City ​​of Witches 346

Chapter 346 – #75_Pride And Prejudice(5)

#344

1.
“Are you feeling very unwell?”
“No, Mom. I’m really okay. I’m just going to lie down and rest a little more….”
“Are you sure it’s okay for Mom to go to work? Should I stay with my daughter today?”
“No, I want to be alone….”
“Oh, alright…. I’ll buy you something delicious for dinner tonight, so cheer up. I love you, my daughter.”
“Yes, me too.”

-Click

As Count Yesod left for work and the door closed, Diana buried her face in the pillow again.
For two days now, she had been agonizing and agonizing over her troubles.
This was because she had witnessed an absurd sight before her eyes, and as a result, one of the beliefs she had held dear had been shattered.

“It can’t be… how could they do such a thing….”

Recalling the outrageous actions of the twins, Diana bit her lip in mental shock and immense confusion.
Their lips had definitely touched.
The man and the apprentice witch had kissed.
Yet, the twins’ vessel was intact.

“Ugh…bleh….”

Diana felt nauseous as she recalled the scene again.
It was unclean.
It was unpleasant.
An inexplicable sense of revulsion swept through her chest, as if she had seen a lion devour a gazelle.

“But I can’t just stay like this….”

Diana got up.
She brushed her tangled hair and got dressed.

It had already been a full two days since she had secluded herself.

Something was wrong with this world.
Diana felt it.

So, there were two options.
To settle for the happy lie she already knew.
Or to face the truth, even if it was terrible and cruel.

Diana was an apprentice witch of the Yesod family.
She had pride in that.
Pretending not to know was the choice of an ordinary person.
A witch who explored the path of magic and pioneered the unknown must make a different choice from an ordinary person.

The gap between ideal and reality.
To explore that distortion, Diana strode out of the house.

2.
The first to be selected for investigation were the employees residing in the family.
As an aside, there were no male employees in the Count Yesod’s household.
Therefore, it was much easier for Diana to investigate this embarrassing topic.

“Good afternoon.”

Two maids, who were chattering in the mansion hallway with laundry in their arms, bowed their heads hastily as soon as they saw Diana.

“D, Diana, Miss.”
“Hello. W, we were just about to go to work….”

It was rarer than one could imagine for a regular employee to meet Diana.
First of all, Diana rarely went outside the mansion beyond her room’s threshold, and she spent most of her time in the water pool directly connected to her room.
Also, since she had spent most of her time with Count Yesod since childhood, it was even more difficult to run into her and have a conversation.

Perhaps that was why the maids were stiff as a board at the sight of Diana suddenly talking to them.

“There’s one thing I want to ask you.”
“Yes!”
“Please ask us anything!”

To the maids, who stood upright like new recruits, Diana asked what she had been wondering about since earlier.

“Please don’t take this the wrong way. And promise me you won’t tell anyone. It’s purely academic curiosity.”

For an apprentice witch receiving all sorts of high-level education to ask a maid about academic curiosity….
It was a very strange thing to say, but the maids nodded their heads for now.

“Yes!”
“We will never reveal the secret.”

Diana hesitated for a moment.
She knew that this was not a normal question.
It was quite embarrassing and shameful.

“Ahem, do you know how babies are made?”
“…….”
“…….”

As soon as Diana’s question was heard, the maids’ expressions stiffened.
They looked at each other and began to sweat profusely.

“Ah, w, we… we have to go to work right now….”
“We’re sorry, we’ll be going now….”
“Ah….”

And then, they disappeared with very quick steps.
It was as if they had been asked about a forbidden magic, and Diana’s eyes widened.

She had asked after much deliberation.
Was it such a question that she couldn’t ask?

Well, it might have been an unchaste question for a count’s daughter to utter.
But seeing them flee in fear as if it were a major disaster, it was strange to think that it was simply due to repulsion.
Because the reaction the maids showed was clearly ‘fear.’

“…….”

And that reaction rather piqued Diana’s curiosity.
It is human nature to want to do more of what is forbidden.
Having overcome even laziness and strengthened her will, Diana continued her investigation.

However, the maid who was washing laundry at the laundry area.
The cook who was making dinner in the kitchen.
The employee who was making flower arrangements to decorate the mansion.
They all had the same reaction.

As if they had heard something they shouldn’t have.
They were all quick to avoid the situation, their faces pale as if a gag order had been placed on Diana’s question.
At that point, Diana was certain.
This was not simply a phenomenon that occurred because Diana’s question was strange.

“Did Mom…?”

The intuition that the count had directly intervened flashed through her mind.

She didn’t know why.
Judging from the way the employee had abandoned even the flower arrangement she was making and ran away, it was clear that the reaction would be similar even if she asked other people.

“Then it’s the library.”

Originally, books contained all sorts of knowledge passed down from the past.
Diana strode confidently toward the library inside the mansion.

3.
The scale of the library in the Yesod family was larger than that of an average bookstore.
Each and every book on the three-story bookshelves was an academic book about magic.
Unless a magical indexing system like a ‘secret library’ was established, finding the information Diana wanted in this place would be like finding a needle in a haystack.

But there was already a clue.

‘And who said that your vessel would be damaged by kissing on the lips?’
‘If it’s that much, you have to have sex. Sex.’

