Chapter 44
“Oh, that was for bad luck….”
“Bad luck?”
“Yes.”
“Did Abel buy flowers too?”
“No. He helped me return the flowers to their places.”
“And what does that have to do with bad luck?”
“…….”
He was right. What did helping someone return flowers to their original places have to do with bad luck? The problem, if there was one, lay in his methods.
The path to return the flowers to the dead had been long and arduous. It was made all the more difficult because she had been accompanied by a snarling wolf.
The cemetery they reached was bleak and damp. The graves were packed so tightly together that she wondered how they could have been buried in such proximity.
She bought flowers to replace the missing ones and laid them out one by one, clearing away fallen leaves as best she could. She had been placing flowers for a while when Abel approached her. He snatched an armful of flowers from her as if seizing loot.
The problem was what he did next.
“Did he throw the flowers onto the headstones?”
Perhaps growing impatient, Oscar spoke again before he even received an answer.
Seo-ah, who had been struggling with how to soften the description of his actions, widened her eyes.
“Or did he throw them and then trample them?”
“No.”
“Then?”
“He used his foot to clear the leaves off the headstones….”
“And why is that a problem?”
Why was that a problem?
“I thought if I were a ghost, I might haunt him….”
A low chuckle wrapped around her timid voice.
Seo-ah desperately fought the urge to look up.
In the study dappled with golden light, the low laughter of the man leaning against the doorframe seemed to fill her emptying mind and body. As she squeezed her clasped hands tighter, he unfolded his arms and ran a hand through his hair. His laughter, dry and cold as a winter wind, subsided.
“So, what does that have to do with salt?”
“…They say salt purifies spirits.”
“It didn’t look much like that to me.”
She wanted to hide.
“Back home, we’d take a handful of salt from a jar and scatter it. It was a bit awkward because it was my first time using a grinder, but salt is still salt….”
Oscar laughed again, and Seo-ah once more could not finish her sentence.
Yes, it must look strange. Still, it was better to endure laughter than to be scolded.
Once this laughter faded, she would go back to her room.
She stood still, enduring the wind swirling around her, when he suddenly moved. He only took a few steps closer to where she stood, yet she felt as if an invisible wave were pushing against her body.
“You asked me how much five hundred million Kerete a week was, yet you only spend that much in a day? I heard you only spent a few tens of thousands.”
“…….”
“Did you buy that as well?”
“…Pardon?”
When she asked back a beat late, Oscar answered leisurely.
“Because I haven’t seen you dressed like that before.”
“…….”
Dressed like that…?
Reflexively, her gaze dropped to inspect her appearance.
In that moment, time seemed to stretch like taffy.
She saw her brown hair falling loose to her waist, the hem of her thin white nightgown, and her bare feet in slippers.
The stretching sense of time snapped abruptly.
“I, uh, that is….”
As heat surged through her as if she’d been doused in fire, her words became tangled.
With her mind knotted like a mess of thread, the foreign language she had studied vanished into blackness. ‘I’m sorry, excuse me, good night.’ She couldn’t for the life of her remember how to say those things in the Norfolk common tongue.
Cold sweat broke out like water, and her head spun as if the ground were falling away beneath her feet.
What should she do?
She had made a spectacle of herself in front of everyone in the house, and as if that weren’t enough, she was wandering around the space he used at night in such a state.
If he found this mysterious guest to be a nuisance… she wondered if he might tell her to go somewhere out of sight.
Anxieties that Oscar would have laughed at if he knew continued to swell inside Seo-ah.
And Oscar stood there, quietly watching her.
His deep blue eyes remained fixed, without the slightest deviation, on the woman’s face as it turned a deep crimson.
Seeing her look so utterly flustered brought that day to mind again.
Why be so embarrassed over this?
The day I first saw you, I saw far more than this.
He toyed with the mischievous question of what kind of face she would make if he told her that, but he was beginning to grow bored of her standing there frozen as if she’d lost her mind.
Oscar jerked his chin toward the door behind him.
“Go on.”
Just as he thought he saw moisture welling in those wide brown eyes, her head bowed. Then, like someone who had been waiting for those very words, she moved as if fleeing.
A small breeze rose as the woman brushed past him.
