No Hero

Volume 1, Diary of a Butler Chapter 9: Meeting the Young Master All Over Again

Translator: Takoyaki-kun

Dear Father,

Please bless that pair of wings to be able to fly forever.

I was not sure how much time had passed, as the explosion had messed up my brain, rendering it unable to judge the time. Maybe it was merely a moment, or perhaps it was over ten minutes, I had no way of knowing. I only knew that while my mind was a mess, a pair of arms had appeared in front of me, covered in blood, the skin and flesh indiscernible. Moreover, one arm was bent at an odd angle, so mangled that it looked like an arm that only a corpse could have.

But it was such a pair of hands that tore apart the metal net.

I raised my head, and what I saw was a bloody human, his clothes long since torn beyond repair. Even the most intact parts were soaked in fresh blood. The only exception was that head of silver hair – even matted with fresh blood, it still gave off a gentle silver glow under the moonlight.

My gaze moved from that head of silver hair to his face; half of the silver visor he wore on his face had already crumbled, revealing a single eye, looking right at me in concern.

I shakily spoke, “Young, Young…”

Hearing me speak, his gaze relaxed considerably. He opened his mouth to say, “Come home.”

After that, he turned around to face those masked men, though he only stood silently. Despite this, the masked men unexpectedly used their blades to slice their own necks in one stroke and fell down to the ground one by one.

Seeing this, I was speechless. What is going on?

However, he did not offer any explanations. After all the masked men fell to the ground, he actually ran with that heavily injured body, each step completely fluid, and then jumped down from the building in one leap.

I was stunned by this image for a while before I stood up, still holding Melody in my arms. She remained motionless. When I lowered my head to glance at her, I realized that she had actually fainted, so I carried her in my arms and jumped back onto the other rooftop.

The bodyguards on the rooftop were still there, but the place was completely silent. Bramble stood without a word, and Dell stared at me with wide eyes.

“A command just came from above, ordering us to attack you two. Then, another command was issued to stop the attack,” Bramble explained lightly.

“I understand.”

I replied simply. I did not have the leisure to listen to whatever else he seemed to want to say. I rushed down with inhuman speed and returned home. Since I was carrying Melody, I rudely kicked open the door, and once the door opened, I could see the living room in a single glance.

The young master, completely unscathed, was currently sitting on the sofa. He even turned his head to look at me.

“Young Master?”

I stood dumbly in the doorway. How can this be? Just now, he, and now… What is going on!?

The young master looked at me curiously and asked, “Charles, where did you go? Also, who are you carrying?”

This is not possible. It definitely is not possible! Just now on the rooftop, the one blocking bullets, saving us, riddling his body with injuries was… Dark Sun, but, also the young master!

I am not mistaken, definitely not this time! That blood soaked Dark Sun was the young master!

But the person in front of me looked exactly like the young master, regardless of his face, voice, or figure… Wait! Why is there a bloodstain on the ground? When I took measure of the young master, I noticed a bloodstain on the floor.

It seemed that he had noticed that I was looking at the floor, so he made an apologetic face, saying, “I injured my foot during my practical course. I was bandaging the injury just now. Sorry for getting the floor dirty.”

At this time, Melody, who was in my arms, moaned and woke up. When she caught sight of the young master, she hurriedly yelled, “Hurry up and tell him to protect us. Only he can save us from the master’s hands…”

“He is not the young master!”

I interrupted Melody, stunning her. However, I too was stunned, for my tone was actually that forceful.

“Charles?” He furrowed his brows, looking confusedly at me. “What are you talking about?”

He is not the young master. Even if I do not understand, why there can be someone who looks just like the young master, and who would sit at home, calling me Charles as usual, but…

He. Is. Not. Young. Master!

Ignoring his question, I directly entered the apartment, brushing past him, and then placed Melody down onto the sofa. I then grabbed the television remote from the table, pressing the sun symbol on the top for three seconds, until the monitor displayed the words— “Workshop has been locked.”

Lifting his head, the young master looked at me as he calmly spoke, “I locked up the workshop. I don’t have to report this to you, do I?”

“If you really were the young master, then of course not.”

After coldly saying this, I passed by him, walked up to the workshop, and deeply inhaled. With both hands curled into fists, I forcefully knocked on the wall, shouting loudly and piercingly, “Young Master, Young Master! You are inside, right? Please open the door. Please let me tend to your injuries…”

The wall did not move at all.

“Charles, what are you doing?” Behind me came a voice just like the young master’s voice. “I am the young master! There’s nobody inside the workshop. It’s just that I have things that I can’t let you see, so I locked it up.”

