episode_0003

0-3. Prologue 3

When I was born, I didn’t know that I was different from others. When I was able to recognize objects and distinguish between adults and children, I realized that I was an ‘orphan’ who was different from others, a child without a mother and father.

When I was young, being an orphan wasn’t particularly bad. I lived in Rom, a city of the lower class, and there were many orphans like me in Rom.

However, when I started to grow up and could no longer ‘get money’ from my neighbors, I had to work less and sleep less.

In the summer, until the sky turns yellow, and in the winter, until the hands turn white. Only then could I barely escape from starvation. Barely, really.

Then, the biggest turning point in my life came in the spring when I was 15 years old.

The chief and head of the village who governs Kreşti have been called Rom. I heard from adults and loudmouth Becky that Rom’s ancestors gathered together gypsies who lived a nomadic lifestyle selling their craft and created a village, which developed into a city?

Anyway, that was when Rom suddenly found me. Spring of 15 years old.

“The child who whined in his dying mother’s arms has already grown up so much.”

Those were Rom’s first words as soon as he saw me. In fact, at the time, I was a childish person who had grown quite large and was at the peak of his skills, so I was a little dissatisfied with Rom’s words.

Still, this old man named Rom was afraid of even strong adults and treated them with reverence, so he just waited for the next word to begin.

No, in fact, rather than saying that there was such a deep meaning, it would be closer to the fact that there was no time to say anything to suppress something that was boiling up in anger.

“here. This is something your mother entrusted to me before she died. It’s yours now.”

“Eom… Mayo?”

The moment I heard the word “mom,” I couldn’t be more proud of myself for holding back my childish temper.

To me, who was going through such a turbulent time at the time, the words ‘Mom’ or ‘Dad’ had nothing to do with me, and to me, they were taboo words and words of longing.

Rom placed a small cloth bag with worn corners on the table that looked as old as the wrinkles on his face and pushed it towards me.

Even now, most of my memories from that time are vague, but I remember this one thing clearly.

The moment I held that old, worn-out cloth pouch in both hands, I don’t know if it was an illusion, but a warmth of unknown origin and knowledge of a card I had never seen before came to mind.

It’s as if I knew it all along, but had forgotten it until now.

From that day on, it was an opportunity that completely changed my life, where I had to do hard and difficult work to make ends meet, so how can I forget that moment?

However, I blame myself for being so careless back then when I was caught ‘having something’ in front of the old monster named Rom. Even so, the current situation will not change.

After that, I became a well-known fortune teller in Chresti, the city of Rom, the city of the gypsies. My card fortune-telling was quite famous, and I even had noble customers.

Of course, life has become much easier. Now you don’t have to work until your hands get swollen in the winter, or run around until the sky turns yellow in the summer, like you did when you were a child.

But that doesn’t mean I’ve become a wealthy person. It wasn’t burdensome to just eat three meals a day. After I owned the rented store, I no longer had to worry about eating, sleeping, or living.

Even if you can’t live without a fuss, you can live a life where you don’t feel burdened by occasionally eating a piece of bread or two for a young orphan who is starving to death due to poverty. It was a life that I was satisfied with.

He would have been able to marry a woman he liked, have children, raise children, and live a normal, leisurely life.

If he hadn’t come to visit that day.

That day was an ordinary summer day.

Since the climate of Creşti has a particularly short summer among the four seasons, the village has been bustling for several days with gypsies trying to enjoy the summer, and I, too, was intoxicated by the atmosphere, drinking a cool drink and sitting on the long chair in front of the store as usual.

At that time, the sight of people splitting up from afar was probably due to my increased awareness while living as a fortune teller. At the head of the crowd, cutting through the crowd like a knight’s spear, was Rom’s second son.

“White.”

The fact that his destination was mine was the seed of misfortune. Although I didn’t realize it at the time.

“Ah, yes. Shailom.”

“Let’s go in and talk for a while. Quietly.”

Shailom sighed, looked around, opened the door, and strode into my store as if it were his own house. Then he turns around and gestures for me to come in.

Again, I shouldn’t have been there alone with him at that time.

“I have a favor to ask.”

He said please. Instead of looking like the crazy man commonly known as Anha Muin, he looks like a polite butler from a noble family.

“Please… What?”

“My brother will probably visit here in a few days. As you know, shouldn’t the festival begin soon? Are you having a good day? It’s like investing time in something useless. Anyway, if that human comes here, feed him this.”

Then he handed me a small vial.

It looks like a potion that nobles and wealthy merchants carry around.

