SERIES: What Remains in the Damaged Place
CHAPTER: What Remains in the Damaged Place 2
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2
Lirette dreamt of the past, something she hadn’t done in a long time.
When was it?
It was a fragment of a past so distant it had faded completely.
It might have been when her father, the Marquis Blewitt, cast a gentle gaze upon her under the warm sun, or when her mother, the lady of the house, called her name in a soft voice.
How old had she been then?
She couldn’t remember exactly, but it was long before she came of age.
An age when she eagerly awaited her débutante and coming-of-age ceremony, an age of being a little innocent and a little cunning...
“...”
Lirette slowly opened her eyes.
An unfamiliar ceiling, covered in an oil painting, greeted her.
Recognizing that her body was in such a state that it was difficult to even swallow, she squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again. Her forehead was damp with sweat. As she raised her hand, she felt a sudden sense of wrongness.
Something was wrong with her hand.
Even when she tried to force her fingers apart, two of them were as stiff as if they had fused into a single clump.
“Ugh...”
Pushing herself up with her rigid hand on the sheet, Lirette’s dazed eyes searched the empty air.
Where am I now?
It was a place she had never seen before.
While she had been ailing, had Dailan, in one of his characteristic, unpredictable whims, completely redecorated the place?
But if that were the case, the gaudy aesthetic he usually favored was nowhere to be found. The room where she lay all alone was filled with furniture and fixtures in a color palette that was weighty yet not off-putting.
Lirette’s gaze, which had been wandering listlessly, soon came to a halt.
“...!”
Her pink eyes, which held a strange light as if they were scarred, widened as if seeing something unbelievable.
What had captured her attention was a large tapestry hanging on the wall.
Lirette rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. But what she was seeing remained unchanged.
Drawn with red dye on a dark brown background, it was the crest of the Justitia Ducal Family.
‘The Justitia Ducal Family? Why am I here...’
Without the composure to calmly assess the situation and rely on logic, she shot up from the bed.
“Ugh!”
She collapsed before she could even take a single proper step. It seemed there was a problem with her legs, just like with her hand that had stuck together as if from a congenital defect.
Lirette struggled to stand upright. She tried so desperately that the skin of her bitten lip broke, and the faint taste of blood spread across her tongue.
Still, her condition hadn’t completely deteriorated, as she managed to get her body upright and make her way to the door. When she pulled the handle, a long, open corridor appeared. The interior, which managed to keep the winter air at bay, was eerily silent.
Lirette cautiously descended the stairs, step by step, down and down.
‘This isn’t the Imperial Palace.’
She was certain after just a few steps.
This was not the place she had endured like a living hell. However, if this truly was the place shown in the tapestry—the same place she had once seen with her own eyes—then it was clear it, too, would become a hell no different from the Imperial Palace where Dailan resided.
She didn’t know why she had woken up here, or by what route she had come.
She knew only one thing.
She could not stay here.
Like the chilling silence that had assailed her the moment she opened the door, not a soul was in sight inside the building. Thanks to that, Lirette was able to exit the building without any interference since leaving the bedroom.
As her cautious, yet nimble, mouse-like steps finally reached the outdoors, Lirette was rooted to the spot by the sight that filled her eyes.
‘What in the world...’
It was a mansion reminiscent of a castle.
The grandeur and vastness it naturally exuded were vivid enough to intimidate anyone.
A body made primarily of stone, topped with a pointed spire roof. It was stark and cold. And so, it exuded an air of arrogance, as if it were looking down upon the world. The white snow resting on the blue-gray spires, in particular, contributed greatly to that impression.
This was no time to be standing around.
A sudden gust of cold wind brought Lirette to her senses, and she hurried to move. Weaving through the gaps between the buildings situated in all four directions, she saw a vast forest stretching out behind them.
Without a moment’s hesitation, she ran toward it.
“Ugh...!”
Unlike the inside of the estate, which was diligently maintained as a thoroughfare, the entrance to the forest was steeped in the chill of winter. The unmelted snow scraped savagely at the soles of her bare feet.
Contrary to its fluffy appearance, it was so cold it made her nerves seize up.
“Hah, haah...”
Before long, Lirette was out of breath and had to stop, clutching a tree.
Fleeing in her poor condition was so arduous she wanted to give up immediately. Her lungs tightened from the run, and her vision blurred and sharpened repeatedly, perhaps due to the returning fever.
But she couldn’t stop.
Not here.
Gritting her teeth, Lirette pushed off the tree trunk and managed to take a step.
“Ugh...!”
And immediately fell flat.
She had tripped on a tree root hidden beneath the pristine snow.
