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Chapter 15
Hannah came before Rita even had a chance to call for her.
Rita was briefly taken aback, then raised her voice.
“Yeah, come in.”
Hannah stepped into the guest room. She was pale as a sheet, trembling all over.
No bruises around her neck. That’s a relief—she must’ve been treated properly.
Rita guessed that Hannah was acting this way because she had been frightened by Rita’s seizure triggered by the pachouli scent.
If she remembered that night, there’s no way she’d still be working in Birch Castle. The chances are high that she remembers nothing. And my family never found out that Hannah was involved in my disappearance at all.
If she’d been an ordinary child, she would’ve been caught for sure. Whoever had controlled her must have erased the traces very thoroughly.
Lilietta studied Hannah anew as she stood there trembling by the door.
Reddish-brown hair, faint freckles, a round, gentle-looking face, and light brown eyes.
Now that I really look at her, she does resemble me. The overall impression is completely different, though.
Rita Pascal had reddish-brown hair, faint freckles, sharp features, and dark reddish-brown eyes.
Living while constantly being thrown into the front lines, she rarely had the leisure to examine her own face closely, so she hadn’t noticed it right away. She’d merely thought, Her hair color’s similar to mine, but her eyes and face are different.
It’s like a distant relative. At a glance it’s hard to tell, but once you’re conscious of it and compare, you can see the resemblance.
When Rita continued to stare at her face without speaking, Hannah’s complexion grew steadily paler.
“Um, miss….”
“Oh.”
Coming back to her senses, Lilietta gestured toward the sofa.
“Come sit down first, Hannah. There’s something I wanted to talk to you about anyway.”
But instead of obeying, Hannah suddenly dropped to her knees where she stood, bowed her head to the floor, and cried out.
“Miss, please kill me!”
“What? What are you talking about all of a sudden—?”
As Rita asked in confusion, Hannah burst into tears and continued.
“H-hic, it was me, miss. It was me.”
“…Don’t tell me.”
Rita felt her expression stiffen on its own.
“You remembered everything? That night? And even then, you kept your mouth shut and kept working by our family’s side?”
When she pressed sharply, Hannah jerked her head up, then shook it desperately, her face soaked with tears.
“N-no, no! I’m not that shameless! I—I mean—!”
Sobbing, Hannah reached into her arms. Rita instinctively prepared for an ambush, but what Hannah pulled out wasn’t a dagger or anything like that.
They were scraps of cloth and leather, charred so black that it was hard to make out their original shape.
With shaking hands, Hannah placed them on the floor and let tears drip down.
“Miss, do you… do you know what this is?”
“…I don’t.”
“These are… these are the slippers you were wearing that night, miss.”
“…!”
Rita recalled the memories she had regained.
That night, as she struggled while being held by Hannah, the slippers she’d been wearing when her nightgown tore had fallen off.
She hadn’t noticed the torn hem caught in the bushes, but Hannah—no, probably whoever had possessed her—had definitely noticed the dropped slipper and taken it along.
But when Lilietta lay in the coffin, she was barefoot, and when Rita returned to her original body and crawled out of the lake, she was barefoot then too.
The ducal household assumed she had disappeared while wearing her shoes, so they never questioned the slippers’ whereabouts. Yet that night, her slippers had definitely been left somewhere.
It seemed Hannah had kept them all this time.
“Last night… when there was a loud noise from the lake, I heard that you re-recovered your memories, miss. At that moment, I also….”
Through tears, Hannah confessed everything. Her words were disjointed, but listening to her, Rita could piece together what must have happened.
When I smashed the coffin with the magic circle carved into it yesterday, it must’ve affected Hannah too.
The morning after Lilietta disappeared ten years ago, Hannah never woke up. She’d been bedridden with a raging fever.
Her whole body ached, she vomited, had skin rashes, even seizures—but even the ducal household’s personal physician couldn’t determine the cause.
In the end, they only prescribed fever reducers as symptomatic treatment, and strangely enough, she recovered on her own after a few days.
