Chapter 1. The Strange Line Between Miss and Ma’am

She was on a boat, heading somewhere. Silvia’s soul shone white and was in a state of profound calm. All around her was deep darkness. Looking down beneath the boat, she was startled to find it was not moving over water but rowing through clouds. In that extraordinarily mysterious space, Silvia simply let time pass, doing nothing at all.

She did not know where she was going or why she was headed there. She simply drifted along in silence. How long had it been? The moment they arrived, everyone who had been on the boat with her disembarked. Silvia rose to do the same.

In that instant, someone grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and yanked her back. Silvia was still wearing the clothes she had died in, though in truth that hardly mattered. A soul dressed in clothing was nothing but an illusion. In any case, Silvia turned to look at whoever had grabbed her garment.

The head she took for a face had no features whatsoever. And yet a voice reached her. She felt no sense of strangeness, no fear. Everything was simply, naturally comprehensible.

“You cannot go yet.”

“What? Why? I’m dead.”

“You lived a life full of lingering regrets. Left as you are, you will not be able to enter the afterlife. You will wander.”

“Wait a moment, I have no regrets. I lived a fairly satisfying life. I want to be done dying now. Or rather, I already am dead.”

The figure that had lifted her with one hand shook its head slowly from side to side. Everyone else had disembarked. Silvia alone remained on the boat.

“A malevolent spirit. You will become a malevolent spirit.”

“A malevolent spirit? Me?”

“A malevolent spirit is what those who leave this world with deep, clinging regrets become. And that spirit sometimes manifests its power and takes revenge. In the end, it no longer knows what it is avenging or whom. It simply takes revenge. So set things right. Everything began with you.”

“W, wait. Me? I’ll become a malevolent spirit? Why? I have never harbored malice in my heart. Not now, and certainly not in the future.”

“Come back after you have shed your regrets. Then, if you wish to go to the afterlife, I will send you. Not now. You cannot go now.”

“Then where am I supposed to go?”

“You will know when you get there.”

With those words, the faceless man pulled the boat carrying Silvia and moved off somewhere. Silvia shifted from a state of calm into one of profound unease. A slow irritation rose in her. No……she had been perfectly fine with things ending as they were, and she could not understand why she was being made to go back. She did not even know what regrets she had left, and if they were serious enough to turn her into a malevolent spirit, she would have rather died without knowing. Knowing would only stir up noise inside her.

Silvia shook off the hand of the man who kept gripping her neck to keep her from escaping. She looked straight at him and cried out. If she was going to become a malevolent spirit, it seemed it would be because of this faceless man. It was the kind of moment that made her seriously consider whether she needed to bring out her sharp tongue for the first time in a long while.

“I have no reason to go back. I have absolutely no attachment to life.”

“You have a reason to return. Everything has a cause and an effect. You are the cause. Every consequence that arose from you is yours to take responsibility for. That is why you must go back.”

Words too difficult and confusing to make sense of. She had no idea how to interpret them. The faceless man shoved Silvia off the side of the boat without warning, and she was sucked straight down through the clouds.

She felt no resistance from the air, no hair whipping around her. Silvia simply dropped straight down and entered her own body. Warmth returned to hands that had grown cold. But it was distinctly different from before.

* * *

“Miss, Miss Silvia, please wake up. You need to get ready if you’re going to the ball. Miss Silvia?”

The gentle voice reaching Silvia sounded remarkably like that of a maid named Sera who had attended to her in childhood. Come to think of it, what had become of Sera. She had not seen her since marrying Luke. Had Sera left service when she got married? Silvia deliberately kept her thoughts going as she delayed opening her eyes. She was simply that overwhelmingly sleepy right now.

“You need to get up. You said you were getting up a little while ago and went straight back to sleep. You said you wanted to take extra care with your appearance today because you have an important meeting. Hmm? Miss Silvia!”

