Chapter 2

One day Delphine had asked.

‘Grandmother, if they die like that, they’ll all go to heaven, won’t they? Since theirs were harder lives than anyone’s here, surely angels will take them to a better world?’

To that earnest question, Irenia could not answer. She could only tell her own one wish.

‘Well now. The angels seem too busy to come all the way beneath this bridge every time, but if one of them were to come and take me away when I die, I would wave them off.’

‘Why, Grandmother?’

‘I have already tasted both heaven and hell. I only wish that when my breathing stops, I will feel nothing anymore. But they should wish to grant me one final mercy.’

She paused for a moment, then painfully raised her thin, wrinkled, twisted fingers, let them wander through the empty air for a little while, finally managed to touch Delphine’s cheek, and slowly caressed it.

‘Instead of taking me to heaven, I mean to ask them to let you escape this hell.’

That was the wish she had spoken.

And then she busily stroked down that high, straight nose. The round forehead of that lovely child, who looked exactly like her Delphinia.

Even without seeing you, I can see your beautiful face, my baby.

So she had repeated to herself hundreds of times and yet again, inwardly, where Delphine could not hear.

“Aah, Grandmother. I don’t want to live anymore now!”

That moment of reflection lasted only briefly, and then Delphine, Irenia’s little baby, writhing in grief over her death, that child who was only nine years old, cried out so desperately.

“Why was I born, and why was I abandoned? Heu-heu-heu-heuk. Now, without Elonzo, and without you, Grandmother, how am I supposed to live all alone……”

Though Irenia’s chest had gone cold and stiff, her soul suffered a sharper pain than ever before. How could she leave that pitiful child behind.

To survive among beggars, there would be no other way but begging or stealing…….

And then, when she grew older, the only path left in such a life would be to become a woman of the streets.

To leave such a young child alone, one who would have to endure such a punishment-like life all by herself.

Among the homeless beggar crowd, Irenia had been blind, and her sickly body had hardly seemed fit to serve as any shield even when by the child’s side, yet together with Elonzo, who always barked fiercely, she had tried somehow to remain there and protect her.

But now even that was no longer possible.

Still the angels did not come. Irenia needed to beg them, please save that child. But no one listened. Not the final scream of her voiceless soul…… nor the cry the child tore out as if wrenching her very heart……

Then the rough sound of hooves was heard. The rattling grew louder and louder, and the lanterns hanging to light the road before the carriage stained the surroundings a bright yellow.

It was plainly the private carriage of some great noble, with its massive form, and even the sound of the vicious cracking whip was loud with arrogance.

It was a warning that roadside scraps of beggars should hurry out of the way on their own if they did not wish to be injured or killed.

If her cold-stiffened body could not move quickly, something terrible would happen. Get up and move, Delphine. Quickly!

Irenia, frantic, circled beside the child and cried out, but no sound reached her.

Delphine, still drenched in tears and trembling all over, seemed at last to lift her head…… but for some reason, she stared straight at the carriage lanterns filling her sight……

And she did not avoid the carriage.

Hihihihing.

The horses’ startled legs, the whip lashing the startled horses, all tangled together, and the cries of those beasts, guilty only of running, split through the empty air of the deep black night.

And in the middle of it, a frail little body rolled across the ground—Delphine, that weak, so very weak little girl. Ahh, her Delphine.

That weary and pitiable life of nine years was shattered into pieces.

Even so, the child had not wanted to part from her forever.

* * *

It was cruel beyond cruelty.

She had endured all of it. Her family had fallen into a heartbreaking false accusation, and even after losing everything in the whirlpool of bitter, blood-clotted injustice…… even the little child she had somehow wanted to endure and protect……

Without even being able to cry out that someone should take responsibility for the child’s safety in place of peace for her own soul……

She had witnessed that dreadful moment and could do nothing.

Long ago, everything had been taken from her.

Her family, her house, her position, her status…..

And the one person she had ever loved.

Thus her daughter had not been born into the noblest status in this empire, and from the very moment of her birth she had been crushed beneath the wheel of a miserable fate.

And then there was Delphine, the only blood relative left behind at the end of death. Irenia had met that child after she had become a wandering abandoned orphan, and though she herself had become a beggar, she had still not been able to embrace her properly.

She had not been able to protect her.

Had my own resentment and suffering not been enough? O God, where was the end of Your cruelty? Why had You not granted even the slightest mercy?

From the moment Delphine was born until the moment I died, You gave her nothing but terrible pain.

In exchange for taking away my love, I had wished only that Delphinia might at least be born safely……

In exchange for taking away my two eyes, I had pleaded desperately that the child might live without being branded as the bloodline of a traitor’s family……

Yet in the end, You made my daughter live a life even more horribly twisted than my own and die young, and Delphine, Delphinia’s daughter, was not even granted as much life as that.

Will this suffering be finally over?

But the villains who had cast her into this pit of death would feel neither cold nor hunger, and this winter, wrapped in fur and wasting firewood, they would likely sneer at the very fading away of lives such as theirs.

None of the sinners would be punished, and they would be forgotten just like this, as pitiful lives crushed and ruined.

No.

That must not happen. Never.

Still there was no angel coming to meet her, and no one to hear her…… yet her soul, driven by bitterness, was wildly pouring out the pent-up resentment of the years gone by.

If only someone would hear and set right the deepest wounds of my life.

She cried out and cried out again.

After losing everything like this, that pitiful little child, who had barely had anything to rely on except Irenia’s very existence, had even thrown away her own life to follow her.

If such cruelty had been dealt to her, then with that same mercilessness, she begged that the ones truly responsible for this tragedy be punished.

Though the happiness and love that should have been hers had been taken from her, and though not even a speck of pity had been granted in the end to her daughter and to that child’s daughter, in this bitter grief she cried out and cried out again.

If she were given another chance.

She would love no one, desire not a single moment of joy, and covet no one at all in her life.

Please.

Turn everything back to before the beginning of this tragedy.