Chapter 003: The Coy Family

Nest breathed out an exasperated sigh.

The miniature angel, Niphilili rested on the crown of his head. She laid spread eagle with her stomach pressed against his scalp. It gave off a somewhat weird sensation. She was definitely there, that he did not question. After all, he could feel it. Her clothes brushing up against his skin, small hands furiously tugging on his hair, he felt it all, but… there was no weight. The girl had no weight to her existence.

It was as if the angel’s insides were completely filled with nothing but helium and the thing rubbing against the back of his head was simply a balloon tied too close to his neck.

As for the little angel, she was currently sulking. Since a while ago, Niphilili had lapsed into silence. Nest did not know what sort of face she was currently making, but he had his guesses. He had tried his best to appease this little delusion of his, but nothing seemed to work.

Shaking his head, Nest quickly made his way to the door. The moment he left his bedroom, he immediately widened his eyes in surprise.

“Why are you still here?”

It was Anya, his one and only personal maid. Of course, the word personal was something that she had tacked on herself, but that’s beside the point. She stood by the wall, opposite his bedroom door.

“Young Mater Nest…” She started to speak but hesitated. Her brow creased while a shallow frown formed on her lips. With a somewhat concerned expression on her face, she cautiously asked, “You… are you feeling alright?”

“What?” Nest tilted his head in confusion.

“It’s just, I heard you talking to yourself.” She explained. “I thought that you might have finally snapped.”

His left eye twitched. Nest’s expression grew bitter. He shot a look at the angel above him, but all he could see was the ball of a child’s foot dangling from the top of his head. He inwardly blamed this little angel, but then again, Niphilili was more than likely just another part of his subconscious. If he wanted to blame someone, then the only person here to blame was himself.

So, to answer Anya’s question, no, he certainly wasn’t okay.

Still, Nest wasn’t about to admit any of that in front of her. The last thing he needed was for this stiff maid to think he was going crazy.

“You didn’t think that I might have been on the phone or something? I’m pretty sure that’s the first thing a person would conclude when they hear voices coming from inside someone else’s bedroom.”

“Pfft—” Anya almost laughed. Luckily, she was able to stop herself just in time. “Don’t worry Young Master, I have already eliminated that possibility. I know full well that you don’t have any friends.”

Dark lines ran down his forehead. He bitterly glared at her, but Anya’s impassive expression remained unchanged. Once again, he felt the biting consequences of this girl’s unfiltered personality. She was truly like a venomous snake!

Without another word, he simply marched down the hallway. Anya followed closely after him.

He headed towards the dining room. Although the property was large and often times, its hallways daunting, Nest had grown quite familiar to its labyrinth-like layout.

Wisteria Manor. The Coy family’s private home. Compared to the family’s long-running legacy, its history was quite recent, but that did not limit any of its grandeur. Four stories, more than fifty rooms, extensive outdoor facilities and patches of land that stretched on for acres upon acres. Rather than calling it a mansion, it was more akin to a personal castle.

Wisteria Manor completely reflected the family’s deep pockets, but that was not what Nest cared about. Right now, what he found most unnerving was the silence.

The grand lavish halls, with its walls adorned in expensive paintings and priceless antiques, felt abnormally desolate. He let out a silent sigh. It was a completely different atmosphere compared to the past that he fondly remembered.

“Did anyone leave last night?” He asked as he stared out the window. Purple-hued flower petals danced with the breeze. Spring had long arrived.

Anya nodded. “Two maids. Their contracts expired two days ago. They spent the entirety of yesterday packing up.” She hesitated for a moment, before tentatively asking, “Did you want to renew their contracts?”

“No…” Nest shook his head. “It’s fine. I was just wondering.” He answered. His hollow words echoed quietly through the empty space.

After a moment of silence, he asked, “How many people does that leave?”

“Only three. Right now, it’s just the head maid, your grandfather’s old steward, and me.”

“Ah, not a lot left, huh?”

Compared to the twenty plus staff that the manor once employed, its current state was quite dismal. Still, Nest did not blame anyone for this. Rather, he had nobody to blame but himself. After all, it was he who pushed the manor to such a situation.

“Should I ask the head maid to hire a few more people?” Anya asked.

“No,” He shook his head. “This is already… it’s fine. We don’t really need all that much, right? After all, I’m the only one here.”

“…” Anya stared at him. Reflected in her eyes was the silhouette of a young man against the backdrop of his hollow castle. At that moment, one word came to her mind: lonely. His back looked so incredibly lonely.

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Unaware of the thoughts floating in his maid’s head, Nest continued down the hall.

It’s been about a year now, hasn’t it? He silently thought to himself.

Nest faintly recalled the events that had taken place over the past couple of months. To be exact, it had been less than nine months ago. It was rather recent, but the memories felt incredibly distant, almost as if they had happened to someone else. At the same time, like a festering wound that had been left out in the sun for one too many days, Nest still bore that time’s poison even to this day.

Even now, he felt a heavy weight press down against his shoulders.

Ernest Coy was the last living member of the prestigious Coy family.

The Coys were a family with a long history, dating all the way back to a time when America was still obsessed with the idea of manifest destiny. The first Coy came alongside the earlier waves of immigrants brought on by the California gold rush.

While their wealth did not come from gold, they still made enough to open up a simple business selling shoes. That business eventually expanded and once it did, the Coys truly began to shine. Now, after successive generations of successful business ventures, that once simple shoe store had transformed into a giant conglomerate, one with its fingers dipped in a variety of different industries.

Nest’s grandfather was the family’s previous patriarch. Unfortunately, he died. Nest’s father should have been the one next in line, but he died too. In fact, everyone died. Everyone except him.

