“I’m sorry, but leaving the palace was more difficult than I thought.”
Ariadne smiled involuntarily. She treated the old Moor woman as if she were her own grandmother. She spoke to the old Moor with a charming, sly tone.
They had no similarities in race, age, or education, but their mutual affection transcended all of these.
“There was a place I was originally planning to stop by, but I skipped it and came to see my grandmother first.”
But the Moorish grandmother was still upset. She wasn't just blaming the arrival time today.
“You said you were sick! If you were sick, you should have come to me first!”
The Moorish grandmother grumbled incessantly. It was an expression of her distress.
"All those Central Continent doctors are charlatans. They only know how to sew wounds, but everything else is just a mess, a mess! Especially when it comes to gynecology, you should have come to me for the best price!"
There wasn't a single pleasant word coming out of her mouth, but it was filled with consideration. Ariadne smiled slightly.
She visited the Rambouillet Relief Center today to meet an old Moorish woman.
After entering the palace, she could no longer visit the old woman's home in Campo de Spezia as before. She moved her and her grandson's residence near the almshouse, creating opportunities for her to meet the Moorish grandmother discreetly and regularly, without attracting attention.
“You said you were sick after giving birth.”
“Yes...”
“While we’re here, let’s look at that too.”
Grandmother habitually waved her bell-tipped staff, casting a barrier around her. The truly important conversation could only be told after blocking off the four directions and covering the eyes and ears of the "awakened."
“Yes, first the hands.”
Ariadne obediently extended her left arm. Her grandmother examined it, turning it back and forth. To the layperson, it looked like the radiant, healthy, flawless skin of a young woman in her twenties.
However, the scar covering her left arm, bright red, was clearly visible to Ariadne, the person involved, and the grandmother who had the drink.
"Come on time. If you don't make an offering to the land god on time, someone will notice. You were caught slacking off last time, too."
Alfonso saw it when they first got into a relationship.
It was fortunate that the person who was caught was Alfonso.
Funny enough, before it happened, she wished everyone in the world could see it, but Alfonso wouldn't, but now she's glad Alfonso did.
Ariadne, feeling depressed, grumbled involuntarily. In front of her grandmother, her tightly knit self-defense mechanism—the mask she wore to keep her emotions from being revealed to others—loosened.
“Why does this only last a month? Can’t it last for six months at a time?”
Her grandmother spoke so gruffly that it felt unfair to be the only one to talk to her. But more importantly, she felt like she would accept anything she said to her. She threw a tantrum, words she didn't really mean.
“Your secret technique sucks. Grandma has no talent.”
“You son of a bitch!”
- Tang!
"Ouch!"
Ariadne hugged the back of her head and glared at her grandmother.
“No, three minutes ago you said you felt bad for the child, and now you’re hitting me?”
“That’s because you’re talking nonsense that’s worse than Ishmael!”
Ishmael was the grandmother's grandson's Etruscan name. He's adjusting so well to his new country these days, a source of both pride and concern for his grandmother.
“Six months is nothing; there are also secret techniques that last until death.”
“Then why don’t you do that!”
“Just to cover up a scar, do you want to be dragged to hell and burn for a thousand years without being able to rejoin the cycle of reincarnation?!”
The old shaman shouted loudly. Her voice was too loud.
Ariadne began to wonder if the barrier blocked the sounds not only of the 'awakened ones' but also of ordinary people.
'There's no one around here...'
"It could be so if you offered a sacrifice. The higher the sacrifice, the longer the magic lasts. Melted gold, dog's tongue, the blood of a toad soaked in myrrh, the fat extracted from the corpse of a condemned criminal..."
The longer Grandmother spoke, the more Ariadne's complexion worsened.
It was a series of familiar images. Black magic.
The barrier had to block even ordinary sounds. Such sounds couldn't escape.
“I heard that even that level of activity is strictly regulated and punished with black magic on your continent?”
Lucrezia's later years were not good because she was friendly with such people.
“...Is there anything worse than that?”
“If you offer a living person as a sacrifice....”
