Ch.222Interlude, A Story (3)

Not all stories in the world can become comedies.

There are as many stories in the world as there are people, and naturally, not all of these stories can end happily.

Especially stories with one foot in reality.

No matter how hard one tries, no matter how many trials one overcomes, no matter how desperately one searches for solutions… many stories still end in tragedy. Very many. Perhaps most could be called such.

“Ah…”

So.

“Please.”

The witch begging before Najin’s eyes was merely the protagonist of one such common tragedy.

“Let me meet Roseline.”

Lena, the witch who loved a human.

The names other witches called her: The Mad, Witch Blinded by Love, Witch who was Cursed by Mother, Tainted Witch.

A prisoner confined in the Black Tower for 600 years.

Unlike Anton and Lapis, she was the protagonist of a story that ended in tragedy. She clutched Najin’s ankle, as if begging him to listen to her story.

“…”

Though he could have shaken her off at any moment, Najin couldn’t bring himself to do so. Because the witch before him reminded him of a certain red-eyed mercenary to whom he owed a debt.

She resembled Roseline Askarlo.

A witch who spoke Roseline’s name.

Najin stopped walking and sat down for a moment to listen to her story.

2.

The Red-Eyes mercenary, Roseline Askarlo.

There was a person known by that name.

She was one of the White Horn adventurers in Cambria, City of Opportunity, and possessed skills classified among the upper ranks of Sword Seekers. This Roseline had one open secret.

“Red eyes.”

“A witch’s eyes.”

The color her eyes held wasn’t simply red, but the ominous red that witches possessed. Witch’s blood flowed through her body.

Roseline was a half-blood between human and witch.

However, that was all that was known. No one knew who her mother or father was. Not because Roseline never told anyone, but because she herself didn’t know.

She’s an experimental subject kidnapped by a witch.

No, she’s a homunculus created by a magic tower.

She might be a half-blood created by mad black magicians.

There were many speculations, but nothing certain. Nevertheless, most people assumed Roseline was an “artificially created life.” Her background made such assumptions inevitable.

Roseline’s age was at most 40 to 50 years.

In contrast, the most recent human known to have loved a witch was Anton Kehano, and even he last encountered a witch 400 years ago.

The eras didn’t match. The timelines didn’t align.

Therefore, the theory that Roseline was an artificially created being naturally gained strength. Of course, no one could know the truth.

“Roseline is my daughter.”

So Najin would probably be the first.

“My beloved daughter.”

The first person to learn about her origins.

“I’m late with my introduction, aren’t I?”

Najin looked at the witch sitting before him. At first, he thought conversation would be impossible as she seemed deranged, muttering only the name “Roseline” repeatedly, but after some time passed, she regained her composure.

After moistening her throat with water Najin offered, she spoke.

“My name is Lena. The red-eyed witch Lena.”

“I am Najin. The free knight Najin.”

“Free knight? It’s been a while since I heard that term.”

The witch who introduced herself as Lena.

Chains bound her wrists, ankles, and neck, and a stake was driven into her spine. It wasn’t a stake that could be pulled out by mere strength.

‘A stake that has taken root inside her body.’

Najin wasn’t sure exactly what the stake was.

But like a tree rooting into the ground, the stake had torn through her back and rooted deep inside her body. Because of this, Lena couldn’t straighten her back properly and sat in a hunched position.

“It’s been so long since I’ve talked with someone that I don’t know where to begin. Would you mind waiting a bit? Let me gather my thoughts.”

“Take your time. I have plenty of time as well.”

“My, how kind.”

Yet she herself seemed to feel no discomfort, as Lena smiled and moved around the room with her hands on the ground, as if searching for something.

A narrow prison. A dark, sealed room where not a single ray of light would have entered before Najin found the entrance.

Inside this sealed room lay hundreds of scattered papers. Lena carefully gathered these papers and stroked them gently with her fingers, as if they were treasures.

“About Roseline? She’s the fruit of Albert and me. She’s also the only treasure that he, who has now left my side, gave me!”

Albert.

Najin knew that name.

‘Brave of United Kingdom, the dull-witted Sir Albert.’

A figure who made his name about 600 years ago. It was a name Najin had learned while researching heroic tales. It was a name that stuck in his memory because the conclusion of the heroic tale was so shocking.

‘A man who was seduced by a witch and turned his back on his homeland.’

Albert was both a hero of the United Kingdom and, in the end, a man judged to have abandoned his duty. He wasn’t recorded as a criminal only because his achievements outweighed his sins. The witch that such an Albert had loved was now before Najin’s eyes.

“She must be a lovely child. Although I’ve never seen her face, she must be lovely. No matter what anyone says, she’s a child I gave birth to, a child who resembles me.”

As Lena spoke thus, Merlin, who was listening to the story, frowned.

-This is strange.

‘What’s strange? That the timeline doesn’t match?’

-Not that.

Merlin spoke with a subtle expression.

-Basically, witches can’t have children with humans. No, having children is impossible for their species to begin with.

Merlin, who had killed more witches than anyone else in the world and thus knew more about them than anyone, declared:

-Witches only resemble humans but are different from them. Witches don’t reproduce through procreation. They’re beings born from chaos, like demons or dragons.

Merlin explained that witches lack the organs necessary for reproduction, and that they only resemble humans but are fundamentally different beings.

-Yet she claims to have had a child?

It’s impossible.

At Merlin’s assertion, Najin’s expression also became subtle. Perhaps reading Najin’s gaze, Lena tilted her head and smiled.

“You find it strange, don’t you?”

I can understand why.

