A Monodrama for Carolyn August - Chapter 3

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 102.
Splash.
In that instant, as Ipros reached out, Caroline shoved the diary into her bag with superhuman strength.
“What? How did you do that?”
…….
Her heart hammered so violently she couldn’t speak.
Caroline looked up at the large man who’d stepped close. She had no martial arts to neutralize him, no arrogant words to break his will.
She was afraid of this beautiful doll doing mad things. If she were the Alter Persona, it would never happen.
‘I can’t let my expression slip again.’
Caroline quickly lowered her posture and peered into the Lake.
Night had deepened the water into impenetrable dark—she couldn’t tell where the key lay. Even if she dove in now and swam desperately, her body refused. She was trembling with instinctive dread.
‘How will I find it?’
“Was it someone that precious to you?”
Yet Ipros’s suspicion lingered.
Caroline realized that if she kept trying to find the key like this, she’d only provoke him further. Since she couldn’t go in and search now anyway, she had to pretend she didn’t care.
“……No. Actually, it’s fine.”
Caroline straightened her posture, gritting her teeth.
Her chest still fluttered and her legs still trembled, but she couldn’t show it in front of Ipros.
“I decided not to worry about it anymore. It doesn’t matter now.”
“Really?”
“If I meant it, I’d have gone in there. Take me to your hideout.”
Ipros stood in the breeze, watching Caroline for a long moment before moving ahead. He slipped his hand into hers again with utter naturalness.
As if nothing had happened. Like an affectionate lover.
Caroline followed him, gritting her teeth. How much time passed? When she stepped where Ipros led, they were in the Basement.
“……Is this your hideout?”
“Yes, the place I came to before.”
Last time, she’d napped near the Armory and met Ipros.
“I found it while exploring on my own when the other you was busy. There are useful things here, interesting things. What kind of person left this place?”
Ipros had discovered this place before her, but he knew only the Underground Prison and the Armory. Today too, the man holding Caroline’s hand led her to the Armory where his bag was kept.
“This is my hideout. I’ve been coming here often since that visit.”
“Why? You like it here?”
“It’s cozy. No one around. So many strange machines.”
Typical of Ipros. Born as a machine, living a lifetime as one, he could only find weapons and tools intriguing.
“Don’t you like it?”
“……It’s fine. Just an Armory. Nothing rare.”
“That’s true enough.”
While Caroline stood with her hands clasped behind her back, watching him from a step away,
he opened the Armory and pulled out his bag stored at the bottom—a worn travel bag crammed with his diary, a pocket watch, emergency rations, and a mirror.
Though Caroline had removed the diary, his Alter Persona seemed unaware of it.
“I liked this place and these things, so I put some in my bag. Look at this. Pretty, isn’t it?”
Ipros opened his bag and asked Caroline. The moment she stepped forward to see what among all those objects he found pretty,
her hands were seized in his grip before she could react.
And then.
“!”
Click.
The two chain-like rings she’d noticed in the bag earlier—not knowing what they were for—now locked around her wrists.
Now she understood. They were handcuffs. And she wasn’t agile enough to escape them.
“……What are you doing? Unlock these.”
“You had the look of someone who’d already seen this bag.”
“……!”
Caroline shoved the bag aside and looked at Ipros’s blank expression with dismay.
She couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
“And I noticed the shape of the bag had been touched by someone else before. You’d already searched mine. Of course, I could say it’s yours, that this bag is yours too.”
As the man continued in his languid tone, Caroline slowly stepped back. But Ipros closed the distance in just a few strides.
“Unlock these.”
“And you went to the place I warned you was dangerous. Without telling me. Were you trying to leave?”
“You laid thread down. If you weren’t coming back, you wouldn’t have done that. First, unlock these and we’ll talk.”
“It’s just thread. If I succeed in going all the way through, I can just abandon it.”
With a languid face and pouting lips as if hurt, Ipros pulled the chain with his large hand, drawing Caroline helplessly into his embrace. He planted a soft kiss on the bridge of her nose, his laughter mingling with the gesture.
“……But I’d already abandoned it long before.”
“I didn’t throw it away. So…….”
“And today you said there’s someone you love besides me. Last night too, you had me right beside you but you were thinking of someone else.”
There was no way to create distance. Caroline gripped the handcuff chain tightly as Ipros slowly pushed her along, and she moved as he wished. She could neither escape nor overpower him.
Her mind had gone numb.
When Caroline came to her senses, she found herself in the Underground Prison. The place where Will had locked her away.
Click.
“!”
And Ipros had locked the door behind them.
“……Open this! Ipros, open the door!”
His footsteps grew fainter and fainter. Caroline gripped the iron bars, staring into the darkness, and realized it was too soon to despair.
‘It’s all right.’
She had her hairpin. The same one that had let her escape when Will locked her in before.
Though both her hands were bound with only the smallest distance between them, it wasn’t a major problem. Caroline drew the hairpin from her bag and pressed it against the lock.
And as she was pushing it in and beginning to work it back and forth—
“Well, well. Caroline, that’s cheating, isn’t it?”
Like a nightmare, a large hand appeared and snatched the hairpin from her grasp.
“……I’ll keep this. Shall I put it in your hair?”
Ipros had not actually left. He had been standing at a distance, watching her every move, savoring the sight of trapped Caroline—or rather, the trapped Caroline that was his.
A chill ran down her spine.
After that, Caroline gripped the iron bars, which were so dark she could barely see beyond them, and continued to shout. She ordered him to open the door, threatened punishment if he didn’t comply at once. She cajoled him, insisting he had no reason to suspect her and never would, begging him to open the door and talk to her. As time wore on, she found herself pleading with him to let her out.
But Ipros did not answer.
Caroline realized that this time he had truly left her alone in the Basement. She was utterly alone in this vast, dim space.
Her entire body began to tremble.
‘Surely he’ll come back to let me out.’
That desperate hope faded as time crept onward. Without a watch, she couldn’t know the exact hour, but Caroline could feel midnight passing, the deep hours of early morning settling in.
She drifted in and out of sleep. Each time she opened her eyes, she hoped the imprisonment was a dream from which she’d awaken, but nothing changed.
Eyes open or closed, she was surrounded by darkness.
‘What happens now? Do I die like this?’
Someone would come looking for her, she thought—but she knew, even as she thought it, how unlikely that was.
If Ipros simply became the 3 a.m. Aiden and fell asleep, he wouldn’t come back until the next time that persona woke. The 3 a.m. Aiden wouldn’t even know she was here. He would simply sleep peacefully.
Daytime Aiden never came to the Basement, and neither did the servants. Even if tonight’s Alter Persona Aiden came down…….
But it was early morning now. At least sixteen more hours would have to pass.
Would Caroline still be alive by then?
In a place with no water, no food? Her mouth was already parched and dry. Her throat, already irritated from screaming, burned. Caroline could feel despair closing in on her.
‘This is how I die.’

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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