However, unlike the blue potion that resembled the sky, the one in that small bottle was an ominous purple color. It’s the kind of color that somehow makes you feel like you should never open or touch it.

“Uh, how… … . It’s not possible! No, I can’t!!”

It was a natural reaction. And he also threatened me in the natural way.

“If a fortune teller like you disappears, what do you think will change? Even if I cut off your head and hung it at the entrance to the village right now, if the one who did it was this body, Rom’s child, everyone would just accept it and move on. So take your pick. Will I get my head cut off right away, or will I cooperate with my work and keep running this great fortune teller?”

Shailom’s voice was not loud. All I did was grab him by the collar, push my face close to his smelly mouth, and mutter quietly through my teeth.

As someone who had never experienced anything like this before, this was the first time I experienced the hair standing up all over my body due to his actions.

“Ah, I understand, I understand.”

As if he was satisfied with my stuttering answer, Shailom smiled as he loosened his grip on my collar and straightened my crumpled scar.

“Okay. If it had been that way from the beginning, we wouldn’t have had to blush, right? When you do something big, your voice naturally gets louder, so White, you should understand. Got it?”

“Yes. Yes yes.”

I remember answering in complete fear. Even after Shaylom left, I spent the day in a daze like that for a while. It was to the point where we couldn’t even receive guests.

A night like that, I skipped dinner and greeted it with my pounding heart.

Chigi, who had been hidden for a while and who had plunged headfirst into the world as a child, raised her head.

‘You son of a bitch!’

The next day, as Shailom said, his older brother, Benerom, who was said to be the next Rom after the current Rom, actually visited my store.

“Oh! white! Cresti’s best fortune teller! There is something I would like to discuss with you! You didn’t come when you were busy, right? Hahahaha.”

With a smile on your face. He was a man who laughed so much that it made you wonder if he was wearing shoes that made a ‘hahaha’ sound effect with every step he took.

His smile, laughter, and the warmth that made me feel like he was a good person made me carry out what I had only planned in my head with Chigi last night.

widely-.

The sound of the small bottle hitting the table sounded like thunder to my ears. Venerome and I take turns looking at the bottle filled with purple liquid on the table.

“What is this?”

he asked. Why didn’t I notice that his voice was cracking then?

“There is someone who asked me to kill you. With this.”

I answered.

“… Why?”

“Yes?”

I expected him to ask who I was. If you ask him who he is, like a general in a play you once saw, you will press your lower abdomen and say, ‘Your brother! I was even ready to say, ‘It’s Shaylom!’

But he asked me, ‘Why?’ Why did you try to kill me? How do I know that? As I learned later, the question why he asked me had a different meaning.

“I feel sorry for you. It can’t be helped. Arrest me.”

“Po, Pobagi? Now, just a moment! Why me!”

“I’m sorry. white. I would rather have you give me this poison. If I had done that, I would have been less sorry.”

He said that and turned his back, and the time it took for me to be beaten by Rom’s private soldiers and dragged out tied with a thick rope was an instant.

As if the guards he had were there to catch me in the first place.

The last thing I saw of Benerom as he was dragged out by the soldiers was that he was taking an old pocket from a drawer that contained my mother’s card that I had received from him a long time ago.

◈

A few days like that. Was it four days? No, was it five days? I don’t know. Three days have clearly passed, and it seems like a week has not yet passed.

A festival held for two days and one night on the peak day of the short summer in Creşti, the city of gypsies. Euvilleum.

It was only a little while ago that I was informed of the decision to execute me on the first night of the Juvillerum. Unilaterally. The charge is that he was trying to drive a wedge between Rom’s brothers with false information?

The laughter and loud noises coming from outside right now let me know that I don’t have much time left to live.

The devil-like bastard who told me in fact and in detail what would happen to me in front of me a little while ago is still standing there.

“Aren’t you curious? white? Why did this happen to you? What did you do wrong? Huh?”

I’m not curious. No, I’m curious. But what dominates me more than such curiosity is the anger that burns brighter than the bonfire lit far away in the center of the village. Anger towards the damn Rom brothers and Rom.

“Did I tell you? That no matter what choice you made, you would end up like this. If you hadn’t given poison to my eldest son, just like now, even if you had followed my younger son’s instructions and given him poison, there would have been no harm at all to my eldest son, who had already taken the antidote. However, your crime would have been changed to attempted murder.”

It was like that. The old man in front of me right now is Rom, who planned this.

That damned old man named Rom came with eyes shining with a greed that I couldn’t understand, and started off by saying that I was going to die today and started talking about what was going to happen in the future.

