Chapter 54 – Blood Hatred (1)
After Lucia goes to Isabella’s mansion,
Only the sound of the wheels starting to move again and stepping on the dirt floor creaked and resonated in the silence of the room.
Glance.
The woman who happened to get into her carriage looked furtively at the brown-haired woman sitting next to her.
Her quivering eyes, her pale face, her fingers wandered near the corner of her mouth, but she seemed to be nibbling and biting her fingernails. She didn’t look well, just like the woman who had left earlier said.
‘Is it my fault?’
The woman blamed herself to some extent. Of course, she might feel bad if she suddenly asked to ride in a wagon with such a dirty appearance, and that someone else was already in it.
‘Even so…’
Did the seed of conflict already exist, looking at the atmosphere between the two, such as the conversation that her younger brother had before getting off? It was more like one-sided anger on the part of his younger brother than a conflict.
‘Has her older sister made a big mistake on her younger side?’
She couldn’t think of anything else. Seeing her quietly hiding what she wanted to say, as if something had been caught, all she could think of was that.
Well, what does this thought mean?
Rolling her hair in an unsuitable way she did not suit herself. She thought so and opened her mouth again.
As if he didn’t notice, calmly.
“It’s Grace.”
Her own words cause a slight confusion on her sister’s face. She smiles softly and continues her words.
“It is my name.”
Her sister sighed, ah, and she hurriedly gave her name. Mason. And the name of her sister who just left is Lucia.
“I wonder if I may have caused trouble by asking for a ride. Sorry.”
As Grace apologized, she watched Mason’s expression change. She waits for emotions to show on her face. Annoyance, vigilance, whatever.
“Yes… ? Oh no.”
Mason smiled lightly as he said that, but it was a weak smile that anyone could see. But there was no emotion in her eyes.
‘Shall I dig a little more?’
Grace spoke in a light tone, as if in passing.
“But you’re pretty kind to your younger brother, aren’t you?”
“Yes?”
“Ah, I also have a younger brother in my hometown, and if you talked to me that way, I would just hang it up and plug it in.”
“… Yes?”
A slight embarrassment appeared on Mason’s face, perhaps because of the way she spoke that would not come out of a woman’s mouth. She thought it was a good sign, and Grace continued her talk. She said that she had scolded her younger brother since she was a child, and that she should have taken care of her from the beginning in the first place.
I knew it was a little rude, but I wanted to somehow elicit a reaction from Mason.
“… Haha, it’s okay.”
Mason just laughed quietly, and she only responded appropriately.
‘Um, did I fail?’
Grace felt slightly embarrassed, she thought to herself. But fortunately, she said her efforts were not in vain.
“Just… That’s why I couldn’t be a big sister.”
She spits out words that seem to be muttering to herself, and her emotions that pass by her eyes show guilt and regret.
What? Did she really do anything wrong to her brother?
Grace continued to look furtively at Mason. Even though she knew that it was rude to keep caring about others, she kept wondering why the two of them had a relationship.
There was something unpleasant about it that you could call it intuition.
“Miss Mason, where in town do you live?”
She showed a little wariness on Mason’s face, but then she answered cautiously.
“… We live a little farther away in town… , Shall we ask the carriage to stop at the entrance?”
“Oh, I have to go to the woods, maybe the carriage will go there?”
“Yes? A forest?”
Mason, who seemed a little puzzled by Grace’s words, shook her head slightly.
“Well, the road to the forest is a little rough for a carriage… Then I think it would be a little better to get off at the place where I get off and walk.”
“Thank you. I should do that.”
Grace nodded and smiled. It seemed that it would be hard to find out anything even if we talked any more, and any further conversation would only irritate Mason.
Again, through the awkward silence, the clatter of her horses’ hooves and the rolling of the wagon wheels broke through. Grace, too, looks out of her window and tries to turn her attention to the landscape around her, but all she sees is Mason.
“…”
Looking outside, Mason seemed somewhat lacking. She was like an idiot who had lost everything she remembered, her eyes reflecting on the scenery outside, but she wasn’t accepting it.
She’s like she’s a person who’s oblivious to everything and resigned herself.
“… Be friendly Miss Mason.”
It was only when Mason’s face turned toward her that she realized that she was the owner of her words that came out of nowhere.
