Glossy black hair and red pupils. Knowledge unbidden from his mind told Harold his face had the features found on people in Japan and even far away from Asia, inducing yet another of his notorious headaches. 

         Those names again. Those places. Just what do they refer to? I have yet to find such an area in my family’s extensive map collection. That impudent servant; I had been avoiding her for the past year or so precisely because she did things like this to me. And yet, after years of annoying me to no end, and causing migraines with her sight alone, the inferior woman went out of her way to cause me trouble. I don’t know why I never bothered getting rid of her sooner, but it is as my father says; you learn from your mistakes. Mother always said I had inherited too much of his mercifulness, so I might as well make use of his wisdom as well.

         His partly haggard figure was roughly 140 cm in height as expected, and aged ten years old. Why he needed to confirm this was a mystery to him. Harold was dressed in a pure white shirt with a cross-tie and knee-high half-pants, he had the appearance which was exactly like a painting of a young boy coming from a distinguished and noble family.

         Unwinding from what he thought was just a particularly strong episode of his typical mind plague, Harold repeated his usual routine to focus his mind.

          “I am...Harold...Stokes.”

         Another spike of knowledge and alien thought assaulted Harold, and he was simultaneously attacked by a feeling of weakening in his legs. At the same time as he put his hands on his knees, whose sudden weakness was now shared across his entire body, he fought to hold back a welling sense of nausea.

        Needless to say, the routine did not work. Something relentless was tugging at his mind, trying to pull to the surface as Harold attempted to shove it down. Quickly, he stumbled to rummage through his cabinet shelves, upon which he retrieved out three old, dusty capsules that rattled.

         The first was two pills for anti-nausea, and the second was one large pill that did...something, to alleviate the symptoms. Harold quickly swallowed the first two with his pitcher of water and glared at the vile, pinkish demon pill. 

         If I had accurately described the symptoms to mother and father, I might’ve gotten something better than this horrid drug. Such a thing is impossible, since I’d be accused of being a warlock practicing black magic by the ungrateful inferior species, and there’d be a terrible uprising, but one cannot help but dream pointlessly every now and then.

         Desperate times call for desperate measures, Harold thought as he quickly gulped it down in a similar fashion. After that, he waited on his bed, staring into the clock until five minutes had passed. 

         Gradually, his breathing slowed, and everything felt… different. Exhausted, he swallowed the final pill, a simple sleeping agent, and collapsed down on his bed. Harold would attempt to nap away most of the duration of the side effects, and put an end to his worries soon enough

          

***

 

         Harold awoke in an uncomfortable sweat and a raging realization. 

         It was that inferior woman, wasn’t it!? She had been causing the great majority of Harold’s recent episodes; how could he not see it!? 

         He jerked up from the bed in a single motion, cool with a dark anger. It was exceedingly obvious to him that that Clara woman was the one who had bewitched him.

         When the servants had been subject to strict interrogation, and replaced one after another for a long time when his parents first suspected poisoning, Clara was largely absent or unnoteworthy. And finally, by the time the frenzy had finally calmed down, Clara had coincidentally received her current position! It all pieced together!

         Just then, there was a knock at Harold’s door

          “……What is it?”

          Who was it bothering him at such a time? Harold shifted further into his sheets, to make it even a slight bit more clear that he was not in the mood for whatever issues had cropped up. As Harold expected, a man with greying hair opened the door, bowed rightfully, and stepped inside the room. It was Norman.

         He, who serves as a butler in this estate, was given the title “Conscience of the Stokes house” by the fandom, though he was affectionately called “Norman-san” by both avid fans and ironic fans. Since he was just a butler and not a blood-relative, he wasn’t a member of the Stokes family. Rather, he was somewhat of a half-blood species, so while Harold didn’t go out of his way to disrespect him, especially since he was his primary caretaker, he felt a moderate amount of disgust toward the half-man, and in his current condition, he immediately disregarded whatever he was about to say as pointless, even before hearing it.

         Norman, who becomes a morally refreshing character in the event related to the highly ranked and valued Stokes house, stepped into Harold’s room.

         “Excuse my rudeness-”

         “Get on with the drivel.”

         “Well, to be honest, I wanted to consult Harold-sama about…….”

