I jumped up from my seat and hurried towards Zachary without even properly putting on my slippers. I walked over like a madman and immediately grabbed the cloth.

“Are you okay?”

I had heard the sound of water dripping earlier.

The source of that sound was none other than Zachary. The cloth with the ghost’s eyes drawn on it was completely soaked. The cloth covering Zachary’s face was half-wet, clinging to his face as if choking him.

‘Did he make a mistake while working and get drenched in water?’

How suffocating it must have been for the damp cloth to keep sticking to his face.

I hastily removed the cloth from his face.

“What in the world happened to get this so wet… And…”

The damp cloth fell onto the back of my hand. But there was no time to dispose of the cloth. I couldn’t even finish my sentence and could only stare at the face of the person standing in front of me.

“Young master.”

He called out to me in a low voice. Zachary, the owner of the voice, was expressionless. His face was the same as usual, with not a single trace of emotion to be found, to the point of looking chilling.

However, what startled me was not Zachary’s expression.

“Young master.”

Unbelievably, the reason Zachary’s cheeks were damp was…

“You said you would help me.”

He was shedding tears, drop by drop.

In the dark corner where not a single ray of candlelight reached, water pooled and overflowed from his pitch-black eyes that lacked any sparkle like a dead fish. The tears that flowed down his cheeks soon gathered at his chin and fell.

Drip, drop. The tears that fell as if cutting through the air repeatedly landed on the floor and seeped in.

‘He’s crying?’

Zachary was crying. No matter how many times I blinked and looked again, unable to believe it, he was indeed crying.

A servant is crying? In the over ten years I had lived here, I had never seen such a sight. Thus, upon witnessing Zachary crying now, I couldn’t snap out of the shock.

Even as I stood there dazed, looking at him, the tears relentlessly fell down Zachary’s cheeks.

He seemed to not know how to express sadness. The endlessly falling tears from his chillingly expressionless face seemed to represent the sorrow he couldn’t properly express.

Would it have been different if he were crying with a completely disheveled face? Seeing the tears falling from his cold face, I wanted to wipe them away and embrace him to comfort him right then and there. That’s how pitiful Zachary’s appearance was.

Without realizing it, my hand automatically moved towards his cheek. As I raised my hand, Zachary slightly closed his eyes as if to assist me and gently lowered his head to lean in.

However, before my hand could touch his cheek…

“You…”

There was something even stranger.

The words I had just heard caught my attention.

Come to think of it, didn’t Zachary just say something? But the content…

“How…?”

I looked at Zachary with a belatedly shocked face, but Zachary gave no answer. He simply stared at me blankly while shedding tears drop by drop.

“What did you just say?”

When I withdrew my hand that was about to wipe his cheek, Zachary gazed at it as if feeling regretful. However, there was no time to wipe away his tears.

“What is it? Explain properly!”

I grabbed Zachary’s arm, pulled him towards me, and shouted. But he just kept crying with his characteristically smooth and cold face.

Those two eyes, completely dry despite the incessantly flowing tears, were not only eerie but also unsettling. However, there was no time to pay attention to every detail.

“Young master. You said you would help me.”

Did I mishear? That can’t be.

It was undoubtedly Zachary’s voice. Although it was still emotionless and lacked any intonation.

“It’s you, isn’t it?”

I was certain that the voice I had just heard belonged to Zachary.

“You’re the one who just spoke, aren’t you?”

Even if I wanted to forget the conversation I had when I first met Zachary, I couldn’t.

Because whenever I was severely eaten away by guilt, I would unfailingly dream of the moment I first met Zachary. And the dream was so brutally cruel that it always stopped and repeated at the part I feared the most.

“I will help you leave this place.”

Words I had irresponsibly uttered and still couldn’t keep even after several years had passed.

The agony of watching myself make a promise that was no different from giving false hope to young Zachary was indescribable.

“Zachary, it’s you, right? You… You’re the one who spoke to me, right?”

There was clearly no one in this room except for Zachary and me.

I clung onto Zachary’s arm and looked up at him imploringly. However, he simply stared at me with eyes that were as transparent as glass beads, shimmering but devoid of any vitality.

“Cough.”

As I quietly observed those eyes, he coughed softly while maintaining his posture of looking down at me. But that was just the beginning.

“Cough! Cough, cough, cough!”

Zachary coughed repeatedly while standing and then collapsed to the floor. Blood flowed from his mouth as if being poured out with each cough. The blood didn’t just flow from his mouth.

