Lawrence's Nervous Breakdown

Lawrence sat at the desk in his workshop, rubbing his temples, utterly drained.

"Ruslan..."

He recalled the old butler who had always remained by his side during his lifetime, and an involuntary sense of fear rose within him.

The feeling that his life was being watched made Lawrence deeply uncomfortable.

"It's not just me. Those people must be the same, too." Lawrence thought of the other differentiated individuals.

"Servant, doctor, brother, researcher..." Lawrence muttered as he browsed the information on the page.

Suddenly, he noticed a page.

Pulling it up, Lawrence frowned. "Is this a fairy tale manuscript?"

"This story is dedicated to an old friend of my father's, in remembrance of the legend of the 'London Monster' he once heard in London?" Lawrence enlarged the page and looked at the words Andersen had left at the end of the manuscript.

His gemlike burgundy eyes dimmed involuntarily.

Was this... a story written about that child Anno's incident?

Lawrence decided to read the fairy tale that the great storyteller had written with Anno as its prototype.

The story was short. After finishing it, Lawrence could not help complaining, "Storywriters just love allegory after allegory. Isn't it enough to use allegory in things written for adults? Why do they have to do it in fairy tales too?"

"...Wait."

He noticed a few small details.

"This minister..." His eyes narrowed.

Half an hour later, Lawrence, with heavy dark circles beneath his eyes, stood before the whiteboard in his workshop, deep in thought.

"This minister basically matches Ruslan's circumstances," Lawrence said with certainty. "The dark mage broke the minister's staff in front of The Prince and the Monster. That's equivalent to the mage killing Ruslan in front of Anno. That part lines up."

"And judging by the order in which they were deployed, Anno