128 – 5. Witch Moon (4)
5. Witch’s Month – Old Dreams (4)
Leaving Grace alone, I headed for the kitchen as Celine grabbed and led me. It was much warmer than the hall, which relied on a single fireplace, where each fire was burning in the hearth to prepare dinner in advance. When Ms. Angela was gone for a moment, she let go of my hand and turned around.
“What are we going to do?”
“What?”
“Just that one! Just put her hand on her face.”
Celine shot at me, looking rather agitated. What is it? She just wanted to see the wound. As I looked at her with a guilty look, she put her hand on her waist in a spirited manner, trying to decide what to say, but then she barely cried out.
“That’s rude! An extramarital man, a commoner!”
I made an absurd expression. That’s the only excuse I could think of. Of course, I know why she reacts this way. I put my thoughts into Celine’s mouth to reassure her.
“I know what you’re thinking…… The two of us are not like that.”
“We…… !?”
“So, Mira is different. In other words, it could be seen as a similar relationship to Alphonse. Don’t you know what it feels like?”
Of course, before leaving the capital, her adoptive father threatened to kill her, but now that I think about it, I wonder if it was an old man’s own joke. There will be old age. Isn’t there a lot of cases where a paladin lives alone for the rest of his life, and if you look at it closely, he’s not that different from a nun, so he stabbed a man close to him for no reason.
“…… Ha.”
Did you know my sincerity? Celine didn’t say much, but she looked up at me suspiciously. And she asks if she’s embarrassed for nothing.
“That, Grace…… Does that knight think the same? I don’t think so?”
“No. Didn’t you, Alicia, say the same thing with the lord?”
“Um… ….”
When I gave a similar example as an example, she slightly softened her pouting eyes as if she had barely understood. And she muttered, as if she had come to her own conclusions.
“Yeah, well, it’s a priest.”
“That’s right.”
“And…… She actually called to say this.”
“Huh?”
A little nervous, Celine asked me with a serious expression.
“As expected, didn’t something happen in the capital?”
When she asked, I shut her mouth. It was because I was worried that I might reflexively say something useless.
The fact that I died while fighting her demon is a secret not only from her but also from her inn family. Angela and Cooper may be worried, but I don’t know how to convince them. Because adventurers understand that their lives are always facing death. However, Celine is different. If they find out, there’s a good chance she’ll find out eventually, even if I ask.
This little lady in front of you is not an adventurer, nor is she an extraordinary person with an extraordinary secret. Her appearance is extraordinary, but she is just an ordinary person who has grown up helping inn workers since she was a child. She is a person who has absolutely nothing to do with evil gods, demons, or monsters. She never had and never had to be involved in such a thing and she should not be involved.
So to speak, it’s all because of my selfishness. As my psychological final boundary, my selfishness to maintain my own mental sanctuary that has nothing to do with my ‘non-daily life’. If you truly care for her, it would be right for her to tell you every story involving me, even if it takes her time. But…… I don’t like it though.
I hate to see you cry.
I hate it when you worry. It’s just that I always keep my mouth shut.
Because of that, even though you’ve grown up, the relationship between the two of us is still the same.
The same goes for witches. Except for the letter, Mirana Grace knows about my past by hearing it directly from me. Maybe someday I’ll be able to tell Alphonse and the Geralds. But I can never tell only to Celine. Because she didn’t know my darkness as much as she did.
“…… Yes, I understand.”
Seeing my determined expression, she seemed to understand that I had no intention of saying anything, and she walked right past me and out through her back door. The cold wind is blowing not only because the door is open. In the end, instead of alleviating the mood, it only made it worse.
I returned to the room that way. I opened the magic book, but my hand didn’t go over, so I covered it and lay down on it again. Again
※
After being left alone for a while, I finally left the room. The reason it took time was to find out how the carpet or something held my feet, but again there was no Velcro structure there.
After leaving the gothic-style room, a similar corridor unfolded again. Where did she go? I checked that the door to every room I could see was unlocked and looked inside, but there was no place where I could feel the presence of people.
