping laxatives into the servants’ food, Vincent needed to take out his anger on others to the same degree that his father took it out on him. Yet the servants could hardly dare say a word to the young master, so they had no choice but to quietly let him vent.

Up until now it had been relatively harmless pranks, but apparently not long ago he had attempted to resort to physical violence, just like the duke. What a relief that it had not gone that far.

Violence was like a drug, once one fell into it, there was no escaping it.

“Speaking of Young Master Vincent.”

“What about him?”

“Hasn’t he been quiet lately? He hasn’t even been shouting.”

Indeed, Vincent had been so well-behaved recently that it surprised the servants. Becky, a servant who had been diligently scrubbing by hand, let out a small laugh at those words.

“How long do you think that’ll last? He’s probably plotting some strange prank again.”

“Oh, don’t say that. It’s sad, isn’t it. He’s only 7 years old and his body is covered in bruises…… I feel sorry for him every time I see him.”

“Sorry for him? Please.”

A suddenly heated voice rang out through the dining room.

“Keep your voice down. We’re lucky the master is at the palace on business right now.”

Another servant glanced around nervously, and Becky lowered her voice. It was a voice thick with suppressed irritation.

“Listen, I was beaten by my father too when I was growing up. Being born into a good family and not having to scrub floors like this, that alone should be considered a blessing.”

Becky’s hands tightened as she spoke. Her colleague could only sigh and shake their head.

“Right. Let’s just clean.”

There was one person listening to all of this.

A child with a beautiful face, wearing an expression filled with rage that did not suit those features at all, clenching both fists tightly.

It was none other than Vincent Rogato.

Being the subject of someone else’s conversation was not a particularly pleasant feeling.

Vincent, unable to contain his anger, was about to step forward when his legs gave a small flinch. He then quickly looked around to check whether that child was nearby.

A small child with blazing red hair tied in two braids had not left his mind for over a week.

〈Do bad things, and I’ll punish you.〉

Those words kept coming back to him with a strange persistence.

What was more, whenever he thought of that child, his heart would pound, his face would flush, and he would break into a needless sweat. The moment he had opened his eyes, he had asked around everywhere trying to find out who that child was, but the child who had vanished like smoke was nowhere to be found.

Perhaps that was why……

The reason this suffocating feeling kept lingering.

Even as 7-year-old Vincent stood there with his hand resting quietly over his heart, wearing a serious expression and lost in the mood of the moment, the servants’ conversation continued.

“By the way, did they catch that child?”

“Who?”

“The one who made the young master faint.”

As the topic shifted, the heart of the eavesdropping Vincent beat even faster. Without realizing it, he leaned his body toward the direction where the voices were clearest.

“Nobody got a proper look at the face, so how would they catch them.”

“True, the duke didn’t seem to care much either. He’ll probably just pretend to look for a little while and leave it at that.”

Vincent’s mouth fell open at the new piece of information he had just learned from that exchange. He had clearly described the child’s appearance since he had seen the face himself, and he had been told a proper search was underway!

Children were easily fooled by adults’ lies. Adults never knew how great an impact that could have.

Shocked, Vincent ran straight up to his room. He locked the door behind him, then pressed his ear against it to check whether anyone was passing through the corridor.

His father, who had lied about conducting a search, and the maidservants who had known everything and said nothing, he hated them all.

“Everyone is a liar. There’s no one I can trust.”

Once he confirmed that no one was outside, he immediately opened the wardrobe door. Inside was a small backpack. Without hesitation, Vincent grabbed the backpack and headed for the window.

It was a bag he had packed each time he had been beaten by his father and had made plans to escape from the estate.

Before opening the window, Vincent strapped the backpack firmly onto his back, let out a determined puff of air, and steeled his resolve.

Then, as the straps pressed against his wounds, he let out a pained groan with a grimace.

“Ugh!”

They were wounds that had appeared just the night before. His personal maidservant had applied ointment, but there was no way they had already healed.

His father often spoke of the family’s glory. Unlike the genetic trait of the Rogato family, who had been brown-haired for generations, Vincent’s ash-gray hair, the spitting image of his mother, seemed to frequently grate on the duke’s nerves.

〈You shameful wretch!〉

The night before as well, the intoxicated duke had summoned him late at night, recited the proud history of the family at length, and then kicked Vincent.

The expression on Duke Rogato’s face as he looked down at Vincent, who kept coughing because he could not catch his breath, was utterly indifferent.

Three years ago, after the duchess had fled, the duke’s delusion that Vincent was a child born of her infidelity had come to be accepted almost as established fact.

As he recalled the events of the previous night, Vincent’s resolve only grew stronger. He moved forward with a determined expression. Beneath that resolute face, there seemed to be a grief that could not quite be named.

“The truly bad people are the ones who live here. Not me.”

– – –

It was his first time going out without a maidservant in tow. An outing without an adult accompanying him was nothing short of a grand adventure for a 7-year-old child.

Where should he go to find that child? After much deliberation, Vincent decided to revisit the place where they had first met.

It was somewhere he had gone to on occasion, so he could get there on his own without a maidservant to guide him.

‘Right. I can do everything on my own.’

But when he arrived at the spot, there was no particular trace of anything. Someone had already demolished and cleared away the remaining wall, and the ground was clean.

A flustered Vincent looked around, but there was no adult who paid any attention to a child in distress. The moment of confusion passed quickly, and Vincent, who had never intended to ask an adult for help in the first place, renewed his determination.

“She disappeared so suddenly, so she must have gone into one of the alleyways.”

In his own mind, it was perfectly logical reasoning. Vincent thought to himself that it was a good thing he had studied hard, and headed toward the nearest alleyway.

Having always walked along bright, wide main roads, he had not known, but the alleyway was dark, with no sunlight reaching inside. And it smelled strange.

The paths were tangled like a maze, making it difficult to tell one from another.

“Hmm, did I pass through here earlier?”

Vincent muttered to himself while looking at the ground. If he did not at least talk to himself like this, he felt as though he might collapse on the spot at any moment.

“I’m pretty sure I saw that marking earlier……”

Looking more carefully, all the markings seemed to look the same. Vincent, not in the slightest aware that he was lost, walked on diligently, examining only the patterns on the ground.

Just then, a dark shadow fell across his path ahead. At the sudden darkness, Vincent looked up.

Three boys who appeared to be in their late teens were swaggering as they blocked Vincent’s way.

“Hey, kid.”