Silvia opened her eyes with a blank stare at Sera’s chattering. Silvia’s eyes were the color of olives. In bright light they shone like embedded emeralds, giving her an air of mystery. Her hair was a deep, rich brown, soft and sweet as chocolate cream. Even with a sleep-rumpled face, Silvia was beautiful.

Sera watched Silvia with fond eyes, the kind of girl who always had trouble getting up despite having slept plenty.

“Drink this. Have some and collect yourself.”

Silvia took the cup of black tea mixed with milk and honey and took a sip of the lukewarm drink. The sweetness that spread through her mouth was quite strong. Come to think of it, she had always sought out sweet things in childhood. As she grew older, she developed an aversion to sweetness and ate things as unsweetened as possible.

“Mm, this is actually good.”

Today, for some reason, it suited her perfectly. After falling ill, nothing she ate had tasted like food, but now, as though it had all been a lie, her appetite had returned for the first time in ages. She finished the entire cup of tea in no time. With that, a sharp hunger hit her. Her stomach ached with a hunger she had not felt in a long time. The last time her appetite had been this fierce was when she had been carrying her first child.

Perhaps from drinking the tea too quickly, a flush rose in Silvia’s cheeks. Her lips were small but quite full, and even without deliberate makeup, the line of her lips was red and distinct. Her nose tilted up slightly, so even though her nose was shorter than other women’s, it looked far higher. Her skin was clear and dewy, her features fine and smooth.

Overall, Silvia gave off a richly classical yet mysterious impression. The fact that admirers never ceased even as she aged was proof enough of that. Looking back now, it really was a strange thing. Even with Luke growling and watching with burning eyes, butterflies and bees unable to pass a flower still flocked around her.

Silvia let a small smile slip at the pleasant memory, then handed the teacup back to Sera and stretched. Watching Silvia’s unhurried manner, Sera added with barely contained anxiety:

“Miss, it’s already late if you want to make the ball. You need to get ready quickly. You still need to do your makeup, fix your hair, and put on your dress.”

“What? A dress?”

Silvia narrowed her eyes. What on earth was……then her gaze landed on the mirror hanging in her room. Reflected in the mirror above the vanity in the bedroom she had used as a child, she caught sight of her own face and body, and she nearly fainted from shock. Well, what exactly would fainting accomplish for a dead person? Either way, she was enormously startled. This was precisely the kind of moment one would describe as nearly dropping a baby……if she had been pregnant, it very well might have happened.

Without even blinking, Silvia grabbed her own face with both hands and pressed and pulled at it mercilessly.

‘What is this. What on earth is this. Whose skin is this, so dewy and delicate and smooth? And what is all this fine down on this face.’

The soft, downy fuzz was beyond belief. No, more than that……the br*asts that had nursed through multiple births, that had been devoured so roughly every time that she had sometimes wondered if they belonged to Luke, were gone. It felt like a lie that she and Luke had ever quarreled over her telling him to stop being so fixated on her chest as it lost its firmness.

“Good heavens……”

“Why? Miss Silvia?”

“Sera, do you see this? It’s so white and so soft. Not a single stretch mark……”

Silvia untied the ribbon at the front of her chemise entirely and, in a manner quite unbefitting a young lady, gave her own chest a firm squeeze. Her mouth would not close. Like a young woman of marriageable age, a red bloom sat there like rose petals laid upon her. So different from the darkened n*pples she had known, she was shocked again and again. Whenever she had gone to enjoy a bath at the hot springs with her daughter, who looked just like her, she would look at the girl’s body and think of her own younger days.

The smooth curve of her softly rounded br*asts was genuinely enviable. Honestly, Silvia thought her own chest right now was far more perfect in shape and size than her daughter’s had ever been.

“I’m……”

“M, Miss Silvia. What, what’s the matter. Does your chest hurt somewhere?”

“No, it’s not that it hurts……it’s that it’s so healthy. That’s why.”