Chapter 76

Fear has a habit of swelling itself larger.

Helio, seated in front of Sabina, couldn’t stop trembling even while seeing that his master was safe. Sabina called the boy’s name, worried.

“Helio?”

Even as she called him a few more times, Helio couldn’t properly hear. The split ribcage, the empty place where the heart should have been. The horrific burn-record image showed no sign of fading from Helio’s mind. He flinched when he suddenly saw the image overlay itself onto Sabina across from him.

“Helio?”

The woman with her chest opened asked him.

When Sabina took his hand, Helio startled even more. Sabina’s body temperature was colder than Helio’s, who was sunk in terror. Thinking she truly felt like a corpse, the boy quickly pulled his hand away.

“What’s wrong?”

Sabina asked anxiously.

“It’s nothing…….”

“It doesn’t look like nothing. If you’re sick…….”

“It’s not that.”

He did feel dizzy from using too much magic, but he wasn’t in pain. Afraid Sabina would say she would go home like this, Helio hurried to speak.

The boy had already been tense since this morning. It had been a long time since he’d agreed to meet Sabina, and the last time he’d seen her, they’d even fought. But with physical and mental fatigue piled on top because of Ashton, his vision truly went dark. Not to mention what had happened with Reyes before that had worn Helio down as well.

Sabina could tell that something had happened to Helio. But because Helio stubbornly refused to tell her what it was, she felt stifled.

She rose from her seat.

“I’m really fine, Master. I really…….”

Terrified Sabina would order Helio to rest and leave, he muttered urgently and reached out. He didn’t look fine at all. Fortunately, Sabina had no intention of leaving.

Sabina also understood, at least, that Helio didn’t want to say anything. It was a little sad that the boy had become a child who wouldn’t share his worries even with his guardian. Still, she decided not to press him.

She sat down beside Helio. And she pulled Helio into her arms.

The boy’s thoughts stopped.

Helio had grown taller and filled out, so it ended up looking more as if Sabina was leaning into Helio instead. She hugged Helio a little awkwardly and stroked his hair.

And there, in Sabina’s embrace, Helio collapsed.

The tears he had tried to swallow began to spill out. He gripped Sabina’s shoulder hard enough to hurt and cried and cried.

He wanted, somehow, to do well. But he didn’t know if he was moving down the right path. These were things far too heavy for a fourteen-year-old boy to handle. Helio wandered in fog, then was torn open, cut, by blades he didn’t even know where they had come from.

But what frightened him most was the possibility that everything he had done for Sabina might come back to her as a blade. The nature Reyes had shown, even briefly, made it impossible for Helio to place certainty in that man any longer.

At that moment, Helio was tormented by a fierce impulse to want to know Sabina.

He slowly took hold of Sabina’s shoulders and pushed her back. His master, kind as ever, wiped Helio’s tear-stained cheeks. Helio slowly reached his hand toward her.

Helio suddenly remembered Dennis, who had avoided touching him.

Sabina trusted Helio, and so she was defenseless. Even knowing what ability her ward possessed, she only looked at him with gentle calm.

In the end, he could not bring himself to read Sabina.

Letting his hand fall weakly, he only whispered, 

“I’ll do my best.”

“You don’t have to try so hard.”

Helio shook his head.

In the end, Sabina had no choice but to comfort him with different words.

“It’ll turn out the way you want.”

“……I hope so.”

Only then did Helio smile a little.

Sabina also smiled faintly.

***

The weather stayed clear through the first half of November, and only on Walter’s Memorial Day did it rain.

The rain was fairly heavy.

“It’s raining so much.”

Someone said worriedly.

Sabina wore black neatly and held an umbrella. The damp air was cold enough to sting. With today’s rain, winter would come a little earlier this year.

Even wearing a wool coat, chill seeped into her skin. Riding in a carriage to the park where Walter’s grave was, Sabina stared blankly ahead.

Many people had already arrived at the cemetery. As expected, Walter was the person who had had the greatest influence on modern magical history. Even at the third anniversary, the people who came to mourn filled the place. Yet looking at them, Sabina felt a sickening irritation.

Many among these people weren’t here because Walter’s death made them sad, but because they wanted to build ties to Sabina.