It was the twins’ statement.
The ‘truth that Diana had been mistaken about’ was that a baby could be born if lips touched, that is, if they kissed.
Then, the twins’ rebuttal, which pointed this out, naturally contained the ‘real truth.’
In other words, the keyword was set.

“Sex… sex… sex…. sex….”

Diana, who had climbed up the ladder, began to look for books with the title ‘sex’ from the top shelf.
Diana, who usually picked out a book she liked from below, was impressed when she looked at the books in the library.
There were books written by the past Yesods on the theory of reverse fields, as well as collections of various unpublished thesis reviews.
There were even rare hardcover books that had translated ancient documents written in already lost characters.
But no matter how much she looked, there were no books that seemed to be written about the relationship between men and women.

“It’s strange….”

It was suspicious.
Of course, men could not bear a mark.
They could not even possess magical power by birth.
It was natural since they did not have a uterus.

However, they were not beings that could be completely separated from magic.
As members who clearly occupied half of the world, it was only right that research data on them existed.
Otherwise, witches would not have used men as test subjects.

But there was not a single item related to men and magic on this bookshelf.
In other words, it was reasonable to think that only very strictly censored books were allowed in…

By whom?
It goes without saying.
It was Count Yesod, her mother and teacher, whom Diana believed in and loved so much.

“Why… Mom….”

Diana frowned.
But even in the midst of that, the clever Diana was deciding what she had to do.
If her meticulous mother had led the censorship and controlled the information, Diana would not be able to find the book she wanted in this library.

But there was another way.
Her mother was currently out on business in the present world.
Her mother’s room had a separate private library.

She wouldn’t have thrown away or sold all the books, so if she searched there, she would find something.
Diana got off the ladder and headed to her mother’s library.

4.
If the library in the center of the mansion was the size of a city library, then Countess Lucy’s private library was quite small.
It would be easier to think of it as the size of a small neighborhood bookstore.

Since the optimal humidity and temperature were always maintained by management magic, even books that were hundreds of years old were as crisp as if the ink had not dried.
The sunlight that cheerfully crept in through the window frame and the smell of paper gave her a sense of peace.

Books arranged in a ‘ㄷ’ shape and a table in the middle.
On the desk, there were papers scattered with various calculations for magical designs.

In fact, Diana also frequented this library.
Count Yesod would never refuse Diana’s visit.
But it was her first time sneaking in like this, so her heart was pounding for no reason.

“Hoo….”

But after searching the bookshelves for about 30 minutes, Diana was soon discouraged.
It wasn’t here either.
The only difference from the central library was that there were books on much higher and more specific magical information.

“Did I think wrong…?”

Was it possible that there were really so few books about men?
Was she simply misunderstanding her mother?
A sense of guilt for no reason.
Diana sighed softly and tried to put the books she had pulled out back.

-Click!

It was a mistake.
She was just about to put a thick book on the bookshelf and leave the room.
However, a small statue placed on one side of the bookshelf.
When she touched the silver crescent-shaped piece that symbolized Yesod, it made a sound as if a spring was turning.

“…?”

Diana put down the book and looked at the statue at eye level again.
Was it normal for such ornaments to be fixed to a bookshelf?

“This is….”

Diana, who had suddenly realized something, twisted the crescent-shaped piece this way and that.
Then, with the sound of metal pieces meshing together, the bookshelf began to slowly move backward.
It was not a simple ornament, but a kind of mechanical device.

As the bookshelf was completely pushed back, a space behind the wall was opening up like an entrance.
It seemed that this bookshelf usually acted as a door.

“A secret room….”

Diana held her breath and waited for the door to open completely before cautiously stepping inside.
It had an ordinary appearance for a secret room.
There was nothing particularly different from her mother’s library, even in the location of the bookshelves and the arrangement of the table.

But the books were different.
The books in the secret library were all novels, as one could tell just by looking at the titles.
Diana walked over and carefully began to scan the titles.

“A bored witch’s dangerous prank…. A debt-ridden witch’s debt relief life…. How the butterfly flower falls…. The tailor of the Malkuth Gallery…. Something sweeter than cocoa….”

Just by saying the titles, she felt a very unpleasant feeling.
Would it feel similar if one fell into a pit full of snakes?
A chill spread through her, and her spine tingled.
What kind of titles were these?

“What is all this….”

All the books had titles like that.
Judging by the fact that there were several colorful bookmarks in each book, it was difficult to think that they were simply for storage.

A novel (小說), literally a small story.
It was the consensus among witches that it was not something elegant.
Above all, even Shakespeare’s works were classified as low-class culture among orthodox witches who valued magic above all else.

Count Yesod belonged to the far right among orthodox witches who valued authority and tradition, and it was surprising that her mother, who was a perfect aristocrat, was enjoying such a secret hobby.
Well, it wasn’t like she was particularly disappointed.
Diana herself was full of thoughts of playing around when she became a witch.

Everyone must be hiding some secret part of themselves.
Thinking that it would be rude to pry further into her mother’s secrets, Diana was about to quietly slip out.
There was something that caught her eye.

A bright red leather cover on the table.
The title written in an antique font was.
‘The Fiend Deliveryman, Volume 3’.
Diana slowly reached for the book on the table.

“This is….”

Because the handwriting that decorated the cover was her mother’s.
Diana couldn’t resist her curiosity and opened the book.

From the first page to the last.

She read that book, all written in the handwriting of Lucy Yesod.