ㅤ Thud.

ㅤ The sound was surprisingly small. The dull sensation of piercing flesh traveled up her wrist as the thin blade of the paring knife sank halfway into his neck. Blood sprayed across the pillow like a fountain. The dark red liquid spread across the white linen like a blooming flower.

He clutched his throat. Blood leaked through his fingers. His eyes turned toward Guest. Eyes filled with disbelief. Not shock or anger, but pure confusion. Eyes that could not process the fact that his own possession had bitten him.

He opened his mouth. Only a hissing sound came out. His vocal cords were torn. Even so, he tried to say something. He tried to give an order. Just as he always had.

His mouth opened and closed. Bubbles formed in a mouth that only leaked air. The blood flowing from his neck spread across the duvet like a river, yet the man still reached out. To grab Guest's wrist. To command, to seize, and to put her back in her place, just as he had for fifteen years.

ㅤ Just before his fingers could touch her, his body convulsed violently. His eyes rolled back and then returned. And then, he stopped. His hand lost its strength in mid-air and fell limp. He lay perfectly still in the center of the bloodstain on the bedsheet.

ㅤ He was dead.

ㅤ The room fell silent again. It was a different kind of silence than before. Only the ticking of the clock echoed. Two in the morning. There were still four hours before the servants would wake. It was the perfect time. Whether it was planned or just luck, only Guest would know.

Beneath her trembling hands, his body heat was rapidly cooling. He was still warm. A body dead for less than a minute remembered the warmth of life, and that fact was transmitted sickeningly vividly to Guest's fingertips.

Compared to what this man had done to Guest, compared to fifteen years of oppression, this was a pathetically hollow end. Every morning she woke up, she wore the assigned clothes, sat at the assigned table, and met only the people her husband permitted. Even her smiles were calculated based on his mood. If he was in a bad mood, she would be locked in her room for the day.

But it was strange. Fear was thinly layered over a sense of euphoria, but it could not suppress it. Her heart was pounding wildly, but not just from terror. Something hot surged from deep within her gut. If she had to name it, it was pleasure. A pleasure for something she had committed entirely of her own will, something she had never felt in her life.

The hallway was dark. The wall sconces held only the minimum light, and the servants' movements were strictly controlled. He had made it that way. After eleven at night, the maids retreated to the inner annex, and two guards took turns patrolling the entrance and the hallway. The shift change was at midnight. There was a gap of exactly fifteen minutes.

Guest knew that gap. She had lived in this manor for fifteen years. She was a caged bird who could only move within the range her husband allowed, but a bird memorizes everything inside its cage. Where the guards loitered, which door the servants used, where the locks opened and closed.

ㅤ She had to go down the stairs. From the main building to the back gate, she had to pass through the servants' passage. The main entrance was guarded. She placed her feet on the stairs, muffling her footsteps. The wood creaked. She held her breath.

When she slipped out the back gate, the world was different. It was a landscape she had never seen from inside the manor. Moonlight poured over the gravel path, and the silhouette of the forest in the distance blurred like spilled ink. The sound of crickets. Leaves swaying in the wind. Guest knew these things existed in the world, but she had never truly felt them. She had always only seen them through a window.

The gravel pierced her bare feet. It hurt. Only now were her senses beginning to return. Coldness traveled from her toes to her calves, and the dawn chill seeping inside her robe pierced her thin nightgown.

Still, she walked. There was no place to go back to. In the master bedroom lay a bleeding corpse, and when day broke, the manor would be turned upside down. A pursuit party would be formed. The wife of a southern noble killed her husband and fled? It was an event that would set the entire empire ablaze.

ㅤ No sound came from the manor. It was natural. It was the shift change. The time when the guards would be yawning while on patrol. Four hours until morning. She couldn't afford to think that was plenty of time. To feel safe was to become careless.

Her soles were bleeding. She hadn't noticed while stepping on the gravel, but as she entered the dirt path mixed with stones and dry branches, her soles cracked in various places. The pain rushed in late, but she couldn't stop. If she stopped, her thoughts would return. If her thoughts returned, regret would follow.

She didn't stop. Because if she stopped, she would think; if she thought, she would regret; if she regretted, she would hesitate. And if she hesitated, everything she had done to get here would be for nothing.

She walked along the narrow path. The hem of her robe grew damp with dew. That sensation kept reminding her. The feeling of piercing flesh. The resistance of bone. The warm blood soaking her clothes.

The night wind scattered her hair. Surely, having killed a person, she should feel guilt, but strangely, the strongest thing she felt was a sense of liberation.

ㅤ The first thing this woman ever did of her own will was kill her husband.