Chapter 149 – Volume 30 – Inner Marchen (4)
“How… Carly, are you awake?”
“Yes…”
The last day of vacation.
I woke up feeling Rosaria hugging me in bed.
Now, seeing her swollen up to the point of full term, and struggling to lie on her side.
I slowly hugged her from behind and gently stroked her belly.
“I don’t know if my baby slept well.”
“It looks like you’re just kicking it?”
“Really? Where? This way?”
“Uh, there.”
It really seems like a very small vibration is being transmitted.
I never thought that this day would come to me.
It’s really weird when things like this happen.
“Did you submit your work yesterday without any problems?”
“Uh, I checked everything. I thought I could start selling it as soon as possible because I produced the manga sequentially.”
“After I finished the card, I didn’t go to sleep every day and drew manga, and I really finished it before I went back to the academy.”
“Because I was working on it a little bit ahead of time.”
The scenes that were sure to come out were drawn in advance.
Anyway, I feel refreshed after finishing the work I’ve been working on all vacation.
For a while now, I thought I should focus on caring for Rosaria, who is about to give birth, instead of doing art work.
“Did you say there was a competition?”
“Yeah, I coordinated the schedule with the academy because of that.”
We decided to make it so that our academy students could participate in the competition without any problems if they wanted to.
Honestly, most of the Ministry of Magic are fans of my work, so it’s going to be a mess.
If the kids are going to miss the lecture anyway, he decided that it would be better to make a schedule on purpose, so he OK’d it.
“Would it be a foul if I left?”
“You’re cheating and take good care of yourself. I’m on the verge of becoming a mother, so I have to be careful.”
“Hi-Hi…”
I slowly stroked Rosaria’s big belly, who was laughing so hard.
I am looking forward to our condolences, the lectures of the new semester, and the reaction of my work.
It was a morning full of expectations.
『In a world where erotic comics are legal』
“Five outlines…?”
“Yes, the work that came out this time is composed like that.”
The woman asked again, wondering if she had heard it wrong, but the answer was the same.
So, does this new work mean that 5 works of the same series were released at the same time?
In fact, upon hearing that there were five separate works with different covers, the woman could not hide her absurdity.
“Are you buying everything?”
“Yes Yes…”
Although it was a situation where the expenditure was much larger than expected.
Rather, she was grateful that she had many cartoons to watch.
However, I wondered why they started selling these five comics at the same time.
It should have just been published right away.
“Thank you.”
Anyway, it was true that I was happy that I had more things to enjoy right now.
She went back to her house, feeling quite happy, waving her heavy hands.
With this weight, I thought maybe I could enjoy it while watching the cartoon repeatedly for a while.
“What is this?”
But when she came to her house and opened the book, she couldn’t help but be very embarrassed.
Of course, there was quite a bit of thickness, so I thought it was about a normal book for each piece.
Surprisingly, each book was thick enough to be considered very thin.
Instead, each book had a paper box with a pretty design attached to it.
When I opened it, cards with oddly designed pictures spilled out.
She tilts her head at her first visual, remembering that in cases like this, reading the manga often solves the problem.
For now, I left the box alone and started reading the manga.
“A girl selling matches?”
Under that heading, there was something similar to a subtitle called ‘The Story of Hope’.
First of all, I can understand that there is a girl praying in the picture.
It wasn’t easy to figure out what the intention was in it.
“It is still difficult to predict the work here…”
After reading the entire work, that must be the scene that penetrates the work more than anything else.
I think each of these elements is the part that makes Siwoo’s work interesting.
She let out a small laugh and flipped the cover of the book.
“Huh? It starts with a poor commoner’s house.”
Come to think of it, there weren’t too many cases where settings other than different races or aristocrats appeared in Siwoo’s works.
She felt that it was a little strange that such a character was the main character.
However, the clothes were a little dirty, and there were so many places where life looked uncomfortable.
Still, the character’s shiny appearance was the same, so she read her work without much thought.
“Oh, you’re trying to make money because you don’t have money.”
This was something I heard from time to time, even if it wasn’t commoners.
Isn’t life originally hard to live without money?
The reason why I was able to coolly buy 5 of these books right away was because of the salary I usually earn.