After passing through the corridor like that, an open space was revealed. It was only then that I realized that this joking place was a large mansion. It means mansion, mansion. Not a multi-family house or a villa, or a cultural property that has been moved to the sky due to lack of space, but a real mansion. A very inefficient structure that no one follows now.
I shook my head vigorously, thinking of her words that this is not the world I live in. There’s no way I could draw it, what did I do that I had to go through a dimension shift? I ran to the middle of the lobby on the first floor, feeling a chill, and when I tried my hand at the large gate that seemed to have a story, it was unlocked as expected.
Is it a trap? But it didn’t look like the person who kidnapped me for a purpose in the first place. As if I’m saying something, that look that just doesn’t interest me. You acted like you wouldn’t mind if I left.
But then why did you bring me here in the first place? No, was the two-day long death I felt really just an illusion? If that’s true, how long has it been? I still look down at my normal body with no problems…… Eventually, I opened the door and went outside.
According to her words, there was a high possibility that a place where such a large mansion could be located was naturally densely populated. Especially if the cultural level of this world is the Middle Ages I know. At least it was the house of a lord, or that of a very successful merchant. She didn’t look either way, but it was clear that she at least had a quality I didn’t get from people in my world.
However, I broke my expectations again…… What appeared was just a forest. The banquet of trees spread out right in front of the house ten meters radius. I walked out on the grass. I looked at the conifers that grew much taller than I was. And I looked back.
When viewed from the front, the mansion is even grander. Even considering the excessively pointed tip and dark color tone, it must have astronomical value. In order to build a mansion like this, it is normal if there are construction roads in the front and back. However, the grass did not seem to have been planted overnight, and these dense trees were also not something that could be created in just a few months. Especially if you don’t use rapid growth drugs.
There is only one conclusion. It turns out that this mansion has been built for an incredibly long time. From then on, I gradually felt that it was at odds with the common sense I knew.
So, really? I started running towards the forest as if throwing away a question that had arisen in my heart. Where are you? Was there ever such a large forest in the country? At least as far as I know, with a green area of this size, there must be more than one or two experiments that can be done. It is not even the size that an individual can secretly hide and possess. I shook off all the trees that appeared and went straight ahead…… About 30 minutes passed.
From then on, I had the feeling that not only this forest where I was standing, but also that what she had been saying might not be a lie. Out of breath, I calmly moved forward this time, marking the trees one by one so I wouldn’t get lost…… For some reason, the unknown smell made my mind go crazy, as if it were interfering with the perception in my brain, and in the end, I had no choice but to return to the place where I decided to start after two hours.
I was able to grasp the time thanks to the faintly changing angle of the shadow. Only then did I lose all will to resist and decided to return to the mansion. If I kept wandering in a forest that didn’t produce a single fruit, I would end up consuming both my life span and spirit. Even if it was a woman’s goal, there was no other choice.
A forest? As I trudged along, I remembered what had happened before I fell from the sky. Just the rest of the tired of everything walking under the dazzling lights. The manhole, which was placed without a sign saying it was under construction, I was sure to pass by, but somehow I got sucked into it.
She called it a ‘well’. That there is no way to go back. If there is a way, should I go back? I thought of the academy where I wasted half of my life and the countless people who always surrounded me…… For some reason, he frowned at her.
If there is a chance to go back, is it right for me to go back? To that stuffy world full of thoughts of taking advantage of me, to a stuffy classroom where you can’t feel any emotions other than envy and jealousy. There were definitely a few things I missed, but…… Walking through a big forest that I hadn’t experienced in my entire life, even those things made me feel like an idiot.
In the end, after contemplation, I had no choice but to return to the mansion with a tattered appearance. And that only took about 10 minutes. When I ran aimlessly, saying ‘let’s get out of here’, I spent almost 30 minutes, and when I promised ‘let’s memorize geography and get out’, I made him spend two hours, but when I said ‘let’s go back’ without thinking, I could return to the mansion many times faster than that. There was.
Speed that makes no sense both mathematically and geographically. However, I already knew that it was pointless to go through all these things one by one. It was necessary to reset all my thinking on the assumption that everything she said was true, or at least it was true that I was in another world.
