Chapter 175: Her Name

“If you committed an evil deed, you should have never been caught. What a foolish daughter.”

Mardian Abreldine.

After being abandoned by his family and exiled by the Empire, the man, who had once been both a father and the head of the family, attempted to send herself into exile at a monastery. However, she could not accept that fate, and so she fled her family.

The place she eventually settled in was the city of Märchen, far from the Empire.

Fortunately, she had managed to bring some of her family’s wealth with her, so for the time being, she didn’t have to worry about money.

However, that wouldn’t last long.

If she couldn’t find a proper job, the wealth she had would soon run out.

“You seem to have a good eye for art… Would you like to try picking up a brush?”

It was an unexpected offer from a painter wandering the streets.

In shabby clothes, with a dirty appearance, she was someone who would have gone unnoticed in the Empire.

But this was Märchen, a city of free art with no social hierarchy.

Half-interested, she picked up a brush for the first time in her life.

And at that moment, her life was completely changed.

A genius.

That’s how people started to call her.

With an artistic sense unlike anyone else’s, she quickly began to gain fame, day after day.

By the time she had earned the alias “Black Rose,” she had become one of the wealthiest individuals in Märchen.

It wasn’t bad. Painting turned out to be an unexpected fit for her.

Most of all, when she painted, she could forget everything about Tina.

But that didn’t last long.

As time passed, she unknowingly began to paint Tina’s image on her canvases.

“Tina.”

At first, it was mere curiosity.

Then, it became interest.

And soon after, affection.

In the end, it turned into an obsession so deep that she could no longer control it.

Because of this, she walked the path of destruction, but strangely, her yearning for Tina only grew deeper.

Was it because she didn’t want to forget her?

Or perhaps, because she couldn’t forget her?

Even his paintings could no longer erase the traces of Tina.

After that, she drowned herself in alcohol every day.

Believing that fulfilling her bodily desires would ease the pain, she paid for women to be brought into her mansion.

She would torment them with the intention of killing them, and for a brief moment, it felt like the longing for Tina would fade.

Thus, her daily life became a never-ending cycle.

She painted while drunk.

By the time she grew tired of that, she would call women to her mansion and lash out with violence.

Day by day, she filled the emptiness of her life with alcohol and women.

But no matter how much she drank, no matter how much she tormented the women, the only thing left at the end was an emptiness and a sense of futility that could never be solved.

“Tina…”

Without realizing it, she called her name.

She tilted the bottle, trying to suppress the sorrow rising up her throat with more alcohol.

[Take the drug, Mardian.]

Suddenly, Tina’s words came to mind.

Right. She had certainly threatened her to take drugs.

The white powder that Viviana had forcefully given her.

Was it her intention to make her believe it was not drugs, but just a sleeping pill?

She was probably that meticulous.

She was a woman who was terrifyingly thorough and calculating.

“Maybe… if the thing I took back then was really a drug…”

At least, it wouldn’t be as painful as it is now.

Even if she were addicted to drugs.

She might have been able to forget the suffering caused by Tina.

“Drugs…”

To forget her, she needed something stronger.

Perhaps the answer was drugs.

This was a city of freedom and indulgence.

Among the upper class of Märchen, many had already fallen into drugs.

Compared to the Empire, the law enforcement here was lax, so it was easy to get drugs.

If it’s drugs…

If it’s drugs, could she forget Tina?

Knock, knock.

The sound of knocking from outside cut off her thoughts at once.

She glanced at the clock.

It was about time for them to arrive.

“Come in.”

As the door opened, women with quite decent appearances filed in one by one.

Beings who approached for money.

Perhaps because of this, she too could treat them as mere objects.

She put the bottle down and scanned them once.

“Rushel is still sick, I see?”

“Y-Yes… she hasn’t recovered yet.”

She had heard that she got sick after eating with the youngest one. If the greedy Rushel was absent, it must have been a pretty serious illness.

The same went for the youngest one she had taken an interest in.

Thanks to the desserts she made being fairly decent, she had paid the girl a bit of attention.

Well, in the end, that woman had likely only approached her for money anyway.

“Today, we’ll treat you, Black Rose.”

Erina let her coat slide off her shoulders with a bewitching smile.

