Outside, Adam slipped into a new pair of black pants and a silk shirt. Stepping into the main wing, he saw the purple-haired young girl walking into the mansion. He had a rough idea of what happened with her.
‘To think that the shop allowed Grayfia to form a contract on her own.’ It stunned him when the system gave him the notification. ‘I should be more careful who I sign employment contracts with; if my proxy makes untasteful contracts that I can’t handle, it would bite me in the ass.’
“Hello… Master.” Sakura, shaken by Adam’s stone-like face, bowed.
‘It’s like staring at the sun.’ Her eyes burned a little, but that wasn’t all. ‘How can one make others feel safe with just their presence?’
“Sakura, right? The maid Grayfia is training.” Adam gave her a warm smile; first appearances mattered after all.
“By your grace, Master.” She clasped her hands together in front of her stomach. Even without her uniform, she at least had the etiquette down.
“It’s nothing that grand actually…” Adam sighed. The middle schooler in front of him had those shiny eyes full of respect; such eyes only led to trouble for him.
“You should not understate yourself, Master. We understand your grand purpose and hope to be of service to you.” Grayfia, the original glazer, came in.
‘I have a Grand Purpose? Why didn’t I know of it?’ Adam’s lips pressed into a hard line; Grayfia’s behaviour seemed to remind him of another troublesome client of his. However, he shook his head, noticing the two reverent gazes on him.
“Well, since a contract was made, I should complete it fast.” He moved on to the main matter.
“My contract?” Sakura looked at Grayfia.
Her contract was to be saved from the Matou family; in exchange, she had to become a maid for Adam. Grayfia already saved her on the day they made the contract. But there was more to it.
“You still aren’t fully saved from the Matou Family; their actions still haunt you, don’t they?” Adam looked at the girl, reading her memories with ease.
Sweat ran down Sakura’s temple; her right clenched her left wrist hard enough to turn it red. Adam was right. Even now, going near a basement gave her panic attacks.
“Well, since the contract is made, I will complete it in earnest.” Adam didn’t want to chide Grayfia over it; she did what was within her authority and power.
Though he did plan to lay down some conditions for the contracts she made, not too many of them; after all, she already had an eye for people.
“I think that might be the best way to handle this.” Getting a clue about the solution, Adam placed a hand on Sakura’s head. Almost stroking the silky purple hair to reassure her. “This won’t take long.”
Although the gesture had no significant meaning behind it, Sakura felt tears well up in her eyes. She looked at Adam through her blurry vision. A sense of comfort filled her empty heart as her heavy eyelids closed shut.
***
“Wake up, it's time.” Sakura opened her eyes to the aged, cold voice.
For the first time in a while, someone came to wake her up. But it wasn’t the family she had. It was the one who took her away.
In the dark room with a single ray of sunlight piercing through the curtains, red eyes stared at her from the gloomy corner.
“Today is an important day, the day you truly become a Matou.” Zouken Matou, the head of the Matou family, spoke again in his commanding voice.
Sakura stumbled out of bed in a hurry, a gaping hole in her heart. A hole that had grown larger every day since she was adopted into the Matou family.
She looked at her short black-brown hair in the soup’s reflection, a shocking contrast to the bright violet of the young boy glaring at her with his twisted smile. She felt fear sitting at the table, sitting with this supposed new family of hers.
Always, every day, every hour, she heard someone tell her to run away. And she wanted to follow that voice in the back of her mind; however, she couldn’t.
“Follow me.” Zouken’s words were like a line on the stone.
Her body moved out of fear for the man surrounded in darkness and blood. An instinctual fear of the strong.
Walking down the damp stairs, Sakura’s stomach twisted in knots from the rotten smell. It was even worse than the compost used in their family garden, so pungent that it made her retch the few bites she had managed at the table.
However, despite her struggle and stumbling, Zouken didn’t stop his descent. He led her to the pit in the middle of the basement. The origin of that arid smell that assaulted her.
Inside the pit of stone, Sakura came face to face with worms. Enough worms to cover their neighbourhood, slithering and wiggling all over inside that slimy pit from hell. The worms, each marked with a crest, screeched in joy as if they noticed her fear. And they did indeed.
“No…” Sakura stumbled backwards, already fearing the worst.
However, Zouken’s hands, holding the iron cuffs, came closer. Even if he didn’t say a word, Sakura understood. The voice in the back of her head became clearer. It told her what would happen to her, what those worms would do to her, and what would become of her. It told her everything.
‘No please, no…’
Zouken clasped her mouth so that no scream escaped her.
‘Please… someone please save me!’ Tears streamed down her face as she struggled to break free.
However, the voice in the back of her head reverberated in the room, twisting and turning from the mutters of a young girl to that of an adult male.
“Looks like we arrived at the perfect time.”
“Who ar-?!”
Before Zouken could finish his question, a slap made him splat on the wall like a bug.
“Creepy fucker, what are you doing to a child?” Adam, now wiping his hand, looked at the old man in disgust. “Even Lucifer himself would blush.”
Sakura didn’t know who it was, but she was freed. The grimy hand was pried off her, and a new hand came. However, it didn’t feel dirty. It only patted her head to comfort her. It told her not to cry. She couldn’t tell what the person looked like through her blurry eyes, but she could see the rough figure of the tall man.
Adam looked at the young Sakura; she had a lot of differences from the one he saw before coming here, but also a lot of similarities.
‘If only I had a way cleaner way to erase this trauma she had. But the timing is limiting the number of methods I can use.’ Adam sighed, his divine energy flaring.
The method he used was a bit complex but also simple at the same time.
“Sakura…” He called out gently to not startle her. Although she still cried, grabbing onto his hand, he had to implant the voice in her head. “Everything that happened on this day is a nightmare; it was never real. Just a bad and unfortunate nightmare.”
“O-ok…” She muttered, almost possessed.
Planting the thought in her head, Adam locked her memory about his actions and gave her the fabricated memories of the day.
Since he had come back to the past much later, he had limits to how much he could mess around. He couldn’t kill the Matou family as that was Grayfia’s job, so he left them alone. Only changing Sakura’s reality into a nightmare that never happened. However, she had to live in that nightmare till she met Grayfia.
‘This is the best I can do without breaking the future that has been written.’ Adam picked up the unconscious Sakura with care.
In her bedroom, he placed her down gently and covered her with a blanket. The dark room was filled with her calm breath as he broke away from her little fingers.
‘The Nightmare will end in time, Sakura. So, stay strong. Do not give up.’ Sakura could hear the voice even in sleep. The voice that was once clear, distorted over time, as if telling her to forget who it belonged to.
However, a trigger made that voice clearer. That trigger was her meeting with Grayfia. Each day, the voice became clearer until she heard it for herself. That blurry figure imprinted in her mind finally stood before her.
“Master!” Sakura sprang up on her bed and found herself alone.