          Norman’s words trailed off at the middle of his sentence. Feeling suspicious, Harold intently watched Norman’s face. Thankfully, he was pleasantly surprised by the words which followed.

         “Perhaps, are you feeling unwell? Then…”

         “Ah! So you have grown a pair of eyes after all! If you are hesitating then it must be unimportant. Leave.”

         Under fire of Harold’s blunt reaction, Norman felt that something was out of place. The young Harold that he was aware of had often displayed a strange duality in his behavior that he couldn’t quite attribute to any environmental factors. 

         He, on occasion, showed great hatred towards any sort of effort, and would never work hard, run away from pain, and eliminate everything he disliked while claiming superiority, but just as well, he would diligently study various niche topics, practice magic for hours on end, and display a limitless sense of sharp curiosity that showed a true potential for greatness in the future. Normal glanced at Harold’s somewhat pallid face, then glanced around the room until his gaze settled on a triplet of medicine capsules sitting on the desk.

         Norman’s jaw clenched with the realization. This was a dangerous, yet crucial moment. Harold’s emotions should be overtaking him currently, and his capacity to think straight was limited. However, this also meant that Harold was in such a mood to where he decided to take the medicine which he hardly tolerates being left in his room. Regardless of his temper, there was a possibility that Harold was also in the type mental state where he is the most open minded. If this was so, then the current moment could be Norman’s best chance at persuading him. Taking into account the fact that the young boy did not yell or curse at him yet, Norman took a risk.

         “…I will be brief. I am requesting for reduction of the punishment imposed on Clara-“

         The boy's eyes darkened with a dangerous chill at the mere mention of the punishment, and Norman feared he had just committed a grave error that he would be incapable of escaping the consequences, but just as quickly as the look flared up, it died down when he mentioned the servant’s name.

          “You replaced your ears for a pair of eyes, did you? I will not repeat myself a second time.”

         “Of course. I shall see myself out.”      

          Seeing Norman take his leave, Harold sat back up in bed and moved to his bookshelf. Norman’s mention of that witch left him restless. Not that he knew what he was saying; he knew Norman had always had a soft heart for those of his kind. Shaking his head, Harold scanned tall, wide bookshelves. Along with various entertaining myths and tales, drawing manuals, and occasional music theory, there were a vast multitude of manuals on magic, books discussing magic theory, and even normally restricted books on dangerous offensive magics. 

          He always had an unquenchable sense of hunger towards learning and practicing magic and combat, more than any other subject. It was to the point that he even sought the knowledge on his own, rather than soaking up what his teachers taught him just because it was mildly interesting. Thinking he already knew which spell he would use on the servant, and studying wasn’t proven to help much with already known and practiced magic, Harold sought to relieve his stress by taking out his sketchbook and an illustrated encyclopedia of the magical plant life found in the Stokes territory. 

          Spreading the books out onto his desk, he got to the routine he had established recently. Flipping through the book, he would pick out the most difficult illustration, read a summary about it, and draw it over and over, even drawing a few pieces at a time, until that illustration was no longer the most difficult one to draw. He would then move on to the next most difficult, and on and on. When he was bored he would draw an original drawing from his imagination of the same plant. 

           Harold had splendid eyes, he was aware, and almost no detail could escape him;  this led to him creating a habit of simply copying whatever he saw in as much detail as possible, measuring distances between points in his mind only, and barely drawing any sketch work. He was aware of this flaw, and tried to break the habit multiple times, but the look of the sketch underneath the final image would always somewhat sully the final result. If he pressed his eraser down too hard while erasing the sketch then, it would ruin the final drawing even more. 

           How troublesome. Even if I were to treat the erasing as a part of the challenge, I am reluctant to ruin my beautiful artwork for the sake of practice. I try to make the sketch as light as my books say, but whatever bastard wrote them seems to have some trick to doing it properly that they’re hiding from me. 

          Harold continued his stress relieving for hours, but it was anything but relaxing. His hand seemed to be cursed to make the same mistakes every single time, no matter how hard he tries to learn from them. Mistake after small mistake built up to an explosion of cursing and ripping out papers of the sketchbook. In his fiery, irrational rage, Harold scribbled meaninglessly for pages upon pages, and eventually threw the encyclopedia to the ground, stomped on it, and kicked it into the walls before snapping his pencil in half. 

