The Terminally-Ill Lord Desires Hospice Care

The Nevermore Estate.
Once a place I frequently visited to see a friend, but now it was a viper’s den to me.
From that fool Raul’s fiancée to the other adults of this family – they were all snakes I wanted to grab by the head and drop from the sky.
Filthy snakes constantly plotting dirty schemes, compiling others’ weaknesses.
Not that I was the only one who disliked these snake bastards, but if ranking hatred, I was confidently first place.

“…Tell the lord that Camilla of the Argos Duchy has arrived.”
“The lord is currently meeting an honored guest, so…”
“Then tell him his sister’s friend is here. As his friend, choose whether I beat him senseless first or get let in.”

Since when did that shriveled raisin get to make people wait in such a position?
If not for Raul, she would have met a wretched demise, yet seeing her act so arrogant was just…pissing me off.

“Or should I start by getting rid of this ‘honored guest’ bastard’s head? Then he can meet me.”
Frankly, all these nobles putting on airs deserved to have their heads lopped off for me to feel refreshed. Bastards just enjoying the peace we secured.
Pigs insulting my comrades without sacrificing anything themselves.
I could kill without guilt those who paid no price yet climbed aboard the carriage of peace.

“Go tell him right away. If he doesn’t come out, I’ll make shish kebab out of this ‘honored guest’ first.”
“It seems there is no need. My business here is concluded.”
“Ah…really.”

The voice I hated most in the world reached my ears, naturally scrunching my face.
“Eying someone like gutter trash is uncalled for, isn’t it, Yvaine?”
Ratri Berger. Raul’s mother and one of the two people I hated most in this nation.
She had the same facial features as Raul with night sky-like hair, but she was a bitch.
Once a knight who took to the battlefield with our father, but she was a bitch.
Looking at her bearing or appearance, she seemed unchanged from her youth, but she was still a bitch.

“Well, I know of one wretched woman I look at the same way…no, not a woman, but a wretched creature.”
“Is that so? Whoever that woman is, how pitiful she associates with you.”
“It would be troubling if that woman tried to act pitiful. If I saw that woman acting pitiful, I feel I might just kill her.”
“Someone whose tongue gets thorns if they can’t kill has quite the resemblance to someone I know. It seems friends grow to resemble each other.”

In an instant, I nearly unleashed the electric currents I was suppressing.
This was why one should only meet a bitch once a week. Meeting more than one bitch a week was bad for one’s mental health.
Having met my brother yesterday, this witchy woman was testing my limits, making me want to die.

“…Didn’t you have business with the lord of this viper’s den?”
“Yes, but I’m debating whether to enter or not due to excessive stress. I feel a murder may truly occur today.”
Considering my current mood, I felt I might stab whichever of these women I saw, really.
No, I’d stab them both, then go home and stab my brother reviewing documents too. Since I was working, I might as well take care of it all at once for efficiency.

“That vicious girl seems to be preparing quite an amusing plaything.”
This was unexpected. For this woman, normally even more aloof than Raul, to slightly furrow her brow – that was quite a sweet expression. I should tell Aschel and Penelope later.

“So a bitch’s enemy is another bitch, I see…”
“Pardon?”
“Oh, my apologies. I sometimes speak too directly, taking after my brother.”
My brother was quite useful to invoke at times like this.
“Yvaine is quite free-spirited. It must be nice to understand each other so well as friends.”
For the record, that was calling me a foul-mouthed swine.
But I wasn’t particularly angered, being commonly called the vagrant Yvaine anyway.
The traitorous emperor, crippled whore, monster, and now the vagrant Yvaine…quite masterpieces, from the nation’s dregs who called us that.

“Then I’ll be going in. And please, don’t bother looking for my son, should you happen to be concerned.”
“It doesn’t seem like something you would meddle in. Though I doubt such a situation would arise.”
With those words, she left, brushing off the faint remnants of anger in her eyes.
Of course, that anger was not directed at me, but at the shriveled raisin who owned this estate.

“…It would be so nice if they tore each other apart and died.”
Suppressing the electric currents and hatred trying to seep out, I climbed the stairs to arrive before the lord’s room.
Restraining the urge to smash through the door, I managed to knock.
The voice that answered was not that damned raisin’s, but an elderly servant’s:
“The lord has granted an audience.”

…At this rate, even if I killed them all, Raul, not to mention she who went to heaven first, might not forgive me.
I kicked the door apart and could only see that arrogant two-faced bitch again once the rising dust cleared.

