Chapter 131 – Saint (2)-Complete
It hurts.
The moment she regained consciousness, what filled her mind was the sensation of her entire body screaming.
Every movement of her body was unstable and rough. Every time I breathe in and out, it is painful, as if a stiff rope is scratching my throat.
My two legs were weak and shaky, so all I could do was lean against the wall.
I feel dizzy. I felt nauseous, as if I was going to vomit at any moment, but it only caused pain as if my stomach was twisting even though I had not eaten anything.
My vision was blurry, my head was pounding, and my throat felt very heavy. The very attempt to think was burdensome and painful.
She struggled to regain focus in her trembling eyes and looked ahead of her.
The light coming from outside her was too harsh for her to get used to after being unconscious for so long. The feeling that everything is so bright that it hurts the eyes.
But she ignored her pain and squeezed her eyes, which were twitching and shaking.
Soon, slowly but surely, her eyes took in the situation.
In front of her, a woman was sitting down and looking at her. The expression is a mixture of shock, fear, and surprise.
And behind the woman, a body lying motionless.
The area around the corpse was full of dark red liquid.
Blood was spreading from her stomach onto the woman in front of her. Her face was hideously mangled. As if it had been crushed by something. It was a process in which the ship was twisted horribly.
The moment she becomes aware of the surrounding situation, she takes a short breath and sits down on the floor.
I feel dizzy and ringing in my ears. Her breathing becomes rough, her throat feels like it’s going to burn, and her fingertips and toes begin to tremble.
She closed and opened her eyes with difficulty.
It was still inside the cave. The woman who sat down still looked shocked. There is still a body behind her. However, what was different from before was that there were numerous corpses tangled together.
In the corpse where the bleeding has not stopped, murmurs and cloudy red water are all over the floor, and weapons, including knives, are broken with teeth missing.
The living woman breathes heavily and just looks at herself.
She and I.
If I had to describe this place full of creepy silence created by the confrontation between the two in one word.
Hell too.
Is there any expression that fits this situation better than that?
I open my eyes, rubbing my trembling eyelids with great difficulty. There is still a woman in front of me. Eyes full of fear. Fear of what you have done, awareness of what you have done with your own hands. However, the most revealing thing among them is-
Worry.
There was a feeling of concern for her in her eyes.
At that moment, a single thought slipped through her mind through the terrible pain, fatigue, and confusion.
And Sianna realizes why she is here.
Breathe in. Exhale. Lack. It felt like my lungs, which were missing, were being squeezed more than the air coming in. I take a deep breath again with urgency.
It is not enough.
I can’t breathe well. Her chest feels tight, her mouth becomes numb, her head spins, and her hands and toes feel numb.
Still, Siana cannot be stopped. She has no choice but to repeat meaningless actions such as pouring water into a bottomless pot.
She loses her strength and collapses. She catches her breath, holding her head with her trembling hands.
But what scared her the most was not the symptoms of her body.
It was an unforgettable moment reenacted before my eyes.
Tears well up in her eyes. But the tears flowing down the Volga are cold and still.
It was the result of resignation and compromise with painful reality that filled her mind.
Yes.
I escaped from a nightmarish moment and gained some breathing space.
She also had a brief but happy time. It’s all an illusion.
Isabella, Becky, and Lucia are all fake.
I made this when I went crazy.
I am.
I never left that place in the first place.
My consciousness was fading. The numbness passed through her hands and feet, up to her chest, and the back of her head and neck began to tingle.
That moment.
Someone in her forces her to stand up. Sianna didn’t even have the strength to resist. No, she just does her best not to let go of her consciousness.
With quick hands, Sianna lowered her arms, which were folded over her head, and quickly unbuttoned her dress. Meanwhile, she looks straight at Sianna and tries to hide her fear with her calm voice.
“Breathe. Slowly.”
Although her bare skin is exposed above the undone clothes, the hot scent emanating from her body nearby makes her feel warm.
Her hands rest on Sianna’s shoulders and press them to the floor. Be careful not to get sick. Just enough to keep her from shaking.
“Inhale briefly and exhale.”
Her voice was steady, but I couldn’t shake the fear that was shaking her. But still, she did her best to calm Sianna down.
-It’s okay
“It’s okay.”
Someone’s voice was heard from far away. It was a familiar and missed voice.
“Everything is okay now.”
-It’s all over now
A soft, calm voice began to overshadow the other voices.
“It can’t end here.”
-It can’t end here
The tears gradually stop. Breathing slows down little by little. The tremors of the hands and feet remain the same, but the shaking of the body decreases.
Vision gradually becomes clearer. Siana’s eyes capture the image of a woman holding her down.
Her hair falling down tickles her lightly, and a complex scent passes by her nose. The smell of burnt fire, the smell of dust, a good scent, and the smell of iron.
“Now it’s back to normal.”
-No more… Live like this… No… Okay
The overlapping voices were saying different things, but one voice was clearly moving away.
I couldn’t hear well. So much so that it’s hard to clearly understand what they’re saying.
A beautiful woman’s face looked down from above, her haunting purple eyes looking into her. It was threatening but desperate at the same time.
The voice, eyes, expression, and atmosphere convey pure regret.
“Let’s go back. “To the time when you were happy.”
-Escape… Together… Make… Get out…
Sianna’s breathing gradually became easier, and the tremors of her body gradually subsided. Her Sianna’s green eyes looked into her Isabella, and Isabella looked into her Sianna.
“Become a saint again, Siana.”
What was in her eyes was sincerity.
Pure sincerity that Siana had never seen in Isabella before.