I pushed open the mansion door, which was also unlocked, with my exhausted arm. It was firmly locked at the point of escaping once, and I was worried about what to do if I was barred from the door, but fortunately that did not happen. But…… After waking up, I was hungry like crazy, probably because I had exhausted my energy without drinking a sip of water.
If this is a place that maintains the style of civilization from the Middle Ages, or maybe even modern times, at least the space for the dining room or kitchen is clearly separated in the corner. With that calculation, I first headed towards the opposite side of the hallway from which I had walked. I didn’t even pay attention to the rooms that looked small at first glance, and I looked for a large room that could have a large dining table or chandelier.
And this time, as I expected, a space that looked like a restaurant appeared. However…….
“What is all this?”
I muttered involuntarily. There is only a large table with a torn tablecloth and only one chair with traces of use. The skulls of various animals of unknown meaning were strewn about the floor. The atmosphere of the restaurant was so unpleasant and empty that I couldn’t even think of it as a place to eat.
Where all the other chairs had gone, I walked in front of the only chair placed. There was a rectangular pressure mark on the spot, that is, on the tablecloth. I know it’s not the place where I put the plate. I sighed and looked for a passageway leading to another space.
Anyway, since the restaurant exists, it must mean that there is also a separate kitchen where food is prepared. It is a place where there is a water supply and an oven and where food is stored. I didn’t want to stay in that nasty space full of animal skulls for any length of time, but I managed to hold on to my stomach and find an aisle.
And as I expected, given the size of the restaurant, the kitchen, which could have been used by several people…… There were only a few candles and the like, but there was no sign of being used at all. It would be better if there was even a piece of meat dripping with blood, but all there was was a bottle of alcohol.
Is there room for other meals that I don’t know about? I thought, but it was hard to think of creating a separate place like this in a mansion of this style. Of course, I might be obsessed with preconceived notions as much as it is a different world. Anyway, just in case, by the time I left the kitchen with a bottle of alcohol…… ‘She’ was standing in front of the aisle without a sign.
“Surprised!! What, what.”
“…… That’s mine.”
In silence, she pointed to the bottle I was carrying around my side. Anyway, since alcohol has calories and alcohol, I thought it would be useful for cooking and disinfection, so I brought it. Is this yours? Then all those 50 bottles of alcohol?
“…… Ah, yes.”
But since she had nothing against her, I politely put her bottle back on her shelf. She stares at me as she crosses her arms and pushes up her chest. What a violent sight. For a 16-year-old, this is too much of an ordeal.
“What are you going to do with it?”
“Yes? Ah…… Well, if you allow it, I thought I would try to find some food and cook for you.”
“With alcohol?”
“Yes? Yes.”
It’s a lie. I had no intention of getting permission or anything like that. You have to see it once you live. Of course, it failed because there were no ingredients in what looked like a kitchen. Where the hell do you live and what do you eat?
“…… How?”
However, contrary to my calm reaction, she suddenly made an expression as if her eyes were slightly widened and came closer to me. A woman about the same height as me, including her heels. However, the pressure felt from her blindfolded eyes was on a different level than that of the armed instructors at her academy. What is the identity?
“I, uh, I tried, but there’s nothing to eat here.”
“Something to eat? …… Meat?”
“Yes? Well, the same goes for meat. Flour or…….”
The moment I murmured so arbitrarily. She turned her gaze to the empty table for an instant, and then I witnessed an unbelievable sight.
Because the corpse of the lamb, which seemed to have already stopped breathing, was lying there. Something I didn’t see when I looked around for a while. Only then did I turn around her creaking neck and barely face her.
Only then, I was convinced.
This woman.
God…….
“… ….”
It seems like an existence similar to
, But it was staring back and forth at the bottle and the corpse of the lamb, giving me notice. No, what can I do with just that? I pretended to mince her meat, but she just tilted her head slightly and stared at me.
I had a hunch that my daily life with her would not be smooth from now on. Of course, if you can get your hands on something called everyday.