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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 75
Chapter Title: Chapter 3 Return to Abli Village (2)
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“This time, suicide.”
“It seems so.”
“Sigh.”
The next morning, villagers who had been searching for the elder who disappeared overnight found his body at the bottom of a cliff.
Those who recovered the body and returned to the village couldn't hide their heavy hearts.
They couldn't understand at all why such incidents kept happening so suddenly in the village.
If they knew the reason, it would at least bring some peace, but since they didn't even know the cause, their frustration only grew.
“M-my goodness! Kashu, my friend!”
Just then, an elder who seemed to have been close with the deceased approached, gazing at the body with a look of utter despair.
“To… to go like this…”
As if even tears wouldn't flow, the elder collapsed in front of the body and muttered to himself in a low voice.
At the sight of the elder, those around him also felt their hearts grow heavier and bowed their heads.
“He seems to have been your friend.”
“……?”
At that moment, someone quietly approached the elder and spoke to him. It was Sei-an.
“…Who are you?”
The elder looked at Sei-an with a wary gaze at the appearance of a stranger.
“It seems best to move the body elsewhere first.”
Sei-an spoke to the elder, looking at the body on the ground. It seemed that this situation needed to be sorted out before asking anything.
At Sei-an's words, the villagers, who had been deep in sorrow, quickly collected the elder's body again and hurried to prepare for the funeral.
“…Are you travelers?”
A little later, the elder, watching the busy villagers weakly, spoke in a strained voice to Sei-an, who stood quietly beside him as if guarding him.
“No.”
“Hmm?”
“We came to find out about the deaths that have recently occurred in the village.”
At Sei-an's subsequent reply, the elder's expression quickly hardened.
“It’s just a simple death, no need to worry about it.”
As if he didn't want strange rumors to spread, the elder spoke firmly, then quickly walked past Sei-an, attempting to leave.
“Are you waiting for everyone in the village to die?”
“…What nonsense are you spouting!”
But the next moment, at Sei-an's voice, the elder couldn't help but stop in his tracks.
“If you don’t know the cause, you can’t find a solution.”
“……”
“Don’t you want to know what caused your friend’s death?”
As Sei-an's words continued, the elder's expression grew even more rigid.
“The next victim could be you, elder.”
“……!”
And at Sei-an's last words, the elder's eyes widened in surprise, then he looked at Sei-an with trembling eyes.
“You just need to tell me a few things.”
“…Sigh.”
Finally, the elder let out a long sigh and slowly approached him again.
***
“I don’t know about the others, but Kashu, that friend, started acting strange about half a month ago.”
After returning to the inn with Gelf, Sei-an and the others began to listen intently to his story.
“He strangely didn’t show up all day, so I went to his house and…”
Half a month ago, Kashu, who usually visited his house several times a day, strangely didn't show up at all that day.
When he asked others, they said they hadn't seen him that day, so thinking he might be sick somewhere, he rushed to his house.
“The moment I saw him at his house, I was startled.”
“What happened?”
“He was huddled in a corner of the bed, wrapped tightly in a blanket, as if terribly frightened by something.”
Gelf, who had hurried into the house thinking Kashu was very ill because there was no answer when he called, was startled to see Kashu trembling on the bed.
“When I asked him what was wrong…”
“When you asked?”
Kanto urged him to continue, but Gelf hesitated, unable to easily proceed with the story.
“Elder.”
“…Sigh.”
At Sei-an's call, Gelf let out another long sigh and slowly continued speaking.
“He said a dead person appeared.”
“What?”
“He mumbled that someone who died a long time ago had come to find him.”
Kashu trembled and kept mumbling incomprehensible things, saying that someone who had died a long time ago had come to punish him.
“Someone who died a long time ago…”
“……”
Gelf paused again, hesitating to speak about the deceased with an even more hardened expression than before.
“About twenty years ago…”
“What?”
“Twenty years ago?”
“It was someone who died around that time.”
‘Twenty years ago…’
Surely not?
At Gelf's continuing reply, Sei-an subtly turned his head to look at Jeron, wondering if it could be.
“…Royce.”
“……!”
“He kept saying that Royce, who died twenty years ago, kept appearing before his eyes.”
And the next moment, seeing Jeron's expression harden beyond measure at the name that came from Gelf's mouth, Sei-an let out a short sigh inwardly.
“Fa… father.”
It was the name of Jeron's father, who had been dragged by the villagers and buried alive twenty years ago.
***
“Jeron.”
“Hm? Oh, why are you out? Aren’t you sleeping?”
Late at night, when everyone was fast asleep, someone was sitting on an old chair outside the inn, staring blankly at the night scenery, unable to fall asleep. It was Jeron.
And the one who quietly approached him and spoke was Sei-an.
“You don’t seem to be able to sleep.”
“Right.”
He couldn't sleep. The name of his father, heard after so long, filled his mind with all sorts of thoughts, preventing him from resting.
Anger surged at the fact that the deceased was one of the villagers who killed his father back then, and he felt an inexplicable frustration when he heard that this person had taken his own life out of fear of his father, not by Jeron's hand.
“Do you want revenge again?”
“…Revenge, huh.”
Then, at Sei-an's quiet voice from beside him, Jeron turned his head and looked at him.
“I still have the poison.”
“Will you give it to me if I ask?”
“Of course.”
“Ha… haha!”
Jeron let out a small laugh at Sei-an's answer that he would return the poison if he wanted it. Then he sighed deeply, looking at the night sky again.
“Twenty years is a long time for humans.”
“…Indeed.”
“It’s enough time to forget any memory.”
“……”
“That person just now… when he spoke of your father, Jeron, his eyes trembled a lot.”
It had been twenty years. Jeron thought he was the only one who held onto the memory of that day.
He believed that all the villagers who were there at the time had long forgotten the death of his family and were living happily.
‘But was that not the case?’
There was someone who saw his father's apparition, trembled in fear, and took his own life, and there was someone who spoke his father's name with pain in his eyes.
‘That doesn’t mean they’re forgiven, though.’
That’s why his heart became even more complicated. It felt disgusting, too. He was angry at the mere fact that they felt guilty after killing someone.
But at the same time, the thought that they, too, might have suffered and lived with the memory of that day, just like him, made a long sigh escape him.
“Life is just that complicated.”
“…Heh! You talk like an old man who’s lived for decades.”
Then, at Sei-an's words from beside him, Jeron stopped his thoughts and chuckled again.
“Let’s go in and sleep.”
“You go first. I’ll get some fresh air before I go in.”
“…Just get it here. Don’t wander off unnecessarily and get lost.”
“Yes.”
A moment later, Jeron left a cautionary remark, then got up and headed to his room, while Sei-an remained seated, looking at the night sky and lost in thought, just as Jeron had been moments before.
“The appearance of the dead…”
Both the doll that Glomi feared and the elder's incident, where he seemed to have taken his own life after seeing the ghost of a dead person, were intriguing elements for Sei-an.
‘Has another puppeteer appeared?’
He suddenly wondered if another puppeteer, like himself, was deluding people.
“Hmm?”
But then, Sei-an, who had been looking up at the sky, quickly stood up. His gaze was still fixed on one point.
“That’s…”
A scene very familiar to Sei-an was unfolding in the sky not far from the inn.
‘A Soul Passage!’
The space that Grim Reapers called the Soul Passage, the dark space that appeared when guiding souls to Shainos, was spread across the sky.
“……”
A moment later, Sei-an began to run rapidly towards it.