Muttering thus, Lena exhaled.

“You’re thinking that a witch shouldn’t be able to have a child with a human. That’s right. We can enjoy a night’s pleasure, but we can’t conceive a child.”

“Then…”

“Still, I wanted to have a child. I wanted to leave evidence of Albert’s and my love.”

Lena caressed the papers she held in her arms.

“I researched for a long time, and I succeeded. As a consequence, I was imprisoned here… but that’s okay. That child must have been born into the world.”

She smiled.

“Still, I want to see her. I want to see what she looks like, this child who must resemble me and him. I want to see how she’s living. I want to experience a little of the happiness of being a mother, but I suppose that’s too greedy.”

Lena raised her arm. The chains made a clanking noise. Seeing herself unable even to stand due to the stake in her spine, Lena smiled bitterly.

“But still. If you don’t mind…”

Lena looked at Najin.

“Would you listen to my story? And could you take my story to the continent? So that someday my child might hear it.”

Only then did Najin understand what Lena was holding in her hands. The papers filling this room. What was written on those papers was a story, a letter to someone.

“I will.”

“Thank you, truly!”

Najin nodded. When Najin answered that he would do so, Lena smiled brightly. As if truly grateful, she took Najin’s hand and shook it up and down several times, then cleared her throat and began to tell her story.

A story written over 600 years by a prisoner in solitary confinement.

Lena spoke the first sentence of that story.

“The story begins like this.”

To my beloved child, Roseline.

From your mother, Lena.

3.

Najin listened to Lena’s story for a long time.

Though he occasionally left to check on Anton, Najin spent most of his time listening to the story Lena told.

Lena laughed happily as she spoke.

Even as the stake rooted in her body pierced her lungs with every word, causing her to cough dryly, she did not stop telling her story.

“And then, and then!”

She spoke with her arms spread wide.

Her story was composed of several chapters: Chapter 1 was the love story of Lena and Albert, Chapter 2 was about how their story ended, and Chapter 3 was about Roseline.

Listening to her story, Najin felt bitterness.

Her story could never become a comedy. It couldn’t be called a happy ending. Despite their efforts, overcoming trials, and struggling with all their might, Lena and Albert’s story ended in tragedy. As if proclaiming that the only possible end for love between a witch and a human is tragedy.

Along with bitterness, Najin felt regret.

Not just for the witch before him, but also sympathy for Anton who was now climbing the tower. After all, Lena’s story was also the ending that awaited Anton.

“For a witch to love a human, she must give up being a witch.”

“Why is that?”

“Otherwise, the curse won’t be lifted. Our mother, the Witch of Abyss, engraved several taboos into the souls of witches. So that they could never mix with humans.”

So to be with a human.

“You must give up being a witch. It’s a difficult thing. An incredibly, incredibly difficult thing. It’s close to completely denying your life and being reborn. Breaking your own mystery is such a thing.”

Lena placed her hand on her heart.

“I couldn’t do it. In truth, I might have been able to. But if I did that…”

“You would die.”

“Yes. Denying yourself and your star means dying from erosion. But I had a reason to live. For as long as possible.”

Her gaze was directed somewhere far away.

“If I died, that child wouldn’t be born. So I, and we, chose. Perhaps we accepted it. If it could only end in tragedy, we decided to talk about what comes next. To at least leave evidence that we loved each other.”

In the midst of tragedy, they found an answer.

Even if it ended in tragedy, it wouldn’t be meaningless.

“So, I’d like this story to reach that child. I wonder if she was born? Or perhaps she hasn’t been born yet. Is she still wandering in dreams?”

“Well, she does wander in dreams occasionally. She’s someone who gets drunk almost every day.”

“…What?”

As Lena’s story was coming to an end, Najin spoke about a certain mercenary he knew.

“You, do you know Roseline?”

“She’s someone I’m indebted to. She helped me a lot.”

Lena’s eyes trembled. As her gaze wavered, Najin told her a story. About the Roseline Askarlo he knew.

“So.”

At the end of the long story.

“Let me.”

Najin rummaged through his free knight’s coat. Though its appearance might be identical to the coats worn by knights who followed Arthur 1000 years ago, its interior was not the same.

The knowledge and technology accumulated by the Empire over 1000 years were concentrated in the single coat Najin wore. The Empire’s magic tower had painstakingly applied all kinds of magic to it. And among those magics was, of course, “expansion magic.”

Clothes stored in an expanded space.

Pulling out a set of clothes from his coat, Najin smiled slightly. It was clothes that held Najin’s memories. Clothes he used to wear in the underground city days. More precisely, clothes he wore when acting as the “organization’s executioner.”

But now Najin focused on the appearance of these clothes rather than their use.

When visiting someone as the organization’s executioner, Najin always carried “Ivan’s letter” and wore a postman’s clothes, introducing himself as a postman since he had to deliver a letter.

It was the same now.

Taking off his free knight’s coat, putting on a postman’s hat, and slinging a postman’s bag to his side, Najin extended his hand to Lena. As if asking for a letter to deliver.

“Before becoming a free knight, I worked as a postman for a while. If you have a letter to send, please give it to me.”

Looking at Najin who spoke thus with disbelief, Lena burst into laughter. She gathered all the letters filling the room and handed them to Najin.

“Can you deliver this to that child?”

Interlude, a brief gap between acts.

A time when actors leave the stage to prepare for the next story and catch their breath. During this brief time, actors often rest, forgetting their roles.

And Najin intended to use this interlude to temporarily take on a different role.

A postman delivering letters.

Perhaps, it was the first role Najin had ever played.