Approximately nine months ago, the Coys suffered an unforgettable tragedy. During a family vacation, a car accident occurred. A blaze of fire so intense that it rivaled that of Hell’s. The smell of burning flesh intermixed with rubber and gasoline. The screaming. No, there was no screaming. All of it was muffled out by the burning flames.

Honestly, Nest did not remember much.

There were people there to remind him, to tell him what had happened and how it had happened, but his memories, his real memories were far and few between. Most were blurry, and the clearer ones had less of a chance of being real and more of a chance of being something that his imagination conjured up in order to fill in the blanks.

The only thing for certain was that people died. Important people died.

On that day, five people were in that car. Only one came out. His grandfather, his father, his mother, and his nine-year-old little sister. All of them, all four of them died. Only he survived.

He survived with only a few scratches. He would later find out that what had killed them was not the raging fire, but rather the initial impact. Everyone was already dead by the time the fire started. He was the only one screaming.

Was it intentional? Maybe. The Coys were wealthy, but they were also passive. Some saw them as easy targets. It also did not help that they had numerous business rivals. The tragedy back then could have easily been orchestrated by a third party, that possibility certainly existed. Still, none of that mattered anymore.

The family’s entire heritage, accumulated through several generations, all of it fell on the laps of the only surviving member of the Coy family, a nineteen-year-old by the name of Ernest Coy.

With the inheritance, he received an astronomical amount of wealth in the form of ownership to one of the world’s most profitable international conglomerate, ownership of a few other large-scale domestic and foreign companies, the shares of another few dozen fortune 500 companies, and this large, overly extravagant manor.

The manor was located on the west coast, a fair bit away from the nearest city. It basically functioned as an independent, modern-day fortress. The surrounding area, be it the forested fields near the back or the empty, uncultivated plains by the roadside, all of it belonged to the family. All of it belonged to Nest.

After receiving the inheritance, he was not excited nor did he burn with vengeance. All he felt was this wallowing emptiness as if there was a hole in his heart that refused to close up.

The death of his family haunted him. As a result, he entered a state of lethargy.

Many of the businesses that the family previously owned, Nest lost. Some were stolen away by other competing powers, others sought independence of their own, while even more simply crumbled under the pressures of an ever-fluctuating business world.

Nest watched this all happen from the sidelines. He acted as a simple passerby as a once thriving business empire slowly disappeared, swallowed up by wolves and hyenas. Nest was still in grief. He simply did not care.

Eventually, things spiraled into so much chaos, that it even began to affect the distant Wisteria manor. Slowly but surely, after news of the family’s imminent demise began spreading, the people of the manor, those that had once worked for the family, one by one, they all left. Now, only a scant few remain.

It would be a lie to say that Nest felt nothing. Fully aware that he was squandering entire generations’ worth of effort, Nest felt guilty, but at the same time, he simply felt no passion towards the family business.

Did he need more money? No, of course not. His ancestors made more than enough for Nest to live life ten times over, and even that would only be scratching the surface. He thought about continuing, about taking up the mantle of Coy family patriarch, but he never did. Even without all the grief in his heart, he never was like all the other Coys that came before him.

Nest simply did not care for extravagant wealth. In fact, after the deaths of his family, he began to hate the money in his pockets.

Wealth was certainly a good thing, but too much of it and it simply becomes baggage. No, not even that. It wasn’t baggage, but rather, a ticking time bomb waiting to explode.

Thinking up to there, Nest tilted his neck back and stared at Anya.

“What is it, Young master?” Upon noticing his gaze, Anya mildly asked with the same deadpan expression that he had long since grown used to seeing.

“I was just wondering when you were going to leave.” He spoke without reservation.

She paused for a moment and blinked. Anya thought for a while, before responding, “When my contract is over, then I’ll stop being your maid.”

“And when exactly is that?” he asked with an exaggerated groan.

Anya Loris was someone who had been with him from the very start. Nest’s grandfather had taken her in when Nest was only three. That meant he spent more than ten years of his life together with this girl.

He did not know the full story, but apparently, Anya’s parents had once saved his grandfather’s life a long time ago. After they passed, an orphaned Anya was then brought into the family. Although she was being trained as a maid, Anya was treated more like an extra Coy. Cut to now, and Anya was Nest’s one and only self-stylized personal maid.

Of course, he wasn’t the one that employed her. Anya’s employment had been previously handled by Nest’s grandfather before he died. Things like the terms of her employment, her salary, or anything even remotely similar were completely unknown to him. There were even times when Nest wondered whether or not Anya really was a maid, and not just somebody who liked to play dress-up.

Anya smiled. “Who knows?”

A groan escaped from his throat as he stared reproachfully at her self-satisfied face.

A maid who won’t listen to what I say, a maid who doesn’t dress appropriately for work, a maid that I can’t even fire…

He felt inwardly distressed about his rather willful childhood friend, but in the end, he could do nothing but swallow his pride and take the momentary headache.

“You, if you keep being like this, then don’t be surprised if I lower your salary.” He weakly threatened.

“Young Master, you don’t even pay me though?”

“Then why is it that you still work here?”

“Who knows?” she responded with another tightlipped smile.

He really couldn’t deal with her. In the end, the halfhearted desire to fire her fizzled away as the smell of cooked food tickled his nostrils. He climbed down the stairs and moved towards the manor’s kitchen.

“Let’s drop this topic for now,” he exasperatedly spoke, “First, we’ll go eat some breakfast.”

As Nest let out another sigh, the faint traces of a playful smirk quietly faded from Anya’s lips.