Chapter 88 – #20_Solitude
#86
1.
The season of autumn leaves passed, and winter arrived.
It seemed this winter would bring a lot of snow.
As always, Amelia’s residence was tranquil.
The garden was already covered in snow that reached up to one’s thighs, and through the snow-covered windowpanes, snowflakes could still be seen fluttering down.
It seemed it would snow all night long.
“Haa…”
A sigh.
Even indoors, her breath was visible.
Amelia stared blankly at her misty breath before adjusting the shawl around her shoulders.
-Knock knock
She knocked habitually, but as always, there was no response.
Amelia twisted the cold doorknob and stepped into the room.
Siu’s room was covered in magic circles from the wallpaper to the floor.
These were magic circles to maintain his life.
Several bottles of high-grade mana potions were being consumed daily to maintain this magic.
On the shelf, there were several cartons of cigarettes that Amelia had brought as gifts for him, and in the middle of the room, Siu lay in bed, looking pale, covered with a blanket.
For ninety moons, he remained the same.
Ea’s ribbon, which had pierced his eye socket, had ravaged Siu’s frontal lobe.
Fortunately, his brainstem was not damaged, so he avoided instant death, but the fact that he had suffered irreparable damage remained unchanged.
He had fallen into a deep sleep.
Unresponsive to any external stimuli, he was merely breathing in a coma.
Even this was the result of Amelia’s emergency treatment.
The moment she took him, she had used particles to ‘stop’ all processes occurring in his body.
However, completely stopping a human’s biological time was nearly impossible.
The magic circles covering his body and the magic formulas drawn in the room were delaying his death as much as possible, but Siu was still slowly, very slowly, dying at this very moment.
He was a living corpse.
A pain like being stabbed with a hot awl tore through Amelia’s heart.
Today alone, she had come to see Siu’s face over 100 times.
Each time, countless regrets spread like stains in her heart.
That night.
She recalled the autumn night when the tragedy occurred.
What if she hadn’t made him her exclusive subordinate?
What if she had accepted the offer from Count Jemaine to hand Siu over?
What if she had offered him a proper apology from the start?
What if she hadn’t run away from Siu, who was scolding and berating her, and had faced him directly?
What if she hadn’t run away to her teacher’s house?
What if she had gathered her courage a little earlier and returned to the mansion?
What if she had squeezed out all her strength and run faster to meet him again?
What if she had prepared for battle the moment she saw the barrier and protected Siu?
Countless possibilities of ‘what if’ arose.
A tragedy that would not have happened if Amelia had done even one of them.
Even though she knew that what had passed could not be undone, she kept clinging to the past.
Amelia pulled a chair next to the bed and sat beside him.
“How are you feeling?”
It was more like talking to herself.
He was unconscious, and the flow of Siu’s time, fixed by magic, was different from Amelia’s time.
Even if, miraculously, Amelia’s voice reached Siu’s ears, it would reach him as an unidentifiable noise, like a stretched-out tape.
“I was just okay today. It was just another ordinary day.”
Amelia had been frantically going in and out of the library and salon.
She was researching how to restore Siu’s body or searching for a witch who could heal him.
Although she had reached the 23rd level after her awakening that night, recovery magic was a completely different field from the magic Amelia had previously studied.
It was no exaggeration to say that she was starting with a 10-level regression.
However, Amelia was determined to revive him, even if it took hundreds of years.
Because there were still words she hadn’t conveyed.
“I had a dream again today. It was a dream where Siu woke up and poured out his resentment at me.”
That it was all because of her.
That if she hadn’t been there, such a thing would never have happened.
It overlapped with the last image she had of him, and he vehemently blamed her.
In that dream, Amelia no longer backed away.
She approached him, shedding tears, begging for forgiveness, and hugging him, saying she was sorry and had done wrong.
“It was sad, but it was still good. Because I could hear Siu’s voice again.”
Amelia carefully brushed away the strands of Siu’s hair that had fallen over his forehead.
“Get some more sleep.”
She quietly kissed his cheek and returned to her research.
She had come so often throughout the day and said all sorts of things, but she clearly had so much more to say.
Her heart was so heavy that she couldn’t speak any further.
It felt like she would burst into tears, throwing everything away.
She knew.
In fact, Amelia knew that she could only be a sinner in front of Siu.
That if she traced the cause of all these events, it would ultimately come down to Amelia’s karma.
That all these actions were nothing more than self-satisfaction for her own sake.
Clear tears streamed down Amelia’s cheeks.
She wiped away the tears, not knowing how many times she had cried today, with a handkerchief.
In the white garden, snowflakes were quietly piling up.
2.
Odile and Odette, having finished their classes, stopped by Amelia’s residence.
It was a new routine.
One day a week was their visiting time for Siu.
After finishing their classes, they returned together, and Amelia immediately headed to the research building for her studies, while the twins, holding bouquets of flowers, headed to the room where Siu was lying.
For reference, Count Jemaine was responsible for half of the cost of maintaining the magic circles.
“Hi, Assistant!”
“Hello, Assistant.”
