66. Two Friends (3)
After graduation, they naturally lost contact.
Though there were plenty of job opportunities, Judith, trembling with betrayal, rejected all offers and returned to her hometown.
While living like a recluse, she fell in love with her childhood friend and decided to marry.
Her friend first contacted her one day when wedding preparations were in full swing.
She said she heard about the wedding and wanted to congratulate her, apologize for everything, and asked to meet just once.
Though she must have gathered her courage to make this gesture of reconciliation first, it only seemed laughable to Judith.
So her reply couldn’t be kind either.
「What’s not going well? Are you hoping to get my forgiveness now to ease your conscience? But listen. All the suffering in your life is because of you. You’re just receiving back as much pain as you gave me. That’s your karma.」
Though it had been two years since she became Baron Lantskoĭ’s student, her friend hadn’t made her debut, let alone been introduced as his student in any media.
Her friend, who seemed ready to soar into the vast sky with wings added to her talent, was unexpectedly struggling and still bound to earth like a chicken.
If she couldn’t properly display her talent, she was no different from Judith.
So in that moment of writing the letter, she wanted to laugh at her friend to her heart’s content.
「I’ve completely erased you from my life. So don’t think for a moment I’ll be your diary again where you can dump your emotions under the pretext of friendship. I hope we continue not seeing each other like we have until now.」
Whether she understood the message or not, no reply came from her.
One day, just a week before the wedding,
She happened to hear news of her friend from another classmate living in Vasnetsov.
That she had taken her own life several months ago.
The timing overlapped perfectly with when Judith sent that malicious letter.
Her friend had left this world not long after receiving that letter.
Judith canceled the wedding and, as if possessed, returned to Vasnetsov.
Then she found the hotel where her friend reportedly died.
It was practically out of business as visitors stopped coming due to rumors of a dead woman’s evil spirit appearing.
‘Why did you end up like this when you seemed to have everything?’
Why did she not want to live?
‘Was that letter to me your last desperate attempt to live?’
Her chest felt tight, like a stone was lodged in it, thinking how cruelly she had treated her friend who must have been grasping at straws.
Judith found Room 404 where her friend had stayed before throwing herself off the balcony.
“If a spirit really appears here, I want to see even your ghost.”
I want to meet you again. Meet you again and—.
“I want to say I’m sorry.”
Back then, she felt she could only survive by hating her friend.
She had to believe it wasn’t because she was lacking, but because her friend had snatched away what was hers—only then would the pain lessen even a little.
She had made hatred her driving force in life, filled with self-pity over her frustrated dreams.
Judith collapsed on the floor, sobbing with longing for her friend.
Regretting now was useless.
Her friend had already crossed the river of death from which there was no return.
As she lay crying for a while, she noticed a familiar object where her gaze happened to fall.
Without thinking, she reached out and picked up something sticking out between the dresser and curtain.
Sure enough, it was the exchange diary they had used together before.
Opening it, she found it full of faded memories.
Inside, the two girls chattered excitedly about trivial things, not knowing what future awaited them.
As she turned page after page, the sunlit yellow pages took on a red tinge.
Looking up, she saw the sunset had begun outside.
Thinking the pages would be blank after the day they met Baron Lantskoĭ since they stopped writing in the exchange diary, she turned to the back, but the diary entries continued.
Her friend had kept writing diary entries alone, addressing the unresponsive Judith.
Just then, footsteps sounded in the hallway.
“Are you sure there’s really no one here?”
“I told you, right? Who would come to a haunted hotel?”
Judith quickly hid under the bed, thinking they might be staff.
Though it was closed, this was still private property and she could be punished for trespassing.
She thought they might be patrolling staff, but the man and woman didn’t pass by Room 404 and instead entered together, suddenly jumping onto the bed.
Watching the bed bounce above her, Judith covered her mouth with both hands to prevent any sound from escaping.
“So she really died here?”
“Why, surely our devout Viscountess Borodin isn’t afraid of evil spirits?”
At those words, Judith’s pupils dilated.
The familiar voices on the bed belonged to the Molnitsky Girls’ Academy principal and Baron Lantskoĭ.
Why were these two here at this hour?
“You think I’d be afraid of mere spirits? With the gods protecting me, what is there to fear? Besides, she barely attended temple services like a non-believer, while I always give my best in offerings.”
“Well, being born a commoner itself proves she was already abandoned by the gods, right? We boyars are chosen from birth.”