“I also plan to stay in this town for a while. Please take good care of me while I am there.”
Grace turned to Mason with a soft smile. Her smile didn’t return, but Mason nodded her head cautiously.
After that, silence descended on the carriage again, but Grace felt much lighter than before.
Hours after she broke up with Grace, Mason was still waiting for Lucia, who never came. As she sat at her table, fiddling with a cup of tea that had already cooled down, she was thinking a little about the woman she had met today, Grace.
She was a weirdo
Is Nucksal good, or is it not paying attention to others?
The person who suddenly stopped her carriage and asked to ride with her did not hesitate to see Lucia look uncomfortable.
The color was also unusual. A lot of dust settled down, as if looking at an old adventurer. And the two eyes of gold eyes that can’t be seen easily.
Mason continued as she looked at the woman talking to her, and she couldn’t decide how to respond. An outsider who kept talking to her slyly from the first meeting with her, a woman who kept talking about her sister, talking a little too hard and doing things that showed me disrespect.
She couldn’t judge a person by what she looked at, so she didn’t want to judge her easily, but she couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable and, if displeased, a little displeased.
However, the soft smile she showed in that last sentence asking her to be close to her.
For some reason, I feel like I’m comforting myself a little now that I’m tired.
Mason looked down at the car in her hands, and she thought for a moment.
Shouldn’t she have told me to go with a cup of tea?
But her thoughts stopped when the door opened. She raised her face hastily and looked at the man who opened the door.
Lucia was there. But something was wrong with her.
Red-stained eyes, slightly crumpled clothes from what had happened, and an endlessly depressed atmosphere.
Her heart skips a beat when she sees her crumpled clothes, and her body trembles again as she thinks she’s a little better.
The terrible memories of being in the locker room this day, the back of Lucia heading to her mansion, overlapped with the now crying Lucia.
“Lu, Lucia what-“
Lucia’s eyes meet her own. Deep fatigue was evident in her eyes. Anxiety and nervousness run through the body. In case something happened to her one and only family of her own, her precious little brother,
If,
Just in case, Lucia-
“… It’s nothing.”
Her doubts, her insecurities, and her obsessive-compulsive disorder intensify when her brother averts her own eyes. Mason grabs her wrist. Just as she did in the carriage earlier, Lucia tries to escape her grip, but no matter how much she quits as a knight, she can’t defeat Mason by force.
“… !
Lucia says something, but she doesn’t hear it. With all her blood pumped into her head, only her own pulsating sounds echo, and her vision is focused into a single point.
If,
If-
In an instant, I felt a touch on my cheek. Her head tilts together, and when she puts her hand on the sensitive part, she feels the pain, and then she recognizes that it is her face.
The ear-piercing, vicious screams were next.
“It hurts… !!! It hurts!!!”
All of her situations are communicated to her one step at a time. Mason let go of her hand, which she was giving her full strength without realizing it. Lucia, who fell to the floor with a thud, enters. Tears were already streaming down her face, and she was clearly bruising the wrists she held.
“Ah…”
Mason just looked at her Lucia with her hand on her own cheek, like a dumbfounded fool of hers. She looked up at herself with her resentful eyes at her sister.
No.
Lucia. Don’t look at me like that
“Mi, Mia-“
“I’m sorry, I’m always sorry, I’m sorry!!! Please stop!!!”
Mason flinches at her sister’s screams of resentment. The words of her blood, her true family, pierce her heart more deeply than any other words, than the curse words she heard in battle, than the rants that Shiana had poured out in the past.
“Sister, you are not normal right now.”
Like a sharp winter wind in her, she felt the pain ripping through her lungs.
Now that she herself thinks she’s weird, she doesn’t like having her family confirm it.
“Do you have some kind of mental illness?! Whatever it is, she seems to be half off her thoughts!! Act like you’re possessed by something!!! If this is the case, why did you come back!!!!”
It’s hard to breathe. His breathing became harsh and his head throbbed. Mason looked at Lucia with her goofy face. As she watched the endlessly flowing tears, she wondered what excuse she should make.
“I really hate it!!! Unnie and Isabella, I really hate them!!!”
Her final screams echo inside her home.
The hateful words of her one bloodline, her own brother.
More than anything she’s ever suffered, more than any wounds she’s suffered in battle.
It was terribly painful.