Odile opened the door energetically, followed by Odette.
Of course, there was no response.
It seemed that miracles were not so easily achieved.
“Today, we brought blue hydrangeas. The flower language is arrogance, coldness, and pride. But we just brought them because they’re pretty.”
“Yeah, what does the flower language matter?”
Odette took out the withered flowers from the vase on the table and replaced them with fresh ones.
The twins pulled chairs and sat side by side next to Siu.
They stared at his face, which looked like he was sleeping soundly, for a long time.
That night.
Siu had risked his life to save Odile and Odette.
Even as the twins were about to give up and kneel, he had taken the lead, encouraging them, and fought against the witch until the very end.
They still couldn’t forget his back, which had boldly provoked the terrifying witch until the last moment.
When they returned with their teacher.
Siu’s condition was utterly miserable.
He was covered in wounds that looked painful just to look at, and he was on the verge of death.
He had known that this would happen, yet he had only evacuated the twins.
Even though he had the option to run away, he had absolutely refused to compromise.
“Thanks to you, Assistant, we were able to study hard today.”
Odette wiped away her tears, which were welling up for no reason, and held Siu’s hand tightly.
It was rough.
The complex fractures, which had barely held his bones together, had all healed, but the jagged scars still remained.
“Today, I’ll tell you about what happened this week. You must be bored lying down all day, Assistant.”
The twins, who had been holed up in Amelia’s residence for a week, taking turns sobbing, were able to accept reality as time passed.
The helplessness of not being able to do anything and the life they had been unilaterally saved.
That helplessness became a new driving force for the twins.
They couldn’t just sit down, immersed in sadness.
They were studying magic harder than ever before.
So that when he woke up again, and if such a thing happened again, they could protect him this time.
The twins began to chatter, telling Siu about what had happened during the week.
“There was something this week that you would be proud of, Assistant.”
“Yeah, Assistant. We got praised by the professor today.”
“For the first time, the number of corrections we received was less than 10.”
Starting with their recent enthusiastic magic studies.
“There were some upsetting things too. On Wednesday, Pecha caught a squirrel…”
“Odette opened the cage to feed it, and it ran away, didn’t it?”
“Eek! Honestly, it’s mostly your fault, sis. It got scared and scurried away because you were making such a fuss about how cute it was, right?”
“Oh, it was perfectly still in my hand? Maybe it ran away because your heart seemed too wicked?”
Even the bickering that started while talking about their daily lives.
But since there was no one actually listening, the twins’ fight quickly fizzled out.
They became gloomy because Siu, who should have offered a vague wry smile and a similarly vague compromise, was silent.
As if trying to overcome that gloom, Odile spoke first.
“How about we tell our Assistant a story that’s a little more enticing?”
“Enticing story?”
“You know, that one.”
Odile lowered her upper body and rested her arm next to Siu’s pillow.
She climbed onto the wide bed and gently placed her hand on his chest, as if handling a soap bubble, and whispered.
“Assistant… you said you’d let me do it on your face when we meet again, right?”
Her voice, which was filled with sweet coquetry, was probably mixed with tears.
“I’ll let you do it wherever you want, not just on your face. Actually, we’ve been practicing something lately.”
Seeing Odile’s proactive approach, Odette also stuck close to Siu in the same posture.
Her heart was pounding.
Odette glanced at the door.
Not for any other reason, but because if Amelia saw them clinging to Siu like this, she would give them a mountain of homework in the next class.
“Y-yes! What we’ve been practicing is…”
Odette, like Odile, was close to Siu’s ear.
“…creating a thin membrane to prevent mana from seeping into the baby-making hole.”
A magic that unfolds a thin wave of mana, like a tokamak that confines plasma, to block the mana generated from the male genitalia.
The twins were diligently researching a magic that no one had ever created because the risk of failure was too great and it was useless.
To give him something he would like as a gift when he woke up.
“If you wake up and wait a little… we can put it in the hole where babies come out too.”
“Yeah, yeah, the book said that chastity is for someone really precious, but since you’re our savior, Assistant… we’ll give it to you with a big heart.”
“I’ll give you my first time too, Assistant!”
The twins held their breath, watching Siu’s reaction.
“Wouldn’t Count Jemaine chop me into pieces if he found out? No matter what, it’s too dangerous.”
The same answer should have been heard.
But from Siu, whose metabolic activity was suppressed to the point where his heart beat only once every three minutes, not even a small breath could be heard.
Would the day ever come when those eyes would open?
Or would only promises that could never be kept remain?
Neither of the twins voiced the anxiety that arose at the same time.
“Well, anyway, just know that and wake up strong. We’ve bought you a cool eye patch too.”
“Assistant, we’ll come again next time. You have to get well by then, okay?”
Odile and Odette got off the bed, packed their things, and left the room.
Then, they pretended to close the door before opening it wide again.
There was no movie-like scene where Siu had opened his eyes when they closed the door and turned around.
“……Let’s go.”
“….Yeah, sis.”
Odile and Odette exchanged lonely words and held back their tears.
They had promised not to show their crying faces to their Assistant anymore.
