A Smile Turns Devious

“How did you find the fish, Young Master?” Anne asked after the… main event was over and a fragile truce had been established.

“Mm. It was very delicious.”

“That’s wonderful to hear. It makes all the effort I went through to catch it for you worthwhile.” A captivating, genuine smile bloomed on Anne’s prim and proper face, making Ewan’s mind go blank for a moment. Although her yandere side was the stuff of nightmares, he had to admit that when she was acting normal, she was a stunningly beautiful woman. And the figure hidden beneath her modest maid’s uniform was in no way inferior to Celicia’s. If he could just date her, it might not be so bad. Of course, that was on the non-negotiable condition that she returned to being a normal, non-homicidal human being.

“Speaking of which, Anne, you seem to be soaked to the bone. Did something happen?”

Due to the dim, oppressive light, Ewan hadn’t noticed her condition before. It was only now that she mentioned it that he saw she looked as if she had just swum a four-hundred-meter dash in a raging river. Her usually impeccable hair was plastered to her forehead, and her dress was spattered with mud. For the ever-meticulous, ever-perfect Anne, this was an unimaginable state of disarray.

“It’s nothing, Young Master. I was just caught in a little rain,” she replied, her voice calm.

“Rain?” Ewan frowned. “If you were caught in the rain, why didn’t you go take a bath and change your clothes immediately?”

“Because I wanted the Young Master to have his lunch as soon as possible. Weren’t you hungry?” she said, as if it were the most natural, logical thing in the world.

“Lunch can wait! What if you get sick from being out in a storm like that?!” Ewan’s expression turned genuinely serious. “Go take a bath right now! A hot one! Soak for a while, change into warm clothes, and then sit by the fire. And to be safe, you should probably have the doctor prescribe some medicine to prevent a cold!”

“Young Master…” Anne’s expression was one of stunned, wide-eyed surprise, but her cheeks visibly flushed a deep, pleased crimson. “You’re so… concerned about me… I’m so moved… I want to…”

“Alright, stop being weird and just go!”

“Yes, Young Master.”

Basking in the rare, genuine warmth of his concern, Anne nodded obediently and began to efficiently clear away the remnants of the meal. But even with his repeated, impatient urging, she still meticulously, almost reverently, collected every single fishbone before taking her leave.

“Well then, Young Master, if you’ll excuse me.”

“Just get out of here!”

“Yes, Young Master.”

Despite being yelled at, Anne’s expression only grew more blissful. She left with a light, happy, and slightly terrifying spring in her step.

The narrow, dim cell returned to its oppressive silence.

Ewan watched until she had completely disappeared into the darkness. His serious, concerned expression immediately crumbled.

And then… his smile slowly, deliciously, turned devious.

“Heh.”

“Hehe.”

“Heheheh.”

“As they say,” he chuckled, a manic glint in his eye, “a woman in love has a lower IQ.”

“And isn’t this the perfect opportunity?”

…

Confirming that Anne had truly, finally gone, Ewan began to stretch his limbs. Although the shackles severely restricted his movement, he was able to get a feel for his current limits.

“As I thought. The first step is to free my hands.”

He looked to his side. To completely immobilize him, his hands had been shackled to the wall, forcing him into a posture like a suffering martyr on a cross. He couldn’t do anything in this position. He had to get out of the shackles.

“It’s fine. It’s fine,” he took a deep, steadying breath, a long-accumulated resolve hardening in his eyes. “I’ve practiced this hundreds of times in the black book’s space. I can do this.”

Having made his decision, he pressed his right thumb into his palm and then, with all his might, pushed.

Crack.

With the crisp, sickening sound of bone dislocating, a sharp, searing, white-hot pain shot through his brain, making cold sweat bead on his forehead.

“Hiss— As I thought. Even after practicing in the book, this pain is still almost unbearable in reality.”

“It’s a dislocated thumb, after all.”

But the agony was not in vain. With his thumb dislocated, his hand could now, with a bit of wiggling, easily slip through the shackle.

The TV shows didn’t lie!

After successfully freeing his right hand, Ewan pressed his now-mangled palm against the cold metal floor, lined it up, and then—slammed it down hard.

Pop.

The sound of bone snapping back into place echoed in the cell, followed by another, even more intense wave of nauseating pain.

“Hiss— Damn it. Putting it back in hurts even more than taking it out.”

Ewan tilted his head back, gritting his teeth against the agony. But he didn’t have time to rest. His thumb was back in place, but a dark, ugly bruise was already forming around the joint, and his hand was trembling uncontrollably. He had no time to worry about that. Anne could be back at any moment. He had to hurry.

He raised his hand and, with trembling fingers, slowly, carefully, took something out of his mouth. It was something he had been hiding under his tongue, something Anne had almost discovered…

A single, slender fishbone.

And it was his key to freedom.

Lockpicking LV8.

Ewan looked at the record in the black book, a sense of triumphant, almost hysterical relief washing over him.

Father, Grandfather, and all the degenerate ancestors of the Campbell family, I was wrong about you. The strange and wonderful books you stuffed into the library were not useless after all! At the very least, that dusty old copy of ‘One Hundred Ways to Commit Burglary: How to Pick a Lock with a Fishbone’ is proving to be very, very useful right now!

“Alright, let’s begin.”

He took a few deep breaths to calm his racing heart and to steady his trembling hand. He held the fishbone in his right hand and carefully, delicately, inserted it into the keyhole of his left shackle, his heart pounding in his throat.

Success or failure, it all came down to this.

…

It was even easier than he had imagined.

With his LV8 lockpicking skill, not only the shackles that bound him, but also the ridiculously large and secure-looking lock on the iron gate, were easily, almost comically, picked with the simple fishbone. Anne had clearly never considered this possibility. She had been cautious enough to take away his clothes, but she had never imagined that he could learn a heaven-defying, protagonist-level skill like picking a lock with a fishbone.

Father, Grandfather, and all the ancestors of the Campbell family, thank you again! I’m so glad you were all a bunch of muscle-headed, book-hating idiots!

“I have to get out of here, fast.”

After picking the lock, Ewan carefully stepped out of the cell. The area outside the bars was even dimmer, lit only by a single, faintly glowing stone embedded in the ceiling several meters above. Thankfully, it didn’t affect his vision too much.

“This seems to be… an underground storage room?”

Looking at the piles of dusty, forgotten junk around him, he vaguely remembered where he was. In the far corner of the ducal estate, there was an old underground storage room that the maids used to store miscellaneous items. It had been abandoned after the estate was renovated. He remembered coming here to explore as a child and taking a nasty fall in the dark.

Ewan subconsciously touched his forehead. He could still feel a small, faint scar there.

“I remember now. At that time, it was Anne, who had just become my personal maid, who comforted the crying little Ewan and rescued him from this place.”

“And it was from that moment on that the original Ewan began to rely on her more and more.”

“She was so gentle back then. Like a kind, warm big sister.”

…

So why in the seven hells did she turn into such a dangerous, terrifying yandere?!