          As he turned his back to the aftermath of his rage, Harold breathed out deeply as he crossed his arms and looked up to the ceiling. After a while of this, he stared himself in the mirror for nearly half a minute until he calmed himself as much as he could. 

          …Hah, at least I don’t have a headache... 

          Now switching to a cold clarity, Harold put away the beaten book, tossed the ripped pages in his drawer, and began drawing without reference this time. Harold depicted useless, self-victimizing servants getting their backs flogged by himself, and drew multiple artworks of Clara burning alive and begging him for mercy. 

          Ah, that’s it, isn’t it? That witch had something to do with my art too, didn’t she!? The wretch, I’ll burn her tonight. She doesn’t deserve to live for any longer than she has to. She made me take this stupid medicine too. 

         The images of Clara burning stir something else inside Harold, but it is pushed out and dismissed by the stirring mess inside his head. He could only think about how explicitly angry he was. Even the mistakes made in the bleeding servants were lighting a fire under his mind, and when it was time for dinner and he accidentally stepped on one of the crumbled papers on the floor, he almost lost himself again. 

          Dismissing the squeamish servants, Harold sat himself down at the table with his beloved family, which only consisted of him and his parents, Jessica and Hayden Stokes. They would be able to tell he was under the medicine, but that was fine; they had even told Harold that there were occasionally times where they like him more with the pill than without.

         “I always did want to get rid of that awful servant. Just looking at her pitiful face made me sick.”

         “Harold always did have a good intuition with such things; once he learns to harness it, he’ll grow up to be a splendid noble like you, Hayden dear.”

         “Of course he will! He is our son, after all; there won’t be a child with purer blood him for years to come!”

         “There will never be one. Ever.” Harold replied curtly.

         “My, how gallant! Truly, you are the future of this world, dear Harold,” His mother replied.         

         The dinner went on like this as the servants looked on in an uncomfortable silence, though they were ignored as always. The dishes and drinks refilled themselves, with no waiter or chef wanting to get on the family’s bad side. They knew the family thought of the majority of them little more than objects, and would therefore not hesitate to throw abuse towards them should they not ‘work properly’. 

         Especially if you had little to no history in nobility. Sometimes they would have a slight bit of leeway with the child, but as the waiters observed Harold’s mood, they quickly realized that today they needed to be in top form. Even if they could not read him, the parents’ comments about Harolds’ medicine were easy enough to decipher. Eventually Harold stood up from his seat.         

         “Now then, I’ll finally put an end to that miserable wench. There’s no need to treat it as anything more important than it is.”

         “Have fun, dear! Make sure to let her scream a little; I’ll give you something if I hear it from my windows.”

         Harold strode outside and without wasting any time, and he called out to an armored soldier who was nearby in an impatient tone.

         “Oi, you bastard”

         “A- Ah!”

         The soldier bent down on one knee and lowered his head. Word had spread that Harold was in a mood.

         “Lead me to the dungeon where the servant called Clara is imprisoned”

         “To the dungeon?”

         “What? Does an inferior bastard like you have objections?”

         “No, I don’t! This way please!”

         With brisk movements, the idiot soldier took the lead. The armor was clattering noisily. It would be an annoyance if he wandered around in the mansion during the night.

         He followed behind the soldier like that for a short while until they arrived in front of a desolate looking building with a height of 3m, made out of stone, situated behind the mansion.

        “This is the dungeon”

        “How many people are imprisoned?”

        “For now, it should be a single person, but…”

        If it was like that, it seemed that the only one inside was Clara. Harold was disappointed he wouldn’t be setting an example for the other prisoners, but it couldn’t be helped.

       “You remain here and keep a lookout so that no one interrupts.”

       “Ce, certainly”

       Making the soldier stand outside, only Harold entered inside the building after opening the wooden door.

       “Ha, Harold-sama!? Uo!”

          In the narrow guardroom, there was the form of yet another soldier. Lying down upon the chair which was lined up, was the posture of the soldier indicating his blatant, impudent idling.

