Chapter 3 – Home and Reunion (3)
Sianna woke up with a sharp pain in her neck. When she woke up, the light was streaming in through the cracks in the curtains that she hadn’t completely covered the day before.
Her eyes were swollen from the previous night’s disturbance and her throat ached.
“…Mason.”
She buried her head in her pillow and called for Mason in a hushed voice, but she opened the door and Mason was not there.
Still feeling drowsy, she got up from her bed and opened her curtains. After a little glare, she saw that the sun was already in the middle of the sky.
It took Cianna a moment to realize where she was, but she soon remembered that this was Mason’s house as she remembered yesterday.
“…Mason?”
She opened the door and walked down the quiet hallway and knocked on Mason’s door. Her answer didn’t come back. Shia just opened the door.
It was an old room. The room she now occupies is smaller and worn out, with faded yellow wallpaper and a creaky old mattress.
Oh, Mason said she was going downtown today.
It was a thought that came to her with a sudden feeling of hunger.
Cianna lay on Mason’s hard bed, clutching her hungry stomach. From one point on, she always started fighting with Mason. Even though she knows how much Mason cares for her.
She turned her head and tried to bury her head in the blanket on her bed, but the blanket didn’t smell of Mason, as she had been without a master for a long time.
Lying in her room, she felt the discomfort of yesterday’s fight, but even for a moment, her eyes slowly closed. Eventually, Cianna hoped that Mason would return as soon as possible, and she curled up on her bed.
“…Holy Lady, please take away the sword.”
Someone said in a trembling voice. She could have been a high priestess or a paladin. His face was obscured by shadows, making it difficult to see. Both of Sianna’s hands were hot and sticky, and in her right hand she held a small knife.
The brilliant gold and five-colored lights of the daggers decorated with gold and jewels were all dyed in a terrible red color, and the same red color dripped from the gap under Cyana’s left wrist.
“…A saintess?”
Her voice was surprisingly calm. The hot pain in her wrist was rather a disprove of the cold reality.
“I am no longer a saint. One more time…”
She raised her frantically trembling hand and pointed at her opponent, who was cutting herself with her sword. The red color on the blade gleamed strangely in the light of the torch.
“One more time, call me a saint. Because then you will see this knife go through my throat.”
The man paused.
It was boring now. She was the object of everyone’s respect and reverence, but that she herself receives sympathy and pity in her eyes.
Things that I would not have dared to raise my face in front of me even three years ago.
Suddenly, a strong wind blows into the crypt, blocking her view with her hair. He raises his hand and brushes her hair, leaving a trail of goo on her face. But it doesn’t matter.
Today, she will die here.
“…You guys want to stop too.”
Three years after she lost her mission, she initially thought it was her mistake.
“In the meantime, I prayed and prayed every day.”
But her owner didn’t respond.
“I wandered around aimlessly and got pointed at by people, but I believed your words.”
But she never heard God’s voice again.
“After all, have you accomplished anything by today?”
People, including the man, said nothing. I was just confronting her and swallowing her dry saliva.
“…I won’t blame you guys.”
It was a lie. Sianna hated them. She didn’t want to believe in reality, and they blown away at her and made her spend three years in meaningless suffering.
“I could be wrong. It could be an ordeal given by God for me.”
The skin on her forehead blistered and she began to feel the needle-like pain. A few of her closest to her noticed it too, and sat down on her ground, staring at her devastatedly at her.
“…Then I’m broken by the ordeal.”
The stigma in the center of her forehead began to disappear in smoke from her. Her pain, which had been pricked by her needles, intensified little by little.
“Even if God has not abandoned me, now I have abandoned God.”
Then, in pain as if her forehead was being stabbed with her hot iron, Sianna dropped her knife from her hand and grabbed her forehead. The new red mouth on her left hand bleeds inexorably. The world is red
Sianna screams and wakes her up.
Holding onto the now-disappeared stigma with both hands.
Then, the light coming into her room and the sound of birds chirping outside reminds her of where she is now. She sets down Mason’s blanket, which she clutches tightly in her hands to the point of getting wet with sweat, and gets up from her seat.
She covers her eyes with her trembling hands and takes a deep breath.
It’s a thing of the past, and now it’s a thing of the past. You don’t have to live like that again.
While she was trying to gather her mind, she heard the door on the first floor opening and closing.
Mason.
Cianna opened the door wide to her delight and tried to get down, but as she tried to get up from her bed, she stopped suddenly.
The footsteps coming from downstairs were not one, but two.
“Sister Mason!”
“Lucia’s older sister-!”
It was the voices of boys who had just entered their voice transformation phase, mixed with a slight metallic sound. One voice scolded another.