“See, this is why we understand each other so well.”
Viscountess Borodin let out a laugh.
“That’s why you meet me despite having a husband.”
“Don’t mention that man. You’re ruining my good mood.”
Lantskoĭ pulled out his arm that had been serving as her pillow and changed position to get on top of her.
“Isn’t it thrilling?”
“What is?”
“If that girl’s spirit really appears here. Thinking she might be watching us makes me even more excited somehow, don’t you think?”
“You have such bad taste, really. How can you say that about a woman who died carrying your child?”
Though Viscountess Borodin said this, she kept giggling non-stop.
For Judith, the shocks kept coming.
That friend had been pregnant with Baron Lantskoĭ’s child?
Since she started dating him after coming of age, the act of intimacy itself wasn’t strange.
Though society emphasized women’s chastity, even nobles from conservative families believed it was fine as long as they weren’t caught.
Originally, secret affairs were more thrilling.
But her friend had principles about not being intimate with men before marriage.
For someone like her to have gotten pregnant before marriage…
“Watch what you say about it being my child. How could that lowborn commoner girl be carrying my child? She might have gotten pregnant somewhere else and claimed it was mine.”
“That’s why I told you to only meet girls I connect you with through the Despot Club.”
The Despot Club was a historic social club consisting of select elite students and alumni from Hersen National Academy.
It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say the Despot Club controlled Hersen, with its members dominating not only key government positions but also academic and cultural circles.
Baron Lantskoĭ, the youngest son of a high noble family, was also from there, and when Judith first heard about it, she thought he was indeed noble-born through and through.
The subsequent conversation between the two tore Judith’s heart to shreds.
Viscountess Borodin had a very special relationship with Hersen National Academy’s Despot Club, which was affiliated through sisterhood ties.
Not only did she help launder money for nobles allied with the Borodin family, but she also actively helped cover up their children’s misdeeds—one of which was arranging meetings between Despot Club members and Molnitsky Girls’ Academy students.
Specifically targeting commoner students who were pretty, knowledgeable and cultured, but naive about relationships between men and women.
The Despot Club members wanted women they could somewhat converse with and play with before marriage, so the demand matched perfectly.
Members would take the innocent young ladies they met at parties to a different location.
They would rent entire hotels and reassure women hesitant about staying overnight by saying they’d give them the fourth floor since men and women should be separate, while they would use the fifth floor.
Then when the intoxicated women fell asleep in their rooms, members would climb down through the balconies into the rooms of women they fancied and slip under their blankets.
They would confess love to women who resisted in surprise and persuade them by promising to take responsibility through marriage, while also threatening that screaming would only make others suspect they had lost their virginity, until they finally got what they wanted.
These wicked young masters would then date these women and torture them with false hopes of marriage, only to eventually marry other boyars and ruthlessly abandon them.
That was the entertainment of the long-standing Despot Club.
That day in Room 404 was Judith’s friend, brought there by Baron Lantskoĭ.
When her mentor secretly entered her bed and confessed his love, she allowed him, swept up by her feelings for the Baron and fear of being expelled as his student if she refused.
That was how their doomed relationship began.
Like other women, her friend had no idea the end would be tragic.
“I’ve always carefully selected well-behaved, obedient girls from our school, so why did you suddenly meet someone like her? That’s why she clung to your ankle demanding responsibility after getting pregnant. She’s such a stubborn girl, despite being so foolish, tsk tsk.”
This was the true nature of the principal Judith had so respected.
“Eating only set meals gets boring. So I tried something adventurous.”
“Usually they give up and drop out after hearing about marriage, but that girl was really persistent. This is all because you got too involved with her. Why did you touch a student?”
“I thought she would paint my pictures more passionately with love. My prediction was right in the end. She stupidly did my work for me while believing it was for love.”
To Baron Lantskoĭ, who was in a slump around the time he gave guest lectures, she was a blessing that rolled in.
Completely abandoned after the Baron’s marriage, she begged just to have the paintings she had drawn returned.
But the Baron drove her away, saying they were his since they had received critics’ recognition under his name.
“Commoners are all alike—without conscience, vulgar, and incredibly stupid. How dare they act like victims when they’re just social climbers who threw themselves at us? I’d like to ask that so-called evil spirit about that.”
“Exactly. Kids these days only blame others. She died well. How could someone so weak survive this harsh world anyway?”
Judith felt murderous intent toward these monsters wearing human masks.
