“Your wounds need tending. If you leave them, they’ll fester.”

“Don’t bother. Put the medicine on your own backside. You took a fall just now.”

“……”

“It’s hot, go inside. Don’t collapse in the sun and make me deal with a funeral.”

Simon watched for a long time as the boy, having coldly refused his kindness, ran off into the distance. The eyes of the demon he had so despised no longer held any meaning for him. Superstition and old wives’ tales cannot outweigh the sin he had committed.

Heaven, for someone like me. Absurd. The old man bowed his head low.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

‘Villa Efrysia,’ built of pink Florentine marble, stood on a high hill and looked out over the sea with quiet pride. The hill faced the Azure Coast, and the former Countess Babineau, when commissioning the estate’s construction, had requested the architect design it so that the Mediterranean could be seen from every room inside.

The many guests invited to the house afterward were captivated, as if bewitched, by the cool blue light that spilled in through the windows. Through their lips, word spread naturally to the capital that heaven could be found in Cappera, in southern Gallia.

There was one more thing the former Countess had boasted of as the villa’s pride. Nine individually divided gardens, each perfectly landscaped to its own distinct theme. The villa’s main garden was conceived in the shape of a ship’s deck, built so that the sea could be viewed from both sides. Standing at its far end, one could not help but feel the grand sensation of sailing out on a great vessel into the open sea.

The other eight gardens had gold poured into them just as freely. Guests who came to the villa enjoyed strolling through the horseshoe-shaped Espan-style garden, the spring garden blooming with flower varieties gathered from around the world, and the modest country garden that recreated a Gallian pastoral scene.

There was, however, one area that drew no admiration from them at all. That was the garden filled with cacti bristling with sharp spines, the last garden the former Countess Babineau had ordered built after sensing her husband’s approaching death.

The so-called ‘Cactus Garden’ was parched and rough, starkly different from the lush and graceful spaces around it. One visitor, after walking through it, had described it as ‘hell within heaven.’ The place was unpleasantly out of place.

Perhaps what the former Countess had truly desired, the ultimate landscape she had envisioned, was a ‘silent wasteland.’ The boy lay still in the Cactus Garden and let that idle thought drift through him. Around him, only the sound of distant waves broke the silence, tapping gently at the garden wall at steady intervals. Over it, a quiet voice settled, pricking at his eyelids like sunlight.

“So you were here.”

It was strange. That sound could descend like light. That it could reach the eyes rather than the ears. The boy slowly pulled his eye away from the viewfinder. His vision, still unfocused from keeping one eye shut, gradually sharpened around a single figure.

A few strands of bright golden hair curled down over the girl’s pink cheeks. Her eyes, a blue that could almost be mistaken for green, gave her an impression of purity. The vivid yellow bouquet she held against her chest suited her perfectly.

Marigolds. The name he had picked up from Bertrand came to him faintly. The flower of the Madonna, or something like that. It clashed terribly with this garden, which people called hell.

“I saw you heading this way earlier.”

The boy slowly pushed himself up from where he had been leaning against the hot rock. The girl’s eyes went wide with innocent surprise at the sight of his swollen cheeks. Silk slippers with thin leather soles skimmed quickly over the sand.

Even as she approached, there was no sign of alarm in him. He didn’t scramble to bow his head. The boy simply stared at the master’s daughter drawing near and set the camera he had been holding aside. That was, in truth, a rather insolent thing to do. To begin with, aside from the gardener and his assistant Bertrand, the servants of Villa Efrysia were strictly forbidden from entering the estate’s gardens without permission.

The boy had slipped in here by working the lock open with a small wire instead of a key. If caught, he could rightly be dismissed. The master and mistress were devoted to their gardens. Bertrand had actually caught him once before, but Bertrand, who had taken beatings from Georges in the boy’s place, was not shameless enough to disturb the rest of someone who had never reported his own thieving.

“……Miss.”

Cora Babineau. The girl was the daughter of Count Babineau, who had arrived from the capital not long ago.

“Do you work in the garden too?”

“……”

The boy shook his head. Strictly speaking, he was not an official servant of the villa. He was nothing more than the grandson of old Simon, a painter the former Countess Babineau had favored, brought here at the old man’s pleading, clinging to this place like a parasite on her charity, and earning the resentment of the servants with his unyielding manner.

His stepfather Damian had died not long after coming here. All Damian had left behind was a single book, its binding worn loose from too much reading, and a camera with a cracked and peeling leather cover. They had originally been things his mother had treasured like her own life.

The boy had never actually seen the former Count and Countess Babineau in person. Even during the years the late couple had left Lutes and settled properly in Cappera, Simon had never shown them the boy, and they had never taken any particular personal interest in the painter’s grandson.

Violence came frequently to someone who was ‘invisible to the master’s eyes.’ Lightly at first, then growing wilder until it was nearly unbearable. Years passed that way. And a few months ago, the former Count had passed away.

Beatrice Babineau, the former Countess, who had been deeply devoted to her husband, fell into grief and shut herself away after the funeral. Rumors circulated that she too had fallen gravely ill from the loss.

Mathieu Babineau, set to inherit the title, had rushed from the capital Lutes to Cappera with his wife and children the moment he heard the news, to attend the funeral. It was the first time he had brought his family here.

After arriving, Mathieu declared to Beatrice Babineau’s face that he intended to remain in Cappera for some time after the ceremony. It was a rather unexpected decision. He had rarely visited Villa Efrysia until then.

Mathieu Babineau came to the villa once or twice a year, always with a deeply furrowed brow, to look in briefly on the former Count and Countess. It never ended well. More than a few servants had witnessed him storm out shouting and send his carriage off toward the Nicaea station. The servants were puzzled, but they followed the orders of their new master without complaint. The affairs of those above were not their concern.

Meanwhile, entirely apart from all this upheaval, the boy had been steadily looking into places to settle after leaving the villa. He had no reason to remain in this godforsaken house now that the former Count was dead and his wife had gone into hiding. Simon’s protests aside, the boy intended to vanish from Cappera without a word, taking the old man with him, as soon as he was ready.

“I’ll take my leave.”

Cora stared blankly at the boy as he gave a brief farewell, then reached out a white hand and took hold of his fingers. This time it was Cora who caught him off guard, and she laughed softly at the sight. More laughter spilled in through the boy’s narrowing eyes.

“There’s blood here. It still hasn’t fully stopped. Hold on, let me clean it.”

“……”

The blue-green eyes looking up at him sparkled like waves on the Mediterranean. Shhhh, the sound of waves crashing and rolling in from far away reached his ears. The swell, he guessed, was much higher now than before.

“My little brother gets hurt a lot too. When he starts bleeding, it doesn’t stop easily, so I always carry this with me.”

“……”

Cora Babineau sat on the rock and spread a clean handkerchief from her handbag across her knee. Inside a small glass bottle wrapped in cloth was an unidentified white powder.

“It’s a styptic. Tell me if it hurts.”

“……”

Fine white particles settled over the chapped skin of his hand. It looked like soft snowflakes falling onto cracked, frozen ground. A fragmentary memory of snow he had seen as a child, falling to cover the frozen earth of Schwaben.

Once she confirmed the bleeding had stopped, the girl folded the handkerchief into a long strip with practiced ease and wound it around the broken skin. The movements were swift and precise as she tied the ends into a knot and tucked them in so they wouldn’t get in the way.