“Oh, yes, Grandma! I won’t bother you.”
"Rather than doing something like that, why not just pray to the gods of the land and barely get by? Wouldn't that be a hundred times better than having the Prince's wife dragged off to the Inquisitors?"
This time, the priestess took Ariadne's wrist and felt her pulse.
“Let me see if you’re in good health.”
But less than 10 seconds after she caught it, the grandmother's brow furrowed.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing...”
“If you lie, hair will grow on your butt!”
“Isn’t that crying and then laughing?”
“Hey!”
Ariadne preemptively dodged, fearing another blow. The old priestess, who had tried to strike but missed her timing, responded with a scolding instead.
“You eat lead?!”
Ariadne was embarrassed and covered her grandmother's mouth.
"Shhh!"
“Ugh, uh uh uh!”
She must never enter Felicite's room. Felicite might overlook black magic, but she won't let you off easy.
The old priestess was able to free Ariadne only after she reminded her of the barrier with gestures of her hands and feet.
"Let's talk, you punk! Why would you eat something like that when you have a husband who will protect you?!"
“Oh, yes. Grandma. I’ll take care of this.”
"Don't talk nonsense! If you eat that kind of thing for a long time, it'll harm a woman's body!"
The old priestess glanced at Ariadne.
“After all that work, you crawled from the bottom to get here!”
The shaman grandmother couldn't help but feel frustrated.
“Your husband also loves you and has settled down.”
Ariadne felt like pounding her chest.
“Everything is going well, so why on earth are you doing this, why!”
Ariadne, who had been listening to her grandmother's scolding, asked quietly.
“...Everything is going well, right?”
There was an uncharacteristic tremor in Ariadne's voice.
A woman of commoner origin who captured the heart of the guardian of the world of Yesak, the most influential new tycoon in the Central Continent, where everything she touches becomes the latest trend, and a leading theologian renowned for her theology.
Ariadne was a woman everyone envied.
But she was desperately anxious, even more so than on the first day she returned empty-handed.
"You said I was on the 'judgment bench'? With a 'mission' I don't even know what it is."
“...”
“If you can’t do it, your soul will be stolen by the devil.”
“They are the ‘awakened ones’!”
“It’s the same as taking away the soul, but what’s the fundamental difference?”
“...”
"I don't know what I'm supposed to accomplish, but let's say I do what they want. Then my bad deeds will be measured."
Ariadne held out her left arm, a fresh, red, blood-soaked testament to her guilt.
Although no one else could see it, it was clearly visible to Ariadne and the old priestess.
"You say that no amount of good deeds can compensate for it. You say that sins already committed can never be washed away."
Even if she could find homes for every orphan on the continent, eradicate poverty, and bring peace to the world by ending war, Ariadne would still have to pay the price for this red bloodshed.
“You said that because my evil deeds have reached the heavens, I will suffer every hardship and adversity imaginable, from the ‘Day of Judgment’ until the day I should have died naturally.”
You will lose everything you have: your status, your wealth, your fame, even your friendships.
Loved ones betray, succumb to illness, or die.
What follows is a fall from grace. Blame and insults heaped upon you for things you didn't do. Unjust expulsion.
And if you persist in surviving, the ultimate ordeal remains: unending physical pain. A mortal punishment that no human, clothed in flesh, can escape.
“They say Prometheus was eaten alive with his liver pecked out.”
“...”
Ariadne, in fact, didn't think it would be such a big deal if she were crucified alive and had her liver eaten. She was always a patient person. Something would work out. It always had.
But she couldn't stand it happening to someone she loved.
Ariadne suddenly spoke up.
“...Grandma. I don’t know what love is.”
The emotional connection she was sharing with Alfonso was the closest thing to love Ariadne had ever known.
But she was attracted to him, gave him everything, received his care, and kept his faith in return. That was all. No one knows the taste of food they haven't tasted. Ariadne wasn't sure if this was love.
She never understood why someone as wonderful as Alfonso would do such a shameful thing for her, and she feared that the magical luck that happened every day would disappear at any moment.