Despite only coughing a few times, blood had already started flowing from his nose and ears as well. Zachary’s damp cheeks quickly turned red.

‘Blood…’

My mind went blank.

Before I could gather my thoughts and come up with a plan, seeing Zachary’s upper body completely dyed red made my stomach churn from the metallic smell of blood. I felt dizzy and wanted to collapse right then and there.

However, what stopped me from crumbling was…

‘The curse mark is strange.’

The sight of Zachary’s curse mark flickering through the slightly loosened bandages.

The curse mark on his other wrist that I hadn’t touched, the one sealing his spiritual power, was repeatedly changing from black to gray.

The mouths hidden within the bandages, drawn by the scent of blood, revealed themselves through the loosened bandages. They grotesquely pursed their lips and began sucking Zachary’s blood.

The piercing headache made me feel like I would collapse. Although my mind was so hazy that it wouldn’t be surprising if my knees buckled at any moment, I barely managed to hold onto my consciousness.

My mind was a mess. I couldn’t even grasp where to start or how to figure out the reason behind the curse mark’s current state. However, amidst the thoughts that were so complex they felt like they would burst, seeing the fading curse mark, one thing was certain.

‘This is the opportunity.’

Now is the time. I had a firm conviction that if I touched up that curse mark now, something would definitely change.

Moreover, him bleeding like that must mean that Zachary is desperately trying to express his will to me in some way. Zachary’s self has clearly emerged to the surface, so I can’t miss this chance.

“Wipe it.”

For now, I held out a handkerchief to Zachary. Despite bleeding, Zachary took the handkerchief I offered.

But that was it. He didn’t wipe his face with the handkerchief. Rather, it seemed like he was trying not to dirty the handkerchief, attempting to keep his blood-soaked hands from touching it as much as possible. It made my chest feel suffocated.

In the end, I forcibly grabbed that hand and pressed it against his face.

“Keep wiping.”

I barely managed to muster strength in my body. I wanted to directly wipe Zachary’s bleeding face, but I gritted my teeth and endured it.

I couldn’t afford to waste a single moment. To touch up the curse mark, I first needed to find the tools.

I struggled to move my stiffened feet. As I turned my back on the bleeding Zachary and started walking, Zachary reached out and grabbed the hem of my clothes.

“Young master, young… master…”

When I turned around, I saw Zachary, who had collapsed to the floor, repeatedly trying and failing to stand up. He seemed to want to follow me, but he couldn’t get up as if he had no strength in his body.

‘I need to find it quickly.’

I gritted my teeth and broke free from Zachary’s grasp to search for the tools.

Fortunately, since I had plans to touch up Zachary’s curse mark soon, the tools were placed in an easily accessible location. However, in my haste, I kept fumbling.

I tried to calm my mind as much as possible and grabbed the necessary tools before turning around. At that moment, I had to involuntarily close my eyes at the miserable sight.

“Young… master.”

Zachary, who had crawled in front of me at some point, looked wretched.

His body trembled, his face was covered in blood, and his hands clumsily tried to grab onto me. Unlike his expressionless face, his touch seemed to be desperately pleading with me.

There was no time to hesitate. I immediately grabbed the arm I hadn’t touched up and unwrapped the bandages.

“Ugh!”

The mouths in the bandages, revealing themselves after a long time, opened wide as if delighted. Not stopping there, they tried to greedily suck up the blood Zachary had shed. My fingers got cut by the violent mouths while roughly removing the bandages, but I paid no mind. After removing all the bandages wrapped around his neck, arms, and legs, I tossed them into the air. And just in case, I took out the pig’s blood I had prepared. Although it wasn’t fresh, the bandages lapped up the pig’s blood as if possessed.

“I’ll do it quickly.”

Zachary was still staring at me while shedding tears. Under his watchful gaze, I reached out my hand.

“It’s okay. I can do it. It’s alright. It’s going to be fine.”

Tap tap, after a few fumbling attempts, I managed to light the candle, heat the knife, and placed the ingredients one by one into the bowl.

I can do it. I can do it…

The mumbling came out naturally. Trying to touch up the curse mark all of a sudden in an unprepared situation made me several times more nervous. My heart was pounding like crazy, and my stomach felt queasy. My mind also kept involuntarily going hazy.

From now on, I can’t make any mistakes. It may be just a mistake for me, but it doesn’t end as a mere mistake for Zachary, does it? With that thought, I slowly grabbed Zachary’s wrist.

‘It’s hot.’