She was glancing at the door in annoyance when I opened it blithely. The sharp hairpin in her hands didn’t reassure me even though it was her precious barrette. Hair flowed down her head naturally, almost reaching the cot. She had sprawled her legs beyond the boundary of the cot, and I stiffened involuntarily. No, she wouldn’t ask me to lick her feet; I pacified myself and sat on the floor beneath her under her threatening gaze.

I wasn’t a spinless undead for a fact, but this body was attuned to being scared of the villainess. Those were the restrictions imposed on me for accepting her role as her butler, something I was the least inclined to address.

If you want proof for my spine, I suggest you rank the undead according to the number of people they have killed. I won’t be the last person on the list, for sure.

“Where did you go?” She asked, casually pulling her dangling feet over the cot. She had a detached expression on her face as if my whereabouts didn’t bother her. I knew better.

“To meet a friend,” I said. “They’ll help us at our outing tomorrow.”

Her eyes lit up before the coldness returned to them. Her eyes were expressive, and I could always guess her mood from her expressions alone.

“Is your friend a woman?”

Possessive she was, but I didn’t mind. “A man, my lady. You’ll meet him tomorrow.”

She leaned forward and sniffed my attire, almost tumbling down the bed. I held her by her exposed shoulders using my gloved hands and earned a punch, nonetheless.

“I can smell faint alcohol on you, mongrel!” she snapped, and I saw her clutching the barrette so hard that it pierced into her skin.

I sighed and got up.

“I didn’t ask you to get up, scum! Kneel down!”

Despite her sharp words, there was visible pain in her eyes. I touched her hands, and she reflexively loosened the grip on the barrette, watching her blood flow out with indifference. I cast [Heal], and a faint glow of dazzling light danced on her hands that immediately closed the wound. I took the barrette from her hands. It was stained in her blood, but I would clean it before tomorrow.

“I didn’t drink, my lady. I would never do anything that would make you hate me, so don’t worry about me abandoning you like others. If people call you a villainess, then there is no problem in becoming one, is there?” I smiled gently, sowing seeds of hatred in her. Call me manipulative, but this was what I intended to do all along.  If my villainess was destined to bow before the heroes of the world, then I would make it so that she would rather die than succumb to others.

“What are you saying, mongrel?! Who told you I’m scared of losing you? You pathetic philandering bastard is the only one who thinks that.”

“Now now, isn’t philander too harsh? I have never touched a woman’s body in my entire life.”

“Am I not a woman?!” she snapped again, her snicker too loud to ignore.

I stared at her blatantly for a while and replied honestly, “You are one, my lady. And a beautiful one at that.”

Albeit plain when compared to the heroine. I left the words unsaid because I knew they would cause me more harm than good.

She snorted and jumped out of the cot. “When are we leaving?”

“At sunrise tomorrow, we’ll meet with my bread lad, I mean, with a mercenary at the gates of the city. So, we’ll leave early.”

“Do I have you take a mutt on a walk? Aren’t you too inefficient, Rudolf?” She adorned a ponderous expression, which forced me to reexamine whether I had been inefficient. I stayed silent and watched her amble to the door without talking.

“Clean that hairpin before you return it to me. If I see a single speck of stain on it, I’ll burn you alive,” she said and paused at the door for a while. “What’s that weird language in your books?”

“It’s my own language, my lady. I’ll teach it to you someday. It makes writing incantation while using summoning spells much easier too,” I said, completely unfazed by the fact that she had rummaged through my belongings. If it had been anyone else, the city gates would have seen burnt corpses hanging upside down. It often surprised me how much I indulged this little girl.

“I’ll go for dinner,” she said, eyes downcast.

“I’ll be right behind you, my lady,” I said and followed her out of the room.

It was an unspoken rule between us that she would never be alone with her family members unless absolutely necessary. I had caught flying table knives multiple times, all from the hands of the lady of the house due to her carelessness. She would lose her fingers one of these days if she wasn’t careful with them.

It was a harmonious atmosphere in the dining hall as always, and my lady earned another slap from the Marquis when her fiasco came to light. I heard the teetering laughter of the maids from all around me, and they were too ugly to be called giggles. My lady didn’t cry, but she didn’t speak a single word of admonishment to the Marquis, though the lady of the house got called ‘a vile whore’ multiple times despite the bellowing lord.

Somehow, my lady was more calm than usual at the table. She didn’t get riled up over righteous words of the heir, nor did she hurl more than a couple of curses at the lady of the house. It was rare, considering Marlica ran her mouth throughout the meal, along with her two siblings. Plates changed, deserts descended on the table, but my lady got up. She loved desserts, in all honesty, but there was something different about her actions.