So she struggled as hard as she could, trying to come up with an objective reason why Alfonso would be nice to her.
To save his life, to provide him with military funds, and to present him with the throne on a silver platter.
However, efforts to give him only the best cannot always be successful.
There will come a day of failure. If she's lucky, it will be after Judgment Day. If she's unlucky, it will be before that day, due to human error, even though she knows the future.
Ariadne had no idea what she would do if one day she was no longer of any use to Alfonso and he declared that his love was over.
“...Let’s say I give birth to a child. Do you think I, who doesn’t know love, will be able to raise that child well?”
Can I love him?
Can a child who doesn't receive love from his mother be happy? Wouldn't this just create another person like me on this earth who doesn't know what love is?
The shaman grandmother spoke with emphasis.
"Trust Alfonso. He's a loving boy, and he'll definitely be able to teach you and your own children what it means to receive parental love."
“Suppose I come to understand what love is. If I love that child.”
There was genuine fear in Ariadne's voice.
"On 'Judgment Day,' my evil deeds will strike down those I love. I will bring a terrible fate upon everyone I love."
If her child betrayed her, she would rather have been better. Yes, leave me and fly away. Ariadne was used to such situations.
The mother-daughter relationship she observed most closely—Lucrezia and Isabella—was also like that. Isabella devoured her mother, leaving only her shell behind, before flying off spectacularly. If that were the end, Ariadne could endure it. But the vicious Golden Rule wouldn't allow that to happen.
What if the little life she first fell in love with was exploited for her own sake, for the purely Golden Rule's purpose of inflicting suffering on the regressor, and contracted a terrible, incurable disease? What if she suffered incurable pain? What if she died an untimely death?
Arabella's nine months left an indelible scar on Ariadne's heart. Those days felt like a lifetime, a lifetime she could have lived without.
But a newly created life, a baby with an infinite future, facing such a future because of her? She felt like she couldn't possibly bear the guilt.
“Grandma, in my previous life, I died in 1137.”
This was the first time they talked after returning.
Ariadne smiled involuntarily. She treated the old Moor woman as if she were her own grandmother. She spoke to the old Moor with a charming, sly tone.
They had no similarities in race, age, or education, but their mutual affection transcended all of these.
“There was a place I was originally planning to stop by, but I skipped it and came to see my grandmother first.”
But the Moorish grandmother was still upset. She wasn't just blaming the arrival time today.
“You said you were sick! If you were sick, you should have come to me first!”
The Moorish grandmother grumbled incessantly. It was an expression of her distress.
"All those Central Continent doctors are charlatans. They only know how to sew wounds, but everything else is just a mess, a mess! Especially when it comes to gynecology, you should have come to me for the best price!"
There wasn't a single pleasant word coming out of her mouth, but it was filled with consideration. Ariadne smiled slightly.
She visited the Rambouillet Relief Center today to meet an old Moorish woman.
After entering the palace, she could no longer visit the old woman's home in Campo de Spezia as before. She moved her and her grandson's residence near the almshouse, creating opportunities for her to meet the Moorish grandmother discreetly and regularly, without attracting attention.
“You said you were sick after giving birth.”
“Yes...”
“While we’re here, let’s look at that too.”
Grandmother habitually waved her bell-tipped staff, casting a barrier around her. The truly important conversation could only be told after blocking off the four directions and covering the eyes and ears of the "awakened."
“Yes, first the hands.”
Ariadne obediently extended her left arm. Her grandmother examined it, turning it back and forth. To the layperson, it looked like the radiant, healthy, flawless skin of a young woman in her twenties.
However, the scar covering her left arm, bright red, was clearly visible to Ariadne, the person involved, and the grandmother who had the drink.
"Come on time. If you don't make an offering to the land god on time, someone will notice. You were caught slacking off last time, too."
Alfonso saw it when they first got into a relationship.
It was fortunate that the person who was caught was Alfonso.
Funny enough, before it happened, she wished everyone in the world could see it, but Alfonso wouldn't, but now she's glad Alfonso did.