In that draft, which held a temperature just around body heat, was a scent that was difficult to define with a single word. It wasn’t perfume, nor was it the smell of soap. It was a fragrance that could perhaps be described as greenery or lush foliage.
Oscar’s gaze followed the scent carried by the breeze. As the afterimage of the woman who had fled disappeared around the corner, the clear scent wavered in the air before subsiding.
“…….”
It was strange.
That scent should have faded.
It wasn’t a perfume so pungent it made his head swim, nor was it the smell of tobacco that lodged in his lungs and hit his nose with every breath; yet he kept sensing that faint fragrance, so subtle he wasn’t even sure if it were real.
That scent, like formless moonlight, brought back the secret face of the woman he had watched hiding in the moon’s shadow, and then… it called to mind the white nightgown that was almost translucent, and her small, white feet that matched it.
The rounded line of her shoulders harmonized strangely with her sharply defined collarbones, and with the soft swell beneath them. Her pleated hem was like a coastline viewed from afar, and her slender legs showed beneath it. Her ankles, surely no more than a handful, looked delicate, and her protruding ankle bones seemed tinged with pink.
Formless but real moonlight. If one were to mold that into a person….
The thread of his thoughts snapped.
A sharp crack appeared in Oscar’s face, which had been shrouded in darkness. A silent, mocking laugh twisted the corners of his lips fiercely.
Oscar took a deep breath and ran a hand through his hair.
He should have just drowned this tedious night in alcohol; why was he standing here wondering about this, clinging to an afterimage that had already vanished….
Ah, was it sexual frustration?
Was that it?
Even a self-deprecating curse felt like a waste of breath.
Shaking his head low, he turned around, his blue eyes sinking deeper than an underground mine shaft.
He craved a cigarette, one acrid enough to choke him.
As Marquis von Reinhardt disappeared toward his bedroom with long strides, a long, dark shadow wavered behind him.
Seo-ah ducked into her room as if escaping and shut the door. Then, like prey hiding from a predator, she stood frozen in place, unable to even breathe.
No image caught by her retinas felt meaningful. All her nerves were tracing the shadow behind her back.
Even though the heavy presence beyond the door had vanished, she couldn’t move her feet. She huddled in front of the door for a long time before crawling toward the bed. She knew she should eat the food out of respect for Mrs. Barbara’s kindness, but she couldn’t bring herself to touch it.
By habit, she lay flat and pulled the duvet up to her chest, then pulled it all the way to her neck, feeling it wasn’t enough. Perhaps because the duvet was light, her heart felt strangely adrift. So she curled onto her side like a parboiled shrimp. It was slightly better than lying flat, but after a moment, it still felt insufficient.
She stroked her chest with her palm and pressed down, and for some reason, it felt a bit more grounded. But the strength of her hand wasn’t enough. So she flipped onto her stomach. She lay face down and pulled the duvet over the back of her neck.
She hid her body completely, leaving only her eyes peeking out as she steadied her breathing.
She wished she could just fall asleep as if passing out. She wanted to escape into sleep, but cruelly, a low, cool laugh echoed in her ears.
“Because I haven’t seen you dressed like that before?”
As the laughter laced in that deep, deep voice came to mind, her body curled up instinctively.
She had waited for his return and felt relieved when he did. Yet he was a person she did not want to face.
The person she wanted to keep at just the distance she had maintained while watching from behind the train window.
One day she would have to confess her sins to him, and the mere thought of that day already made her feel suffocated.
Seo-ah squeezed her eyes shut and buried her face in the bed.
How wonderful would it be if she could undo this entire day?
No, if there were a god who could turn back time, she wanted to ask them to return her to the time before she was born. If she could be used for that purpose, if this useless body and soul could be used, she felt she could gather every last tiny fragment of herself and offer it up.
It was difficult. How could taking a single step be this hard?
Life had never been easy for a single moment, but life in this strange world made even drawing a single breath feel like a struggle.
Ultimately, the night turned white as she stayed awake.
To one for whom every waking moment was difficult, the comfort of closed eyes was a desperate need. She tried to drag back the sleep that had fled far away, but even with her eyes closed, everything was a bleached void. No matter how hard she covered her ears, that low, cool laughter drummed against her eardrums. It felt as if it weren’t coming from outside, but from within.