From the symptoms, it sounds like an aether backlash. The culprit must’ve used magic through Hannah’s body, which had poor aether affinity. That would explain why she naturally recovered, too.
After falling ill and then recovering, Hannah had no memory at all of what happened that night.
With Lilietta’s disappearance throwing the ducal household into chaos, they did interrogate Hannah as well, but no one seriously suspected a child who had just barely gotten out of a severe illness. When she said she didn’t know anything about that night, they let it go.
They thoroughly searched even Hannah’s small room during the castle-wide search, but the slippers weren’t found then.
In the garden and the birch forest path, there were no footprints, no traces of any kind. There were no clues or witnesses linking Hannah to the incident. Only a scrap of Lilietta’s bloodstained nightgown was found in the bushes.
Hannah herself never doubted herself at all. She simply grieved together with everyone over the young lady’s disappearance.
The moment something resurfaced in her mind was last night.
“It suddenly came back to me. Vaguely… I-I went to the main building, to your room, miss. I didn’t even know where your room was back then, so how did I f-find it so exactly, and then say to you that we should… do something together…?”
She said that something had lodged itself in her mind and kept ordering her around. She couldn’t resist, couldn’t even think of resisting.
As she followed that whispering voice as if enchanted, whenever she fumbled or did something poorly, it felt as if it clicked its tongue in annoyance… and after that, she couldn’t remember anything.
Rita made a judgment internally.
At some point, Hannah suddenly started speaking smoothly and smiling. When she couldn’t do what was ordered, the culprit must’ve taken direct control then.
When she came to her senses again, she found herself standing blankly in her room, drenched.
Seeing her wet clothes, Hannah thought she’d had an accident in the middle of the night. Afraid of being scolded, she secretly washed her nightgown, hung it up to dry, changed clothes, and went to sleep.
After that, she fell seriously ill… and lost her memories. Just like Lilietta.
“And then yesterday—last night—I woke up to a loud bang, and something was glowing under my bed. I-I was so startled that I lay down and looked, and there, I know it sounds impossible, but there it was—there was a small slipper….”
It was a slipper she’d never once found, despite cleaning and looking under the bed countless times over ten years.
Wrapped in a strange golden pattern, it shone, then ignited on its own.
Even when Hannah panicked, dragged it out, and poured water over it, the fire wouldn’t go out. Then, once only shapeless fragments remained, the flames vanished as if by magic.
“And then you recovered your memories from that night?”
“Yes… I know it sounds like a lie, l-like an excuse, but it’s true. Truly, until yesterday, I didn’t know anything. I’m n-not lying. Only now… only now do I remember, and oh my god, I—I think I… kidnapped you, miss. I….”
Still on her knees, Hannah clawed at the floor. The carpet darkened with her tears.
“…Please kill me, miss. I—I deserve it. Even if you say I was repaying kindness with enmity, there should be limits—h-how could I dare do that to you….”
Rita let out a long sigh.
Just like the wooden coffin that had stolen and stored Lilietta’s memories, Hannah’s memories of that night must have been sealed inside the slippers.
Perhaps there was some connection, and when Rita broke the coffin in the lake, the seal broke as well.
Just like how nothing was found no matter how many times the lake was searched, those slippers must’ve been hidden by aether too. If so, no one in this world would’ve been able to find them.
She rose from the sofa and walked over to Hannah. Standing before her as she trembled with her head pressed to the floor, Rita picked up the burnt fragments of the slipper.
Though hard to recognize, there were clearly lines left behind that were unmistakably part of a magic circle. Judging by the remaining color and texture, they were definitely the slippers she’d worn that night.
Meaning Hannah’s story had substance.
The culprit behind all this is, after all…
The Archmage Pascal. There might have been accomplices, but to have used magic of that level, it was most likely him.
He had possessed Hannah’s body and kidnapped Lilietta.
I’ll need to investigate these traces further. Along with the coffin fragments.
After securing the slipper pieces, Rita looked down silently at the sobbing Hannah for a moment, then spoke.
“Hannah.”