“Do you remember what this is? No, of course you remember, right?”

What was in his hand was his mother’s deck of cards. While the cards used by ordinary fortune tellers were made of enchanted paper or animal skin, the old, old cards were made of a hard, thick material similar to wood, although the material was unknown.

When telling fortunes, I also use cards made of animal skin for commoners, and fancy cards made from paper treated with magic for nobles.

That unique card was used to remember my mother, whose face I did not even know, by taking it out and fiddling with it every time I felt longing for her.

The card Rom is holding now is a card depicting a woman wearing colorful clothes.

I know that card so well that just looking at Rom holding it gives me the illusion that I can feel its unique rough and hard texture at my fingertips, as I have been fiddling with it all the time over the past four years.

“I remember the day you received this. I can’t forget the way your face changed, as if you were seeing something in the air. And after that, you started playing card fortune-telling and owned a store, even though you didn’t learn anything from anyone. It’s been 4 years like that. As time passed, my doubts turned into confidence. I am confident that this card is an artifact!”

Artifact? Are you referring to the ring that nobles sometimes wear on their hands?

Then it can’t be like that. Well, I have special memories of card fortune-telling, but isn’t the artifact an object that creates magic that makes fire come out of the hand and ice pour down?

“I decided to take it away. No, actually, I have a share in this thing. After your mother died, I kept this and passed it on to you, so that’s right. This is a legitimate exercise of right.”

That crazy bastard. They often say nonsense and use difficult words. But what if it is unpleasant? He is a powerful Rom, and I am just one of the common gypsies. Instead, the best I could do was glare at Rom as if he were going to kill him.

“So it’s white. Would you mind telling me the conditions for activating this artifact?”

ah! Was it that?

Why did that old man drag his old body around and stand in front of me, avoiding other people’s eyes, and talk hesitatingly? So the mysterious thing that happened to me didn’t happen to that old man?

“Pfft! Kkkk. Hahahahahaha.”

Laughter suddenly bursts out against my will and I can’t stop it. As if someone had punched a hole in my lung and got some air.

Because I imagine what that greedy old man must have looked like holding a card.

“White… ?”

“Ha, hahaha. Rom No, inspiration. Make sense. Even if it’s an artifact, should I tell the secret to the old man who made me like this because I’m crazy? And that’s not an artifact. Well, believe it or not, but.”

“Okay. I see.”

Rom didn’t look disappointed at all. I just calmly nodded and muttered that. He seemed even more surprised when I was laughing like crazy a little while ago.

“So what did I say? Didn’t they say that lowly things don’t listen to what they say? ”

Then he barely turned his head, which was buried in the flesh and could not be seen, halfway, and spoke to the back. Those who heard him and walked out from the darkness were the two sons of Rom.

“Look at that. Are you saying that those below you should be disciplined with a rod? My brother is too withdrawn.”

“… I can’t help it.”

The one who appeared while talking about the hawk was Shaylom, who gave me the poison, and the one who appeared next to him, sighing as if there was nothing he could do, was Venerom.

It started from then. Severe beatings and torture.

How much time has passed? 1 hours? 2 hours? Maybe it was such a painful time that it felt that way even though less than 10 minutes had passed.

A sticky liquid that gets into your eyes and stings will bleed, right?

Looks like one arm is broken?

I am surprised at myself for thinking these things calmly in the pain of feeling like I will die soon. Was I this type of personality? Or is it simply because death is just around the corner?

“Do you feel like talking now?”

Do you want to talk?

I’m about to laugh again. However, because of what was going on inside my body, what came out instead of laughter was coughing. Full of blood.

okay. I think I’m going to die soon anyway, so let’s at least curse as much as I can.

“… S… Ah.”

“What? I can’t hear well.”

Then, old and fat Rom bends over to me on the floor, and eventually even squats. good. Now, let’s swear at the top of our lungs. So that bastard can grab your ears and stab you in the ass!

The moment I took a deep breath, something happened.

The old pig tilted while squatting on the floor,

In the aftermath, my mother’s old stack of cards, which was in the hands of old pig Rom, fell to the floor.

The dropped card touched the puddle of blood that was constantly flowing from my body.

By coincidence, it all happened at the same time.

And it was at that time that light flowed from my mother’s card that touched my blood, and a pillar of pure white light fell from the sky.

“This… … .”

A moment of amazement at the pure white pillar, where I felt not only that my injured body was miraculously feeling fine, but that I had never felt so refreshed before.

In the light pouring down like a summer shower, it was like hearing the deep sorrowful voice of a man I was hearing for the first time.