I stopped for a moment but immediately resumed hammering on the wall, shouting, “Young Master, I am your butler, I am meant to take care of you, not be taken care of by you. In the end, not only did you save me, but are even refusing to let me bandage your wounds. What use am I as a butler?”

“Charles! I’m getting angry. Stop making a racket!”

Hearing a voice that was just like the young master’s say this dealt a heavy blow to my heart. If I were actually mistaken, and the person behind me was the young master, the situation would be so terrible it would be irreversible… but he is not the young master, definitely not!

“Young Master, Young Master!”

I repeatedly knocked on the wall, repeatedly shouted, but the wall did not move at all, and there was not a single response. In the end, I sank to my knees, weakly calling out, “I am begging you…”

A voice rang behind me again, one that I had never heard before, the young master’s severe tone. “Charles! If you continue to do this, I’ll fire you!”

Fire… I closed my eyes and thought about why I was so sure that the person behind me was not the young master. Coming to my mind was the blood soaked young master from just moments ago who, even though he was covered in blood, still looked at me with anxious eyes, and then told me to come home… Come home?

I was stunned. Would it not normally be “go home?” Come home, would this not only be used by someone for me to “come” home to?

I opened my eyes, no longer holding any doubts, and once more sincerely begged, “Young Master, I am sure you are inside. There is definitely no mistake, so please, let me tend to your wounds. Even if you shall fire me after this, or kill me, Charles will not have any regrets.”

Behind me came the sound of Melody gasping. I lifted my head. The wall opened soundlessly as usual, and behind it was a spacious workshop.

Inside the workshop was a blood-soaked person whose side faced us. He was standing in front of the table that was usually used to modify guns, a half-crumbled visor lying on the table. Although he was without a visor, his drooping hair covered his face.

His right arm was bent at a strange angle but still held a spray can, spraying a similarly completely broken left arm with much difficulty.

I immediately stood up and rushed forward, rudely snatching that spray can from his hand. He lifted his head, looking deeply at me. On his blood-covered cheeks remained traces of tears that had trickled down.

Seeing this, I worriedly asked, “Young… Young Master, does it hurt?”

The young master actually shook his head, making it so that I did not know what to do. I could only stutter, “Then, then… let Charles help. Where should this be sprayed?”

The young master merely nodded, saying, “Everywhere. Those are haemostatic agents.”

Indeed. I looked at the young master’s injuries. They could only be described as too tragic to look at, as it was simply impossible to see which wound blood was being lost from. With injuries like these, the young master is still able to stay standing…

“Young Master, would you like to sit down?” I earnestly recommended.

The young master seemed to have nodded and then looked left and right. Upon seeing the sofa, he went over to sit down. I hurriedly followed him and began to carefully spray the medicine on the young master’s body.

“What… What exactly is going on?”

Melody’s shrill voice rang out, “How can there be two young masters? You, are you twins?”

Twins? This is possible. I paused, but immediately continued to spray the medicine. The most important thing right now was to quickly staunch the bleeding.

“Melody, so it’s you.”

The young master tilted his head. Under these conditions, he was still able to make a curious face, asking, “You also know Charles?”

“Young Master! The most important issue right now isn’t that one, right?” Melody screeched with an even shriller voice.

However, the young master laughed instead.

“Calm down, Melody. His name is DSII (Dark Sun Two). DSII, greet them.”

That voice that was exactly like the young master’s sounded out. He cheerfully said, “Melody and Charles, nice to meet you! I’m DSII. I’m very happy I could meet you.”

I noticed his speech and tone had completely changed. Although his voice was just like the young master’s, the feeling was entirely different.

The young master lightly said, “And we’re not twins. DSII is my clone.”

“What?” Melody was shocked. She blurted, “But how is that possible? Aren’t all clones a bunch of idiots?”

“Young Master.” I opened my mouth and spoke to the young master, but it was to subtly remind Melody not to forcefully pester him. “If you do not wish to tell us, you can say so, and we will understand.”

“I’m not lying to you two.”

The young master calmly explained, “DSII is my modified clone. The people you saw on the rooftop, none of them are real humans either. They are all modified beings. Also, regardless if it’s DSII or those people, they don’t have brains. They use a computer chip to move, which is why I took the right of command from my brother just then, making all of them slit their own throats.”

Hearing this, even I was shocked for a while before I was able to continue my duty.

“But they didn’t look like modified humans. They didn’t have any modified parts on their bodies…” Melody responded in confusion.

The young master smiled and asked in return, “Do I look like a modified human?”