The women who had followed her in also began loosening their outer garments, one by one.

She grabbed a bottle of liquor and downed the rest of it in one go.

It was always like this.

Whenever she spent time with her lovers, she had to be completely drunk.

By the time she was wasted enough that she couldn’t even tell if what was in front of her was a dog or a cat—

Only then would these women start to resemble Tina.

***

“Ghk…! Ugh…!”

She strangled her.

Grabbing a fistful of hair, she yanked her head up and struck her flesh with a whip.

“Ahh…! Ahh…! Black Rose…!”

The women’s moans reached her ears.

But unlike Tina’s clear, natural gasps, their voices were thick with deliberate seduction.

The only thing these women sought from her was pain.

Then all she had to give them was pain.

She tightened her grip around the neck of the woman lying before her.

A relatively young girl with greenish hair and emerald eyes.

Shirley… or something like that.

Half-naked and thrown onto the floor, she flailed desperately as her throat was crushed in her grasp.

“Kkh…! Gggh…!”

A choking, suffocating sound.

Drool spilled from the girl’s lips, wetting the back of her hand.

How strange.

The composition of saliva should be the same for everyone, so why did this woman’s saliva feel so repulsive against her skin?

Tina’s saliva had always seemed so sweet, so intoxicating—enough to make her want to lick it up immediately.

Crrk—!

She tightened her grip even harder, squeezing Shirley’s throat with crushing force.

Her eyes slowly rolled back, and her body began to tremble as if in a seizure.

“Ah… It hurts… I… I hate this…”

In her struggles, only fear resided.

If it goes any further, she might die.

I slowly loosened my grip on her.

“Cough…! Hah…! Ugh…!”

Her breath, which had been stifled, finally returned, and the green eyes that had been flipped over regained their original light.

“Hah… Hah… Huh…”

She seemed exhausted.

This seemed to be the limit for her.

I had just tossed three gold coins onto her stomach and was about to turn my attention to another woman when—

“I… I remembered!”

Shirley suddenly jerked up, her eyes wide with realization.

Her sudden movement startled not only me but also the women around us.

“Ah, s-sorry… I got carried away…”

Was she finally coming to her senses? She awkwardly apologized, her face flushed.

“What did you remember?”

I was genuinely curious.

What had made this nearly unconscious girl snap back to her senses so abruptly?

“Ah, it’s… the new girl who’s just joined…”

“And why her?”

“I swear I’ve seen her face somewhere before. But I just couldn’t remember where…”

Listening to her, it didn’t seem particularly interesting.

If anything, I was starting to get bored.

For such a trivial matter, she was causing all this fuss. It was truly insignificant.

“She looks exactly like the woman in the Black Rose’s painting!”

But in that moment, Shirley’s words jolted every nerve in my body.

“…What?”

“I went to the Black Rose’s studio once, you know.”

“And?”

“In there, there was a wall completely covered with portraits of a woman. She had white hair and blue eyes!”

My heart began to throb slowly.

Without realizing it, my breath was becoming uneven.

“The woman in that painting looked exactly like the new girl!”

At Shirley’s words, the other women widened their eyes and nodded in agreement.

“Ah, you’re right. Now that I think about it, they really do look alike.”

“I haven’t been to the studio in ages, so I barely remember.”

The words of the women passed through my mind like an echo.

I blinked blankly.

Just a moment ago, I had been so drunk that I couldn’t even distinguish what color the woman’s hair was.

But now, it was as if I had never touched alcohol in my life; my mind was clear.

My heart, which had been racing like crazy, was now pounding as if it might burst.

With trembling fingertips, I gripped Shirley’s shoulder tightly.

“Ah…!”

“Her name.”

I was startled by how much my voice was trembling.

“What?”

It couldn’t be.

It must have been nothing more than a coincidence.

Still, I couldn’t help but ask.

“The name of that child. Do you know their name?”

“Uh… yes… her name is…”

At that moment, everything seemed to slow down, like a scene being replayed in slow motion.

Shirley’s lips slowly parted, and through the gap, her voice came out.

“It was Tina…”

My vision instantly went black.

And when I opened my eyes again, I was.

Running wildly, barely conscious.

I hadn’t even realized that I was barefoot.