Her grandfather’s death was an opportunity for them.

Was pure mourning impossible?

Sabina walked slowly without meeting anyone’s eyes. A splashing sound rose underfoot. The toes of her shoes gradually dampened.

Sorrow began to lap up from beneath her feet.

“Miss D’Vialis, may the deceased rest in peace.”

“May the deceased rest in peace. Miss D’Vialis…….”

“Miss D’Vialis.”

This isn’t something she experienced.

Ignoring everyone’s words as she walked toward Walter’s grave, Sabina repeated to herself.

This body isn’t my body. I’m a different person from the Sabina who used to be. I’m the one who entered this body at the graduation party of this timeline.

So don’t be too sad.

She looked down at her grandfather’s grave.

On Walter’s headstone, nothing was written besides his name and the dates of his birth and death. He hadn’t left any last words for the world. He existed as his inventions, and as the magic piled high in the basement storage of D’Vialis mansion.

‘This isn’t something I experienced.’

Sabina closed her eyes.

Because she was an existence completely different from the earlier Sabina, she could refrain from being drawn to Reyes at all. She could even despise the ‘Sabina of the original story’ who had been fooled by such a man twice.

But why wouldn’t the emptiness—Walter no longer existing in this world—fade, as if it were her own?

There were more than one or two places where the body owner’s thoughts dominated her mind, but right now, she resented that part the most.

The world seemed to run on too many contradictions.

‘If only I’d met Grandfather even once, even for a moment.’

She ended up sinking into an enormous sorrow. The sorrow that had been rising from beneath her feet finally burst out from her tear ducts.

Sabina, standing rigidly upright, cried in silence.

Suddenly, someone grabbed her shoulder and turned her around. Surprisingly, the handkerchief that touched the corner of her eye smelled of dry sunlight. Sabina gently closed her eyes. When she let the wavering tears fall, her lover came into view, smiling awkwardly.

“What brings you here? To the grave of someone you’ve got no ties to.”

“No ties? He’s your grandfather.”

Even as he kept smiling, he knitted his brows. He seemed unable to take his eyes off Sabina crying, even though he didn’t want to see it. Sabina didn’t want to show him herself crying, either. There wasn’t a single happy person among lovers.

Even when she didn’t want to cry, the tears kept spilling. It felt as though only her tear ducts were alive. Only after a long time passed did she, who had been like a plaster statue, turn her head.

“Loss is a painful thing.”

Ashton couldn’t easily decide whether he should agree or not.

So he pretended not to hear, and only carefully wiped away Sabina’s tears.

Because Ashton was soon going to bring loss to Sabina, there was something contradictory about that comfort.

Both of them were thinking of Ashton’s illness.

“Will you tell me properly about your illness?”

Sabina lifted her shadowed face. Her expressionless face looked unusually gloomy.

Sabina didn’t believe, at all, what Ashton had said before about it being nothing but a chronic condition. Not anymore—especially after learning the medicine’s ingredients and function.

When the topic that followed the word “loss” became “illness,” the man was put in an awkward spot.

“I want to know properly about your illness. What kind of illness is it?”

“Like I said, it’s just…….”

Flimsy lies wouldn’t work anymore. Sabina’s eyes told him not to say things like that again. Ashton had no choice but to fall silent. The handkerchief at her eye slid away. A pale face hid behind black gloves.

“There’s so much I don’t know about you. Because you hide it. But I can know one thing for sure. You like me. Or perhaps you’re only pretending to like me…….”

Her shoulders trembled faintly.

“Even if you’re only pretending, you must have a reason.”

The hand holding the handkerchief had nowhere to go, drifting in the air.

“Anyway, tell me honestly. Is that illness killing you?”

Her sorrow tormented Ashton, and her words put him in a bind. The man tucked the handkerchief away.

“It’s a rare incurable disease. But I’m managing it.”

Once again, Ashton chose to hide the truth behind ambiguous facts. Sabina thought of Blueisia Tentacle and all manner of dangerous materials.

She didn’t want to lose Ashton. Losing him would be another loss. It would be sorrow of a different direction and a different intensity from losing her grandfather, but even if the direction  was different, sorrow was still sorrow.