“Of course you don’t…”

Melody answered halfway but suddenly stopped speaking. I could understand why she had stopped. The young master’s arm was broken and his blood covered the entire ground, yet he was still able to speak to other people normally as if it were nothing. This was assuredly unlike a normal human. Furthermore, the blood stains on the young master smell a little bit strange…

“Charles,” the young master suddenly called out to me.

“Yes, Young Master,” I reflexively answered.

“You once asked me, saying that my body has no traces of being modified, so do I dislike modifications, right?”

I stilled. That was the KTV incident…

“Yes.”

The young master remained silent before he opened his mouth again. “Actually, there’s no place on my body that hasn’t been modified. Even my head has a computer chip in it. There’s only one difference between me and DSII, the fact that my brain hasn’t been dug out.”

The young master’s tone was as calm as usual as he described this, but after hearing his answer, I shuddered so much I could barely manage to speak. “This, was this done by the master?”

“No! No, don’t misunderstand my brother.”

The young master was surprised, nervously and quickly speaking, “Gēge would never hurt me no matter what… He, he really wouldn’t hurt me, he really loves me, he, he only wants to protect me…”

The young master’s voice grew smaller and smaller as he spoke. In the end, he was practically mumbling. It was impossible to hear what he was saying. Finally, he stopped and only blankly stared forward, as if he had yet to realize that tears were falling from his eyes.

“Young Master?”

Melody could not help placing a hand on the young master’s shoulder and softly called out to him.

As if the young master had been startled awake, he shuddered and then turned his head, his face showing deep fatigue. He apologized to Melody and me, “I’m very sorry. For my brother to want to kill you… Why don’t you two stay with me for now? After I’ve spoken to my brother, you are free to leave.”

I tried hard to smile at the young master, but finding that I could not pull up the corners of my mouth, I gave up trying to smile, only reminding him, “Young Master, have you forgotten? I am your butler. How could I leave?”

The young master stared at me, hesitated for a bit, and then opened his mouth, “No, Charles, you, you should stop being my butler. You still have Melody. When the time comes, you should both leave!”

“Young Master!” I almost jumped up.

The young master reminded me, “Charles, didn’t you just say, if I allowed you to tend to my wounds, I could even fire you afterwards?”

“That…” I was speechless.

The young master quietly but firmly said, “No matter what, when this is over, you should go… You’ve been fired!”

Fired… Even though I knew the young master was doing this mostly to protect me, being fired for the first time shocked me so much that I became dizzy. Ah, Honorable Father, I have actually been fired, and I have even been fired by the only employer who has treated me as a butler!

“Ah Ye.” DSII, who had been silent the whole time, suddenly spoke.

“What?” The young master turned his head to look at the identical DSII.

DSII smilingly said, “Previously, you ordered me that no matter what Gēge commands me to do, I have to tell you first before executing it. Hence, I need to tell you, Gēge told me to kill everyone here, except for Ah Ye of course!”

The young master jumped up, and the wounds that had just clotted tore open once more, spurting forth quite a lot of blood. Warm blood sprayed Melody and me. Both of us were shocked, not understanding the situation.

The young master gruffly shouted, “Death Scythe!”

A strange noise came from the workshop, like the sound of metal clashing, and then a huge silver object flew into the young master’s hand. It was at this time that I clearly saw the silver object. Shaped like a scythe, its full height was even taller than an adult human’s, and the blade was large enough to cleave a person into two. At the place connecting the handle and the blade was actually a huge claw. The overall image was like the one in the legends, like the scythe held by the grim reaper.

“It really is the Death Scythe?” Melody was left agape, completely losing the image of a beautiful female vampire.

DSII retreated a single step, but the young master’s speed was even faster. Only a flash of silver was seen, brushing past DSII’s neck, and then a head fell to the ground with a “bang.”

My mouth fell open slightly. I believed that my current expression was not too different from Melody’s.

After the young master chopped off DSII’s head, he held the Death Scythe, silently looking at the head lying on the ground. “Sorry, DSII, I will fix you after this.”

The head rolled a few times and then faced us. The expression shown by the head was actually still a cheerful smile. The head smilingly said, “No matter, Ah Ye chopped quite neatly, so the wound was quite neat! The probability of a perfect repair is 90%.”

“The head’s still speaking?”

After Melody spoke in a daze, she suddenly slapped me, and then she blankly asked, “Does it hurt?”

“…A lot.”

“Then this really isn’t a dream!” She grabbed onto my neck, and then shook me wildly.

The young master, who was holding a huge scythe like a grim reaper. A motionless, headless body that was still standing without falling. A head on the ground that was still showing an innocent smile. This kind of strange situation, even though Melody and I were vampires who were well-known citizens of the darkness, was an experience we had never had before.