Her frail body was buried in the snow before she could do anything.
It felt as if her entire body was freezing over. She tried to get up again, but her will, like her fallen body, faded into a hazy blur.
When she slowly opened her eyes, she saw the sunlight filtering densely over the cold snowfield. The light, shining down from a great distance, was one of the things she had longed for so much while being held captive and tormented by Dailan.
‘Maybe it’s better to die here.’
Lirette had made a resolution.
That she would never die by Dailan’s side.
She had vowed that if the moment of her last breath ever came, she would not even leave her corpse for him.
Unable to follow her blood relatives to the grave, her life had stagnated in this world, and she had clung to it tenaciously with that one single resolve. It flickered, on the verge of extinguishing but never quite going out, and even now it made her fingers and toes twitch.
But all she could do was stir the bitterly cold snow.
Her vision, clouded with fever, blurred once more. There was no reason to hold on.
Lirette slowly closed her eyes, as if swallowing submission instead of resistance.
Bang-!
The sound of a gunshot cut through the air, shaking the tranquil forest.
Woof, woof!
The vigorous barking of a hunting dog supported it. A black creature, as if thrilled, dashed out onto the snowfield.
Feeling a sensation in his hand that was entirely unfamiliar, Valderion clenched and unclenched his fist a few times.
“Tsk.”
A blade-like wind blew fiercely, lashing his cheek. His black hair, which he usually wore slicked back without a single strand out of place for formal occasions, was down freely today and surrendered itself to the wind.
As he roughly swept his hair back, he spotted his hunting dog, Kamon, with its head buried in the ground, sniffing.
He dismounted and approached.
“...Hmm?”
A sound of puzzlement escaped him.
Kamon looked up at him, wagging its tail as if asking for praise. Valderion stroked its glossy head, then slowly bent his knees and crouched.
Before long, he gestured toward a certain spot.
He was summoning his guard, who had been following him hidden from view so as not to disturb his target practice while he released a few foxes into the forest.
When someone revealed their presence, Valderion nudged the head of the woman lying in the snow with the butt of his rifle.
“What is this doing here?”
He tilted his head.
His mind was already a complicated mess, which was why he had come out to the forest in the first place.
He had no way of knowing why the woman who had been sleeping soundly in the annex bedroom when he last saw her was now lying like a corpse in this snowfield.
But even without knowing how, he knew what he had to do.
“Pick her up.”
The knight, Tilin, obeyed the duke’s command without any fuss.
After roughly brushing the snow off her body, he lifted the small, curled-up woman. Kamon circled them, barking loudly. As he took a step, Tilin suddenly spoke.
“Your Grace, her body temperature is too low.”
Valderion clicked his tongue and looked at the woman in the knight’s arms.
He didn’t know how she had ended up sprawled in this forest, but judging by her pale, haggard appearance, she was clearly in very bad shape.
Valderion, his expression displeased, gestured to the knight.
“Give her to me.”
With a single command, the woman, radiating cold, tumbled into his broad arms.
The Name, which was regarded as a kind of disease, was said to be an illness cured by touch. He had willingly extended his hand to test if that was indeed true.
Walking toward his horse, Valderion gazed down at the woman in his arms.
Her deathly pale complexion, so severe she could have frozen to death, was gradually—at a rather slow pace, but definitely—regaining its color in his arms.
It was only a dozen or so steps to his horse.
Her condition had improved this much in that short distance.
“Ha.”
Valderion let out a dry laugh at the dumbfounding phenomenon.
While riding back toward the mansion, he noticed the woman was barefoot. Roughly calculating the distance from the annex to this part of the Alter Forest, he thought she was truly tenacious. And if that thought was right, his life ahead would be a path of considerable hardship.
Clip-clop.
As the horse galloped on, snowflakes that he thought had stopped began to fall again.
* * *
Did I have a terrible dream?
That was the thought that filled Lirette’s mind the moment she opened her eyes.
If not, how could she explain this situation, where the oil-painted ceiling she thought she had finally escaped was once again the first thing she saw upon waking?
Why?
Hadn’t she clearly escaped this place, buried herself in a snowy forest, and awaited the repose of death?
She wanted to believe she had died.
But everything reaching her through her five senses was too vivid to deny that this was reality.
Everything was the same as before she had fled.
The perfectly square table, the curving vase, the unlit golden candelabra.
Even the tapestry, proving this was the Justitia Ducal estate.
Catching her breath, Lirette hurried to get out of bed. But her ankle was caught unexpectedly.
Clank.
A strange sound came from her ankle, hidden by the blanket. Startled, she hastily threw the blanket aside. A gleaming shackle was fastened around her ankle.
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