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Chapter 13
“Miss… you were… gone…”
“I woke up from a scary dream. Did you wake up too, Hanna?”
“Yes……”
The yellow glow of the lamp flickered over Hanna’s sluggish reply. Lilieta felt something was strange about her eyes—eyes that seemed unfocused, staring into empty space.
“If you’re scared… we could… together…”
“Together? You mean sleep together?”
Lilieta brightened and grabbed the hem of her clothes. Hanna shook her head.
“Together, together.”
“Huh?”
“Together… ugh…”
The girl, repeating the same word, suddenly clutched her head and let out a groan. Then she lifted her face again.
The vacant expression was gone, replaced by a strange smile and oddly gleaming eyes.
“Let’s go stargazing together, miss.”
“Stars…? All of a sudden?”
“I woke up too and was wondering what to do… and since it’s rare to be awake at this hour, I thought we should go look at the stars. I figured it’d be even better if I went with you, miss.”
“With me?”
“I already brought milk and cookies to the lakeside. There’s a blanket too, and a constellation book. Miss, you learned about constellations from your tutor recently, didn’t you? Don’t you want to see them for real? If we watch the stars together while drinking warm milk, you’ll fall asleep easily afterward!”
Hanna chattered on brightly, smiling.
Lilieta, who really had learned about constellations not long ago, found herself tempted.
She was scared to fall asleep alone like this, and the thought of eating milk and cookies in the middle of the night with someone her age made her heart flutter.
“Okay!”
Lilieta replied with a wide smile.
Raised with love among good people, the young girl felt no suspicion.
She didn’t question how Hanna—who couldn’t enter the inner keep and lived in the outer castle with the servants—had managed to reach the young lady’s bedroom deep inside the main residence.
She didn’t wonder how a child who hadn’t even become her playmate yet, who’d only been in the castle for just over a month, knew that Lilieta had recently learned about constellations.
She didn’t question how a young maid with no special authority could have prepared all those things by the lakeside in the birch forest.
She didn’t think about what it meant to take a ten-year-old noble girl out of a mansion filled with safety measures in the middle of the night.
Lilieta was simply happy—happy that she could have a special game with someone her age who was going to become her friend, happy that she wouldn’t have to fall asleep alone in the bedroom where she’d just had a nightmare.
The young lady was led by Hanna’s hand out of the mansion. Despite the patrolling guards and night-duty servants, the girls encountered no one on their way out.
When they passed through the back garden and entered the birch forest, Lilieta finally sensed that something was wrong.
“Hanna, wait—you’re walking too fast…”
Twelve-year-old Hanna, healthy and strong, was about a hand’s breadth taller than frail ten-year-old Lilieta.
She was almost dragging Lilieta along by force—without looking back, without saying a word.
Feeling uneasy, Lilieta tried to stop instead of letting herself be pulled along. Hanna turned to look at her.
Her face was blank, like a doll’s.
“…Hanna?”
“Yes, miss?”
The girl replied with only the corners of her mouth lifted. Her eyes weren’t smiling at all. It was deeply unsettling. Terrified, Lilieta instinctively stepped backward.
“Where are you trying to go? The lake is this way.”
Hanna grabbed her hand tightly and yanked her forward. Lilieta struggled to pull free, dragging her feet in resistance.
“N-no, I don’t want to go.”
“Pardon?”
“I changed my mind. I’m sorry, Hanna. I just want to go back to sleep—”
“You can’t do that.”
The forced smile vanished. With a blank face, Hanna pulled Lilieta with an eerily strong grip.
“Come here.”
The tone and cadence were similar to what she’d heard in her nightmare. Panic-stricken, Lilieta screamed and tried to run.
“Kyaa—mmph!”
Hanna quickly covered her mouth. Wrapping her arms around Lilieta’s body, she restrained her struggling and muttered something rapidly in a strange voice.
“〈I desire…〉”
Lilieta couldn’t hear the words clearly. She was too frantic, thrashing wildly to escape Hanna’s grip.
Then her nightgown caught on a branch in the bushes. The sharp tip tore a long gash along her thigh, drawing blood and ripping the fabric. The bloodstained piece of nightgown remained snagged on the bush.