We walked around the corridor, and I skipped my bread for the first time in a long time. If my lady was unusual, I didn’t have meals because she fed me bread. Whenever I stayed back at the main kitchen to eat meals, not a single piece of bread would be left on the plates prepared for the workers of the house. Everyone knew I liked bread, so it disappeared quickly.

As soon as we reached her chamber, she paused at the door, and I almost collided against her slouched back. I took a step back, and she just leaned backward, resting her head on my chest and my chin atop her head.

“Did I do good, mongrel?” she asked in the same vulnerable voice she spoke in front of the prince.

“My lady?” I called out to her, holding her shoulders so that she wouldn’t lean against me completely.

“Did I do good, scum?!” she asked again, except my address changed.

“You did, my lady. Everything you did was perfect today, though I would have preferred if you had marred the face of the heroine instead of just pushing her away. The redhead’s too. And during dining, it would have been great if you were more defiant to the Marquis.”

“Redhead?” she asked in surprise, her body shivering uncontrollably in my hands. I felt her smile in that split second, but her lips were away from my eyes.

“The prince, lady. He isn’t my prince, for I only have one lady.”

“Is that your profession of love, Rudolf?” she didn’t get off my chest, instead wiggled out of my grasp and leaned against my chest.

“I cannot love, my lady.”

“You cannot?” she asked, getting off me and turning around.

“I cannot.”

“Does that mean you will belong to me forever?”

“As long as you stray down the wrong road, I will always stay beside you.”

 “Is that a promise, mongrel?” she stared at my face, her eyes glittering with something I perceived as happiness.

“Always, my lady,” I smiled and ushered her to the room.

As I said before, we undead share different values from humans. For her, forever is a matter of 100 years, but for me, those mere years are fleeting seconds. So, I could make all the promises humans craved in a lifetime without batting an eye because it was only a matter of keeping them for a few seconds.

Humans hate undead, or rather they detest them, because we have immortality, and they don't. It is a mortal human’s desire to live for as long as they can, so they always attempt to kill anything different from them out of spite. If I place a harmless demon in front of a knight, they will kill it without fail. It is natural instincts, and their justification is that ‘they are dangerous’ instead of ‘they are more potent’ and ‘they are different’.

You might have thousands of exceptions for me, but try living for a millennium, and your every exception doesn’t appear more than a few hundred times, yet my human appears throughout the millennium. Time speaks the truth, and a mortal’s time is limited to even claim something is right.

“I’m not sleepy,” she said after a brief silence, annoyed at me that she wasn’t.

She was as unreasonable as ever, but it was something that needed acceptance too. And I doubted any human would accept her selfishness as a part of her. They would instead ask her to change and become deserving of their fucked up love.

I wouldn’t say I am different, for I would be nothing more than a hypocrite then. But I don’t give her fake promises as I only speak the truth.

“Should I read you a story, my lady?” I sat on the stool beside her bed, picking up the usual book.

The Story of The Immortal Demon

Yes, that is the title of the book. I have been reading it to my lady since she crossed the age of ten. It is not too gritty nor gory; rather, it talks about the loneliness of immortal life. I didn’t write it but found it strikingly relatable. If my lady ever discovers that I am undead, I don't want her to crave immortality. That will be my only kindness to her in this life amidst the myriad of manipulations.

“Why that story again, Rudolf?” she asked, turning her head to face me.

“Because immortality is a poison disguised as bread.”

She laughed, and it was a beautiful laugh. I have heard it many times before, but I could never grow tired of it.

If you thought my lady was a mopey brat, then you are gravely mistaken. She is a girl, young enough to laugh naturally, hardened by her experiences.

“There was a beautiful princess in a high castle across the plains,” I started reading the book aloud and watched her fluttering lashes. “She craved immortality because she loved an undead. She wanted to wait for him as long as she could, so she asked the gods for blessings. Every day, every night, she prayed in the secluded temple of the wild, animals often surrounding the place hearing her painful woes.

“A demon took pity on her and granted her the wish. Elated, she returned to her palace, only to see it overridden by people of the west. She killed each one of them, bathed in their blood every day, and waited amidst the marred corpses for the return of her beloved, but news came from afar that blessed humans had slain an undead. Enraged…”

I stopped as soon as her breathing evened out and tucked her under the sheets. After casting [Ward], I walked out of the room blithely with the spiders staring at me threateningly as I entered my humble abode. My dairy lay open atop the table, ink sprawled beside it along with the broken perfume bottle.

I sighed and picked up my pen as I pulled my book away from the broken ink and perfume bottle.

Nothing out of the ordinary.