episode_0140

I knew why the dead couldn’t speak.

Humans have souls.

Though never visible to the eye, a soul clearly resides within one’s heart.

If seeing, hearing, and feeling are the body’s tasks, ‘Speech’ is something only the soul can create.

The dead cannot speak because they have lost their souls.

Even though my eyes were open and seeing, no sound came from my mouth.

It was because my soul had vanished.

So I couldn’t answer anything.

“Oppa? Ritsu Oppa…!”

Even as Marie shook me, calling out anxiously.

Even watching the child’s meaningless actions, I couldn’t say a word.

My soul was shattered.

Is this heavy despair, so profound I can’t even twitch a finger, truly death?

Is it because it’s so heavy and difficult that the deceased cannot move?

If hell exists, it’s right here.

This pain of my heart being pierced and twisted by a sharp spear.

This moment, where I can’t even scream and am groaning like a cripple… if this isn’t hell, then what is it?

Even though I’m alive, I’m not truly living.

I… was a skeleton.

A stark white skeleton, having lost all flesh and blood.

A meaningless bone, left to tumble, having lost its power.

A wooden doll rattling in Marie’s pebble-like small hands.

“Ritsu Oppa! Snap out of it!”

Marie’s anxious voice echoed in my head.

* * *

I didn’t remember how we got back to Breezedown.

I only vaguely recalled Marie holding my hand tightly, practically dragging me up to the village.

…That small child, so weak and lacking stamina, no less.

Ruyef, who had been waiting for us, asked where we had gone.

Marie replied that she had followed me down to the general store, but the moment I opened the door and went inside, I suddenly started wailing and acting strangely.

Upon hearing that, Ruyef merely glanced at me with an expressionless face. He didn’t inquire further.

Night fell.

We didn’t speak a word.

We just sat blankly in front of the crackling bonfire, staring at the flames.

A long silence continued. As night deepened.

It was when Marie curled up on a discarded cart and fell asleep.

“Ritsu.”

Ruyef spoke to me.

“Still don’t want to speak?”

“…”

“As I thought.”

He said, tossing a log into the bonfire.

“Typical of the Village Elder’s son. That look of not answering anything.”

“…”

“Get some good sleep. I’ll keep watch tonight.”

“…Ruyef.”

Ruyef lifted his head.

I called out to him without realizing it.

My first words, spoken suddenly by me who thought I would never be able to speak again, were:

That name I had believed I would never have reason to call in my entire life.

It was surprising, yet not particularly so.

Even while feeling an alien sensation, as if another part of my soul had forcibly opened my mouth.

I also understood the reason why I had to call Ruyef.

“How did you… find me?”

Ruyef was silent for a moment at my question.

Soon, he let out a deep sigh and answered.

“It was some time after I escaped from Breezedown. It was winter, and there was nothing to eat, so I was rummaging through the trash heap in Taildown market, hoping to find something. But in that trash heap, I found a luxurious letter paper, completely out of place.”

With that, he took something out from his pocket.

It looked like a mere note, but just as he said, it wasn’t ordinary parchment; it was high-quality letter paper used by nobles.

“Even though I can’t read, I knew it was the same handwriting as a note left by the court physician who had visited our village back then. So I asked someone who could read to read the letter for me, and I learned that it expressed great concern about your illness worsening and provided instructions on how to treat it. However… the fact that the letter paper was simply discarded in a trash heap, and judging by its contents, I realized something bad must have happened to you.”

Ruyef held out the neatly folded letter paper.

I took it with trembling hands.

I hesitated, but.

My fingers eventually slowly unfolded the parchment.

The words were visible.

[Tia! I received your letter safely! I’m so happy to hear from you after such a long time!]

[But I couldn’t smile after reading that Ritsu was ill. I’m sorry. I hope you understand that I’m writing a hurried and disorganized reply out of worry.]

[First, Miss Tia’s deduction is accurate. Judging solely from the symptoms you described, it seems the Enbus remaining in the child’s body has become problematic.]

[I don’t know exactly why that happened, but it seems the toxicity has become stronger than when I treated it. If so, there’s a danger that those ignorant of medicine might mistake it for actual death, as it truly appears that way. Miss Tia will have to do a good job of convincing them.]