Then Hanna’s strange chanting stopped.
At the same moment, all strength drained from Lilieta’s body, and she went limp like a doll.
Hanna hoisted Lilieta onto her back, picked up the slippers that had fallen off during the struggle, and continued along the narrow path.
Unable to move a muscle, Lilieta stared blankly at the approaching lake.
There was no milk, no cookies, no blanket. No constellation book.
There was only an empty coffin.
Hanna laid the barefoot Lilieta inside it. Seeing the coffin’s interior, covered in grotesque patterns, Lilieta wanted to scream—but she couldn’t even move her lips.
The lid closed over her rigid body. Just before it shut completely, Lilieta saw Hanna looking down at her with a gloomy, bitter expression—one that didn’t belong on a child.
Then the lid closed, and complete darkness fell.
Lilieta felt the coffin being dragged. She heard the sound of water sloshing.
Don’t tell me she’s putting the coffin into the lake?
Was she going to die like this?
Overwhelming terror seized her entire body. She wanted to cry, to scream—at least to squeeze her eyes shut.
But Lilieta lay there like a doll, eyes half-open.
Whether fortunate or unfortunate, water didn’t seep into the coffin. How much time passed like that?
It felt like an eternity to Lilieta, but after what was actually only a short while, she saw a strange light flowing along the grotesque patterns carved into the coffin.
Then pain struck—like something piercing her mind. It hurt so badly she couldn’t think, and even her vision blurred.
She screamed soundlessly over and over…
And at some point, that scream became real—she heard it with her own ears.
Lilieta was screaming and writhing. Someone held her down with great strength, gripping her head with large hands.
Chaotic things flooded through her mind. After some time—she didn’t know how long—the pain suddenly vanished.
She opened her tear-filled eyes and saw a man wearing a hood.
He wiped away the tears pooling in her eyes and stood her in front of a large mirror. Reflected there was a girl with reddish-brown hair and freckles—someone who vaguely resembled Hanna.
Who…? Ah… is that me?
Had I always looked like this?
As she stared at the unfamiliar reflection, the man spoke.
“You are ‘Rita.’”
Rita didn’t question it. With her memories completely stripped away, her mind left blank, the man’s words carved themselves into her consciousness.
“You’re an orphan I took in. You have no parents or family.”
Rita stared up at him blankly. The man placed a hand on her head. She felt something filling the emptiness inside her.
“Now, you’ll vividly remember how hungry and miserable you were.”
Suddenly, vivid memories surfaced—digging through piles of trash from hunger, the horrific stench, the hand extended to her when she thought she would starve to death.
“If you become my child, I’ll make sure you never starve.”
She remembered taking that hand, following him, greedily devouring the piece of bread she was given, then lying in a strange coffin covered in bizarre drawings as instructed—and afterward, her head…
“No, no, not memories that detailed. You mustn’t become Dorothy. Even if your body belongs to the insignificant orphan Dorothy, your soul has special qualities… an exceptional case, but without a doubt unprecedented…”
The man’s words blurred, and her memories grew hazy again.
When she came to, Rita was gazing up at the man stroking her hair, without a single doubt in her mind.
“…Be grateful to me for taking you in.”
Grateful to the Archmage Pascal, who had taken her in when she was starving.
Lilieta opened her eyes.
The guest room, which had become familiar over the past few days. This time, she didn’t jump up in alarm or scan her surroundings.
She slowly sat up in bed and looked out the window. Some things had changed over ten years, but the view was still familiar.
A carefully tended garden, fences tangled with rose vines still full of buds, and beyond them, a birch forest filled with pale green new leaves.
She had grown up running around that garden.
Following the knight of flowers—or rather, the gardener—watching him work, asking the names of flowers and trees, fighting with Leonhardt, and dragging out a sulking Reinhardt from hiding.
They used to go on picnics along the narrow paths of that birch forest, holding Leonhardt’s and Reinhardt’s hands, or their mother’s and father’s.
Rita then turned her gaze to the matchbox placed on the desk. As she opened it and looked at the small card inside, she heard a knock on the door.
