Chapter 292 – The Long Long Friday (3)
It was burning from the hand that touched the fire. The fire devours the arm very quickly, tearing apart the shoulder, the neck, and the whole body. Soon, the existence of Mare de Fawen disappeared from this world. He was just burning himself. Burning, burning, burning again, to the soul…
“Marey? Marey? Mare de Parwen!!”
Hearing Celine’s voice, I was taken aback. The clean scent of the lakeside, the lukewarm wind brushing your skin, the heat of the sun, and the chirping of birds. The five senses that had been blocked were revived again, and they came more clearly.
“Are you okay?”
“Ah yes. Yes? Yes!”
Celine was calling her. The white world, covered in ash just before, had disappeared like a dream. What was that just…?
“Did you sign a contract?”
“Ah, that’s… Yes… I think I did… This is going… ? Patterns?”
Marei glanced at the pattern floating on the back of her right hand.
“That’s what only the contractor sees. They say you can see other people if you learn spiritism to the extreme, but I’m still far away.”
Celine scratched her cheek.
“So, who? What did you see?”
“I think it was a fire… A burning flame.”
“It’s a fire spirit… Can you infuse her magic once and tell her to appear?”
As Celine instructed, a red bird the size of a canary appeared from the back of her hand.
“What a cute kid. Ah, I should start with a name.”
“Isn’t it usually called something like Casana or Salamander… ?”
“It’s just like a nickname. It feels like calling you and me imperial people. Now that we are in a new land, isn’t it the beginning of friendship by giving the new land a useful name?”
“Aha… Are you okay, senior?”
It was only then that I could see Celine’s figure. Her pale face, half-closed eyes. Her trembling arms and legs. She was obviously overdoing it.
“But it’s fortunate, I was summoned very stably for the first time. There’s such a cute bird… Great You, too, have the qualities of an Elementalist.”
When Celine tried to touch the red bird, her spirit, which took the form of the red bird, slammed Celine’s hand with its wings.
“You seem like a very proud kid. Her intelligence seems high…”
As she dodged Saline’s hand, Celine laughed heartily at the sight of the red bird flying off the tree.
“Can I summon other spirits as well?”
“You can summon him, but it’s better to do it after getting close to him. They get jealous if you randomly summon them.”
Marey held out her hand, but the red bird seemed unwilling to come down from the tree.
“I should try to make friends first.”
Celine laughed out loud at what was so fun. The red bird was circling around Marey. When a hawk hunts, it climbs little by little higher and higher as if it were looking for its prey, and was looking around.
“I’m nervous because it’s a new world, so don’t worry too much.”
“Senior, are you okay? I think you should rest a little.”
“I would have said it was fine in normal times, but it’s impossible now.”
Celine walked away and sat down on the bench closest to her. Red bird, no. Ifrit was still spinning in the sky.
“How is your school life these days? No. I asked you yesterday too.”
Marey also laughed at Celine’s words.
“We talked about studying yesterday, and we have nothing to talk about…”
“Yes…”
If Philia had been there, they might both have something to say, but unfortunately Celine and Marey had a vague sense of distance as to what to say when they were alone.
“Hey, about spiritism…”
“Spiritual magic isn’t a well-established discipline, so these are subjective stories. It’s for you to experience it once and share your opinions later, but I don’t have enough deep realization to teach you.”
Celine gave a small smile as if she was not confident.
“I want to see Celine senior’s spirit… Are you okay?”
“Ah, yes. It’s not difficult. Undine. Are you Undy?”
She was Celine who called Undine several times, but her spirit did not come out.
“They say they don’t want to come out. This kind of thing rarely happens… I’ll show you next time. I’m so exhausted right now that the other kids are overworked.”
“Ah yes…”
Spirits are harder to deal with than I thought. I heard a brief impression. To be honest, she wasn’t even sure if she could handle spirits.
“Still, it’s amazing, I didn’t know you could summon it all at once. You might be better than me.”
“Is it great?”