The young master released the Death Scythe, and his body swayed. I hurriedly stood up to support him, asking, “Young Master, is there anything wrong?”

The young master nodded his head. “Yes. My blood loss has neared 40%. 80% of my body has been damaged.”

It seems the question is not if there is anything wrong or not, but rather how is he even still alive… Hearing this “status report” and seeing that the young master did not even sound pained, I simply did not know how I should react. I could only blankly ask, “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

The young master tilted his head in thought and then said, “Make a phone call to ‘An Te Qi-bàba.’ He’s a doctor.”

“Understood.”

I hastily supported the young master to the sofa and took out a cell phone. Seeing that the display showed that there was no reception, I only then remembered that this cell phone could no longer be used to make calls.

“Young Master!”

Just when I was going to open my mouth, someone beat me to it. Turning my head, I found out that the person was actually Bramble, and behind him were two bodyguards, one of them being Dell.

After Bramble called out to the young master, the three people prostrated themselves without warning, striking their knees against the floor, the sound so loud that it was shocking. Bramble gazed at the young master, stiffly saying, “Young Master, there has been a death order from above. If you do not turn on the monitoring devices in the house, the three hundred and seventy two bodyguards upstairs have to come down here one by one and commit suicide in front of you.”

Hearing this, even my heart thudded heavily, let alone the young master’s.

I turned my head to face the young master. Before I could even clearly see his expression, I saw an even more surprising scene… A series of symbols actually flashed across the young master’s black eyes.

Following that, the television suddenly turned on. The television was currently reporting the news, and the contents were of an unknown explosion. Then, all the lights in the room lit up, the computer transmitted the sound of it starting up, and the oven in the kitchen dinged…

“Gēge!”

The young master walked to the middle of the living room, and facing the door, he lifted his head up to look at the ornament above the door. In the ornament was a monitoring device, as I had once found.

“Gēge, look at me!”

The young master extended his bent arms, facing the monitoring device, shouting hoarsely, “You once said, you will never ever hurt me. You also said, as long as I’m happy, you’ll let me do whatever I want, but not only did you order people to stop me from doing what I like, you fired bullets at my friends… How can I be happy? How can you say you’ll never hurt me?!”

The young master put his hands down, tears flowing endlessly from his eyes. Just from the look of his sad face and his slouched posture, his deep fatigue was apparent.

The young master lowered his head to wipe away the tears, and when he raised his head again, he had already hidden away his sad expression. With an icy expression, he said, “Gē, don’t touch Charles, don’t touch Melody, don’t touch the bodyguards, and don’t touch anyone related to them, or else… I will never see you again! Even if you have the entire world in your palm, I can still make sure that you will never find me. You know I can do that.”

At this time, Bramble and the two others kneeling at the door suddenly raised their weapons and faced the corridor. Although I did not see anything, I could hear footsteps just like the uniform ones of those masked men on the roof.

I immediately materialized two rapiers. Melody also extended her claws, and two blood colored broadswords floated to the left and right of her shoulders.

“Don’t attack!”

The young master called out to us, and when we looked at the young master, the fatigue on his face had set in even deeper. Symbols constantly flashed across his eyes. He explained, “I am having these people protect you guys. They will keep watch outside, in case my brother still tries to kill you.”

I stowed away the rapiers that were materialized from my blood ability and worriedly asked, “Young Master, are you all right?”

The young master shook his head and tiredly said, “I’ve lost too much blood. I need to sleep a while. During this time, you shouldn’t leave this building. Wait until I wake up. Then, I’ll try to speak to my brother again…”

After saying this, the young master unexpectedly fell to one side. I hurriedly rushed forward to support him… Heavy! This was not the weight someone with the young master’s figure should have.

I suddenly remembered that previously Dark Sun had a weight that exceeded my expectations, and since the young master was Dark Sun, he obviously would be very heavy. Luckily, I was supporting the young master’s shoulder this time, not just grasping two of his fingers. Thus, even though the weight was beyond what I had expected, I was still able to support him.

After assisting him, I suddenly realized that when I had supported the young master earlier, he had not felt heavy. Is it because he had still been supporting most of his weight?

Yet now, the young master has given me all of his weight. Does this mean that he really cannot hold on anymore?

“Call An Te Qi-bàba,” the young master feebly said to me.

I anxiously said, “But my phone cannot make calls…”

“Ah Ye!”

An anxious voice sounded from the workshop, interrupting me.

And then, wearing small glasses, a man around the age of thirty hurriedly rushed out of the workshop. Behind him were two masked men who were carrying various types of equipment.

The young master turned his head, weakly calling out, “Bàba…”

Following that, he finally fainted.