The lights went out shortly thereafter, and I was left to my own devices after an audible 'click' came from the bathroom door.

  While it would have been nice to say I had some secret method to escape from these circumstances, the reality was that I was just incredibly uncomfortable. Unlike any other time that I might have experimented with some light self-bondage in the comfort of my bedroom, Lu Liwang's rigging (that asshole) was far stricter than anything I would have preferred for myself. That guy was totally serious about making the bondage 200% functional, and at that point, it wasn't innocent fun and games anymore.

  What was the best way to describe it?

  Getting tied up could actually feel kind of nice... until it didn't feel nice anymore.

  It was sort of like how the idea of being a maid for a guy that you liked might sound sexy and erotic (at first), but after you got into the nuts and bolts of the gritty details, the countless negatives generally outweighed the perceived perks of an imagined fantasy. Eventually, reality would dump a big bucket of ice water on top of your head, and you'd finally realize that you were completely screwed.

  This — was probably one of those moments.

  No matter how much I struggled, the cords only grew tighter.

  ...At some point, I reached the critical epiphany that there wasn't any way to get free.

  That I couldn't even turn over or stretch my legs.

  I couldn't even bend my back.

  All while my shoulders continued to cramp.

  + + +

  My willpower must have been extremely weak, because I didn't even st ten minutes in the darkness before I seriously started considering the white fg option. For instance, I thought about telling Kang Jiesu outright that I was Zhang Guiyu, and I figured that he'd surely release me from this stressful position if he knew my true identity. You might think that I'm a total wimp — that I couldn't even tolerate a retively basic form of bondage — but my muscles were cramping painfully and I couldn't stand it for a minute longer.

  I really needed someone to untie me right now.

  But nobody was here.

  My mental pleas gradually transformed into resentment.

  What was Kang Jiesu even doing?

  The hypocrisy was really ridiculous. Was it okay for the protagonists to tie up a girl and abandon her in a bathroom simply because they were the protagonists? Ostensibly, my cssmate had 'rescued' me from the clutches of the Crown Prince because he didn't like what he was seeing, but honestly all that had happened was that I exchanged one set of shackles for another. At the very least, Prince Leopold had tried to ensure that I was comfortable, although my feelings were so irate right now I couldn't definitively say which dilemma was better.

  The situation was just absurd — a hero rescuing a girl and then immediately tying her up in the basement.

  It was a massive blind spot in Kang Jiesu's reasoning — the size of Antartica's ozone hole.

  Fictional narratives had a tendency to do this to people. For example, in the Legend of Zelda, the protagonist (pyer/hero) never really questioned whether it was wrong or immoral to break into a NPC's house, break furniture, or loot chests. With the appropriate framing, it wouldn't even seem like thievery at all, and the pyer would believe they were fighting for justice.

  The Pokemon franchise was equally guilty, if not significantly worse. Since Pokemon were fully intelligent with their own vibrant lives in the wild, most of the game's premise boiled down to kidnapping wild pokemon, abducting them from their families and loved ones, and locking them inside small balls or PCs until the trainer could bother to take them out again in order to force them to fight for human amusement, all while feeding them drugged kibble that made them happy and love their trainer.

  The human mind could have incredible pses of empathy.

  The mental gymnastics really were not that eborate. Human psychology often predisposed us to certain forms of tunnel vision, and people very often saw the things that they wished to believe. A rge portion of that came from internal defense mechanisms — a type of willful ignorance that stemmed from an inborn fear of admitting there were monsters inside us.

  + + +

  I didn't know how much time had passed, but eventually the bathroom door opened again and the light switched on.

  I immediately started to mumble into my gag while struggling wildly against the restraints, thinking that I really needed to convince Kang Jiesu to release me from this uncomfortable strict tie.

  However, it wasn't him.

  The person standing above me was Miss Nelle — the big-breasted maid who had been re-assigned to take over my pce as Kang Jiesu's personal maid.

  "Mmmdaspphh!" I pleaded into the gag while trying to catch her attention.

  Even if she wasn't the person that I was hoping for, Nelle was perfectly capable of releasing me from my predicament. Any employee in the Royal Pace was effectively my ally at this point, and I could even count someone like Prince Leopold to rescue me promptly without second-guessing the circumstances.

  However, she didn't react.

  If anything, her eyes looked somewhat gzed over and empty.

  I remembered that Hong Rei said that she had another maid under mind control, so this probably meant that appealing to Nelle was as good as trying to negotiate with a zombie. While I had no idea exactly how my cssmate's mind control magic worked, it didn't seem like my colleague was conscious.