“Ah, um… Huh. That’s great. It’s embarrassing to say this, but my family is a fairly old family of elementalists, and everyone praises me as a genius. I don’t know if it’s spiritism.”
Is there really such a thing as talent? Celine muttered in vain.
“Marey, why are you siding with Princess Philia? You didn’t have to do that when you went to Duke Parwen.”
‘Need’
Marey looked at Celine. She said Celine and she herself and Philia were colleagues. She didn’t know herself, but Celine was a colleague of Philia, and it seemed that it was made out of ‘necessity’. Does Philia have a relationship like this? Mouth was stuffy.
“It’s just that I like Philia. She was just standing next to Philia.”
“Okay… ?”
Celine looked at Marey without saying anything. Only emptiness lingered in her blue eyes. Marey shuddered involuntarily at the coldness.
“Envy you.”
“What?”
“No no. What did I say?”
“You said you would like it…”
Celine brushed her head left and right.
“I made a mistake, I said the wrong thing. Yes, that was a mistake.”
How many times did she answer that it was a mistake, she bit her mouth shut. Marey didn’t have anything to say to her, so only her awkward silence hovered around the two of them.
“Actually, I… Respect Philia. I like it, but I regret that she has to serve him because of her contract.”
“Is that so.”
“Sheffield, there was only one way out of that son of a bitch.”
Celine was muttering to herself without even raising her head, as if at her confession. Her voice was so low that you couldn’t hear it unless you listened.
“Can’t we just break off the engagement?”
“My parents are bound by a contract.”
So I can’t help it. Celine laughed. No, she was trying to laugh. I couldn’t ask what the contract was or what Sheffield was like. The distance between her Celine and herself was only this far. Marai let out a small sigh.
Celine and I didn’t talk much. The conversation with her ended with moderately similar questions and similar answers. She either moved closer or farther away. It wasn’t until her vague sense of distance took her breath away that Celine said she had a schedule and left first.
She looked at her back for a long while as she left her seat as if to run away.
It wasn’t until Celine left that a red bird circling the sky landed on Marey’s shoulder. The shiny red feathers shone brightly like rubies. Far from chirping, she was staring at Marey as if spying on her.
When I signed the contract, the name was…
“Hello, Ifrit.”
The bird turned its head. When he reached out to touch her, he flapped her wings as if to stop touching her. It must be said that he was stern, or he seemed to be dissatisfied with something, but Ifrit said nothing. He was a boring friend. But he didn’t hate it. Something connected himself with this red bird. I couldn’t explain what it was with my five senses.
“Ifrit, I am Marei de Parwen. Like I said.”
The red bird nodded. No, he could have felt that way himself. The bird’s black eyes stared at him. What is this child thinking? He wanted to talk, but it seemed like talking to a bird would be difficult. If you ask Ran, wouldn’t he know how to talk?
When we signed the contract, we said each other’s names, but in reality, it was unreasonable or even regretful. Ifrit, who only watched himself, was still sitting on his shoulder, and he seemed unwilling to go anywhere else.
A bell rang nearby.
Choir. I forgot the choir. I heard that there was a practice every Friday, so I thought I would go every week, but I completely forgot about it. Marey gets up and walks briskly, but Ifrit continues to sit on the boy’s shoulder.
I went to see the choir rehearsal, but ended up singing along in the middle. It was accurate to say that Gillia was applauded in admiration for perfectly digesting the high register in the center, but was caught by the choir and practiced together.
In addition, people’s attention was focused on Ifrit, who did not leave Marey’s side and clung to her shoulder. Celine didn’t tell her how to reverse summon her, so even if she wanted to send Ifrit back to the spirit realm, she couldn’t.
Around the time I got used to the people’s attention, when I was having a light chat with the choir members in the middle of practice, Gillia cautiously approached me.
“May I touch you…?”
“Ah, this friend. Ifrit, can I touch you?”
Ifrit shook his head from side to side. Gillia smiled bitterly.
“Don’t be like that, my family, Ifrit. Gillia Marita. Marita, this child is Ifrit.”