          The fool among fools hurriedly tried to rise up, tripped and fell down from the chair. Harold memorized his face and decided to think of a punishment later, before extending his hand to an iron grill, furnished on the ground in the left-hand corner of the room, which led to the dungeon. When he pulled it, he found that it was locked tightly. Infuriated, Harold demanded the soldier in a hash, snapping tone.

          “Key. Now.”

          “Ye, yes!”

          The sloth bastard with only half his armor on gave the key to Harold, from the ones hung on the wall. He inserted the key into the keyhole and when he turned it to the left side, the lock opened with a loud clank.

          “I have to deal with the person in the dungeon. Don’t you dare enter.”

           Nailing down that point into the useless man’s skull, he descended the stairway leading to the dungeon while he still held the key, so that he wouldn’t get locked in, even if by chance. If anyone could accidentally do so, it would be that scampering buffoon of a soldier. The stone stairway was gloomy, and so dark that even the steps couldn’t be seen properly, giving the sense that the shadows were drawing away all hope as the temperature dropped away. He finally reached the prison after carefully descending the 10 odd steps.

           The prison had a total of 4 cells, 2 on each side. Each cell only had something which seemed like a bed made only out of straw and a simple toilet out in the open. On the wall at the other side of the prison was a small window, with a height of 20 cm and a width of 30 cm, through which a small amount of light was illuminating the prison. Even that much seemed too lenient in Harold’s eyes, but perhaps it was meant for ventilation, so it was possible that it was a necessity. The cold, damp environment suited the scum perfectly.

           Harold stopped his feet in front of the cell situated at the interior right hand side, in which Clara was imprisoned.

          “You are called Clara Emerel, confirm this.”

          “Harold-sama…”

          Harold stood in front of Clara’s cell in a position where she could not make out his facial features. It was at the level where she could only guess at who it was from looking at the small silhouette of the person and listening to the voice of the person. The inferior woman could not even answer direct orders, but Harold wasn’t expecting much from her in the first place. 

          He could immediately recognize the voice of the blonde woman either way, and the reflection of blue in her eyes was unmistakable, so he didn’t care. A dizziness assaulted him as he realized he knew this scene, but Harold’s freezing hate drowned it out, as he felt schadenfreudic amusement towards Clara’s sullied fair skin, pitiful prisoner’s tunic, puffy red eyes. Everything about her posture has displayed hopeless despair until Harold raised his voice, upon which she shifted fearfully such that her hands were held close to her chest, and she had shrunk away from the bars.

           “Perhaps…Has that time already come?”

           Her voice shook. A test subject for experimenting his new magic. The boy standing in front of her had spouted such cold words just an evening earlier. Realizing that the time had already come, Clara’s face was etched with an even deeper color of despair.

          “So it would seem the ugly wrench has at least half a brain. Yes. But for now, answer my questions, old hag. Do not lie.”

         Harold folded his arms and leaned his back on the iron bars of the opposite cell.

Clara’s face clouded in shock as she realized these would be her last moments alive. She had worked in this mansion for almost two years, and the amount of times she had directly conversed with Harold was uncountable, but still, his current form appeared particularly more cruel that usual. Did he perhaps take that vile medication, she wondered.

           “…Yes. I will answer all the questions you ask of me”

          Clara displayed vigor as she nodded with agreement. Perhaps she could find some room for negotiation, or reasoning, with the little time she had. She was swallowed by the atmosphere given off by Harold, who was emitting a mildly interested, but ultimately uncaring attitude, making it feel as if her life could be taken at any moment.

          “What is the composition of your family?”

          “I have a single daughter”

          “What is her name?”

          “She is called Colette”

          “...What about blood relatives or close family members other than her?”

          “I left my hometown with my husband, which could be viewed as running away, and from then on it was a state of isolation from my house. Three years ago, due to a disease, my husband…”

          Harold broke out into a cold sweat. He knew, without any reason he should know it, the name of this inferior woman’s daughter even before asking her. Even when she told Harold the circumstances of her coming to work here, all he thought was Ah, that was why Colette didn’t have any relatives other than her mother. There were many times in the past where Harold had a gut feeling about information unprecedentedly, before he ever learned it, but this was the first time he had ever known anything personal about anyone.

            The purpose of the questioning was for comparing and adjusting the knowledge in his head, but now he wondered if Clara was planting these thoughts in his mind purposefully. Clara was getting baffled by listening to him asking questions about her circumstances which had nothing to do with her punishment, but Harold paid no heed to that and persistently continued to interrogate her.