[In any case, if you lower the toxicity of Enbus, Ritsu will surely wake up. I’ve written the treatment method below. If you follow the instructions precisely and administer the treatment for about two weeks, you can quickly neutralize the toxicity. Miss Tia is so surprisingly smart that perhaps you could even manage it within a week, couldn’t you?]

[Instruction one: Protect the patient in a suitably cool place.]

[Instruction two: Five times a day. Have the patient ingest water mixed with salt and clean water in equal proportions….]

Below it, a long treatment method was written.

It wasn’t a particularly difficult procedure. As the court physician said, with Tia’s skill, it was a task that could be completed within a week, no, even three days.

[…Continue to administer the same medicine until the patient shows significant signs of recovery. Never give up and keep watching over Ritsu.]

[If I get a chance in the near future, I’ll send another letter.]

[P.S. I’m truly sorry I couldn’t visit in person, as various things suddenly happened in Deseo. Instead, I’ll enclose some money, and I hope it helps.]

Finally, the letter ended with the signature of the Deseo administrative office, stating that five hundred gold coins were enclosed.

“…”

I see.

Everything had been right.

Tia’s hypothesis to save me, and even her theory… not a single thing was wrong.

Yet, in the end, it went wrong.

Tia always possessed unshakeable conviction.

Her will was so strong that even influential elders found it difficult to break Tia’s stubbornness, often asking me to do something about it.

She was truly an incredibly firm and resolute person.

But an angel whose wings had been broken once could no longer believe she could fly again.

She could surely do it. It was a matter of simply having faith…

That letter, containing such faith, ultimately failed to reach Tia.

It skipped over one hundred days and ended up in my hands like this.

Now, it was meaningless. Just stiff paper and a block of text.

“I found out that you had already died and were buried a while ago. But that letter said you would surely wake up, and coincidentally, I also heard that all the villagers had been captured… so I thought something was strange. That’s why I personally dug up your grave to investigate. As expected, you were alive, and I immediately brought you to my hiding place.”

Ruyef said he had taken care of me exactly as written in the court physician’s letter.

Naturally, however… it wasn’t the treatment method ‘exactly as written’.

Ruyef not only lacked pharmaceutical knowledge, but also, due to his impoverished life, he wouldn’t have had medicinal ingredients, and as he couldn’t read, it would have been difficult to obtain information.

Anyway, he and Marie put their heads together and tried in their own way… it took a long time, but eventually, I woke up, he said.

“In the meantime, I searched for the whereabouts of the ‘five hundred gold coins’ mentioned in the letter. If that much money had flowed into either Breezedown or Taildown, it would have been impossible not to know. But no one I asked knew anything about it. It seems likely that the letter never reached Tia in the first place, but someone intercepted it midway.”

“It’s Fosao.”

At my words, Ruyef frowned slightly.

“Fosao…”

He repeated the name once, then stroked his chin in deep thought.

“I, too, had suspected that pig-like fellow for a long time and once visited the general store. But as you know, there was nothing there.”

“…He went somewhere else.”

“Somewhere else?”

I couldn’t bring myself to say it was Tia’s house.

Rather, I had to answer another question.

“But Ritsu. That’s strange. How can you speak with such certainty?”

“…”

I looked down at my palms.

I knew I couldn’t tell anyone else about this ability to ‘see memories’.

The Village Elder had lived meticulously hiding a secret.

No one knew. Not the villagers. Not even I, his son, knew a thing until I learned the truth.

While the Village Elder commanded both respect and fear from the villagers, I could somewhat guess why he tried to hide this ability…

Because that was the best way to protect Breezedown, to protect the village.

Locking the doors tightly against the outside world, which was raging with madness.

Gathering his loved ones in a peaceful well, the Village Elder had willingly become the lid himself, shielding them from the wind.

But now that the Village Elder was gone.

All the villagers had left, and the only people remaining on this land were me, Ruyef sitting opposite me, and Marie, sleeping peacefully as if oblivious to the world.

There was no longer any reason to hide it.

I had already…

Lost everything I had to protect.

“I saw memories.”

Ruyef didn’t seem particularly surprised.

He just made a short ‘hmm’ sound, then asked again.

“Seeing memories… does that mean you saw the past?”

“Yes.”

“What past did you see?”

I closed my eyes.

It was an instinctive action, a spontaneous reflex to avoid recalling that terrible, painful memory again.

Even though I did that.

A terrible sadness clung to my voice.

“…Everything.”