The Villainess turns the Hourglass

Editor Group: Liber Reverie

Aria wondered if Berry was going to die before she confessed. She burst into tears as if to be overcome with fear, and the Count belatedly raised his voice, saying, “What the hell is all this fuss about!”

The uproar was so great that after the Count stopped eating, and Mielle, Cain, and the Countess came out after him. They all looked unhappy with the situation.

“Ma, master.”

“We’re in trouble.”

The real owners of the mansion appeared, and the servants and maids crowded in the hall paved the way for a good view of the arrested Berry.

“… Be, Berry?!”

Mielle’s face was horrified to find Berry. Her eyes looked as if they were going to pop out. How dreadful and fearful she must be now that Berry had returned after betraying herself. Emma following her was also stone-hardened with her mouth open.

The Count, who was embarrassed because he didn’t know if she came back into the mansion on her own feet, shouted, “Please contact the security forces,” and the Countess, who was relieved of her legs, fell on the floor unseemly. Cain hurried to Aria and stood guard against her.

“I, I have…! Words…! Ugh…!”

Berry managed to wring her voice from under pressure. Everyone’s eyes were on her, and as if she were trying to stop her from speaking, Mielle sank and wrapped her head in fear.

“Uh, we have to let her shut up and call the guards! She’s too dangerous!”

Emma raised her voice too much and made a fuss, but Aria had no intention of letting Berry leave, and of losing the opportunity she had barely made.

“Berry’s got something… I think she’s going to say something important.”

Then Aria grabbed Cain’s sleeve and answered. It was a small voice that was only audible to Cain. Cain stared for a moment at Aria’s hand, which caught up in his sleeve, and her pale face, and soon insisted in a loud voice that they needed to hear Berry’s.

“It’s a woman with no power. She’s tied, so there’s no danger. It’ll take time for the guards to arrive, so we’ll have to hear why she showed up.”

The Count nodded at his reasonable remarks. When things didn’t go as planned, only Mielle and Emma showed fear in cold sweat.

“But, but what if she hides a weapon in her body? I’m so scared…!”

At that abominable look, Aria answered with her head sticking out from Cain’s back,

“It’s also a little bit like that, too. So, Mielle, wouldn’t you rather go up to the room? I want to listen to her because I have a guess…”

“Yes, miss. You’d better go up.”

Emma’s expression was horrified when Annie, who was no different from Aria’s slave, helped her. How upset she was because there were two maids who betrayed them.

“Mielle, as you say, it may be dangerous, so go up.”

The Count also urged her, who had nothing to do with the incident, to go up to the room, and after all, Mielle wouldn’t leave, clinging on Emma’s arm, saying, “It might be okay because there are so many people.” So Aria glanced at her from behind Cain’s back.

At the same time that she was given a chance to speak, the trap of squeezing Berry’s body loosened a little. When Berry saw the glistening eyes of Aria, she took a big breath and slowly opened her mouth,

“… In, in fact, I was threatened. She threatened me to kill my family if I don’t poison the tea of Miss Aria.”

Emma clenched her fist so tightly that her fingernails stuck in her palm at the lie. Looking at her bulging eyes, she looked eager to shout at the nonsense. Berry’s voice rang again in the silence of the hall.

“So there was no choice… I received the poison… but I hesitated and agonized several times because I couldn’t poison the tea, and Miss Aria, who had noticed me feeling a little anxious, asked me why several times.”

This drew attention to Aria. Berry’s eyes were too, which were enveloped in anxiety. Tears welled up in her pale face, and she answered with her face on Cain’s back,

“I, I remember… Berry’s condition was very strange… so I told her to tell me everything and it would be fine, but… sob.”

Aria’s tears seeped into her light indoor shirt, and Cain stiffened. The answer was not yet complete, so Aria squeezed out her tears for a long time and then opened her mouth again.

“I’m sorry. I remember that time all of a sudden. I was so sorry about Berry… Anyway, then I advised Berry to choose the way to be happy. So I said I would forgive her for making any decision. I didn’t know exactly, but… I thought she was worried about something bad. So, uh, that’s why Berry put it in my tea…! She might not be wrong. I encouraged her. Sob…”

Aria, who was feeling intense again, wrung out her tears. The rumor that there would be a real culprit turned around and everyone in the hall was convinced without a doubt and sympathized with Aria’s grief. Only Annie and Jessie, who all remember the situation, cocked their heads. And…

“… then, who the hell is the real culprit?”

The overcast voice of the Count rang in the hall. There was no need to hear the answer. There was one person everyone suspected. She was a very reasonable person. In a flash, everyone’s eyes fell on Emma.

“This, this is slander! I’m not the real culprit!” exclaimed Emma, whose face turned white. Mielle, who grabbed her arm, also sympathized with her and complained of injustice.

“Right! Emma’s innocent! Emma can’t do that, can she? Berry! How could you do this?”

It was the first time for Mielle to speak so loudly that the crowd looked very embarrassed. In it, Aria alone smiled contentedly.

‘You’re crawling into hell, aren’t you? Isn’t it very strange? How can she assert that Emma is innocent?’

Cain also seemed to find it strange so he asked Mielle, “Mielle, how do you know she’s not the culprit? Do you happen to know any other real criminal?”

“Well, that’s not it, but… you know Emma’s good personality! Emma is never the kind of person!”

Cain sighed at the groundless argument. The Count also asked Emma for the truth, ignoring Mielle, who exclaimed that she was innocent, whether he thought the claim was worthless.

“Emma, I don’t want to think you did it, but you’ll have to offer a convincing explanation because it was done by your maid.”

How could she explain when she was accused of being a real culprit by a poisoned criminal? It was also claimed by the accomplice herself. There was no one to overcome the slander.

Emma made no excuse when asked to prove something that no one could prove. She just had a pale face and said, “Not me, not at all…” She repeated the words like a parrot.

Mielle, who was the only one who could save her, also failed to come up with a plan, and said, “Emma’s not the woman to do so.”

For Aria, it was a golden opportunity to drive the two into the abyss of hell. “Really…? Emma really gave Berry that order…? Huh? Berry, speak it out! Don’t you know? I can’t believe it…!”

Aria, who had not missed the opportunity, asked in tears, as if she could not believe it, or did not want to. It was an act that had come to mind dozens of times just for this moment in a long time. It was a tearful act that someone had introduced in the past to bring her down to the pit.

Back then, there had been many viewers around her, just like now. But the Prima Donna’s role in acting had changed. It would be her who wept but laugh in the future, and Mielle would fumble in hell, and would slowly die. Berry, too, was willing to throw herself into her play without missing a chance.

“… right, miss. In the first place, I went into being your maid according to Emma’s instruction. It was all Emma’s order.”

“You bitch! You’re lying?!”

Emma, who couldn’t beat her anger even before she was finished, jumped at her. It was her outburst that had no place to run away anymore. Emma, who ran to Berry in an instant, grabbed her hair and shook it roughly. The hall was filled with Berry’s screams.

“Ahhh! Emma! Ouch…!”

“Do you think you can survive with such a lie?”

“Emma?! Emma!”

Mielle, who was next to Emma ran out after losing her temper, fell on the floor and shouted her name. Then, she shuddered and shouted only her name, startled by the terrible sight she had never seen before. She looked as if she had lost her mother.

“Stop it!”

“Stop it!”