          “...The age of your daughter is?”

          “She becomes 9 this year”

          “You lied. Her age is twelve, almost a teenager.”

          “What!? That’s not-“

          “I explicitly told you not to lie. Do you want a punishment worse than death, I wonder?

          “You are- I don’t-“

          “Do you have any experience in martial arts or using any magic?”

          “No, no things like that in particular!”

          “Then why are you affiliated with that family, then? If you weren’t any sort of fighter, you would have no reason to be near them.”

          “What- Family? I-“

            The genuine questioning lasted only a minute. Harold rapidly and indifferently repeated the questions, including multiple fake outs, further adding on pressure as strang memories began to resurface to his mind one after another. He even began to burn her after she got her questions ‘wrong’, but the memories just wouldn’t stop. As long as she was alive, the memories would not stop. 

            “Your daughter has blonde hair and blue eyes like yours, you said?”

            “Y-yes.

            “-You, you inferior woman! Are you so old your memory has become senile!?”

            “I-“

            “Don’t look at me like that! Stop! I demand you! I don’t know how many times I’d ever seen you, but I always knew. How incompetent you were! Stop trying to confuse me and cause me even more trouble in the last moments of your life! Oh, cry, woman! Go ahead, cry your last goddamn tears before I burn them right off your face! Hahahaha!!!”

          Harold’s blood blazed alight, and he forced himself to let out a deep breath. He was losing control horribly. Using a form of detoxification magic, he removed as much as he could of that medicine from his system upon which he instantly felt both better and worse.

          All the information obtained from Clara was consistent with his foresight. The attempts at catching her off guard with things she couldn’t know, while also straying away from specifics, were met with only confusion, and bluffs were met with confusion and insistence that she was speaking the truth. With this, all the information that could be obtained at this stage was present and he had nothing left to pursue.

         “...That’s it. Well then.”

         “W-Wait for a moment please!”

         Clara pleaded for Harold, who was about to begin, to allow her some last words. He didn’t want to, and yet, something else in his mind begged some mercy of the infuriating woman. Had he perhaps gotten even softer than before?

           “…What?”

           “If...I-If I die, then my daughter…Colette will be all alone. At that age, she wouldn’t even be able to survive if she is left alone…”

           Clara pleaded while shedding tears.

           “Therefore, after my death, please help my daughter! That girl has done no wrong. Please, please display her your merciful benevolence to her!…”

           Instead of worrying about her own life, she, who was anxious about the future of her child, begged while grovelling and bowing her head, to the one whom she should hate to the core, and the cause of her unreasonable situation. He could currently sense the unconditional parental love from Clara. She was truly an existence that was absolutely indispensable for Colette. And so, he burst out into a fit of uncontrollably laughter

          “Good one!!! Hahahahahahaha!”

          “...”

          “Ahhh, -sigh. Hmph, what an unsightly face; someone like you truly has no value in living.”

          He remembered a bright screen, and hours spent sitting in front of it. Sometimes playing video games, sometimes using a digital drawing program that would crash every few days and erase all his progress.

         “...You must know this by now, but there is no way you could possibly be forgiven.”

         He couldn’t stop speaking if he wanted too; it was a horrifying experience. Meanwhile memories of television, cars, school, cooking, and more flooded his mind like a dam broken loose.

         “...Life to an inferior species that cannot properly serve her better is less than useless.”

        A piercing migraine raged in his skull. He remembered his determination that one day, he would grow up into a rich entrepreneur that would save the world from global warming, or at least try his damnedest until his death. He remembered wanting to help everyone that was suffering. He wanted to bring happiness to the world.

         “...At least, if I do it this way, you’ll have a use in death, right?”

         He remembered warm baths, the proud look on the teacher after he got an award for his GPA, the sweet taste of sugary lemonade, the smell of lots and lots of rice dishes, the annoying sensation of beach sand in between his toes, his heartfelt desire to share his feelings and passion with the everyone who’d listen, the soul-crushing exhaustion of all nighters, and his mother’s warm, loving smile…… 

         ...He remembered Brave Hearts.

         “-It’s over– Flame Column.”