Sianna looked up at her, forgetting to take her breath for a moment.
The words contained in her heart were what she had longed for all this time.
Returning to a saint.
No, to be precise.
Giving up in despair in the face of this unresolvable pain.
She turns her eyes away from the being she hates.
She goes back to the time when she didn’t know despair.
In the end, it was a choice to kill oneself without any solution.
Sianna longed for it so much.
An irresistible temptation, the sincerity she had longed for in her subconscious.
It’s embarrassing to hear something that even I didn’t fully recognize through someone else’s mouth.
At the same time, I felt horribly refreshed.
Something inside Siana broke. She didn’t even know if it was the threads hanging from every joint of her joints, the guilt that had bound her all this time, and her anger toward the world that had gnawed at her.
Beyond the small rising flames, someone’s screams could be faintly heard from the other side.
A vague shape of a woman was seen where the sound was heard.
The cheekbones were bright red from tears. Frightened green eyes. A woman with a haggard appearance and dull, gray hair was tearing out her hair and crying, bursting into laughter.
… It feels somewhat familiar.
Who was that?
Sianna’s breathing gradually slowed down, her weakened body could not handle her fatigue, and her eyes began to close.
In this hellish place, this hellish moment, she finally found her way out.
Constantly falling towards the floor.
Stretching her limbs helplessly in a sense of liberation.
She threw herself without hesitation.
Late that afternoon, when the red sunset gradually sinks into the darkness.
Two people were discovered in the mountains after severe monsoon rain and storms had stopped.
With a woman smiling with a peaceful expression.
A woman sleeping soundly in her arms.
Investigators could not help but think that the woman discovered in the basement of the mansion seemed to have been decorated to resemble a sleeping woman.
The black-haired woman, who was hugging the sleeping woman, watched them approach without changing her expression.
The sight of a woman humming, with her head completely crushed, and her body covered in blood, with her back facing a corpse with gunshot wounds, was extremely grotesque.
What found them was a group of capital investigators who went out to investigate their superior who had not returned over time.
Even when they draw their swords and approach cautiously.
The woman holding the skinny woman in her arms just hummed her song.
Some people recognized that it was a hymn from a religion that had recently disintegrated, but they did not share it with others.
Investigators approached cautiously and separated the two, but the woman did not resist.
After gathering the belongings at the scene and recovering the body, they moved the sleeping woman to a stretcher and tied the other one to a rope and took her away.
When they arrived at the front gate of the biggest mansion in town.
When the door opened, the woman who ran out first sat down and burst into laughter when she saw the people who had arrived.
Deacon Noh greeted them like an experienced deacon, but he could not hide his stern expression and trembling hands.
Time passed, and a trial was held.
The woman, whose once gray hair was only a speck of red at the ends, refused to testify.
The woman found in her arms at the time was unable to attend due to her health issues.
However, only those in the know knew that the father of the person involved in the trial had financial connections to someone in the capital.
Responsibility for the investigator’s death was buried.
Most of the investigators who investigated the mansion at the time assumed that the fact that the dead superior was a person outside the eyes of the executives was a big factor, but no one had the courage to say it out loud.
Finally, after completing her trial, the woman with her black hair and beautiful purple eyes walked out on her own two feet.
As if she had expected this, she had a soft smile on her face as she headed to her mansion in a prepared carriage.
When she arrived at her front door, one of the newly hired employees opened the door.
Passing through a garden that is obviously chilly even though it should be full of the vitality of a summer day.
Upon entering her mansion, she heads straight to the basement.
As she opens the two doors and enters the room, what catches her eye is a platform in the distance.
There were no statues of gods, no Bibles, no cathedrals for leaders, or even a podium for ordinary sermons.
There a woman is on her knees, bowing her head, and calmly clasping her hands in her prayers.
The hallway was densely filled with funeral chairs, similar to those found in churches, but there were only a handful of people sitting.
She walked along the center of the hallway and sat down on the chair where two people were sitting. The red-haired woman, like the woman before her, was leaning on the table in front of her with her hands folded in her prayers.
She also followed the woman and took a praying posture.
After a while the prayer ended and the woman slowly opened her eyes and looked ahead of her.
There stood a woman so beautiful that even the expression that she was loved by God was not enough.
Long but neatly grown gray hair.
Dark green eyes in the dark, full of warmth and understanding.
Pink lips painting a comfortable smile.
Isabella looked at that figure in fascination for a moment.
Her appearance was quite unique.
She was beautiful even though she was wearing clothes made from white sheets, curtains, and pillowcases. Rather, the unidentified robes that were created in such a strange way made the mysterious charm even stronger.
Isabella looked at the robe for a moment and remembered how much she had sewn with her own hands to make it.
“You’re back.”
Her beautiful voice filled with infinite kindness brings her back to her reality.
Isabella also smiled and responded.
“Yes, saint.”
In response to her response, the saintess gently nodded her head, then smiled slightly and held out her hands. Her wrists were clearly visible in the loose sleeves of her robes, each of which had different arm lengths.
The dark red old scar that once remained beyond the area covered by the robe only turned into a white and faint trace thanks to Isabella’s sincere care.
Smiling at the change, Isabella places the back of her hand on her palm. The saint reverently, yet naturally, brought her hands together and placed her forehead against her clasped hands.
“Then, shall we pray again?”
Isabella was about to close her eyes when she suddenly heard someone sobbing and turned her head.
The brown eyes of the woman sitting alone in the corner of the funeral chair were not with the usual dullness of an idiot, but with bloodshot eyes filled with sorrow.
She was looking at herself.
It happened occasionally.