“Idiot, what is Lucia’s older sister? She taught me that her name is Sister Mason.”
“Oh, I’ll call you whatever I want! You’re Lucia’s older sister! Sister! I am at home?”
Cianna reflexively pulled Mason’s blanket over her head and curled up.
‘I didn’t tell people that you were a former saint. Because I don’t want to attract annoying attention. But you still have to be careful.’
She remembered Mason’s words and tightened her grip on her blanket. Footsteps and boys’ voices were coming up the stairs.
“Jimmy! We can’t come up here…”
“Oh little! You might be here! Sister Mason-!”
Footsteps reached this floor and I heard the sound of Cyana opening the room. She felt her body tremble.
Please, please don’t open this place. Please.
But the footsteps and hoarse voice continued to grow, and soon I heard the sound of an old hinge opening.
Kiik-
“Sister- Huh?”
“…Uh?”
Silence. Sianna heard her own heart beating in the darkness, only her. When she trembles in the multitude of shameful thoughts running through her head,
“Someone!”
Then there was the sound of laughter and strength as she tugged at the blanket she was holding in her hands.
No matter how hard Sianna held on to the blanket, it was not enough to withstand the strength of the rural boys who were trained through daily labor. The boys laughed as if they were playing, and tugged at her blanket even harder.
“Who is this! Aren’t you a thief?”
There was a hint of laughter in their voices. The boys clenched their hands like rakes and scratched the outside of the blanket to get it off.
It caused Cyanna’s hair to get tangled under the blanket the boy was pulling on, and soon she couldn’t help but let go of her blanket, screaming in pain.
Coudangtang-!
The boys couldn’t overcome the force they were pulling and rolled across her floor, and Ciana panicked and tried to cover herself with her hands.
Of course, it wasn’t enough, and the boy saw Siana, and Siana saw the boys.
“What!”
While the boys remember Mason’s face coming in yesterday’s cart pulled by Uncle Regine, they didn’t see Cianna’s face in her hood.
That’s why their parents’ wary of strangers, the adrenaline that just started to rise in a power struggle, and the appearance of their opponents fearing them instilled a strange sense of justice in them.
“Uh, uh… It’s a thief!”
The strange heat of the boys and the sense of biological superiority they felt over those who feared them began to work towards her sadism towards her fearful Sianna.
Jimmy and Rupert began to press with force, like bull terriers dragging their prey. The boys climbed on top of the squirming, fragile Sianna, pressed her arms hard to the floor and screamed excitedly.
“Stay still! You thief!”
A roar of laughter mixed with terrifying metal noises and excited talk pounded in her ears. No matter how much Shiana struggled, she couldn’t shake their grip.
And the actions of these boys unfortunately stimulated Cianna’s forgotten trauma.
Siana’s mind went blank. Her whole body was wet with cold sweat.
Shiana, covered in sweat, protested, screaming until her throat was hoarse, but the more agitated the boys pressed harder. They looked down at her with eyes like her hunting predators.
Tears welled up in her eyes and her head throbbed. Her chest jumped up and down, her breathing stopped, and her body began to tremble madly with excitement.
The moment the excitement subsided in the boys’ eyes and the first uneasiness began to sprout.
The door on the first floor opened and I heard someone enter.
Mason.
Cianna called out Mason’s name with all her might.
The sound of something falling on the floor, the sound of running up the stairs like the wind, and the person who came in kicking the door.
She was not the Mason she had hoped for, but a woman who came in with her ebony-black hair.
The boys’ eyes are fixed on a new person. Their round eyes are full of fear.
“…This, this, Isabella’s sister.”
The dark-haired woman saw the scene in the room, then strode over and gave the boys a strong slap.
The sound of sharp flesh clashing echoed through the room.
Each of the boys, beaten so much that their faces turned around, clenched their reddened cheeks and hesitated in confusion. A woman named Isabella did not hesitate to push the boys hard.
They tumbled from her top like a helpless scarecrow, crashing into the floor and walls.
“Jimmy, Rupert. Get out now.”
Frightened by the woman’s cold command, the boys scrambled out of the house.
When they heard the door slam on the first floor behind them, Isabella looked at Cianna, who was still out of breath. Her two purple eyes were a mixture of worry and bewilderment.
“Are you okay? In case you got hurt-“
The moment Isabella stretched out her hand to check her condition, Ciana’s right hand, unable to properly grasp her situation, turned toward Isabella.
The defense mechanism that came out reflexively in response to the trauma did not reach Isabella’s cheek.
Siana’s sharp fingernails were pure white and were enough to carve solid red lines on her clean skin.
