episode_0081

[Episode 81] – Magic

“Is this a story about you and my mother?”

“…I told you it was a friend story. Elise…”

Again, a brief silence fell over the room. Elise seemed to be thinking about something, tapping her knees with her fingers while her legs were crossed, while Catherine was busy filling her empty glass with alcohol and gulping it down.

Elise had a lot to say as she listened to Catherine’s story, but she was worried about how much she should say. No, she was worried about whether she should say it at all.

When Catherine was away from the mansion, the topic of their mother was something that even the sisters didn’t bring up among themselves. Could they really say this to Catherine, an outsider?

Elise thought for a moment, then broke the silence and opened her mouth.

“Certainly… my mother has changed.”

“Huh..? How..?”

“First of all…”

Gulp, Catherine swallowed and raised her head, staring intently at Elise. She couldn’t take her eyes off Elise’s lips, wondering if Elise was feeling the same discomfort she was feeling, or if Elise knew why Trisha had changed.

“Mom has become cuter than before.”

“…Huh?”

“You’ve gotten prettier since you came. Should I say your behavior has become a little more rounded? You used to be a little sharp, but now you’ve become more rounded and cute. Unlike before, you get embarrassed even when we hold hands, which is really…”

“…haa, no, that’s not it…”

Catherine lowered her head as if she had been expecting something for nothing, and sighed deeply. She had thought that the children who had been with Trisha up until now would feel the same sense of discomfort as she did, but Elise seemed completely unaware.

“Haa… Okay. Go back to your room.”

“If my mother changes, is that a bad thing?”

“…what?”

When Catherine raised her head again and looked at Elise, Elise, who had been smiling brightly just a moment ago, was looking at Catherine with a serious expression.

Is it a bad thing that Trisha has changed? Catherine thought Elise hadn’t understood her at all and tried to explain again.

“…What I felt was not just a change in personality. Yes, it was as if the person had changed…”

“So what you’re saying is that your mother is a ‘different’ person than she used to be?”

“…I don’t know either. Is it just my imagination, or…”

“And, you are the reason why your mother changed.”

“…..”

Even if I explained ‘magic’ to Elise, would Elise believe it? There was no way she would believe it. Catherine herself couldn’t properly explain the sense of discomfort she felt right now.

I just wanted to believe that Trisha had lost her memories, but every time I thought about the old Trisha and the current Trisha, a feeling of discomfort crept up inside my chest.

The feeling of discomfort turned into guilt, and the guilt turned into anxiety.

Even though Trisha thought she had just lost her memories, she couldn’t even go to bed without drinking alcohol because of the terrible anxiety that she might have taken the real Trisha away from the children.

The more she thought about it, the more the regret and self-reproach that began to creep up from the bottom began to instill in Catherine a sense of anxiety. Elise glanced at Catherine, who was just drinking alcohol, and opened her mouth with a sigh as if she was frustrated.

“It was because of you that my mother changed.”

“…”

“Because of you.” Elise’s words pierced Catherine’s heart like a sharp knife. A nausea that made Catherine feel like she was going to vomit at any moment came over her.

When I thought about it, it was obvious. There was no way Elise or the children wouldn’t have known that Trisha had changed. Catherine lowered her head in guilt, thinking that maybe the children had just accepted the changed Trisha.

However, the words that came out of Elise’s mouth were completely different from what Catherine had expected. She had expected that she would say that her mother had changed because of her and that she wanted her mother back, but the words that came out of Elise’s mouth were…

“If it’s your fault that your mother changed, then I, no, we should be grateful to you.”

“…what?”

It was a word of gratitude that she had never thought of. Catherine doubted her ears, wondering if she had misheard Elise. Unlike Catherine, who was confused, Elise continued to speak calmly.

“We also know. The fact that Mom has changed a lot. Why don’t we know? I don’t know what you mean by ‘other person’, but we have never been separated from Mom. We know every little thing about Mom, so why don’t we know that?”

“……”

Elise frowned as if she didn’t want to remember, jumped up from the sofa, snatched Catherine’s glass, poured herself some strong liquor, and drank it in gulps before letting out an irritated sigh.

“…You only drink with people you like?”

“You don’t seem to be drinking? It’s because of you that I have to bring this up?”