“Roji Nevermore.”
“…I will separately bill House Argos for the door.”
Roji Nevermore.
My friend’s sister and Raul’s fiancée – no, the girl who was to be his ex-fiancée – was a bitch.
Called the empire’s greatest beauty, but a bitch inferior to her sister.
With hair mixing white and gold, golden eyes, and an alluring appearance earning her the ‘Platinum Lioness’ name, to me she was just a bitch.
What lion carried such excessive fat deposits on its chest? She was simply a bitch.
In short, a bitch who was merely pretty.

“Feel free to bill as much as you like. My brother handles processing such things anyway.”
“Of course. While your brother Yvaine was brilliant enough to handle all supplies and administration during the war, you seem lacking in that regard.”
I never expected to miss Raul so soon.
No, at this rate, even my brother would be preferable to deal with over these women.

“…You’ve grown quite cheeky already.”
“Or has the yet-unmarried Yvaine simply aged?”
At this point, it felt like everyone would defend me if I stabbed her once with my blade. Not the blade itself since that could be dangerous, but the blunt pommel area.
No, I should refrain from beating her first. I needed my eyes and mind intact to read Raul’s letter.

With superhuman patience, I suppressed my rage and trembling hands to retrieve the letter. I didn’t know I had such strong restraint.

“Your fiancé sent you a letter. One he wrote all night, so you should read it carefully a few times.”
“Ah, a letter from him?”
This brazen raisin caught the letter I handed her with her left hand while working with her right.
Her gaze remained fixed on the documents, not me, making her seem so much like a bitch I wanted to gouge out her eyes.
If a child born from her and Raul inherited both their personalities…just imagining it was truly dreadful. A living calamity.

“It’s surely a letter of disengagement, is it not?”
And without reading Raul’s letter, Roji simply burned it in the candleflame.
“Not worth reading.”

I proceeded to smash apart the desk she had been working at.
“Hey.”
“….That was a rather pleasing desk, so I will bill you for it as well. An ivory piece, so quite costly.”
“Hey.”
I grabbed her collar.
“Are you quibbling about desk prices instead of owning up to what you did? Asking for condolence money?”

“Paying for items you broke hardly constitutes condolence money. Are you so savage as to not know that?”
“So you want to play word games now?”
“I burned it knowing the contents. Since I was prepared to accept the disengagement, I thought there was no issue. Was there a problem with my conduct?”

This is why I can’t stand noble bastards…! Though I’m one myself, these ones in particular…!
They were nothing but utterly disillusioning creatures.

“Unless he sent a love letter confessing to me, if it was not a request for disengagement, I will gladly apologize.”
“Don’t call the writer ‘it’. We fought as you lounged around in luxury, so show at least basic courtesy if not respect.”
“Basic courtesy…is that what smashing a door and desk then grabbing someone’s collar is called?”
“…I’m desperately restraining myself from smashing your skull right now.”
If not for Raul and this bitch’s sister, I would have shattered her skull on the spot and splattered her brain matter.

“Yes, Lord Raul the hero, is he?”
Despite me grabbing her collar, this bitch showed no change in complexion as she lashed out:
“And simultaneously, my sister’s murderer.”

That was…an undeniable fact.
But we did not lack a counter-argument either.
Raul had sent letters about that day’s events many times, but…seeing this bitch’s attitude, she surely burned them unread.

“Listen well. That day’s events were unavoid…!”
“The world is results, Yvaine. No circumstances change the result that the writer killed my sister.”
“…Ah, I see. Well done you.”
It seemed conversing with this bitch would be less productive than debating with my brother.
But withdrawing did not suit my nature either, so I decided to retort:

“But you know. If the world is results, then why do you ignore the result of you becoming lord thanks to Raul?”
“That’s…”
“No circumstances change results, you said.”
“……”

She was just as my brother had evaluated. His eye for judging people was sharp, even if he himself was vexing.
In his notes, my brother had assessed this bitch like this: ‘Capable but lacking in conduct.’
It was exactly as he said.

“…I will remember today’s discourtesy.”
“By all means. But if you can’t ask, don’t bark in the first place.”
“Yes, I intend not to.”

As I released her and turned to leave, Roji said:
“Now that I think about it, the anniversary of the late…no, the very late Count Berger is coming up.”
“…I’m not so meticulous as to memorize others’ parents’ anniversaries.”
“I will show you both something quite amusing. You and the writer alike.”
“Do as you please. Ah, and I told you earlier. Don’t bark if you can’t bite. But you see…”

I unleashed electric currents, shattering the window behind her.

“I bite, then bark.”