The Master of Amber Mansion—wasn't he just livestock raised inside the estate?
How delightful.
No wonder she said the Master left right when I arrived.
The Master was killed. Which means the only livestock left in the mansion are the guests.
Nanami Kira stared at the pallid daylight beyond the window. His fingernails lengthened slowly, steadily. His face, by contrast, grew more tranquil with every passing second.
Tranquil as stagnant water.
"Kento."
A cool voice came from behind him.
"Why didn't you eat breakfast? Was it not to your liking?"
Jasmine stood in a black Lolita-style gown, a spray of small flowers gathered at her chest, brown leather shoes soundless on the well-insulated floor.
"No, I quite like it. The cut of meat seems excellent."
Nanami Kira turned to face her, calm and unhurried, her reflection caught in those black pupils.
"In fact, I'd rather prepare it myself. Were there any hooves, by chance?"
"Let me show off my skills next time."
"Huh?"
Jasmine tilted her head, blinking those wide, guileless eyes.
A normal person, upon learning they'd been served human flesh, might have recoiled in horror. But Nanami Kira was not, by any reasonable metric, a normal person.
Human meat? So what if it's human meat? Everyone had their hobbies, and a taste for human flesh was as defensible as any other inclination. It was the same as how the mere sight of slender fingers sent a thrill through his body—how seeing a beautiful hand made him want to pluck it off and take it home, as naturally as picking ripe fruit from a branch. What was there to be shocked about?
Nanami Kira was, above all else, a man of understanding.
When you encountered a psychopath, the trick was simply to out-psychopath them.
Sun Erniang had run a human-meat bun shop at Cross Slope, and when she met the heroes of Liangshan, they'd sworn brotherhood all the same. None of them were decent people—kindred scum, drawn together by the stench. Right now, Nanami Kira felt a genuine impulse to become sworn siblings with Jasmine on the spot.
"You do have a sense of humor, sir."
Jasmine blinked again, smiling that flawless smile.
"It would hardly be proper for a guest to cook his own meals."
Nanami Kira held her gaze. Once more, he confirmed it.
The maid was an ordinary human. Not a trace of Cursed Energy about her.
Unless she possessed a Concealment Innate Technique superior to Hoshino Ei's, or raw power rivaling Gojo Satoru's, there was no way she could fool his eyes.
There is a game operating inside this mansion. No—I can't be certain she actually killed anyone. There's no hard evidence yet. Everything so far is inference.
"Sir, shall I give you a tour of the estate? It's one of the tasks the Master assigned me."
The Master's orders, then. Fine.
Nanami Kira nodded.
Amber Mansion really was not large. Three floors. Aside from the top floor, which could not be entered, Jasmine showed him almost every room.
"This is the washroom... This is a guest bedroom, for the visitors arriving tomorrow... Oh, I nearly forgot—that clock tower, yes, the narrow spire outside the window. It's been abandoned for quite some time. If you'd like to visit, I can take you—"
"No need."
Nanami Kira stopped walking. He looked down at Jasmine, who barely reached his chest, and said quietly:
"I'll have a look on my own. Don't you have plenty of work to attend to?"
He had mapped the mansion's basic layout. Ground floor: the great hall, several hundred square meters, with two kitchens. The second floor wrapped around the hall in a ring—counting from the far left, nearly ten rooms. Each had its own private bathroom, though one room at the innermost end of the second floor was locked, standing there conspicuously. The third floor was the storeroom; according to Jasmine, the Master's entire collection was kept up there.
The maid's tour had been exhaustive. She had shown him virtually every corner of the building. And the more exhaustive it was, the more suspicious it became.
Because Jasmine's behavior looked exactly like a deliberate information disclosure.
He saw her off. Then, with her permission, he entered the mansion's study.
The study was not large. Shelves lined the walls, packed with books of every description, all coated in dust. On the wall directly ahead, Nanami Kira spotted a portrait of a man.
A handlebar mustache. A severe face. Brows drawn together in a faint, perpetual frown, radiating an authority that defied easy description. Brown eyes staring straight ahead.
The previous Master of Amber Mansion, most likely.
The books were scattered, thick with dust—it appeared the old Master had seldom visited this room. And the study, like every other part of the mansion, alternated between old and new. Every room contained both modern elements and relics of another century, as though time itself had gotten tangled.
Moreover, everything—old or new—had its counterpart on the other side.
Electric lamps paired with candles. The antique desk set in his own room matched by a brand-new one in the room next door. His bedroom had Wi-Fi, while the hall downstairs had only a vintage antenna television.
He could frame it this way: everything old could be classified as the Past. Everything new could be classified as the Present. If something existed in the Past, then its counterpart necessarily existed in the Present.
And if he applied that naming convention to people?
The man in the portrait had a stiff, humorless face, but his suit was distinctly modern—a dark ensemble that Nanami Kira, something of a connoisseur when it came to tailoring, placed at early this century.
In the early twentieth century, this Master of Amber Mansion had belonged to the Present. So what was his counterpart in the Past?
A pre-twentieth-century Master of Amber Mansion?
By Nanami Kira's reasoning, within this estate, Past and Future were required to coexist.
They live in deep seclusion, their numbers few. Their history, ancient.
His eyes lit up. A thread of intuition, half-grasped, flickering.
Outside, the sky pressed lower. The autumn wind blew bleak and desolate.
The counterpart to the current Master of Amber Mansion was the Master of the Past.
They existed simultaneously within this space.
Before Nanami Kira's arrival, the living Master had coexisted with the spirits of his dead ancestors—all of them, together, bound to this place.
Thunder pulsed between the clouds, bleaching them white.
But now the current Master—the one belonging to the Present—was dead. He had become the Past.
He'd been made into meat.
Past and Present had fallen out of balance. A new equilibrium was needed.
A new Master of Amber Mansion.
And according to the intelligence files, the mansion's bloodline had thinned to near-extinction. No branch families. No surviving heirs.
Hence the invitations sent outward, summoning outsiders to participate in the game. It was a succession contest.
The sole survivor—the sole victor—would become the new Master of Amber Mansion. Would inherit the estate in its entirety.
Would inherit this curse, tangled through a thousand years, stretching from the Heian era all the way to the present day.
Nanami Kira finally understood what had happened in the previous timeline.
In terms of the outcome alone, his past self must have won. He had been the game's final victor. But he had also lost.
Because the prize was a cage—bound forever within the curse of Past and Present, raised inside the mansion as livestock.
So that version of himself had detonated the bomb. Had chosen to reshape time.
And had paid the price. Some misstep had forced him into a Binding Vow—stripped of four days' worth of memories, compelled to return to Amber Mansion after the rewind.
The rain fell harder.