  Perhaps it was something like sleepwalking?

  + + +

  The light flicked off again, and Nelle shut the bathroom door again only a few seconds ter.

  Evidently, she had only briefly dropped by to check in on me.

  My heart sank further.

  Some time ter, I heard a few distant muffled voices outside of the Emerald Room.

  It was impossible to hear them clearly, but I could just barely make out the voice of Nelle and one other male individual.

  "Did you see a maid and a guard pass by here?" A familiar-sounding voice asked.

  "No, not at all," Nelle responded emotionlessly.

  Nelle was evidently standing guard outside of the Emerald Room in the hallway.

  "I see... I'll keep looking then." The nameless male replied, his voice full of worry.

  Who was that?

  But before I could process the mysterious man's identity, he was already gone.

  + + +

  Thirty minutes... maybe another hour passed.

  The bathroom door suddenly flung open like it was blown in by a typhoon, and it was Hong Baiye.

  She had a rather strange glint in her eyes, and I could see Miss Nelle standing obediently at her side.

  None of my other cssmates were here.

  Something didn't feel right.

  The atmosphere was all crooked and warped.

  "Sorry, it took me a while before I could get some time alone," Hong Baiye announced her entrance in Mandarin.

  She knelt down on the marble floor right next my immobilized figure.

  The ice queen ran her fingers through my hair.

  "Kang seems to like you better than the other maid, which might pose a serious problem down the road."

  Confusion fshed through my eyes. What was she even talking about?

  "I can't have him favoring you too much," Hong Baiye continued. "So I'm just going to set up an insurance policy."

  Hong Baiye gestured at Nelle, waving at the other maid to come forward.

  "Unfortunately, I can only control one puppet at a time, so I have to break the contract of the first one."

  The expression on Nelle's eyes was completely vacant and bnk.

  A dark purple light began to shine, which had an especially ominous afterglow inside of the bathroom.

  "As my st command for my former servant — I want you to forget everything that you know...

  "...And then I want you to jump out of the window."

  + + +

  My eyes widened at Hong Baiye's instructions for Miss Nelle.

  I couldn't believe my ears.

  The Emerald Room was located on the sixth floor of the Royal Pace. Instructing a servant to jump out of the window was pretty much the same thing as commanding someone to commit suicide. That being said, I recalled a few seconds ter that this section of the pace was directly adjacent to the castle moat, so there was still a reasonable chance that a person could nd in the water, but it was still an incredibly dangerous order. From this height, a human being would strike the water at 20 meters per second, which still had the potential to result in broken bones and major injuries. Considering that Nelle was currently brainwashed, she'd probably wake up suddenly in the freezing cold, intense pain, and pitch darkness in the middle of the night with no idea what was happening. She'd forced to swim (if she even knew how to swim) or simply drown.

  Was this really the same Hong Baiye who was my cssmate for the past ten years?

  This was really too callous — horrific and cruel.

  ...Unless she didn't see the 'NPC' maids as real humans.

  Was all of this isekai universe just a game to her?

  Was it a virtual simution?

  Nelle turned around and opened to bathroom door. Her movements were perfectly obedient like a robot executing a computer program. She stepped out of sight and shortly thereafter, I heard a heavy window pry open in the Emerald Room.

  And then there was the quiet sound of the wind.

  + + +

  Hong Baiye's attitude was casual and rexed.

  There was no indication that she felt the slightest amount of distress or guilt about sending a maid out of the window. A random tangential memory from the European history course that our css was taking st year suddenly fshed through my mind. In 1618, two imperial governors and their secretary were tossed from the Prague Castle, henceforth called the Defenestrations of Prague. 'Defenestration' was a funny word, and half of my css seemed to find it amusing that real historical figures had been killed by being thrown out the window.

  Was Hong Baiye one of my cssmates who had been ughing at the time?

  She pced her right palm over on top of my eyes, and a purple glow began to shine once more.

  "I know Kang said that he wanted your memories intact, but there shouldn't be a problem as long as Kang can't tell that I fiddled with your head a little bit," she muttered. "What he doesn't know, can't hurt him, right?"

  She ughed softly underneath her breath.

  "Mpmphhh!" I fought desperately into my restraints.

  Hong Baiye did not seem troubled by my obvious distress.

  "First, I want you to forget any positive interactions you had with Kang Jiesu. In fact, it'd be better if you hated him forever."

  "Second, you're not allowed to tell anyone that you've been mind controlled."

  "Third, you'll always do exactly what I say, even when I'm not controlling you directly."

  "Fourth, you won't remember the things that... ███████████████████████████████████"

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  minacia