Ariadne, feeling depressed, grumbled involuntarily. In front of her grandmother, her tightly knit self-defense mechanism—the mask she wore to keep her emotions from being revealed to others—loosened.
“Why does this only last a month? Can’t it last for six months at a time?”
Her grandmother spoke so gruffly that it felt unfair to be the only one to talk to her. But more importantly, she felt like she would accept anything she said to her. She threw a tantrum, words she didn't really mean.
“Your secret technique sucks. Grandma has no talent.”
“You son of a bitch!”
- Tang!
"Ouch!"
Ariadne hugged the back of her head and glared at her grandmother.
“No, three minutes ago you said you felt bad for the child, and now you’re hitting me?”
“That’s because you’re talking nonsense that’s worse than Ishmael!”
Ishmael was the grandmother's grandson's Etruscan name. He's adjusting so well to his new country these days, a source of both pride and concern for his grandmother.
“Six months is nothing; there are also secret techniques that last until death.”
“Then why don’t you do that!”
“Just to cover up a scar, do you want to be dragged to hell and burn for a thousand years without being able to rejoin the cycle of reincarnation?!”
The old shaman shouted loudly. Her voice was too loud.
Ariadne began to wonder if the barrier blocked the sounds not only of the 'awakened ones' but also of ordinary people.
'There's no one around here...'
"It could be so if you offered a sacrifice. The higher the sacrifice, the longer the magic lasts. Melted gold, dog's tongue, the blood of a toad soaked in myrrh, the fat extracted from the corpse of a condemned criminal..."
The longer Grandmother spoke, the more Ariadne's complexion worsened.
It was a series of familiar images. Black magic.
The barrier had to block even ordinary sounds. Such sounds couldn't escape.
“I heard that even that level of activity is strictly regulated and punished with black magic on your continent?”
Lucrezia's later years were not good because she was friendly with such people.
“...Is there anything worse than that?”
“If you offer a living person as a sacrifice....”
“Oh, yes, Grandma! I won’t bother you.”
"Rather than doing something like that, why not just pray to the gods of the land and barely get by? Wouldn't that be a hundred times better than having the Prince's wife dragged off to the Inquisitors?"
This time, the priestess took Ariadne's wrist and felt her pulse.
“Let me see if you’re in good health.”
But less than 10 seconds after she caught it, the grandmother's brow furrowed.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing...”
“If you lie, hair will grow on your butt!”
“Isn’t that crying and then laughing?”
“Hey!”
Ariadne preemptively dodged, fearing another blow. The old priestess, who had tried to strike but missed her timing, responded with a scolding instead.
“You eat lead?!”
Ariadne was embarrassed and covered her grandmother's mouth.
"Shhh!"
“Ugh, uh uh uh!”
She must never enter Felicite's room. Felicite might overlook black magic, but she won't let you off easy.
The old priestess was able to free Ariadne only after she reminded her of the barrier with gestures of her hands and feet.
"Let's talk, you punk! Why would you eat something like that when you have a husband who will protect you?!"
“Oh, yes. Grandma. I’ll take care of this.”
"Don't talk nonsense! If you eat that kind of thing for a long time, it'll harm a woman's body!"
The old priestess glanced at Ariadne.
“After all that work, you crawled from the bottom to get here!”
The shaman grandmother couldn't help but feel frustrated.
“Your husband also loves you and has settled down.”
Ariadne felt like pounding her chest.
“Everything is going well, so why on earth are you doing this, why!”
Ariadne, who had been listening to her grandmother's scolding, asked quietly.
“...Everything is going well, right?”
There was an uncharacteristic tremor in Ariadne's voice.
A woman of commoner origin who captured the heart of the guardian of the world of Yesak, the most influential new tycoon in the Central Continent, where everything she touches becomes the latest trend, and a leading theologian renowned for her theology.
Ariadne was a woman everyone envied.
But she was desperately anxious, even more so than on the first day she returned empty-handed.
"You said I was on the 'judgment bench'? With a 'mission' I don't even know what it is."