“Ifritra… He’s a cute kid compared to his name.”
“Yes? Is it strange…?”
“Ifrit is the name of the fire spirit king. Well, among the spirits, there are often people who give their spirits the name of a king, so it’s not strange.”
Ifrit introduced himself as Ifrit. Marais saw the red bird not freeing herself from her shoulder. Ifrit only looked at her surroundings despite Marey’s gaze.
“I didn’t know you had a talent for spirit magic. Did she learn from before?”
“No, I summoned you for the first time today. I got a chance…”
“It doesn’t have to be spirit magic, so I wish I had some talent for magic or something else… “
Gillia’s shoulders drooped.
“Gilia is a wonderful person!”
“She doesn’t tell me she has talent.”
“Gilia has talent!”
“What talent?”
“That… That… So…”
Gilia burst into laughter at Marey’s inability to answer. She imagined that if she were the adopted son of Ravella de Parwen, she might look similar, but in reality she was the exact opposite. Of course, she didn’t like it. No, on the contrary, I really liked this look. It was as if she had a real brother to rely on.
“I don’t lament over something I wasn’t born with. Too bad.”
At Gillia’s words concluding her story, Marei said haha. She did and she couldn’t help but laugh. When she was at a loss to say something, she seemed to respond strangely with a smile, which made me uncomfortable. Practice ended safely. Today, thanks to Sasha’s late arrival, let’s say everyone did it quickly and finished quickly~! She hurriedly finished her practice.
“Sasha senior’s singing is not good… ?”
“Okay, that’s a problem. After hearing that, I don’t want to sing.”
One of the choir members let out a long sigh. She seemed to know why. As people began to gather following Gillia, she could hear this and that right away.
“The governor general’s secretary’s office said they bought a lot of things this time. Does Marey know anything?”
“Yes? Ah, I don’t know anything about Lauren-sama…”
“They bought this and that in too large a quantity. Teddy bears and toys are said to be scattered around nurseries and facilities, but they buy a lot of jewelry and cold weapon collections… It’s not even the end of the year yet to rob the budget… I wonder if you know anything?”
“Ahaha, I don’t know… Maybe Lauren needs it personally… ?”
“The governor has such a cute hobby? A joke too.”
Marey knew nothing about Lauren. All she knew was that she was her great-grandfather’s wife, that she was a dragon, and that she was delighted to discover something in herself that she didn’t know why.
The problem was that everyone was mistaken that they knew about Lauren well. The adoption of an adopted child by the unmarried Ravella de Parwen meant nothing more than that she had no intention of marrying. Therefore, Marei guessed that since she was the next head of the Parwen family, she would be on good terms with Lauren, who dearly cherished the name Parwen, but Marei was just embarrassed.
Rather, in Marey’s opinion, she was more comfortable saying that her relationship with Lauren was bad. She wasn’t in a good mood, but it took a moment to engrave her chief chamberlain’s words into her heart. She cuts off her hand for being selfish and gives it as a gift.
Who could like someone like that? I could understand why people hated Loren de Parwen. Mare, who didn’t particularly hate or hate people, was a target she wanted to avoid.
A dragon who doesn’t know what he’s thinking. There was a reason why everyone hated it. Still, he was a family man, a family man. I couldn’t like her, but I had to try not to hate her. That’s why she wants to avoid it.
Even so, I wanted to get closer to her, half of her interest. She wanted to know about Lauren. Why do people do things they hate? What do you think, why do dragons live as humans? I wanted to know what she was thinking, not the vague reasons Ran carefully brought up.
“There are rumors that Princess Philia is not going to the Imperial University, but is it because of family problems?”
“Why are you looking at me and saying…”
People’s eyes were focused on Marey.
“No, but… I heard that she was dating Princess Philia… Maybe not?”
“That’s right, but… But Leah’s personal history…”
“Kyaa~!! Under the li! Under the li! Do you already have a nickname?”
At the gaze of people asking about Philia’s story, Marei bowed her head. She seemed to have experienced a similar sight somewhere.