Boom! Elise slammed her empty glass down on the table and sat down, facing Catherine, on a chair beside her. Elise threw herself down on the wooden chair and continued to sigh deeply, muttering, “Where should I start talking?”

“…How do you think your mother has been doing all this time?”

“As Trisha said… It was hard, but it’s okay because I’m with you guys…”

Catherine thought back to what was written in the letter. Trisha’s words, that all she had left were her children, that she could not fall, so she would stand, flashed before her eyes.

However, Elise shook her head after hearing Catherine’s words.

“Before I got the fever, that is… Before the change you mentioned, my mother doesn’t seem to remember what happened then…”

As if it wasn’t such a comfortable and pleasant memory,

He shook his head and opened his mouth with difficulty.

“My mother had a mental breakdown at that time.”

“…Huh?”

The moment she heard the story, Catherine’s heart sank. She had never heard of Trisha having a fever or having a mental breakdown.

“This is probably the first time you’ve heard this story. It’s a story that even my sisters never bring up. I also don’t like to think about it. It was really hard to see my mother back then.”

Nausea arose. The alcohol in her empty stomach seemed ready to come out of her mouth at any moment. Catherine’s face turned pale as she remembered why Elise had called her a bad person for just waiting.

“Do you still want to listen? Honestly, I don’t want to say any more. If you’ve heard this far, please understand. Why we don’t say anything when our mothers suddenly change, why we’re hiding this story.”

“…..”

“Honestly, it’s not something I should tell anyone but my family.”

Catherine looked at Elise with a pale face as if she had just woken up from the sudden shock. Elise’s expression, smiling bitterly as she looked at her, seemed to show that she did not want to remember that time.

but…

“…Tell me. How Trisha has been doing while I was away.”

Still, she had to hear it. Catherine had to know what the hell had happened to Trisha, why she felt uncomfortable around her, and whether something had really gone wrong because of the magic she had given her.

Elise looked at Catherine for a moment, then let out a small sigh. If she brought up this topic to anyone else, it would only insult her mother. To be honest, it was a story she didn’t want to bring up…

Elise knew best who they were enjoying now and who they were thankful for. Thinking that Catherine, who loved her mother, would be okay with listening to the story, Elise began to speak calmly.

“After the person who passed on the debt died, we had a little hard time, but it was okay. At the time, we didn’t know that there was debt at home, so we just thought that my mother was having a hard time because she lost her husband twice.”

“…..”

“Of course, as time went by, my mother would overcome her grief and return to how she was before, so we stayed with her, believing that. But…”

Elise wiped her face with her palm as she recalled the memory of that time. Elise pursed her lips as if she really didn’t want to say anything, but finally opened her lips to tell the story.

“A few months before she got the fever, my mother literally had a mental breakdown. She would scream like a madman and wouldn’t come out of her room. Sometimes she would come to her senses, but most of the time she would just cry in her room, screaming that it was hell and that she couldn’t do it anymore.”

“……”

“I think that was the first time I got hit by my mother. It was a given that I would get hit whenever I took care of my mother. She really hated even having us come into the room.”

Catherine couldn’t say anything to Elise’s story. She just listened to Elise’s words, thinking that she wanted to kill herself, the person she was at that time who thought she could just wait.

“She wouldn’t eat properly, so sometimes we had to force her to eat. However, as time went on, she ate less and less, and eventually, as her energy declined, she contracted an unknown fever.”

“Fever..?”

“Yes, the doctors said it was an unknown disease… and told us to prepare ourselves mentally. But we didn’t give up and continued to nurse our mother. Please, please don’t abandon us.”

“……”

“Fortunately, I don’t know if it was our nursing that worked or if it was heaven’s help… but my mother overcame the fever and opened her eyes. That must have been the moment. The moment my mother changed.”

Elise smiled slightly as she recalled that memory. How could she forget that time? When she opened her eyes in a hazy state of consciousness and her mother returned to being the mother who loved her like before.

Elise was actually glad that her mother had changed.

Sylvia and Lily were as happy as Elise.

Not a mother who was waiting for death herself.

That she had changed back into a mother who loved her sisters and herself.

It almost felt like ‘magic’.

I was truly delighted.