“...”
“If you can’t do it, your soul will be stolen by the devil.”
“They are the ‘awakened ones’!”
“It’s the same as taking away the soul, but what’s the fundamental difference?”
“...”
"I don't know what I'm supposed to accomplish, but let's say I do what they want. Then my bad deeds will be measured."
Ariadne held out her left arm, a fresh, red, blood-soaked testament to her guilt.
Although no one else could see it, it was clearly visible to Ariadne and the old priestess.
"You say that no amount of good deeds can compensate for it. You say that sins already committed can never be washed away."
Even if she could find homes for every orphan on the continent, eradicate poverty, and bring peace to the world by ending war, Ariadne would still have to pay the price for this red bloodshed.
“You said that because my evil deeds have reached the heavens, I will suffer every hardship and adversity imaginable, from the ‘Day of Judgment’ until the day I should have died naturally.”
You will lose everything you have: your status, your wealth, your fame, even your friendships.
Loved ones betray, succumb to illness, or die.
What follows is a fall from grace. Blame and insults heaped upon you for things you didn't do. Unjust expulsion.
And if you persist in surviving, the ultimate ordeal remains: unending physical pain. A mortal punishment that no human, clothed in flesh, can escape.
“They say Prometheus was eaten alive with his liver pecked out.”
“...”
Ariadne, in fact, didn't think it would be such a big deal if she were crucified alive and had her liver eaten. She was always a patient person. Something would work out. It always had.
But she couldn't stand it happening to someone she loved.
Ariadne suddenly spoke up.
“...Grandma. I don’t know what love is.”
The emotional connection she was sharing with Alfonso was the closest thing to love Ariadne had ever known.
But she was attracted to him, gave him everything, received his care, and kept his faith in return. That was all. No one knows the taste of food they haven't tasted. Ariadne wasn't sure if this was love.
She never understood why someone as wonderful as Alfonso would do such a shameful thing for her, and she feared that the magical luck that happened every day would disappear at any moment.
So she struggled as hard as she could, trying to come up with an objective reason why Alfonso would be nice to her.
To save his life, to provide him with military funds, and to present him with the throne on a silver platter.
However, efforts to give him only the best cannot always be successful.
There will come a day of failure. If she's lucky, it will be after Judgment Day. If she's unlucky, it will be before that day, due to human error, even though she knows the future.
Ariadne had no idea what she would do if one day she was no longer of any use to Alfonso and he declared that his love was over.
“...Let’s say I give birth to a child. Do you think I, who doesn’t know love, will be able to raise that child well?”
Can I love him?
Can a child who doesn't receive love from his mother be happy? Wouldn't this just create another person like me on this earth who doesn't know what love is?
The shaman grandmother spoke with emphasis.
"Trust Alfonso. He's a loving boy, and he'll definitely be able to teach you and your own children what it means to receive parental love."
“Suppose I come to understand what love is. If I love that child.”
There was genuine fear in Ariadne's voice.
"On 'Judgment Day,' my evil deeds will strike down those I love. I will bring a terrible fate upon everyone I love."
If her child betrayed her, she would rather have been better. Yes, leave me and fly away. Ariadne was used to such situations.
The mother-daughter relationship she observed most closely—Lucrezia and Isabella—was also like that. Isabella devoured her mother, leaving only her shell behind, before flying off spectacularly. If that were the end, Ariadne could endure it. But the vicious Golden Rule wouldn't allow that to happen.
What if the little life she first fell in love with was exploited for her own sake, for the purely Golden Rule's purpose of inflicting suffering on the regressor, and contracted a terrible, incurable disease? What if she suffered incurable pain? What if she died an untimely death?
Arabella's nine months left an indelible scar on Ariadne's heart. Those days felt like a lifetime, a lifetime she could have lived without.
But a newly created life, a baby with an infinite future, facing such a future because of her? She felt like she couldn't possibly bear the guilt.
“Grandma, in my previous life, I died in 1137.”
This was the first time they talked after returning.
Comments
Post a Comment