In a way, if that main character, ‘Yuri’, was herself, she wouldn’t have seen Shiwoo’s cartoons because she didn’t have money.
She had a terrifying vision, and shook her head in disgust.
Anyway, as much as she is earning her money too, she seemed so virtuous as to be her glass trying to find something she could and earn money to support her family.
In general, the image of the poor is that they are lazy as much as they have no money.
In fact, there are many cases where it happened because of bad luck.
That’s how she reads her work with her usual level of empathy.
While reading her work, I realized that she had a very strange part.
Strangely, the people in the work did not use ‘force’.
“What is it? In general, nobles who bully commoners like that should use force as they please?”
Although such an act is prohibited by law, there is no way that commoners can accuse it of it.
There are many aristocrats who secretly persecute the commoners and fill their own pleasure.
And even though Yuri’s family was in such a situation, there was no scene of threatening or threatening with severe force.
Instead, he only showed a mocking look while holding something similar to a strange card.
“That card, somehow, looks similar to the one in the box earlier.”
And simply because there was a story about what it was.
Belatedly, she too learned what that card meant.
It’s a world where the act of awakening takes place, like pulling out those cards from one’s mind, just like children awakening as incarnations in the Incarnation series.
Through it, all disputes and quarrels can be resolved only by performing an act called ‘Marchen Battle’.
The guys who bullied Yuri like that are said to be attending a banquet called ‘Walpurnigis Night’.
It was about a tournament where they could compete in the Empire’s largest scale Merchen Battle and receive huge prizes.
In fact, the honor contained in winning the competition is greater than the prize.
By saying that he was aiming for the championship by participating in it, he was proud of his strength.
“Wow…!”
And Yuri has her awakening that night, as she is immersed in an incredibly dreamy world.
However, what was shown in the process was to explain a certain ‘story’ of Yuri as if it were conveyed in words.
Perhaps this is the content of the card called ‘Merhen’ that has been appearing over and over again.
“The name of this story is the girl selling matches.”
A little girl living in a poor family finds her job to support all of her family.
Then, by chance, she gets assigned to an old woman selling her matches, and starts working.
Apparently, few people bought matches on that cold night.
“…It’s going to be cold.”
She would have tried to wear whatever she could, but there was no way a poor girl would have one.
She is a girl who is much colder than the others, and she is eventually driven to the brink of freezing to death.
And since the only means to warm her body is a match, the girl lights a match.
“Wow…!”
Then, the warm fire or food that the girl wanted came out of the match.
Let such magical hope flow from the match.
She uses matches to spend a very happy and warm night.
And word of mouth spread from those who saw it.
Magic matches are sold for very, very high prices.
The girl who had made her rich by selling her match went to find her grandmother who had given her the match.
It is a story that her grandmother’s store had disappeared.
“Wow…”
And Yuri holds the deck she received through that awakening.
By chance, he succeeds in participating in the Walpurnigis Night.
In that tournament, she begins to face her formidable opponents.
At first, Yuri barely managed to win through chance and faith.
Gradually, through his growing power, he grows some of the cards in his deck into rare cards.
With the power that has been strengthened through that rare card, the powerful people of the tournament will be defeated one by one.
“Marchen…!”
Before she knew it, she was concentrating on her work, shouting “Merchen” At every timing of the ‘Merchen Declaration’.
While cheering Yuri hard, she was consumed by the pleasure of the act of ‘Merchen Battle’.
In particular, when Yuri was gradually driven into danger, the pleasure of resolving it as if she had expected it was definitely unbearable pleasure.
“Wow…”
And besides those victory and defeat elements, there were many elements that made me yearn for battles.
The aristocrat who bullied Yuri in the beginning also became friends while fighting together, sincerely apologized and became friends.
It was because they were able to share their thoughts and share their thoughts through the battle.
What made it possible was that each person’s different Marchen was a story that was no different from representing that person’s personality.
That’s why telling her story was telling her own story.
Naturally, the battle became an act that was no different from an honest conversation.
By finally winning the contest, the short manga ends with a happy ending in which Yuri takes her wealth and honor.
After closing the book, she began looking at the cards in the box with a very moved expression.
